He doesn't know how long he cries for. It could have been minutes, hours, even days. Time had fallen away, a meaningless contrivance to the man hunched amidst the rubble his entire world has been reduced to.

'Lily. Oh sweet Lily.'

The body is cold and broken and lifeless in his arms, but he clutches her so fiercely to his chest that she is perhaps now the only tether he has to reality.

How could it have come to this? How could he have failed her so spectacularly? Self-condemnation seeps like acid into his every thought, the insidious green glow bathing the nursery further proof of his untenable guilt.

Severus Snape killed the only woman he ever loved.

He knew it the moment he staggered into Godric's Hollow; knew the moment he spotted the Dark Mark seething in the sky the price his sins had wrought. He may not have said the words, may not have cast the Unforgivable, but he did set them all on this collision course to damnation the night he relayed Voldemort the prophecy.

'The prophecy...'

With a hollow sort of awareness, Severus registers that while his wails of grief have petered off, the only other living occupant in the room's have not. He looks with clouded eyes to the crib off to his right.

To Harry.

'That was his name, right?'

Harry Potter, son of Lily and spawn of James, his best friend and most hated enemy all rolled into one.

Harry Potter, the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord.

Harry Potter, who - for all intents and purposes - appears to have done just that.

It seems incredible - 'absolutely ludicrous,' Severus wants to scoff - to think that a mere child could have brought down the most powerful dark wizard of the age. Yet here he is, the "Chosen One": wearing nothing but a nightie as he raises hell behind a prison of charred wooden bars. Severus can see the curse scar now - the strange lightning mark imprinted onto Harry's forehead, evidence that he was touched by dark magic. It is jagged and red and looks very raw. Severus watches, sickened, as a bead of blood bubbles then bursts, trickling grotesquely out the open wound. The child doesn't seem to notice. His chubby little arms are reaching through the slits, hands grasping, fists opening and closing and opening once more. The abject desperation is discernible even on his very puerile features.

Harry wants his mother, he seeks to capture her attention, but his mother will never respond to his summons again.

The shudder that races through Severus is violent. Why does this boy live? Why does he draw breath, while Lily does not?

The lanky young Slytherin moans, burying his crooked nose in Lily's soft hair. He is hardly aware that he has begun rocking again, lips moving with soundless pleas. Hardly aware that Harry has at last transitioned from sobs to snuffles, exhaustion taking its toll. Hardly aware of the imminent and precipitous danger they find themselves in -

Until three loud cracks of Apparition resound in the distance.

'No.'

Severus snaps alert. His heart decides to take up residence somewhere in the vicinity of his throat.

'Oh no no no no.'

He doesn't even have to look, he knows what lurks beyond the window, but he goes anyway. He lays Lily back down to her final resting place with all the reverence of a priest to his deity, then hurries over to the seeing glass, parting the curtains just enough to peek surreptitiously out.

Severus sucks in a sharp breath. His suspicions are correct (not that it is any surprise - his powers of deduction have always been astoundingly acute). The disturbance is due to the arrival of three tall figures swathed in robes of blackest night. Even from this distance, the unholy masks gleaming pure moonlight are unmistakable.

Death Eaters.

They've come to revel, to wreak havoc on poor unsuspecting civilians, or perhaps just to check in on their master, terminally late to his own victory party.

'Fools, the lot of them.'

Only the most inner of circles amongst the Dark Lord's ranks had been clued in about the intended assault on Godric's Hollow, Severus included, but clearly some in their midst should not be deemed quite so trustworthy. 'Rather ironic,' the bona fide spy for the light thought, given that he himself had snuck off to waylay Lord Voldemort, even as the Death Eaters began launching raucous celebrations without the necessary approbation of their master.

'All of us, fools, in the end.'

None of this is Severus' concern any longer. If all went well, Voldemort's sanctum would soon be swarming with aurors, most of those rejoicing fools bedding in Azkaban by sunrise. No, what is his concern is the trio slinking right down the Potters' cobbled drive, wands lit and aloft as they approach the scene of destruction, and the front door that he knows to be unwarded - blown out from its very hinges.

Severus lets the curtain fall. He swears vociferously under his breath. His brain is still a bit of a pain-stricken jumble, but in spite of this mental maelstrom, one thought reigns strong:

He needs to get the hell out. The Dark Lord may very well have been cast into the great proverbial ether, but it is far from safe here.

'Safehouse. Get to the safehouse.'

Severus grasps his wand and gives it a perfunctory sweep over his disheveled form, robes transfiguring themselves into a mirror look-a-like of their intruders'. It will do no good if he is caught looking like the beaten young penitent that he is; he must blend in. Another wave, and Severus dons the infamous mask, but the cloying feeling of *wrongness* it evokes nearly floors him once more. He can't wear this abominable face - not here, not with *her*, not with the knowledge of all the untold and unspeakable acts this false veneer has played witness to. Partaken in, even.

He will never rub shoulders with the angels.

Oh, he had hope, once. In dazzlingly green eyes, so full of life and laughter and love, he had seen laid out the promise of redemption.

But he has betrayed the only sliver of divinity graced to him in this wretched cesspit of a life, and those green eyes dazzle nevermore. Their awful dead gaze is a reminder -

That there was never any hope, not really. Not for him.

He is like Judas Iscariot - his love is the Kiss of Death.

Severus growls, shoving away roughly at both the Death Eater sigil and his maudlin brooding. He leaves the former to tangle atop his ebony skullcap, out of mind and out of face, and the latter to resume upon acquisition of the wizarding world's most potent Firewhiskey. He refuses to look at the floor, already tucking Lily's death into a deep dark corner in the very distant recesses of his brain. Occluding is second nature to him; it's like breathing. He is quite used to having to compartmentalize under pressure. The man's first priority right now is to slip past his fellow Death Eaters; keep them off his tail until he's beyond the anti-apparition shields protecting this once unplottable house. It's a simple enough task, for Severus has always prided himself on being a skillful strategist, and an adept duelist should it come to that. "Simple", until he's ready to escape out the door, disillusionment charm half-formed, only to be struck dumb in his tracks by a sudden plaintive mew.

'Oh hell...'

TBC