Summery: It's hard to stand up against your enemies, but even harder to stand up against your friends. Just how hard is it to sell your friends' children?
Somewhat inspired by a discussion in the 'books' forum.
War Toys
You are the ghost that haunts this place, wading through stale memories, unattached but remembering. The trembling light of the candles throws the past onto the floor, pale faces from another time mingle with the faces of today, masking them. You are the ghost of flesh and bones and skin of dust, you have touched death, but death hasn't wanted you yet.
You see calmness upon their faces, a calmness that is seldom these days, and you know that is because they trust you. There are not many people left they would trust, and you wonder again how you still manage to look them in the eyes.
That is what scares you most about guilt - you can live with it.
You live. Unlike so many that were here with you once, here, where it all started. Some were striving, some were just angry, but you all were so very young, children playing war with their toys. You can see it before you so distinctly you almost believe the past twenty years have not happened.
Treason is the easiest way to kill, so easy it makes you laugh. You write down a name on parchment, and some time later a face will disappear from you life. You just hadn't expected to see their faces again.
They are their fathers' sons and they'll fight their fathers' war. One day you will meet them on the battlefield, killing them before they kill you. They might turn to you for help before the green light from your wand mocks upon their trust.
It's hard to stand up against your enemies, says the headmaster, fatherly and self-righteous, but even harder to stand up against your friends. Well done, Severus, ten points for Slytherin, one for each life.
It's almost as though you see yourself again from a distance, mutely watching yourself fall. But for tonight, they're only children in nightgowns, barefoot, beds and lives all made, waiting.
Their time will come. Their toys will change.
Naturally, the other teachers have noticed your recent habit to come here every night; laughter smothered behind wrinkled hands they say they'd never thought you had a heart. But in fact you don't. If you had, you wouldn't just wait in silence, watching history repeat itself.
You would tell Draco that there is nothing glorious in killing. It is no victory. One would think that life would fight, stubbornly, frantically to the very last, but it simply melts away and runs through your hands like mercury, glimmering, beautiful and poisonous. It is too easy. A part of yourself dies when you kill, and that is probably why the Dark Lord rarely does it himself.
Pansy likes to sleep long and you ignore it when she's late for your lessons. You would tell her that Narcissa Malfoy never sleeps when her husband is called away. How could she, she says when she asks you for a potion to cover it, how could she sleep when she might wake up and find her world in pieces.
You would infuse them with words of yourself, diluting the venom that creeps through their hearts.
You would not listen to those that say the risk is too high, and that they're lost. You would remind them that they said the same about you.
You would remind Dumbledore to choose right over easy.
You'd thought the rat's betrayal would show them the danger of their pride. You should have known better.
Of course you know it is presumptuous to want to judge them when they didn't judge you. You know that nobody is to blame for your faults but yourself. None of their heavy phrases would have reached you, you were already poisoned by the light, little words He had dropped here and there. And so you followed, mechanically, like one of His snakes, until the things you'd seen weighed heavier than the things you'd heard. But you also know that Regulus Black might still be alive if he had known someone to turn to like his brother always had.
The old question arises again. What is a life worth? Potter's is an army. And some not even the try.
A Potter's Field, to bury strangers in.
This, the Muggle priest had said from the pulpit, was the price of their saviour's blood. You laughed as you entered, all of you; such a grotesque picture, six black-hooded men in a Muggle church, laughing at their belief in salvation, laughing for you knew there was no such thing, laughing as you sealed the door and set the fire.
You have not rated your own life ever since. You are too afraid of the result.
After that, betrayal had been easy. It had seemed right. You would never have dreamed this war could be so bloody long, and now you're not so sure anymore. Yet you remain still. You are a ghost of flesh and blood, and their faces will haunt you forever.
You stopper death with silence.
You spin an invisible web of silken lies, and the morning dew of another dawning war glitters beautifully on it.
You laugh at the irony of things, for once again what you see and what you hear is so far apart. At least you have only your own life to rate. You have no children.
No other than these.
"Is there anything else, Sir?"
"No... no, I suppose there isn't."
"Good night, Sir."
"Good night, Draco."
End
Author's note:
Matthew chapter 27, 5-8: "I have sinned in that I betrayed innocent blood." (...) Judas threw down the pieces of silver in the sanctuary and departed. The chief priests took the pieces of silver, and said "It's not lawful to put them into the treasury, since it is the price of blood." They took counsel, and bought the potter's field with them, to bury strangers in. Therefore that field was called "The Field of Blood" to this day.
The traitor and the potter's field...that screamed for a little wordgame...
