Devils Trill
By- Dizmius Artistius (who else does the weird titles that
mean nothing to most people?)
Disclaimers as per usual. My whole ideal of Snape: if he seems OOC, don't blame me. We each
think of him differently, its personal ideas right? Right.
Onward to the Summary- What Snape did during the summer of
GoF.
PG for not much in particular.
~*~
"You sure you won't stay at Hogwarts for the summer?"
Dumbledore asked as Professor Snape climbed into one of the horseless
carriages.
"No, I think not." Snape muttered, "You understand why,
headmaster."
"Of course, naturally." Dumbledore nodded, "Wouldn't want
people to think that magnificent house of yours was going to waste, would you."
Snape made a derisive sound, as he closed the carriage door
and sat down on one of the plush velvet seats, his pile of books and his
overstuffed trunk next to him.
The ride to Hogsmeade station did not take long, and it was
a ride he had done too often to relish any longer. He just needed to get out of the Anti-Apparition zone around
Hogwarts, and then could leave as quickly as a crow skimming the skies for its
prey.
The carriages stopped with a jerk and if he had been
listening, he would have heard the distinct sound of children clamouring
joyously towards the Hogwarts Express.
But he had his mind on other worries, worries that many of the joyous
crowd would probably never have to deal with if they were lucky enough to be
kept out of the way. Severus himself
had put himself in the way of trouble, so in a way, it was his own fault that
this was happening. Meeting Voldemort
in Quirrel four years ago had not gone down well in Snape's favour. Voldemort would have deep suspicions about
him, not just baseless rumours, but deeply sown seeds of doubt. Seeds that Snape could do much better
without right now.
These thoughts in mind, he disapparated off the Hogsmeade
platform, trunk and books in hand to a small village, close to nowhere,
population of just under one hundred last time he had cared enough to
check. The wind was blowing fiercely
for a July day, and the clouds above him were threatening to tip down their
contents at any moment. Nobody had
noticed his arrival in the tree-lined grove.
Just as well really, as he was wearing what an ordinary Muggle would
call rather "odd" attire.
But he had stopped caring about his attire long before, at
round about the same time as he stopped really caring about his hair. It suited the image he wished to
portray. Unfriendly and more to the
point- unapproachable.
He started walking up the grove, up towards a large stone
house at the end of a country road that cut across the grove about fifty paces
ahead. Just like Hogwarts, he had his
own Anti-Apparition wards that faded out just about here. Enough space to see anyone of the wizarding
world approach his home.
Home. Sanctuary. There were very few places that Snape ever
gave such a title of honour. A place
where he did not have to think about the wretched children that plagued the
weekdays of his life. A place where
Professor Snape could be Severus Snape the person. If indeed, there was such a creature left.
He hadn't seen this front door since he'd cursed it closed
behind him over eleven years ago. A few
of the window panes in the tall windows were cracked, the curtains faded to a
dull nondescript colour, probably owing to the dirt that had collected there
over the years. The house was in no way
as large as Malfoy Manor, but Snape had prided himself on the fact that it was
still a house of some worthy significance.
Had been the family home for decades.
It was strange really, Snape thought, how the entire Snape dynasty had
dwindled down to just one person. Namely, himself.
He dropped the trunk at his feet, and pulled his wand out of
his sleeve. His robes always had sleeve
pockets, very much like the kimono Geisha wore to keep their fans close by. He
pointed his wand at the door, and in his own distinctive drawl, muttered
"Alohomora matro del'Snape." The door
creaked, opening slightly. Snape put
his wand away, picked up his trunk again, and kicked the door open. It swung on its hinges and hit the wall with
a dull thud, raising a cloud of dust.
Nothing that a few cleaning charms couldn't deal with later. As Snape
continued walking down the hall, the door automatically closed behind him.
Every candle he walked past in the dim rooms lit up as if a blowtorch had been
aimed in their direction. He dumped his
belongings in the drawing room, and took a tour of his house.
As he stepped into the dank stone flagged kitchens he smiled
grimly at the large cauldron in the fireplace.
The house elves were always on the look out for young master Severus
entering this room, in case he was trying to get close to their beloved
cauldron, and use it for his own dark purposes. There were no longer any house elves in the kitchen, they had all
been dismissed the day Snape took up teaching at Hogwarts. And what a magnificent dismissal that had
been. Just telling them to 'sling their
hook, they'd all been freed' was enough to cause an uproar of grief amongst the
devoted elves. He'd run out of clothing
that day, there were so many elves to free.
Snape smirked. Somewhere in the country there would be an elf or two
with a robe bearing his name on the inside of the hem. Or maybe a sock of his. That would be quite a sight. Or maybe the ministry had called them in,
taken all his clothes as important artefacts of a Dark Wizard. Yes, that would be something Cornelius Fudge
would do. There would be a vault
somewhere within the ministry completely devoted to the wardrobe of Severus
Snape. Each item carefully ironed and
pressed, each bearing the Snape family insignia, folded up neatly for new
Ministry members to study on their arrival at the Auror Institute.
Not that he was ever convicted of being a Dark
Wizard…
Snape pushed open the small door at the end of the kitchen
hallway, and walked out into the small herb garden the elves had devoted so
much of their time to. It was over-run
with brambles and looked like it belonged to the Forbidden Forest. He looked
over the low wall into the rest of the once magnificent gardens. The small white statuettes were losing a
battle against bindweed, their pale demeanour had been dampened somewhat to a
murky grey. The flowerbeds were a
tangle of weeds and thicket bushes, the neatly clipped hedges ran riot in such
a way that reminded Snape briefly of Hagrid's hair. Snorting incredulously, he turned on his heel and walked back
into the house, taking the steps out of the kitchens two at a time.
The foreboding panelled oak door unnerved him. How many times had he stood here, listening
intently through the wood at his father's booming voice. The voice that told him so many years ago of
what he was to become. A fearless aide
to the master, a servant to the most supreme deity of modern times. That was perhaps the day that Severus Snape
had felt that his father had truly acknowledged his existence within the
family. That was the day that Lord
Santalio Snape had told his son that he would be proud to see Severus accepted
within the folds of Lord Voldemort. It
was a pity that Santalio never even made it to the initiation ceremony. He had outlived his usefulness, and had been
disposed of accordingly.
Pushing open the door, the musty smell that he often associated
with libraries wafted past. The walls
were covered with shelves of books, some bound with leather and gold, some
carelessly stacked on top of another.
The small globe that hung in mid-air pointed out all the wizarding
cities of note, each in a different colour.
Knowledge was so easily achieved in this room; it was easy to see why
Severus loved sitting here, in his father's leather chair, immersed in a volume
of some interesting new book. However,
there was time enough for doing that later.
He opened a drawer in his father's much-loved bureau. Filled to the brim with dark talismans. Skulls with the power to see beneath the
ground. Owl claws, which permitted the
carrier to see in the dark, with a 270-degree vision bandwidth. A lock of someone's hair, long forgotten,
probably used for polyjuice brewing. A
book, which he had been told, drew in the soul of anybody who read a certain
page. The Dementors should feel
threatened; I can match their power.
Snape thought with a hint of a smirk. How satisfying.
It was not, however as satisfying as walking up the
magnificent marble staircase into his large sector of the house, his bedroom,
his own smaller but equally as grand study.
But what he loved most was the potions lab he was always spending his
free time in, always looking up new potions to try, or maybe some curses when
potions got more tedious. The cathedral
like windows reached up towards the ceiling, the black velvet drapes held open
on either side by two stone gargoyles.
He'd always had a fondness for those two gargoyles. They moved from time to time, flexing a wing
or two. But now, they looked like they
hadn't moved since he last saw them.
They were proper gargoyles, not the weedy, fearful gargoyles Hogwarts
seemed to prefer.
The platinum cauldron he had been given for his eighteenth
birthday hung dejectedly over the fireplace.
That must have been his favourite cauldron ever, and Snape had had his
fair share. There was a layer of scum
on the inside of the cauldron, remnants from whatever potion he had been
brewing there last. What was
that potion? Snape asked himself thoughtfully. The half empty bottle of eye of rat stood next to an ornate
silver dagger. A bottle of a thick red dried up liquid was spilt over the work
surface. Blood. Snape thought to himself. He blew the dust off of the book that lay
open on a chair beside the table. Spirit
containment potion, keeps the mind and spirit of the being intact and on the
physical level once the being has died. That potion had been his last order from Voldemort. In his race against death, he had given
Snape the spellbook and ordered him to work it out. Some wizards do not have an ounce of logical thinking, but here,
logical thinking was the essence of everything. It was something Snape prided himself on; his ability for logic
had brought him through some potentially difficult situations. Chief Potion Brewer for the Dark Lord
himself. Oh he had been praised highly
for the effort he had placed in this particular potion, after all, it must have
done something.
Lord Voldemort was not something he particularly wanted to
think about right now. Especially as he was in his own house.
"I was wondering when you'd show your face here again." A
silky voice shook Snape out of his thoughts.
Snape didn't even need to turn round, if he had felt
shocked, he hid it well. "Lucius." He nodded, "Long time no see."
"I couldn't help but notice…" Lucius Malfoy slid into view.
"You absence at our Lord's calling."
"It's called being a teacher at a school run by Dumbledore."
Snape met Lucius Malfoy's hard gaze. As
per usual, Malfoy was impeccably dressed in forest green robes, with a high
collar that contrasted rather nicely with his swept back greying blonde hair.
"How could I possibly just apparate?"
"How indeed." Lucius smirked, "Or maybe… you're too much of
a coward to return."
"You should save your speech for Karkaroff. I think you'll find that he is the one who
lacks… well everything actually."
Lucius looked down at the dusty table, "I thought you had an
army of elves."
"Freed." Snape answered plainly. Right about now, he was wishing that Lucius would just disappear,
preferably into a nice bottle of nightshade poison. "Why are you here?"
"Our Lord wants a word with you." Lucius walked towards the
fireplace. "Tomorrow, noon. You know the place." And with that, he stepped into the floo fire, and with a mutter
of "Malfoy mansion" had gone.
Snape scowled. Short but succinct as it always was with
Lucius Malfoy. He made a mental note to
block out any Floo arrivals as soon as possible. Noon was definitely going to be classed as interesting
tomorrow.
~*~
It took a moment for Snape to register that he wasn't
sleeping in the bed he usually woke up in.
It also took a moment for him to realise there was sunlight streaming
through the patches in the grimy windows. Sunlight, that meant the sun had
moved round the side of the house enough to be about… ten-ish. Snape
thought to himself. He rolled over and
pulled out his wand from his robe pocket, which was draped over a chair. Damn
the lack of house elves. The sunlight glinted off the silvery décor on the
metal poles of the four-poster bed. He
conjured up a mug of herbal tea and proceeded to make himself slightly more
presentable than his present state of sleepish stupor.
He lazily walked down the marble stairs, dragging a finger
through the layer of dust on the banister.
He momentarily thought about writing nonsensical words in it, half
remembering what one of the house elves told him when he had last written lewd
phrases in an offending patch of dust. "Sirs can touch the dust, but it
would be pleasing if sir did not write in it so much. It is not sir's job to be touching the dust,
it is the job of the elves in sir's house." She had practically quivered at
asking him not to do something. It was
quite a funny sight at the time. But
then he'd always got kicks out of holding power over smaller, lesser beings
than himself. That Longbottom boy for
example… incredibly frustrating, but worth it just to see him having to hold
back the tears every time Snape so much as glanced in his direction. However, the power table was going to be
shifted out of his favour in a few hours.
Perhaps Dumbledore should be notified. He can have that skull if I
don't return. Snape thought to
himself. Maybe not, it would look
slightly ridiculous if Snape were to send a note saying something along the
lines of "Help, I'm going to be skinned alive at noon, you can have a very
evil dark skull amulet if I don't come back, yours Severus."
And to think some of the students at Hogwarts thought him to
be part-vampire. There would be much
less of a problem if he had been descended from a vampire. However, there were rather large flaws. The major one being that had he been a
vampire, the job as potions master would be thoroughly unsuitable, too much
usage of deadly garlic for example. He
wouldn't be able to touch a bloodstone in order to prepare the Wolfsbane
potion. Not that he needed to prepare
it any longer, he had seen to that. Dumbledore had criticised him for doing so, but he payed to
attention to the words of wisdom that seemed to spew froth every time
Dumbledore opened his mouth.
Once again, Severus Snape was heading into the world of
backstabbing fanatical scroungers. This
was going to prove quite a different summer from the last… What was it that
that child had said? Death would be an awfully big adventure…
Yes, death would be a new enterprise for Severus Snape, and
he was going to end it on his terms.
And his terms very boldly stated in shimmering green ink that it wasn't
going to be anytime soon.
I'm going to be old… and be sitting in front of my
fireplace with a nice glass of Bordeaux wine… Yes, that'd be very nice… And
have those silk robes that my father was always raving about…
END - if you want a sequel, it'd be a
possibility, but this was just about Severus going home, not about the death
eater meeting… it's just some of his thoughts…
