The Road Less Traveled

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Two roads diverged in the wood and I

I took the one less traveled by

And that has made all the difference

--Robert Frost

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It was the suggestion of the Occlumency lessons that had first made him question Dumbledore's sanity.

A suggestion so innocently dropped between the daily discussion of reports on Voldemort's movements and activities, and the strategies for addressing the growing obstinacy of the Ministry of Magic, that Snape had simply nodded his head in assent, not truly processing what he had agreed to until later. When he finally did, his first response was to turn on his heel and head back to Dumbledore's office.

Fiery rage over the request only propelled him half way down the hall before it quieted to resignation and the smoldering resentment that had become nearly indistinguishable from his general personality. He would give Harry Potter Occlumency lessons. Dumbledore had requested it, and Snape had yet to refuse one of the senior Wizard's requests.

After the first, what's one more?

They all seemed so simple, so ridiculously easy after the first one that it never occurred to him to refuse. Of course, after agreeing to Dumbledore's first request, he never had a reason to. Until now ...

Even as he went about setting up the first lesson with the boy, a part of him wondered whether the stress of Voldemort's rise had finally pushed the old man over the edge. It was a thought that he pushed away as quickly as it formed, if for no other reason than following that train of thought lead to places too cold and too frightening to stay for long

A portion of his mind, still awash in the old Slytherin propaganda he had once bought into so completely, maintained that this was simply the reality of living with a Gryffindor headmaster -- stupid, incomprehensible choices that inevitably thrust the burden onto Slytherin house.

But of course Dumbledore wasn't stupid, and behind his veneer of cheerful, slightly scatterbrained behavior lay one of the most coolly logical and inordinately clever minds that Snape had ever encountered. At the most basic level, they were kindred spirits. So there was a reason, a simple and definite one why Potter must study Occlumency, and why he must be the one to teach him.

Yet even from the beginning, Snape knew that it would be a disaster, an experiment doomed to failure long before it ever fully formed. Not because of any sabotage on either part, but for the simple unalterable reason that Severus Snape and anyone named Potter were never meant to be allies.

It disturbed him that Dumbledore was unable to see that, disturbed him because it meant that the elder wizard had never known one basic and simple human emotion. Dumbledore had never known love.

Oh, Albus loved in the bright open way of parents or family, the kind of love that could encompass everyone, but he had never known the kind of love that consumed -- that kind of selfish love left no room for anything else but the object of your devotion, and took your heart with it when it left.

Severus knew it. He had been intimately acquainted with it long ago, so that even now, late at night when the school was quiet, and he walked the halls looking for curfew violators, he'd catch himself half expecting to see the flash of her hair, or feel her breath on his skin.

*****

"I never took you for a rule breaker." The light voice drifted just beside his right ear.

Whirling around, his wand already out, Severus barely managed to stop the spell on the tip of his tongue. A pair of bright green eyes stared back at him in astonishment. Angered with himself for the overly rash move he hissed, "You idiot! Don't you know it's dangerous to sneak up on people?"

Her eyes suddenly turned hard and cold, as though they had managed to extinguish the candlelight reflected in them. "People or just you? Not every student here is so paranoid."

Now self-conscious of the wand still gripped in his hand, he couldn't decide what to do with it. If he put it up in his cloak, it would be a gesture of concession. If he continued to stand there holding it, he'd look like a fool. Finally settling on the only position that

wouldn't make him look weak, Severus crossed his arms in front of him so that the wand lay nicely along his upper arm. "Just me then. You should not sneak up on me. I might have hurt you."

It was meant as a threat, but somehow it didn't come out that way. Softer, remorseful, it became almost an apology.

Damn it.

Cocking her head, so that the candlelight now turned her hair to fire, Lily studied him briefly, as though seeing him from a new angle. "Why didn't you?"

"What?"

"Perfect opportunity to wage a little war on the Mudblood."

He didn't know a word could drop like poison until that moment ... like acid burns on his skin.

"Why not take it? Can't run and tell, I'd have to admit I was back in the Restricted Section in the middle of the night, lose house points. So why not take the shot?"

Was she taunting him or testing him? Either way he was becoming tired of the confrontation, too much like playing chess against a madman. You couldn't anticipate the moves because you weren't even sure they were trying to win. Turning away, he placed the book he'd been holding back on the shelf, careful to keep his hand over the title until he felt the tiny spark that indicated the illusion had clicked back into place. Let her try to figure out which book he had been looking at now.

"Two very simple reasons." His voice was calm, level, indifferent ... excellent. "The old man's put a web up, lights up like Christmas at the slightest bit of unconnected magic in this section."

Not meeting her eyes, he picked up his candle and brushed past her.

"And the second?" she called after him.

"You're simply not worth the trouble." It was a beautiful exit, haughty, controlled, dispassionate. At least it would have been, if his step hadn't faltered at the end of the aisle.

Pausing, he threw a quick glance over his shoulder, to find her examining a different section of books, completely unaffected, as though he had never been there. Severus, who?

Biting back the bile that rose up in his throat, he walked quickly back to the dormitory, uncaring who saw him. After all, if Potter's gang wasn't torturing him, he was invisible.

It wasn't until he was back in the Slytherin Common Room that it occurred to him to wonder why Lily Evans, the pride of Gryffindor, had been in the Restricted Section at midnight.

*****

He hated that the boy shared her eyes. Staring at them, day after day had tortured him, no end, but he had managed. Poorly and abusively, but he had managed all the same, until that moment when those eyes looked up at him in pity.

Her eyes had looked at him in so many ways -- sharp with contempt, soft with understanding, warm with love, burning with hatred. He came to define himself by what lay there, when she loved him he was perfect, and when she hated him he was worse than the Dark Lord.

He could not take the pity, for however else she had seen him, he had never been pathetic.

He snapped.

How could Dumbledore have expected any more of him?

Maybe he thought that the more time Snape spent with the boy, the more he would warm to him. Maybe he thought that Lily's son would bring out the man that Lily did. But that man was gone, burned away in the fires of war. He hadn't been a good man for twenty years. It would take more than the old Wizard's belief to make him one again.

Besides, it was simpler for all concerned if he remained despised. In times like this people needed belief. The boy needed it more than anyone -- needed to believe in the goodness of his parents, the permanency of their love. He needed to believe that Snape was exactly who he seemed to be.

So Severus had taken particular care to secure that belief, not out of kindness, or sympathy, but simple, exacting necessity and expediency. Snape lived by those words, Slytherin words. Do what you must to win.

So he extracted all those memories which might have tarnished the boy's idols. Then in one foolish, arrogant second, the boy had rendered it all for naught. Potter's son to the core, he felt entitled to invade places that were not his own, simply by right of birth.

Anger, cold and terrible, roiled up in him at the sight of the dark tousled head bent over the Pensieve. Anger followed by terror. What had he seen? How much? Which parts?

It was the anger that propelled him forward, but terror that made him reach for his wand. He had to get the boy away before he saw any more than he already had.

Once the boy had left, he stood over the Pensieve and wept with relief, for whatever else the boy had seen ... his greatest betrayal remained hidden.

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