Decisions by seeker

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He'd known eight months before, when the latest showdown between the Dark Lord and Potter had ended with both licking their wounds and neither winning a decisive victory -- again -- that it would come to this. He'd hoped it would end before Draco was forced to make the choice his father had made before him. Hoped the war would be over before the son repeated the mistakes of the father.

So much for hope.

Snape stared over the sea of bent heads that was all he could see of the seventh year Slytherin/Gryffindor potions class. The Gryffindors were caught up in the day's lesson. Granger was finished, as usual, and on to the next assignment. Longbottom was, thankfully, still in the infirmary with burns from the last minor cauldron eruption. Weasley was daydreaming, probably about Granger. Or Potter. While Potter was glaring at his Potions text as if sheer force of will would make it understandable.

On the opposite side of the room, Crabbe stared at his text almost as hard as Potter, though Snape knew from the glaze over his eyes it was an act. Next to him, Goyle slept with his eyes open. Not much was expected of either of them. They knew where they were going, what they would do, who they would be. Cannon fodder in the Dark Lord's great war. Enforcers. Not like Draco.

Draco, who put the finishing touches on a perfect potion, a small smile on his lips, his eyes as content as they ever got. Draco, who reminded Snape painfully of Lucius before the Dark Mark ate his soul. Draco, who stood at a crossroads, with every lesson he'd ever learned at his father's knee, every chain ever forged that tied him to his inheritance on any level, pulling him down one road.

Only Snape even considering pointing out the other road to him.

It might be a waste of time, it might be futile and, worse yet, betray his undercover status leading to his discovery by Voldemort and a painful, protracted death. Thirty years of well-honed self-protective instincts screamed at him to let the boy do what he would, that he was damned already by birth and blood and breeding.

Then Draco looked up and smiled at him, a rare, unshadowed smile of uncomplicated triumph in pulling off a difficult task, and Snape smiled back involuntarily.

Damned, perhaps, but not yet lost, and wouldn't be, if Snape could help it.

Over the next few weeks the rumblings grew louder, and Snape knew the time would come soon when the children would be gathered, and the ritual claiming commenced. He'd been subtly working against this for the past seven years, ever since Draco came to him, countering Voldemort's rhetoric with other options. Trying to open eyes in such a way that the eyes seemed to have opened on their own.

When Draco turned to him the night before the Call and came into his arms, he thought, for once, he had won.

The night was too short, the embrace too ephemeral to last. He cradled the long, sleek body against him, swallowed cries of wounded surrender and wondering sweetness, showering pleasure on a young man who'd known too much pain for all his privilege. In the aftermath, as they held one another, he'd whispered, "Make your own choices, my Draco, for you shall be the one who must bear the consequences. Choose wisely, be strong, for a moment of weakness will condemn you to a lifetime of agony."

Draco brought Snape's arm to his lips and kissed the Dark Mark. Snape threaded his hand through Draco's hair and forcibly pulled it away. Wide gray eyes stared at him in shock.

"Don't make the same mistake ... your father did." Made clear in action, not words, that it was a mistake Snape shared, and one he did not wish on Draco. The eyes narrowed at him, and for a long moment Snape feared he'd made a terrible mistake.

Then Draco curled up closer, dropped a kiss on his lips, and sighed, "I won't."

A day and a night later, as Snape writhed beneath the kiss of the Cruciatus curse, he knew the boy had spoken the truth. For when Draco unmasked him, a gift for his Dark Lord, Lucius had defended him.

And suffered the consequences of his mistake.

As Snape did now.

Curse piled on curse. His body began to shut down under the force of their orgiastic hatred. Fighting the spasms in his tortured nerves, Snape reached out and caught the cold, unresponsive hand of Lucius, soul already sucked away by the Killing Curse. From his son's wand. His eyes wandered, once, to see one final time Draco's rare, unshadowed smile of uncomplicated triumph in pulling off a difficult task, this time aimed at Voldemort.

His gaze dropped, to the open, vacant eyes of his first love, and Snape smiled as the world turned to fire around him.

END