Snape exhaled, a dry husk of a laugh. "Whatever I'd call him. That was well said. We were always complicated. From the moment I laid eyes on him I ...admired him. You know that."
A hollow-eyed glance, sidelong and infinitely sad: and for more reasons than Malfoy. "I always wondered what else you knew about him. Whether you worked it out," he breathed.
"He was the one who led me into the Inner Circle."
Still in the same voice - dry, quiet, sad - he added, "For that, I spent most of my adult life wishing he was dead."