Disclaimer: Find out the meaning of the word 'disclaimer' and get back to me on that one. What's it tell you?

Note: Yep, this story has been reposted into one chapter, but that's only because I believed the first chapter was putting people off.

The first section is Harry's POV, the second is Snape's.

Conscienceness
Part 1

Desperate memories collide and cluster. Reeling, confused and alone, in the dark of the abyss. There is no light, no pretence. Just the erroneous belief that there will be salvation.

But of course there isn't.

Stumbling, blindly, through the crushing silence, chasing a non-existent hope. How cold it seems. How aloof. How unaffected. The abyss can feel but it will not care.

Black, Red, White
Alone

We cannot interpret infinity.

Lie down and cry, boy. You once wanted to. But you feel you've overcome that, haven't you? Relying on other people to interpret how you feel inside... it doesn't matter who, you just give them hints and let them form their own conclusions.

You know how you feel, how you once felt. Do you care? Do you give a fuck?

Does it matter anymore?

You cannot speak the truth the way you want to. You hurt so badly inside, from the taunts, the aggression, all the guilt you carry.

You want to cry.

You need to.

You can't.

You've left it behind, locked it in a vault, never tried to find time to scream...

It's become habit. Everyone you know can speak the truth to themselves. Why can't you? Bottling it all up, stubbornly and unyieldingly. It'll hurt more.

Ah, but you don't care. All you want is a shoulder to cry on. Not love; just understanding. You think you know who, but they will shy, no, run away from you. It would be so unrecognised, going to him for help. You have both suffered silently, mindlessly, and you're sure that, if you were anyone else, they would understand... but he'll sneer and regard you as weak.

Besides... you couldn't let him close. You can't let anyone close, or they'll all go the same way as Cedric did. And Sirius did. And others will. They'll all die for you, and you'll have to watch and know you were responsible. You can't let anyone close... especially not one so important.

He could have understood -

Maybe. But can you let yourself be that vulnerable, especially to him? You don't respect him and he doesn't respect you, and there are too many doubtful questions about trust, and how would he react? Sneeringly, worriedly, pityingly?

His pity would feel like spit on your cheek. You want understanding, someone who can hurt with you and feel with you and help you both heal. Then you both can feel like the demons have been exorcised.

But you can't, can you? He wouldn't even look at you once. He would, with the air of someone concluding exhaustive research, pronounce you weak and foolish.

You're not. You know you're not. What you do know is that you are pressured with a burden that not even a full-grown man could handle, all this left to a child, a sacrificial lamb, someone who they can throw into the maw just to see themselves survive. So, you have no choice. Retreat into yourself once more.

Alone.

Again.

Conscienceness
Part 2

You have watched this... this forsaken child from a distance and from up close and your findings are hard to interpret.

You hate him. Oh, you know that. You hate him with an unbridled passion, a kind of focused rage that does not allow you to look at him without wanting to wring the life from his scrawny neck. Your homicidal tendencies towards this man-child are not good. You feel them within you, a delicious anger, and you feel their dark black-purple invade your mind and poison your thoughts. You spend a couple of minutes fantasising about various ways of torturing him.

Trying to make him understand what he and his predecessors made you suffer through. Trying to make him see what it's like to be mindlessly persecuted, to be hated in such a stark and bored way, to be publicly humiliated in a pointing, laughing circle of schoolmates that manifest themselves in his dreams into hideous, bestial monsters, all

red black sickly yellow

the rich warm mauve of cruel laughter, taunting whispers, dark shadows and darker thoughts. Creatures that bear no resemblance to anything seen on earth: long, sharp teeth, sharper tongues that cast labels and insults like curses but deeper, so much deeper. Monsters that prowl and are inescapable forever. Monsters that wait and transform themselves into semblances of familiarity that are almost like comfort. You sought out the monsters again, didn't you? You sought them out and joined them, had the tattoo of death beaten into your arm, made you feel home again.

The creatures that you lived with in your youth, especially the one that bears so much resemblance to the child currently in your gaze of enmity, are like old friends. Their taunts and curses are predictable and comforting. When they were gone you searched for the familiarity of pain and found it in a cult circle of dusty black, death shrouds and skulls. You found it in snakes and curses and green light. You found comfort and homeliness in the acid green.

That is why you are so confused when you see this... child? Man? Boy? You find yourself in the midst of an absolute hatred, a desperation to kill it is almost unchecked, and in the centre of this whirling maelstrom of terror a set of green eyes stare that are so calm, so hurt and so open to trust that it literally makes you stop.

They say eyes are the windows to the soul, and these are green as lightning death, green as eternal life on earth. You find, in this despised face, windows that have no representation to the monsters you are so accustomed to fighting. These eyes bespeak peace and a tranquillity that you do not associate with slate-grey hatred - they are all that remains of someone who took it in themselves to hate the Four as much as you did. A kind of companionship.

The only kind you knew, sad as it was. A companionship openly rejected.

But still. Memories collide and cluster, reeling in the void of the abyss.

Shake that aside. You know as well, that this boy has suffered. Before. He lost parents, godparents, friends. You can empathise with that, but only at the surface level. Despite what leaf-green says, despite whatviridian tells you when you probe them with a vague sense of malice, you still hate this raven-haired youth with a passion that you feel burning you up. It will consume you some day. It will eat at you until their is nothing left, and you will have nothing, no compassion, no boundaries to stop you taking that pale face and twisting it into a rictus of pain.

But you know him. You recognise that. You see him watching you, knowing. And his pity feels like spit on your cheek.

You know, as does a few of his closest friends/observers, that he carries a burden too heavy even for an adult's shoulders. You don't care. Why should you? You suffered under the hands of his last generation. Now echoes of the pain and the futility come bouncing back to fill your stone heart with a such hatred that you want to watch him die. Echoes that are louder than you imagine. And you feel the need for vengeance that is not deserved, revenge that is unwarranted, but revenge that will eliminate this pressure inside your soul. The pressure that expands daily.

This need for violence has become crucial. You can see that his need for comfort is comparable, although there appears to be a similar desperation crawling in a corner of his brain. You use this anger when in the meetings of darkness and death, and lust, hate and betrayal. You use these to fuel the utter blackness in your soul, the unforgiven sins that roam the plains of your spirit.

It occurs a kind of ecstasy when you torture.

A sort of… thrill.

A curious excitement when the staccato rhythm of your
(prey)
victim's heartbeat reaches a crescendo and then stops.

Lust, hate and betrayal. How… quaint.

These have become your love, art and music. They are all you know.

Your music is what you wait for and even though you know that you must fight evil you feel a dull pang of unhappiness at forsaking the only world you ever knew, the only world you ever felt comfortable in. The only place where people welcomed you, even if only to stab you in the back. Perhaps that was what you looked for.

A treacherous thought wonders fleetingly if something similar is happening in the head of the one you hate, but you brush it away in annoyance. Spare no thoughts for the Hated One. His presence in your head is unwanted.

'The Hated One'. Already it has acquired capital letters in your mind.

Despite this, your mind drifts slowly back, creepily, treacherously, like the deviance of a straight line by a rolling ball.

He is the only one who is as isolated as you. You see him with his friends (who doesn't?) and you can understand with a simple clarity, like a clear sheen of light through dirty blackness, that his friends cannot understand him as you do. You view him with a predator's single-mindedness, free from the vortex of emotions that cloud your view, and you can see him stood on his own... even when in a crowd. All alone.

This builds a bond, whether you like it or not. You share something with this so-called miraculous boy, whose only miracle is his stubborn and persistent refusal to die, a little fact which continually gets on your nerves. You share a habit of standing alone, always in the spotlight even when in the sidelines.

You've already had to work hard enough to save his life, a fact for which you bitterly rebuked yourself for, but at the same time you felt satisfaction. The feel of a craftsman doing a job properly and well, fulfilling a contract left behind by the Hated One's father.

Another common fact - the both of you now only have one link left back to those days of enmity. A single suffering werewolf who doesn't even know the crucial role he plays in the boy's retained sanity. How wonderfully ironic. The animal that sees all cannot sense dependency.

Let's return to horrific thoughts of trial and torture, shall we? Much more enjoyable than memoirs of a past filled with hatred.

What exactly do you want to do to this boy?

Hurt him, crush him, make him understand -

Wouldn't it be possible to do all of this by... (say, let's take a novel approach to this, shall we?)... by talking to him?

Talking. Hah.

Wait... think about it. Hurting him will do no more than to increase hatred. You know this. You've seen it. The hatred does not die with death, it grows, until one morning you wake and realise it has consumed your life
(too late for that)
and that is not what you want. Others have died, killed, committed suicide, and genocide
(Voldemort there really is no other word than genocidal do you want to turn into him)
all because of a single occurrence that caused so much hatred.

Maybe talking to him would provide some answers for the both of you.

You still hate him. Nothing can take that away; it is like a security thing. Talking to him would fill your mouth with bile and the urge to hurt would increase tenfold.

But it must be considered as an option. It may provide comfort.

Not the cheap acid warmth of familiarity but the deep-seated comfort of calmness and release of emotions. You've never felt that. Maybe it's time you started looking for it before the hate, the rage consumes you entirely and you become a copy of the utmost evil.

It would hurt.

Not talking would hurt more.

It would be like... like blasphemy. Like sacrilege. Like breaking a promise sworn under oath.

Perhaps. And it would fill you with venom... but perhaps only for a short time. Soon after that may come blessed coolness and calmness, emotions you only associated with the afterlife.

Look at your life: a bitter rampage of hatred, venom and bile, sulphur and brimstone... you should know, in the profession you chose. The profession that had nothing to do with teaching.

Talk to him.

What have you got to lose?