Snape In Love: Chasing Darkness Away

AUTHOR'S NOTE

I apologise for the delay in posting this penultimate chapter...I think that, perhaps, I don't want to let this story go! I do hope you enjoy it too.

Warning; disturbing in parts.

Chapter 26

Revelation

Marriage to Severus suited Ella. He fulfilled her in every way; in far more ways than she would have thought possible before she met him. Emotionally, familially, sexually, intellectually, he was everything she had ever wanted and more besides. His company was a craving he was eager to satisfy and she was a happy woman. He sat at her side on the ancient stone bench, its hard corners softened by the passage of time and the ravages of countless storms, and it seemed to her that both were akin to the very soul of the school, outwardly solid and stiff of appearance but the most welcoming place in the world for those fortunate enough to be granted access.

She looked straight ahead, over to the foothills where they had taken their vows, but he was there, an overpowering presence at her side, visible from the corner of her eye. Always there, she thought happily, a constant part of her perception. His hair blew across his face as the light breeze caught it and played with it, but his hands remained on his knees, one of hers enclosed tightly within his grasp.

"There were times," he began, "when I thought we would never reach this point."

"I know. When you went off to Europe and I was left behind to plan the wedding...I dreaded that you'd never come back to me."

She felt him sigh and lean in to her and she edged closer to him, feeling suddenly cold at the memory. He released her hand and slipped his arm around her shoulders, turning to her and taking her chin with his free hand to tilt her face up to his. His lips brushed across hers and she closed her eyes, savouring their warmth and his vibrancy. His hair blew across her cheek and they parted as she pushed it back from his face, watching as the wind ruffled it, glossy blue-black in the sunlight.

"I'll never leave again, Ella. You do believe that, don't you?"

She searched the depths of his eyes and said pensively,

"No, love, I don't believe it. I don't think I'll believe it until he's dead and gone, and even then I'll still dread it happening some other way."

She pressed herself to him then, snaking her arms around his shoulders and making small circular strokes around the nape of his neck, tangling his hair between her fingers and feeling heat and power radiate from him. He bent his head to hers once more but paused when their lips were just a breath apart, gazing into her eyes. She would willingly drown in those eyes, dive in and never emerge again. She held her breath as her world shrank, telescoping in on itself until all that was left was their love and that moment. A moment filled with all the possibilities of the future. She did not think that adoration was too strong a word to express how she felt about this man.

She leaned back against the arm that encircled her, sinking into his strength and letting her eyelids droop as she gave herself over to the sensation. His lips, full and slightly parted, were so close that she could feel his breath caress her mouth, and she pulled his head down to hers so that they touched. The lightest brush, and then he took her top lip between his and ran his tongue over it. Her fingers splayed in his hair as her own tongue sneaked underneath his and sought his mouth, and unconsciously she drew in a deep breath through her nose to ready herself for the depth and intensity of sharing that she knew was to come. As if her action was a trigger, his arms tightened around her and he slanted his questing lips across her yielding ones, deepening their kiss with a sigh. His hair slipped through her fingers as they embraced and long locks brushed against her cheeks sending delicious signals to her lower back, and she rejoiced in the hard fabric-covered buttons of his frock coat digging into her chest as he crushed her to him. Ah, but he tasted so sweet!

Abandoning herself to his will, she allowed him to run his hand under her thigh until it reached the curve of her buttock, grasping it and pulling her leg on to his lap as he in turn curled his body around her, pressing her back against the sun-warmed granite back of the bench. Her heart was so full that she wanted to cry, to laugh, to crow to the skies and the Fates that this was life, this was living, this was perfection.

Ella felt as if she would melt from sheer happiness, but he drew away after a while and she saw that his smile had been replaced by a wariness that was chilling in what she feared it represented.

"I need to tell you about what I used to do for Voldemort. And what I did to - to your parents and your sister."

"You don't have to tell me," she emphasised, knowing that she would be strong enough to hear it but dreading it all the same.

"I do," he said simply, and she made no further protestation for of course she had always known it to be true. "And when I've told you...well, then I want to know if - if you can still tell me you love me."

His eyes were deep dark oceans whose pain seemed fathomless, and she drew his head down to her breast and held him to her then, trying to show him that he need not fear. At last, she released him from her tight embrace and he ran his hand through his hair before disentangling himself from her completely. He sat ramrod straight once more, gathering his thoughts and his resolve, staring across the shifting surface of the lake.

Knowing how difficult it would be for him to find the words he so obviously felt he needed to say, Ella gave him the emotional space he required and leaned over to their baby, just now stirring in her pushchair. Pulling back the cotton blanket that covered her, Ella lifted Persephone into her arms and kissed her, making the child gurgle happily and kick her legs. She turned to her husband and passed Persephone to him, and he took her in his arms as if she were a gift he could not believe he had.

************************************************************

He had not been surprised to learn that Ella had never been back to the town of her birth to sift through her memories and lay them to rest. In her shoes, and he allowed that their lives did hold certain parallels, he would have done the same. Delving into her psyche throughout the blissful weeks since their reconciliation, he had learned much about her motivations over the sixteen years since she had lost her family. Since he had slaughtered them. Sixteen years she had spent running from her guilt. Sixteen years he had wallowed in his.

The twenty years of memories from her family home had been distilled and decanted into a steel box twenty two feet long and fifteen wide, she had said, by second cousins she had not seen in years. She had handed over all matters financial to the family solicitor, receiving a statement of accounts, an invoice and a receipt cataloguing all the items transferred to the storage facility. She had deposited everything in Gringott's bank, she had told him, and never looked back.

He envied her courage. Oh, some would say that she was running away, and so she was, but she had taken a leap into the unknown and shown such determination that she had repeated said leap regularly until her wandering had come to an end, at Hogwarts. Until she had met him. Even then, she had chosen the path more dimly lit, eschewing the neon-bright Black charisma for his own more rarefied charms.

He, on the other hand, had shown a far more cowardly, selfish brand of so-called bravery. He had kissed the Dark Lord's feet until he could physically stomach no more, and only then had he found sufficient backbone to do nothing more than come crawling back to the safe haven of his youth, replacing one arch-manipulator with another. For he no longer lied to himself, and while he recognised Albus as a force for light he was well aware that the older wizard's powers of persuasion were superior even to Riddle's. He had served the Headmaster faithfully and had resumed his place at Voldemort's side when asked, without question. And he had been a most effective spy, and he had risked his life, and he had endured more pain than Madam Pomfrey had thought any man could bear. None of these things made him brave, no matter what Dumbledore, or Shacklebolt, or Molly Weasley told him.

And then Ella, his love, his life, had told him that she wanted to reclaim her past. She made no demands, asked for no company or help. She simply stated what would be, and he was awed by her courage. He owed it to her to share her burden, and it was the work of but a few moments for him to voice his own intent.

"Why did you leave a space on the shelves? Over there?" he had asked carefully upon their return from St Mungo's with their baby. He had noticed the empty spaces at once, and it was with a sense of foreboding that he had awaited her answer.

"For all my books. My parents' books."

"You've never been back, have you?" he had stated, his eyes staring at a fixed point on the wall opposite.

"I've never felt strong enough to face it, love," she had replied gently. "Not until now."

His brows drew together. Where was the rancour in her tone, the festering resentment, the reproach? He would never comprehend fully the extent of her feelings for him, and he sighed.

"Have you decided when you want to go?" he asked at last, his decision surprisingly easy to make.

"Well, I had wanted to go before the wedding, but then Persephone showed up early, and..."

"We'll go next week," he had said.

"You're coming with me?"

"I don't want you to go through it alone. And - I owe it to you. And to your parents. I owe it to them to always look after you."

His eyes showed plainly the extent of his remorse, and he searched hers for her assent.

"Thank you," she had said softly, drawing them closer, and they had sat for a long time, each deep in thought.

***

The Muggle city that was home to the storage facility had been an unwelcome reminder of the outside world, and its decay had resembled that of the seedy street in the Eastern European town they had visited while on Malfoy's trail. Snape had felt uncomfortable walking the litter-strewn streets, not least because he understood little about the Muggle world and liked it even less. He was not in his own milieu and while he knew that he would be more than capable of keeping his new family from danger, still the responsibility weighed heavily on him as he strode along beside Ella, gripping the handle of the Pushing Chair as if Persephone's life depended on it.

He was uneasy, but he was also terrified; not of the insalubrious environment, but of Ella's past and his part in it. They kept a steady pace but inwardly each step he took was more sluggish than the last until his reluctance felt like dozens of hands clawing at his shoulders, pulling him back, whispering that he need not go, need not subject himself to such guilt for it was all in the past and he had repented long ago. It was her burden to bear, not his. Still he walked on, for he knew that the insidious voices were wrong, that while he had indeed repented he had not been redeemed, nor would he ever be, and that any burden she had, whether caused by him or not, would be shouldered by him willingly for his love for her was boundless.

Too soon, they stood before the steel door of Ella's unit and he watched as she unlocked it. Her hand was sure and steady and he marvelled at her strength of character. She had been through so much and had been afraid for so long, and yet now, because of him, so she said, she had the courage to confront her past with no qualms. She opened the door and stepped inside, illuminating the room-sized metal box by means of a switch on the inner wall a little way over the threshold. The Pushing Chair shielded him from the entrance and he gripped its handle, not wanting to enter the huge steel coffin in which Ella's childhood had been laid to rest.

"Severus? Are you coming in?" she asked.

"Are you sure you want me to?" he replied hoarsely. "I feel it would be...an intrusion."

The light from the single bare bulb that dangled from the ceiling had cast her face into shadow, but as she approached him once more he could see the concern in her eyes, and her voice was gentle as she said,

"You still feel so guilty, don't you?"

"How can I not? I'll feel guilty for the rest of my life!"

"Then make amends! Come in, and share this with me! Please?"

She slipped her arm around his waist as she spoke and buried her nose in the wide lapels of his long black overcoat. His arms closed around her reflexively, needing her reassurance, and he pressed his mouth against the top of her head. After a while, he released her and together they pushed Persephone into the room.

He had thought himself inured to suffering before he met her, his own included, but as he entered the room by her side and began to remove the dust sheets that made phantasms of her past he had to accept, once again, that she made him feel. For many years he had enfolded his guilt into himself, wrapping it in a layer of aloofness and protecting it with an impenetrable armour of sarcasm and ill temper. It was always there, a part of him that few people could see, and he had preferred it that way, until he had met her. Now, he was stripped bare before everything that she was and that she represented, and there was nowhere he could hide. Everything was brought back to the surface now, and as the white ticking was pulled off and folded magically into neat piles, revealing Ella's life by degrees, so little by little his disquiet grew until he thought he could almost feel the reproach emanate from the cartons and the couches, the tables and the rolled up tapestries.

Once everything was visible, Ella took a moment to circle round, taking it all in. He glanced at her from beneath hooded lids, hardly daring to note her reaction to the emotional impact he assumed such a sight would have on her. She wore a slight frown, as if everything was not as it should be, or perhaps not as she had expected; and he looked away, busying himself with Persephone's blanket because that was something of his, from his world, and he needed to anchor himself. He heard her sigh, and reach out to a large boxful of framed Muggle photographs. He helped her take it down, and on her invitation sat down beside her on a large, comfortable sofa.

He tried not to think of the obvious indentations in its seats and by whom they had been made. Instead he racked his brains trying to recall whether or not it had been a feature in any of the tens of Muggle lounges he had seen when, as a Death Eater, he had gone from house to house and from murder to murder as Lord Voldemort's hired assassin. His mind drew a blank, of course. He had been far too busy noting the effects of his creations on the unfortunate victims to pay attention to the décor. He suppressed a shudder and gave Ella his full attention.

The first photograph she took out was of her parents on their wedding day, and he felt a pang as he looked at their smiling faces, wondering at Ella's resemblance to her mother and what they would think if they knew of her own choice. Next came a photograph of Ella herself in her best Ravenclaw dress robes, taken, he presumed, on the day of the Leaving Feast. She would have been eighteen. Her image smiled at them and waved and the Ella beside him gave a small laugh.

"I remember that day so well. I had my University place all sorted out, and a couple of my friends were going with me, but I was still so upset to be leaving Hogwarts."

The next photograph was of Phoebe, Ella's baby sister. Ella had described her to him before, and he had had a hazy recollection of a golden haired child choking to death on her mother's knee. An angel. Ella said nothing as she looked at the photograph, this one a Muggle one that did not move, much to his relief, but he saw the depth of her sorrow and turned to her, taking her swiftly into his embrace.

"I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry."

After a while her tears slowed and she put the photograph to one side with a heartfelt sigh, taking out a large magical picture of her family. Snape's gut twisted as if there was a knife there, plunged in to the hilt. He recognised the family and there was no more room for doubt. The child was a little older, her mass of curls falling farther down her back than on the previous photograph, and he could tell from Ella's reaction that it was probably one of the last they had had taken together.

"See how young I look!" she whispered.

So young, and oblivious of the hand that life was shortly to deal her. He could not speak, merely held her to him a little more closely.

"The years have been more than kind to you, love," he murmured at last. What else could he say? What good would it do, when she knew already that he regretted it all so strongly that its stain on his soul would linger for all of his life?

She began to pick out framed photographs one at a time, explaining to Snape what they were, when they were taken and what memories they evoked, and then did the same with the many photograph albums that bowed the box's sides. He said little, allowing her the catharsis of reminiscence and rendered dumb with regret. If only he had never succumbed to Riddle's siren song, if only his family had never looked on the Malfoys as their passport to society, if only his parents had kept on loving him. If only he had never been born.

The contrast between Ella's childhood and his own seemed so extreme as to be beyond belief. She, seven years his junior, growing up so happy and carefree, fresh faced for her first day at Hogwarts while he, a graduate, was being seduced in more than one sense by the dark attraction of Lord Voldemort. She, Phoebe's age, laughing and playing in a meadow full of flowers as her doting parents looked on while he watched a one-year-old Caius being dandled on his mother's knee and knew that he had lost her love. She, curled up on a window seat and engrossed in a book surrounded by the usual paraphernalia of a teenaged girl; he, alone in his darkened room, zapping flies with his wand and listening to angry voices in a room below while his brother shouted and ran around outside, heedless of the adult drama being played out within.

What had he done, to be such a disappointment? Had he not been a dutiful son? An assiduous student? A competent, if reluctant, elder brother? He had scoffed at some of his more pampered fellow students and their doting families but the longer he remained at Hogwarts the more he realised that it was he, not they, that formed the insignificant minority. And Ella was of their ranks, not his. He wondered what she would think of him, if she knew. She might despise him and assume that he should be held responsible for the emotional shortcomings of his family; or even worse, she might judge his emotional development to be so stunted as to be beyond improvement. She would be wrong, though, for he loved her so fiercely that he could no longer envisage life without her. He had suffered more than he had ever thought possible at her hands and yet he had found sufficient hope in his heart to forgive her, and to give himself to her incontrovertibly. He loved her enough to subject himself to this examination of her life and of his culpability, because she wanted him to be there. So he sat and he held her close, and he listened to her life and filed each of her memories away in his mind, for her.

When all the photographs and albums had been seen at last and stacked in neat piles at their feet, she began to cry in earnest, her tears multiplying from the occasional large droplet that would fall from her cheek on to the pages on her lap into a torrent of anguish and loss. He weathered the storm of her sorrow and suppressed his own, for she needed his strength. She had lost so much, far more than he had ever comprehended, and all of it was his fault.

At last her tears stopped, and she relaxed into his arms finding comfort there. He leaned forward to take a photograph that Ella had placed lovingly on top of one of the piles at their feet. It was the family group, their last one together. They sat and gazed at it for a long time until Ella said,

"Thank you for coming here with me today. For helping me."

There was no recrimination in her tone. There was only love, but he wondered how that could be and his mouth twisted bitterly as he replied,

"Under the circumstances it was the least I could do!"

"Oh, Severus, don't be like that! Don't you see how you've helped me come to terms with it?"

"How can you say that, when I'm the cause?"

"Love, no! We've been through all this, I forgave you for your part in this a long time ago!"

"But I didn't forgive myself, Ella! I - I can't!"

"Then let us..."

The spectral voice was little more than a whisper but it crashed into Snape's awareness like a thunderclap across a barren landscape, filling him with foreboding and the promise of a tempest to follow. He heard Ella croak,

"Dad?" and felt himself shrink inside until the very essence of him condensed into a tight knot of apprehension, for surely no good could come of this encounter. His jaw clenched tight, he cast his gaze about the room to try and find the source of the words. Soon he discerned a grey swirling mist that shimmered before them and gradually coalesced into three distinct shapes that filled his heart with awe and cold dread. There could be no doubt that he had seen them before.

Ella's mother spoke next, her warm voice so like Ella's that it sent a shiver racing along his spine.

"Hush, Ella, it's alright!" she soothed as Ella gripped his hand, sobs hitching in her throat. He in turn still embraced her and while he knew his fingers would leave a mark on the tender flesh of her shoulder he could not let her go, particularly when her sister Phoebe chimed in, her childish voice piping,

"Eya! Eya!" and causing Ella to cry uncontrollably, reaching out to her family even though they were as insubstantial as a memory. He had to know how much they had heard of their conversation; indeed, he wondered how long they had waited and watched before this manifestation. It was not unheard of for ghosts to watch over their loved ones for years, lifetimes even, unable to release themselves completely from the shackles of the corporeal life and pass on to the next.

"Are you here? Have you been here all the time?" Snape asked haltingly.

"No," replied Ella's mother, turning a warm, radiant smile on to him that made him flinch for it was far more than he deserved from her. "We have been in another place, but we always knew our daughter would need to say goodbye to us one day. And today, we heard her call."

"Oh, Mum!"

"Shh, shh. Don't grieve for us any more. You have a future. You have a beautiful daughter, and you have a man who loves you more than life itself. You are blessed, my darling."

"But I - I was responsible for your deaths!" Snape interjected. Surely she could not mean it, and yet ghosts were unable to lie.

" - And have spent all the years since trying to atone, and never more than now," rejoined her father solemnly. Snape looked at his insubstantial form, amazed. Yes, he had repented and had spent years castigating himself for his past mistakes, but he deserved neither forgiveness nor redemption, least of all when it was offered by his victims. "We have come to know things written in the moon and the stars," her father continued. "We are cognisant of the turning of the world and the unfolding of the seasons. And we know that this is meant to be."

"You will look after our daughter, Severus Snape," Ella's mother repeated. "We know this to be true, and we love you for it."

He shook his head slowly in disbelief. They should hate him. They should tell Ella that he would never be worthy of her love, that she was betraying their memory by loving him.

"How can this be?" he asked.

"Accept what is, Severus. Embrace it, for it is your salvation and your future."

Shivers coursed through him and he could no longer trust himself to speak.

"Mum - Dad - I've missed you so much!" Ella whispered, tears coursing down her cheeks and dropping on to their hands, entwined on her knee.

"We know, sweetheart, and we've wept for your sorrow. But we rejoice in your joy. It's your time to be happy, now - "

"Oh, I am!"

" - With only fond memories of the past."

One by one the shades lengthened and became so insubstantial that they were barely there.

"Bye bye Eya!" Phoebe waved, the beaming smile on her angelic face wrenching Snape's heart until he thought it would break, especially when he heard Ella's desperate plea,

"No, don't go! Not yet!"

Ella's mother was the last to disappear, and she lingered for long enough to give a cold, yet tingling kiss on each of their foreheads before she too disappeared with a whispered,

"Be happy, my darling..."

The kiss was electrifying. Snape had been shivering with mingled fear and wonder throughout, but the soft brush of insubstantial lips across his brow affected him profoundly. The loving caress soothed his doubts and fears and warmed him through, calming him and quelling his doubts. If they accepted the propriety, the rightness, of his relationship with their daughter, then perhaps there was hope yet for his redemption, since the only person that still needed to forgive him was himself.

Ella turned to him and clung to him, tangling her fingers in his hair as he in turn clutched at her back, their breathing ragged, and they lay against the cushions of the sofa and, eventually, relaxed. All that needed to be said was said by their hands and arms as they clasped and stroked one another until both were calm.

A long while later Ella smiled up at him and he could see that she was at peace.

"Do you think they liked me?" he asked, quirking an eyebrow. She laughed, as he had known she would, and he joined in, and the laughter was of joyous relief, healing, cleansing laughter, the kind of laughter born of miracles.

Once their euphoria had passed and they had chosen and shrunk the items Ella wanted to take with her back to Hogwarts, they left the Muggle world behind and returned home. Hogwarts was home, for both of them. He had realised long ago that his family home meant nothing to him. He had neither financial nor emotional ties to the place and had not visited it in years. It stood empty, to the best of his knowledge, apart from a couple of house elves and, from time to time, Caius. Hogwarts, on the other hand, was his retreat and home to his personal library and laboratory; and his friends were there. He sighed inwardly. Admitting that he held a little more than merely professional regard for some of his colleagues did not come easily to him, but nevertheless it was true. As for the old man...well, Dumbledore held a place in his esteem that his own father had forfeited many years before his death.

Now, it seemed that Ella felt equally strongly about their home. She seemed so relieved now that she had seen her family and laid their ghosts to rest, and he could tell that she was as glad to be home as he was. Strange, he mused, how their wildly differing backgrounds had resulted in such accord that they both now looked on the school as a safe haven. He envied her, despite the trauma he had caused her. He envied the love she had known, the unconditional affection and support that had been her bedrock in life and the source of all the fortitude she had shown since their deaths. His own life could have been so different, if it had begun like hers. If his parents had not thrust him into the company of Lucius Malfoy.

***

Malfoy was a study in arrogance. Snape had always known it, even when as a callow youth he would admire the older boy's self assurance from under downcast lashes, wondering how one man could contain such a surfeit of confidence. He soon learned, of course. By the time he had followed Malfoy's lead and been initiated as a Death Eater he had seen that Malfoy's demeanour was a potent combination of old money and dark magic, coiled around one another, woven together in inextricable links forged of influence and a consuming lust for power at any price.

Snape was not interested in power or social standing, and besides he knew that both were beyond his reach. No, his thirst was for knowledge and for the feeling of supremacy in his chosen field. For absolute mastery of his own area of interest. So, while he watched Lucius Malfoy enjoy all the trappings that came as part of membership of Voldemort's inner circle, he, Snape, toiled assiduously to further the Dark Lord's ends, since they appeared, at first, to mirror his own. It did not take long for Malfoy to sink into total depravity and Snape watched and wondered and was sickened, but did nothing. His interests would not have been best served by interfering. Let Malfoy have his way with the homeless and the dispossessed of the Muggle world; there were plenty other dark wizards around who would do the same and it would not behove Snape to draw attention to his sensibilities by trying to save each and every one. A discreet Obliviate or even Avada Kedavra, should there be no kinder way, was all that he would tell himself was required.

He had lived to regret his inaction in the years that had followed, watching Malfoy rise both in Voldemort's favour and in the upper echelons of wizarding society. Malfoy's kid leather gloves were not enough to hide the bloodstains on his hands, but it seemed that no-one except for Snape and Dumbledore either knew or cared that Lucius Malfoy was a liar and a vicious murderer. He was above the law, it seemed, and Snape was powerless to take matters into his own hands by means of a casually administered poison, for the Order 'needed' Malfoy, 'needed' Snape's special relationship with him. It sickened him, but he did what he had to do in order to maintain his cover and keep the Dark Lord's ear knowing that it was for the greater good. He had lost count of the number of times he had wished Malfoy dead by his hand, and after he found that Ella had been taken from Diagon Alley he cursed that greater good for it almost cost him his love.

The deadly potion Snape had brewed, as a new Death Eater of less than two years' standing, was a masterpiece and one in which he had had immense pride. An amalgam of several arcane concoctions and imbued with the strength of more dark curses than even Snape had previously been familiar, he had spent months on experimentation and adaptation until he had amassed parchment after parchment of closely written notes, cross-referenced and themselves annotated and charmed, so complex that no-one but he would have had the vaguest idea of where the procedural instructions started, or where they would lead.

He had destroyed them, of course. He had been forced into the unwelcome realisation that they would serve no purpose other than for ill, even though they would represent the most brilliant research he would do in his entire career. Once he knew to what purpose his creation had been twisted, he disowned it mentally and publicly, excusing his behaviour to the Dark Lord by allowing Voldemort's overwhelming vanity to take credit for it, telling him,

"All of my work was done for your greater glorification, Master. It's only fitting that the credit be yours, and I would prefer, if I may beg your indulgence, to step back and allow you to bask in your achievement."

Voldemort had been delighted and had ensured that Snape appreciated the fullest extent of his gratitude.

The poison Snape had devised was effective no matter what method was used in its administration. Ingested, it would cause searing stomach cramps in minutes as it reacted with the natural bile contained in the gut, as the essence of malevolent magic inserted into its very molecules during its concoction burst from it and combined with the little used herbs and other ingredients that formed its substance, creating a combustible magical explosion in the stomach which would spread rapidly through the body causing convulsions and a rather messy death.

The other method was in the form of a gaseous solution introduced into a household in relatively small quantities, where it would seek out oxygen and carbon dioxide molecules and change sufficient of them to render the air fatally toxic. Death would be agonisingly slow, and unavoidable once the first breaths of the poisoned air had entered the lungs. Breathing would become laboured and then almost impossible, and any increased swallowing due to alarm would ensure passage of the toxin to the stomach, which would then begin the cycle of cramping and convulsions.

At first, the Muggle subjects were simply brought to the meeting-hall in the usual way; abductees, the homeless, sometimes children, always lost. Never released, except into Death's insistent embrace. After the beatings, rapes and tortures inflicted by those Death Eaters with less delicate sensibilities, one or two of those Muggles left standing would be thrown into a magically warded cage in the ante room, to recover from their ordeal. Snape avoided that room, the fear and hope in their eyes sickening him since he knew he could do nothing to alleviate their plight. Even a whispered "Avada Kedavra" was out of the question since he was never left alone for long enough to avail himself of the opportunity to save them any further suffering.

He hated himself for his inability to act. He sometimes thought that to rationalise his inactivity in such a way was simply to hide his head in the sand, for even if he had had the opportunity, still he would have feared the repercussions for Voldemort would surely have discovered his action and meted out punishment. Snape knew how severe such punishments could be.

For a while he managed to convince himself that by refusing to be the one to administer the poison, under the guise of needing to observe and make careful notes on every step of the experiment, he was a step removed from the deed and therefore not culpable, never mind that he had invented the potion himself. After the third or fourth test subject, however, he knew that he had been hopelessly naïve.

Voldemort decided that field trips were a necessary element of the trials. Laboratory tests were all very well, but they did not allow for any variation in temperature, humidity, ventilation or room size, and he was keen to discover whether the toxicity level of the concoction in its gaseous form was sufficiently high to claim multiple victims in the same attack.

Targets were chosen seemingly at random. Apart from certain criteria that had of necessity to be met, notably that the property should be in a secluded area, the Muggles should be observed to establish a pattern of activity, and a time should be decided upon that would allow for as many of the property's inhabitants as possible to be present, the Death Eaters selected to settle upon suitable targets were given a free rein to indulge whatever whim they wanted; large house or small, new or old, poor family or rich, town or country.

No matter what the location, the modus operandi was always the same. An advance guard of Death Eaters from the lower ranks would apparate close to the target and secure it by warding it with anti-disturbance charms. Then they would enter the property and locate its inhabitants, Confunding them and taking them, as far as possible without harming them, to a central point, usually the living room, where they would be Impelled to sit and wait mutely. Next, word would be sent to the higher placed Death Eaters and to Voldemort himself, and the target Muggles would sit in terrified silence, unaware of what horror was to come. Malfoy would take charge of the sealing of the room, directing Avery and Nott and sneering at Snape wherever possible for his reluctance to take part in the preparations and breathlessly anticipate the sport that was to come, and he would place a small stoppered vial of poisoned gas on the inevitable low table in the centre of the room.

At last, everything would be ready and a charm would be cast on the ceiling to render it transparent. Snape would retire to an upstairs room with a heavy heart, his boots feeling as if they were filled with lead as he made his dread way up the stairs. Voldemort and his loyal supporters would take their places above the hapless family in the arena below, and the sport would begin.

"Liberato!" Malfoy would shout with a manic gleam in his eye, pointing his wand through the floor at the vial, and the stopper would release itself with a pop, allowing the silvery gas to curl out of the glass tube while the Muggles looked on in horror. Another charm released them from their immobility and returned their power of speech, and the Death Eaters looked on and sniggered as they flew to one another, trying in vain to open windows and doors, to plug the stopper back in, as if this dark genie could ever be returned to its bottle, eventually resorting to covering the vial with a cushion, or an upturned cut glass vase hastily emptied of flowers. Such desperate antics would soon reduce Voldemort's coterie to loud guffaws of mirth, and Snape would stand tight-lipped, emptying his mind of his anguish and disgust, and his sympathy and regret.

The gas was mercilessly efficient, and the mood in the upstairs room would change rapidly as the Muggles began to exhibit the promised symptoms. The atmosphere would be pregnant with anticipation, and breathing would become heavy as trousers were loosened and lips were licked with voyeuristic avidity. The more the Muggles suffered, the more the Death Eaters liked it, until their groans of arousal would compete with the muffled gasps and wheezing from the room below. Doubled over in pain, their faces would purple with the effort of filling their collapsing lungs until at last the colour drained from them and they lay still, slackjawed, showing their horror through unseeing eyes.

Snape witnessed many families die like that. Some were forgotten quickly, the places and the people blurring into one huge atrocity that Snape could not bear to examine too closely. Bad enough that he had to examine each and every corpse afterwards to measure the extent to which the poison had penetrated against the length of time they had taken to die.

One family among a very few, however, he did remember. A mother, dark-haired and comely, her husband, of moderate height and build, and their daughter. Blonde, ringletted, and the most beautiful child he had ever seen. Her mother held her on her lap as she died, smiling at her as she stroked her hair from her face, consoling her with whispered nothings as she herself struggled for breath and grimaced in pain as her stomach burned.

Snape had done all manner of things in his short life that he now lived to regret. He had spurned the affection of his troublesome young brother. He had practised the darkest of curses and enjoyed it. He had allowed himself to be sodomised against a wall by a demon, allowed that same demon to pleasure him with his mouth until he groaned in shameful ecstasy. And now he was a murderer surrounded by the sharp salt stink of ejaculate, unable to take his eyes off the tableau below him. The father, already dead, sat on the sofa with his arm still draped around his wife's shoulders in a protective gesture, offering comfort where there could be none. The mother rocked her child in grotesque parody of a soothing rhythm, wracked by sudden convulsions, and her eyes were filled with compassion for her baby girl's suffering even as she took her own dying breaths, determined to hold on to life for as long as possible in order that her child not die alone.

This unknown woman's love for her child was pure and self-sacrificing and he had never felt so unclean.