Home | Members | Help | Submission Rules | Log In |
Recently Added | Categories | Titles | Completed Fics | Random Fic | Search | Top Fictions
SS-Centric

Betrayals by duj [Reviews - 2]

<< >>

Would you like to submit a review?


Warning is for passing mention of torture and OC death. Thanks to all my reviewers.




“We have heard much of your proficiency, young Snape,” the Dark Lord’s high, cold voice commanded. ”Show us what you’re made of.”

Severus was standing again in a ring of Death Eaters watching a quivering, gasping hulk that had once been a young man scant years older than himself. This time, as he cast Pulmonaris glacis and watched that chest explode with shards of glass and great gouts of blood, as his own thin chest filled with mingled pride and revulsion, he thought, “That’s my future.”

Again? This time?

With that thought, the men and the darkness and the bleeding wreck on the ground faded away and he found himself staring into wise, blue eyes in a sad, wrinkled face. Occlumency, he was in the headmaster’s office learning Occlumency. After three days of practice, he was getting better at closing his mind to the man’s invasion but never till now had he fallen so deeply into a memory that he lost himself in it.

That incident had marked both the start and the mental end of his Death Eater life. His first meeting after joining, and the last he had looked forward to. Severus panted for breath and shame and forgetfulness.

“I did that for Him,” he gasped. For my Master, the Dark Lord. “Next time I’ll be doing it for you.”

“Severus -”

“That’s what it means, doesn’t it?’” he pressed, his voice rising. “I’ve to go back and be what I was, do what I did, all in your service, all at your command.”

He stared at the old man. 'I knew that,' he thought, 'it was implicit in your offer. Why does it come as a shock?' A soft mouth framed by silver beard tightened with understanding sympathy. Blue eyes met black still, with steady command.

“You’ve to go back and do what’s necessary to survive, but you will not be what you were. You don’t share their hate or their joy in hurting. Every victim will be your secret brother, your partner in ending this horror.”

“But they’ll still be just as dead. It will still be my hand that speeds them.”

“Yes.”

The boy gulped, black eyes wide and wary. Just “yes”? No argument, no side-stepping?

“Are men tools to you? Are you just like Him?” he spat.

“Am I?” Dumbledore’s voice was calm, though not untroubled.

“Yes. No. I don’t know.” Long, pale fingers clenched around his wand, at once weapon and comfort, the only thing apart from himself that he knew he could rely on.

“Don’t you?” the headmaster asked softly.

Severus bit the inside of his cheek as his eyes turned from portrait to portrait of previous headmasters, sneering or sleeping or shaking their heads irritably at him. None of them answered for him. His gaze returned to the current holder. Why couldn’t the man give him a straight answer? How was he supposed to know?

But that was part of the answer, wasn’t it? Dumbledore reflected his question back to him to find his own solution whereas the Dark Lord would kill him for asking it.

He shook his head. It wasn’t enough. Dumbledore might grant his followers a measure of mental autonomy that the Dark Lord denied, but they were playing the same game. Just so might a wizard’s chesspiece be free to smash or stab the piece it took, but not to choose the move.

In any case, wasn’t this gift of free thought merely a ruse for the man to abdicate responsibility for actions done in his name? As a spy, Severus would continually face tough decisions: follow and fulfil the Dark Lord’s orders as given, fail Him and face punishment, or perhaps fight to set certain victims free. To follow was to kill and torture at command. In that case, why have risked his life and betrayed his friends? To fail the Dark Lord too often was to die soon and screaming. His Master had little tolerance for incompetence and none for disobedience. And to fight was to end his usefulness and his life at once. Yet if a prisoner was vital to Dumbledore’s cause and he didn’t fight? Was he to keep himself and his spy mission alive at the cost of letting the whole enterprise fall?

How could he know, alone and unguided, which choice was right, he who’d never been taught right from wrong? When had he ever made a right decision in his life? And every wrong one would bury him deeper.

He shrugged and shook his head slowly, black eyes narrowed and forehead creased.

“I can’t see much difference,” he admitted. “From now on, I’ll be killing in your service instead of his. You won’t kill me or torture me if I fail, not by your own hand and not for pleasure, but you don’t need to, do you? Azkaban or Death Eaters will do it for you.”

“In my service?” the headmaster probed. “Do you think me a rival Lord, fighting to rule the world for my convenience?”

“He says there’s no right or wrong, only power and those too weak to seek it,” Severus argued. “You say you’re fighting for Right to win. But if your way is right and other ways are wrong, then you’re fighting for yourself, aren’t you? You and the Gryffindors are always right by definition. In every dispute I’ve ever had, you’ve ruled against me.”

The old, wrinkled brow creased into deeper wrinkles, but the headmaster said nothing.

“And I’m outside, looking at both of you, and I’m wrong either way. I’m too weak to wish to use my power against people unless I’ve seen them wrong me and I can’t be a Gryffindor." He shrugged and screwed up his face. "I don’t even want to be. They’re just as full of hate as what they claim to be fighting against.”

There were mutterings of agreement and argument from some of the portraits, but they faded when Dumbledore held up his hand for silence. He nodded and sighed.

“Yet you came to me of your own choice. Why, if I’ve wronged you so much? And I do agree that I have.”

“I don’t know that either,” the boy shrugged, staring at the floor.

He watched a Queen bumblebee crawling across the carpet, yellow-banded and buff-tailed with two pairs of transparent wings. It should have been hibernating outside somewhere in a hollow log. Perhaps it had been brought in with the firewood and the warmth of the room had woken it. It seemed as out of place in that office as he was. It shouldn’t have woken. Now it would never survive till Spring.

“It seems you feel there is a right and wrong, even if you can’t explain what it is. The human mind is a wonderful thing. It can comprehend the whole without understanding the parts; indeed it often grasps the whole easier than the parts,” Dumbledore mused.

The bee was quite near the boy’s foot. He could crush it with one step. 'Why not?' he thought. It was just an insect, albeit a potential mother of hundreds of plant pollinators. For that matter, its wings could be used in three different types of healing potions. Regardless, what did it matter whether he killed it or harvested it or let it crawl away to die untouched? What did it matter whether one or one thousand crawled by? What difference whether they were welcomed bees or unwelcomed flies? And if bees didn’t matter, why did people?

“Meaning comes before structure in our understanding,” the old man continued. “Language came before the alphabet. First men spoke, then they analysed the building blocks of sound that made their words. In the same way, you know instinctively that you can’t be a loyal Death Eater, your heart tells you it’s wrong. Each choice you make is the building block of your personal code of ethics. Looking back at your choices will help you understand why you made them.”

Black eyes lifted behind greasy, concealing wings of hair. Thin lips folded, then opened in a resentful huff.

“I can’t make the right choices. I don’t know how!” Severus burst out.

“You’ve begun already. You know that you don’t want to act in blind hate. You know that you don’t want to hurt people you don’t know.” Dumbledore watched his listener’s eyes widen and his brow smooth over. “You know that there are right choices and it seems that you mostly trust me to know what they are and to make them.”

He emphasised the word “mostly”. His returning twinkle was briefly reflected in the boy’s shy, dark eyes.

“Let that guide you,” Dumbledore continued. “You’ll make mistakes still, no doubt about it, but you’ll learn from them too. You’ll have to, because I can’t be there with you and I can’t anticipate every situation you’ll face. And sometimes there are no right choices, only lesser and greater degrees of wrong.”

“How can it be right to kill or torture for you when it’s not right to do it for him? Do you think you’ll be any less tainted, just because you don’t see my actions or because you don’t say the words yourself?” the boy spat.

“You are my agent,” the headmaster replied. “I share the responsibility to avoid what we can and accept what we must – and try to stay on the lighter shade of grey. After every meeting, you’ll show me everything; together we’ll try to understand where that lighter shade is.”

Severus wrapped his arms around his chest and returned to contemplating the carpet. The bee was still crawling, but it was out of reach of a casual step or even a stretch. Only a deliberate move would crush it now. He’d been as heedless as that bee before he came to this room with his confession. How sad and pointless it would have been to die so stupid, with so much unthought and unasked. Let it go on its way and let himself continue on the way he’d chosen. Maybe one day, he’d understand where he was going.




A/N: There’s no indication that wizards follow any particular religion so religious teachings are presumably not available to them as a moral/ethical resource. At first glance, Dumbledore’s comments may seem inimical to Jewish tradition that the Alefbet (Hebrew alphabet) was the mechanism of creation and possibly also to the Gospel verses, “In the beginning was the word…” but his explanation deals specifically with human comprehension.

Teaser: His first performance. And probably his easiest. Any incoherence in his story could be blamed on having just woken up from a week’s delirium. If only that were true...

Betrayals by duj [Reviews - 2]

<< >>

Disclaimers
Terms of Use
Credits

Copyright © 2003-2007 Sycophant Hex
All rights reserved