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How Did We End Up Like This? Musings of a Death Eater
By Jewels
They don't speak of it, they don't dare, but it's there between them, unspoken but clearly understood in the meeting of their eyes. How did we come to this? We who were the best of a generation, one by blood and the other by brains, we should be somewhere better than here, on our knees in front of what was once a man.
They had not been friends at Hogwarts, the five years age difference unbridgeable then but now they are, not friends still, but there is a connection between them, born of a odd mixture of shared regrets, sympathy for the other's wounded pride and intelligence. They both look at those around them, the stupidity of Crabbe and Goyle, the madness of Bella and the Carrows, the sickening obsequiousness of Pettigrew and they try to work out how they came to be included in such company.
Once they were both young and idealistic, one wanting to protect the rights and security of wizards and his own family from the increasing number and sophistication of muggles, the other wanting respect, knowledge and separation from the muggle world where he had known little but poverty and hurt. They had met a man who they at first thought shared their goals, and maybe once he had, but too late they learnt that they had walked themselves blindly into a state of servitude to a mad man. But they were Slytherins, schemers, survivors, they resolved to do what ever they had to do to come out of the experience with a whole skin, to mouth the sickening words required by their 'lord and master' and wait for the man who would be god to fall, as they knew, as they hoped he must.
A sane man would have realized that he had long since passed the limits of what such men would stand and remain loyal, he would have wondered as they did about each other, what plans had been made to gain freedom, they never voiced their questions though. During the years of his absence they had both worked hard to gain knowledge and reputation, they would have been content with that had they not known he would almost certainly return, and would not care or even consider that they were people with lives and plans of their own, that they had actually got closer to achieving what he had originally said his plans were in his absence they ever had when he was there.
The rights of wizards and the increased security of the wizarding world from the muggle one were now a pale afterthought of his quest to kill the child who the prophecy of a drunken charlatan of a witch said could kill him, to kill and persecute any who didn't share his taste for cruelty. As they watched the torture of a wizard for daring to say 'perhaps muggleborns weren't really a threat' the thought was in both their minds: This wasn't what I signed up for.
They both kept up the pretence, even with each other of being the perfect servant, it's enough to foll the rest, even sometimes enough to give each other pause, but they know that they are both more than that. Now as things around them unravel, as they see the stain they are living under plainly mirrored on the other's face they both know the act won't, can't last much longer.
~~*~~*~~
It is only in the aftermath, one Lucius knows he is undeservedly lucky to be alive and free to see, that he realises how much he will miss Severus Snape and how much the world owes to a man no-one truly knew.