Innocence

Feel my heart... it’s ever bleeding... through spear and thorns...

Worse things had happened to people, he knew. He wasn’t dead, after all. “I have survived the war,” Severus Snape reminded himself, surveying the cluttered shelves of his office. “...For all the bloody good it did.”

The steam from the bubbling cauldron at his feet drifted up to his grim face. Carefully, he stirred the purple liquid clockwise, then walked over to the open book on a table nearby. “Eye of newt,” he muttered softly to himself, finding the ingredient on the shelves of his personal potion stores.

The war was over. Peace had come to the wizarding world once again, along with the task of rebuilding its shattered structures and lives. The casualties of the war had been greater than anyone had feared. The Dark Lord was dead, but the list of dead did not include only Death Eaters. Sirius Black. Remus Lupin. Alaster Moody. Percy Weasley.

Slowly, he added the ingredient to the cauldron, trying to concentrate, but the names rolled on in his head, more sinister than any other accusation could be. Fleur Delacour. Minerva McGonnagal. Cornelius Fudge.

He took the cauldron off the fire, and extinguished the flames. The potion turned a rosy color, then faded to black. His dreamless sleep potion would be ready to be bottled as soon as it cooled. He would need a good dreamless sleep tonight. His nightmares had become very disturbing, though often as not, his guilt would keep him awake more than his dreams.

Snape walked to the other side of the room to collect the bottles he would fill with potion. He surveyed the assortment of glass containers thoughtfully, as the names continued their unwanted silent parade across his mind. Colin Creevy. Cho Chang. Harry Potter. Ted Tonks. Albus Dumbledore.

There was a sound of breaking glass, and Snape looked around to see if anyone had just seen him drop the flask he had been holding. But, of course, there had been no one there. This room had been his only companion for the last few months, a subtle reminder of the shame and guilt he carried, but better in his mind than the less subtle ones outside its walls. He waved his wand at the broken shards on the floor, and they flew to the wastebasket.

Dumbledore. He had been one of the last to die in the war. Snape had not been there when he died. He should’ve been there. He shouldn’t have let Dumbledore die. Cursing, Snape levitated the remaining bottles toward the table, where they clanked noisily as they landed. Dumbledore had been the only one who had ever really trusted him, Snape knew. The only one. And, if it came down to it, the only one Snape trusted as well. Dumbledore had forgiven him when no one else had. “A chance to renew your innocence,” Dumbledore had called it. Severus Snape snorted. He had never been innocent. He was not innocent.

But, he missed that acceptance that Dumbledore had given him without question. Outside the confines of the school, he felt the stares he was given. He never felt accepted, anywhere; he felt guilty as if the passers-by could look through the billowing black robes he always wore and see the Dark Mark still branded on his arm.

Today was the end of term, and Snape faced three months at home with the stares of the people daily upon him, and he did not like it. “I need to find a place where I can relax,” Snape said aloud, as he lowered a ladle into the cauldron full of now-cool potion. “Yes, a place where I can relax.”