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Questions in the Night


Regulus Black lay awake in his bed, well after midnight, unable to close his eyes. Whenever he did, that tiny house elf flooded him and he couldn’t stand it. So although his eyes burned and sleep pecked at him like a cross owl, he still refused to close them for fear of the nightmares. Hours had passed this way, listening to the other second year Slytherins snort and snuff in their sleep, wishing he was making sleeping sounds, too… Regulus finally couldn’t take anymore and he got up and snuck out of the dormitory, down the stairs to the common room. At least down by the fire there he wouldn’t have to listen to the snoring.

But as he came down the last couple steps, he realized he wouldn’t be alone after all. By the fire sat Severus Snape, staring into the pale greenish flames, sitting on the edge of the coffee table, one hand supported by his knee and clutching his chin. Regulus hesitated when he spotted Severus, unsure if he really wanted to go on down.

“Hello Regulus,” came Severus’s voice.

Caught, Regulus went the rest of the way down and sat quietly on the end of the couch, folding his hands in his lap, staring up at Snape’s jaggedy profile, his long hooked nose exaggerated by the dark lighting in the room. Regulus looked down at his hands.

Severus turned toward him. “You’re upset.”

“Yeah. Why else would a person be up in the middle of the night?” Regulus said, “Good deducting skills, Sherlock.”

“Don’t be a prat to me, Regulus,” snapped Severus. “I have the power to completely destroy you in the eyes of the Dark Lord, don’t forget. Of all the people in this castle, I’m the one you should be on your very best behavior with.” Silence fell over them for a long moment and Severus looked back at the fire floo and finally he added, “Besides that, I was trying to be nice and offer to listen to whatever’s bothering you, if you needed to talk about it. You shouldn’t bite the hand that feeds you.”

Regulus studied his hands a moment. “I have a question.”

“What?” Severus waved his wand to add another log onto the fire and watched as the sparks flew up from the pile of them, spinning and dancing their way up the chimney.

Regulus said, “You know the mudblood girl you like? That Lily Evans?”

Severus grit his teeth and looked over at Regulus, “I said not to push me, Black.”

“I’m not. It’s a real question. Listen… I’m just curious if you think of her like she’s a person that has a life that’s worth living.”

Severus looked over at Regulus. “Obviously,” he drawled. “It’s not as though she’s a lamp or something. She is a person.” He rolled his eyes and muttered under his breath about quality of education.

“Well, you think she’s special, yeah? But mudbloods aren’t special at all according to Voldemort. Aren’t even slightly important. They deserve to die for trying to steal our magic, he says, yah?” Regulus sat forward. “If he had his way, every one of the mudbloods would be killed. Including your Lily Evans. Right?”

Severus’s jaw became a hard square as he stared at the fire. Regulus had literally just said the words of Severus’s greatest, most absolute fear. He closed his eyes. He could still feel the pain he’d felt the year before when Professor Veigler had been teaching on boggarts. The Defense Against the Dark Arts practical had been terrible in the Slytherin house. A disturbing number of the students had faced their own parents against the boggarts, or else Voldemort himself despite all the boasting they did on a daily basis about wanting to work for him… Severus’s boggart had been the only truly different one and perhaps that was why it stuck out.

Lily Evans had laid on the floor of the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, dead, her hair spread about her in a pool of red and gold, her jaw slack as though screaming, her eyes closed. Overcome with the sight of it, Severus had become the laughing stock of the room as he’d run forward, kneeling beside the form and trying to pull her up into his arms… but the laughter of the other students at the hilarity that Severus Snape’s boggart was some mudblood girl, dead was enough to pop the boggart away and ended the class.

Severus never had found a way to make it funny.

It was the least funny thing he’d ever seen in his life… and the memory of it haunted him, had pushed him to try and be closer to her, wanting to protect her, to keep that boggart’s shape from ever being something true… He’d gone mad with the fear of it, driven to the point of brewing the amortentia and imagining that if she only would fall in love with him then he would have the reason he needed to run away with her, to go some place that Voldemort would never find them, and live there in peace, without the shadow of the Dark Lord looming over him. He could be free from the life that he was being slowly forced into…

“What makes her so special?” Regulus asked.

“Everything,” Severus murmured.

Regulus asked, “Why are purebloods better than mudbloods? Why are wizards better than muggles? House elves?”

“We have magic,” Severus answered flatly.

“But so does a mudblood. So does a house elf.”

Severus said, “You’re asking too many questions.”

“I need to know why,” Regulus whined. Severus looked at him with a raised eyebrow, staring down his nose. Regulus flushed under the weight of the glare. He withered a bit in the seat. “Father killed the Lupin boy’s house elf over summer,” he explained, “I saw her die, I saw the light leave her eyes. Only for a second, but I saw it and… it’s been bothering me, Severus.”

“The Dark Lord says that purebloods are royalty and deserve to rule over all the rest. Especially those of the Sacred Twenty-Eight, one of which you are,” Severus replied. “You’re a prince, according to how Voldemort thinks, entitled to the world. Voldemort’s entire mission is to restore this hierarchy, destroy the statute of secrecy, and put the muggles in their place. Mudbloods are not true witches and wizards in Voldemort’s eyes. They are muggles who have stolen the knowledge that we alone are entitled to.”

“You’re a half-blood,” Regulus pointed out.

Severus didn’t answer. He looked down at his shoes.

“What do you say?” Regulus asked.

Severus shrugged.

“Do you really believe all that? You really believe that Lily Evans stole knowledge and deserves to die for it? Or at very least serve you because you’re better than she is because of the blood that fills up your veins? Blood that’s just as red as hers if you’re cut and that you had nothing to do with putting there? Because you got lucky and was born by the right people in the right house?” Regulus pressed, “You think you’re better because of something you’ve no control over?”

Severus murmured, “You don’t question the Dark Lord, Regulus, that’s the first step to becoming a good Death Eater. You never question him. You never ask him why, you never tell him when he is wrong.”

There was something in the weight of Severus’s voice… something that made Regulus heart beat double-time. “Are you saying that --”

Before Regulus could finish the sentence, Severus turned quickly, and his hair fell over his face so that he was peering through the dark, greasy strands at the younger boy, his eyes stone cold and hard, “I am saying that you do not question the Dark Lord unless you want to end up dead, Regulus. I am saying that you are best to let this conversation end here and not to bring it up again. I am saying that you’ll keep your mouth shut if you know what is good for you.”

“But --”

“Ask yourself, Regulus, if the a house elf’s life is worth risking your own?”

Regulus swallowed with the heaviness of those words. “Is Lily Evans worth risking yours?” he asked.

Severus slowly turned back to the fire.

Always, he thought.