The Courage to Live

Chapter 1

"Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes. Silently and imperceptibly, as we wake or sleep, we grow strong or we grow weak, and at last some crisis shows us what we have become." ~ Brooke Foss Wescott 

—

His eyes seared with pain.

It was absurd that, of all the agony coursing through him, it was his eyes that brought Severus back to the world of the living. But, as his lungs gasped and heaved, and tears welled up to soothe the burning dryness, the relief that came from squeezing them shut almost overwhelmed the awful ache in his torn neck.

Dying — dying.

He was dying.

Severus choked and shuddered, curling into himself with instinctive panic. He was just lucid enough to know to lie on his left side, the shreds of his neck facing the ceiling so that less blood would flow out of them, but he also knew that it was pointless.

He was going to die.

He pressed his hand against the wounds, letting out a hideous, gasping cry as his raw flesh burned with the sweat from his palm — an involuntary sob wracked him at the touch of his injury, feeling how his neck was torn, shredded beyond repair. He could feel his heartbeat, erratic and weak, in the hot blood pulsing against his hand, and he grit his teeth, taking a rattling breath as it gushed beneath his trembling fingers.

His wand. Where was his wand? He'd dropped it, dropped it when he was trying to push Nagini's cage off of his shoulders. It lied only an arm's reach behind his back.

It might as well have been a thousand.

Severus screwed his eyes shut, shuddering as the venom made its way through his body. Even if he'd held onto his wand, he knew there was no reprieve for Nagini's bites: her venom would make it so that the wound would not close, no matter what spells he might try to cast. Alone and unaided in the shack, he would die long before help could reach him, if any was sent at all.

But his death was not in vain.

Severus let out a wheezing chuckle, which promptly sent him in a horrible, wet coughing fit, but, even as he choked on his own blood, he didn't regret it. Instead, a feeling of triumph rose in his thin chest, and he bared his teeth in a defiant grin.

He'd fulfilled his last task. Through the sheerest stroke of luck, Potter had the memories he needed — he knew how to defeat the Dark Lord. Severus had worried for well over a year how he would tell the boy Dumbledore's plan, appalled that it would fall to him to explain the horrible sacrifice that must be made, but, in the end, he hadn't needed to. By murdering him, by inadvertently giving him the perfect opportunity to give the boy the necessary information, the Dark Lord had only ensured his own downfall.

If he'd had the breath, Severus would have laughed at the pure irony of it all.

His head was growing hazy, foggy with blood loss, and he cradled his free arm against his chest, his other hand still pressed against his neck. It was futile to attempt to staunch the wounds, he knew, but he refused to hasten his demise, considering it a last act of defiance against his former master and the world that had worked so hard to kill him.

The pain was such that Severus was glad to find himself slipping away, glad of the mist that was descending on his mind, and, as he shook and shuddered on the slick floorboards, his only thought was what might await him in the afterlife. Had he atoned? Had his efforts, in the end, been enough to offset the evil he'd wreaked?

He coughed, a wet, awful cough, and his breath caught and stuck. He tried to draw another one, hearing, as if from down a long tunnel, the gurgle as he inhaled his own blood, but the struggle was too steep. Defeated, his hand slid from his neck.