The Price of Atonement by Eihwaz Ehwaz

…James Potter looked up to address the gathered crowds. "Let all those who have a grievance come forward and present themselves before the judge."

The crowd of spirits erupted into chaos, shouting their accusations and pushing forward to make themselves heard over the voices of their fellows.

"SILENCE!" bellowed James Potter, his voice magically amplified to a level that caused Snape to cringe. The decibel level dropped as some of the shades complied, but others continued to yell and shove and ignore all pleas for order.

As the cacophony continued, Snape saw Potter's eyes narrow dangerously until, after about a minute had elapsed, he raised his hands and a rush of magic swept over the crowd followed by a silence so profound that Snape felt the need to shake his head as if that might clear whatever was blocking his ears.

"Much better," Potter commented in a tone of false sweetness that Umbridge could only hope to emulate. "Now that we are all paying attention…it seems that the circle caster specified a trial by the scales," and Potter indicated a set of brass scales as tall as Hagrid that had appeared to Snape's left.

"As judge, I can determine when you may place your grievance on the scales, but I cannot deny you the right to do so. However, be aware that the scales judge guilt differently than you might, and they cannot be reasoned with. If the wrong done against you is counted by the scales as an act of good, there is no recourse."

There was some shifting at this, and several spirits whose voices were still silenced by the spell Potter had cast were moving their mouths in soundless protest.

Now Potter turned to Snape, "Once we begin, you will be allowed to speak after each presentation to justify or explain your actions, but no other interruptions will be permitted. Do you have any questions before I hear the first accuser?"

What good would curiosity do him? The trial would be held, his many misdeeds piled on the scales, and he would have to face judgement. Well-deserved judgement, he knew. Still, there was one thing he wished to know. The traditional scales of justice had two pans; if one pan was to hold all his misdeeds, what would the other hold? "What is used as counterbalance on the scales?"

Potter actually smiled at that. "Ah. Silly of me to leave that out. That pan is for the acts of good you have done throughout your life."

There was no way the balance of his life would be good.

"Anything else?"

Snape shook his head.

"Very well, then let us begin. You in the Hogwarts robes," Potter indicated a shy looking young woman standing toward the back of the crowd and apparently studying the floor, "you first."

The child squeaked and nearly fell over, and a spark of recognition flared in Snape's mind. Julius Worsfold, a Ravenclaw whom he had taught for three, no four years. Then one year he had not returned. What had happened to the child? Had he even bothered to inquire? He rather doubted it. Snape had his Slytherins to manage and paid little attention to the other children. After all, it wasn't entirely unheard of for a family to move or for a student to be transferred to another wizarding school.

"I- I- I didn't…" The boy trailed off, taking a deep breath. "I didn't mean to come. I saw what they did to him before you got here and I don't want to do that!" he said.

"That's okay. The ritual brought you here for a reason, but you don't need to approach the scales if you don't want to."

"Can I…can I just talk to him a bit?" the boy asked.

"Of course."

Snape suppressed a grimace. He remembered the young Mr. Worsfold as a hard-working and articulate student who wrote excellent essays and had absolutely no talent for actual brewing. Snape had not been kind to the boy, frustrated as he was by the disconnect the child exhibited between his near-perfect theoretical understanding and his inability to follow the step-by-step directions to brew a simple potion. Torture might be preferable to a conversation with him now.

Worsfold met Snape's eyes for a second before dropping his gaze to the floor again. After a lengthy pause, he seemed to have gathered enough courage and looked back up to say in a shaking voice, "You are a bully. For some reason you were given authority over children and you abused it."

It was hardly a revelation.

"Well?" Worsfold asked when Snape did not immediately reply. "What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Very little," Snape admitted. "You have said nothing untrue."

"Why?" and that word was laden with enough pain that Snape felt a twinge of shame.

"I…" Snape was quite practiced in deception and had no qualms about lying if it meant preserving his life, however he loathed excuses. He did not accept them from his students and he would not stoop to that level himself. Given that his demise tonight was a certainty, he saw no reason to try to justify himself to his former student. "I was the victim of bullying at school, and I cannot imagine many explanations that would soothe the hurt of it. I will not offer you false words here. I have little tolerance for incompetence, especially incompetence that puts others in danger, such as your sloppy brewing did on a regular basis. I was harsh on you because I could not fathom how someone as intelligent as you were could be so bad at following instructions."

Worsfold snorted. "You were right, that doesn't make me feel better at all. Yet you have come here to ask for atonement. How would you atone for your wrong? Will you promise to cease your bullying and help your students instead?"

Snape's eyes narrowed. "You assume I will be alive to do so."

"And why not? I'm not going to demand your death; you did nothing to me bad enough to deserve that. I would like to see you be a little nicer to your students, though."

Could he? With the Dark Lord gathering his followers and working his plans and with the very students Snape sought to protect spying on him (and each other) to curry favor with their maniacal master any change in behavior would be reported. With Bellatrix whispering in the Dark Lord's ear, he could not risk any actions that would be judged suspicious.

"Even if you assume that I will survive tonight, your request is both reasonable and impossible at this time," Snape answered at last.

Worsfold humphed. "Well, I still won't call for your blood. You've suffered enough this night." With that the boy turned to the great scales. "I waive all claims against this man," he said and touched his right hand to the base of the scale. The pans remained level as the boy faded from view.

Another spirit immediately took his place.

This one, a witch who declared her name to be Helena Boyd and whom Snape did not recognize, was covered in scars and was less disposed to be forgiving. She had died in a fire that had been magically enhanced by a potion Snape had invented to be nearly impossible to put out. "He should suffer as I did!" she insisted when James Potter pointed out that Snape himself had not done her any harm.

"What of the ones who threw the potion? Don't you think they bear the majority of the guilt? If Snape had never invented that potion do you really think you would be alive today?"

"There's plenty of guilt to go around," Boyd insisted.

They argued further but it seemed to Snape that Potter made little impression on her. It took several long minutes for Potter to convince the woman to let Snape speak in his own defense. As if there could be a defense for that particular potion. It, like Sectumsempra had no redeeming value. Still, she turned to him arms akimbo, waiting with an air of one determined to be displeased.

"I wish I had never developed that potion," he admitted.

Boyd snorted. "That's it?"

Snape shook his head, absently noting as he did so that he was beginning to feel the loss of blood from the gashes on his forearms. "What else is there to say?"

"What else? Well, let's start with the obvious question. The same one that boy just asked. Why did you do it?"

It was unlikely that she would like the truth, and it certainly would not buy him any favor from the others watching, but they deserved to know. He began his explanation, wondering as he spoke if there wasn't some compulsion charm woven into the ritual. Snape had never spoken so openly about his motives to anyone, not even to Dumbledore.

"I was an angry young man searching for a way to gain respect and influence as I felt both had been denied me my entire life. I joined the Dark Lord's followers because I thought that was the way to achieve my goals. In the beginning, I invented potions to prove my worth. Did I wish harm on you specifically? No. But I knew the purposes to which the potions would be put and I made them anyway. I believed myself to be on the right side of the war, fighting to liberate wizards from the chains that bound us into hiding from muggles despite our obvious superiority. The Dark Lord assured us that the casualties were a regrettable but necessary evil and that once in power things would be so much better.

"After some time, I began to have doubts, but one could not just leave the service of the Dark Lord. I continued inventing potions then in the hopes that by gaining his favor, my mistake would turn out not to be a mistake after all. Perhaps things were better for those he trusted, I thought. Besides, the Dark Lord and the other Death Eaters scarcely needed potions to kill or maim or harm. If they already had fifty ways to kill someone, what did it really matter if I handed them one or two more?"

"What. Did. It. Really. Matter?" Boyd repeated, anger dripping off every word. "You're pathetic, you know that! First you tell me that you wish you hadn't created the potion and then you say that it doesn't matter. How nice to know my life doesn't really matter to you. I would have died anyway, so you don't need to feel guilty, is that it."

"I regret the part I had in your death," Snape reiterated, "but once the Dark Lord decided to kill someone, the ultimate outcome was merely a matter of time."

Boyd spat in disgust—a gesture that was rendered much less impressive due to the fact that the phantasmic saliva vanished the instant it passed her lips—and took her turn to face the scales. "I demand the petitioner pay for the role he had in my painful death."

Snape closed his eyes as she put her hand on the scale only to snap them open again as she screamed, "No!"

The pans had moved, but not nearly as much as Snape had feared.

Boyd was still yelling. "That can't be all! He must pay for ha—" and she, too faded from sight. To Snape's surprise, so did several others.

"What?"

"I think that was everyone whose only grievance was that you invented that potion. You can hardly be held guilty for a single act a dozen times," Potter reasoned. Snape hoped he was correct.

The parade of spirits continued on. In the first war Snape had not been on the front lines. He had skulked around pubs and spied, invented spells, and brewed potions at the request of those who were more inclined to the more up-close and personal kinds of violence. The guilt for each potion and spell might not be much, but they added up. Too, as the procession continued there were more people like Helena Boyd than like Julius Worsfold. Privately, though, Snape thought it wouldn't matter in the end. The bleeding from the wounds on his arms had slowed but it had not stopped; given the number of people still in the queue the odds were high that he would bleed out before a decision was reached.

The next person Snape remembered. Of course he remembered her, he had killed her less than a month ago. Until this woman, a woman whose name he had never learned, all of the people who had confronted him had either done so over bullying as a teacher or indirect harm from his potions or spells he had created in the first war.

She looked at him with disgust, something for which Snape did not blame her. "I have nothing to say to you. You can give me no excuse that I would care to hear." With that she turned and placed her hands on the scales…which shifted toward the good.

"No. That's not right!" She turned to James Potter. "What the hell just happened?"

Potter looked as gobsmacked as the woman, who was even now fading from sight, and turned to Snape in confusion.

"Avery had…plans for her," Snape said, letting his tone imply the nature of those plans. "I—" he stopped and took a breath to steady the shaking in his voice. The blood loss was affecting him, it had to be, there could be no other reason why he had so little control of his emotions right now. "I could not save her any other way than by sparing her," he shifted his gaze to where the astonished woman had been standing, "the pain and the days of torture that would have followed." She had been spared, but Snape had not, and he shuddered somewhat in remembrance. Avery had been furious at Snape's carelessness with the prisoner, and with the Dark Lord's permission had subjected Snape to several curses.

"Damn," Potter said, with a gusty sigh.

"Indeed. And I cannot even do that much most of the time without drawing suspicion upon myself."

Potter shook his head. "I can't even imagine."

Snape looked at the next spirit and shook his head, trying to clear the double vision. It didn't work. The spirit still had a fuzzy outline. He looked like a teen, but also like a young man in his early thirties. It was making Snape's head throb. Or perhaps that was the blood loss again.

Then he looked into the spirit's eyes. They were brown and nothing noteworthy until he saw, like the flashes of lightning deep within a cloud, a blaze of red. And then he remembered where he had seen the teen's face before. It was in a memory that Dumbledore had shared with him several years ago.

Perhaps he wouldn't die from his wounds after all.