"Is this remorse, Severus?"

This burns hotter than any of The Dark Lord's crucio's had.

You loved her. You will always love her. You could never will her death.

Never.

But you remember...

You remember all of it.

You remember the dragon that you joined the Death Eaters to slay. You remember the cold venom in your blood. You remember the furnace of your fury, and the black hatred of joining so you could one day crush Potter and Black's throats—

He showed no pain as the dark mark was branded onto him, thinking only of when his new master conquered the world, and him making Potter and Black beg for mercy as he tortured them.

And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no venom. That there was only you. Only Severus Snape.

That it was all you. Is you.

Only you.

You did it.

You killed her.

You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were only thinking about yourself...

''You're lucky Evans was here, Snivellus...''

''I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her...''

"I can't pretend anymore. You've chosen your way, I've chosen mine."

It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark arts, the final cruelty of the Death Eaters...

Because now your self is all you will ever have.

And you rage and scream and want to crush the shadows that have destroyed you. One, a monster who tricked you into serving him when you were young and foolish. The other, who manipulates you and expects you to see nothing wrong with it. But you are so far less now than what you could have been, you are like a painter who has gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadows.

In the end, you do not even want to.

In the end, the shadows are all you have left.

Because the shadows understand you, the shadows forgive you, the shadows gather you unto themselves—

And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.

This is how it feels to be Severus Snape.

Forever...

This is based on Matthew Strover's novelisation of Revenge of the Sith. Reading this particular chapter brought forward what I saw as a lot of parallels with Snape, and I couldn't resist the opportunity to rework it to fit the thoughts of Snape. Please leave a review and say what you think.