I do not own any of these characters. I just had to write because waiting for book 7 may kill me. Here's some of what I read between the book 6 lines. Premise is hours after what happened in the tower.
I wrote another one shot with the opposing POV (it's in the next chapter) for those of you who are disgusted with me.
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He couldn’t deal with Draco right now. He couldn’t deal with his familiarity; his pointy little face and inappropriate remarks. No he couldn’t deal with him. He’d unceremoniously force-fed the boy a powerful sleeping potion just moments after they’d arrived so he could grieve in peace.
He’d come here on Dumbledore’s orders. Dumbledore who was dying in front of him just a few hours ago, shaking with pain. Eaten alive from the inside, barely standing. Dumbledore who gave him no choice.
He cursed legilimency.
Albus’d showed him what he’d been up to. Showed him what he’d been drinking. Showed him a place he never thought he’d see again. ‘Save the boy, save yourself, *finish* me. You promised. I want it to be you’, he'd said without speaking.
‘Damn you!’ Snape shouted, throwing a dish against the wall. He picked more of them up and threw and threw and threw. He shouted over and over again, all the time thinking ‘how could you, how could you’.
There were soon no dishes left to break.
He slowed his breathing, brushed the hair off his face and willed one foot in front of the other.
He let himself into the bathroom, turned on the water for the bath and stepped into the big old tub fully dressed.
The cold jolted his body but his mind was having none of it. He waited, empty inside, as the water went up and over the rim of the tub before he turned it off. There was to be no magic from him for quite awhile. He tried half-heartedly to get his face out of the water to breathe.
Albus Dumbledore was dead.
The pieces were in place for the final showdown. He’d known they were getting to it as soon as Dumbledore had given him the Defence Against the Dark Arts job, it had been pre-arranged many moons ago. Making the other side believe he was making headway, covertly readying the children for war at the same time. As much as he could anyway, he tried giving them a fighting chance.
In the end he hoped he'd shown Harry Potter how little he really knew about what was ahead. He’d shown him what he should be studying like blocks and silent spells during the school year. He’d even purposfully left his old Potions book so the twirp could practice. The boy would begin to understand how weak he was, the boy would see how easily Snape could have snuffed out his pathetic little life. The boy would have to get better.
With tiny little flicks of Snape's wrist he had showed the future savior of the wizarding world that he needed to leave his childhood behind and go to work. Potter was suitably enraged, he knew. Suitably blinded by his hatred for him. He would no doubt spend every waking moment training and studying and plotting with his friends. With the Order. With those ungrateful bastards who would jump to the wrong conclusions because they couldn’t know. Because they didn’t know. Because they never knew what Dumbledore had on him. Because he never let the man tell. Because they all had to stay just a tad suspicious. Because they were as jaded as he was.
He took a breath and let his body float. His ears were in the water and the buzz in his head was almost pleasant.
He should want to throw up; he was such a white hat, it was pathetic really… All of this for young Regulus who had made a predictable mistake and heroic last stance and paid with his life. All of this for Lily who had tried to recruit him, who had seen something in him he hadn't even been aware was there. Who had let him touch her inflated belly to feel her child moving inside, to feel the life and the love and the possibilities. She’d said ‘Severus, you know I’m right, and I know you’re good’ and she’d smiled, taking his hand.
It was, of course, the last time he saw her alive.
He had unknowingly betrayed her a year later, but had tried to have her spared when Wormtail had told him who the new targets were. He should have known she wouldn't stand aside. Should have known she would give her life. And all for a boy who ended up having far too much of his father in him. A boy who had no discipline, who was careless with himself, his friends, potions and subsequently all of the wizarding world's very lives.
He couldn’t bare it when he got the news the whole family would be killed. And Dumbledore took him in. Saw his mind and opened his door. He had been loyal to a fault to his new master, he had resisted temptation even when there was so much of it he couldn’t breath and now he would surely die for the cause, die a traitor like everyone was so quick to believe.
Albus chose to trust him above everyone else. He had chosen to give him the hardest jobs, the dirty jobs, the impossible jobs.
Well the impossible job. Singular. The one where he had to either kill his mentor or be killed by an unbreakable vow he made to protect his position and by dying insure that both his charge for not following through and that boy Lily loved so much for being Harry Potter would die excrutiating deaths. He did what he did to protect the weapon with the soft eyes and to protect the little dragon for Narcissa, who had once meant something to him. He also did what he did to see the look on that shrew Lestranges' face when he said ‘I do’.
She would pay for this. They would all pay for this. The world had tumbled around him. Up was down and down was up and for what? They could have had more time if only he’d thrown Bellatrix out on her crazy behind that day. If only he’d told Dumbledore about what precisely had happened to Regulus Black. How he had refused to kill his own brother. How he had sacrificed himself like a bloody Gryffindor when he saw the error of his ways. How he had disappeared before his inevitable torture and execution to go on a fool’s errand, all because he had overheard impossible things about horcruxes and set out to find one. How he too had been eaten alive from the inside by a potion of Snape’s own making as he stumbled into Malfoy Manor to face his sentence. Snape had covered his recognition of the potion he smelled on Black, used Legillimens to confirm his suspicion.
There was nothing to be done. It complicated potion of immeasurable power, potency and durability. A potion with no antidote that had been one of the highlights of his many triumphs for the Dark side. He had stood back as his young friend had been tortured to death by a half dozen death-eaters fellow death eaters. And then they all had lunch.
He guessed he shouldn’t take this that hard. He was, after all, a complete git with questionable morals who held grudges against young students and who was and had always been a pawn, although a knowing and accepting one.
He opened his eyes. The bathroom was so bare, so normal. A spider was weaving a web in the corner and birds by the window had the nerve to chirp.
He wondered what his mentor felt like behind the veil. He had no doubt the man was well received. He knew the man had regarded death as the greatest of adventures.
And he wondered if he would ever get out of this bath; if he could ever face Draco. He didn’t know what to do with him. Who to be with him. How to speak to him. Draco, all nerves and shock, had laughed when they had gotten the portkey to the safe-house. Laughed and said ‘old Dumbledore never saw that coming’.
How wrong he was. How wrong.
What would he do with the boy? What would he reveal? How long could they stay hidden?
He had orders, Snape had. He couldn’t sink down to the bottom of the tub like he wanted. He couldn’t let himself fall asleep and wither away. He was a weapon. He had a plan to execute, and as always he would obey. Because, as Bella once crudely stated, he was Dumbledore’s bitch, wasn’t he?
FIN-
