The slow clicking of dragon hide boots echoes in the hallways. Students risk glances and freeze in terror, scampering out of the way like scared animals.
Severus sneers down at them, looking as evil and cruel as he can manage. Internally, he wants to beg them, "run. Run away and never come back. Take your friends, take your families, and hide."
Instead he keeps walking, steady and calm, with a scowl on his face. He manages to keep the Carrows from torturing too many students by giving them meaningless tasks. Perhaps the Death Eaters know the orders she meaningless, as they glare at him and mudblood rolls from their lips, yet they know better than to disobey him.
He's the Dark Lord's most trusted, after all.
Severus snarls at a child to get to bed before curfew, and they glare defiantly at him. "Please, please," he wants to plead, "hide. Don't get hurt, let me save you."
He grabs the boy by the scruff and gives him a harsh shove. Or, at least, it appears harsh. In reality, its only enough to knock the child off balance and make it seem like he was hit. Thankfully, the child loses all his bravery, eyes wide with terror. He dashes away quickly, desperate to get to bed and escape his cruel headmaster.
Severus watches him go and continues his trek.
The walk is long and hard to tolerate. He turns a corner and hears screaming. He prays to gods he doesn’t believe in that the victim survives the night. Begs to the heavens above, as people used to do in his catholic church, pleading silently to a cruel and unloving god for mercy.
He remembers the services on Sundays. Women in long dresses and sometimes, in the summer, a head bonnet to shield their hair. His mother by his side, bruises around her eyes or wrists, or whatever Father had taken his anger out on the night before. She would whisper soft things to him, while Father’s head was bowed, the only time he was ever silent. She’d tell Severus, “Breathe, be silent. Pray to Deivos, ask him for his Mercy.”
“He is our deity, Sev,” Eileen would whisper in her lowest voice, looking like any mother instructing their child how to pray, “The Prince line has always worshipped Deivos. It's our ancestry, he gives blessings on our magic.”
Severus no longer believed in Deivos. He no longer believes in the Christian god, or any other deity. Yet, he finds himself kneeling before an altar, hidden in his office. He makes a sacrifice and prays, kneeling himself in supplication to whatever god or goddess may listen.
He crushes purple hyacinth and black eyed susan flowers, and the bud of a willow flower, burning the sacrifices in his brass bowl. And he weeps, silent and controlled, barely a shake leaving him despite the tears rolling over his face. He weeps for the loss of his students, his fellow professors, and everyone else doomed in this war. Then he stands up again and pretends he’s never cried in his life, scowls at his own reflection and resists the urge to slit his own throat.
“Severus, my boy,”
Severus grits his teeth as the portrait speaks, for even in death Dumbledore could not allow him a moment's peace or grief. He keeps his back to the painted face of his former colleague, his second, true master.
“Albus, I haven’t time or energy for your platitudes,” He snaps, harsh and angry, no longer pleading for the affection he would never receive from Albus. Albus was dead, and Severus planned to be soon. He would die with a pleasant memory of only one person he truly loved, and the awful memories of leading her son to the grave.
“You promised, Severus. You cannot back out now. You cannot give up, we must win this war,” Dumbledore continues anyway, as if he has any idea of how Severus feels.
The current Headmaster snarls and hurls a glass tumbler against the wall directly beside Albus’s portrait. If a portrait could look condescending, that would properly describe the look painted on Albus’s face.
“I don’t plan on backing out. I will plant the sword, I will lead Harry to his grave, and I will not be there to watch him die.” Severus growls, fists clenched and eyes dark with rage.
“But until then, I will listen to my students beg and scream for mercy as they are tortured. CHILDREN, as young as eleven years old! Tortured for the sick amusement of sadistic men and women.” The sallow man is getting angrier every second, voice shaking with rage fuelled grief. With one strong, uncontrolled burst of magic, everything flies from the desk. Glass breaks and shatters against the floor, ink spills along the stone, trickling through the cracks.
“I will watch as they cry and stare at nothing, silent. I will continue to slip potions into their foods. Nutrients, Wiggenweld, and any fucking protection I can find them. Then I will hope and pray that these children I have helped raise will survive to see their eighteenth birthday.”
Severus turns his back on the portrait again, feeling extraordinarily sick. He wants to scream again. He wants to fall to his knees in front of Albus and beg as he did years before, plead with the man to save them.
But he won’t. Albus can’t save anyone, he never could. He would play the game, but in the end, he would lose.
Severus turns the portrait around and ignores the protests of his former Master. For a moment, only one, he considers the poisons in his locked chest. Slow ones, that would torture him like he deserved. His hand hovers over the lock, mind screaming for him to do it. But that was not fair.
If his students could live through this, he would too. He would continue to protect them, and keep them alive. When the war came, he would hide as many as he could. The Whomping willow might be able to hold some of them, as well as the various hiding places among the school itself.
He would save them.