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In the end, it really worked quite well. He had had doubts as to whether he could finish it. He was a man who rarely had doubts so it was troubling indeed. In dreams he had pressed the cold tip of his wand to Dumbledore's forehead and said the fateful words. The ones that would take that dratted twinkling out of his eyes. The one that would shut off the voice of his conscience. Killing his conscience had been so very easy. Those last few moments he could feel his temperature rising, the heat of the blood in his veins. He was normally made of ice but it was, after all, his conscience. Yes?

They had thought him another pawn to be moved around the chessboard. Yes, a pawn. His king was, though, the wrong color. It always had been. Even when he had been young, with Sirius Black pinning him against a wall. His hot breath in Snape's ear. Nobody had helped him at that particularly helpless point in his life. He had had only himself.