Several hours following the defeat of Lord Voldemort...

A celebration had taken hold of and brought together the Wizarding World: Lord Voldemort was dead. Though such a triumphant event – anticipated for the better part of two decades – had finally come to pass, a murky and baleful temper was still present if not strengthened by the day’s success.

The heavy stillness of the room that held this darkness was saturated in tension, confusion, and silent chaos. Wax candles of midnight black clad in elegant fixtures of wrought yellow gold adorned the walls enfolded in maroon. The flickering candlelight revealed irregular fragments of the long room while leaving sinister corners still cloaked in shadows. The occupants stood in close huddles of three or four, their communal despair being their only consolation. If one looked into the room, they would not find a single unique individual save for their height or frame, as each of these mourners wore matching floor-length robes of deepest ebony, the hood draped over their head leaving their faces indistinguishable.

A crack would sound every so often, so loud that those not deeply immersed in their own misery would jump in surprise and take a defensive stance, only to find another has joined their throng of bereavement. No one dared to speak. They would wait, wait for the authority they had been conditioned to follow blindly; it was all they knew. So easily they had forgotten that they had been summoned to this dreary place, the searing burn of their left arm leading them to believe it was taking them to their master, only to find themselves immediately drowning in the thick air of loss: loss of direction, loss of purpose, loss of self.

It was hard to say how long they had been standing there, waiting, always waiting. When another crossed the threshold and entered the room, her dark heavily-lidded eyes scanning the area erratically, it wasn’t until she spoke that they even acknowledged her presence.

“Loyal servants,” she raised her deep voice to the tomb of stillness, and several heads turned to her direction. “It is with a heavy heart that have I called you here, mere hours following our darkest.”

“You summoned us?” an abrasive voice growled from one of the shadowy corners.

Belletrix’s glare snapped to the direction of the voice, her upper lip curling to bare her yellow teeth, damaged from years spent in Azkaban.

“Do you dare to question me?” she jeered, and then raised her left arm vertically above her head, her own black sleeve falling to gather at her elbow.

As eyes rose to take in the black marking that stood out dark as ebony against the ivory skin, hoods fell to reveal astonishment and gaping mouths. A few ripped back the fabric from their own arm to check their Mark. It was there, exactly the same as what shone before them on the arm of their Queen. They had heard the rumours of Lord Voldemort’s death, but only a few hours later they felt the burning call once again and made haste to find out if it could be true. Once they found themselves in that room, the confirming whispers of his demise reached their ears, and so they remained, unsure and lost.

The skull that now adorned their arm was larger than it had been, the snake conspicuously replaced with a dark raven, its wings spread within the skull’s gaping mouth. Few had bothered to look at their Mark when it had summoned them, the scorching sensation their flesh had endured countless times before felt no different, and consequently failed to notice that the blaze they felt had changed it.

A pass of power, but must they obey? How had this happened? These thoughts plagued their minds, but could they resist the natural gravitation they felt through their Mark, the growing admiration spawned by fear spreading within them. The weakest fell to their knees first, anxious to follow, to have a sense of purpose again. Bellatrix smiled wickedly, continuing to wave her forearm around the room as more submitted to her influence.

“What are we to do, my Queen?” asked a timid woman with a flat face vaguely resembling a pug surrounded by thick dark brown hair falling flat around her shoulders.

Finally letting her arm fall, Bellatrix stepped towards the woman slowly, and everyone seemed to hold their breath. Her small brown eyes widened for a moment and she looked up from her place on her knees, panic flickering across her face. She tensed as Bellatrix bent down to bring her own pale face closer.

“Where is your lovely daughter, Parkinson?” she said sweetly.

“Sh-She has not been inducted yet, b-but is anxious to obey,” Mrs. Parkinson sputtered, directing her eyes downward in obvious embarrassment.

“Very good. You will then bring her here on her seventeenth birthday, as is your responsibility since your husband is still in the Order’s custody,” Bellatrix commanded as she straightened to a standing position. She then raised her voice to again speak to the crowd as a whole, almost all on their knees. “You will all bring your children here if they are of age, or else their induction will become a part of their coming of age celebration.”

Murmurs of agreement filled the room, even from those who had secretly hoped to have been able to give their children a choice in joining the ranks. Bellatrix hardly felt it necessary to explain to them that the first step in retaliation is to strengthen their numbers, and therefore everyone would initiate their child or else face the consequences. Filling their ranks was a given, especially since the number of Death Eaters she had thought to be loyal to the Dark Lord and his cause seemed so few, at least fewer than she remembered. As she scanned the room, her eyebrows contracted in outrage as a realization dawned on her.

“Where is Avery? And Greyback and Yaxley?” she exclaimed, only mentioning a few of many faces that were missing. Brutal punishments already racing through her mind for their disobedience, her nostrils flared in fury.

“They all lie dead at the house in Cornwall!” a small voice in the back squeaked, and all eyes turned. Alecto Carrow attempted to shrink into the wall behind her.

Bellatrix swiftly closed the distance between them, and Alecto squeezed her eyes shut and scrunched her face to ready herself for the impending pain. When nothing happened, she snuck a peak through one cautious eye to find a wand in her face.

“Speak! What do you know?” Bellatrix barked, causing Alecto to jump and cower ever closer against the wall.

“I... I...” Her beady, sunken eyes darted around the room, taking in the curious faces all looking to her. And then her eyes landed on the face in front of her. Bellatrix’s once striking beauty, with her high cheekbones framing a classically beautiful face of porcelain skin, her shining black hair, and her seductive stare, could no longer be found as beautiful. A woman ruined by greed and supremacy, a mad gleam in her wide eyes, a permanent snarl pulling at her upper lip, her hair a frizzy unkempt halo, held her face inches from Alecto’s, awaiting an explanation that would impress her.

“The Dark Lord had brought in the Weasley girl, and left her with Snape!” Alecto blurted out. “Then Snape tricked us all into drinking mead with him, only it was poisoned. I pretended to drink it out of respect; I don’t much care for mead. When everyone dropped dead around me, I knew I should pretend to be dead as well. I heard him perform the death curse on Greyback, and then he killed Nagini and took the Weasley girl away.”

Her breathing had elevated with her rising heartbeat, and she awaited her Queen’s reaction. Bellatrix hissed through her teeth, a deep rage bringing her eyebrows together, contorting the frightening aspects of her face further.

“I knew it. I knew Snape couldn’t be trusted. And after I told my Lord so many times–” She stopped suddenly, a wave of a foreign sentiment washing over her features, and her voice shook. Taking a step back, she closed her eyes and took a deep breath. When her lids rose a moment later, the instant of weakness had passed, and there was nothing to find but composed fury within the depths of black coal. She focused her lethal stare on the Carrow in front of her.

“And you waited this long to tell me?” Bellatrix seethed, her eyes narrowing and her wand coming up to rest against Alecto’s throat.

“Oh please, Dark Mistress, please spare me! I was frightened of Snape discovering I was alive!” she cried, dropping to her knees and clutching Bellatrix’s robes.

A disgusted snarl ripped from Bellatrix’s throat. She quickly stepped further back, out of Alecto’s reach.

“Crucio!”

As Alecto writhed and screamed, the surrounding Death Eaters watched on, some with disgust, some with rage, but none with empathy. Later that night, within her private quarters, Bellatrix had placed Alecto’s punishment far from her mind. Once seated upon her bed, she glanced briefly towards the door that separated her chambers from Rodolphus’s to see that it was shut, and then retrieved a withered piece of parchment from her bedside table, worn with creases from being folded and unfolded over a period of years. Having kept this treasure hidden on her person when she had been taken to Azkaban, she had been able to pull it out whenever the despair had become overwhelming, granting her a moment’s peace and a surge of resolve.

She opened what used to be a sketch of a handsome man with jet-black hair and dark eyes. She had taken to making physical “corrections” with the small pieces of stone littering her cell, drawing in slits over the perfect nose, reshaping the full lips to become a lipless mouth, and always adding to the eyes. The cat-like pupils she drew in weren’t enough to capture the entrancing effect his eyes had on her, but she would continue to add a curve here and a shadow there. To anyone else, the eyes looking back at her would look positively mad, but to her they possessed power, control, and superiority.

Lovingly tracing the outline of the gaunt face with her pointer finger as she had many times before, she whispered to it in a honey-sweet voice.

“We will make him pay, my love. We will make him suffer. Then we will finish what you started.”

She raised the parchment to her face, rested her lips against the indentations her primitive drawing utensils had made along the curves of the snake-like mouth, and then pressed the drawing against her chest. She lay down, strategy and revenge sifting through her mind as she drifted off to sleep.

The morning after Ginny Weasley’s seventeenth birthday...

A soft prod in her subconscious stirred Ginny from a sluggish sleep. She could see sunlight through her eyelids, but she was too warm and comfortable to open them just yet. Instead, she awakened each of her other senses one by one. His musky smell was what stole her attention first, and she breathed deeply, the memory of the weight of his body over hers drifting to the front of her thoughts. Aware that her head was moving up and down rhythmically with his breaths, she took to listening to his chest, her ear pressed against it. A steady and relaxed thumping was heard behind the ribs her cheek lay against. She then awakened the feel of his skin beneath her fingertips. Ever so softly so as to not rouse him, she traced the familiar lines that criss-crossed his chest: very thin and faint scars left from Draco and Harry’s last duel. Though Snape’s usage of the Essence of Dittany had prevented disfiguring scars, these hardly noticeable souvenirs had been left behind.

She then turned her head so that she could press her lips against the skin her cheek had just been touching, tasting a faint salty residue: A result of a night of sweaty, strenuous activity. He stirred, his hips shifting to angle towards hers and the arm wrapped around her shoulders tightening its hold. She felt muscles in his chest constrict as his free arm rose, and then his curled fingers were beneath her chin, lifting her face. She found Draco’s eyes of dark mist just before they closed, and he pressed his lips against hers for just an instant. Pulling back immediately, she smiled as she wrinkled her nose. Her lids rose to find him smirking.

“What?” he asked, and his breath washed over her face.

“Eww, morning breath,” she whispered, bringing up her hand to cover her own mouth.

He snorted, and then buried his nose into the crevice between her neck and shoulder. The abrupt prickling sensation caused her to arch her back and giggle.

“No, stop!” she laughed as she pushed at his chest.

He only pulled her body against his in response, his large hands spread across her naked back. The nose-nuzzling had been exchanged for kisses as he ran his lips down her front, and she stopped writhing in protest.

“Mmm, why haven’t we always done this?” she asked, revelling.

His lips broke contact with her skin and he uttered hoarsely, “I honestly can’t remember.”

Now looking up at her with his chin resting on her stomach, he smiled. His cool, grey eyes seemed to smile at her as well from beneath a fringe of white-blond hair. It was odd looking at him from this angle, but she savoured every second. She loved that he had seen every part of her and she felt completely at ease, and even better, she had seen every part of him.

His eyes shifted to the bedside clock, and he pursed his lips.

“You should go soon before your mother calls you down for breakfast.”

Rolling her eyes, she exhaled with irritation through her nose.

“I’m of age now, and I want to stay here with you,” she argued, pulling him by his upper arms so that he would lie next to her.

He submitted for a moment, cradling her in his embrace as she rested her head in that perfect nook of his shoulder. With a sigh, he tightened his hold and then released her, sliding beneath the covers to the edge of the bed. As he sat up, locating his pants and trousers near his feet, he heard her snort with frustration before moving to the opposite side of the bed. Sneaking a look over his shoulder, his breath caught. She was shoving a foot into one side of her knickers with clear aggravation, so he took that moment to admire the perfect hourglass of her shape and the flawlessly pale skin of her back as it contrasted with her flowing mane of glowing red hair. He knew she needed to get home soon, and getting on Mrs. Weasley’s bad side for keeping her only daughter all night was not an option.

Tearing his eyes away, he commenced pulling on his own garments with a little more difficulty than he would have had had he not looked.

As Ginny buttoned her last button, Draco snuck up behind her, sliding each of his palms around either side of her hips to rest together against her middle and pushed aside a lock of her hair with his nose to kiss her neck. She turned to face him, smiling contentedly. He feigned a disappointed expression, drawing his eyebrows together and pouting a little.

“What’s wrong?” she asked self-consciously, her hands coming up to smooth her bed-head.

“All covered up,” he said in a whiny voice, and she giggled softly. He brought one hand up to touch her face, grazing her cheek with his thumb. “But still beautiful.”

“Ugh,” she scoffed as she rolled her eyes. “You know, you won’t need that cheesy rubbish anymore to get me into bed.”

She had uttered the magic words that would cause any bloke to go weak at the knees. Stepping forward to press her body against his, she pulled apart the top opening of his shirt to kiss him at the base of his throat.

“Merlin, Ginny, what are you doing to me?” he whispered with a groan into her ear as his hands came around to run themselves up her back.

She pushed against his chest, knocking his knees out against the side of the bed and forcing him onto his back.

“Getting my way,” she whispered back with a smirk as she climbed on top of him.

For this reason she wasn’t in her room when Mrs. Weasley called her down to breakfast, but showed up fifteen minutes after her mother had poked her head into the empty room to rouse her daughter. Ginny flew swiftly through her open bedroom window, seated upon Ron’s old Shooting Star. Propping the broom against the wall, she looked to her right into her bureau mirror, initially alarmed by the way her body took on the colours of whatever lay behind her. And then she noticed a face staring at her from the left part of her stomach as if it were a part of her travel robes.

Ginny whirled around, all thoughts involving her chameleon appearance forced to the back of her mind.

“Mum!” she cried with surprise, her eyes wide. “I was just–”

“Oh, Ginevra, I know where you were. You think that you could have snuck out almost every this summer without me noticing?” Mrs. Weasley said seriously, but with a hint of a smile in her warm, chocolate eyes.

Ginny’s mouth fell open, and she stared at her mother for a moment. Now she was in for it.

“Come, come, sit with me.” Mrs. Weasley let the smile spread to her lips as she patted the quilted bedspread of the twin bed she sat upon.

Inching forward with admonition, Ginny finally joined the older witch.

“Now.” Mrs. Weasley brought up her wand to rap Ginny on the head, perhaps a little harder than was necessary. Ginny felt the familiar cascade of warmth run through her from the tingling spot on her head where the wand had touched it. “I can see those guilty eyes.”

The hot sting of culpability crept across Ginny’s cheeks, and she knew they now rivalled the hue of her fiery hair. Her eyes dropped, unable to look into the kind face that should be laying into her for her blatant disregard of her mother’s trust. She noticed, clutched within Mrs. Weasley’s slightly restless hands, a small ball of purple fur. Another smaller wave of guilt grew for Arnold, her forgotten Pygmy Puff. It seemed ages ago that having one was so important; when had her childhood ended?

“Poor little one,” Ginny murmured, poking the fuzzy ball, and Arnold twitched in response.

Mrs. Weasley opened her hands, and the Pygmy Puff bounced up Ginny’s arm to rest on her shoulder. She felt silly again, but enjoyed it. Her mother released a long sigh, and Ginny met her eyes. They held no admonition or resentment, only love.

“I don’t understand.” she said slowly, “Why aren’t you yelling and screaming like you do at the boys?”

Laughing lightly – which threw Ginny off even further – Mrs. Weasley replied, “Because dear, your brothers have been blessed with your father’s thick skull. Yelling and screaming is the only way to get through to them.”

Ginny smiled; no argument there.

Her mother reached up to smooth her daughter’s hair, running her fingers through the fiery ginger strands.

“My baby girl, my only girl; all grown up and ready to leave me,” she said softly, her misty eyes following the progress of her fingers continuing to comb through Ginny’s hair.

Now Ginny understood what was holding back the screams.

“Mum, I don’t want to leave you! But– I just–” she started to voice, but she couldn’t quite string together a complete thought.

“I know, honey,” Mrs. Weasley said with a sad smile, “but you remember how young your father and I married. I just hope you’re not rushing into something.”

“We’re not getting married!” Ginny exclaimed, causing Arnold to jump an inch into the air before landing back on her shoulder. “I just always want to be with him! I can’t get enough of his company, and when I have to sleep by myself, all I can think about is wishing he were next to me. That’s all!”

Mrs. Weasley’s hand that had made a pass through the crimson mane held in mid-air during Ginny’s outburst and then dropped to the bed as a relieved smile spread across her face.

“Good,” she replied, the skin around her warm eyes crinkling with laugh-lines, “because if you think I would let your education suffer for an infatuation, that I would let you drop out of school for this boy, you’ll be wishing I were just yelling and screaming!”

Ginny’s cheeks began to flush with embarrassment; she hadn’t realized that her mother had been so worried about she and Draco running off to get married, not about what they were doing all alone at Draco’s flat. As her cheeks burned, Mrs. Weasley reached out to touch the necklace Draco had given her only yesterday.

“This looks beautiful with your hair,” Mrs. Weasley spoke, lifting the heavy pendant that hung from Ginny’s neck. She held it up with her two fingers, leaning closer to admire the large sapphire.

“It was his mother’s,” Ginny said softly, remembering the time Draco had first spoke to her about his mother, the time he had first opened his heart to her.

“Oh Ginny, dear,” her mother sighed as she let the pendant slip from her fingers to once again hang from her daughter’s neck, “it seems so soon for these things. But, I know, you’re an adult now, and I’ve raised a smart girl. ”

She couldn’t believe she was getting off this easily; being of age was already paying off.

With a sigh, Mrs. Weasley pushed herself up and walked towards the door.

“I’ll heat up your breakfast for you, dear,” she called over her shoulder as she left the room.

Ginny collapsed onto her bed as a whoosh of air left her lungs in heavy relief.

“Oh, and by the way, love” her mother said sweetly as she poked her head back into Ginny’s room, “you’re grounded until school starts.”

Ginny hadn’t even had time to sit up before Mrs. Weasley was padding down the stairs. Her mouth hung open as she stared up at the ceiling, a Holyhead Harpies banner covering every inch of it. One of the chasers was making rounds from one end of the pitch to the other, giving Ginny a grin and a thumbs-up before putting on a burst of speed. Ginny gave a childish screech of anger before getting up, realising that school was a whole three weeks away.

Alecto nervously turned her untouched drink in circles on the scrubbed wood of the bar. She knew it was her punishment to sit here night after night until he finally showed up. Once he arrived, she had to get his attention somehow, to draw him in. There were plenty of Death Eaters here he could target, but she had to make sure he followed her. If he hadn’t killed her brother at the house in Cornwall, even Bellatrix’s fury wouldn’t be enough to give her the courage.

Out of the corner of her eye she spotted an old man enter with short-cropped grey hair and a long beard pulled together with a beaded piece of string. He lurched in, leaning heavily on a wooden crutch. Taking a seat in the far corner, he settled down with a full view of the pub. She turned back to her drink, her heart hammering in her chest. Throwing it back in two gulps, she slammed her glass down to get the barkeep’s attention. She’d need at least five more before the nerve would come to her.

Half an hour later, Alecto slowly pulled back the sleeve of her left arm. Her breathes came and went quickly in ragged gasps and she squeezed her eyes shut. Once she had summoned the Dark Mistress, there was no turning back without facing agony and certain death. She jabbed at her left forearm with her index finger and felt an instant of searing pain; Bellatrix would be here soon. Opening her eyes, Alecto spun around on her stool and stood so fast that she almost fell over. Those drinks had taken their toll on her balance, and she struggled to stand upright.

“I can’t stand it!” She yelled, instantly earning the attention of the entire pub, including the old man in the corner. “If I have to see one more Mudblood prick and their dirty Muggle parents in Diagon Alley, I’ll do in the whole lot of them!”

Throwing her arm for emphasis, her belligerent outburst was met with cheers and applause. She staggered towards the door as if she hadn’t been waiting for any acknowledgement, screaming obscenities the whole way out and promising the death of a Muggle tonight if they were to cross her path. More hoots and hollers followed her outside, and as the door swung shut she ran full speed for the alley on the side of the pub. Her given state wouldn’t allow for any type of coordination, and she went sprawling face-first onto the pebbled walkway.

Her forehead smacked stone, causing stars to burst in front of her eyes. Blindly pushing against the ground with her palms, she wobbled back to a standing position. Warm blood oozed a thin ribbon of red over her right eye, making it sting and keeping her from being able to open it completely. Her head felt clouded with jagged lead, and she struggled to hold it up as she stumbled forward. After the whine of rusty hinges coming from the entrance to the pug, the unmistakeable sound of a crutch hitting the ground began to follow her with each step, and she tried to walk faster.

“Oh, how sad,” a deep voice spoke, dripping in disdain, “this won’t even be a challenge.”

Her heart leapt to her throat, but before she could faint from anxiety a figure Apparated in front of her, flanked by four robed men, two on either side. The party pushed roughly past Alecto, the man behind her being their apparent objective. Without so much as a second’s hesitation, she heard five voices shout “Stupefy!” and a body instantly hit the ground. Whirling around, she attempted to rub the blood from her eye and to stand upright on her own two feet.

Bellatrix pulled back the hood of her robes carefully over her wild mane of frizzy black hair, her wand pointed at the motionless old man lying in the street. The four men that had appeared with her stood silently in a wide circle around her, their hoods up and their Death Eater masks affixed to their faces, watching for any disturbance in the night.

“You say this is him?” she called to Alecto, hardly glancing in her direction.

Alecto gulped and replied meekly, “Y-yes, Dark Mistress”

Bellatrix’s cat-like glare snapped to her direction, and she appraised Alecto’s appearance and demeanour with obvious disgust in her curled lip before turning her eyes back to the old man.

“If you are wrong, so help me...” she said softly as her wand circled the man’s head, and Alecto trembled outwardly.

The man’s gray hair began to darken to a shiny ebony, lengthening at the same time that his beard started to recede into his face. His nose lengthened and hooked towards the end of it, and the deep lines of his face softened. Alecto held her breath as the face of Severus Snape took shape before her, relief loosening the knot in her chest knowing that her life would be spared with her victory.

A sweet but venomous smile spread across Bellatrix’s face at the sight of their capture. She raised her right hand and snapped her fingers sharply. The four covered faces of her guard jerked towards her direction.

“Take him to the holding cells and leave him for the night,” she ordered harshly, her eyes wide with excitement and still fixed upon Snape’s face, “He and I have unfinished business to attend to starting tomorrow.”

The tallest of the four grabbed a handful of Snape’s greasy long hair, then Disapparated with a crack. Five more cracks followed, and Knockturn Alley was left to resume its previous activities of hovering in eerie silence.

---

After four weeks spent calling the dungeons of the Lestrange Manor home, Snape was barely recognizable. He had undergone hours of torture, purely for the personal fulfilment of the Dark Mistress. And then came the day she stepped carefully into his cell, twirling her wand of twisted black wood in her fingers. He knew from the look on her face that his pain was no longer giving her the satisfaction she desired, and that she had finally come to end it.

“Any last words, Severus?” she jeered, her wand hand twitching with anticipation.

Snape met her erratic gaze with a steely cold glare. He had expected his life to end in this way, especially once he had taken to targeting and eliminating Death Eaters personally. With each private victory, he felt the conclusion to his tragic life drawing a little closer, or maybe it was that he needed it to draw closer. Having spent years as a marionette for both sides, the malevolence and hate he had conditioned himself to exhibit for Voldemort’s followers was surprisingly difficult to turn off once he was free, and so he was made unfit. Sure, most students of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry would agree that he was anything but affectionate, but if only they could understand what he was truly capable of. He would have them shaking in their seats every day, terrified. The power of what he could do, what he had done, had been consuming him since the day he inadvertently took the life of the only person to care for him for who he was. He had buried himself that day with her, and had taken on a new life of vengeance and penance.

There was nothing Dumbledore could ask of him that he didn’t feel he deserved, and every time he was forced to stare into the red eyes of her murderer, he only thought of extinguishing those eyes, watching them burn to ash like the embers of a dying fire. These bloodthirsty thoughts were always safe behind his veil of Occlumency; the only place he was safe. He had been forced to retreat behind masks: The mask of the right-hand man to the darkest wizard of all time, blood-crazed, deadly and willing to do anything. There was the mask of the Professor, mild enough for children, though questionably so. And then there was an entirely different mask, the face he wore for Harry Potter. It may look the same as the schoolteacher, but inside felt entirely different. Though he hated the boy for his arrogance and his father’s face, every time Potter stared at him with venom in his green eyes, Snape remembered vividly the day he begged her forgiveness for letting slip that vile word: Mudblood. He felt ashamed, guilty, humiliated, and even worse, like an awkward fifteen-year-old boy again. But Potter must never know.

Once a mask was no longer required, Snape felt an emptiness inside of him that couldn’t be filled with any pleasure, any satisfying meal, anything that is meant to make one happy. Even when Potter spilt every detail to the Prophet about how Snape had been working for Dumbledore all along and had been the one to destroy Voldemort in the end, making the Wizarding community shout for him to resurface so they could properly appreciate him, he couldn’t feel a thing. Only the emptiness occasionally iced with malice was his sole companion

Then came the day when he happened across a face, new to the ranks but unmistakably a Death Eater. Snape had been wearing his typical disguise, making his features and hair indistinguishable to those who knew him for his greasy curtain of black hanging over his hard, dark eyes. He saw him stumble out of Knockturn Alley, no doubt having just left a pub frequented by the dark crowd: The Green Skull. He had a fidgety air to him as he stood at the entrance to the alley, eyeing the passersby. When someone did happen to catch his eye, Snape finally felt something different: A curl of disgust. The Death Eater had locked his gaze onto a small girl, maybe seven years old. She held an ice cream cone in her tiny fist, trying to keep her blonde curls back as she attacked the icy treat while her mother held her free hand at the same time. The girl was becoming impatient with the difficulty, and soon snatched her hand away so she could push back the hair sticking to her cheeks.

Snape’s eyes narrowed with realization as he looked back at the Death Eater, who had already started to follow the little girl. She was falling further and further behind her mother in her efforts. Snape knew it would be only a few moments before the crowd of the busy Saturday afternoon engulfed her, and the mother would look behind her to find her daughter missing. The Death Eater need only to grab the girl’s hand tightly and Disapparate on the spot, and then she would be gone forever. As the Death Eater made a bee-line for her, Snape in turn headed straight for him. Snape’s legs were longer, and he felt the burn of murder in his heart, making him half-giddy that he could feel something after all. Before the Death Eater could even reach out his greedy hand, Snape had grabbed his shoulder, taking an iron-grip fistful of his black cloak, and Disapparated with a crack.

Though Snape had hardly taken the time to enjoy his kill, he took plenty of satisfaction in the message it sent. After first fitting the mask he had found in the Death Eater’s robes onto the lifeless face, he hoisted the dead body to hang from a tree outside the magical protection of the Lestrange Manor; Snape felt the thrill of justice. He knew that taking such drastic measures had significantly shortened his lifespan – though he expected nothing less than to be hunted for his deep betrayal to the Dark Lord – but if he could take some of these bastards with him, it wouldn’t be as much of a waste.

“Nothing to say? As you wish.” Bellatrix spit her words at him, her face contorting with rage.

As her wand rose, he closed his eyes and thought of only one face: The face of a girl who used to be his friend. Flowing red hair billowing around stunning features, and those eyes, those vibrant emerald eyes always boring into him, seeing him for what he was. He knew from the first time he saw her that she would be beautiful, and that he would be powerless to her. If there was a heaven, and he had earned passage, he knew she would be there.

“Please, don’t hate me, Lily,” he whispered as a smooth jet of green light careened toward his chest, unseen but welcomed.