Severus Snape and the secrets of time

Chapter 1: Regret

Severus could feel the weight of the world closing in around him as he sat alone in the headmasters office. He couldn't bring himself to alter it when he took over, finding some small comfort in the illusion that Albus, the former headmaster, at any time could come strolling through the door with some wisdom or comfort that he so desperately needed. But he knew that never again would he see the long white hair and beard and the laughing blue eyes behind half moon spectacles, walk through that door. His last friend and confidant, like everyone he had ever loved, gone by his own forced hand. The consequence of foolish choices, still haunting him, twenty years later. Death surrounding, yet eluding him. His days were once again, or was it finally, numbered.

He couldn't go yet though. Not until he told Harry the last few things he needed to know, not until he gave him the last few tools he needed. Harry, the son of the woman who still, even in death, possessed his heart and soul. The son who should have been his, but for bitterness, foolishness, and immaturity. But instead his childhood bully, his tormentor, had weaseled his way in, when he was at his weakest, his most foolish, and stolen her...

No. There again was the bitterness, the blame shifting. He had made the horrible decisions that had lost his best friend since they were eight, that had driven her away at sixteen, away from him, and to the person he hated most, after himself. It was his mistakes, his decisions, that had taken her life. And it was his tormentor, who had fought to protect her, and failed, that he saw every time he looked at the child who had come into his classroom six years ago, broken, battered and abandoned. Just as he was when he came to that same class, twenty years before him. Only Harry was in far more danger, far greater need of protection.

But he could never allow himself to care for him, to see him as anything but the child of his tormentor. No, doing so would put them both in danger. Maybe when death finally came, sixteen years late, he would at last know peace. Maybe he would have managed to pay penance for the choices that had cost the lives of everyone he loved. Cost his own life. Lived solely in recompense for the choices he made, when he was younger than the child he sought to protect.

So many children, too many children, in his care. Powerless to protect them all.

But he must get up. He must go on. Without him, how much worse would it be? He could not allow himself to think about it. He must live only to walk the fishing wire thick line that was the price of his ignorance and hatred.

The burning of the tattoo on his left forearm yanked him out of his revelry. One of his hated cohorts had called his "Master", the dark lord. Harry was discovered. If he didn't think fast, work fast, Harry would be captured, again. And it would be too late. Harry would go in unarmed of the knowledge he needed, the knowledge he had failed to pass on.

No! No matter the cost, he must succeed. Harry must not die!

Until the appointed time.

His knees nearly buckled under the weight of that truth. Sixteen years of sacrifice, keeping him safe at all costs, only to lead him to the slaughter. He knew it had to be done, but he didn't know if he was strong enough to do it. He was never meant to care for the boy. It would be so much easier if he didn't.

He tossed multiple different types of healing potions, anti-venom, and a couple bezoar (A stone from the stomach of a goat, that will protect you from most poisons) in his pockets before slipping silently down the stairs and into the hallway.

The dark lord had been called to the Ravenclaw common room. There was a slim chance he could get there first, but what would he do if he could? Maybe Filius Flitwick, the head of Ravenclaw, would get there first. Maybe he could pretend to be outmatched.