Hallelujah

Maybe I've been here before
I know this room
I've walked this floor
I used to live alone
Before I knew you
I've seen your flag
On the marble arch
Love is not a victory march
It's a cold and
It's a broken hallelujah.

"...and again they said, Hallelujah. And the smoke of the burning rose up for ever and ever." 

All around me, people are happy. Happy as they haven't been in years. The kind of happy you normally find only in religious euphoria. Such a shock, this relief, such a shock that even one week later they still aren't over it and some still aren't even into it yet. Still wondering if it is all a dream.

And if so whose.

I am having headaches again. I've been taking too much again, I know, and I really should put it away, get off it for a few days before I go talk to the old man again, because he can always sense it on me and never says anything just stares. Eyes all blue behind the silly glasses. Stern and sad and accusing all at once, and then I'll feel like shit won't I.

When did his opinion start to matter so much to me anyway?

No. When did it stop? Because actually... I don't give a fuck if he sees it on me, smells it on me. He can stare all he wants. I'm too tired. And he's not my Headmaster any more, now is he.

My head hurts. My head hurts, and my arm itches. Healing? Some healing wound, scabbing over and flaking off the dead skin?

God, if we were all so lucky. If He really is gone. If. If.

I've been trying to decide, in my more lucid moments, if he really is gone. I... don't think so. Sometimes... sometimes everything is all sharp clear and violent edges and I understand bloody everything. But these moments come generally with the vein on my forearm wide open and bottles empty before me, and I've learned, hah, not to trust such moments of clarity!

Didn't teach me that at Hogwarts. No.

And under everyone's happy little smiles and exuberant gestures towards perfect strangers, I can taste the undercurrent of fear. Nerves brought too tight to the breaking point (and we know a thing or two about that don't we, about breaking points) then suddenly let go. Not snapped; just let go, the tension gone. But too clear in their memories to be forgotten, and nobody wants to mention just how scared they really were to anyone else. Let the ghosts lie, they say, don't mention the dead, they say with their shared little glances, and the hushing motions towards the ones too young to know better.

I'm going to be ill.

And if I go back to the little dirty washroom at the back of this little dirty flat, I shall be iller still.

'Iller still.' I've forgotten how to talk. No one to practice on.

There's a church across the street. Little old Muggle ladies go in every Sunday, dragging children by the hand. They hold their service to their God, and one time the landlady halfway invited me to go and I was more than a little stoned out of my head and I actually went! Yes, Severus Snape went into the Muggle church.

No, I did not get myself kicked out. I just sat there, the mark on my arm burning something fierce... and that alone is testament, I suppose, to some sort of goodness and deity in that building, in their faith.

But I did laugh in the priest's face when he pulled aside the 'troubled young man' after services and asked me if I had accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour, and given my life over to him. I thought about telling him I already had a Lord and Master-- two, in fact-- but knew he would have taken Voldemort to be their Devil.

In which he perhaps would not have been too far wrong.

I apologized for laughing, and left the stone walls that reminded me, oddly, comfortingly, of Hogwarts, and the sound of their hymns followed me all the way out...

I've been having headaches. I think I said that already.

James Potter is dead. I should feel something. But I don't.

Lillian is dead too. I... think... I feel something there. Regret, maybe, and a little shame. I vomited up my guts for seven hours straight when I heard the news, then got pissed out of my head on four different potions and did it all again.

But I didn't feel anything.

I considered the other alternative to the numbness, but Albus extracted a promise from me last time we talked-- was it already three months ago? that I'd not take out the razor again.

And again: I don't care about the promise. If my head didn't hurt so, I'd go in the dirty little room and find it, just to prove to Albus that I don't care anymore.

I wonder occasionally about the child. Every one is full of praise for him, and I want to laugh at them all and say you stupid fucking fools, he didn't do anything, why are you singing hallelujahs and laying out the palm fronds for him?

(That's what I learned in the church that day by the way. Their Christ entered a city on a donkey, some prophecy or something, and that's what they did.)

Entered in a victory procession. A hero. I hadn't heard all the back story... perhaps he'd come from a war or something... Muggle theology is not a strong point of mine, and though I can memorize anything that appeals to me, that subject really doesn't. Various reasons. I think I fear the parallels I'd find at times.

A victory march. How long will it be before they get something like that up? Gods, that would be a laugh. Who'd be at the head? The infant Potter? Yes, probably. The old man and his endless machinations are what won the war, but he prefers the role of shadow worker and master puppeteer, and would only smile and put on his Foolish Face at any talk of him leading the parade.

You have your victory, Albus. If all the words are true and He is gone. You have your triumph of the Light and Good. You even have a hero, your messiah, and you can fly the flags high at school... You have what you've strived for so desperately for the last eleven years. You may put down your weapons, Professor, and rest. Wash your hands clean of all this darkness, as I know you long to do.

Wash your hands clean of me.

I've never really had any illusions as to what role I held, and you never insulted me by trying to pretend something other than the truth. I was a weapon. A valuable tool, but a desperate measure, used because of the desperate times and the desperate struggle you fought.

And now the struggle is over. And what will become of me. The traitor. The Judas Iscariot, ha.

This is the thought that rips me apart here in the empty little flat, that leads me to reach for the vials and powders, that makes me shiver and long to reach for the razor.

I was naïve enough to think, once, that you might need me and not my skills. That you might even... want...

This way leads madness, I know. But sometimes... it is so quiet here, so absolutely empty, with nothing here but the sounds of my blood in my veins and the waiting for my Mark to burn, that I long so for any kind of contact. Even the face of the landlady cow is a welcome sight. Other people do exist, I have not imagined them, the voices in the next flat really are voices from real mouths, not the other voices I hear sometimes, accompanying the worst of the headaches.

And if you... wanted me... if I was a person instead of a tool... I've had dreams of you, Headmaster. No, you don't even need to tell me that it's bloody ridiculous and out of the question, that there never even is a matter of a question, and I really do know better, at least in the light of day I do. I could (if I could keep my head un-fucked and my bloodstream clean long enough to actually sit down and write) write you a marvelous essay on the psychological reasons why I'm projecting this particular fantasy, on father-figures and Oedipal complexes (that's not quite the right term but the Greeks didn't quite have this, either) and how you're the only person to give me any sort of decent fucking human touch in the last four years, and that's why I'm having the dreams and it's simply a subconscious substitution of physical intimacy for emotional. I could write you this essay, in the light of day.

But I'm a nocturnal creature, goddamnit, and all I know is I wake from vivid dreams imagining the touch of a man old enough to be my grandfather and I have to mix asphodel and wormwood before I can sleep again.

To hell with getting clean before coming to report. Maybe watching the disgust in your eyes as you note my twitching hands and bloodshot eyes will be enough to turn me off.

And maybe not. But I'll come to your familiar office anyway. Sit in the room I know much better than any I've ever stayed in because somebody actually lives there...

Sit in your temple, and worship you from afar.

The Headmaster ascended the steps one after another, as he had done nearly every morning for many years now. Up to his office. A week, now, more or less, since... everything...

The boy was waiting for him inside.

For a moment they regarded each other in silence, Albus reprimanding himself mentally. He turned nineteen not long ago. He really is no longer a boy, and it's silly of me to refer to him so.

The not-boy was sitting in Albus's chair, looking out of place in the cheery, slightly cluttered atmosphere of the headmaster's office. All the color in the room seemed to drain whatever there was left from the frame of Severus Snape.

Dumbledore took in the dark smudges under his one-time student's eyes, the painful thinness of the wrists where they protruded from the dark robes to rest on the desk top, the raggedness of Severus's hair, growing out again. Long enough to get in the eyes, which were tellingly bright and glassy. Albus let out a very small sigh.

The young man took the sigh, perhaps, as permission to move again. He rose with that peculiar fluidity of his movements that always struck the eye so oddly. Incongruous, that feline grace, in the gangly adolescent body that had been his. Even now, with adolescence gone and gangliness shifted into rail-thinness, the sinuous motions of his limbs and hands caught one unawares.

He was all planes and angles and long thin lines. The body became more effective in action than in repose, as if he did not know how to be in his body when it was sitting still, and only the spark of action could reveal the elegance he possessed. Unconscious elegance, and all the more powerful for that.

The elegance was visible as he crossed the room to stand by the window. Albus closed his eyes briefly, imprinting the image indelibly on his mind. This image of strange beauty, presented in the series of contradictions that was Severus Snape, the odd tangle of convoluted logic and shadowed movement, over a midnight heart that sent potions and poisons in steady slow staccato through the veins.

There had been a time, the old wizard mused, when he'd understood Severus. It had never been easy, not with the strange child that nobody else could bring themselves to talk to for long, but it had been possible. Because the boy had been willing to open up, if only somebody would listen for half a moment, and promise not to shatter the fragile dark crystal of him. There had indeed been such a time, when Severus had actually talked to him...

Dumbledore's musings were interrupted by Severus's voice, low and quiet and gentle as it rarely was... indeed, only when his young spy was trying to control some great and terrible emotion or fear.

"I'm sorry. I was in your seat."

The Headmaster waved the concern away negligently. "You know you're always more than welcome to anything in my office, Severus."

"Potter and Lily are dead." This without preamble, a quick rush of words. Albus froze, then made himself keep moving towards his desk. The grief of that night was still terribly raw and fresh, a new burden to bear. To add to the ones he already carried.

"Yes. Yes, they are," he said quietly, reaching the desk and standing at it for a moment, not moving to take his seat, his back to Severus.

"And... He is gone."

"It would appear so."

"And it's over."

Albus permitted himself a sigh. "For now, it would indeed... appear so," he said softly, turning to face Severus. He was unprepared for the grief and anger on his spy's face, and only slightly more prepared for the raw anger and acid in the no-longer-a-boy's tone.

"And I'm-- still-- alive. Why?! Why the hell should I still be alive?" snarled the former Death Eater. "Gods know I wasn't supposed to be. James and Lily-- they're the sort who should have their bloody happily-ever-afters-- not that my ever-after is feeling very fucking happy, mind you-- but goddamnitall, I was supposed to be one of the casualties! Supposed to go with my lord and master..."

Dumbledore waited as Severus lapsed into a moody silence. He didn't claim to understand the young man's rages and black moods. It was enough that he, Dumbledore, sat here and listened to him swear and cry.

He waited, expected more, but when the boy spoke again, his expressive voice had reverted to the unnatural forced calm.

"I don't want to be alive, sir. I shouldn't be alive."

The old wizard was familiar with his charge's suicide drive, as well-- had talked him out of locked bathrooms and off of heights on more than one memorable occasion. But he had not heard the bleak, philosophical note to this statement before, and felt a sudden distant stab of fear.

"But you are alive, Severus. And I need you to stay that way," he said gently, reprovingly.

Severus made a noise that might have been a laugh, in some happier world. "No you don't. Haven't you heard, Albus? Everyone's been saying it, so I don't know how you could have missed it: the war is over. Voldemort is dead and gone.

"I have made the transition from invaluable informant to expendable to downright bloody useless. And soon the Aurors, who now find it safe to persecute Death Eaters with the Dark Lord gone, will find out my name from one of my fellow filth. In their excessive, relieved, post-downfall-of-the-Snake-God zeal, they will ship me off to Azkaban with the rest.

"No more than I deserve. Or am fit for."

Dumbledore frowned. "Don't be ridiculous, Severus," he said briskly, and had the satisfaction of seeing the young Snape start a bit. "You're still quite useful, and needed. More than that, you're wanted. For starters, there are several vacancies on staff now I'll be needing to fill."

At the word 'wanted,' Severus's dark eyes opened wide with something completely unidentifiable, even to Albus. But in a second it was gone, leaving a mirthless smile on the face as if he was laughing at himself.

Albus thought, as he had thought on more than one occasion before, of the saying that 'Eyes are the windows to the soul.' If it was true, then this boy's soul was some patch of interstellar void, some abyss where nothing but eternal night reigned.

"I do very well mocking myself, sir, thank you-- you needn't join me," the teenager said with that terrible smile still on his face. Dumbledore shook his head.

"I wasn't. I meant my offer-- you will always have a place here at Hogwarts, my boy.

"And as for the Aurors: if it ever comes up, I am not about to let you be dragged off to Azkaban. You know better than that.

"I'm not about to let you be lost... as we've lost so many, this far."

Severus's black eyes seemed almost... hungry, for a moment, searching Albus's face for something. He turned away with seeming dissatisfaction, tearing his gaze away to look out the window.

A quiet descended over the office. Dumbledore watched the boy. There were moments, occasionally, when he'd give all the magic he possessed just to know what went on behind that face. With most people, he had no trouble divining inner thoughts and secrets. With some, he had to work for it. But Severus was the first he'd ever met who could turn completely unreadable. Perhaps it was that the young man barely understood his own thoughts sometimes, buried as they were under the layers and strata of pain and hate and intelligence and fear that made up his mind...

Severus's mood did one of its inexplicable and sudden shifts, his pensive expression shifting to the cruel mask he wore at times, the dark eyes glittering with malice. An unlovely smile twisted the corner of his mouth as he shot a glance up at Albus.

The headmaster steeled himself. This, too, was something he'd learned to accept in his dealings with this strange, hurting, hurtful boy. Whatever was coming next was going to sting, sting with all the considerable venom that this Slytherin snake of his could inject.

Severus's dark eyes spat fire, like sparks struck from a flagstone. His words were steel and ice and the crack of a whip, and Albus Dumbledore flinched at them.

"Of all your adopted children, Headmaster, of your adopted sons... The brightest and best is dead now, for all your efforts to protect him and arm him. The next is werewolf, hiding from the beast within and the world without. The third is dead at the hands of the fourth, who is also the one responsible for James. The traitor, Sirius... Lost to you, now, and his betrayal hurts more than all the other things combined, doesn't it?"

As he spoke, he ticked them off on his fingers, like points in an argument, until only his thumb was left... pointing at himself.

"Four of them. Dead. Or gone. Leaving only me. Your bastard son, Albus. Your bastard stepchild, the only thing you have left.

"Doesn't say much for your parenting skills, does it, Albus?" The boy's shadow eyes were empty and bleak, his lips curving in something that was not so much a smile as a sharp object, the kind you keep away from the lunatics.

Dumbledore was very quiet, his head bowed slightly and something very old and sad aching there, lingering there, just in the line of his shoulders and the angle of his head.

The sharp lines on the boy's angular face faded, until all his face matched the bleakness of his eyes. When he spoke, the tone too was empty and hollow, the accusatory venom drained.

"It wasn't supposed to be like this, was it, Headmaster."

A soft exhalation from the tired old man. "No. No, it wasn't."

The dark eyes closed, and Severus seemed indeed a fragile thing of pale parchment and blackest ink-- his ashen skin but the paper on which his hair, sunken eyes, shadowed cheekbones and robes were sketched in sharp relief.

"I'm sorry." Little more than a whisper, from those thin lips that normally spat such poison, and it was an apology for many things, some of which were not even his fault.

Dumbledore roused himself, looked up at the thing of shadow and pallid highlights that hovered in front of him. If a sketch on paper he truly was, he seemed to be waiting for flame to consume him. And am I to be, again, the fire that will devour you, Severus? Am I the instrument of your censure? Will you once more have me play that role?

I fooled myself with reassurances that better my justice, the cleansing purity that could heal as well as destroy you, then the dark inferno of your other Master. For he truly would have devoured you. Oh child-- no, I cannot even call you that, because you never were such. Because I took childhood from you, in my desperation for weapons against the dark. So, I cannot permit myself the dubious comfort of calling you 'child,' of letting myself protect you.

Of letting me erect that barrier between us, when I find it harder and harder not to share my old-man's worries, to admit my fears to you, to say things I never should to a student, and certainly not to you who have enough to bear. To treat you like an adult and colleague, when I have permitted myself none in so long.

But the old man said none of this. "So am I." This too an apology, for more things than can be safely said.

The black eyes opened and looked at him without accusation. Too much to hope for that it was also with pardon. "You did what you had to."

Albus took a deep breath. No, Severus, don't give me this, don't offer me forgiveness. I have not the strength to refuse it as you constantly do, and what you hold out to me is too tempting to my old heart.

Yes. It's true. Even I occasionally doubt the rightness of my actions, even I lay awake some nights asking for pardon. Is that so unimaginable? To everyone else, yes.

But you, dear boy, much less than half my age, you of all people seem to understand that. You who've turned doubt and self-loathing into an art form, who have elevated despair and atonement and penance into a way of life... you see in me an occasional reflection, and have the temerity to offer me what you will not take yourself.

"Severus..."

The gaze on his own faltered as the boy flinched, retreating back into himself. The dark head bowed in silent agony, a withdrawal so complete it made Albus's blood run cold just to watch it.

"Don't," escaped the boy's lips, a whisper he barely caught.

Albus paused, unsure. "Don't what, Severus?"

"Don't say it... like that... "

Concern moved him forward to where the young man shrunk inwards, huddled up against the wall. His eyes squeezed shut, his chin tucked to his chest, his arms wrapped tightly around himself in defence against... what?

"Nothing here is going to hurt you, Severus," he said as gently as possible. His only response was a sort of shuddered laugh from the boy.

He sighed and lifted a soothing hand to the boy's shoulder, expecting a flinch that did not come. Instead, Severus only whispered again, "Don't."

Gentleness seemed to be getting him nowhere. "Don't what?" he snapped sternly. No answer. Albus rolled his eyes in exasperation. Sometimes, this young man was simply too much to deal with...

He reached a hand to the dark hair and forced the pale face up, to look at him. But whatever anger he'd managed melted away at the sight of the tears streaming out of the boy's eyes, still tightly shut.

"Oh, Severus," he heard himself say, and pulled the youth into an embrace. Whatever this poor boy's problems and riddles, he was a hurting creature, and Albus felt responsible for some of that pain.

The figure in his arms was very still; if not for the warmth of the body, he might have thought he was holding something inanimate. But he nevertheless rocked him, gently, and in a thoughtless gesture of simple concern, pressed his lips to the boy's forehead.

Without warning a tremor shot through the young body, unfreezing at an astonishing rate. The long thin cunning hands came up to the back of Dumbledore's head, to tangle in the silvered hair, the lean graceful body under the black robes suddenly molded itself to him, and those clever, cruel lips were soft and hot and demanding against his own.

Gods.

For a moment, he stood stunned. He hadn't meant--

And the young man--no, the CHILD, for the love of all the gods-- was touching him, moving against him hungrily, holding him close, and above all else there was that mouth, burning on his own, lips and tongue moving with feverish desire. He tasted a sharp flavor, mint and blood and the faint buzz of illegal substances as Severus's mouth tried to plunder his own.

He stepped back. Out from those slender arms and clever fingers, that tried to cling to him even as he pushed them away. His own hand moved before his thoughts could possibly interfere, one swift decisive explosive action, and Severus's dark head flew back, a red spot appearing on his cheek where the open palm had struck.

For a long moment Dumbledore stood there shaking, more conscious of how wrong the situation was than he'd ever been of anything else. Gods. Gods. Wrong. He wanted to lean forward and shake the stupid boy, who stood there with a hand pressed to his cheek trembling and crying, shake him and ask him if he had any bloody idea what he'd just done???

And he wanted to weep, at the pain in those dark eyes.

And he wanted to swear, for having caused that pain, for being in any part more responsible for the ruin and ravage of that soul than he already was.

And he wanted Severus to not stand there like he'd been punched in the stomach by a friend, with that uncomprehending expression on his face.

And he wanted to kiss away the tears that burned their way down the high cheekbones.

And he wanted to kill something or someone, for wanting that to begin with.

He closed his eyes. How, oh how, in the name of Anybody merciful that might be watching, was he supposed to salvage the situation? He fought vainly for the words to say, searched his mind... He opened his eyes.

"Severus..."

The boy fled. Without a word, without a prayer.

He finally found him in one of the prefect's bathrooms, after searching through the breadth and width of the empty school, with all the students home for summer hols. Only he, Dumbledore, stayed at Hogwarts for the whole summer, his wonderful school that was home and child and fortress to him. Only he knew every twist and turn of the passages and stairs, and he'd gone over nearly all of them before he found the spell-locked door.

Most of the school's doors stood aside for him, even ones normally impassable. That this did not showed someone had purposefully enchanted it. He did not waste breath in shouting for Severus on the other side of the locked door, just stood and carefully, patiently, began to unravel the layers of magic surrounding the lock and frame.

It was a complex enchantment. A wizard just nineteen had no business being able to cast such a spell, sealed with more than a little blood and calling on more than a little Darkness. But the boy was very bright and very gifted, and possessed of blood and darkness. Albus went slowly, deftly through, tracing it backwards. Such locks could be forced-- but only with great damage to the caster and to the forcer. The headmaster thought more than enough damage had already been dealt on either side.

It took him nearly five minutes before the door finally moved open at his touch. He entered warily, still unsure what he was going to say.

But words would be completely unnecessary. Severus lay unmoving on the white tile floor, his skin every bit as pale, his black robes and black hair a tangle about him. More black than white, and more red than either.

Blood pooled out on the clean tiles, stained the robes and still pulsed feebly from cuts and lacerations. Bloody handprints smudged the walls, smears of crimson, spattered here, there, on the brass shower fixtures, all over the floor and the figure there, and it was really something that anybody had so much blood in them to begin with.

Albus knelt and ever-so-carefully felt for the signs of life, not allowing himself to look at the wreck and ruin he touched. Some clinical, detached part of his mind wondered what-the-hell curse the boy had cast on himself.

A pulse fluttered beneath his fingers, weak weak weak but there. Albus closed in his eyes in silent thanks and began the most powerful healing spells he knew.

And when it was over, when he could breathe again, he held the unconscious body with hands that shook. The face looked like a face again and not an unholy mess of bleeding flesh and gashes and the whiteness of bone peeking through here and there. The body's limbs once more lay at natural angles. The breathing was even and the heartbeat that showed at the temple was steady. The spells had even cleaned up the blood on the body, so a newcomer to the scene would not understand why the old man was cradling a perfectly healthy (if a little thin and unkempt) young man so gently, in a room splashed with scarlet.

Eventually he rose, the lanky but surprisingly light figure in his arms. He knew the house-elves would clean up behind him with no awkward questions. But his foot hit something as he walked towards the door. He looked down to see Severus' blood-covered wand on the floor, idle, as if it was innocent of this whole macabre scene.

Severus had written something with the wand before passing out, traced in shaky letters with the red ink he had at hand.

And Jesus answering saith unto them, Neither do I tell you by what authority I do these things.

Somewhere, the fragile dark crystal was shattered. Albus closed his eyes and left with his precious burden. And it was only the odd, out-of-character quoting of Muggle scripture that made him think he heard a faint echo, behind him in the crimson room.

A cold and broken hallelujah.

There was a time
You let me know
What's really going on below
But now you never show
It to me, do you?
I remember when
I moved in, you
Your holy dark
Was moving too
And every breath we drew
Was hallelujah

Maybe there's a God above
And all I ever learned from love
Was how to shoot
At someone who outdrew you
It's not a cry
You hear at night
It's not somebody
Who's seen the light
It's a cold and
It's a broken hallelujah...

Hallelujah, hallelujah
Hallelujah, hallelujah 

Title: Hallelujah
Author: Lady Dien
Rating: R for language, dark and/or adult themes, and some sort of Snape/Dumbledore. Yes, this is a weird fic.
Summary: A Severus Snape (and Albus, for that matter) major angst piece. After the Potters' death, Dumbledore and his spy talk.
Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns these characters, I just get to write crap like this. Leonard Cohen wrote the song 'Hallelujah,' and the texts are from Revelation 19 and Mark 11, respectively.