AN: This story had been posted previously, but I (like a proper dope) forgot to adjust the rating from K to T. So Fanfiction dot net shot it out of the sky like skeet.

*head desk*

So, yeah. Repost, this time for real and with a brand new ending as well.

Four men with skull and snake tats on their arms are all playing poker. It's night outside, cars zoom by gently with bright lights that sometime hit the windows and annoy the player across from the window.

"Load of shite," one says, drawing two cards. This was Murray.

"What?" says another. This was Theo, his best mate.

"Job I gotta do," Murray says. "Load of bleeding shite."

Roger says, "No one forced you to sign up, you know."

"Yeah, I know."

"What's the job?" Severus asks. He lays down three cards and Roger deals him three.

"There's this Muggle family lives out our way," Murray says. "I gotta..."

Silence. Cards slapping table, knuts and sickles sliding across a mahogany table. Spinner's End was a tiny, miserable house back when Snape was stuck here with a bastard of a dad and a nervous wreck of a mom, and it's a tiny, miserable house now. The best part about the house, Severus often thinks to himself, is he owns it outright so he doesn't pay rent.

"You thinking of backing out?" Roger asks.

Rhetorical. No one backs out. Just empty words to get rid of the silence.

"Maybe," Murray says.

Silence. Roger bets high, and only Severus sees him.

"Bad mojo," Theo says, shaking his head. "Bad, bad mojo, right there."

"Load of shite," Murray says. "I ain't saying we're not better than Muggles. I'm just saying, why should I go and, you know... don't make no sense to me."

Severus wins. He rakes in a small hill of silver to his edge of the table. If he makes another three silver and five bronze, he'll be back to where he started at the beginning of the night.

"You do it because he told you to," Theo says. "That's how it works round here."

"Bleeding shite."

"I heard a story about him," Roger says. He pauses to check his cards and bets a single knut. "You ever hear of Regulus Black?"

Severus had, but he keeps quiet and studies his hand. The other two hadn't.

"Dark Lord borrowed a house elf off of him, they say. Just out of the blue, hey you, give over the elf. And Regulus does. It's a house elf, you know? Well, the Dark Lord left that elf somewhere far off to die. He tortured it hard, and ditched it in some foreign country a million miles away. Just left the little bugger out there all alone to die."

"Where?" Theo asks.

"Dunno, I wasn't there, was I? But the way I heard it, the exact order Reg gave that elf was, 'You do the job, and come right back home.' So of course, after the Dark Lord is done, the elf comes home, and Reg sees what happened to his elf." Roger pauses to let the suspense build.

"Then what?" Severus asks.

"The Dark Lord up and kills Reg," Roger says. "For that. He takes man's elf, tortures it to an early grave, and kills the man because he saw it after."

"I don't believe it," Theo says. His hand wring together, and he twitches his head sideways to avoid the lights from a car outside.

"It's true. Swear to you."

"Oh, God," Murray says. "I can't get out of it, can I?"

"Probably not," Severus says. It's his deal, and his long, graceful fingers swirl as he passes out twenty cards. Murray has trouble picking up the cards because his hands are shaking.

"A man who'd do that would kill me if I backed out," Murray says. "Sure as anything. A man just can't get ahead in life."

A round of gameplay interrupts. Roger's luck wins him two hands in a row, then he loses hard to Murray on the third. Theo folds each hand and only loses some knuts, but Severus bets hard against Murray and loses almost a whole Galleon.

"Bollocks," Severus says.

Theo is anxious to shift attention away from Murray's indiscretion, so he talks about the more senior Death Eaters

"Load of stuck-up bastards," Theo says. "Rich too, every one of them. The Malfoys, the Notts-"

"The Galloways-" Murray says.

"The Galloways, the Farrels," Theo says. "You could buy a whole city with the gold in their Gringotts vaults."

"True," Severus says. "I knew Lucius back in Hogwarts. His spending money outweighed my whole tuition."

"Ain't that the sad and sorry truth," Theo says. "They don't worry about a damn thing, do they?"

"Born with a silver wand in their hand," Roger says.

"Bet they don't play two knut poker," Theo says. "Bet they play cards with, I don't know, property deeds instead of chips."

"My mum used to say, 'Them as has, gets.' She knew what was up, my mum," Murray says.

"Doesn't seem right," Severus says. "They have everything and we have nothing, and yet it's us who have to skulk around doing the dangerous work."

"Like that Malfoy, he walked up to me two weeks ago, and he talks to the air above me," Roger says.

"What?"

"Like, he's addressing me, but it's beneath him to look down at me direct like. Next thing I know, I have to commit a burglary in broad daylight, and it's the Cruciatus if I don't!"

"Load of bloody shite," Murray says. "Just like this thing with the Muggles. It's not the Malfoy's who're going to 'Kaban if I get caught. It's not them with a wand at their back if they don't want to hurt somebody. It's me."

"Not that they're ever going to 'Kaban," Severus says. "They own the courts, but just watch and see if they'll use their solicitors to bail us out if we get nabbed."

"Fat chance!" Theo says.

The cards lay forgotten. Four men with skull and snake tats on their arms sulk in silence, brooding on injustice. A passing car provokes a swear word from Theo.

"It's not right. It's not fair," Murray says. "I don't mind jinxing a bastard who's got it coming, but I didn't even notice those Muggles lived down there. And now I got to roll the dice and hope for the best."

Severus nods.

"The deck is stacked against us," Theo says. "Name one break any of us ever got."

Severus thinks about a beautiful red headed girl who had liked him and sat next to him when no one else would. He thinks about her green eyes and soft hands and sweet scent. He thinks about how she loved him long before she could stand to be in the same room as Potter, and he says, "I had a lucky break once."

"Oh yeah?" Murray asks.

"Never had a second chance after I made a mistake, though."

"Ain't that the sad and sorry truth," Theo says. "I should have that on my tombstone. 'Never had a second chance.' That just sums us up, don't it, Sev?"

"Sums me up, at least," he says.

"We had our chance to back out," Murray says. "I could have took a holiday to Jamaica till he won, but I didn't. I got a Dark Mark on my arm instead."

"We all did," Roger says. He rubs his left forearm through the cloth.

"Exactly. I don't have a second chance, here."

"Poor bloody Muggles," Theo says.

Everyone but Severus laughs and laughs, because the moment got tense there and close to treason, but now they're all back on safe and familiar ground and everything's okay. They're the lower rung on the Dark Lord's ladder, and the shit falls from up on high onto them, and it's funny they ever thought that was weird.

Severus says, "I once came very close to joining the other side."

And the laughter dies. For one second they were safe, and now good old Sev had ruined it. Theo glares and Murray looks down at the table and Roger stares hard at Severus.

"Oh yeah?" Roger asks.

"Yes."

"Now why would you want to do something dumb like that," Theo says. "The Dark Lord's winning."

"Yeah," Roger says. "He's been winning almost as long as we've been alive."

"Oh, you know," Severus says. "I was young and stupid."

"Was?" Murray says.

They laugh again, even Severus. It's because they can all make each other laugh hard and often that they hang out together and play cards. There's an invisible line in the sand, and every one who they're comfortable with is on one side, and every one else is on the other. It's why they're so free with the casual complaints and the edge of treason- they know no one will go outside the group and fink.

"What changed your mind, Sev?" Theo asks.

Severus shrugs. "I don't know. I really don't."

"Come on!" Roger says.

"Really, I don't know. I just fell into it. Looking back, I was on a collision course with this mark"- and here Severus brushes his left shirt sleeve gently- "ever since I can remember."

Murray rubs his forehead. "Same here. I got nabbed by the Aurors one year out of Hogwarts- bit of smuggling, you know. Two bloody years in 'Kaban. I get out, yeah, and no one's bloody hiring. And if they are, they sure won't hire me."

Roger nods, slow and quiet. "I've been there," he says. "No fun at all."

"I'm clean as soap," Theo says. "But it's like nobody really wants me around anyway. You know? Then I meet some great blokes who like me, want me hanging around, do me favors... Now I got my tattoo, and I'll be damned if any bloody Auror tells me I was wrong to do it."

"That's right," Severus says. "That's exactly right."

"It's simple," Theo says. "Those Aurors, and the Ministry people, and Professor Dumbledore's crowd, they don't want me around. The Dark Lord does. If they think I'm wrong to go Dark, then they should have bloody thought of that before they told me to piss off, shouldn't they have."

"Exactly right," Severus says. He had once said something similar to Lily.

"Still," Murray says. "Still."

"What?" Roger says.

Murray rubs his face and stare sat the ceiling.

"What?" Theo asks. He's worried about Murray's second thoughts.

"I'm with you all, but... still."

Theo says, "You gotta do what you gotta do, Murray. Ain't no changing that."

"It is what it is," Roger says.

Severus thinks about how much he hates Spinner's End. He thinks about the first time he ever killed anyone, which was last year when the Dark Lord ordered Miles Moody's death, and how it felt to touch Miles' corpse afterward; all cold and rigid and terrible. He thinks about a new world order of wizard domination, and how it would feel to live in a mansion and have servants and wealth and prestige and actual, genuine respect. He can't quite see it, because he's never had any of those things, but trying to envision it hurts his chest so bad he can't bear it. He thinks about Potter taking off Lily's clothes on their wedding night.

"C'est la vie," he says without missing a beat, "et c'est la guerre."

"What?" Murray says.

"It's French," Severus says. "Such is life, and such is war."

"Oh," Theo says. Roger spoke a little bit of French so he had had it half-translated in his head.

"One Muggle family is a small price to pay to keep your friends," Severus says. "And people like us, well. We can't get ahead in life without friends."

"Ain't that the sad and sorry truth," Theo says.

Theo deals. A shift comes over the group, and talking is largely done with and poker is resumed. They have chewed the concept of treason over, and spat it out in favor of the status quo.

Two weeks later, Severus hears a prophecy in a bar that ruins his life.

Three months later, a warrant is issued for Murray's arrest for the murder of three innocent muggles. He resists capture and is killed by the Aurors, at the command of Alastor Moody.

Five months later, Roger is caught stealing Ministry files and is sentenced to six years in Azkaban. He serves his time without incident and is released into a world that is recovering from the war. He finds honest work cursebreaking and tending bar. When the Dark Lord returns a second time, Roger escapes to North America rather than return to the fold. Local Dark wizards seeking to curry favor with the ascendant Dark Lord lynch him within a week.

A year later, with his master seemingly dead and the Aurors hounding everyone with a Dark Mark, Theo puts his wand in his mouth and says the magic words.