Absolve Him So

Notes: Huge thanks to Jen and Amy G. for beta reading while Firebolt was swamped. This story wrote itself - it's one of the best things I've done, IMHO, and Amy & Jen helped me polish the rough ends that were still there. :) Drop me a line on AIM - slytherinstar, Y!M - slytherinkeeper, or just e-mail me if you wanna chat! :)

 

 

White shall not neutralize the black, nor good
Compensate bad in man, absolve him so:
Life's business being just the terrible choice.
-Robert Browning, The Ring and the Book

 

 

The potion master sat, and as he sat he turned the pages of a book, eyes moving from one side to the other, from the top to the bottom of each page. He rubbed the heels of his palms against his eyes, then bent over the tome again. It was too late for thinking, but Professor Snape was attempting the feat all the same.

Goodbye, he thought to himself, not knowing what he was bidding farewell. Go in peace. His eyes attempted to focus on the words: hemlock, dragonsbane, and spearmint for taste make a potion that can kill dragons quickly. The problem occurs when attempting to slip it into their food; the only thing one can do is swallow it oneself and promptly get eaten by the dragon one wishes to kill... he couldn't get the page to stop jumping in front of him, couldn't stop the visions from drifting to his pupils, couldn't stop them from seeping through the tiny holes into his brain. Stop! The thought did nothing for the sight in front of him, the words running like wax, shifting into tableaux. Stop!

But they wouldn't stop. Standing, Snape nearly knocked over his chair; his movements were clumsy as he reached for the small stoppered bottle on the bookcase. Sleep. Wormwood and asphodel in small draughts always managed to end the exhaustion, at least for a little while. But he knew he would wake up more tired than he had gone to sleep, and slowly he would build an immunity to even the Draught of Living Death. What a weak will you have, some part of his mind whispered incoherently. Turning to magic for even sleep. You can't force your own body to do what you want.

The potion was bitter on his tongue, and he barely had time to lie down on the floor - the closest and most stable surface available - before he felt his eyelids grow heavy. He slept, silent on the floor, his face relaxed and almost childish; there would be no dreams.

 

 

The Lydgate family was old and older, stretching back into the time when England had been little more than a island of reclusive, homogenous savages. Or so they said. And the youngest Lydgate, Frances, had known Severus Snape since the day he was born, when she was two years old.

Frances' hair was her best feature, long and blond and wavy; her face couldn't be called pretty, however well-groomed she was, and her figure was somewhat below average; there was no disguising the fat that tended to gather around her face. But there was something in the hair that captivated people, made them look twice, and even if they didn't like what they saw - well, they had been caught looking.

She ran a brush through the silky strands as Severus looked on, sitting on a couch in one of the manor's sitting rooms. "I do wish you wouldn't stare, Sevvie," she said condescendingly. She always told Severus not to stare. He always stared.

Stuffing her brush away, she glanced back at her sometime friend - and with an impatient tug at the hem of her robes, Frances rushed from the room. Severus followed, knowing what path she would take, through the rooms and rooms of the giant house to the breakfast nook and their parents' watchful eyes. He also knew something Frances didn't, though; he always had been smarter than her. She would figure it out soon enough - the adults certainly talked about it often - but he had found out on his own. Squib, Severus thought. Good for nothing Squib. There was some comfort in the words, but also some guilt, touching a part of his heart that hadn't been cultivated and was rarely used.

Frances Lydgate, with all her shining hair, couldn't touch what Severus had. He was magical, and she? She would never cast a single spell. As bad as a Mudblood or a Muggle. He had every right to gloat.

But it made him feel empty inside.

 

 

The hangovers were always immense, and it was a wonder he hadn't discovered a way to get around them. There it was, though; Severus Snape, the most knowledgeable potions-brewer in England (perhaps the entire world) had no time to think of a cure for the hangovers.

Bullshit. You don't want to.

The pain kept him alive, it was true, in its own way. Every morning that he woke up to pain, he at least knew he could still feel it; every day that he was haunted by the aches in the base of his neck, he was reminded of the people he had wronged. And the visions that floated up before him - well, they were too painful. He couldn't deal with those, not while he was functional, not to be a teacher at Hogwarts.

He scratched out an answer on a test, wrong as usual from Longbottom. Somewhere in the back of his mind niggled the guilt - you're just being a jerk, Severus the Slytherin. Stereotypical of you. But he quashed it down. Dealing with guilt had become second nature while he was a Death Eater, and now it was merely a defense mechanism.

A Muggle psychologist, he thought, would have a field day with me. He toyed with the idea a moment, hand methodically inking out answers, then discarded it - only to find the visions lying there, benign under the surface of his day to day chatter. Snape could feel them, brushing up against him like Dementors, never quite daring to step into the circle of light that was his conscious thought.

And then , one did.

 

 

Severus heard the muttering run in fitful bursts through the Death Eaters. There were only ten or so - eleven, with the Dark Lord and Severus making thirteen, exactly a coven. The Mudblood groveled on the floor, most likely under the effects of the Imperius curse - or maybe just weak of heart.

They're all weak of heart, Severus reminded himself. It was a fact that would not bear forgetting. It's the definition of 'Mudblood.'

His arm still burned, and he pulled his robe away from the scar; not even a scar, anymore, but a black mark that was forever etched into his flesh. A skull and a snake, the snake for Slytherin and the skull for - what? Death? The death of the Mudbloods, the death of the Muggles that oppressed all of wizard kind?

The unsettling thoughts were banished as easily as one might shrug a blanket off one's shoulders. The others' wands were out; why wasn't his, as well? He drew it, self consciously, and held it out towards the Mudblood as the others' were.

"You do the honors, Severus," the Dark Lord said, his gravelly voice insinuating itself into the boy's very brain. "Your first kill, I believe."

Severus' hand shook as he pointed his wand, threatened to drop it as his lips formed the words. "Avada Kedavra." And with that, the green light shot from the wand to the Mudblood, and the Mudblood's energy drained away into the night. Severus was filled with the sensation of power such as he had never had before, every ecstacy combined into one. The world was at his feet - he could kill them all, should he wish it. A tear came to his eye, and he repressed a laugh and a smile he hadn't worn in ages.

Severus Snape was nineteen years old.

 

 

Snape blinked, his eyes moving up from his paper to see Hannah Abbott standing in front of him. "Sir - you can hear me? You were just shaking so hard - "

Run along, little Hufflepuff. "Yes, Abbott. I'm fine. What do you want?" Her parents were Muggle-lovers, weren't they? Snape had a regular devil's advocate in his own mind, telling him things that he didn't believe in any more. Well, I don't! Then why did the voice continue? Why was Abbott still soiled in his mind?

"Just to turn in my homework, sir," she replied nervously, giving him a weak smile and dropping the papers on his desk. "Thank you for letting me turn it in late." Her footsteps echoed in the empty dungeon as she hurried for the door, obviously uncomfortable in her Potions master's presence. Her hair reminded him of Frances', long and blond and soft, but it was nowhere near as beautiful as Frances' was.

The blood, do you remember the blood, Severus? How the blood from her face didn't quite touch her hair? And then how the curse pierced her heart, Severus. You remember the scream, I know you remember it because you're shuddering now. Aren't you, Severus? Aren't you shivering in your pitiful little seat, remembering what you did? They couldn't get the blood out of her hair to bury her, you know. Remember the rumors that flew.

He remembered. Frances. Rosier and Wilkes had decided it was too dangerous to go Muggle-baiting, but they hadn't drawn the line at Squibs that night. They had taken Snape along, and all they had to do was go to the room above Madame Malkin's, sit and wait for her to come home... It smelled like her, don't you think? Like Frances Lydgate, that room smelled. And then when you killed her it smelled like blood, didn't it? A tang, the salt, the metal. Snape tried to think of something else, closing his eyes to shut out the visions again - but there it was, dancing behind his eyelids. It was Frances again, with Hannah Abbott's face.

You have to pay for what you did, Severus.

He knocked over his chair in his hurry to run from the room, to his office, off the grounds of Hogwarts, wherever he had to go to be free from his memories. Wherever the darkness couldn't follow him anymore.

 

 

Dumbledore had always been something of a nemesis of Severus', the well-meaning fool. Severus came to him only because the Ministry had forced him to. It won't seem strange if you go to see him occasionally, they had said. You're just getting advice on a potion. And it didn't seem strange, not to anybody in the Dark Lord's ranks; they assumed he was using the old Muggle-lover for the only thing he was good for, obscure knowledge. After all, Severus had been very careful not to let any of them know his prowess. Being underestimated was a powerful tool at all times.

So every time he came, he was nervous, knowing that Dumbledore wouldn't underestimate him, knowing that his old headmaster would have some final judgment. He feared that he would not pass. He feared - he didn't know what he feared, only that somehow a fear was there, no matter how many times he passed his information along.

Maybe he feared the knowing blue eyes.

He touched the gargoyle, muttered "Fizzing Whizbee." It opened, reluctantly. Even the statue knows what I am. The wall behind was open, and then he was into the study, before he knew where his feet were carrying him; Fawkes was standing indifferent in his cage, and Dumbledore had risen to greet him.

"Severus. Welcome. Have you any information on the target of the next attack?"

He bit his lip, then spoke. "The Potters."

 

 

On the edge of the Forbidden Forest, Snape found something that was to change his life. All of his years as a teacher - gone, as though they had never been. He looked up to the sky. Dusky, like it had been when he first joined the Death Eaters. The path before him was one he hadn't taken in years; it was a path to a clearing in the forest, a clearing where students had held Dark Arts practice, so long ago...

The voice that plagued him quieted as he placed one foot in front of the other, walking slowly now. He had made a choice, then. Eighteen or nineteen, he couldn't remember now - only that he had been so eager, so willing to fight against the Mudbloods and Muggles that he had taken his oath before even comprehending what he was swearing.

Before him, the way was smooth. Although he wove drunkenly, his dry eyes hiding oceans of unshed tears, he found nothing to bar his way. Ahead of me lies my future. Behind me lies my past.

The clearing was empty and alone, and Snape felt the Dark Mark burn into his arm with nobody to see. It was a jet black, painful in its intensity - he caressed it with one finger lovingly. Perhaps the visions will be gone forever, then.

A squirrel skittered across the clearing, and Snape pulled his wand, uttering the word "Crucio" without a qualm. So different from those years ago, when you shook to even say it. A moment later he put the animal out of its misery, leaving it only a tiny bag of bones to rot in the grass. The power still gave the same feeling it had, whether or not he was still frightened to take it - Snape, the god of life and death, able to move heaven and earth with a few phrases.

His wand was put away, and as he pushed his long black hair out of his eyes, Severus Snape readied himself for a return to his boyhood. He readied himself to become something he hadn't been for what seemed like forever. He readied himself to Apparate, back to where his master was waiting.

 

 

The Mudblood screamed as a chunk of the wall fell, burning, into it. Its wand was safely in the hand of a Death Eater, and it had no defense except the pitiful slaps of its hands against the fire. Inexorably the flames licked their way over the Mudblood's belongings, through its books. They caught flame beautifully, each one a separate burning flower.

For a moment, Severus entertained the thought of showing mercy, of simply killing it where it stood, of perhaps saving one of these helpless creatures. He pondered it for less than a second, then returned to watching the hypnotic dance of fire over its possessions.

After all, the visions were gone. They had disappeared by becoming a reality, perhaps. But then, hadn't he made the choice when he was nineteen? To become something more than himself, something more powerful and more terrible than Severus Snape could ever be on his own?

He could never go against his own choices. He had far too strong a will for that.

 

 

Finis 1/1