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.
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.
Author notes: Please review! I appreciate your read!
Next chapter: When Opportunity Knocks
To Be Continued.
CrystalM is the author of 3 other stories.
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