Thanks for the Mudblood

Incontrovertible Evidence

I always knew what you were.

I know you think that everything started changing, that we broke at Hogwarts and slowly fell into nothing as I began to realize. I know you think that I only just wised up when you finally snapped and said that one unforgivable word. No, I knew what you were from the very beginning.

I saw the book that you were reading when Tuney and I first got to the park. I heard how you spoke to her. I always knew what you were.

But you spoke to me of my secret like it was something brilliant. You made it real, something that wasn't just in my imagination, something that didn't mean that I was going crazy. You weren't afraid of it the way that Tuney and my parents were. You even ruled out my reigning theory that it was the magic of childhood that would fade then disappear as I got older. So I went to see you, even though I knew what you were.

I was furious when you attacked Petunia, so that I had to admit what you were and stop talking to you when you had just promised a whole, real world of magic. But I still had questions, and I was afraid that you were crazy. So I snuck back to see you again, over and over again until I was sure it wasn't a joke and you were sane. It got easier to pretend that I didn't know what you were, especially when we stayed clear of Tuney.

You presented me with the wizarding world like it was your own personal gift to me. You made me feel special and powerful, assured me that I would be so even in this magical world. You told me secrets that I treasured more than the whole of Gringotts itself. That's why I hated you when you forced me to remember that I knew exactly what you were.

I knew that your answer about being Muggleborn not mattering was a lie. Did you really think that I didn't know what you thought from the way you treated Tuney? How you never expected her to matter to me, how you never understood why it bothered me that she was upset? How could I have missed what you thought of my family? How could I have thought you were telling the truth? But you lied for me, so I pretended that I didn't know what you were and what you were doing.

You opened up a whole new world to me and guided me through it, convinced me I would be brilliant and special within it. So I went back to your house regularly, and I opened up to you. I even shared the letter I found from Albus Dumbledore with you.

But I knew what you were, so I wasn't really surprised by Tuney's reaction. I also wasn't surprised that you, once again, didn't understand why what a Muggle had said bothered me. I told you to go away on the Hogwarts Express because I didn't want to be near you when I couldn't ignore what you were. I knew you would just say more to prove it to me until, eventually, someday I wouldn't be able to pretend anymore. I didn't want it to be our first day at Hogwarts.

You knew just want to say to win me back. "But we're going! This is it! We're off to Hogwarts!" And I wiped my eyes and fought but failed to keep the smile off my face. Yes, this world you had told me about was perfectly real and we were becoming a part of it together. You knew how to win me back, always, and make me play our dark little game of Lets-Pretend so that I could believe that the bright, beautiful world was not a similar figment of the imagination.

"You'd better be in Slytherin." Yes, even before I knew the full extent of their reputation, I knew exactly what you were.

But you were my friend, and those stupid boys had no right to act like that toward you, so I took your side, "Come on, Severus, let's find another compartment." We ended up having to sit with Avery and Mulciber who looked at me like I was some kind of bug when they found out my surname. I saw how you naturally got on with them, even though you pretended not to like them because of how they treated me. How could I not know what you were?

I knew I could not stand seven years of seeing you with such people, of being around such people. You wanted me to tell the Sorting Hat where I wanted to be. I did. I told it to keep me away, just far enough away that we had a prayer of staying friends.

I glanced back at you a little sadly as I walked to the Gryffindor Table. You probably thought it was because we wouldn't be in the same House, have all the same lessons, and cheer for the same Quidditch team. You thought it was because our two Houses would be sworn enemies who would fight us on our friendship every step of the way. I was sad because the Sorting Hat had known that I was afraid of you. Ironic, that it had chosen the house known for bravery because of an act of fear. Then again, I wanted to preserve us despite the danger that I knew you were. It may well have been the bravest act of my life. Or the Hat might have known what you would almost cost me the day our friendship ended, and it wanted to keep me away.

I wouldn't sit with you in all of my classes, but I set my books down next to you when you waved me over in Potions. Of course, Horace Slughorn was utterly delighted by us, always was, always so shocked by the Gryffindor and Slytherin sitting together without any prodding, always turning in perfect potions. He separated us for about a week at one point, do you remember, and he seemed mildly surprised that my potions were just as good as ever. Not quite, but I'm not entirely sure that he noticed. After all, we were more brilliant together.

While most first years sat about gossiping, you and I would sit around thinking about ways to improve the potions or the spells that we were learning. You had read just about every book through fifth year and what seemed like half the library by the end of the first term, and I had what you and the professors called a natural knack for magic and manipulation - of spells. I think it was my Muggle-raised common sense. I mean, if a twirl wand motion works for spells in the same class and has to be used for the more powerful spells, doesn't it make sense that twirling your wand at the end of the wand motion will work better than the swish-flick? Aren't spells Latin, mixed with the caster's desire, and the right mix of wand movement and intention? It's not an impossible formula, though occasionally difficult and always delicate.

I could still invent spells and manipulate magic without you. I know because I would try sometimes at night, but when our two different approaches melded, when our easy conversations stimulated each other's thought processes... I wanted so much to be brilliant, to show that Muggleborns were just as good as anyone else... Is it any wonder that I pretended not to see that you were Dark? Pretended that I was too caught up in the fun of magical invention to notice that you made up hexes and curses and used them on your enemies? That you were always strongest in the Dark areas of magic?

I glared and disliked you when you made it too obvious. Couldn't you see how hard it was getting for me to pretend? How hard it was to justify what I loved doing with you so much when you just had to inject Darkness into it?

I will never forget the first time that I heard you call Mary Macdonald a Mudblood. It was third year after Herbology. I'm sure you don't even remember it. She bumped into you from behind because she'd been staring at Sirius Black in perhaps the least subtle way possible. She started to apologize, but you had already snapped, "Watch where you're going, you stupid Mudblood!" Mary froze, but my heart was the one that stopped beating for several of the longest seconds of my life. Your eyes flicked to me, and you knew you'd made a mistake. I hated you in that moment.

And not because you'd said the bloody word.

I hated you because I knew then that sooner or later I would have to give up the hobby, the obsession, that I loved doing with you so much because of what you were. You were still the one who flung wide open the gates of magic and possibility for me, so I made excuses for you in my head and to my poor housemates.

"He-he didn't really mean it, Mary, it's who he hangs around with! They throw that stupid word around so much it's not really a surprise he's desensitized enough to let it out in company..."

"He wasn't the one who actually attacked you, Mary..."

"Toughen the hell up, Cresswell, he isn't really hurting you..."

"Maybe if Potter didn't hex him anytime he got near one of you you would realize that he's not all that bad!"

"He can't be all that prejudiced - he's best friends with me, isn't he?"

It was a stalling tactic, and I was furious with you for making it harder and harder to keep up the pretense. For two years I was furious with you more often than I was friendly. We fought, constantly, about your friends. It was the closest that I could come to yelling about what you were without admitting that I knew exactly what that was. We fought about how your House treated people like me. I screamed and wanted to ring your neck whenever you called anyone else a Mudblood. I wanted to scream at you that I couldn't keep it up much longer.

Once I actually said it. I had to backpedal quickly, explain that I couldn't go on pretending that you didn't mean me whenever you called Mary or Dirk or any of the others Mudbloods. That was when you told me: "I would never call you that. You are different. You are more powerful than anyone I've ever met, and anyone who can't see that is blind as a bloke under the bat-bogey hex. But Mary? She's pathetic! Oh, she's sweet and all, but she can barely do anything. She casts a bad light on people like you, she's the reason there's so much prejudice...Not you, Lily. Never you."

I had to pretend that that was enough. Do you realize what that did to me? To have to swallow that codswallop and pretend that I believed it? You think that I never sacrificed for you? You think I didn't bend until I broke for you? The things I had to pretend to believe to stay your friend so long...

I had to believe that I could stop you. I had to believe that as much as you were influencing me on my journey as a witch and a woman, I was having the same effect on you. I had to believe that I was keeping you tied to the Light, or at least from slipping into the Darkness at a freefall.

But the fighting didn't faze you, so long as you didn't think I was going to accept one of Potter's mad proposals. You didn't seem to care if I thought you were going down a bad path, if I was begging you desperately to get different friends, to be a different person, so long as I also called Potter a sniveling toerag.

If I had just bitten the bullet and gone out with him then, would you have listened?

Didn't you see? Why couldn't you see that my excuses were wearing out and my façade was running thin? No, you were too busy obsessing over Lupin being a werewolf and those boys running around "getting away with everything." You compared yourself to them and expected me to swallow your insistence that there was no difference between merry pranksters and you. How could I not have known - by then - what you were? How could you think that I didn't know the truth? How could you think that I would believe that?

It made me hate those boys for tormenting you so constantly and making your case for you. I hated the way they acted because it did, indeed, become harder and harder to draw the line in my arguments. I knew then that I was in danger of falling, of slipping into a world where I wouldn't be able to keep Light and Dark or Right and Wrong straight any more. I knew that you were close to dragging me into what you always were if I didn't draw the line between you and those boys anymore. They made it so hard to see sometimes.

It scared me so much, how close I was coming to that precipice. At this point, pretending I didn't know what you were and making excuses for you had been going on so long I didn't know if I could bloody stop anymore. I needed those boys to stop being prats to you so that I could just draw the line again. I stopped being around you so much, blaming frantic studying for the O.W.L.s, and then it was your turn to pretend. You had to pretend not to know that I studied better with you than alone. But I had to stay away enough to be able to tell the difference.

So when those bloody boys attacked you when you were just sitting there, like Mary had been when she was ambushed by Avery and Mulciber! And two on one, just like with Mary. They weren't using dark curses, but they were just as cruel. And they were choking you, choking you for a witty little joke - a laugh, that's all just like you had called Avery and Mulciber trying to torture Mary...

I was perhaps seconds from thinking that the only difference was that Potter and Black were succeeding not trying and perhaps a bit smarter not to use such an obviously Dark spell.

I panicked. I had never interfered before, but I shot to my feet and started screaming, begging them to stop. Stop before I fell, stop before I teetered over the edge of the precipice to which I had now walked as close as I could without walking off into the Darkness...

And the bloody idiot just kept making it worse!

"All right, Evans?" all casual and carefree as if it wasn't even a bad thing that he was dangling someone helpless above him and torturing him at the exact same moment.

"Leave him alone. What's he done to you?" I glared at him, hating him for nudging me to bend farther and farther over the edge. Couldn't he see that I was about to break or fall? In a few seconds it could all be over and I would be lost!

"Well, it's more the fact that he exists, if you know what I mean..." he mused, saying the words that you and your precious little evil urchins of friends used to explain why you attacked Mudbloods like me.

"You think you're funny. But you're just an arrogant, bullying toerag Potter." I could feel myself slipping. My voice had gone cold. "Leave him alone," I all but begged him.

"I will if you go out with me, Evans," James said quickly. "Go on...go out with me, and I'll never lay a wand on old Snivelly again."

At this point, I might well have shagged the egotistical prat if he would just convince me that he was better than you, that I could still see the difference between him and you. But if he was using the fact that he had you trapped as leverage...

So I dangled a test before him, imploring him to pass it. "I wouldn't go out with you if it was a choice between you and the giant squid." But please, please stop hurting him anyway... If you do I swear I'll kiss your bloody feet, Potter... That's what I thought at him with all of my might.

Then you helped me regain my balance. You sent that horrible curse, the one I knew you invented without me, the one you tried to hide from me only a week ago, at James with his back turned and looking at me. You used me to distract him to attack. I didn't care about losing the battle to pretend I didn't know what you were anymore. I was too afraid of finding out that I had become the same thing.

I might even have looked relieved for a brief second, and then I saw you hanging upside down by the power of the spell that we had invented together and I, for a split second, wanted to smile and just go back to pretending in safety because I would never have invented that spell without you...

But if I did that, I would only lose sight of where the precipice was. And it was a spell that I had helped you invent that was being used to torment someone... "Let him down," I told Potter and Black.

The horrible prat did but those two boys didn't stop attacking you. They dropped you out of the air then knocked you over before you could have mustered a defense. "LEAVE HIM ALONE!" I screamed in desperation, feeling as if I had just zoomed right back up to the very edge at their horrible actions. I drew my wand and brandished it at them threateningly.

They looked afraid of it for a moment. They respected me, it was almost something to cling to...

"Ah, Evans, don't make me hex you," James said earnestly.

But he would if he had to.

Would he? "Take the curse off him, then!" One last chance, Potter...please, I'm beginning to lose my balance!

Potter sighed, took an interminable length of time, then muttered the countercurse and released his adversary. You and your cronies would never have done that, not even you would have done it for me. But they had tortured just as casually, just as freely, with as little possible remorse...with one of my spells...

"There you go," Potter said as you struggled to your feet, "you're lucky Evans was here, Snivellus -"

I wished I had been anywhere else because, despite the fact that he had passed the last test, I was still about to fall, because he had used my spells to torture...

Then you saved me. You finally spoke up and made it so crystal bleeding clear it was as if I had been thrown a lifeline. "I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!"

I blinked. It was done. The precipice and the Darkness beyond it were speeding away. I had finally admitted that I had always known exactly what you were. It was too late for us, but not for me. I still knew the difference. I still knew what you were, and I wasn't the same thing. You had made me different than you. You saved me. You blame that as the moment that you lost me. You have no idea. You have no idea how close you came to having me in your world, as your little clone, right before you finally separated us beyond measure and saved me.

"Fine," I told you, calm and cool and blessedly certain for the first time in months. "I won't bother in the future. And I'd wash your pants if I were you, Snivellus." I hated you for forcing me to that precipice. I hated you for taking away all of the things that I loved about our friendship when you started forcing me to that precipice. I hated the cost of not toppling over it. I hated that you had set up our friendship to cost me everything. So I threw one of Tuney's taunts at you, and I hated you for making it so that I couldn't be glad to be on her side again, not after all these years and all that I had just lost. I called you by the same name as Potter and secretly hated you for making me despise someone I could have admired and fancied in another life, for a friendship that would not even last.

"Apologize to Evans!" Potter roared, jabbing his wand threateningly at you again.

Your apology was the last thing that I wanted to hear. "I don't want you to make him apologize!" I shouted, rounding on the other boys who had shoved me so near the edge of the Darkness, who had nearly lost me my very self with their horrible jokes. "You're as bad as he is..."

I knew it wasn't true, but only barely. Trying to draw such a fine line had gotten me into more trouble than I could deal with. I had to draw the line much further away, and from where I could safely stand, Potter and his crew were barely in sight.

"What?" yelped James. "I'd NEVER call you a - you-know-what!"

But neither of you boys ever realized that that was not the point at all. If the only distinction you could draw was who you treated like vermin, which prejudices you adopted... I knew better than anyone that it was a dangerous game that it was all too easy to lose. The point was that if you could call me a Mudblood then I never could have saved you. That made it very easy to walk away from you. It wasn't worth the risk if I wasn't even capable of changing you the way you were obviously changing me.

My anger and fear unleashed themselves on Potter who had nearly dragged me over the edge and could so easily have done so: "Messing up your hair because you think it looks cool to look like you've just go off your broomstick, showing off with that stupid Snitch, walking down corridors and hexing anyone who annoys you just because you can - I'm surprised your broomstick can get off the ground with that fat head on it. You make me SICK."

I hadn't meant to put what really ticked me off about Potter in that speech. It was too close to what I had just gone through. I had to cut myself off into another jibe at his arrogance before I went down that road too far. In the end, I cut my losses and fled the scene before I forgot the facts that had just saved me.

Saved me, I knew, from your fate.

I had never done cursework like I did for the practical Defense O.W.L. It felt bloody good, though I may have lost a few points for refusing to use anything darker than a stunner. I hear you were almost formally reprimanded for your chosen spells. I wanted to thank you again, but my House didn't give me the chance.

I didn't really realize that the entire of Gryffindor House was gathering around me, protecting me from you and your apologies and attempts to reconcile. They gave me a protective escort up to the Tower, with you trailing behind us getting threatened by different people in turn. I heard you calling when the portrait swung shut.

But I sat, for hours, curled in a ball on an armchair by the fireplace, afraid to leave this place of safety or think too closely of how close I had come to the Darkness. Because of you.

I could not believe it when Potter came up to me. "Evans, Evans, I'm sorry, I know he's your mate," he said, shuffling nervously from foot to foot.

"Was," I said stiffly. "You've always known, and you've never cared." Like I said before, I had to draw the line much further from that precipice than James Potter at that moment stood.

"Look, Evans, I mean - it was just a -"

"Do not finish that sentence, Potter, or I swear -"

"Okay!" Potter said, throwing up his hands. He seemed glad I wasn't actually hexing him yet. Like I said, I had to draw that bloody line pretty far up from now on. "But you've - you never took anything we did to him before like - like that or - or like this. If I'd known you were going to take it like this -"

"It's not about you, Potter!" I hissed at him. "Everything with you is always - " Then I lost it. "I was supposed to be enough!" I cried more to myself than to bloody stupid Potter. "I was supposed - being my friend was supposed to stop him from..." I let out a sob and covered my face with my hands.

"Bloody hell, Evans, have you been throwing yourself in front of a curse for the rest of us all this time?" Potter exclaimed loud enough to draw the attention of the entire Common Room. "All this time, being his friend, you were trying to stop him from joining in with Avery and Mulciber to torture people like Mary...you...you didn't have to martyr yourself like that, Evans!" I could feel my estimation with my fellow Gryffindors growing exponentially with his outburst.

Yes, I had almost been martyred, but not for all the selfless reasons he had just said. Yes, I had been hoping...but it was also for the thrill of magic opening itself up to me that I only felt when I was talking and experimenting with you.

"Go away and think whatever you want, Potter," I told him, curling up again. "I don't care what either of you boys thinks of me." I was staring at my knees, and I didn't hear footsteps in the carpet, so I don't know how long it was before Potter got the hint and left me be.

All I know is that Mary Macdonald, of all people to take your side, tapped me on the shoulder just before going to bed and mildly told me what you had asked her - as if you had any right - to tell me.

I rose and walked out to face you, my eyes dry and resolve set. It was over. I knew what you were, and I knew that I was not. I had finally admitted that I had to draw the line between what you were and what I was willing to become.

"I'm sorry," you said, and the first time you said it as if you really expected it to work. Probably not immediately, but you expected it to set the foundation for forgiveness. You thought it was about that terrible word. No, that word had saved me. What I could not forgive was everything that had made it necessary for you to say that terrible word to bring me back to my senses.

"I'm not interested."

"I'm sorry!" this time you sounded desperate. You had never heard that tone from me before, not directed at you. It was over.

"Save your breath. I only came out because Mary told me you were threatening to sleep here."

"I was. I would have done. I never meant to call you Mudblood, it just -"

"Slipped out?" You nearly had me. You nearly captured me. You nearly dragged me down into the Dark, when even you would never have accepted my presence there. If it hadn't slipped out... "It's too late. I've made excuses for you for years. None of my friends can understand why I even talk to you." It was too late to go back to the lie. I had seen what the cost of maintaining it was. "You and your precious little Death Eater friends - you see, you don't even deny it!" You were making it so easy now, after so many years of making it so bloody hard. "You don't even deny that's what you're all aiming to be! You can't wait to join You-Know-Who, can you?"

There it was. It was over now. The lie of my life was over. I'd finally said what I'd always known.

You opened your mouth but couldn't deny it. Did you know, then, that I'd known all along? Surely you must have known that one little word wouldn't make me realize everything in one fell swoop?

"I can't pretend anymore. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine." We had reached the fork long ago. If I stalled there any longer, I would have walked on with you. I had finally chosen. It was over.

"No - listen, I didn't mean -"

"- to call me Mudblood? But you call everyone of my birth Mudblood, Severus. Why should I be any different?" I wasn't treating you differently anymore. I knew with you the same way I knew with Avery and Mulciber. I was done pretending that I didn't know. And once I admitted it, I hated you. I hated you more than I could ever hate Avery or Mulciber.

I walked away from you, hating you for being something I was bound to despise. I hated you for lying to me that it could be different with us. I hated you for tying up my love for magic with my dangerous friendship with you. I hated you because I had always known that I would have to leave you someday, but I hadn't known how close I might come to joining you instead. I hated you most of all for nearly pulling me into the Darkness.

I always knew what you were. That was why I almost fell. That one little word you spoke saved me. I don't hate you for that word. I hate you for every other word you ever spoke to me. I forgive you for that word, Severus. It's the others that I can't forgive.

That's what you should know about that word. It didn't make me realize. It didn't make me hate you. I always knew. I was always on the verge of hating you. That one word saved me from you.

So thank you, Severus Snape, for calling me a Mudblood. You may have saved my soul.

But I can never forgive you, because you made yourself a part of it first.