May was a terrible month for a python, and I felt it very well as I sweltered in the Summer heat. Add to it the fumes that came at Spinners End and the smog that covered the sky; I was lucky to be alive.

Potter was still in danger, no matter that he had killed the Dark Lord. His minions survived, and they would be out for vengeance. I knew that Bellatrix might have been insane, but they were saner people than her who were more ruthless still surviving. The younger recruits were even more foolish than the weathered death Eaters. We were hoping to win but we were also prepared to die. Life rates dropped a lot when you were crucioed on a daily basis for breakfast lunch and dinner; and we didnt have horcruxes, now did we? The younger recruits hadnt tasted the bitter brew of life yet, and like Draco Malfoy and his visions of grandeur, they jumped the ship hoping for eternal glory - the fools!

I sucked in a breath in the memory of my godson. Was he alive? Had he been killed for his foolish mistake too? He was only trying to save his father and his own life. Gryffindors had the doctrine of 'dying for the honor since living would be idiotic' well instilled, but my dear Slytherins lived to survive for the other day; that proved to be their folly, our folly, my folly.

Then there were my childhood nemeses: Potter, Black and Lupin. Heroes, but dead. Was there truly a life after death? Lily was my salvation, but she died too. Regulus was a friend who helped me when my classmates bullied me for being a half-blood, and he died fighting for the light too. I laughed as a tear fell from my eye,'Ha! Everyone I loved, everyone I cared for, Everyone who made me who I am- they are all dead? Why the hell am I alive? Why the hell didn't death take me too? What? I am not worth death either? Why the hell do I have to suffer? What did I do to deserve no one at all?"

Lily, those bright green eyes, that wonderful face, those rosy red lips and those curly red hair framing her face with her curls cascading down her shoulders. Oh Lily!

"I will help your son grow up, Lily. I am so sorry I tormented him so much but all he reminded me of was you and James. I resented him for resenting James choosing you over me.

"I am so sorry Lily, I am so sorry for thinking of you as just a trophy and someone who was just always going to be there. I didnt mean to call you a mudblood, but I was afraid of looking weak. I should have known Malfoy and Mulciber and Avery were nothing like friends, but I sought their approval over yours and I deserved everything and more for throwing away your friendship just for a chance to climb the social ladders of Slytherin."

I sobbed as I recalled her crestfallen face as I called her a mudblood. I wasnt just calling her the child of a muggleborn, I was telling her that she would never amount to as much as me and the purebloods - worse than that, I was telling her that I thought Voldemort was right, that muggleborns dirtied our blood and reduced our magic. Oh how wrong I was, oh how wrong I was! Voldemort was a half blood, I was a half blood, Potter was a half blood - and nothing would have happened if it werent for the two most brilliant minds Hogwrats had seen - Lily Evans and know-it-all Granger.

"Harry James Potter, son of Lily and James Potter; I will help you become the greatest sorcerer since Merlin. I am sorry, I am so sorry Potter."

I slithered off to the grate and curled up near the hearth after flicking at the electric switch. I coiled tighter and fell into a deep slumber, hoping that the magical exhaustion wouldnt leave me a squib.

Two days later, I woke up refreshed. I tried to stretch out but all I did was straighten my snake form.

"Oh damn it!" I hissed.

The events of May the second dawned back on me and I hissed furiously again. 'How long have I been asleep? What if Potter's dead? I doubt he would have taken my portrait and had the portkey activated,' I thought.

"Damn it," I hissed again as I tried looking for my core to no avail. 'Am I a squib now?'

'Clear your mind Sev,'I chided myself, cocooning back into my nice warm coil as a cold draft hit me.'Okay, find the heat, find that warmth that calls me back... C'mon Sev.'

Struggling to find any sort of heat as my form fought the impulse to hunt was difficult - in fact, I would have said impossible if my greasy locks didn't frame my face in under a minute of fighting my own DNA counterpart.
"Black, I salute you. How did you manage to change and change back at Azkaban with those dementors around? Give me an answer when I get to the afterlife, if I do. Then again, you were a mangy old mutt, so maybe that has to do with it too. Reptiles being superior creatures and all. Parseltongue does prove snakes are sentient unlike other animals, doesn’t it?"
It was ironic really; I was a snake in the literal sense as well as being a Slytherin, and yet my patronus was something I really liked eating in my Snake form - does and stags are simply delicious and very succulent, I think only rabbits beat them. I wondered whether, had I known how to turn into my animagus form, would I have eaten James Potter when Black played that awful murdering prank? That would have been black humor at its finest, explaining to Dumbledore that they planned to murder me, but I ended up eating them, Dumbledore couldn't have laughed that off - the manipulative old coot.

Dumbledore brought about another can of worms; what sort of headmaster did we have who willingly wished for a student to commit bloody suicide! Raising Potter like a Pig for slaughter; I knew he was senile, but that was just mental! And now Potter could either be dead, have killed Voldemort or he could have been murdered by Voldemort's vicious stooges. Yippee, Hallelujah! God save the imbecilic minds of Gryffindorish foolishness! Knowing Potter, he would have actually gone to die, and while I was somewhat apprehensive of the child dying (Seriously, six years of almost deaths and he miraculously survives, that has gotta be awful Karma) I was still afraid he would actually be dead and Voldemort would kill me all over again and probably more painfully. Allegiance to the wand and what not.

I braced myself and sighed in distress while running a hand through my hair. I lit the fire with my mother's wand which lay on the mantelpiece and sat on the stuffy moth-eaten leather recliner that Father used to sit on with a cigar in hand.

I had to make a plan, and that's what I sat to do.