A/n: Last chapter. Thanks for reading! And thanks to Eraina, for the challenge I thought I would never do – but obviously did.

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Chapter 5

Snape found the shack he had woken up in the morning after his transformation and went about cleaning it up, particularly all the broken furniture. He cleared the dust and splinters from every surface and set up a makeshift bed in the far corner of the top floor. He locked the door up tight and boarded most of the windows.

It was to be the "haunted" Shrieking Shack of this town – and his new home.

So this is it, he thought. This is how I'm going to spend the rest of my days.

He was unable to hope for better – not after all that he'd done, all that happened. He had crafted his life in such a way as to someday forever serve the darkness, the Dark Arts, the Dark Lord. He even gone so far as to "align" himself with Albus Dumbledore and his little warriors of light, the Order.

All for naught.

He had burned every one of those bridges once and for all when he'd murdered the Hogwarts Headmaster. The ties to the Death Eaters had been severed for him after hearing of the reception Macnair, newly bitten by a werewolf, had received when Lord Voldemort realized what he was to become. Now Snape had no link, no tie, no alliance… with anyone.

He was trapped all alone on a desert island, he was painted into a corner, he had no place to go. He was a man without a country.

Unfathomable…

Snape buried his face in his hands, feeling sadder, more hopeless and alone than he ever had before in his entire life.

A man without a country.

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Had he anticipated the way that night, some time ago, had come to pass, it was likely he would have made a very different set of choices. He would not have sided with the darkness, because it had thrown him away like a piece of garbage. Now that he had, and he was here, he could see that the decision to do everything to save himself ended in the destruction of his own life.

But he had chosen the darkness, however, and now he could see all his decisions to further his own ends had ended with this destruction of his own life.

The darkness had rejected him, betrayed him and left him to die – well, they thought he was dead already. All because he had become a werewolf.

Unfathomable was still the best word to describe it. He didn't think he could've imagined how things would turn out or how he was going to get through his days.

He still doesn't.

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There was barely a shave off the full moon. The night before the true full moon. The night before a night filled with horror and pain and fury that no one could have imagined. They couldn't imagine any of it unless it had happened to them. Unless they too had that kind of an experience every time the full moon rose into the night sky to induce such agony and devastation.

Unless they too, were a werewolf.

And unfathomably, Severus Snape was a werewolf.

-End-

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A/n: This story was rather much of a "branching out" for me, if you will. Did you catch the "echoes" or throwback, whatever you want to call it, to chapter 1? Anyways, thank you to everyone who reviewed and anyone who still will. Also thanks for just reading.