Eleven: The Second War Begins

Reader, I know you don't give a shit about a middle-aged man's prurient musings. The real reason you are still reading is to find out if I really murdered Albus Dumbledore. Well, of course I murdered him. Don't be so shocked, gentle Reader. Had you hoped my soul would be cured by years of remorse and the teaching of innocent children? Had you thought I would learn some sort of code of honour from the noble Knights of the Phoenix or that I would emerge reformed and refined from the impeccably moral alembic of Miss Granger's mind? Hardly. This is not a morality play in which the hero triumphs with his newfound principles or his transcendental consolations; here there are no pat simple-minded lessons to take home at the end. I killed him with full knowledge of my actions.

Or perhaps you are one of those readers who seek not a tale of moral instruction but rather one of delight. Perhaps you are aroused by the prospect of violence and starting to drool at the prospect of forthcoming deathly details. You want drama, wand-waving, flashy bangs, special effects, the usual devices of a story. But this is neither a Muggle motion picture nor a Skeeter tell-all, and I shall give you no such pleasure.

In any case, the sum of my actions and not any subsequent words shall speak for themselves. I am certain that nothing I could say would change your interpretation anyway; you have already drawn your own portrait of me, sentenced me in your mind as a terrorist (or a war criminal, Nazi, brute, brigand, barbarian, or whatever term is fashionable at the moment). But for Hermione's understanding I must chronicle several details from the summer of 1996:

O.W.L.s came and went, as did the fiasco I had been seeking to avoid, in which Potter's brave delirium resulted in the sacrifice of his godfather, Sirius Black, and nearly all of his friends as well. Miss Granger's recovery alone required my brewing – with no assistance, mind you – of ten different potions, which I was obliged to deliver myself to the Hogwarts hospital wing.

The wing itself was quiet; several members of Potter's militia slept in its recovery beds. The telltale unruly rouleaux were spread over the third pillow on the room's eastern side. After some hesitation I approached her sleeping form and set the potions upon the nightstand adjacent, moving aside the morning's paper and its flaccid headline:

"HE WHO MUST NOT BE NAMED RETURNS"

She lay on her side, turned away from me and covered by a white hospital sheet. The regular rise and fall of her shoulders suggested deep sleep. I wondered if she might still be in pain or with fever, but I could not see her face. She would never know if I leaned over just to examine –

"Tsssk," whispered Madam Pomfrey, the school matron. (How had she crept up on me?) "You mustn't wake her. She had a very hard time falling asleep."

I retreated stiffly to the doorway and gestured toward the potions on the bedstand. She bustled over to pick them up.

"Severus, really, thank you. This is most generous . . . You needn't have gone through the trouble; I could have ordered them in the usual manner," said Pomfrey, continuing quickly: "But I'm sure you're right – we would not want to take chances with inferior brews."

"I must explain the exact dosage to her. Each one is very precise."

"Oh no, you know I never allow students to dose themselves. I'll be handling the entire schedule. And I am quite familiar with these potions; I've been doing this a few years."

I felt a scowl begin to form. She added, "You're welcome to come back and visit when she's awake. If you'd like, I can let you know –"

"That won't be necessary," I said and turned to go before any further insinuations could be made.

Soon afterwards, I received a note from Miss Granger, announcing as if I did not already know that she was still in the hospital wing and impossibly bored. I still have the letter, which also included much fretting about O.W.L. results and her failure to keep Potter out of danger, as well as some nonsense about rethinking the merits of Divination now that she knew of the Department of Mysteries' Hall of Prophecy.

I could hardly respond to such a letter. Post was a particularly dangerous form of communication these days. More and more post-owls were intercepted by Death Eaters and the Ministry alike. Written correspondence could easily be used by either faction as evidence of disloyalty¹. I could take no chances, even on intra-Hogwarts post. I replied:

Do not write me. Please destroy my previous letter and any other written correspondence. I assure you I have already destroyed yours.

I did not hear from her again, a fact upon which I had little occasion to dwell given the demands of my occupation, which had multiplied now that the Ministry had effected the magical transfiguration from a universe in which the Dark Lord was "no longer amongst us" to one in which he was now powerful enough to control the Ministry's Dementors. This remarkable feat was soon followed by a change in government (to one equally reactionary and of only slightly less dubious merit) and the conjuring out of thin air a Ministry Plan of counterattack, complete with publicity jingles on the wireless and a Name – "Operation Strong Wand" – that revealed more than I cared to know about the particular insecurities of our new Minister for Magic. This act of political theatre seemed to achieve its immediate aim: to calm the panic-struck citizenry, which would have preferred to continue its ignorant slumber and was now desperate to embrace the collective fiction that something was being done about "The Situation" (as it came to be referred in popular parlance)². Dodgy sorts were plucked off the streets and sent to Azkaban with great show. Aurors conducted 'random' searches in public. (I was myself ignominiously groped on three different occasions.) Wizards appeased their wives with the purchase of Honest Willy's Wonder Wands and Weasleys' Shield Hats. In any case, it seemed to be mostly Muggles and political sorts who were threatened; so long as only one or two disappeared here and there, events could be rationalised, complacency maintained, thinking avoided. Things settled into a brittle, oppressive peace.

As it was, the Ministry's actions, or lack thereof, had no bearing on the Dark Lord's rise to power. Instead the tide of the war, Albus's fate and my own, came to turn on nothing more than a small golden ring.

I did not know, nor do I now, if the fatal curse the ring dealt to Albus Dumbledore was his reckless mistake or simply part of his plan. That night, I found him unconscious, near death; it was a miracle I did not lose him then. When he finally came to and asked for his prognosis, I could only hazard a guess that he might still have a year of life left. I tried to extract from him more details on the curse and the ring, but he would say only that he had donned the ring in error, that he had been somehow tempted to do so.

When he turned the conversation to one of my Slytherin students, Draco Malfoy, I understood even less. I thought it incomprehensible that Albus could speak so, as if he were not dying and we were merely continuing a previous conversation. In fact, we were, for only the previous night we had discussed at length Malfoy's knotty predicament. You see, in a moment of desperation the boy had recently pledged before the Dark Lord his commitment to murder the Headmaster – an essentially impossible task that would likely cost him his life when he failed³. When Albus offered the casual opinion that his own death would make things much easier for Malfoy, I was still in a fog, struggling to navigate what exactly was happening and what his words were implying, when his next order came:

"You must kill me."

The words took a long time to reach me; they came slowly at me as if through a tunnel. My own voice deserted me. For an unknown quantity of time, I sat stricken. The air condensed till I felt I could not breathe. Vision thickened with pulse; behind the eye pressed a hard, burning weight, beneath the ribs a sickly dull ache. On his desk lay the mysterious ring – I had never seen it before – and the sword of Gryffindor. Behind it loomed the split, blackened fingernails, charred knobs and knuckles, the pulseless remains of what had once been tissue and blood. The smell of molten tallow and burnt flesh hung in the air; I shut my nostrils, a reflexive response conditioned by years of experience. From behind me came a horrible irregular clicking sound, like a mad clock's second hand gone awry. Nothing, nothing made sense.

I heard my own voice say, "Would you like me to do it now? Or would you like a few moments to compose an epitaph?"

He smiled as if I were joking, as if death were but a trifling matter. In the lightest of tones, he presented his argument – that the boy must be saved from the impossible choice he now faced – and slowly reason began to dawn on me: Albus had plotted out this entire conversation beforehand. He had already made up his mind: I was to take Draco's place as his murderer. If the boy was to live, there could be no other choice.

Perhaps he mistook my silence for disobedience, for I felt then his probe upon my mind, and I had no will left to Occlude. I was hearing anew in my mind those other terrible words from so long ago. ("She chose death," he had said, and a mort-cry had sounded within me as all hope was ripped from my life.) I was seeing the long chain of past and future events that bound me to this, the progression from the moment I had spoken aloud the prophecy's words to their necessary, foregone conclusion: Albus's death by my hand and the subsequent fall of Hogwarts and the Ministry. I would be known finally as a Death Eater, a traitor. I would be alone.

Finally, I nodded.

"Thank you, Severus . . . I am sorry to tell you like this. I did not realise you would be so upset."

"You thought I'd be tickled."

"Really there is no cause for sadness –"

"Sadness?"

"I have practically outlived my usefulness here, after all. When the hour arrives, I shall be ready. And then you shall be free of me and all the tiresome chores I have been imposing on you." The ill-bred bird screeched on its perch; a piece of splintered bone fell from its grasp to the floor. There was a hollow clatter. "You too, Fawkes. You shall both make your own way. Have you not been longing for freedom of late?"

I knelt beside him to examine the limb. The portraits continued to watch us in absolute silence. "Why did you put on that ring?" I repeated, but he changed the subject again.

"Severus, I must ask you a question. I want you to answer me truthfully." His eyes were upon me. Sweat beaded his nose. His still-veined hand was on my arm. I waited miserably.

"What would you give to see her again?"

Sharp and quick to the sternum, the words stung. He had spoken no name, but I knew he meant Lily.

"What does it matter? It is impossible."

"But if it were offered somehow . . ."

"You know I would give anything," my constricted voice said.

He seemed to wither a bit. I tried to say more, but words would not come; they curdled and caught in my throat. I waited, found a hard edge to my thoughts, tried again: "Must we discuss this now? As much I enjoy your little heart-to-hearts, I've a murder to plan."

He leaned back and blinked at the domed ceiling. "Remember, your first priority is Draco. He needs you. Your duty is now not only to Lily Potter's son, but to all the students of Hogwarts."

"I am aware of my duties. I have given you my word; leave my reasons alone."

He closed his eyes, murmuring to himself unintelligibly: "I once thought we were so different, you and I. What did I know? I was a fool; I was wrong; we are too much alike." And with this he fell into sleep and abandoned me to my thoughts.

* * *

Let no one claim that I did not try to forestall Albus Dumbledore's death. In those first hours and days after his injury, I thought of nothing else. I imagined that the curse's power might still be thwarted somehow, or at least held at bay for a time, but I needed more details on the ring, which Albus inexplicably refused to supply. I hunted for relevant textual reference to ringlore, but there were thousands of myths and unverifiable histories of cursed rings, and my efforts were quickly overwhelmed by the mire of data. In desperate frustration, I even carried him off to St Mungo's, but most of the so-called Healers hardly knew a thing about Dark curses and could not even muster a conjecture. Even Smethwyck was of no help. (You see, this is what happens when students are trained to ignore the Dark Arts.) It was a shame Karkaroff was dead by this time.

Through it all, I had the distinct impression that the old wizard was humouring me, biding his time till I let him alone and he could resume his own secretive doings in peace. By the time word reached me of Narcissa Malfoy's plan to beg my help for her son, the curse I had attempted to trap in the Headmaster's hand had already begun to escape. I knew (how I longed to forget!) that it was only a matter of time. So it came to the midsummer date on which I found myself at my old home in Spinner's End, looking into a mother's weeping eyes and pledging an Unbreakable Vow to commit murder in place of her son.

Still I searched for an answer, anything that might obviate the crime of ultima ratio, even now that saving the Headmaster's life would require forfeiting my own. If only I had been a more powerful wizard, had studied more on cursed objects, or been able to force my way into Albus's mind and obtain the curse's details, I might have discovered the means to save his life. Why could he not tell me more? What was the temptation he had alluded to? On this question, he claimed he must have spoken in error, that he hardly remembered a thing from that night. His secrecy was itself a clue: It suggested the cursed ring was somehow related to the Dark Lord. But how? Why had he broken it with the sword? Had the Dark Lord rigged some sort of trap for him? It was as if he had set before me a sort of half-hidden cipher that I was forbidden to crack.

I myself was cracking instead. You might think that a man with such precarious existence under two masters, who now held on his shoulders the charge to assassinate the wizarding world's most beloved figure, would have much weightier matters in mind than a woman. But through the uncertain mixture of secrets and lies came the thoughts of Miss Granger, faint and whispering. They settled and stuck like green seeds upon the ground. I tried to brush them off, tried to remain dispassionate and pressed firmly to the cold stone of duty. But what mind could stand against such agitations as I faced? What mind would not bend, even break?

By day at least, this dilemma could be kept safely at bay. By day, Severus Snape drank toasts to the Dark Lord and casually made Unbreakable Vows. He could bear the foreknowledge of his coming trials, the lingering smell of scorched flesh and the sound of the mortal knob turning. But at night, battered and weakened, besieged from so many directions, I could not master my thoughts; my disloyal mind refused to obey my command. Indeed, the more I tried to bury Miss Granger beneath the convoluted stratagems of war, the more they came to resemble her, as if all were entangled in the same illogical mystery. I found myself idly recalling her Occlumency lessons, retracing the relief of her memories for some sort of insight. How much did she know of the prophecy, of my past? Had Potter told her of Lily by now? What was her connection to Krum? The questions swarmed through me.

Perhaps I was finally feeling the belated symptoms of long-suffered privations; perhaps it was due to the echoes of death all around me, or simply the beginning of madness. But at last I could no longer deny her pernicious effect on my flesh. In the previous months, the ritual invocation of Lily at the right moments, or at times the imagining of some nameless, faceless object, had satisfied me that all physical fantasies had stayed safely distant from my student. But now her image pursued me, waking me, taunting me with a merciless vengeance, and I finally succumbed to what I was certain constituted nothing but a temporary affliction.

I do not contest that such pollutive thoughts regarding a student were risky and ethically questionable at best. But I ask the reader to grant me this one special exception during a time of great need for refuge from the hard weight of servitude. Even a loathsome, despicable man is not made of stone, you know, and it was not as if the behaviour itself were abnormal. It was only under the cover of darkness, in the most private and solitary (though admittedly regular) manner, that I availed myself of this intimate comfort. Besides, what wizard has not indulged in mental play with the forbidden, the untouchable? Could not my private actions be likened to the popular pastime of indulgence in smutty⁴ picture books, a practice so common that I am certain even you, righteous Reader, have partaken of it once in a while?

In my line of work one could hardly afford the luxury of a tender conscience. And, I told myself, it was hardly Miss Granger herself that so caught my involuntary fancy, not her person, with her naive hauteur and her Muggle pedigree; it was merely an image, a corporeal echo of Lily's eternal existence within me, a somatic artefact of too many hours spent with the girl. Nothing but a safely abstracted composite, a perfectly serviceable object for harmless, mechanical flight of fancy.

So the summer stole away in hours of futile fixation upon Dark curses, enigmatic rings, and concupiscent reflection. Unable to find suitable outlet for action, my restless malaise was punctuated only by the grim satisfaction of setting onerous tasks for my house-elf⁵ and the slight buoy of anticipation that Miss Granger would soon once again be sitting in my classroom. In fact, for once I was not dreading the students' return. As a Pyrrhic consolation, Albus had finally allowed me the Defence Against the Dark Arts post for this year, reckoning, I suppose, that my forthcoming fugitive flight would be sufficient to satisfy the conditions of the curse on the position and that any incidental risk would hardly matter to a Death Eater spy. (How very kind of him.) At the least, in the time I had left I could do my best to instil in my students some proper respect for the Dark Arts – perhaps even to Granger. Thus with my course set clearly before me, I set to preparing and waiting.

¹ Even you, Reader, may be considered subversive simply for reading this.

² Let us not fool ourselves: it wasn't really the entire citizenry that was panicking, was it? How do you suppose the Dark Lord rose so quickly to power? It was hardly on his personal charm. The Ministry apologists preferred to believe that Normal, Nice People did not follow Dark Lords. But as Potter's fandom expanded, so too did his enemies' base. Death Eater support seethed below the politically correct public speeches and the haberdasheries sold in the papers. One could never capture a sense of the times simply by examining the Prophet. No, if we wish a more complete, truthful picture of public sentiment, we must turn to writings of a more tenebrous hue. Take the following leaflet in wide circulation at this time, spread by anonymous mass owl-dropping campaigns: (The origin and date of writing are unknown, but it was virtually identical to one I recall from the 70s.)

The Secret Truth About Muggle-borns the Ministry Doesn't Want You to Hear

Myth: Muggle-borns have the same magical abilities as pure-bloods.

Fact: Schools have brainwashed wizards from birth to believe this myth. But studies by Dr. Eugene B. Sangreal prove beyond any doubt that Muggle-born magic is degenerate. "The portion of the brain responsible for magic is shrunken and shriveled in Muggle-borns," he concludes after an examination of 66 Muggle-born heads from around the world. "It is physically impossible for them to do magic equal to pure-bloods." When Muggle-borns interbreed with pure-bloods, the wizarding bloodstream is polluted and the magical race deteriorates.

Muggles and Muggle-borns do not have the magical ability to responsibly govern. We have seen the catastrophic results time and time again. For there own protection, they must not be allowed to amass too much power.

Myth: Muggle-borns are content with their place in wizarding society.

Fact: Muggle-borns will never be content with their place until they have wiped out pure-bloods and done away with the Statute of Secrecy. Muggles breed like rabbits. They and their Muggle-born spawn threaten to overrun us by sheer numbers. Albus Dumbledore, Muggle supremacist, writes in the Muggle Memoranda, "Pure-bloods are only an insignificant minority. The Muggle population is so much larger, and by extension their combined happiness or suffering so much greater than wizards, that their welfare must take precedence." Muggle-borns now hold sway over the Ministry, the banks, and the Wizengamot. Do not be fooled by their lies. Would you give up your wand to the Muggles? Arm yourselves now! The wizarding world is in peril!

Myth: The wizarding world can change without revolution.

Fact: The Ministry of Magic is rotting from inside out. It is too far entrenched to be undone by incremental change. Complete, swift regime change is the only option. Fortunately, there is an alternative. The Death Eaters are wizardkind's new creators. They are creating a new political order from the ground up, and active resistance is a necessary phase. The Ministry poisons the minds of wizards and witches into thinking that Death Eaters are evil. But Death Eater tactics are no more violent than those of Albus Dumbledore. He and his Muggle cult of terrorists, the Order of the Phoenix, are now secretly killing Muggles for the sole purpose of blaming Death Eaters. They justify this action by insisting that the sacrifice of a few is necessary for the good of the rest.

If you are appalled, know this: You do not stand alone. Blood consciousness is rising again in the wizarding world. In a world where only the strongest survive, we must not be afraid to use our power. You can help support the cause by distributing copies of this leaflet and word of underground meet-ups, and by supporting non-Muggle-affiliated businesses and organisations. Together, united for purity, we can root out corruption and restore the foundation of the wizarding world: the pure-blood family.

³ Miss Granger is by now well aware of the circumstance; I need not explain all the details here.

⁴ I should not even use this word. Smuts are perfectly respectable members of the magical community and extremely useful in vanishing-ink potions.

⁵ For example, as she could pop in and out of Hogwarts so much more easily than I, I assigned her sentry duty at Spinner's End, where she dutifully kept watch over Wormtail, the filthy creature whom the Dark Lord had 'gifted' me as a 'personal assistant' and who seemed always to be rifling through my belongings. Needless to say, he was miserably failing to uncover any evidence that could be used against me and sadly was forced to quit after a series of unfortunate and mysterious ailments that could only be blamed on the dusty environs of a Muggle home.

Author's Notes:

* "You must kill me" and "Would you like..." are direct quotes from Deathly Hallows. "He Who Must Not Be Named Returns" is a real headline from OOTP.

* Thanks as always to Countrymouse for her excellent help.