Gray

Gray

Harry looked into Dumbledore's light blue eyes, and the thing he really wanted to know spilled out of his mouth before he could stop it.

"What made you think he'd really stopped supporting Voldemort, Professor?"

Dumbledore held Harry's gaze for a few seconds, and then said, "That, Harry, is a matter between Professor Snape and myself."

- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J.K. Rowling; pg. 604 American hardback edition

The weather is changeable and moody on the first day of November, vacillating between the rainy, sodden warmth of defeat and the bright crispness of victorious celebration. Severus Snape empathizes with both, but casts them aside in order to make the easiest decision of his life. Making it is easier than accepting his Hogwarts letter, than leaving home, than hating James Potter, than becoming a Death Eater.

It is so simple to let Sirius Black burn at last.

Severus has lived in shades of gray. Matters are never black and white, good and evil, right and wrong, as Dumbledore and Potter and others of the Order would lead the world to believe. Severus's actions were colored by his instincts and his mind's rebellion against those instincts. He hates James - instinctively, as James did him. His mind recognizes that his loathing does stem from jealousy, an emotion, like all others, that Severus has never tried to cultivate. Thus there are two sides to his hate: the instinctive, gratuitous hate that James returns in kind and the calculated loathing because of what James provokes in him.

When Severus became a spy for the other side, his motives were again clouded. Yes, the killing had gotten out of hand (which was the phrase Severus liked to used when he thought about it), and yes, it was wrong to kill innocents and to turn on your own. Not that Severus believes that anyone is completely innocent, as he does not believe that anyone is completely guilty. But aside from the moral imperative, Severus knew that the Dark Lord would not triumph. He was too - unorganized. Many of his Death Eaters had turned vigilante, taking orders from no one but Voldemort himself.

Severus had been surprised to learn that the Dark Lord had a spy among Potter's closest friends. Though he doubted that any other Death Eater could, Severus could name the three candidates - Lupin, Pettigrew, Black. The Dark Lord had loved cackling over the success of his unnamed servant, alluding to the power and riches the traitor would gain when the Potters were dead.

At first Severus had suspected Pettigrew, because he was weak and jealous. Then he had thought Lupin more likely, knowing what he knows about him - perhaps Lupin thought the Dark Lord would be merciful to his kind.

Yet now on this strange, inconstant day, Severus thinks he knows which one of his tormentors had been his own unknown ally. He wonders how long Sirius Black toyed with the idea of power and betrayal, if he even began, as Severus had, in school. Severus doubts it. He thinks that it was after they were out of school, when Bellatrix Lestrange had a chance to get at him, and his brother too. He thinks about Black's selfishness, his rebellion, his family, his cruelty, and thinks he is justified. He thinks about what would have happened to him if he had remained a Death Eater, and Black had become the Dark Lord's second. Severus would not have had a prayer.

He suspected Black last, because he knew it would be difficult for him, Severus, to see grey in this regard, even more difficult than with Potter. Black does not have a family to give Severus the necessary grey sympathy factor. Black tried to kill him, something even Potter never seriously attempted -- and that act has made Severus irrational about Black in a way that is different from the poisonous hate he feels for Potter. That he recognizes this does not help it.

Albus Dumbledore is waiting for Severus inside the Hog's Head. It is the one of the few places it is safe for Severus to go until his name is cleared. Dumbledore looks tired - he has been up all night, seeing Potter's brat extracted from the ruins and then supervising the hunt for Pettigrew's appendages - and wary. He thinks Severus should have known about the attack last night, though the Dark Lord had given no warning. He still does not trust Severus fully. He still validates his reports with other informants Severus does not know, acts on his information rarely, tells him nothing.

He will trust him now.

"Severus," Dumbledore says, too briskly, as the other man sits down across from him and does not order a drink. "You know what occurred last night at Godric's Hollow, I take it?"

Severus nods. "I do."

"And what took place this afternoon?"

He tries not to smile and nods.

"Was Sirius Black a Death Eater?" His tone is flat and charged, and only Severus would notice the slight tightening of his mouth and eyes. Much is riding on his answer.

But Severus does not know. He suspects, of course - but for all the culpable proof he has it might as well have been Potter who betrayed himself. His final suspicion of Black after months of targeting Lupin and Pettigrew was no more than a whim, a belief that all of three of them had reason to betray the Potters.

He has lived his life in shades of gray, the white of what he knows is abstractedly right (he has no proof) swirling with the black of pure emotional hate (Black almost killed him).

"He was," he says.

Dumbledore says nothing, waits. Severus has always added more, explaining himself, the circumstances under which he has learned his information. He has always told the likeliness that a Death Eater is under the Imperius Curse or acting under coercion or threats, mitigating circumstances that would force Dumbledore to intercede for the person, request leniency from the ministry.

Now Severus says nothing.

"He does not have the Dark Mark," says Dumbledore mildly.

Severus shrugs. "I suppose it would have been inconvenient for a spy," he spits.

"Indeed."

Dumbledore is still waiting, but Severus refuses to respond. This is his revenge, his personal revenge on all four of them and probably on the Death Eaters as well. He feels as though he can finally see things the way they do, Dumbledore and Potter and the Order, in simple opposites of black and white.

Dumbledore speaks. "Sirius Black was the Potters' Secret Keeper. You have confirmed what we suspected." Severus sees that the Headmaster's fingers are trembling, the very tips shaking violently. Severus himself has no problem sitting perfectly still. The small ghosts of doubt that had bitten at his mind earlier as he had lied (told the truth, he sees now) to Dumbledore subside and only now does he self-consciously reach up to rub his nose.

"Severus, you have been invaluable to the downfall of Voldemort," says Dumbledore, and his fingers are still and his gaze is clear and steady again. "I and other Order members shall speak to the Ministry on your behalf. Your name shall be cleared. You have my eternal gratitude and trust."

Severus nods his thanks, shakes hands with Dumbledore, and leaves the Hog's Head, slowly walking the empty back alleys of Hogsmeade alone. He had taken the risk and been proven correct - Black was the traitor. Severus touches the Dark Mark on his arm; he thinks it might already be fainter, just a day after the Dark Lord's fall. The thought of it gradually fading away makes him - almost - sad, because it defined him for so long, guiding him through the gray, and because he had hoped to have it as a war wound, proof of what he went through to leave the Death Eaters, to do the right thing.

Unbidden a memory seven years old rises in his mind. It was the day after Potter had saved his life, and Severus had been following the rest of the Slytherins into Herbology, a class shared with the Gryffindors. Sirius Black had paused before pushing past the other students to enter first and turned to Severus. "You would have been no loss," he had said viciously. "Just another bloody Death Eater dead."

Now Severus surveys the memory calmly as he stands on the corner of Hogsmeade's main street. He has always fancied he can detect truth without the use of his curses or his potions. He hears truth in the memory of Black's voice.

But Severus's days of grey are over. He tosses the memory with the doubts of Black's guilt over his shoulder and walks away with one foot in black and the other in white.

Dumbledore offers Severus a position at Hogwarts as Potions master. He accepts bitterly, as he is denied the post of Defense against the Dark Arts teacher. He brings his hate with him, his grudges and his black and white views on his life. He forgets that he ever saw in grey. Soon he is Head of Slytherin House. He pushes his students brutally, punishing and rewarding lavishly. He hates Gryffindors and what they represent and especially those that remind him of his former tormentors.

So when a small thin child bearing the unerring marks of his parents upon him comes to Hogwarts, Severus finds it easy to hate him. Ten years ago he would have seen himself in the boy too, seen his own desperation to prove himself, to overcome feelings of personal failure, to forget shattered family life. Now he sees the boy as the purposeful embodiment of four people - any one of whom may actually have been guilty that day Severus listened to WWN as they announced that Black had been taken to Azkaban. Harry is emulating his father when he talks back to Severus in class, mimicking Lupin when he eggs his friends on, aping Pettigrew when he fails at potions, and following Black when he breaks every school rule and gets away with it.

But the problem with black and white, one part of his mind says as he frantically whispers a counter jinx from the teacher's box at the Quidditch match, is that one cannot make excuses for oneself either. He continues to struggle to save the boy's life until bright blue flames burn his robes, flaking them into ash.

The End