DISCLAIMER: not mine.


PROLOGUE

They're all over his body, they're all over his face. There are scratches, cuts, slashes deep into the skin revealing open flesh that glistens an incandescent blue under craning necks of streetlights, where he limps.

He struggles with his feet, slowly dragging him along the peeling painted fences. Every breath feels like he has swallowed sandpaper and it grinds against his throat. He can smell everything. From that rusty scent plastered like bandages around him to that unpleasant waft of odour emitting from every direction in this godforsaken place.

He casts cautious glances behind him but no one is there. No one is following him, just the shadow of his sagging form and the remains of a chip packet stealing across the gravel and tar, forgotten and free.

He doesn't know where he's going. He doesn't care where he's going. He just needs to get away. And away he goes.

By now he is completely exhausted and drained that it is not until it seems like the rubble of the pathway is hovering an inch away from his face when he finally feels the blow to his kneecaps as it brings him crashing down and he screams out harsh and dry.

The last thing he sees while that dark, thick puddle presses warmly against his temple are two pairs of boots barely touching his nose before he passes out.

They have found him.

The other man sees this silhouette of a large lump falling to the ground and when he nudges it over with his foot he can barely recognise the face of that someone covered in brutal wounds and drenched in the stench of blood and dirt. It's disgusting and he wonders if he should leave it there.

Nevertheless he grabs into the pockets of his robes, pulls out his wand and levitates the limp form into his house, identical to the ones along the street.

Past the bleak scabs of yellow wallpaper he carries this bundle of wreck into the guest room and lays him down on top of the covers, for it isn't going anywhere on his own bed he barely even sleeps in.

"Yes Master Snape?" His houself asks while she wipes her bony hands on her tea towel of a dress.

"Peaches, I need you to clean this man up before I tend to his wounds, can you do that for me?" Snape says before she nods and he strides out of the room.

The grandfather clock ticks one in the morning as he paces around the creaking floorboards fumbling in the cabinets, the drawers and rummaging through the shelves until he finds the vial he is looking for.

From the gap between the door and the frame, he can already see the clean naked torso glowing underneath the wall lamps and the tuft of smooth brown hair obscuring the man's face.

He walks in, cautious and anxious and dismisses Peaches.

The man looks worse, for some odd reason. It is probably because instead of the red stained fabric covering him, the angry slashes that have hacked through it and deep into the throbbing layers of his skin over and over again are now more defined. Or probably it is also because he realises exactly who this man is.

Unable to tear his eyes away from this bad attempt of a jigsaw puzzle he pops the cork out of the vial of purplish swirling liquid determined to somehow rearrange it back.


I'm not sure if the rating will change. It could later so yeah. Thanks for reading!