Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any other Warner Brother's enterprises. These are not of my own creation, but the plot is entirely my own, and those who infringe will feel the consequence.


He stood there, his prideful, gaunt form, extending far beyond Albus Dumbledore's admittedly stout body. His blackened eyes, made more so by the ruthless onslaught of the summer's events, were hazed in smoky anger. A twitching arm reached to grip a reassuringly chilly window sill.
You want me to what?, he asked again, each lilt, each syllable punctuated by uninhibited resent. His very structure rattled with both indignance and rage, his beakish nose flexing involuntarily in the olfactorily rich room.
You could take the boy out of the dungeons, but not the dungeons out of the boy.
His taut skin on his knuckles threatened to snap, each bone and sinew revealed in a perversely intimate manner. Fingers, in comparison to the rest of his body, that should have been elongated, alien-like in their slenderness, were instead calloused and roughened, acid bitten and potion stung. He had little care for a neatly manicured hand now.
The wizard sighed, obviously fatigued and defeated by a man so strongly rooted in his ways, any element of change, any variant of routine, was notoriously ill received. His face, which seemed neither old, nor gratuitously young, looked aged in the moment. His hair, which shimmered frenziedly in the light, only caused his face to look even more sallow. Only his eyes, those prismatically blue eyes, betrayed his annoyance.
They changed colors upon mood, and the friendly periwinkle blue had not so subtly bled into a dark cobalt. For your own protection, Severus, he responded slowly. One misstep and the younger, more copiously wounded man would immediately flee, the skittish, jetty stallion he was.
Absolutely not, the response came in a hiss, one that signaled his anger was untethered and frantically hurling itself against the panes of sanity. His eyes narrowed, giving the illusion of becoming eerily serpentine. Appropriate, really, when one considers his house mascot to be a snake. The jaw clenched, and his fingers reluctantly pried themselves from the window, scraping mournfully along the edge.
He would not, for pride's sake, be ambivilously tossed about, floundering an ocean of technicalities, gadgets and non magical people. To be placed in such an openly hostile environment was stoking the witch burners with firewood. He must draw the line somewhere, and he refused to go skulking off, belly first, for Voldemort's sake. He grimaced spitefully at Dumbledore, becoming even angrier at his placid expression. The spectacles, dazzlingly effective at hiding the barest emotions, seemed even more opaque, the crystalline glass forming a very tainted shield around his eyes. He only wished that his own physical traits were so illegible.
If you refuse, Severus, your death is imminent. Hogwarts cannot hope to shield you forever.
Snape gave an angry shrug, but instead came off as more of a frantic bucking; an attempt to ward off an invisible assault. His sable hair, his most prized physicality, had been ravaged by stress and periodic torture. It hung, brittle and limpid, resembling his own state, mentally and bodily. He wished he had another ledge to rest upon, another stable support. But, alas, in this world, with so few unshakable allies and supporters, there seemed much distance between one steady ledge and the next.
Why with them? Why not another school?, he asked carelessly, knowing that his pointless question would be met with further exasperation. He was tired, world weary, battle weary, death weary. Too many people he had seen fall, and it mattered little whether or not they were comrades or enemies. Death had a uniform face, and it varied little in its methods. His face grew tight at the memory of Macgonagall's desperate eyes, once so amicably referred to as beady, ironically so vastly open in death. Just the recollection of her strangled, helpless cry was enough to visibly shake the normally non emotive man. He shook his head, and Dumbledore asked naught, for he knew too well the troubles that plagued him.
You must go. If you refuse, we will have lost our greatest ally.
Snape winced, wishing that he didn't put so much pressure upon his battered shoulders. He had precariously avoided death too many times for the blunt explication of his fate to unnerve him. It was the significance of his presence, the fact that was useful to a cause he found himself frequently questioning. For all the good these supposedly gallant men accomplished, little results had showed. The darkness had been quick and ruthless in its expansion, and those who had wavering faiths had already been assimilated. He felt a twinge in his scar, his indelible reminder of his own faltered youth.
He gave his headmaster a stare that could melt stone, before he gave his terminal decision; I must have time.
Dumbledore rose slightly, ambling towards him in what, in any other situation, would have appeared to be an affectionate gate. But the context revealed him as immensely impatient. There is no time, Severus. That is the very weapon we lack. I urge, for your own sake, to seek protection with muggles. There is simply no other option.
He of course didn't mention death in name, but the heavy implications still lingered. Nor did he say torture, dismemberment or worse, Imperius-induced betrayal. He mourned for his student, a perpetually lost, precariously intelligent young man.
Severus shrugged, giving an indifferent, yet still smoldering glare. He had never liked being confined in tight spaces, and liked even less the thought of death being the only way out. Not that he had accomplished such an enormously large amount in his misguided life, but he would have liked to think that there were better things to live for.

It was a statement, not a question. A retraction of pride, perhaps? But no one could be certain with this capricious professor. He looked sufficiently drained; emotionally sapped.
London. But close enough to Floo networks and wizard gathering places, the headmaster said gently, knowing it would still require an immense amount of encouragment. It was not everyday that a wizard was fored to move from his comfortably settled position and made to re-nest elsewhere.
I have to. For the Cause's sake.
This was uttered autmotically; in a monotonous voice. There was no conviction to be beheld.
Dumbledore nodded, and clasped Severus' thin shoulder briefly, grimacing at the sharp bones that were so evident, even beneath the thick cushion that were his robes.
Snape flashed him a brief, mirthless, almost rueful smile before he glided eerily out of the room.




A/N: Pretty dark from the others, eh? This will prove to be a lot more interesting than the first chapter may seem. Will hold much surprises. Reviews muchly appreciated.