"Scream more, Mudblood!"
The words tore through the air, jagged and vicious, flung like a knife into the night.
Another scream followed raw, human, terrible.
I didn't look away. I didn't step in. I only watched.
I didn't look away. I didn't step in. I only watched.
That word.I had said it once before years ago, in anger, and it had shattered the only good thing I ever had.
I thought I understood what it meant then.
I didn't. Not until nights like this...
The fields stank of smoke and blood. Firelight danced in the hollow sockets of an old barn, gutted and sagging like the corpse of something once loved. Two bodies lay curled near its edge unseeing eyes and broken limbs, barely human anymore. I couldn't remember if they were alive or not. I had stopped counting.
Evan Rosier laughed behind me that shrill, wheezing snort he did when he got excited. Like a child at a puppet show, except the puppet was a man, and the strings were nerves fried with the Cruciatus Curse.
Mulciber circled the group of Muggles, twirling his wand between his fingers like a street thug with a blade.
And me?
I stood still.
Always still.
My mask itched. Not from the fit I had charmed it to sit flush, nearly invisible but from the heat building underneath. My skin was damp, and I could taste bile in the back of my throat. If that was Shame I couldn't tell anymore. The leather dug against the bridge of my nose, and beneath my robes, my fingers curled so tight against my wand hand they went numb.
The spelllight painted everything red and green, red and green, like some perverse holiday celebration.
Mulciber was crouched beside one of the others. A woman. Pale hair. Her face had long since stopped moving.
Amycus Carrow paced slowly between the bodies, his expression blank. Dead behind the eyes. I hated him most when he looked bored. Because boredom made him dangerous.
I had not cast a single curse. Not tonight. Not the last time either. That was the game I played. The lie I whispered to myself at 3 a.m. while I washed my hands for the fifth time you didn't say the words.
But I watched. I always watched.
And that made me part of it.
One of the Muggles whimpered. A boy.
fifteen at most, maybe younger was still breathing, but barely. Curly hair matted with sweat and ash, lips trembling as he clung to the leg of the man beside him. His father? Probably. A second later, that man was lifted off the ground by Amycus Carrow's lazy flick, hurled against the barn wall with a crack. He slid down like meat.
The boy screamed.
I flinched. Only a little.
Rosier turned to me, mask tilted. "Not gonna have a go, Snape?"
His wand still crackled. His teeth showed.
"You look like you need to let off steam."
I said nothing. That was my trick. Silence is safer than opinion, and faster than apology. I let the quiet hang around me like a second cloak.
The truth?
I didn't want to be here.
Not tonight. Not ever.
But what do you do when the only people who ever wanted you really wanted you also teach you to kill for fun?
You survive.
That's what I told myself.
That's what I believed.
Until I didn't.
Because surviving turns sour when you realize it costs your soul.
And mine was already thin a bruised, shriveled thing barely clinging to what I once believed made me human.
He stepped closer. His wand glowed faintly red. "You never do. You just stand there. Watching. Like you're better than us."
I could hear his grin.
"I'm not better," I said, low. The words rasped out of me like sand.
"Sure you're not," he said, but he was already walking away.
The boy moaned again.
It was the sound that did it not the spells, not the laughter. That sound. Thin, broken. Not even fear in it anymore. Just surrender.
I looked at him. Properly. His eye was swollen shut. His lip split. But his hand clutched something not a weapon. A handkerchief. Embroidered. Blue.
A gift, maybe. Or something to hold onto.
I turned away. I couldn't look any longer. Because if I did…
A scream sliced through the air not his. Another man. Older. One of the others they'd dragged from the cottage.
Firelight surged behind my eyes.
I heard Lily's voice, once. Not a memory a ghost of one.
"Sev, this isn't you."
But she was wrong. It was. This was me. The me I chose...
I don't remember walking home that night.
Maybe I didn't. Maybe I just appeared there, the way nightmares do skipping the distance, skipping the logic. One moment I was staring at a body cooling in the mud; the next, I was standing in my room, the floorboards creaking under my boots.
The air stank of damp stone and potion fumes. My sanctuary, they'd call it my lab, my space, my work.
But it wasn't that anymore. It was just a cell that smelled of rot and memoryes.
There were vials still open on the table, their contents dried into crusted rings. A cauldron sat half-cleaned, smoke ghosting out in weak, gray tendrils. I'd brewed something earlier that day a numbing draught, I think. For nerves, for shaking hands, for nights like this. But I hadn't taken it.
What's the point of dulling something that's already half-dead?
I pulled the mask from my belt and set it on the table.
It clanged hollow, metallic, final.
I watched it for a long time. Its empty eyes stared back. For a second, I thought I saw my reflection inside it but no, just a distortion. A flicker. A trick of the light.
Funny, how even metal learns to lie.
I lit the fire, though it barely took. The room glowed weakly, throwing red across the walls. It looked like the inside of a wound.
Some nights, I wondered if this was hell. Not fire and brimstone nothing that obvious. Just this: living in silence, surrounded by things you've built to keep yourself from remembering what you are.
I tried to work. The routine usually helped weighing powders, whispering measurements, stirring clockwise. Precision had always been my comfort. But my hands wouldn't steady. The pestle clattered against the mortar.
I pressed my palm flat against the table until the tremor stopped.
A drop of potion spilled. It hissed when it hit the wood, smoking faintly. The smell sweet and acrid hit my throat and I almost gagged.
It reminded me of burnt hair. Of the barn.
I closed my eyes. Bad idea.
Behind them, I saw the boy's hand again. The blue handkerchief. His fingers locked around it like faith itself.
I'd seen men die before. Too many. But something about that tiny scrap of color in all that ash it wouldn't leave me.
I hated that it wouldn't leave me.
A knock.
Sharp. Two raps. Then silence.
My heart stopped, then started again slower, heavier.
I drew my wand before I even thought about it.
Another knock.
"Severus," a voice said. Smooth. Mocking. Familiar.
Lucius.
I let out the breath I'd been holding and opened the door. He was standing there, immaculate as ever, not a single strand of hair out of place. He smelled faintly of smoke and wine.
"You missed the celebration," he said, stepping past me without waiting for permission.
I didn't answer. He wasn't looking for one.
His eyes roamed the room the mess, the cauldron, the mask on the table.
He smiled. "Still playing with potions, I see. Some things never change."
"Some things shouldn't," I said quietly.
He turned to me then, amusement curling at the corner of his mouth. "Oh, but they do. You should've seen the Dark Lord tonight. Triumphant. Radiant. He spoke your name, you know."
My stomach twisted. "Did he."
Lucius nodded. "He sees potential in you, Severus. Always has. You're clever. Controlled. Loyal."
He let that last word linger. Like bait.
"I'm useful," I said flatly.
He chuckled. "That too. But don't mistake usefulness for safety."
I said nothing.
Lucius drifted toward the mask, brushing his fingers over it like it was a work of art.
"Do you ever wonder," he said softly, "what you'd be without this?"
"Alive," I said before I could stop myself.
His eyes snapped to mine, and for a heartbeat, the mask slipped. Just a little. I saw something real flicker there surprise, maybe. Or pity.
Then he smiled again, cool and thin.
"Careful, Severus. Words like that sound… rebellious."
He turned toward the door, straightened his cuffs, and paused.
"Tomorrow night," he said. "There's another summons. Don't be late this time."
And then he was gone.
The door clicked shut. The silence returned, thicker than before.
I stared at the empty space he'd left behind. The words he'd spoken sat in my head like stones: loyal, useful, careful.
I hated them.
Mostly because they were true.
I sank into the chair, elbows on my knees, and pressed my hands against my face.
When I pulled them away, they were shaking again.
Outside, the wind had started up, hissing against the windowpanes. It sounded like laughter. Or whispering. Hard to tell anymore.
I looked at the mask again. Still sitting there. Still waiting.
For what, I didn't know.
Maybe for me to put it back on. Maybe for me to stop pretending I wouldn't.
Because that's what it meant to be one of us. You don't quit. You don't question. You just keep wearing the face they gave you, until it's not a mask anymore.
Until it's skin.
That night, I didn't dream. Not really. Just flashes Lily's eyes, the boy's scream, Lucius's smile. The hiss of green light, the smell of fire.
When I woke, my pillow was damp.
Whether from sweat or tears, I couldn't tell.
I didn't check the clock. Didn't need to. I already knew I'd be early.
Because that's what monsters do.
We show up.
We serve.
And we call it purpose.