Heart of the Guardian

21. Nightmares

He returned to the school on foot, the walk affording him too much time to think, he decided as he slipped through the gates to the grounds. He thought over his recent interactions with the boy, shaking his head and twitching his shoulders uncomfortably. He had to stop this... could not allow the boy, could not allow himself, to form an attachment. For what? A year before the boy went off into the world to be his own man? There was no point. Besides, he told himself, the boy's only spending time with me because there's no one else in the castle. Who's he supposed to spend his time with? Filch? Trelawney? He snorted. When his mates return in September, he'll feel differently about spending time in Gryffindor's dormitories.

The thought was unexpectedly depressing.

Idiot.

He returned to the classroom to continue his cleaning. Splashes from their water fight in the morning had stained the wainscoted walls, and he cleaned those with a nonverbal spell, chuckling as he recalled a well-placed splat that had made the boy splutter in indignation. He checked the boy's organization of the potions closet, noting with approval that he had left space for additional ingredients and equipment on each shelf. The boy really did have a clever, thoughtful mind, he acknowledged.

He nabbed two identical advanced potions books from the class library and headed back to his quarters to plan NEWT lessons. Once there, he glanced out the window at the still-sunny day. He hoped the boy was getting some sun and air, perhaps playing Quidditch with his friends. He wondered if he should send along the boy's broom...

Some hours later, he straightened from the table and stretched his back, arms and legs. He'd worked too long again, straining his wrist and hands. He'd have to poultice that wrist. He wondered if he would have that problem permanently, Nagini biting too close to bone, too damaging to tendon and sinew for even magic to set perfectly right. He pulled up his left sleeve to examine the spot previously stained by the Dark Mark, rubbing at it as if he could erase the stain from his soul as well. He stopped when he realized he was rubbing it raw, imagining excising the entirety of it – what it represented – with an athame, or even a butter knife.

Macabre, aren't we tonight, Severus? he observed sarcastically, and ordered up dinner, taking it to sit in front of the fireplace.

He realized he was still not out of it, not out of the dilemma presented by his survival, when he had expected so completely to die. He was still not out of being a make-believe Death Eater, a double agent, frantically working to protect Potter, protect the school, protect the Order... He was still stuck in it, in survival and sacrifice, still caught as if his death were inevitable, still not knowing What should I do now? Who am I?

He had expected to die, knew he was dead, knew the inevitability of it, really, from the day he'd turned spy for the Order, for Dumbledore, the nearly ten year interval between the Dark Lord's disappearance and Potter's appearance at Hogwarts merely a deferral of his expectation that, one way or another, his life would be forfeit, a fair end, though not a fair exchange for Lily's life... or James'.

He'd known it the moment Dumbledore had boxed him into that damned corner: to save Draco's soul, he, Snape, had to take another step toward death. If Voldemort did not discover and kill him, the Order surely would, and who would blame them? This entire past year, he was a dead man, dead already before Voldemort's error, before being called to the shack, before Voldemort set Nagini on him... even before Voldemort showed up to claim that damned wand. McGonagall's parting curse as he fled the castle echoed in his heart, surely enough to die from, regardless of whether her aim was true.

He knew how to be dead. He'd been dead for years – longer, really, than he'd lived, if ever he'd lived. Looking back, he remembered being alive – from nine to fifteen, his life bounded by the years he had met and lost Lily, only flashes of life even then, a tantalizing glimpse of life, a promise which his Mudblood! had snuffed out.