Archive of Our Own

 when the war is over, and he’s one of the few left standing on either side, he hits the ground running. there’s trials to prepare for, character witnesses to scour, who might be willing to say one good word in his defense. they’re all flailing and on their own.

when igor screams his name in a desperate bid to save his own skin, severus doesn’t even have it in him to be angry, because he’d have done the same – did, in fact, do the same. he sat in the interrogation cell completely alone, cuffed to the metal table by his wrists, his marked forearm all the damning evidence needed to have him Kissed, and he looks cold and unflinching at crouch, and wonders if he knows what his own dearest heir has been getting up to these days.

he lists their names with a flat, dispassionate voice, and if it makes him a coward, then let him be a coward, but an alive one, a free one. he names them all – the ones whose faces he’d seen, whose names he’d overheard. some of them had been his friends. or at least had been friendly to him. avery. mulciber. mcnair. rockwood. dolohov. both of the carrows.

they need more, crouch says. “you realize, don’t you, it’s your life at stake here.”

when had his life ever not been at stake? he wonders. closes his eyes, and takes a deep breath.

he’s a drowning man, not that it matters, because lily is dead. lily evans had been dead to him for a long time. but lily potter had not survived him either.

there is a child out there now, who will grow up without a mother, because the dark lord was right, and the war spared no one. no one got saved.

and if they’re all going to drown, if they’ll be swallowed up by this senseless violence that is not even theirs, if their parents’ hate must truly permeate every fiber of their being, if he could not be spared for the one good thing he tried to do… well. he can save no one. he can protect no one. it must be his rotten snape luck to serve the people he loves up to slaughter.

“lucius malfoy is marked,” he says, and looks crouch square in the face. lucius will survive this, he knows, will retreat behind the tall walls of his manor, with his money, and his beautiful picture perfect family. draco is a child, severus knows, who will never need saving. except from him, for he is a worthless godfather, and he knows sooner or later, he will fail his golden haired charge, the way he’d failed everyone around him.

crouch stills. the dicta-quill stops scratching on the parchment.

they let him go later that same day. dumbledore spoke for him, they say. he knows he should be grateful, but he isn’t.

he’s having tea with narcissa when the aurors come for lucius. he pretends not to know. he’s rather good at it all, pretending. if he’d gotten to spying earlier, he might have turned this whole damn worthless war around. that’s wishful thinking, of course. he knows, ultimately, that’s what it is. worthless, childish fantasies. he couldn’t even save himself.

they arrest bella, and thelestrange brothers, and little barty. they raid knockturn alley flats. he puts greyback up on his couch in cokeworth, where no one is looking for a marked death eater in a poverty-striken muggle neighborhood. his parents are dead.

they had failed to protect him, and he had failed to protect them in return.

greyback pays for the food while he’s there. “i don’t want yer charity, snape,” he says.

he’s shockingly decent at whipping up a breakfast scramble. by the full moon, he’ll be gone. severus tries not to flinch from him too obviously.

greyback had written him, in fifth year. told him that they’d have a place for a potioneer in their pack. if he wanted to. no one would ask questions. he’d be welcome. if it came to it. if. if. if.

he’d told him to pour silver nitrate in the wounds, if pomfrey hadn’t already done that, to avoid eating meat until the full moon, no need to goad his appetite needlessly. he’d kept a silver sickle in his pocket, and rubbed at it furiously, and every time it didn’t burn his skin, he felt his stomach settle. he purged himself with bitter aconite tea, and when the moon rose in the sky, big and fat, and silver, and round as the sickle in his pocket, and nothing happened, his bones unbroken, and his scarred skin unmarred, and he knew his dirty blood had not been polluted further, he’d breathed a sigh of relief.

when the letter from hogwarts comes, offering him a job, he stares at it in disbelief, knows he is shacking all over.

come back, my boy, dumbledore says. he knows he should move. he knows he looks odd, and freakish, but he is frozen on the spot, because the letter is right there, in dumbledore’s neat delicate handwriting.

greyback snaps his fingers in front of his face a few times, then snatches the letter away, scans it quickly.

“you should take it,” he says.

“what?”

“what do you mean, what? it’s money yer worried about, and the old hack’s offering you a job, and a roof over your head. say the dark lord does come back – how much would he give you, in exchange for your knowledge of what’s been going on with dumbledore while he was gone?”

“i don’t want it,” he says, shakes his head emphatically. “i don’t – i don’t – “

he needs the money. he knows that. he knows he’s turning into his father, doing nothing but drink all day, all maudlin, listening to the radio, reading the papers, and cursing the world for its injustice. he has a mastery. he could go back to brewing.

“you still want a potioneer in your pack?” he asks weakly.

“i’m not your exposure therapy to get over whatever the hell it is that happened to you at that school,” greyback snaps. “what you need is a mind healer. get over yourself.”

snape envies him. wishes he could live like him. only powerful enough to not need anyone, only independent enough from the world that he could survive alone if he had to, and yet never had to.

i have hundreds of brothers and sisters and daughters and sons. who else can say that? he’d snarled once during a meeting, when someone – probably avery – had failed to keep their tongue in check. he was the only halfbreed attending meetings, and severus – the only half-blood. it fell to them to check the others when they forgot how vastly outnumbered they were out there in the real world.

sometimes he wonders if it would have been better if lupin’s bite had taken after all. right at this very moment, he’d be somewhere in the highlands, in a forest, surrounded by people like him. he’d have gold eyes, and his blood would be poison, and he’d be strong. oh, he’d be so, so terribly strong.

greyback leaves with a slam of his backdoor, and severus knows he’s not coming back. he’s found somewhere else to lay low, probably. or he’ll disappear into the wilderness again, for a while, before he goes back to what he does best- wizarding population control. werewolf population growth. no one had saved these children from him, but sometimes he remembers lupin’s thin scarred face, and maybe it’s for the best that it happened.

he writes back to dumbledore, takes him up on his offer, and goes to sleep dreaming of a tree that is trying to kill him.

he spends the rest of the summer drinking, and spending the last dredges of his money on takeaway from the chippy down the road, and scratching uselessly at his left forearm. the malfoys won’t talk to him, which serves him right. the rest of his friends are either dead or in prison.

some of them – because of him. he’s persona non-grata on knockturn. the ingredient shops won’t take his business. the drinking establishments tell him his money’s no good there. diagon alley is much the same, with “murderer” and “death eater” being flung at him as often as hexes. he takes to going out in muggle london instead. he’s just another kid from the estates there, with no future in their world. he drinks until he can’t anymore. sometimes he’ll take a bird home, if her hair’s blonde enough.

“i’m a convict,” he whispers in the ear of an olivia/mary/elizabeth.

“that’s kinda hot,” she giggles. “what’d you do?”

she traces his mark with her chipped manicure. he smiles, and hardly recognizes the expression as one belonging to him. he hasn’t smiled since –

“what didn’t i do?” he says, flips her over, and fists her hair. he fucks her with his other hand around her throat.

afterwards he’d disgusted. with her. with himself. with the whole charade.

a fucking muggle. he’s debasing himself with a fucking muggle, who didn’t even finish school. him, one of the youngest potions masters in the country, the last of the prince line.

he remembers his first revel. the death eater regalia, heavy and warm, and safe, the cold weight of his mask, obscuring his unsightly face. like that, he can almost convince himself he is these people’s equal, though he hasn’t got half the money or power, just his wits and his desperation, and lucius malfoy’s word that he’s worth something.

he hadn’t cast the killing curse before that night. lucius had warned him that it might not work. it didn’t always. you needed conviction.

“you know me better than that, luc,” he’d said. “i don’t need it.”

they’d descended on the muggle village in clouds of black smoke, cloaks billowing behind them, they’d been frenzied and wild. gone were the polite facades of handsome brilliant young people. behind the masks he could imagine their bared teeth, their eyes on fire, pupils blown wide. he thought about james potter cursing him out in a hogwarts courtyard.

he cast levicorpus. a woman hung in the air, and screamed, and screamed, and screamed. he’d never screamed. he’d never begged for mercy. that’s what made him better, he knew.

“it’s all just a bit of fun, really, snape, old boy,” lestrange-the-elder had said, right before they left, clapping him on the shoulder. “you’ll see.”

and he was right. it was fun. to be strong just this once. to have someone else do the pleading. to know he was better.

there’s children. it’s a village. of course there’d be children. they don’t all like to hurt children. bellatrix does, but she’s also crazy, so that’s no surprise. greyback likes to chase them down, and claw them open, so they’ll turn. lucius turns away and pretends not to see them. he and narcissa are trying for an heir, and failing. dead babies are not a sight for his stomach.

he’d known, rationally, that he might see children. he’s not sure how he’d react at seeing hurt children. they run screaming. they run straight at him in their panic. the air is thick with smoke and ashes. he kneels so he’s level with them, and takes his mask off. he peers at them over his nose. they look at him back, frightened. it doesn’t have the same rush as the adults. he likes that they fear him. but the children – well. children should always be scared of adults. it’s just the norm, really. it’s what is due him, because he’s seventeen, and he’s just left school, and entered the world, and entered this war, and he’s been marked, and in a year or two, he’ll be a potions master of renown with the malfoy name behind him.

to these small squirming muggle children, for all his almost-eighteen years, he is an adult. of course they’re scared. weak. he’d never shown his father fear.

he casts sectumsempra and watches them bleed out at his feet, convulsing. he puts his mask back on, and steps back from the blood, so it won’t soil his new dragon hide boots. they’d been a birthday gift from lucius. one of the first pieces of clothing that wasn’t a charity shop find or a hand-me-down.

he doesn’t let himself stoop so low as to shag a muggle again, but he’s much les discerning in the wizarding world, and it turns out there’s those who are also a lot less discerning when it comes to his background. turns out there’s women who think the mark makes him enticing. dangerous. they don’t know the half of it, but he lets them into his bed.

there’s the occasional bloke too, if he’s drunk enough and the mood is right. sometimes he’ll even be on the bottom. it does wonders for his self-esteem, and now he can see why alecto carrow was always a bit of a slag. there’s always someone desperate enough to shag you, regardless of your unfortunate appearance, and it’s a nice boost when it happens. if you get to come – all the better.

the week before classes start, professor mc – minerva turns up at his doorstep, looking as distinctly disapproving as she did in his hogwarts years. he’s wearing a threadbare t-shirt that has nationalize gregg’s emblazoned on the front, and he’s smoking in his backyard. he doesn’t let her into his house. she wants to ask about his teaching plan, which apparently he was meant to send over last month. he smells like alcohol and sex, and there’s at least two people still asleep or unconscious in his bed. his throat is blue and purple with handprints. he arches an imperious eyebrow at her, dares her to say something. she never said a damn word about his bruises before, so why would she now.

she doesn’t. no one ever did. he tells her if she wants to see a curriculum, she can just have a look at old sluggy’s, because he’s not changing a damn thing. it worked well enough for god knows how many years, so it will continue to work with him in charge of the subject. she falters.

he knows what they expect from him. he’s a potions prodigy, he’s made waves, he could share his knowledge. but he could also not do that.

every single thing he discovered, he earned. with his blood, and sweat and tears, with weeks of not sleeping, with begging and borrowing and bartering for ingredients, with burned hands and exploded cauldrons he didn’t have the money to get replaced. he’s not about to sell it off for a teacher’s fucking salary, though that’s exactly what igor’s doing in durmstrang right now.

the students in durmstrang deserve it though, for not being arrogant little cunts who think they know the difference between good and evil because their uniforms are a certain color.

he firmly lets minerva go she’s welcome to leave his doorstep whenever she’d like.

she tells him she’s been around – fucking animagi – and that she’s worried about him. he stares back at her, incredulous.

“obviously i’ll stop drinking when i’m at hogwarts,” he grinds out, because he’s not in the mood for a lecture. “it might have escaped your notice, but until very recently, i was playing both sides of a very violent war. forgive me for wanting to unwind before i have to go spend nine months of my year living like a monk and teaching little mu- muttonheads,” nice save, he thinks to himself. fix your attitude, asshole. “how to brew boil cures.”

she looks like she wants to say something else. she doesn’t. she clicks her heels and disapparates. he finishes his cigarette, and because he’s in a foul mood, goes back inside, and wakes up last night’s leftovers and kicks them out.

he arrives at hogwarts stone cold sober, and so hollowed out it feels like florian fortescue personally took an ice cream scoop to his insides. he sits at the staff table and looks down on a sea of faces. some of them will remember going to school with him. some of them will remember what james fucking potter, hero of the wizarding world did.

slytherin table is subdued, and claps politely for him. one of their own is back. someone who’s been out there in the real world, and lived a real life, unlike old sluggy. he sits straight backed and remembers all the etiquette narcissa taught him. those who remember him from school also remember what he is. the half-blood prince. he’d spent hours practicing in the mirror with a cork in his mouth, reading out passages from textbooks, until he sounded just right, somewhere between lucius’ imperious drawl and the dark lord’s politely disinterested lecturing.

these children have parents who are in prison because of him. the other three-quarters of the tables have children who have parents that are dead because of him, not that he particularly cares. for either group. it was war, and that was the kind of thing that happened at war. there’s children whose parents are dead or in prison because of dumbledore too.

he ignores the other teachers looking at him. they all should remember him well, he thinks. he was exceptional in their classes, even the ones he hated. he had outstanding on almost all of his newts. he begged all of them to do something at some point or another.

dumbledore raises his goblet and toasts the hall, his hateful eyes twinkling. severus stays true to his word and drinks pumpkin juice, and digs into his dinner so he doesn’t have to talk.

the first student who brings up his past as a death eater is from his own house, surprisingly. a rosier cousin. he assigns the little fool detentions with filch until the end of term, and makes careful, calculated eye contact with the rest of the students, to make sure the lesson sticks.

“any other… riveting opinions on my professional history?” he drawls.

and his students quickly learn that his blood status and his relationship to the cause (which one, depends entirely on which family the child hails from) are topics off limits. if no one is questioning filius on his short stature and order involvement, they don’t get to question him, just because he might have been one of them ones. he was never one of them.

he sleep walks through the school year, reading to them from the textbook, and leaving them to their own devices in class. he spends the holidays in a drunken stupor in his quarters, and receives no gifts, except for a perfunctionary card from albus, and one from minerva.

he pretends it doesn’t bother him. it shouldn’t, really. it’s not like he’d gotten anything for anyone. it’s not like he ever got presents before. or celebrated, for that matter. lily knitted him gloves ones, fingerless. they’re somewhere in spinner’s end amond the piles of garbage he never really sorted through over summer. gifts from lucius and narcissa always felt uncomfortable – he couldn’t really offer them anything in return.

“you’re our friend, severus,” narcissa would say. narcissa black, soon-to-be malfoy, the most beautiful girl in the world, the princess of slytherin, the heiress to a fortune that could make a king weep, with her silver hair and aquamarine eyes, and perfect milk-and-honey skin, glowing a sweet radiant glow in the pale winter light. he was only their friend through the year, when they were housemates. he was only her friend because her fiancée had a soft spot for him, for some reason. only because he knew their terrible secrets, but they didn’t know his, not really. someone with his filthy, ugly blood had to earn the right to be around people like them, and he wasn’t a fool.

he doesn’t spend time in the teacher’s lounge. he does all his work and grading in his office. he has an office hour, but he’s such an ass about it his own slytherins barely turn up, and that’s how he likes it. he never gets asked to supervise hogsmeade weekends, and he never offers either.

they’d been planning a raid on a hogsmeade weekend, they’d been planning to escalate. it would have fallen on one of vector’s weekends, or sinistra’s – both would be easy to overwhelm. of course, minerva would have sent a stronger message, but no one fancied losing a limb in the process either.

the last christmas before everything had gone to terribly, terribly wrong, they’d all been in the carrows’ shitty apartment on knickturn alley, which was previously the lestranges’ shitty apartment on knockturn alley, lost in a disastrous series of bet on the outcomes of a disastrous series of duels which severus had all won. lucius had raided his father’s wine cellar, and regulus had gotten his house elf to make something actually edible that wasn’t alecto’s piss poor excuse for cooking, and they were drinking, passing bottles that cost more than the flat’s rent around, and bella had been singing off-key to the radio, which as playing celestina warbeck’s newest and shittiest christmas themed hit.

cissa was trying to convince rabastan to switch tailors for the event, and to bring cousin so-and-so as his date, and he was politely rebuffing her by keeping himself occupied with dolohov’s tongue down his throat.

“i’m going to kill my father,” lucius had announced.

he was sitting in one of the plug green armchairs the ankle of his bad leg resting on the knee of his good, his cane leaned precariously against the arm rest. he was holding his glass of brandy, and looking at it with surprisingly clear eyes for the amount he’d drank. the last notes from the radio song were the only noise for a moment. but the silence did not last.

rodolphus rolled his eyes, and bellatrix snorted. severus, who was sitting on the floor beside lucius, resting his back on the armchair tipped the last of his bottle down his throat and swallowed.

“alright?” he hazarded.

“seriously?” luc drained his glass in a single gulp, and stared at them. “i can’t believe this. you’re all terrible people.”

“well, what do you want us to say?” bellatrix made an annoyed gesture. “oh, no don’t uh – kill the asshole who terribly and horrifically abused you, and also threatened to do the same to your wife – who is my sister – and your future children, that would be awful, and not at all the outcome we want?” she pitched her voice high and pleading.

“seriously,” rodolphus said. “are you asking for an alibi, or advice, or?”

severus hadn’t been the only boy in slytherin who didn’t change in front of the others.

“you don’t want to know what our father did to us,” rabastan had said once, very quietly to him, while they were practicing dueling. “or what we did to him,” rodlophus had added, and thrown an arm over his brother’s shoulders.

lucius poured himself another and shook his head.

“terrible people,” he repeated. “just wanted to warn you, i guess. if you were planning on worming your ways into his will, now’s the time. also severus, i might need you to brew for me, but i’ll let you know when the time comes.”

by his fifth year on the post, he’d settled in it, somewhat. the attraction to his dangerous allure was fading with his dark mark. lucius and narcissa were writing to him again, though he’d not been invited to visit his godson just yet.

he also couldn’t allow to drink his summers away anymore, because he was inundated with brewing requests from poppy and dumbledore. pain relievers, boil cures, fever fixers, skele-gro, dreamless sleep. so he brewed.

and on the side, he brewed for his own little side project. something small and insignificant. something that would never make a difference. worthless, much like his effort but he did it anyway, because no one else was doing it, and if no one else was doing it… well. it had to be him.

at the start of the year, his slytherins knew where to go, to come into his office. he healed bruises, cast glamors on scars. he gave them nutrition potions, and salves, and taught them silencing charms so they wouldn’t wake their housemates up with their screaming. he handed soothing nerve damage potions for families where corporal punishment was unacceptable, and parents smart enough to know the cruciatus left no marks.  he let them float through the year on a cocktail of calming draughts, and let them have enough to last through summer. he took points mercilessly off other houses when they so much as breathed near his students.

he wanted to save them. by salazar, on his magic, he wanted to save every single one of them. he wanted to take them in his arms, and take them somewhere far, far away from this terrible world.

every time he thought about going into the teacher’s lounge with vials of memories, and magical photographs of children’s backs lashed raw, every time he imagined himself in poppy’s office to discuss diagnostic spells –

he stopped himself. this was not how this world worked. he knew if he was a muggle teacher at a muggle school, he’d just call the police. the police would come, and take statements. then the police would leave. then his father would beat him senseless. nothing would get better.

in this magical world, where he’d come, hoping for the safety eileen always promised he’d find behind the walls of hogwarts, he’d realized very quickly that the wizarding world, while shiny and wonderful, and full of many fascinating things, was not that different after all.

you’d show your bruises, and you’d get dismissed, because children often lie and exaggerate. especially slytherin children.

he wanted to save them, but every time he made up his mind that this year would be the last time, that this time he’d do something, he’d get up, and walk into that room, and tell them all what’s what –

all he could think of was the times he’d done it as a child himself. when he’d gone into the teacher’s lounge and begged them all to do something. begged them all to believe him. about his father, about the marauders, about any of it. or all of it.

he remembers being fifteen, and half-delirious from pain, being coaxed into an unbreakable vow not to reveal the secret that had nearly killed him, by an adult who should have definitely known better. he’d realized then, what he should have always known – the wizarding world was simply not a world where children got saved.

he healed them, and drugged them, and taught them how to lie and be charming, and find power wherever they could get it so they could be safe, in whatever measure safety took for them. he told them there was no good or evil. there was only safe, as opposed to not. and if your drunken father had to succumb to liver failure for your skies to finally clear… well. that was the poor old sod’s fault for not watching his bottle.

when he’d been in first year, something big had happened, and he’d only found out because avery overheard mulciber talking to lestrange-the-younger who’d talked to black-the-younger, who’d heard it first hand from his cousin bellatrix, who’d heard it first hand from narcissa. it had been right after christmas break. narcissa had been expected at malfoy manor for a chaperoned date with her intended. she’d found lucius passed out in a pool of his own blood and vomit on the floor of the library, missing his teeth, one eye swollen shut, leg broken in four places, and hipbone completely shattered.

luc now walked with a stylish expensive cane, and smiled beatifically and made elaborate, self-deprecating jokes about overestimating his flying ability, and apologized at length that he wouldn’t be able to finish the year out as a chaser.

“i’ll give you five galleons to steal me pain reliever from sluggy’s storage,” he’d told severus later that same day. still smiling, still handsome. prefect malfoy, whose father had nearly killed him in a rage.

“make it ten, and i’ll brew you some,” snape, all of eleven years old, and unafraid, and just realizing that in this world not only had no one come to save a self-styled king of slytherin, with all the money, and power and good looks that came with it, but that people actively rejoiced in his hurt and scars, had challenged.

and malfoy had tilted his head to the side, and said “huh.” and given him the money.

in the end he hadn’t killed his father. the pox had taken him before he could. abraxas had died miserable and alone, and lucius had raged impotently for days, and screamed, and howled and cried. he’d wanted to be the one to do it. bellatrix ahd rod had taken him muggle hunting, but the shadow in his face never truly went away until narcissa announced her pregnancy.

no one had saved lucius malfoy. but –

“the dark lost told him to stop,” lucius tells severus in madam rosmerta’s over a butterbeer. he looks as handsome and wealthy as ever, smiling at people he knows, waving at them. it’s just him and narcissa at his table though, and severus will make his excuses soon, to leave them some alone time. “so he stopped,” lucius finishes. he’s freshly marked, and the protection of a monster more powerful and terrifying than his father is burned into his eyes with frevor.

when he allows himself to be rational – which isn’t always – he lets himself acknowledge the fact that no one had saved sirius black either. and sirius black had needed saving, and needed it badly, and his whole charade had been one great big warning sign, one great big howl for help that everyone – faculty and friends alike – had ignored. severus knew this because he rubbed salve into little first year regulus’ bruises and reggie would say quietly, soulfully, with all the pain in the world coiled into his little voice, “sirius has it so much worse.”

and… well. if sirius black hadn’t been worth saving to dumbledore just because of his last name, then what the hell chance did severus himself have?

no, he thought. this simply is not a world where children get saved.

at least he was healing them, while slughorn simply looked over bruises, and ignored missing potions in his cupboard, not even a tacit acknowledgment of what was going on – in the hallways, which were just a training for the real warzones of the world at large, and at home, where survival of the quietest reigned supreme. most of them who’d grown up that way wound up in slytherin. they weren’t brave, they were survivors. they knew no loyalty but loyalty to themselves, and they had no energy for hard work after the pain, or thirst for knowledge after having it beaten into them that they were nothing, and knew nothing. they didn’t believe in nobility and justice, only power, and the promise that if they connived their way through to the end of the journey, on the other side a life with no weakness would await them.

“this is not a world where anyone can be saved,” the dark lord says. severus is alone in the room with him, and he is strangely unafraid. he’d occluding hard, obscuring his thoughts, and showing no weakness. the dark lord is handsome, and otherworldly terrifying, but severus knows how to make himself small and unassuming on his knees in front of powerful men. “and i think you know better than anyone… dumbledore can’t save anyone.”

“i know,” severus says, quietly. “that’s why i’m – please. my lord. that’s why i’m asking you. spare lily.”

the dark lord regards him for a long painful moment. “a lover?” he asks, drawing the word out.

“it’s complicated,” severus says. dumbledore can’t save anyone. he hadn’t saved severus that’s for damn sure.

“i notice you’re not asking after her husband… or her son.”

“if you are determined to prevent the prophecy which concerns her son from coming to fruition by killing her son… then surely, asking you to spare his life is counterproductive,” he says simply. it would be unfortunate, yes. but this is not a world where children get saved, and no one had bothered to save him, or lucius, so why should he care about a child – even if it was lily’s child – when in the end it wouldn’t matter anyway. “besides. this isn’t really a world where children get saved. by us or by anyone.”

the dark lord chuckles. “you still say nothing of her husband.”

“i’d kill james potter myself,” he says, and knows that he means it. he’d kill him, confess, and then do the time, and it would be worth it, and he’d survive Azkaban purely on the knowledge that justice had been served.

the dark lord nods, contemplative. “do you remember, when i marked you?” he asks. he’s looking into the flames of the fireplace, and the warm glow illuminates his sharp pale profile.

“of course, my lord.”

“you told me you were a half-blood, yes? muggle-raised?”

“unfortunately, my lord.”

“so you have had some… muggle schooling?”

the line of questioning is unexpected, but who is he, not to indulge his lord’s whim. “some.”

“and did you study the war? the great big muggle one? world war two, i believe they ended up calling it.”

“yes my lord, i’ve studied it. a little.”

the dark lord nods once, slowly, and turns to face snape. “what i will tell you now can never leave this room. swear on your magic.”

severus does, because when a man like voldemort gives you an order, you obey or you die, and he is too young at twenty to die just yet.

“they bombed london, do you remember from your studies?” the dark lord asks. he looks almost nostalgic. reminiscing, “the london blitz,” his voice has a hypnotic, lilting quality to it. “i was there for it, you know. i begged dumbledore not to make me return to the city.”

he closes his eyes, rocking slightly back and forth on his heels. “the germans were dropping bombs on us… the explosions rocked the whole street. debris and stones everywhere. no light as far as your eye could see… picture some thirty filthy starving little orphans, all clutching each other, praying to make it through the night.”

“and you were one of them,” severus finishes quietly.

“i begged,” the dark lord repeats. “imagine me… begging albus dumbledore for my life. i’d wager he rather wishes the bombs had done his job for him, back then.”

“when i tell you that this is not a world where anyone gets saved… that no one can protect anyone, that children don’t get saved… that albus dumbledore will not be the one to save them… severus. if in our world children got saved, do you truly believe you and i would be standing here right now?”

the truth is he doesn’t. if albus dumbledore had saved a terrified teenage boy in the great big war, then perhaps, this boy would not now he standing, quietly ordering the death of another child. if dumbledore had once – not even all the time, but just once – raised his voice and wand not to severus himself, but to potter, and the rest of the smirking arrogant gryffindors, perhaps severus would have known that there is a seat for him at the other side’s table too. if he’d extended his hand to black, and taken him away from that evil place before it was too late, perhaps severus would never had needed saving – not from him – in the first place.

he hadn’t mourned his mother when she died, because she’d been a filthy liar, who promised him that hogwarts is where he’d be safe, and then forgotten to warn him he’d never be safe anywhere, because she spread her legs for a piece of muggle garbage.

he hadn’t mourned his father, because. well.

and when minerva shows up at his piece of shit muggle garbage house at the end of summer to ask about his curriculum and lesson plans like he gives two fucks about anything besides just making it through another day by the skin of his teeth…

every time he thinks about coming to her to tell her one of her little gryffindors heard something through the grapevine, and went to him for salves and potions, he remembers the way she’d reacted at the sudden appearance of lucius’ cane, with a quietly contained glee that maybe finally gryffindor would stand a chance for the quidditch cup, with slytherin’s best chaser out of commission. he remembers that black had always worn long sleeves – in summer too – and she’d looked away. he remembers that this is not a world where children get saved.

every time he walks into the staff lounge, and one of these people, whose indifference had nearly cost him his life, tries to talk to him, all he can remember is being a child, begging the adults in his life to do something, and being kindly asked not to exaggerate, and is he sure he didn’t provoke anyone?

lucius starts talking to him more, as draco’s enrollment to hogwarts draws nearer. he needs to do less brewing for his side project, the farther they get from the war, though still more than he’d like. draco is a bright well-adjusted child who doesn’t need saving.

lucius walks him through the recently renovated gardens. white peacocks pace in step with them.

“you know it occurs to me we were terribly failed as children,” lucius says.

“what, just now it occurs to you?” severus asks acerbically.

“we’re not children anymore, severus. we’re adults,” lucius says.

they are, for all the good it’s done them. severus wants to save the children. all of them, every single one. even the gryffindors. percy weasley who hides in his classroom in his free periods, else his brothers will bully him something fierce, who breaks, screaming, about how tired he is of being poor and pathetic, even him, severus wants to save.

“this is not a world where anyone can be saved,” severus says quietly. of all the things the dark lord had said – and he’d said plenty – this is the truest.

lucius regards him silently for a long moment, and heaves a sigh. “still. it would have been nice if someone had tried.”

it would have, severus can agree. but it’s been years now, since the war, and his father’s belt is just a dull memory, and his scars have been glamored for so long he may as well not have them. the children he hadn’t saved grow up into journalists and politicians and aurors and quidditch players. he’s not like sluggy. no one sends him game tickets, or offers to publish his opinion pieces in the prophet. but sometimes, he’ll pass by someone in flourish and blotts, feel a hand on his shoulder. some other bruised child turned venomous adult will look at him and say “i know you did the best you could.” will say “thank you for believing me.”

and he did. he’d believed them all.

no one had believed him, when he’d needed them to. faculty. friends. no one.

he knows, in theory, he could go into minerva’s office, as deputy headmistress, and tell her “i know that a child is being brutally abused.”

he watches harry potter, the child he hadn’t saved, be sorted into gryffindor. dumbledore can’t save anyone, he reminds himself. and this time… this time he has to sit this one out completely. in a world where children don’t get saved, what’s one more?

he knows he could tell her that luna lovegood walks the halls barefoot, because someone keeps stealing her shoes. he knows he could tell her that there are children emerging from lupin’s classes, whose greatest fears are their parents, and shouldn’t someone, maybe, potentially be looking into that?

hell, there’s students whose greatest fears are teachers at this very school, isn’t he pending some sort of professional review for his conduct? just pro-forma? no?

he knows he could tell her that lupin didn’t take his wolfsbane, and needs to be stopped now.

rationally, because he is an adult, he knows this. but on some level – and he knows this also – he is not an adult. they – minerva, albus, filius, pomona – they’re adults. faced with them, he will forever be just a bruised, scrawny fifth-year, begging the adults who were put in this school to protect him to believe him, that it is as bad as he says, that it’s worse. begging them to admit that his life is worth slightly more than a month of detentions.

when sirius black had gone to prison for murder, severus hadn’t even questioned it. black had killed him a long time ago. some nights, he still woke up, wondering if he’d died all those years ago under the pale light of the full moon, and this was all just a dream of limbo.

and so, when he lets himself naively think that this time something will be done, all he has to do is feel the silver sickle in his pocket, which still does not burn his skin, and remind himself that children do not get saved in the wizarding world, least of all by albus dumbledore. instead, he takes his wand out, and makes his way across campus to face down a full grown werewolf, hoping at least this time, the children will be saved, because he is the adult now.

and, when some twenty years later, dumbledore looks at him with the same twinkle in his eye he had when severus had been fifteen, and delirious with pain, and talked into an unbreakable vow that would spent the next two decades breaking him… telling him how it’s all a big misunderstanding, how he must just be confused…

he doesn’t even fight it. he loses his temper, true. for a moment, he’s not the polished, pureblood-passing professor with an indistinguishable accent, he’s a fifteen-year-old kid from buttfuck nowhere, north west england, and he’s begging someone, anyone, to believe him.

he goes back to his rooms, and he summons himself a bottle, and he wants to firecall lucius, and also wants to go home, and also wants to be safe, and also wants to go set a muggle village on fire.

he undresses and studies the bruises he got from being knocked around, and takes a swig of the bottle while he’s at it. it’s a nice bottle. lucius gave it to him for christmas. he’d be appalled at how it’s being treated. he summons his silver nitrate. they may be just bruises, but he’d rather be safe than sorry. he burns himself on the antidote.

wonders if greyback still needs a potioneer for his pack.

“when you’re a werewolf, you can just bite the head off of whoever is pissing you off and call it a day,” greyback had said once.

“saying shit like this is why the wizengamot won’t vote to give you rights,” rodolphus lestrange had shot back. greyback had just snapped his teeth at him, eyes flashing yellow. all in good humor.

he waves his wand and the radio comes on to some mindless music station. celestina warbeck croons at him that she’d told him to be patient and kind. she had told him no such thing.

he on the other hand, had told minerva many times to stop using her deputy headmistress’ override password to enter his rooms and office to “check” on him. she had lost that right when –

well. a long time ago. he almost takes a swig of his silver nitrate instead of his whiskey. he’s still shaking – with rage or fear or just pure, unadulterated broken-heartedness, he’s not quite sure.

he can see her in the mirror, and she’s standing there, still and shocked.

“oh, severus,” she whispers, and sounds like she’s about to cry. he knows his naked torso is not the most pleasing of sights – the past three years have been harrowing, he’s let himself go massively. “your back…” she breathes out.

he’d had to discard the glamors to take stock of the damage. the lashes from his father’s belt, embedded into his impure skin, as though the worthless muggle had actually tried to bleed the dirt out of him – might be the first time she’s seeing them.

he turns so his back is not visible anymore. there’s some scars on his chest, but it’s mostly from scuffles. one or two skirmishes, a well-aimed hex from bella at a practice duel, and the place where lupin had nearly sliced him open. and all the bruises and contusions from tonight, of course. one thing he hadn’t missed about the war was being constantly bruised and achind and in pain, though he’d certainly been that before the war too. if anything, the amount of damage he sustained had dropped dramatically after he took up death eater regalia.

“can i help you minerva?” he sneers.

“i just… wanted to – “ she regains composure quickly. “you lost your temper. i wanted to see if you were okay.”

“perfectly fine, thank you,” he’s over-enunciating, because malfoy’s good whiskey hits different on an empty stomach and nerves, and he hates when his cokeworth accent slips out.

she stares at him like she’s never seen him before. like he hadn’t tried to tell them. any of them. children in the wizarding world did not get saved. that was a lesson, and he’d learned it, right here in hogwarts.

he looks back at her, and dares her to question him. if the truth of what was done to him is to be denied, then he’ll be the one doing the denying, thank you very much.

he remembers malfoy making a joke about his supposed quidditch accident, and how gryffindor has a chance now. “but they still won’t have the top scores in transfiguration newts for the year,” he’d finished arrogantly.

she’d cracked a smile then.

she looks distinctly uncomfortable. if the endless parade of one-night stands he’d been dragging through his floor during his first few years at the post hadn’t been enough… who knew all he needed to ward his privacy was to have it so grossly invaded.

“i’ve had many quidditch accidents over the years,” he tells her tartly. “if that’s all, please leave my quarters now, unless there’s another emergency.”

he’s never played quidditch a day in his life, and they both know it. she leaves.

he tosses the whiskey into the wall, and feels a thrum of satisfaction in his veins when it shatters.

he’s the adult now, and he should be able to save the children, but he can’t. he tells himself just saving one will be enough. just once. not to be a hero, not for gratification, but because there are scars on his soul and body that will never heal.

he writers a letter to lucius. no one had forced him into an unbreakable vow this time.

and lucius, who too, is now an adult, who hadn’t been able to save a scrawny muggle-raised, half-blooded nobody, wishes he could reach back in time. wishes he could undo it all, every single dirty thing that had been done to them, but he can’t. he doesn’t. instead, he shows the letter to a board of governors who know all too well that children in their world do not – cannot be saved.

and when they vote on the removal of remus lupin from his position, it is with no small amount of satisfaction that they remind themselves – almost cheerfully – that neither can adults.