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To Do All in my Power by testingt [Reviews - 4]

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“A very worthy person, a true lover of his county, and whose virtues I highly esteem, was lately pleased in discoursing on this matter to offer a refinement…. [H]e conceived that the want of venison might be well supplied by the bodies of young lads....” Jonathan Swift, “A Modest Proposal”

“Now you tell me you have been raising him like a pig for slaughter.” Severus Snape as quoted by JKR, The Deathly
Hallows


Emerald eyes glazed in death, glasses knocked askew. A thin body sprawled before him. A familiar face, hated, twisted in pain.

Failed, failed, failed.

Snape sat up in bed, his body shaking. The sheet twisted around his torso was soaked. He touched his throat incredulously, feeling the rawness. He had been… screaming?

Only a boggart.

No, a dream.

The boggart had been in Defense class, when he’d incautiously gone too close. Fortunately the younger Creevey had had as advanced a case of hero-worship as his older brother; Snape had passed the boggart off as his.

Riddikulus!

But the boy was in fact going to die. Dumbledore had said so.

Snape had never found a way to make that fact ridiculous.

Snape shivered as his sweat dried. He stood and shrugged into a robe. No use to try Potion-making when his hands were shaking, still less to try to sleep again. He started pacing in the moonlight.

He’d watched the boy so long. He remembered the beginning.

Green eyes had filled with shocked surprise, then hurt; within minutes, with contemptuous rage.

That hadn’t taken long—Snape at his finest.

It was policy, of course. Mutual dislike must be assured. When the Dark Lord sifted thoughts later, that would be the only safety. He’d thought of the Muggle philosopher: Be what you wish to seem. They must seem to be enemies—and with the boy so like his father, that would be easy.

And it was easy.

It was always easy to goad Potter. It was easy to enjoy it. After so long in Potter’s power, to reverse it—what heady pleasure! The boy so like his father, but vulnerable. As Potter never had been; Severus had never touched him, not really, no matter what he’d done, what he’d tried.

He’d known Potter’s magic to be mediocre in comparison with his—but Potter got the praise, and publicly appropriated Snape’s own creations. He was arrogant, attention-seeking—and he got widespread acclaim. He was a determined rule-breaker—and he got away with it, no matter what he did, while sneering at Slytherins for being sneaky.

He had got her, in the end. Snape had always feared it, and he did. She was taken in.

She’d been absorbed under the cloak of James’s glory. Mrs. Potter.

Not even her own tombstone, not even her own name.

No Gryffindors remembered her; they spoke of famous Potter.

Who had gotten away with everything, and left Snape nothing.

And nothing, nothing Snape had ever done, had even touched him.

But the son, now, that was different. Young Potter’s eyes widened in fear. Narrowed to slits in rage. Glittered with tears, ah, that was good.

Potter’s son hated him and feared him. Potter’s son went in dread of humiliation when he saw him.

As he’d had Potter.

This time around Potter’s gang was no avail. (Trust a Potter not to be without one!) This time three against one didn’t help. This time being a Quidditch star, showoff, playing the hero didn’t help him. Snape proved his power, his superiority, again and again.

Oh, he knew what the boy was like. He was just like his father, sickeningly arrogant, stealing other people’s accomplishments, delighted to be a celebrity.

That ubiquitous toast, those months after her sacrifice. He’d even had to drink it himself, or be suspected.

To Harry Potter, the Boy who Lived!

When it was she who’d saved the boy, who’d stopped the Dark Lord.

Who had died to do so.

Who was forgotten in Potter’s fame.

She had sacrificed herself to shield him, and Potter took the credit.

Snape’s stride had quickened with his rage. His robes billowed now at each turn.

He was just like his father, like Potter in every way.

Except the eyes, reacting. Widened. Narrowed. Glittering.

Her eyes. Green. Open.

Glaring at him in detention, again and again. Staring up at his in Potions. Fixing his insolently in Defense. ("You don’t need to call me sir, Professor.") Fixed in dread as Snape had probed the boy’s memories, found them… not quite what he’d expected, not Potter’s privileged background at all.

Emerald eyes burning behind Potter’s glasses as the boy had blurted out his sole acknowledgment of Snape’s long sacrifice and protection—burning with fury, not gratitude, never gratitude from a Potter. But the boy still had said it—"that’s your job."

It was small recompense for fifteen years of painful struggle, of playing the most damnable role of any wizard in Britain. It was small accolade for four years of unrelenting vigilance, followed by a year of treason, torture, and terror.

But it was the only recognition the boy had ever offered him, and Snape had snatched it.

Even Potter could see it in his face—and had broken through his guard while Snape was softened.

He doubted that the boy understood why that instinctive Protego, hurling Snape’s Legilimens spell against its own caster, had caught those thoughts. Why those memories, of all, had strayed to the top of Snape’s mind. Fear. Loneliness. Taunting. Bitter endurance. Brutally enforced self-reliance….

Notes of congruence.

How curiously satisfying it had been—to have been seen, for just one glimpse, and to have seen some trace of empathy and ability in her son.

Then the boy had promptly turned and proved his willful, his deliberate, his damnable incompetence, his refusal to cut himself off from his visions, to take the urgent advice of those who knew more than he. He’d shown again the exact arrogance that had doomed Potter.

"Maybe your visions make you feel special—important?"

Oh, Snape had been so right about the boy. Snape seethed anew remembering the boy’s triumph as he’d burst mentally through that door and fallen further into the Dark Lord’s trap…. Did Potter’s son ever admit to himself that he’d killed his godfather by refusing to listen to Snape?

Did Potter have time to admit to himself that his arrogance, his blind trust in his friends, his refusal to listen to Snape’s desperate information, had killed his wife?

Then the boy capped all by violating Snape’s trust.

His trust? Violated?

Snape stopped pacing in shock at his own thoughts. `

The boy had violated his privacy, absolutely, inexcusably.

Not his trust. He’d never trusted him.

Snape started pacing again more slowly, his hands clenched.

Snape had always trusted Harry, exactly as he’d trusted Harry’s mother. Look at how he’d acted.

If some poor sod of a teacher had been told off to teach James Occlumency, there would have been no precaution too extreme to protect his private thoughts. He would never have allowed James to suspect that Pensieves so much as existed. He’d never have allowed James to suspect, much less to see, that he was removing memories for safety. That Pensieve would have been stored under several wards and hexes, at least one of which was controlled by the Headmaster for safety…. And if, after all that, the poor sod had found reason to believe James might have figured out his teacher was safeguarding memories, he’d have started getting creative in his safety measures. He’d have assumed Potter would do all in his power to find them—and would use them to damage or humiliate a hated teacher.

If he were teaching Occlumency to Lily … he’d have stored memories only against an accidental breakthrough. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to expect a deliberate invasion. Her sense of honor was so strong, he wouldn’t have even asked for her assurance not to look. He’d have removed and retrieved the memories openly; he’d have stored the Pensieve in plain sight. He’d have left her alone with it without question if a crisis required his attention—not once but twice. He’d have trusted her absolutely.

As Snape had trusted the boy, whatever he had said. About him. To him. To himself.

The boy had betrayed that trust.

Snape jerked.

Not quite true. Not quite—fair.

James would have spread it through the school to complete his humiliation, or used it privately to torment him. Harry… had seemed the one tormented. As his mother would have been, were possible to imagine her doing such a thing.

And… she might have, actually, if she had believed the children’s romantic fantasies about Snape’s concealing some secret weapon. She would have felt shame at the violation--as Harry had seemed ashamed.

“No… No, of course I w—”

Had Snape truly believed that a story so damaging to his dignity were to return to current gossip, there were things he could have done. He could have Obliviated the boy; he could have Tied his tongue; he could have bound the boy to his promise. But Snape had never considered any of those. He had trusted, even in his incoherent rage, in the boy’s word.

If Snape looked at his own actions coldly, he’d always trusted the boy like that. Unreasonably, given their history. And Snape had expected—without reason, without realizing it—that the boy should know to trust him, while pushing the child to distrust.

Snape never made the mistake of losing sight of his enemies, never, never. Not when he was a child among Muggles, not when he was a boy entering Hogwarts, naïvely imagining that other Wizarding children would be natural allies, not when he was distracted by fear or rage or the pain of the Cruciatus Curse. Never. Becoming a Death Eater, becoming a double agent, only augmented a vigilance that had been Snape’s as long as he could remember.

So when Hermione set Snape on fire—when the Trio Disarmed him in the Shrieking Shack—it was because he couldn’t conceive of them acting against him, of not trusting him. He’d never thought to bind or disarm them; he was on their side. He’d not remembered they might imagine him an enemy.

His rage at them, therefore, was partly—hurt—that they'd trust a werewolf, a madman, the Dark Lord’s tool, ahead of him. Over and over.

He had spent nearly half his life, now, guarding the boy.

Snape had played a hateful role, but a necessary one, and he’d played it well. He’d watched Lily’s child vigilantly, protected him, pushed him for excellence where others let the boy slide.

(He had taught the boy Expelliarmus--only to have Potter use it against him.)

He’d known not to expect gratitude from the boy. He’d known that he was cultivating distrust, hatred.

He had known.

He kept telling himself what he had known. What had he wanted?

Even after several betrayals (you don’t learn, do you, Sev?), he’d still trusted. He’d set Sluggy up to give the boy his own Potions book. It was true, if the boy wanted to be an Auror, he’d need Sev’s shortcuts—his own talents in Potions were too—limited—to have made it through N.E.W.T.S without help. Snape couldn’t help directly, and Slughorn, well, preferred to see what students could do without assistance.

That the boy would see his other research—Snape had never admitted that he’d wanted his cleverness to be known. No, not to be known in general. Snape had wanted Harry to know.

Lily had admired some of his spells.

Her child had admired more than he should have. The fool boy had cast Sectumsempra blindly—Snape remembered his sick shock that the boy would use that. But of course the child never had bothered with theory, he wouldn’t have worked out what the spell did—not like young Severus.

Snape had attributed the boy’s trying the spell without understanding its effects to Gryffindor recklessness, arrogance, disregard of consequences. The fool child almost killed an enemy without even the grace of full intent—just like his godfather. Those would have been the Marauder reasons for using an unknown, untried, dangerous spell.

But given how the boy’s mind worked—the reason was likely more simple: trust of the spell’s source, the boy’s unknown friend, the Half-Blood Prince.

Snape had craved that trust, that admiration; he must have. Giving Potter the book had been an attempt—not to earn Harry’s admiration—to trick the boy into offering it unknowingly.

Who then was the one arrogant, reckless, and careless of consequences? Harry or Snape?


And then the last betrayal. That Harry had believed so uncritically, so immediately, in the evidence of his own eyes at Dumbledore’s death.

How could he not? Snape had spent years working to ensure that the boy distrust and hate him. The boy saw him do it, saw all parties play their scripts. How could the boy not have believed? It would have been Snape’s abject failure, he’d have been tortured to death, all Dumbledore hoped to accomplish destroyed, had the boy NOT believed it. The boy had to think him traitor. Everyone had to.

But somehow, somehow, Snape had been enraged that the boy believed it so readily. And then to find out... How could the child have discovered that night that Snape was his parents’ betrayer?

Snape sank onto a chair and huffed a laugh of despair.

He had held control until then. He had herded off the Death Eaters too fast for them to think of doing more collateral damage. He had sheltered Draco. He had protected Harry yet again from the consequences of his rashness, both the danger to his soul of using Unforgiveables and the physical danger of following the Death Eaters so closely.

He had held at bay his own vision of Dumbledore’s face lit by green light.

He had held control even when the boy tried his own spells against him, just like his father had done.

But he had broken when the boy had screamed back, “Kill me like you killed him, you coward.

Snape had cared that Harry knew.

The shock of discovering that, while he absorbed that depth of hatred from the boy so like him in some ways. Self-reliant. Lonely. Angry. Enduring….

So unlike, in others. Green eyes so open.

And the boy’s magic so much weaker, in every way that should have counted.

"Mediocre…." Snape had ranted.

"Reasonably talented," Dumbledore had riposted.

Meaning the same thing. Talented, but not extraordinarily so. Not overwhelmingly powerful.

To bring down the Dark Lord when Snape and Dumbledore could not.

Harry should be smarter than he. Stronger than he. Tougher, crueler, more inventive. More slippery. More insightful. More something.

So weak, in every way that counted. So vulnerable. Not like James at all.

So… open.

Like Lily.

To be protected.

What do I lack, that a boy whose talents are nothing to mine must do what I can’t?

And must die to do so.

And I can’t take it on myself and save you.

I’ll have to watch you die.

I’ll have to watch you die.

I can’t save you.

Riddikulus!


Snape found that he was curled around his crossed arms, rocking slightly. There was no way to banish this boggart.


His Mark burned.

Snape summoned his most useful emotions: the fury he’d felt at Harry’s distrust, the sick hatred he’d felt at learning Harry’s doom. Confusion, jealousy, decades-old rage, pain. He smoothly moved them to cover his other thoughts of the boy. Of Potter's son. Potter. Whom he hated. He arranged his mask and outer thoughts and Disapparated.

Much later, wormwood and asphodel, painstakingly measured.

Snape woke late the next day, his body loose and comfortable. His muscles were not clenched; no dried tears were on his face; his throat was not raw from pleading.

He’d had no nightmares. Snape collected himself carefully, incredulously. He was in his own bed, whole and comfortable. His body moved easily, without pain.

He’d had no nightmares.

“This time with the Tongue-Numbing Drops,” Snape reminded himself.

Verify everything.

He watched with chill detachment the shaking of his hands as he measured out three more drops.

To Do All in my Power by testingt [Reviews - 4]

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