Voices of the Past
DISCLAIMER: I am making no money off of this, and this site isn't either. This is purely fan-fiction written by a weird person who has absolutely nothing better to do than write this stuff. I don't own Harry Potter, Hogwarts, etc. J.K.R. does. I don't own Les Miserables, either.
Severus Snape looked about him as he sat in his office at Hogwarts absentmindedly. The walls gazed back solidly, heavily steeped with stories that they could tell if they but had mouths. Snape smiled ruefully at them. He knew that one day, should someone ever give them the capability to speak, they would divulge tales of his occupancy almost incredible to anyone who knew him. He didn't care much. He had nothing to live for anymore.
A spider began to creep up his bare, swollen and bruised foot. Since he wasn't at a desk, Snape could see the creature, two inches in diameter, as it tediously made its way up his toes, then his ankle. Snape was careful not to move. Not that he was able to much, anyhow. Being tied to his heavy old ebony desk chair, which, in better days, he used to sit in at his own choosing, did not allow him much easy movement. The cords around his wrists and ankles and practically everywhere else cut into his skin, causing it to bleed more than it already was from the beatings and other torture he had endured over the last year. But he had grown more and more callous to these trivial things of flesh and blood. All he wanted was to die. Maybe, just perchance, the particular spider now edging up about his knee was fatally poisonous, and with a sudden movement would bite him and prove an end to his misery.
Snape thought, again, about how he had come to be in this position. It wasn't his fault that Voldemort, the summer before Dumbledore was killed, captured him and took him away from Hogwarts, from the life of a spy he had known, and replaced him via polyjuice potion with Aramand Dubois, a French Death Eater who was excellent at impersonations. They had transferred most of Snape's pertinent memory to Dubois, and the Frenchie went off to Hogwarts that year to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, posing as Snape. Dumbledore even was fooled by the deception, and it was Dubois who had killed him up in the tower that night. Or so Lucius Malfoy had told him while intoxicated. But Snape little doubted that this was indeed the case.
After the Death Eaters had taken over Hogwarts to train by will or by force all the students into being young Death Eaters, they didn't have any more use for the dungeons. It was someone's cruel desire (if not the Dark Lord's, then undoubtedly Lucius') that it would cause Severus the most grief to be contained in his dungeons, the place he had known and loved and learned to call home. And indeed, at first it had. But after a while, he became accustomed to it, as he had become accustomed to almost everything horrible in his life.
Of course, he only got one room of his old dungeons, his office. The rest of the dungeons were torture rooms for the students at the facility. Sometimes Snape could hear as they tortured in the room next door to him. Even, on occasion, he could recognize the student's voice as it screamed for mercy. And often he heard Lucius Malfoy's cruel laugh. Merlin how he loathed that man!
The routine of life was simple. Water was brought but once every other day, and when it was brought, Snape had to drink it in five minutes under watch of a guard. A platter of food was brought every Saturday night and Snape was freed from his bonds for fifteen minutes under watch of two guards to eat his sole meal for the week. Every other Sunday morning a Death Eater of lower rank would come in, drag the prisoner up to the presence of the second in command after Voldemort, Alfredo Tomlinson. That august personage would ask if Snape were ready to submit himself to a series of tests to prove his loyalty to the Dark Lord, and, in turn, be set free to an extent. Of course, being loyal to the cause of the right, though it was already pretty much lost, Snape would refuse and subject himself to torture by crucio and whatever else caught the fancy of the Death Eaters for exactly half an hour, until the next prisoner was brought in. The next prisoner varied almost every fortnight; sadly Snape realized that probably this was because more and more people, good people, hardworking people, were finally submitting to what they believed was the only way out of eternal hell—joining the Death Eaters.
There were a few, however, that Snape had deduced were still in captivity and too stubborn to yield. Among these were Minerva McGonagall, Pomona Sprout, and Filius Flitwick. These were his old associates/colleagues/teachers, and they suffered the same fate as him. Occasionally when being dragged to and fro, he would see them, and even bless them with one of his rare smiles if they chanced to glance his way. They were more or less grateful and very surprised. Snape didn't mind; he lived for those moments of seeing one more loyal soul who shared his turmoil despite the personal cost.
He sometimes wondered over why, when he refused every week, they just didn't kill him. The only reasons he could come up with were that a) they were valuable, talented wizards and witches who could be an asset to them once they converted to their side or b) because of their loyalty to the other side and their respective talents, they didn't want their oppressors to be able to use them to their advantage. In other words, it was basically a very Slytherin theology of 'if we can't use them, we'll make sure you can't either.'
A whirring sound in front of him roused his attention. Languidly, he lifted his eyelids. The sight before him came as more than a shock—James Potter and Sirius Black, at about fifteen years old each of them, standing before him. Severus closed his eyes again. He must be seeing things; lack of food and water and such did cause one to have hallucinations. In fact, this wasn't the first. Before he had thought that his mother came, that his little sister squib of a sister Sylvia (now dead too) and that even Dumbledore came. But every time he found himself again disappointed; they were no spirits, they were merely picture memories surfacing from his mind and projecting themselves through his eyes. He was not about to get his hopes up again only to discover that he had misled himself yet another time. So Snape did not look at the phantoms of the past before him, did not even care that they existed.
There was a long pause. When Snape finally thought himself free from his hallucinations, he opened his eyes again. There were James and Sirius again, still staring in awe at him. Snape blinked several more times, yet the boys did not go away. Finally, James said:
"Bloody hell!"
And they were silent again. Now Snape was sure he heard that. Therefore, the men in front of him must exist, but then they must exist logically. Doubtless Snape was close to his delicious demise, and these dead souls in the form of angels had come to take him away to wherever he would go. Snape was not a religious man. At least, he wasn't until now. He wondered if he would be going to heaven or hell. He very much doubted the former.
"Snape…is…is that YOU?" rasped Sirius' ghost/angel/apparition finally.
"Of course it's me," murmured Snape closing his eyes again. The scene strangely reminded him of a Muggle musical he had seen once. He couldn't remember the name of it, but, in the end, as the protagonist was dying, he was surrounded by all the other people who had died in the play, and they sang a touching song. He didn't remember the words at all when he tried to think of them, but suddenly, without warning, Snape burst out into song.
"Do you hear the people sing For the wretched of the earth
Lost in the valley of the night?
It is the music of a people
Who are climbing to the light.
There is a flame that never dies.
Even the darkest night will end
And the sun will rise."
"I don't think he's…erm…quite right in the head, eh Sirius?" James nudged his friend in the ribs. Snape opened his eyes and looked at them. They certainly weren't acting like angels at all. On the contrary, both of them were grasping their wands in an aggressive manner, as though they had come prepared to attack. "Probably gotten senile," James smirked, dismissing Snape's open stare.
"I wouldn't be surprised," Sirius reflected with a nod. "You know, I don't believe we had better attack him, you know?"
"He's gotten his just deserts in insanity, anyhow. No wonder they tied him up. He's probably become a danger to the community."
Snape shook his head to get the kinks out of his neck. If these were angels, they would not be insulting him to his face. If they were demons, they would have gotten out their torture tools by now. Then they must really be…"James…Sirius?" he asked as clearly as his parched throat would allow.
James shook his head, looking with an odd stare at the man tied in the chair. "He recognizes us," he said slowly, raising an eyebrow.
"Of course I recognize you dunderheads," gasped Snape. "Weren't you the bane of my very existence since my first day at Hogwarts?"
Sirius chuckled. "Bloody hell," he put in, "He can both recognize us AND remember what fun we had…er have?" He looked at James confusedly.
James, at this, grinned. "Yeah, well, Snape," he said smiling, "I haven't the slightest idea if you understand me, but listen anyways: Sirius and I traveled from the past to kick your butt for treating my son like…well…me, I guess. And you used your power as a teacher to your own advantage and were unfair to Harry."
"And how do you know this?" Snape put forth the important question.
"You actually understand me?"
Snape closed his eyes and attempted to make a low growling noise. He didn't succeed very well. "Despite the fact that I am in such a condition as I am now, I am NOT even near senile. I can understand you quite perfectly." He would have added some scathing sarcastic remark to end that with about their ears going bad or something had he not been so weary.
Sirius took his lack of bite to be change of personality on Snape's part, though. "Well! So Snivellus' had a change of heart, eh?"
"Not in the least."
"Ah. So would you explain why someone's beaten us to giving you the time of your life?"
"Hmph. So that's what you call being tortured, starved, and bound so tightly that all one's circulation is cut off, am I right?"
"Well…" James looked at Sirius a moment. Then, slowly, he said, "I don't know why you're in this position. I don't know why I leave just now. In fact, I don't know why I'm going to do this, but I will." And he turned to Sirius. "Your dagger, please?"
Sirius wordlessly drew the magical-dagger-that-could-cut-through-anything from its sheath (he would later give this same dagger to Harry for a present) and placed it in Jame's outstretched hand. Then James turned back to Snape, then, silently, he began to cut the magically-charmed-so-as-to-be-unbreakable cords that tied Snape to the chair. Though Snape had tried for months to use his teeth to gnaw through the thread-thin stings, the knife cut them like butter. Soon Snape was free. As soon as he stood, though, he burst into action.
"We must be out of here, at once," he said quickly. "Potter, how did you get in here in the first place?"
"We used this time turner that I stole from Moo—I mean, Remus," Sirius said, displaying the article.
"Well, let us be out of here, then!" declared Snape vehemently, "When those bonds broke, an alarm goes off upstairs. We have a matter of minutes before they come down here to investigate."
"And who are they?" asked James as he draped the time turner's chain somehow around all of their necks with difficulty.
"Death Eaters," sighed Snape, and they disappeared from the scene.