TBAY: More Assassin!Snape

[dicentra63]

No: HPFGUIDX 46979

Suddenly, the door to the tavern bursts open, and two figures draped
in red jump into view.

"No one expects the Sirius Apologist!" shouts the taller figure.

Dicentra and her companion wait expectantly, frozen in their
swashbuckling poses.  The tavern goes quiet except for the chirping of
a lone cricket.
  
"You missed 'em," says the handsome barkeep. "They're in the back room."

Dicentra's face falls as she and her companion relax their poses. 
"Uh, as you were..." she tells the patrons, most of whom have already
returned to their conversations.  They troop down the hallway into the
back room and see the open door of the back room. They jump into the
doorway.

"No one expects the Sirius Apologist!" Dicentra shouts, trying to
recapture the element of surprise.

No one in the room looks remotely startled. "We're not talking about
Sirius," drawls one of the occupants.

"Oh, but you *were*!" Dicentra cries. "I distinctly heard someone
dissing Sirius."  She looks around.  "It was HER!" she says, lunging
forward, poking Wendy in the chest with her wand.  "SHE's the one who
said...

"'We've got LOADS more dirt on Sirius Black, for example. We know of a
very specific awful thing he did.' 

"Then she looked around guiltily as if expecting me to charge in right
away, but as everyone knows, No One Expects The Sirius Apologist, so I
had to wait until her guard was down.  Fortunately, Eileen ran
interference for me by telling Wendy that the only Sirius apologist
was Cindy, who was a bit indisposed at the moment. And *then* she said...

"'[Sirius is] an adult, and should realise that what he did was
heinously wrong. But he still sticks to his, "Snape deserved it"
story. Which is a load of crap, any way you look at it. And I'm simply
unable to respect Sirius because of it. Which is a shame, really,
because he's actually Dead Sexy. Now that he's cleaned up a bit, anyway.'"

"See?!?  We're getting that old 'Snape isn't as bad as Sirius'
argument.  And I must say I Beg To Differ!" 

Dicentra looks around the room wildly.

"WE'RE NOT TALKING ABOUT THE PRANK!" says the entire room in unison.

"Fine then," says Dicentra, pulling up a chair and perching herself on
the back.  Her companion, a dazed-looking boy with glasses and messy
black hair, leans against the wall.  "Let's talk about Snape, and how
 Bad he was.  And I'll begin by returning to what SHE said," Dicentra
waves her want threateningly at Wendy.

"'At this point, canonically, we know of *nothing* concrete that Snape
has done which would necessitate a redemption, do we? Yes, he was a
Death Eater, but we have no details of crimes he committed.'

"What's this 'Yes, he was a Death Eater BUT' going on here?  There's
no BUT when it comes to being a Death Eater.  Don't you realize what
'Death Eater' means?  It's not some pseudo-scary name that Voldemort
gave his Legions of Terror.  It's a descriptive name that says what
they do.  They Eat Death."  

She turns to her companion. "Post 38649, please."  The boy fumbles
around in his robes and produces a roll of parchment.

"We know that Voldemort's wand is made from the wood of a yew tree,
and yew trees are, as Catlady reminds us, 'symbol[s] of death.
Because: 1) Its berries are poisonous. 2) The English longbow was so
great because it was made of yew wood, which is a natural composite.
3) It is traditionally planted in churchyards on purpose to consume
the buried corpses as tree fertilizer.'

"As you can see, yew trees are themselves death eaters: feasters on
the dead. But I doubt Voldemort and his cronies are exhuming graves to
gnaw on moldy old bones. No, they've undoubtedly found a new way to
eat death--cause it, then profit from it.

"Seeing as how Voldemort's ultimate quest is immortality, it stands to
reason that his DEs are following him down that same path.  Is it not
probable that they've learned how to 'eat' the death of someone
they've AK'ed, adding that person's remaining lifespan to their own? 
And is it not reasonable to assume that anyone who made it into
Voldemort's Inner Circle pursued that path toward immortality with the
same vigor as Voldemort himself?  Do you really mean to tell me that
Snape became a Death Eater without Eating Death?  Surely, you jest!"

Dicentra looks around triumphantly.

"I don't jest," says a voice. "And I do suggest that Snape kept his
hands relatively clean while he was in the ranks of the DEs."

"Who said that?" Dicentra demands pointing her wand first at one
person, then another.  "No one will fess up, will they?  But I know
all you Snapefans want to think that Snape turned on Voldemort because
he couldn't bring himself to develop a taste for killing.  That he
never descended to the level of Lucius Malfoy or Walden Mcnair. 
You've all been talking to that George out there, haven't you?" 

Dicentra has begun to froth at the mouth ever so slightly.  Her
glittering black eyes dart around the room. 

"Goblet of Fire," she barks to her companion, who starts out of a
light nap.  He produces a thick tome from his robes.

"Here we are... end of the Pensive chapter...  'Harry looked into
Dumbledore's light blue eyes and the thing he really wanted to know
spilled out of his mouth before he could stop it.'

"'"What made you think he'd really stopped supporting Voldemort,
Professor?"'

"'Dumbledore held Harry's gaze for a few seconds, and then said,
"That, Harry, is a matter between Professor Snape and myself."'

"See?  There's no reason why Dumbledore couldn't have told Harry right
then and there that Snape had developed a distaste for Voldemort's
Death-Eating ways.  There's nothing so secret about that.  He could
have explained to Harry that Snape wasn't as bad as the rest.  Surely
Harry should know something like that.  But no, Dumbledore's sitting
on a Bang, as sure as I'm standing here.  Snape turned back after
having been in up to his eyebrows."

Everyone in the room was staring either at Dicentra or at the nearest
means of escape.

"Which means that Assassin!Snape isn't so far out of character.  As
Elkins said, Snape's concept of Evil goes so deeply into Pure Evil
that anything less than the extreme falls into the "that's not so bad"
category.  Bullying Harry and Neville, for example, seems inexcusable
to us, but he's done so much worse it looks positively righteous to
him.  So effecting a 'surgical' kill, to prevent more deaths later on,
is not going to register on his Evil scale and neither, might I add,
on Albus Dumbledore's.  

"Having moral courage sometimes means doing one awful thing to prevent
something worse from happening.  The cop who takes out a fleeing,
armed suspect isn't at all happy about killing another human being
(they routinely go in for therapy after killing someone), but it has
to be done to prevent the suspect from killing someone else.  Soldiers
in a war have to kill too, in horrific ways, but if that's what you
have to do to prevent a hostile nation from taking over your country,
that's what you do.

"There's plenty of evidence to suggest that JKR doesn't flinch in the
face of violence or Evil, and that she's not going to pull any
punches.  She's not going to tone down Snape's past or prevent Harry
from having to do bad things in the future because of mere
squeamishness.  You mark my words."

Suddenly, Pippin Apparates on the scene, startling Dicentra.

"Snape is going after Sirius," she declares before Disapparating.

Dicentra, nonplussed, mouths silently like a fish for a few moments
before finding her voice.

"Right..." she says, her voice breaking slightly.  "Dumbledore sends
Sirius to pull the Old Crowd together, and moments later sends Snape
out to kill him.  *That's* effective."  But a few tears have pooled in
her eyes and she runs from the room to hide the fact that she's
crying.  Because No One Expects A Sirius Apologist To Cry.

--Dicentra, who *earned* her FEATHERBOAS, dadgummit