Chapter Twenty-one: Persuasion


Winter, 1980

A normal man would have grieved at his father's funeral. But Severus, when he helped the hired pallbearers lower Tobias into the ground, as he watched the sexton throw dirt over the pine box which held all that remained of his father, felt nothing but a tightness in his soul, like the puckering and tightening of skin when a scar is formed.

But then, I'm not normal.

It became a reassuring thought, for, as time passed, Severus found himself growing happy. That couldn't be normal, so soon after your father had died, but Severus neither could nor wanted to prevent it. For one thing, Mother had become amazing, and he wanted her to stay that way. She had handled all the arrangements for Tobias's funeral herself, including luncheon for the few wizened and suspicious Snape relatives who had attended. In return for the salad and cold meat, they looked at Mother as if they thought she had killed him with some wicked cantrip or other.

But if spells had been cast, it wasn't Mother who had done them.

Not on Tobias, at least. But in every other magic, in spells having to do with every other aspect of life, Mother excelled. Was it because her happiness grew with Severus's? She had wept at Tobias's graveside, perhaps because the chance for her to have with Tobias what a wife ought to have with her husband was gone forever. But the grief did not seem to be enough to overshadow her delight in the return of her magic. Or, not merely the return of her magic, for it had begun returning before Tobias's death, but at its powerful resurgence. It was as if with Tobias's death a pall had lifted from her, like winter mists blown away on a spring wind.

The Malfoys noticed too. Of course they had noticed the initial, fragmentary return of Mother's magic, beginning when, having arrived at the Manor, she had begun to feel safe. But as far as Severus had seen, it hadn't astonished them until after Tobias's death.

Lucius never tried to hide it. He would stare in frank surprise at Mother painting a watercolour of what she saw outside the conservatory window (which surprised Severus too, for he'd never known his mother could paint), his surprise growing into open-mouthed amazement when Mother, tapping the finished painting with her wand, brought it to branch-waving, bird-fluttering life. He would grumble in rueful astonishment at the Gobstones board when his pieces fell before Mother's onslaught, bursting one after another with the fetid fluid that Lucius didn't always manage to disperse with his wand before it struck him in the chest. (That didn't so much surprise Severus, for as a child he had discovered age-yellowed citations at home for prizes Mother had won as a member and the captain of the Hogwarts Gobstones Team.)

"Would it be too presumptuously familiar, Mrs Snape," Lucius said after one of their Gobstones games, "to tell you that you are a changed woman?"

"Not at all," said Mother. But she said no more of her change beyond acknowledging that she had changed.

Lucius did not pursue it. Looking at her, he said nothing further.

Narcissa didn't speak of it at all, at least not in Severus's hearing. Though she rarely spoke to Severus except to reiterate her condolences, he often saw her looking from Lucius to Mother and back again with a wondering expression in her eyes.

It was not a look of surprise. Unlike Lucius, she did not seem surprised, exactly, by Mother's change. But then, Severus expected, it would not occupy her mind. The rounding of her belly was unmistakable now, even under loosened robes, and she gave much more of her attention to appointments with her midwife and the preparations of her baby's nursery than she gave to Severus and his mother.

So Severus was left alone to ponder the appearance of this new Mother. Well, no, that wasn't quite right. She wasn't completely new. He remembered one like her, when he was four or five years old, before he had gone to his primary school, one who smiled on him when Tobias was at the mill (he'd worked quite regularly then), who brought his stuffed animals to life with a touch of her wand, who took him to the asphalt playground near their house, where she pushed him so high in the swing that he thought he'd join the birds in flight.

As baffled as he was, Severus did not press his mother. For one thing, she seemed less inclined to confide in him than she had been before. For another (and there was another, Severus admitted to himself at last), was not the reason for her change something which neither Severus nor his mother might wish to discuss, even in secret? Had not freedom changed her? And had not freedom come to them both through Tobias's violent death?

****

They spoke instead of money matters, which turned out to be as astonishing as everything else surrounding Tobias's death.

Tobias had had no solicitors, and precious little paper, as Severus and his mother discovered after scouring his room in Grimmauld Place and the house in Spinner's End. There was nothing but an insurance policy, which paid out just enough to cover Tobias's funeral expenses.

"I'm surprised he remembered to pay the premiums," said Mother. "I wonder if we've missed something?"

Some debt, she doubtless meant. A trace of the old anxiety had returned to her voice and eyes. The fear of its complete return sent Severus to Lucius, as nothing else could have done.

"Oh, certainly!" said Lucius. "One wants no surprises. Let me put Father's solicitors on the hunt. If your father left any debts, even private ones, Wandless and Wandless will uncover them."

Lucius returned a few days later with his report. "There's nothing but a mortgage on your family's house in Yorkshire, and Mr Wandless tells me you've been commendably prompt in fulfilling the monthly obligation."

He said it with some surprise, but it couldn't have been more surprise than Severus felt.

****

Severus and his mother went one last time to the house in Spinner's End, to clear out everything of Tobias's, so that they could sell it or give it to charity, and to clear it of Mother's belongings, so that she could use them to furnish the flat she wanted to find in the city.

"In a wizarding close or lane," she said. "Though not Linden Lane," she added quickly. Perhaps the apprehension Severus felt on that score had shown in his face. "Within easy Flooing and Apparating distance of Druella Black's house and Malfoy Manor. I've become such good friends with Druella and Narcissa."

She was ready at last. Severus was vastly relieved to hear it, though much less surprised than he would have been only a few weeks before.

"The memories aren't all bad," said Mother, looking around the shadowy, dusty sitting room, mounded with packing boxes. "And it's the closest thing we've got to a family home. But I don't want to live here right now, and I think you feel the same way."

He did. "I'm on bereavement leave for the rest of the week. We can begin looking for a flat tomorrow. We're sure to find one--"

Mother put her fingers to Severus's lips, shushing him as she'd used to do when he was a little boy.

"You'll find your flat, and I'll find mine," she said, then smiled. "You're a bit old to live with your mother, aren't you? You'll want some privacy, a place where you can entertain your own friends."

Severus looked at her, remembering how his heart had sunk within him when she had shown up on his doorstep the last time Tobias had left her, nearly a year ago now. He'd never had the friends, but how he had treasured the privacy, how he had hated having to give it up.

"I can easily afford it, with your father's pension." She smiled gently. "I'll be fine. I don't have to burden you any longer."

"You've never burdened me, Mother." He faltered into silence on his own. She didn't need to shush him this time.

She knew he had lied. But finally he could hope that knowing the truth would not grieve her too much.

"You're a young man, Severus," said Mother. "You want your freedom."

"Tell the truth, Severus. What do you really want?"

"Freedom..."

"You ought to take it, then," she went on, smiling. "You don't want your old mother holding you back."

****

Was it so very strange, then, that Severus was not surprised when in the next week, a couple of days before he was to return to work, Lord Voldemort arrived at Malfoy Manor?

Lucius came to his room with the news after dinner, after dark.

"He wants to see you," said Lucius, with a light in his eyes Severus had not seen since the night he had cast Sectumsempra on him. The light seemed less strange than it had then, less frightening, as if now Severus understood.

****

He met Voldemort in the same library as before, with the same rubbed leather, the same rosewood, the same Persian rug of robin's-egg blue. The claret, however, seemed even lighter and more fragrant than before. Even Voldemort drank this time, sipping abstemiously yet appreciatively.

It was he who presently broke the silence. "Is this an occasion for commiseration, would you say, Severus?" he asked. "Should I say that I'm sorry your father is dead?"

There was no point in lying, especially to him. "No," Severus admitted.

"Good," said Voldemort easily, "since I'm the one who killed him."

Severus knew no shock or surprise showed in his face, for he felt none. His stomach felt suddenly leaden, that was all. He set his glass of wine down on the side table.

"I knew you'd never be up to it, once I'd heard you'd thrown out the Hidden Hellebore," said Voldemort.

"The police say Will Paxton killed him," said Severus. "And the Aurors agree."

"The Aurors. Rufus Scrimgeour, you mean. Inquisitive chap, isn't he? Well, in a way, they're right. You don't think I'd come out and raise a wand to Tobias, do you? No, an old schoolmate of yours, Rabastan Lestrange, was able to give me a hand. I found him quite trainable (says he learned some of his best spells from you, in fact), quite surprisingly capable of learning my most sophisticated Command and Obliviation magic. He acquainted himself with Will Paxton--that man spent a lot of time at the pub; Rabastan just found out his favourite watering-hole, met him there a few times, bought him a pint or two, became a friend of sorts. He cast an Imperius Curse on Paxton a day before your father met his untimely end, managed to stay out of the argument Paxton had with Tobias that fateful night--stayed out of sight, actually, Disillusioned in a shadowy corner of the pub. After the deed was done, Rabastan erased all trace of the Imperius Curse from Paxton's mind and Obliviated all trace of himself from Paxton's memory. And Rabastan outdid himself, I must say. The whole thing went so well that neither the Aurors nor the Muggle policemen have a clue as to what really happened."

Voldemort fell silent. Was he waiting for Severus to thank him? Severus did not feel quite up to that. And yet the weight in his stomach subsided a bit, to a kind of heavy relief. He had not been responsible. Not really.

"You're not up to it yet," Voldemort said again, not kindly, though he sounded indulgent. "After you threw the Hidden Hellebore away on Morgan's order, you never made up another dose, although you had opportunities, although you couldn't have forgotten how. You're not up to murder, not even the murder of someone you hate as much as you hated Tobias." Voldemort paused, then added with something like relish: "But then, it's a rare man who can kill his own father: who, looking his father in the eye, can raise his wand and strike him down."

Severus was not one of those men. He hadn't the courage, Voldemort meant, and he was right. He hadn't even had the courage for the Hidden Hellebore, for the sneaking, underhanded ways of the poisoner. That was why his rages against Tobias had been so flailingly impotent, why he had consumed with his anger no one but himself. He had known he'd had the power--a wizard's power--to free himself of Tobias for good. And he had known--always--that he would never dare to use it.

But no matter now. It was finished. He was free.

"His life was a torment," Voldemort went on. "To you, to your mother. To himself. Reduced to stalking your mother from that wretched hole in Grimmauld Place! It was putting a sick, maddened animal out of its misery. It was for his own good."

There was no answer to that, no argument. It was true.

So Severus didn't answer, didn't argue. "And Paxton?" he said instead.

"He'll go to jail, of course. For a good long time, perhaps for the rest of his life. But the way he was going--record as long as your arm and all that--he'd have ended up there anyway. Does it worry you that he's ended up there a little earlier than he'd expected?"

Severus remembered Paxton coming round to Spinner's End when he was a little boy, loud, drunk, beery-breathed, more than a little frightening. "No," he said.

"Good," said Voldemort. "I did what needed to be done. What you are not ready to do yet."

Severus remained silent. What was done couldn't be undone. And he hadn't done it. For Mother's sake, for his own sake, why not let it pass? When he knew that, in a very short time, once he allowed himself to feel it, he would be glad that Tobias was dead?

Voldemort picked up a Daily Prophet that lay rolled up on the table beside their wine glasses. "New show trials of captured Death Eaters," he said, looking at the front page. "New sentencings to Azkaban or the Dementor's Kiss. New sentencings to death, whether death comes soon or late. Do you know, Severus, that not one of my Death Eaters has survived six months in Azkaban with his mind intact? That most are dead within the year?" He looked up, into Severus's face. "Oh, yes, of course. You do know."

He paused. Severus felt impelled to fill the silence, to rid it of his memory of Ruskin's final screams. "Yes. I know."

"Well, then. I hardly need to tell you that Dark is not synonymous with evil. I don't know whether you had an opportunity to canvass Olaus Ruskin's views before he died. But I don't doubt he was of the opinion that, in his own case, the Ministry was using evil to fight what it called evil."

Another memory broke the surface of Severus's mind: the torches on the walls of the infirmary in Azkaban, flickering weakly, no match for the dementors rustling in the corners. Ruskin, bound to a bed, pale, sweating, glaring wildly, with a belly and a soul full of Defences-Downdraught: "Mad? You're worried about me going mad, Severus? But isn't that what Barty Crouch wants?"

"He was quite strongly opposed to Magical Law Enforcement's new policies in Azkaban," said Severus drily.

"Strong is the operative word, is it not, where Olaus was concerned? Until Potter forced him to drink your Defences-Downdraught, the dementors couldn't touch him."

Voldemort looked into the fire as he spoke. Severus gazed at his faintly misshapen profile, his distant expression. "Yes. And he chose the Downdraught and the dementors before betraying you."

Voldemort turned to face him. "Yes. Olaus was loyal. I value that in my friends. Along with strength. I know few wizards stronger than Olaus Ruskin."

Severus knew no one stronger. Unless he was looking at him at that moment.

"Except you, perhaps. You are as strong as Ruskin was, as steeped in and fascinated by the Dark. You taught him Sectumsempra."

"Yes. I did." Looking into Voldemort's eyes, Severus remembered the feeling of simple mastery it had given him to possess that magic, to know that his skill and power had caused Ruskin to seek him out.

"Strong as Ruskin was, he's dead now," said Voldemort. "And he was one of my servants. He had my protection. You are alone. You work at St Mungo's, a place full of Healer-Legilimentes, witches and wizards who are capable of reaching deeply into the mind. The kind of power they have, meant to heal the psychic damage caused by malevolent or misplaced magic, could easily be put to other uses: like finding out how far the magical faculties of a certain Apothecary are bent toward the Dark."

Severus remembered the lie he'd told to Sage and Wort after healing Auror Dawlish of Sectumsempra, that he'd simply formed the counter-curse off a weak version of the spell he'd picked up at school.

"You could end up like Ruskin if you're not careful," Voldemort went on. "If there's one thing the Aurors don't like--if there's one thing the Ministry of Magic doesn't like--it's a strong Dark wizard. But then, you know that. When you were in Azkaban, what was it Warden Reid liked least about you? Not that you objected to his use of the dementors. No. He didn't become angry until you and Potter banded together with such strength that you drove the dementors off the island.

"Because, you see, Severus, what Reid, Crouch, Bagnold and their kind don't like--and all that they don't like--is strength. They hate the Dark wizard not because he's wicked--a word they toss around as if they were talking about a naughty schoolboy who's earned a month of detentions--but because he's strong. So strong that he wants no outsider to place limits on the use of his power."

Voldemort laughed, suddenly and incongruously. "Do you know, they don't even like Dumbledore for that reason! He sets limits on himself as severe as any the most craven of them labour under. But they're his limits. He commands himself. And he rules Hogwarts as his own little fief, and does what he pleases on the Wizengamot and in the International Confederation. He doesn't let the likes of Millicent Bagnold or Barty Crouch tell him what to do. And so, though the petty, scrabbling bureaucrats need him, they come very close to hating him."

To think that people like Bagnold and Crouch, who looked so dried-up in their Prophet photographs and sounded so stodgy in their official pronouncements had the capacity for so hot-blooded an emotion as hate--and for Dumbledore, of all people--took Severus aback for a moment.

"Oh, yes, Severus," said Voldemort with one of his needle-toothed smiles. "Professor Dumbledore is dearly hated by the people who need and use him the most. He is strong enough to do as he pleases and is, as a result, an essentially happy man. I will kill him one of these days, I assure you. Nevertheless, for that strength and that happiness, I admire him. The petty people abase themselves before Albus Dumbledore. And yet, for his strength and happiness, they secretly hate him.

"This even though he sides with them. Even though he accepts their fencings-in, their prisons, their Azkabans of the soul. Their limits. He imposes those limits on himself and, with his Order of the Phoenix, helps the Ministry impose them on others. Upon us. Albus Dumbledore, who will fight for the rights of the lowliest Mudblood, has no trouble handing over wizards of the purest blood whom he and his Order capture to Crouch and, through Crouch, to the dementors."

"The Order of the Phoenix?"

"The Order of the Phoenix. A ragtag band of rejects Dumbledore's collected, who bow to him like bandits to their chief. Whom he sends out to fight and die for him. I've killed several of them myself."

"The Order of the Phoenix." Ruskin, on the last day Severus and Potter had questioned him, the day of his death. "The Dark Lord knows about the Order of the Phoenix.... He knows them, Potter. And he will kill them. Every one."

It was that which had set Potter off, driven him into the fury which had drawn fifty dementors to Ruskin's side: "Tell me where to find your Master and his murderers, tell me, or I'll--!"

Potter's experience in Azkaban had driven him from the Auror programme. How had he occupied himself afterward? In work for his father, he'd said. "I've been part-time for a while. Now I can go full-time."

"Oh..." said Severus.

"Yes?"

"I just--thought of something. James Potter--I think he must be a member of this Order of the Phoenix."

"I know he is," said Voldemort. His voice turned quite cold. "He and his wife."

"Lily," said Severus. He remembered the last time he'd seen her at St Mungo's, before she had left on what Harding had called her medical leave, on crutches, her leg twisted by a Bone-cracker Curse, her womb holding a child.

"Lily and James Potter," said Voldemort. "Two very large thorns in my side. I haven't found a way to pluck them out yet. But I will."

Severus looked into Voldemort's eyes and said nothing. He hadn't tried to look away from the red-sheened irises and slitted pupils since Voldemort had caught him in his gaze. Snake's eyes. Indeed, Severus could have thought that Voldemort's face had taken on more of the characteristics of the snake since he'd last seen him. But that did not matter. He was no more afraid of snakes now than he had been before. He was a Slytherin, and Slytherins were represented by the snake. Like a familiar, and was not the wizard's familiar even closer to him than a friend?

"I know there's no love lost between you and James Potter," said Voldemort. "But the girl?"

"The girl?"

"Lily."

Potter's wife? The happy thought behind Potter's Patronus? Severus had seen her in Potter's mind when he had gripped Potter's hand to join their Patronuses, flowers crowning her head and embroidered in her wedding gown, gazing at Potter as if he were a gift she couldn't believe had been given to her.

Potter's happy thought. It brought no happiness to Severus. Nor did it rekindle the fear and fury their Patronuses had been meant to dispel. The memory of Lily in Potter's mind felt distant, like the memory contained in an old, yellowed photograph. It left Severus cold.

Lily had chosen her way, long ago. She had chosen Potter, everything Potter had, everything Potter was. It was surprising, really, that the Dark Lord did not see that she could mean nothing to Severus.

"You see her nearly every day," said Voldemort. "You work together."

"We're in different departments. I see her only in passing." Severus shrugged. "She means no more to me than her husband does."

Voldemort smiled as if Severus's answer had pleased him. "Enough of her, then. She is another one of those who will not take what their own power offers them, who blindly and unthinkingly reject the Dark. I have no interest in people like that. You are not like that."

"No," Severus agreed.

"And so you are in danger. Lucius rescued you once, after the Hidden Hellebore incident. He quashed Reid, who might well have had your Apothecary's licence as revenge for dispersing his dementors.

"But that was then. Now, you're alone again. It's only a matter of time before another subminister, another Auror--that nosy Scrimgeour, perhaps--targets you for having too much power, too much skill in Dark magic. How will you fight back? They'll say you shouldn't, of course. They'll crush you if you try. You'll end up like Ruskin.

"I don't agree with their policy," said Voldemort with a low, ironic laugh, "to say the least. And so I fight for my Death Eaters, and they fight for me, against prison, against the dementors, against death. If you can accommodate the Dark, if you accept no limits on your body and spirit--do you have not only the right but the duty to fight back?"

Voldemort's eyes held Severus still, and still he felt no desire to resist. No limits on body and spirit. Freedom. How was freedom evil? Look at Mother. With one curse, Rabastan Lestrange had arranged for Will Paxton to kill Tobias Snape. Tobias, who had long needed killing, was dead. Will Paxton, who had been a burden on society for as long as Severus could remember, would be removed from society into prison for the rest of his life. The death of Tobias Snape, her marriage to whom had been the biggest mistake of Eileen Prince's life, had given Eileen--Mother--magical, emotional, physical and financial freedom. Rabastan's Dark, Unforgivable Imperius Curse had made Mother happier than Severus had ever seen her.

And hadn't Mother's happiness and security lifted from his own shoulders the heaviest of his burdens? Could Severus deny that Rabastan's Dark, Unforgivable Imperius Curse had made him happy?

What was wrong with being happy?

"There is nothing wrong with being happy," said Voldemort softly. "There is nothing wrong with assuring that your mother need never live in fear and want again. There is nothing wrong with being glad that the greatest stumbling-block to her happiness is gone.

"There is nothing wrong with no longer having to scrabble after the necessities of life, now that your mother has your father's pension instead of his debts. There is nothing wrong with doing with your life what were meant to do with it, with using the talents you were given, with doing, simply, what you want.

"There is nothing wrong with seeking knowledge--all sorts of knowledge--no matter what labels others have placed upon it. There is nothing wrong with seeking power, any kind of power, no matter what others call it who can't find that power, who wouldn't know how to use it if they did find it.

"So they call it evil, all those Ministers, Professors and Aurors who are afraid of the Dark. They oppress those who seek its power, because they know that a master of the Dark Arts need fear no one. No one--no Minister, Professor or Auror--would dare become his enemy."

The slitted snake pupils had widened into chasms nearly consuming the red of Voldemort's eyes. "Dark magic is for enemies," said Severus.

"Yes. It is for enemies. For those would mistreat your mother. For those who would crush you, humiliate you, deprive you. For those who, if you let them, would slowly kill you.

"That's the only crime, you know, Severus. To let them kill you."

Especially when it was so clear that it was you, not they, who deserved to live. "You think I have power for the Dark."

"I know you do. You lack only the training to harness it. The training the small-minded of the wizarding world have denied you. I can remedy that."

Severus frowned. "Why do you want to? Why do you want to do so much for me? Why have you done so much?"

"You mean, why have I arranged a murder for you?" Again Voldemort laughed in a low voice. "I'm surprised you haven't asked before this, if you actually wonder. I want you to join us." He paused, tilting his head. "Of course, I've never had to sweep as large an obstacle as Tobias Snape out of the way of any of my other Death Eaters. You reminded me of myself in that, crippled as you were by the handicap of a Muggle father. I sympathised, believe me. But that wasn't all. You're like me in many ways, but in one way very much unlike. You see, I long ago called upon Dark magic to perform the greatest of its services for me, and I am therefore fully Dark. Not that I need or want to, but I cannot conjure a Patronus. Neither can any who have yet been able to take my Mark. But you--you are perfectly balanced, exquisitely poised between Light and Dark. You invent the Darkest curses and come up with the Lightest spells to counter them. You conjure a Patronus and formulate Hidden Hellebore. You make a vow to Dumbledore that lies secret in your soul, guarded from my Legilimency by his Sword of Gryffindor. You are happy with me for ridding you by murder of the nuisance that was your father.

"You see the contradictions! I have never known anyone quite like you, balanced on a thread between Light and Dark, powerful in both. You would become one of my most valuable servants if you joined me, highly regarded and well-rewarded, for I know exactly what you want. Have I not proven that?"

"Yes," said Severus. That he had, and he had acted on the proof.

"Yes. My servant. My friend. My family." Voldemort looked almost dreamy. "For your friends are those whom you reward for worthy service. Your family are those whom you protect because they are of value to you. It would be risky. I will allow that, because I think you know it. You have so much Light in you. You remain drawn to it. Dumbledore must have seen it. That's why he thought it worth his while to meddle with you. But I will take the risk. I will ask you to join me and, if you do, I will give you exactly what you are worth. And as you know that you are worth more than anyone around you, I do not think you will be displeased."

Severus looked at him--stared at him, but Voldemort did not seem to mind. He looked, as Lucius had said, different. But he seemed to think what Severus had concluded at their first meeting, that different was not necessarily wrong. He had the face his choices had given him, and he was pleased with the choices, his face and himself.

Why should he not be pleased, and why should it matter to Severus whether he was or not? Severus had known people with beautiful faces and handsome forms. They'd been his enemies, as often as not, like Potter and Black. Or they had abandoned him for his enemy, like Lily. He no longer cared. No one, handsome or ugly, good or evil, had given him the gift Voldemort had given him: freedom. None of them offered the power that Voldemort offered; Dumbledore had punished him for seeking it. The long-suffering, faintly disapproving patience Severus had endured from him while learning the Patronus Charm had been a discipline all its own.

As for Sectumsempra, the Firewhip and other Dark spells that had sprung from Severus's mind and magical power.... Strong passions had shaken him in his lifetime, storms of hatred, fear, longing, delight and triumph. Nothing had compared with that feeling of power, that sense that he controlled everything and everyone around him, that surged through him with the casting of a curse of his own creation. It was a thirst for life, comparable to the dementors' thirst for feeling and (the insight surprised Severus) a thirst that made them explicable. The dementors had to hunt relentlessly for the food that sustained them. If Voldemort, after giving Severus freedom, now offered to increase his life by unlocking doors to Dark magic beyond Severus's comprehension--had Severus ever been offered more? And was not the refusal of this offer to master death the choice to embrace death? To die? And who but a madman longed to die?

"Life, and the power to get as much of it as we can," said Voldemort. "We half-bloods deserve it as much as the pure-bloods do. And magical power, you may have discovered, Severus, is one thing in this world which doesn't discriminate against us. I can teach you to use your power, in all its aspects, to the fullest extent possible. I can give you all that Dumbledore and his school refused you. All that Dumbledore himself knows, all that Dumbledore possesses, whether he admits to it or not."

Why not? He'd spent his life thus far scrabbling after crumbs, in Spinner's End, at Hogwarts, at St Mungo's. Why sentence himself to that forever, so that he died as bitter and unfulfilled as he'd lived? Why rely on anyone, even Voldemort, to give him freedom and life when he could learn, as a Death Eater, how to take them for himself?

"I'll take it, then," said Severus. "I'll join you."

****

In his fancies, Severus had never got past saying "yes" to Voldemort. He had never wondered what a Death Eater initiation might be like, whether he would kneel before a profaned altar with Voldemort looming above him in vaguely priestly dress like the Black Man out of some seventeenth-century Muggle's fevered dream. Would torches fastened to mould-streaked stone walls shed their flickering light on ghastly ceremonies concluded, no doubt, by largely unimaginable but certainly distasteful orgies?

The reality, as it turned out, was nothing like that. Or at least it didn't start that way. Severus's initiation into the Death Eaters began as his other meetings with Voldemort had done, in Lucius Malfoy's library immediately after he had accepted Voldemort's invitation to join him. Severus's sense of banal unreality increased when Lucius arrived in answer to Voldemort's summons--it seemed as though he and Voldemort were only adding another participant to another one of their conferences over claret. Then Severus looked into Lucius's face. The tension he saw, the banked fear in Lucius's eyes, made him realise--no, remember--that he was about to do something very dangerous.

Voldemort, still seated, smiled up at Lucius. "Yes. He has agreed to join us."

Surprisingly, the news did not seem to make Lucius happy. "Have you warned him, my Lord?"

"No. I suppose I should, shouldn't I? It wouldn't make you look very good if he fails."

Severus looked from one to the other: at Lucius's pale face and tight mouth, at Voldemort with his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his long, thin fingers steepled under his chin, his mouth curved in a lazy, ironic smile.

"If I fail at what?" asked Severus.

Voldemort straightened to look at him. "In taking the Dark Mark. It's that troublesome Light magic of yours. As Dumbledore will take into his Order only those who are Light enough to conjure a Patronus, I will take only those who are Dark enough to receive my Mark. Of course, the unqualified do have a way of weeding themselves out. You must want what I have to give you strongly enough to submit yourself entirely to me in order to get it. There are those who have tried to lie their way in, Aurors or members of Dumbledore's Order hoping to infiltrate our ranks." The smile was gone. The voice had turned cold. "They did not want me. They did not want what I had to give them. They hated me and my Dark Arts, and so the attempt to take my Dark Mark killed them.

"In a way, they can't help it. They can't help hating me, as their Light, when our powers meet in the passing of the Mark, can't help leaching into my Dark. For I am stronger. I am always stronger. I see through their lies to their hatred and overwhelm their magic with my greater power. If that kills them--well, that is the way of the world. The weak always fall to the strong."

"I don't hate you," said Severus.

"No," agreed Voldemort, "you don't. And so I give you the opportunity to join me. But even now you may turn it down. You may withdraw your agreement; you may leave Lucius's house with no greater consequence than the Obliviation of your memory of meeting me."

Severus would lose this memory, of the most feared wizard in the world personally requesting him to join him. He would lose the opportunity of gaining power from Voldemort, of gaining a power like Voldemort's, of seeing to it that the Tobiases, the Potters, the Reids never tormented him again.

"No," said Severus. "I know I can do it. I won't withdraw. I said I wanted to join you, and I meant it."

"Good. So long as you know that once I lay my hand upon you, there is no turning back."

Severus looked into Voldemort's eyes and did not answer, did not speak a word, and yet Voldemort seemed to sense his final assent. "Kneel," he said.

Severus knelt.

"Lucius," said Voldemort.

Raising his wand, Lucius approached. Severus half-expected to be trapped in some binding magic like the fiery red chain of the Unbreakable Vow. Instead, he felt a slight heaviness in the air around him, as if he were immersed in a cloud of cotton wool, which he recognised as the effect of a strong Imperturbable Charm.

"Give me your left hand."

Something in the voice, a power like Dumbledore's, commanded obedience. Severus fixed his eyes on Voldemort's face and extended his left hand. Voldemort's long, bony fingers clamped painfully around it. Keeping a tight grip on Severus's hand, he thrust the sleeve of Severus's robe above the elbow and laid a thin, cold hand upon the inner aspect of Severus's forearm.

Voldemort's hand did not remain cold. It burned like an iron brand laid into Severus's skin, stopping the breath in his throat. He bit down hard, tearing the insides of his cheeks with his teeth. The leak of blood left a coppery taste on his tongue.

But the pain didn't stop at his skin. Fire lanced into his arm, racing along his nerves to his heart, which pounded wildly, irregularly, slamming against his ribs as if it wanted to break free of his chest before it burst from pain. Fire flared in his head, an agony that Severus was sure would split his skull in two if he couldn't make it stop. He writhed, threw himself backward, but he seemed not held by but melded to Voldemort. He couldn't get loose. He heard a loud hissing, as from a huge and angry snake. Then Lucius's voice: "No, my Lord, it's certainly not normal--"

Finally, a raw, harsh scream, as if from the man drawn who is quartered at last, Severus's screaming, which went on and on until the pain dragged him into the dark.