Glad to be back with our last installment of 'Wrath'. Molly showed us righteous wrath, in her quest to save her children. Petunia's wrath, so closely related to jealousy, stemmed from her hurt at being left out and rejected. Emotions feed into one another and are very, very closely related, so Petuia's reaction could have just as easily fit into a chapter of 'Envy'.

Today, we see Professor McGonagall completely lose her composure as she faces one whom she believes to be a traitor of the basest sort. Never poke a sleeping lion.

Betrayal

"Have you seen Harry Potter, Minerva? Because if you have, I must insist—"

Minerva McGonagall whipped her wand out of nowhere, before she'd even had a moment to plan her next course of action. A reckless rage had taken over her senses and sprung to the defense of Harry Potter—potential savior of the Wizarding world, perhaps, but still just a boy, and a boy under her protection at that.

Severus Snape countered with a Shield Charm and all Minerva could think of doing as she struggled to regain her footing was to curse the young upstart into oblivion for all the evil he'd done. He'd been a child, too, once, and Minerva had looked out for him, or at least she'd thought she had, but all this was lost in the magnitude of her wrath. He'd turned his back on those days long ago, it seemed, and it was now down to Minerva to purge the school of her ex-pupil's bloodlust. All children grow up some time, and when they do, they need to take responsibility for their actions.

It didn't matter that Potter was lurking, invisible, perhaps mere feet away from this fracas with the Lovegood girl, also in potential danger. It didn't matter that Hogwarts was now a Death Eater stronghold, nor that Dumbledore, its great perennial defender, was long dead and now lay in peaceful repose in the white tomb across the dark grounds. It didn't matter that Minerva was getting on in years, nor that she was locked in ferocious combat with a known murderer young enough to be her own child. The one thing that mattered now was that she, Minerva McGonagall, had once trusted him—they all had—and she was finally in the position to pay him back for abusing that trust. Dumbledore had been like a father (okay, maybe more like a grandfather; Albus was over a hundred, she amended herself) to this man, and he had rewarded Dumbledore's faith and trust and second chances with what? With cold-blooded murder atop the castle's topmost tower. He'd stared down the one man who trusted him implicitly and shattered him like a china doll. It was a betrayal of the basest sort. He didn't just need to die, in order to protect Potter. He deserved to suffer. If Dumbledore couldn't do it, then she would.

Minerva dodged another spell as she hurriedly planned her strategy. But no, that wouldn't do, the bastard knew Legilimency. Damn it. Of course, the infinitely more satisfying option would be to beat him senseless with a blunt object, or perhaps to put her hands around his scrawny neck and squeeze until he was still and quiet at last, but no—she'd have to settle for spellwork. She waved her wand at a blazing torch on the wall—perhaps fire could purge the headmaster of his sins? Its crackling burned like the anger Minerva felt, anger and betrayal and self-loathing for having been taken in for so long. Predictably, Snape transformed the fire into a thick black snake—I should've seen that one coming. Blasting it to mere wisps of smoke, as she wished she could do to its caster, Minerva McGonagall sent a cloud of razor-sharp daggers at her opponent, silently wishing that one would strike him directly in the heart (if he has one, the villain!) and end it all. She heard the crunch of metal on metal as he sheltered like a child behind a suit of armor. Coward.

"Minerva!"

The timely arrival of Filius Flitwick at the head of the other Heads of House distracted Minerva from the task at hand momentarily as he, too, joined in the duel. Two against one—perhaps now Minerva's taste for vengeance could be appeased, though sharing the job with another wouldn't quite satisfy her as much as her original plan of killing Severus Snape with her own two hands. Preferably as brutally as possible.

As Flitwick charmed the suit of armor that was serving as Snape's shield to attempt to strangle him, Minerva fought back a smile watching Dumbledore's killer struggle to free himself. It was exquisite payback for the months she'd watched him barricade himself in Dumbledore's office and allow the Carrows to run wild in her school—for it was her school, long before he was even born. She couldn't permit him to ruin it the way he'd ruined everything else.

SMASH! The suit of armor sailed towards Minerva and the others; she barely had time to jump out of the way as it crashed into the stone wall behind them with an earsplitting racket. She looked up to see Snape running down the corridor in full retreat. Gathering up her long dressing gown like a schoolgirl, she sprinted down the corridor in hot pursuit, turning into a nearby classroom. She had him cornered. There was no escape now.

Severus Snape, too seemed to have reached this realization. His dark eyes swept the room as though he were looking, futilely, for a way out. Any way out. Minerva hoped with all her heart that at last, he felt the same sense of entrapment that Dumbledore had surely felt when Snape had cornered him atop the Astronomy Tower that fateful night. How do you like it when it's you who's trapped? How does it feel to be at my mercy?

Raising her wand to finish it, Minerva took a step forward, only to quickly raise her arms to protect her face from the torrent of glass that flew at her from the window that was shattered as Snape jumped. For a second, Minerva's breath caught in her chest. Is he…? She fervently prayed that he'd been cut to ribbons by the shower of glass shards, or else that the fall had left him broken and finally beaten at the foot of the castle walls, like Dumbledore had been. She brushed the glass fragments from her dressing gown and stepped forth, hoping against hope that, faced with the enormity of his crimes and the impossibility of escaping with his miserable life intact, Snape had finally decided to end it all.

Her triumph was short-lived, replaced almost immediately with another wave of anger as he slipped through their fingers in escape yet again. "COWARD!" she screeched in sheer frustration, knowing instinctively that this was the one insult that would draw blood. It seems that even villains couldn't bear to face the truth.

Well, I hope you all enjoyed our first Deadly Sin: Wrath. Our next installment will explore Greed. Special appearances by two Hogwarts schoolboys with a powerful sense of entitlement and a madman with an obsession. Keep an eye out for updates!

Until then, I love your reviews!

Delilah