Chapter 66:
Realizations and Confessions
"WHAT DID YOU DO?" Sirius shouted. He had known it. He had known it, and Albus hadn't believed him. He brandished his wand and pointed it at the wounds. "Reparo arterio." The wounds stopped bleeding, but the muscle and skin stayed severed. Sirius' knowledge of human anatomy was quite inadequate, and he didn't dare to try and undo all the damage. For the moment it was enough that Snape wasn't losing any more blood. He could feel his pulse as he held on to his lower arms; it was slightly faster than normal, but still strong.
With another sweep of his wand, he cut two long pieces of fabric from Snape's cloak and knotted them around the bloody wounds. All this time, Snape had put up no resistance, and was watching him with detachment, as if this was all happening to someone else. He didn't even flinch at the rough treatment of his open wounds.
"I couldn't open the phial with the poison. My hands still don't have enough sensation. The knife was easier," the Slytherin finally murmured, almost apologetically.
That brought Sirius tenuous patience to an abrupt end. He brought his face very close to the Slytherin's, without letting go of his wrists. "WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING?"
Snape just looked at him, and the moist sheen over his pupils let Sirius realize that it wasn't simple apathy that held the Slytherin in its grasp, but deep hopelessness. He leaned back slightly. "Why, Snape? Why?"
"Because I'm already dead. Lucius killed me."
"What a load of rubbish. Malfoy is dead. That should be enough payback for you. You've had your revenge."
Snape just shook his head and sighed softly. To see the Slytherin like this was unsettling. Sirius had never thought he'd ever see such a human side to Snape. "What happened?"
Again Snape just shook his head.
"Stubborn Slytherin. Do you think you can tell me much of anything I can't relate to? Don't you remember who you're talking to? Someone who lived with Dementors for twelve bloody years is probably going to understand what happened to you! I had assumed that you could deal with what happened on your own, but now—" he lifted Snape's bandaged arms slightly, to lend emphasis to his words, "—I know that you obviously can't. I have no intention of letting you die here after all the work I put into nursing you. And if still won't tell me what is the matter, then I'll make you."
Finally a bit of life returned to the black eyes. "And how do you propose to manage that? Force Veritaserum down my throat?"
"If I have to…" Sirius was slowly losing patience once more.
"You wouldn't understand." Snape voice again sounded simply tired, and his answer contained neither self pity nor mockery. He was merely stating a fact.
"I wouldn't be so sure of that. Look, Snape. I'm offering you a chance to unload. I'll listen, no matter how bad it is, and I promise to keep everything you tell me to myself." Sirius didn't know what possessed him to make the offer, but after all the weeks he had watched Snape go downhill, in which he had waited for an explosion of some kind, he had developed a kind of pride, had wanted to show Dumbledore and all those who hadn't believed him. Now that he had been proven right, it had awakened his curiosity, and he wanted to find out what exactly had thrown the Slytherin so off track. When Snape still didn't say anything, he gave a short sigh and decided on a drastic step.
"You're pretty good at Occlumency and Legilimency, I've heard. So I'll make you an offer, and I hope you realize what I am offering. Look into my mind and see for yourself what I experienced in Azkaban. I'm ready to trust you with my memories, if you will do the same afterwards." Sirius had trouble forcing the suggestion out of his throat. To let anyone, especially Snape, rummage through his memories went completely against his grain, but he wanted to know what had happened to the man, why he was ready to take his own life. His curiosity was stronger than his discomfort. And Snape wouldn't see anything that he couldn't imagine anyway, after his own short sojourn in the prison. Sirius was confident that he could keep Snape out of his other memories, should the Slytherin push too far in.
"Black, we've hated each other for as long as we've known each other. We've always been enemies, so why, by Merlin's beard, should I trust you of all people?"
The words were still lacking the sharpness that should have been there, and Sirius felt a kind of despondency rise up in himself. "I'm your worst enemy, Snape, and exactly that makes me something close to a best friend. And since you'll never have a best friend, anyway… I've known you your whole life, as you have know me. We have too much of a history together. And since at this point, what happens to you doesn't seem to matter much to you, anyway…why not? You have nothing to lose."
For a while, Snape didn't react at all. Sirius let go of the wrists and almost resigned himself to the fact that he might never find out the whole truth.
The Slytherin let his hands rest on his lap for a moment, his eyes on his bandaged wrists. Finally he took a deep breath, reached to his side, and with stiff fingers pulled his wand from a fold of his robe. His hand trembled slightly, and Sirius asked himself if that was due to the blood loss or something else.
"You probably are right. It doesn't really matter any more. – I'll show you a part, but not everything," he added tiredly a moment later.
Sirius hadn't really believed that the clichéd phrase that 'Snape had nothing to lose anyway' would have any effect, but apparently that exactly was the case.
The Potions master tried to straighten up, but, breathing heavily, sank back down to the floor. A thin film of sweat formed on his forehead.
"No strength… Has to work like this," he gasped.
Sirius pursed his lips. "That's what you get when you carve holes into your body with knives." He continued a bit more cordially, "Can I help you with something? What do I do?"
Snape took a few deep breaths. "Nothing. Just sit." For a while, he looked deep into Sirius' eyes, and a fleeting shadow of doubt showed in the black eyes, but immediately disappeared again, making room for hopelessness. At this point in time, nothing mattered to Snape. He lifted his wand with difficulty, using the heel of his thumb to push it against the rest of his hand, and pointed it at Sirius. "Legilimens," he whispered, a resigned sigh in his voice.
The sensation that gripped Sirius was more than uncomfortable. It felt as if memories from the depth of his soul were being pulled to the upper regions of his consciousness. Unable to do anything about it, he felt memories float to the surface and form pictures in his mind's eye. His mother, as she screamed at him; the news of his brother's death; cold, hunger, fear, and hopelessness in a barren cell.
Panic overwhelmed Sirius. He hadn't expected for control to be wrested from him so effectively. It hadn't been planned like this. He began to fight against the intrusion, but he could do nothing except feel fear slowly crawl up inside of him. Snape also seemed to sense that, and the invisible power that had retrieved the memories from the depth of his brain seemed to ebb – and then, suddenly, there were other pictures. Pictures that didn't belong to him. Again in Azkaban, but in a different cell. This one was high in the tower, to judge by the icy draft that whistled through the high, slitted window. Snape sat in a corner, trying in vain to curl up tightly enough to preserve some body heat. Then he was in the court room, seeing Snape sit on a chair. Somewhere from the audience he heard Ron's voice. "I hope we get to watch when he gets Kissed." Then a grand salon, and a very pregnant woman. Snape stood before her, killing her without blinking an eye, Voldemort behind him. The next picture was slightly blurry, mingling with one of his own memories of listening to the noises of the prison in his dog form. It was almost as if Snape for a moment had lost command over his own memories, and was trying to regain control, but couldn't quite manage any more. The picture never did move into focus, and then he was back in the pompous salon; Voldemort was pressing Snape tightly against his chest, right before the Dark wizard cut the Potions master's throat. Sirius' breath hitched as he watched. He had already known what had happened, but now, seeing it for himself, he suddenly understood why Harry had been so affected, and why Snape still had nightmares about it. This had to be one of the most brutal and painful ways to die. But Snape wasn't dead. The memories switched again, and now he was in a sort of dungeon, Lucius Malfoy standing in front of him.
And exactly at that moment the ability to consciously control what was happening seemed to completely slip away from the Slytherin.
Sirius could not have put it into words, but suddenly it felt as if he was not just looking at pictures, but sensing Snape's emotions. A tidal wave of anger, shame and fear broke over him, and neither his present good intentions nor his years in Azkaban had prepared him for what he was experiencing now. The more pictures he saw, rolling across his mind with brutal intensity, almost in slow motion; the more he experienced as if in first person what had happened to Snape during his captivity; the more his stomach was heaving. The memories unfolded in front of him as if he himself was in the room with Snape. He watched as his body was mutilated, and listened in as Snape's spirit was manipulated and damaged. The physical torture was worse than he had expected, though he had seen the wounds himself, even bandaged them more than once, but what made him feel more nauseated than anything else was the psychological game Malfoy had played with the Slytherin, as he watched Snape's desperate attempts to preserve some dignity.
The longer the memories went on, the more he saw Snape's proud façade crumble away. When he watched as Malfoy enticed Snape to run away, only to recapture and punish him later, he started to get angry at Malfoy. As he later saw how Malfoy's persuasive talk about Dumbledore's behavior seemed to little by little get to Snape, as he watched Snape start to doubt, that anger started including the Potions master. His conscience told him that it wasn't Snape's fault, but his will didn't want to listen.
Everything he had to observe was repulsive and awful, but Snape's present condition, his depression and hopelessness, only became comprehensible as Sirius watched in horror as Malfoy killed child after child and each time told Snape that this was his fault, that he could have saved this one. All he was still capable of feeling at that point was helpless desperation, and he didn't know how much of that emotion was him channeling Snape, and how much was his own. And then he watched as Snape – crying and wearing a dog collar – finally lost all pride and broke. As Snape knelt in front of Voldemort, the last shreds of dignity torn from him, Sirius' stomach threatened to revolt once and for all. For a moment, the image of Snape cowering before Voldemort hung in front of his eyes, before his surroundings grew blurry for second and the small cell changed into the grand salon, a shocked Harry as the spectator – and then they were back in the cell.
Sirius gathered all his strength to push the images away, to free himself from Snape's emotions which threatened to overwhelm him. He searched the most distant regions of his mind for anything he had ever read about Occlumency and lifted his mental shields. "Protego," he gasped, and as the thread that linked him to Snape was severed, the last memories, of Snape on a pile of corpses, staring at a decomposing skull, disappeared.
Sirius fell back a little, as if he himself had been released from a bond. He had started to fear that he would never be able to escape from Snape's memories. That he had managed to push Snape out with what little he knew about Occlumency and without using his wand showed that something had gone totally wrong. At the first image of the torture, Snape had completely lost control, and his Legilimency had taken on a life of its own. And after all he had now seen, Sirius knew exactly why. Small wonder.
He pulled himself back up and looked at Snape, who was still sitting in the corner, shoulders and head bent down and…crying?
Snape was indeed sobbing softly to himself, and the sound was so desperate that the picture of Snape cowering in front of Voldemort came back to Sirius, more than once.
"I didn't want to…" Snape whispered between two sobs, and Sirius with monumental astonishment watched the tears running down the man's cheeks. "You weren't supposed to see…I lost…control…again. I tried. I wanted them to kill me. I wanted to beat them, just once…but I failed, again. I've had to fight since I was born. Nothing was ever just handed to me…but I always had my pride. No one could take that away from me…or so I thought…" He looked at Sirius, tears in his lashes. "I just…can't any more."
Something broke inside of Sirius as he faced the self-loathing and disappointment in Snape's voice. This wasn't the nasty Slytherin he knew, with a hateful sneer on his face and an insult on his lips. No matter who it was sitting across from him right now, he couldn't have responded with a nasty comeback. Looking at this weeping, broken man, it was simply impossible to hold on to the deep hatred that he normally felt for Snape.
He looked helplessly at the Slytherin. He felt completely out of his depth. He could deal with a cynical, nasty Snape, but this was beyond the scope of his experience. This was still Snape, but for the first time, he was also a human being who had been deeply hurt and who desperately needed help. Help that Sirius was incapable of providing. What could he say to a man who had been through things like that? It was bordering on a miracle that he hadn't completely lost his mind. For weeks Snape had squashed his emotions, keeping them bottled up the way he always did, but now it had become too much. The recent confrontations, first with Malfoy and Voldemort and then with his own memories, certainly hadn't helped.
If only he hadn't followed the Slytherin, whispered the egotistical part of himself, and the thought made him sick the moment it appeared. Snape deserved all the help he could get. None of them had realized the scope of exactly how much help he needed.
Snape had again lowered his head and wasn't even trying to suppress his sobs. Gone was the arrogant façade, and for the first time in his life Sirius looked into Snape's soul. He scooted a little closer to the man and uncertainly lifted his hand to put it on Snape's shoulder in a gesture of comfort, but he hesitated in the middle of the movement. The Slytherin wouldn't put up with that kind of a gesture from him. But then this destroyed man only bore a faint resemblance to the Snape he knew… Oh, to hell with it, he thought as he, following an impulse, reached for the other man's shoulders and pulled him into a firm, comforting embrace. To his surprise, Snape didn't put up any kind of a fight, but leaned against him heavily, as if Sirius was his one remaining support in this world. Maybe he was.
This realization caused the last remaining doubts to fall away, and he gently, encouragingly, stroked Snape's back with his hand.
"Calm down now. It's all right. I won't tell anyone," he whispered awkwardly, as he let the other wizard cry against his shoulder. "You didn't fail. You survived. That's more than either Malfoy or the Dark Lord managed to do."
Snape's sobs slowly died down, but Sirius suspected that this had more to do with the fact that Snape didn't have enough strength left to weep than anything he had said.
"And for what? In the end, it's meaningless," whispered the Slytherin, sounding deathly tired, his voice still trembling and interrupted by a dry sob.
Sirius didn't quite know what to answer to that. But one thing was obvious. That he had stopped Snape's suicide attempt this time was only postponing the inevitable. Snape would try again – the Slytherin saw life only as a burden. He didn't care about life any more, cared so little that he had even let his most hated enemy into his memories. Snape considered his life finished.
Sirius pushed slightly away from Snape, still keeping both hands on the man's shoulders. "You don't know that. But Malfoy was definitely wrong about one thing – when we knew you had been exposed and we couldn't find you, Albus just about went crazy. He tried to keep up appearances for the students, but in private he could barely sleep, he was so worried about you." He forced an encouraging smile on his face. "Since I live in his quarters, I could hardly miss all the nights he spent in front of the fireplace, brooding and sighing to himself."
Snape looked at him as if he could determine the veracity of his words by staring at him intently enough.
"If you were to kill yourself now, you would break Albus' heart. He really does care about you, you know."
On Snape's face there was a mixture of guilt, surprise, and, for the first time in a long while, doubt, but then those emotions faded, to be replaced with the familiar resignation.
"Even if it's true, it doesn't really matter. Albus will forget. He won't have a choice. Too many lives are at stake. He can't just preoccupy himself with one of them. Maybe he really would grieve, for a short while, but he would get over it. I wouldn't be the first person he has buried."
"You're not just one name among many to him, Snape."
Snape again lowered his head and stared at his hands. Barely audibly, as if he were afraid to hope, he whispered, "Maybe not to him…but there is the Chosen One…"
This surprised Sirius. "I always thought that you wanted it exactly like that. That it didn't matter to you what anyone else thought. You were always above trying to ingratiate yourself to anyone else. Hell, you did everything possible to make people avoid you."
Again, Snape sighed. "I know. I was quite content with that. I couldn't stand most people in the first place." He looked up. "But now I don't know if it is enough for me any more, being hated. Hatred is a kind of respect, you know. The only respect I could earn for myself. But I was barely gone, and the school threw a party. That sort of respect is worthless the minute I am gone, and the next generation of students won't remember me at all." His face contorted as if he were in pain. "Even Pettigrew in the end revolted against the Dark Lord, stood up to him. Even that abominable coward achieved something I couldn't."
Slowly, Sirius began to recognize the full extent of the problem, and it chilled him. "Peter was a coward. He was simply looking for a way out, the quickest, simplest, and most painless end. You survived torture that he couldn't have withstood for even a day."
Snape made a noise that was half way between a sob and a laugh. "In the end it was I who broke, not he. He resisted. The end result is what really counts. Why should I live, tell me?"
"Your life is not over, Snape. You have many years to still make a name for yourself," Sirius said with a hint of desperation, and he realized with surprise that more than anything in the world, he wanted Snape to live. He had never in the slightest wished for that in all the time he had nursed the Slytherin, except maybe to satisfy his own pride – but never for the Slytherin's sake. But now he wanted exactly that. He wanted Severus Snape, this man who had been so horribly abused, to live. He couldn't allow Malfoy and Voldemort to finish destroying him – Snape didn't deserve that. Right now, he would have given anything for a hateful, bitter, nasty comment from the Slytherin.
Snape had pulled himself together a little bit and snorted disdainfully. "If I haven't managed to achieve anything of note in forty years, do you think another forty or eighty will make a difference? Come down from your idealistic, golden Gryffindor cloud, Black. Do you really want to know why I even agreed to take on this role, when I knew it would most likely cost me my life? Not out of maudlin sentiment, or even out of respect for the Headmaster, even if that might have played a part. No, I knew that if I died doing this, I would remain in people's memories forever. For that, I would have deceived the Darkest of wizards, run any risk. I would have dared to do what no one else would have, and people would have remembered that. I would have finally achieved something that mattered, if I hadn't let myself be broken." His hand clenched into a fist, and a weak gleam of hatred glittered in his eyes. "I would have gone down with pride, and at least posthumously, I would have received the Order of Merlin that was taken from me when you escaped."
Inwardly, Sirius rejoiced. There was at least a spark of life in Snape's words. Apparently, he wasn't doing as badly as he thought in his attempts to get through to the Slytherin.
Sirius let go of Snape's shoulders and with renewed self-confidence sat down more comfortably. "You still have your whole life ahead of you. There should be time to come up with some memorable deed that is worth a medal, don't you think? I'll make you a deal, Snape. You promise not to kill yourself, and I won't tell Albus about anything that happened here."
Abruptly, Snape got angry, even if Sirius had the impression that there was a hint of panic in his eyes. "You deceitful bastard! You already promised not to say anything!"
"That only counted for the memories, not the suicide attempt," Sirius said with a grin.
The outburst of anger faded, like a deflating balloon, bringing back some of the resignation and desperation. "It is my decision."
Sirius could have smacked himself, and his self-confidence evaporated at least as quickly as Snape's anger. The thing wasn't as easy as all that, it seemed; Snape's soul was broken, and if he took away control from Snape right now, he was no better than Malfoy.
"Of course it is," Sirius said, trying to make up for his mistake. "You can do whatever you want to. It's also your decision if you want to tell Albus about any of this, but please understand that there are people worried about you. What happened to you was horrible, but it wasn't your fault. Not any of it. There are people to whom you are very important. Don't forget that, please."
"I can't deal with it, Black. I just can't. I don't want to have the nightmares any more, or hear the screams, or remember how they defeated me."
Sirius again laid a hand on the shoulder of the man across from him. "Please try. You don't have to go through this without help. You're not alone. Albus will always have an open ear for you, and if you don't want to go to him…" He hesitated a moment. "Well, I've already seen everything, so you can come to me…"
This time Snape looked at him as if he had lost his mind, and Sirius allowed himself a small grin. The Slytherin had always been a loner, but to get over this, he would need support, and to Sirius' surprise, he even, to a certain degree, seemed ready to accept it. He didn't know if it would be possible to heal Snape's soul completely, but if he gave himself enough time, he might eventually be able to accomplish it. Some day. With a lot of help.
Snape lowered his head again and thought for a moment. "I can't promise anything," he finally admitted hesitatingly.
"All right, then." Sirius got up and held out his hand to Snape. "Come on, let's go, or Albus is going to send out a search party for us."
Snape looked reluctantly at the offered hand, but finally allowed the Animagus to grab his elbow and pull him to his feet. He swayed dangerous, but Sirius steadied him immediately. "Dizzy?"
Snape just nodded, and a short time later he was standing more steadily, even if he couldn't yet push away from the physical support Sirius offered. Sirius cleaned Snape's blood off his cloak with a spell, and fumbled around with his sleeves for a moment until they covered the bandages. "I'm no good at healing spells. I just hope that once you get home you can take care of this yourself, otherwise you'll have to resort to Poppy after all…"
Again Snape's face contorted into a resentful mask, and with an abrupt gesture he wiped the last traces of dried tears from his face with his sleeve. "I'll manage. Now let's go."
Before they headed for the exit, Sirius cast one more somber look at Snape. "From now on, I'll have an eye on you, Snape. Nobody's going to do anything like what happened at Malfoy's to you again," he swore to himself, so quietly that he wasn't sure if Snape had even heard him. If he did, he wasn't reacting at all.
Sirius smiled. Snape still was an unfriendly bastard, and they would probably never be friends, but today, for the first time, he had seen the human being inside the nasty Slytherin, and he would make sure that this person got all the help that he needed.