pekeleke (![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} pekeleke) wrote in ![[info]](https://www.insanejournal.com/img/community.gif){kind=small} snape_potter,@ 2012-03-01 14:25:00 |
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The voice under all silences. Chapter 2
THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Ch 2
Author: [info]pekeleke
Pairing: Severus Snape/Harry Potter
Word Count:2918
Rating: N-17
Summary: Four years after the final battle Severus Snape wakes up to HELL! Warning(s): Strong language.
A/N: First snarry fic, ever. English is not my mother tongue so mistakes are to be expected.
Beta: None
Disclaimer: The characters used in this fiction are not mine. No money is being made from it.
THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 2
As if through a thick fog he heard them come and go: People, both, familiar and strange...
Some old and watery voiced.
Some impersonal, professional, clinically cold and softly spoken.
One tentatively tender, contrite. Uneasy but Oh!, so filled with gentle care, that her touch felt like the caress of a long-stranded mother: searing him right into forgiveness with the strength of her regret alone...
-Minnie... Do not cry. You were never meant to know...-
There was mostly silence, though. And peace.
A curious calm that allowed him to simply be, as if floating in never-ending water, or flying among clouds.
He desired to think of nothing. To feel no emotions. To hold only emptiness.
Eventually, he discovered that he could avoid thinking no longer and then, with every passing hour, he began to understand that this thing... this hushed darkness, filled with weepy noises and creepily consoling pats to the back of his hand, could not possibly be that lauded-ad-nauseum “Greatest New Adventure” of Albus's. And that thought, in turn, brought home an even more unwelcome realisation: they were wrong... The blasted muggles!
Whatever demon had possessed his good sense, that he'd paid any attention to the same species that had begot his miserable excuse for a father?
Dear Merlin! He must have been mad. Or dying. Or both... Again!
He faded in and out of consciousness. In and out of pain. In and out of reality.
He saw people that should not be here in Azkaban: gentle souls. Naive, beautiful people that could not possibly belong between this murder-infested walls.. That surely deserved better: Minnie. Poppy. Rubeus...
They had all touched his hand. His cheek. One ear...
They had patted the bed. Covered him up. Offered him water...
They had wept. WEPT! All over him! The heathens!
He saw others as well. Bizarre visions that defied all logic: More figments of his imagination, then. Or plain old-fashioned nightmares: twisted wisps of unconscious regrets turned into form.
How else would he had seen that particular band of annoyingly cheerful red-haired people? Weasleys!...He refused to have Weasleys in his “Adventure”!
Or his delusion. Or whatever the Hell this was!
He remembered the know-it-all, suffocating him almost into a new death: his fourth, with that unmanageable bush she called hair.
She'd talked to him constantly. Disrupting his precious “floating” with her shrill little voice as she lectured him, HIM! To pull himself out of his hole and face the music.
Of all the disrespectful...!
And Draco!
He remembered Draco with the vivid recall of the feverish. Or the wishful. With the shattering regret of a man who knew himself to have failed that boy utterly.
His godchild...! A soul more precious to him than unicorn horn powder and he... He had not been able to protect him as he should have! Not from everything. Not completely. Almost not at all...
Draco came and went. Then came again...
Pale hair shining like moonlight against the darkness. Cold hands combing Severus's hair gently in a gesture so familiar it brought tears to his eyes.
' Dra...co...!'
He remembered the shushing sounds issued from trembling pale lips and the promise, fervently voiced in that aristocratic tone, that:
' Everything is going to be alright, Godfather. You just have to shush, and go back to sleep for a while longer. Regain your strength... Be patient...'
He cared not for the lies but treasured the image, nevertheless. Appreciated the hopeful smile in those shining Gray eyes. Held the loving expression he could glimpse, plastered all over that beautiful narrow face, close to his heart. It was meant for him, after all. Despite his failures...
Sometimes there were also sounds. Incomprehensible noises. The familiar twinkling of slowly melting ice. The loud pop of a potion bottle being uncorked. The soft echo of footsteps: some approaching, some leaving, others coming to a halt...
Then they were sentences, confusing, bewildering tidbits of information that he'd garnered like a miser collects gold, only to feel cheated by their unfathomable meaning. By their confusing, baffling lack of real logic.
He'd heard them in batches. In flashes. In broken, fought-for seconds of sudden, complete clarity...
He'd heard them being, both, shouted and cried. Whispered and raged. Exhausted and defeated. Hopeful. Concerned. Desolate...
He heard Poppy enumerate some kind of exhaustingly long list of ailments: Malnutrition... Dehydration... Broken rib... Sprained ankle... Infected lashing marks... Infected wound... Poison... Blood loss... Burns...
She spoke with a voice like thunder about hexes of the skin and of the bone. About curses. About some kind of... nervous system nonsense... and he wondered absently why on Earth should she become so agitated while giving some kind of lesson to only Circe knew whom...
In any case, her voice, be it real or imagined, brought him mostly comfort.
He heard someone he could not place: A Healer? A Potion Master? Some kind of mightily starchy character elaborating droningly on the properties of one or other poison, when in contact with dark magic, and he panicked with the sudden realisation of what Peterssen was up to.
The aurors must be in on it too, because he heard Kingsley's deep baritone agreeing to the dastardly plot in hushed tones.
They were going to off him on the quiet! Poison him in his sickbed and then perform some kind of... Marking?... On his body?... Something meant to have... echoes... able to.... remain, although faded, even after death!
Luc was here too. Luc! He could not believe the old scoundrel's plan had really worked...!
But he heard his familiar, cultured drawl as clear as if he were in the room beside his bed. Bellowing at somebody. Calling them all idiots. Arguing about purpose and control and the ownership of curses. Whispering in a hush-hush kind of confidential aside the one word in his long-winded explanation that made no sense at all to Severus: Parseltongue...
What the hell was going on here? Why would Luc be in cahoots with the ministry to kill him, of all things?
They had forgiven each other outright treachery, for Merlin's sake!
Sometimes he thought he heard Minnie, pleading for his forgiveness.
Telling him about Hogwarts. About the impossibly difficult charms on the ceiling of the Great Hall.
About the Room of Requirement having misplaced itself due to some fire.
About Albus's portrait screaming at the Minister of Magic. About the castle refusing to accept another Headmaster...
What utter tosh was this?... Why should the castle have to choose anyone new when Minnie was still there? It made not one wit of sense to him at all which, now that he thought about it carefully, must mean that he had, somehow, totally misunderstood her!
Molly Weasley annoyed him with her cheerful, high pitched voice. She shoved warm broth down his parched, aching throat. And apple juice...!
Oh, Merlin! How he hated apple juice!
She'd pried his lips open and poured all kinds of things into him: soups, milk, water, ripened tiny bites of one juicy fruit or other...
She'd lectured him about his “ disgusting thinness “. Raged about protruding bones and shallow cheeks and concave bellies and only The Founders knew what other kind of crazed matronly new fads.
He mostly ignored her anyway, as he was in no mood to even pretend to understand what all that ridiculous teenage nonsense was truly about: Killing themselves with hunger in order to stay svelte... What utter rot!
Draco argued with someone almost constantly.
He spoke gently but firmly the same word again and again. And again: ' No. No. No! NO! '
' It won't work... Don't!... Are you crazy?.. Potion... The potion... That potion can't... Must find another way!... He won't forgive you. Us. Any of us!... '
Severus didn't like the distress he could hear in that beloved voice.
He didn't like the idea of some bullying scumbag daring to exploit his precious godchild's natural talent with the craft he'd so carefully taught him.
He wondered what Luc was doing, that he allowed this... travesty... to take place! and attempted, many times, to discern the nature of the discussed potion. But his treacherous senses would invariably shut down on him at the very worst moment, leaving him frustrated and on edge. Utterly impotent to save Draco. Again!...
Potter was here too. All the time. Always uncomfortably close. Touching his cheek. His forehead. His hand...
The jerk had even dared to comb his hair once. And to read aloud a particularly interesting article on the properties of the Aurgular Blue Fungus in mood-stabilising potions!
He heard his voice constantly too: Demanding updates from Poppy. Curtailing his time with Draco. Ordering Molly Weasley to let him rest.
Arguing with Minnie. With Kingsley. With the starchy professional one. With Luc...
Again... And again... And. Again... AND. AGAIN!... About poisons and hexes and markings and snakes and Parseltongue... until all Severus wanted was to tell them all to shut the hell up and go fight somewhere else!.
He heard him arguing about other things too. Things that made no sense... Things that had been dead and buried long ago: like James Potter and Sirius Black. Like old pranks and nightmares and deceptions...
He argued with the Bush-head and the Freckle-king about someone who wouldn't believe... wouldn't understand... wouldn't give a chance...
He argued about choices and gambles and the right thing to do and ensuring... ensuring... what?..
He talked once about debts. About retribution. About someone's old potions book...
He rambled some nonsensical tripe about memories and Legilimency and connexions between heads that had shared everything.
Magic... He talked about magic a lot. About luck and about Albus. He talked about some chambers he'd restored from the images he'd lifted off a pensive...
Once, he confessed the strangest thing in the tenderest of voices: Love...
He felt love for someone. Love of the eternal kind, apparently. The painful kind. The hopeless kind...
LOVE!... of all the strange things to ever speak of to one's former professor!
The perfect Hero of the Wizarding World had spoken that most intimate of words aloud. In the quiet of the never-ending night that held Severus himself captive. Right beside his enemy's sick bed...
The whole outrageously inappropriate business was, for one thing, unusual. For another just plainly bewildering. Severus could not fathom the boy's reasons to do such thing unless the object of his affections was, indeed, among the gaggle of brainless creatures that so faithfully surrounded him.
And then it hit him: Dear Salazar! The menace was infatuated with Miss Granger! And that child was so blindly besotted with the latest Weasley disaster that they might as well have been joined at the hip!
No wonder the Potter boy's last remaining grain of sense had vanished out the window!
The poor, pathetic child...
Lily would have been totally devastated...!
Just as he was getting used to being utterly irritated by these confusing spectres of his former associates, something happened. Something meant to change it all:
He felt the darkness of the memories it brought him long before he realised the actual source of his unease.
He was sweating. Trembling. Lost in a world forged on the very worst memories he possessed: The Dark Lord. The Dark Mark. Blood and curses. Torture. Pain. Betrayal...
All of it constantly underscored by that hateful, subtle sound: Parseltongue...
He shivered and he flailed, trapped within some kind of thick, suffocatingly all-encompassing bindings. He attempted to remove himself from the nearness of the sound. Awful, terrible things invariably happened whenever he heard that detested hissing.
He was trapped though. Bound. He'd been weakened somehow...
Had he been discovered...?
Oh, Merlin! Let the Dark Lord be furious enough to forego the long, drawn-out torturing routine and head straight for dismemberment, if that was the case!.
He shuddered to think of what the next few hours would feel like were he not to be granted this probably last, very desperate wish...
How had he been discovered? Had he put any of the others at risk? By Salazar!, he hoped not!
He had failed in his task to protect Lily's son. One more painful regret to add to his exhaustingly long list: He hadn't been strong enough. Cunning enough. Courageous enough...
He only hoped that, at least, he had been tight-lipped enough to protect whatever viable plans the Order still had... Whomever's safety rested on the continuing impenetrability of Grimmauld Place... Whatever knowledge the Light possessed about the Dark Lord's little stash of Horcruxes and their ultimate destruction...
The sibilant hissing rose and ebbed with the quality of a chant. A ritual of some kind. A requiem.
He knew then, that this time there'd be no reprieve. No second chance. No forgiveness...
He'd messed it all somehow. Big Time!
-I'm sorry, Albus...-
He must have spoken aloud because the beastly stream of words abruptly halted and a wide, too warm hand came to rest along the left side of his clammy temple, pushing aside an irritatingly stuck lock of hair which presence he'd been quite happily unaware of, until that second.
' Sssehhh haavs shruus? ' a voice, puzzlingly much softer than he'd expected, seemed to be questioning him and he wondered for a crazed, panicked second if he hadn't misinterpreted the situation.
Could he be taking part in this... thing... voluntarily? Could he have, somehow, forgotten that he'd allowed the Dark Lord to... What...?: Bind him? Knock him unconscious with some hex? Blur the sharpness of his usual awareness with some kind of hallucinogenic potion?
Could this... thing: Chant... Ceremony... Ritual... have been just another one of those distasteful tasks he had to perform for his despised Lord in order to remain beyond suspicion “among the faithful”, at least for a while longer?
' Sssehhh haavs shruus? ' The question came again, more strongly pronounced this time. Not so tentative. Impatient.
He frowned with indecision and deep terror while his mind fairly raced: Was there any chance at all that he had, miraculously, kept his cover?...
His stomach cramped and his skin crawled when he felt the touch again: His hair was being very gently combed, carefully set away from his damp brow... Strong fingers curled slowly around his jaw-bone, tilting his head sideways and a sharp, lacerating kind of pain flared on the right side of his neck.
The groan escaped him before he could suppress it and the dreaded hissing resumed instantly. Ferociously. A veritable torrent of commands he could not ever have a hope to understand.
He was suddenly plunged into the very depths of agony. Something awful, foetid, putrid seemed to be slithering along the skin of his throat. Burning him like lava. Branding him like cattle. Seeping from the inside out...
His head tensed, held so strongly between a pair of merciless wide hands that he began to doubt again. To worry incessantly. To fear, truly fear, that this... this might be his end...
He attempted to pull himself away but was held fast. Brutally forced to endure this gruesome torment. To submit to this pain that rivalled the Cruciatus. To remain were he was: Trapped. Weakened. Utterly impotent...
Unlike his usual experiences with his Master's bouts of viciousness he found himself unable to block this: he was denied the relief of blacking out. Of closing his mind down. Of fading into whiteness.
He panicked...
He knew without a doubt that he would not be able to bear this utter torment for much longer. A few minutes, maybe even ten, and then... then he'd break...
Merciful Merlin! He was a shameful coward! He could not bear the guilt! To know that, in the end... he'd succumbed so easily...
-Oh!, Albus... You've placed your trust in the wrong hands...!-
He'd have to beg, before he broke, it'd be his only chance...
' Ple... Please...! My... Lord! ' He whispered wildly into that almost violent torrent of hisses and could have fainted in gratefulness when the pounding, brutal flow of sound halted once again.
There was silence then: Tense. Frozen. Dangerous.
The hands moved around his head, cupping it now rather than holding it captive. Some sort of soft wet cloth was being used to wipe the sweat off his clammy, sticky brow.
' Severus? ' He understood his name then. The first sound that had made any sense to him in this long night and his eyelids fought the mighty weight of utter exhaustion, in order to face whatever monsters lurked among shadows right beside him.
His eyes opened, maybe not as much as he'd hoped, but enough for him to see flickering flames...
No. No! A candle... and... a wand? Yes. Albus's wand...! The heavy, blue leathery cover of a thick old book, richly embossed with the Malfoy crest... A bedroom shrouded in gloom and...
Green. So much green...
Green like the colour of a wet, vibrant Rain Forest. Green like spring. Like dewy leaves. Like Lily...
No!. Not Lily... Like Lily's eyes...
Then there was blackness. And pain. For a long time...
TBC...
THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Ch 2
Author: [info]pekeleke
Pairing: Severus Snape/Harry Potter
Word Count:2918
Rating: N-17
Summary: Four years after the final battle Severus Snape wakes up to HELL! Warning(s): Strong language.
A/N: First snarry fic, ever. English is not my mother tongue so mistakes are to be expected.
Beta: None
Disclaimer: The characters used in this fiction are not mine. No money is being made from it.
THE VOICE UNDER ALL SILENCES. Chapter 2
As if through a thick fog he heard them come and go: People, both, familiar and strange...
Some old and watery voiced.
Some impersonal, professional, clinically cold and softly spoken.
One tentatively tender, contrite. Uneasy but Oh!, so filled with gentle care, that her touch felt like the caress of a long-stranded mother: searing him right into forgiveness with the strength of her regret alone...
-Minnie... Do not cry. You were never meant to know...-
There was mostly silence, though. And peace.
A curious calm that allowed him to simply be, as if floating in never-ending water, or flying among clouds.
He desired to think of nothing. To feel no emotions. To hold only emptiness.
Eventually, he discovered that he could avoid thinking no longer and then, with every passing hour, he began to understand that this thing... this hushed darkness, filled with weepy noises and creepily consoling pats to the back of his hand, could not possibly be that lauded-ad-nauseum “Greatest New Adventure” of Albus's. And that thought, in turn, brought home an even more unwelcome realisation: they were wrong... The blasted muggles!
Whatever demon had possessed his good sense, that he'd paid any attention to the same species that had begot his miserable excuse for a father?
Dear Merlin! He must have been mad. Or dying. Or both... Again!
He faded in and out of consciousness. In and out of pain. In and out of reality.
He saw people that should not be here in Azkaban: gentle souls. Naive, beautiful people that could not possibly belong between this murder-infested walls.. That surely deserved better: Minnie. Poppy. Rubeus...
They had all touched his hand. His cheek. One ear...
They had patted the bed. Covered him up. Offered him water...
They had wept. WEPT! All over him! The heathens!
He saw others as well. Bizarre visions that defied all logic: More figments of his imagination, then. Or plain old-fashioned nightmares: twisted wisps of unconscious regrets turned into form.
How else would he had seen that particular band of annoyingly cheerful red-haired people? Weasleys!...He refused to have Weasleys in his “Adventure”!
Or his delusion. Or whatever the Hell this was!
He remembered the know-it-all, suffocating him almost into a new death: his fourth, with that unmanageable bush she called hair.
She'd talked to him constantly. Disrupting his precious “floating” with her shrill little voice as she lectured him, HIM! To pull himself out of his hole and face the music.
Of all the disrespectful...!
And Draco!
He remembered Draco with the vivid recall of the feverish. Or the wishful. With the shattering regret of a man who knew himself to have failed that boy utterly.
His godchild...! A soul more precious to him than unicorn horn powder and he... He had not been able to protect him as he should have! Not from everything. Not completely. Almost not at all...
Draco came and went. Then came again...
Pale hair shining like moonlight against the darkness. Cold hands combing Severus's hair gently in a gesture so familiar it brought tears to his eyes.
' Dra...co...!'
He remembered the shushing sounds issued from trembling pale lips and the promise, fervently voiced in that aristocratic tone, that:
' Everything is going to be alright, Godfather. You just have to shush, and go back to sleep for a while longer. Regain your strength... Be patient...'
He cared not for the lies but treasured the image, nevertheless. Appreciated the hopeful smile in those shining Gray eyes. Held the loving expression he could glimpse, plastered all over that beautiful narrow face, close to his heart. It was meant for him, after all. Despite his failures...
Sometimes there were also sounds. Incomprehensible noises. The familiar twinkling of slowly melting ice. The loud pop of a potion bottle being uncorked. The soft echo of footsteps: some approaching, some leaving, others coming to a halt...
Then they were sentences, confusing, bewildering tidbits of information that he'd garnered like a miser collects gold, only to feel cheated by their unfathomable meaning. By their confusing, baffling lack of real logic.
He'd heard them in batches. In flashes. In broken, fought-for seconds of sudden, complete clarity...
He'd heard them being, both, shouted and cried. Whispered and raged. Exhausted and defeated. Hopeful. Concerned. Desolate...
He heard Poppy enumerate some kind of exhaustingly long list of ailments: Malnutrition... Dehydration... Broken rib... Sprained ankle... Infected lashing marks... Infected wound... Poison... Blood loss... Burns...
She spoke with a voice like thunder about hexes of the skin and of the bone. About curses. About some kind of... nervous system nonsense... and he wondered absently why on Earth should she become so agitated while giving some kind of lesson to only Circe knew whom...
In any case, her voice, be it real or imagined, brought him mostly comfort.
He heard someone he could not place: A Healer? A Potion Master? Some kind of mightily starchy character elaborating droningly on the properties of one or other poison, when in contact with dark magic, and he panicked with the sudden realisation of what Peterssen was up to.
The aurors must be in on it too, because he heard Kingsley's deep baritone agreeing to the dastardly plot in hushed tones.
They were going to off him on the quiet! Poison him in his sickbed and then perform some kind of... Marking?... On his body?... Something meant to have... echoes... able to.... remain, although faded, even after death!
Luc was here too. Luc! He could not believe the old scoundrel's plan had really worked...!
But he heard his familiar, cultured drawl as clear as if he were in the room beside his bed. Bellowing at somebody. Calling them all idiots. Arguing about purpose and control and the ownership of curses. Whispering in a hush-hush kind of confidential aside the one word in his long-winded explanation that made no sense at all to Severus: Parseltongue...
What the hell was going on here? Why would Luc be in cahoots with the ministry to kill him, of all things?
They had forgiven each other outright treachery, for Merlin's sake!
Sometimes he thought he heard Minnie, pleading for his forgiveness.
Telling him about Hogwarts. About the impossibly difficult charms on the ceiling of the Great Hall.
About the Room of Requirement having misplaced itself due to some fire.
About Albus's portrait screaming at the Minister of Magic. About the castle refusing to accept another Headmaster...
What utter tosh was this?... Why should the castle have to choose anyone new when Minnie was still there? It made not one wit of sense to him at all which, now that he thought about it carefully, must mean that he had, somehow, totally misunderstood her!
Molly Weasley annoyed him with her cheerful, high pitched voice. She shoved warm broth down his parched, aching throat. And apple juice...!
Oh, Merlin! How he hated apple juice!
She'd pried his lips open and poured all kinds of things into him: soups, milk, water, ripened tiny bites of one juicy fruit or other...
She'd lectured him about his “ disgusting thinness “. Raged about protruding bones and shallow cheeks and concave bellies and only The Founders knew what other kind of crazed matronly new fads.
He mostly ignored her anyway, as he was in no mood to even pretend to understand what all that ridiculous teenage nonsense was truly about: Killing themselves with hunger in order to stay svelte... What utter rot!
Draco argued with someone almost constantly.
He spoke gently but firmly the same word again and again. And again: ' No. No. No! NO! '
' It won't work... Don't!... Are you crazy?.. Potion... The potion... That potion can't... Must find another way!... He won't forgive you. Us. Any of us!... '
Severus didn't like the distress he could hear in that beloved voice.
He didn't like the idea of some bullying scumbag daring to exploit his precious godchild's natural talent with the craft he'd so carefully taught him.
He wondered what Luc was doing, that he allowed this... travesty... to take place! and attempted, many times, to discern the nature of the discussed potion. But his treacherous senses would invariably shut down on him at the very worst moment, leaving him frustrated and on edge. Utterly impotent to save Draco. Again!...
Potter was here too. All the time. Always uncomfortably close. Touching his cheek. His forehead. His hand...
The jerk had even dared to comb his hair once. And to read aloud a particularly interesting article on the properties of the Aurgular Blue Fungus in mood-stabilising potions!
He heard his voice constantly too: Demanding updates from Poppy. Curtailing his time with Draco. Ordering Molly Weasley to let him rest.
Arguing with Minnie. With Kingsley. With the starchy professional one. With Luc...
Again... And again... And. Again... AND. AGAIN!... About poisons and hexes and markings and snakes and Parseltongue... until all Severus wanted was to tell them all to shut the hell up and go fight somewhere else!.
He heard him arguing about other things too. Things that made no sense... Things that had been dead and buried long ago: like James Potter and Sirius Black. Like old pranks and nightmares and deceptions...
He argued with the Bush-head and the Freckle-king about someone who wouldn't believe... wouldn't understand... wouldn't give a chance...
He argued about choices and gambles and the right thing to do and ensuring... ensuring... what?..
He talked once about debts. About retribution. About someone's old potions book...
He rambled some nonsensical tripe about memories and Legilimency and connexions between heads that had shared everything.
Magic... He talked about magic a lot. About luck and about Albus. He talked about some chambers he'd restored from the images he'd lifted off a pensive...
Once, he confessed the strangest thing in the tenderest of voices: Love...
He felt love for someone. Love of the eternal kind, apparently. The painful kind. The hopeless kind...
LOVE!... of all the strange things to ever speak of to one's former professor!
The perfect Hero of the Wizarding World had spoken that most intimate of words aloud. In the quiet of the never-ending night that held Severus himself captive. Right beside his enemy's sick bed...
The whole outrageously inappropriate business was, for one thing, unusual. For another just plainly bewildering. Severus could not fathom the boy's reasons to do such thing unless the object of his affections was, indeed, among the gaggle of brainless creatures that so faithfully surrounded him.
And then it hit him: Dear Salazar! The menace was infatuated with Miss Granger! And that child was so blindly besotted with the latest Weasley disaster that they might as well have been joined at the hip!
No wonder the Potter boy's last remaining grain of sense had vanished out the window!
The poor, pathetic child...
Lily would have been totally devastated...!
Just as he was getting used to being utterly irritated by these confusing spectres of his former associates, something happened. Something meant to change it all:
He felt the darkness of the memories it brought him long before he realised the actual source of his unease.
He was sweating. Trembling. Lost in a world forged on the very worst memories he possessed: The Dark Lord. The Dark Mark. Blood and curses. Torture. Pain. Betrayal...
All of it constantly underscored by that hateful, subtle sound: Parseltongue...
He shivered and he flailed, trapped within some kind of thick, suffocatingly all-encompassing bindings. He attempted to remove himself from the nearness of the sound. Awful, terrible things invariably happened whenever he heard that detested hissing.
He was trapped though. Bound. He'd been weakened somehow...
Had he been discovered...?
Oh, Merlin! Let the Dark Lord be furious enough to forego the long, drawn-out torturing routine and head straight for dismemberment, if that was the case!.
He shuddered to think of what the next few hours would feel like were he not to be granted this probably last, very desperate wish...
How had he been discovered? Had he put any of the others at risk? By Salazar!, he hoped not!
He had failed in his task to protect Lily's son. One more painful regret to add to his exhaustingly long list: He hadn't been strong enough. Cunning enough. Courageous enough...
He only hoped that, at least, he had been tight-lipped enough to protect whatever viable plans the Order still had... Whomever's safety rested on the continuing impenetrability of Grimmauld Place... Whatever knowledge the Light possessed about the Dark Lord's little stash of Horcruxes and their ultimate destruction...
The sibilant hissing rose and ebbed with the quality of a chant. A ritual of some kind. A requiem.
He knew then, that this time there'd be no reprieve. No second chance. No forgiveness...
He'd messed it all somehow. Big Time!
-I'm sorry, Albus...-
He must have spoken aloud because the beastly stream of words abruptly halted and a wide, too warm hand came to rest along the left side of his clammy temple, pushing aside an irritatingly stuck lock of hair which presence he'd been quite happily unaware of, until that second.
' Sssehhh haavs shruus? ' a voice, puzzlingly much softer than he'd expected, seemed to be questioning him and he wondered for a crazed, panicked second if he hadn't misinterpreted the situation.
Could he be taking part in this... thing... voluntarily? Could he have, somehow, forgotten that he'd allowed the Dark Lord to... What...?: Bind him? Knock him unconscious with some hex? Blur the sharpness of his usual awareness with some kind of hallucinogenic potion?
Could this... thing: Chant... Ceremony... Ritual... have been just another one of those distasteful tasks he had to perform for his despised Lord in order to remain beyond suspicion “among the faithful”, at least for a while longer?
' Sssehhh haavs shruus? ' The question came again, more strongly pronounced this time. Not so tentative. Impatient.
He frowned with indecision and deep terror while his mind fairly raced: Was there any chance at all that he had, miraculously, kept his cover?...
His stomach cramped and his skin crawled when he felt the touch again: His hair was being very gently combed, carefully set away from his damp brow... Strong fingers curled slowly around his jaw-bone, tilting his head sideways and a sharp, lacerating kind of pain flared on the right side of his neck.
The groan escaped him before he could suppress it and the dreaded hissing resumed instantly. Ferociously. A veritable torrent of commands he could not ever have a hope to understand.
He was suddenly plunged into the very depths of agony. Something awful, foetid, putrid seemed to be slithering along the skin of his throat. Burning him like lava. Branding him like cattle. Seeping from the inside out...
His head tensed, held so strongly between a pair of merciless wide hands that he began to doubt again. To worry incessantly. To fear, truly fear, that this... this might be his end...
He attempted to pull himself away but was held fast. Brutally forced to endure this gruesome torment. To submit to this pain that rivalled the Cruciatus. To remain were he was: Trapped. Weakened. Utterly impotent...
Unlike his usual experiences with his Master's bouts of viciousness he found himself unable to block this: he was denied the relief of blacking out. Of closing his mind down. Of fading into whiteness.
He panicked...
He knew without a doubt that he would not be able to bear this utter torment for much longer. A few minutes, maybe even ten, and then... then he'd break...
Merciful Merlin! He was a shameful coward! He could not bear the guilt! To know that, in the end... he'd succumbed so easily...
-Oh!, Albus... You've placed your trust in the wrong hands...!-
He'd have to beg, before he broke, it'd be his only chance...
' Ple... Please...! My... Lord! ' He whispered wildly into that almost violent torrent of hisses and could have fainted in gratefulness when the pounding, brutal flow of sound halted once again.
There was silence then: Tense. Frozen. Dangerous.
The hands moved around his head, cupping it now rather than holding it captive. Some sort of soft wet cloth was being used to wipe the sweat off his clammy, sticky brow.
' Severus? ' He understood his name then. The first sound that had made any sense to him in this long night and his eyelids fought the mighty weight of utter exhaustion, in order to face whatever monsters lurked among shadows right beside him.
His eyes opened, maybe not as much as he'd hoped, but enough for him to see flickering flames...
No. No! A candle... and... a wand? Yes. Albus's wand...! The heavy, blue leathery cover of a thick old book, richly embossed with the Malfoy crest... A bedroom shrouded in gloom and...
Green. So much green...
Green like the colour of a wet, vibrant Rain Forest. Green like spring. Like dewy leaves. Like Lily...
No!. Not Lily... Like Lily's eyes...
Then there was blackness. And pain. For a long time...
TBC...