WIKTT challenge: The Hollow Man
Forsaken
Everyone's first impressions of the Wizengamot's holding cells were always the same. Cold wrapped itself around you, sliding through your clothing to slick smooth against your skin. The hall was long and unlit, leaving your eyes to follow the disappearing grey walls into oblivion and your terrified, half-crazed mind to wonder if, perhaps, the hall never ended. If perhaps the cells went on forever, and the echoes from the endless screaming rebounded into eternity.
Although, only people who had been there before heard the screams that night, in their minds and in their memories. That night, everything was still, and silent.
Hermione Granger followed the guard without even lighting her wand. If she'd lit it, someone might have seen the tears dripping over her nose as her own painful memories swarmed around her. With each holding cell they passed, she stomped carefully on another raw thought.
When the guard stopped and turned to face her, she finally muttered the spell. The tip of her wand flared into life to show her eyes, calm and dry. The guard, now visible as a blonde woman with a blank, indifferent expression, explained, "You'll have to be specific in your instructions. Umbra follow commands to the letter without a much sense for its spirit."
Hermione kept her eye contact even. "You keep them in cells when there is no possibility of a threat?"
"Procedure, Miss Granger. Until released to their owners, they are prisoners whether the procedure has been preformed or not. To Umbra, there is no difference between a stone floor and a down mattress. Collect your property and register with the agent at the front, please."
Hermione stepped into the open cell and swung her wand about. With a soft word, the light increased, and she walked to the small bench to the right. Her new property watched the far wall without reaction.
"Hello, Professor. Stand, and follow me. Stay slightly to my left rear." Hermione allowed the guard to lead her back out, blinking at the sudden light when the door to the stairs was opened. At the top of the short flight, another indifferent-seeming guard sat at a desk, holding a book and quill.
"Hermione Granger, in possession of Severus Snape."
The heavyset man frowned at her. "Use of prior names is discouraged, Miss Granger. An Umbra is not a person. His number, please."
She glanced behind her, at the simple brown robe. Stitched across the left breast in orange was the three-digit numeral.
"Umbra 001."
***********************************
There was an old, worn path, winding through dead trees and a forest of chin-high weeds. It had apparently once been a beautiful approach, full of flowers and neatly-kept bushes. Hermione's next thought on the subject forced her lips into a mocking smile: that it looked like the way to a witch's house. Reminded of her situation by the sound of footsteps just behind her, she felt quite a lot like an evil, twisted old hag, luring some innocent child into her lair. Her expression falling back into introspective grimness, Hermione heightened her pace, and soon reached the open lawn and the manor it preceded.
When the war was ended and Voldemort gone, the Ministry hunted down every Death Eater it could, brutally handling even the newest and most misguided of the Dark Lord's servants. The entire world had screamed for their blood. With the faces of those dead and missing staring back at them from their closed eyelids, the Wizengamot, one by one, sentenced each dark wizard to lives of complete emptiness.
During the war, someone had developed a new, terrifying process. A complex potion, that quickly, but very painfully, ripped away the drinker's magic. Within the next day, aspects of his emotions, opinions, and beliefs followed. First courage, then hope, then every other distinguishing characteristic of a human being. The last thing to be taken was always his despair, making the last few moments of humanity spent in agonizing screams and sobs.
Lucius Malfoy was utterly destroyed that way. Avery, Nott, Crabbe, Goyle, Lestrange, Macnair… and Severus Snape.
Albus Dumbledore was one of the missing faces for whom the world mourned. Snape had been the first trial, and the first sentence. Without the only man who could vouch for his movements for the Light side, Severus Snape ceased to exist.
And Hermione Granger, a victim of the Death Eater's atrocities, had been given one of these emptied people, one of these 'Umbra'. A servant, as part of the compensation for her sacrifice.
Many of the other victims had been students of Snape's. Not knowing the man for what he was, always thinking he was a traitor, they could have taken so many terrible paths of vengeance. The Ministry never would have protected the Umbra, who was no longer, in their eyes, human.
So he'd come home with Hermione.
Home in more ways than one, actually. The manor house Hermione was busily taking down the door-wards on was what used to be Snape family estate. It was the rest of her compensation, with the sole condition that she take a few orphaned muggle-borns in on the summer holidays. Having no home of her own, she'd accepted.
She entered the house and slid her muddy boots off onto a mat next to the door and her cloak onto a nearby rack that reached for it, wrought iron uncurling to gracefully receive the light material. With only a slight hesitation, she turned to Snape.
She was ready to deliver the instructions she'd been planning out ever since they'd left the ministry: a careful schedule of necessary activities she didn't know if he would perform without her command. She opened her mouth to begin.
Snape watched her without a flicker of emotion. She'd never seen his eyes so indifferent to the world.
Professor Snape taught her potions for seven years. In seven years, she'd never caught his eye without his lip curling, his eyes flashing, or his shoulders stiffening in irritation. Snape, although admittedly tactiturn, was an emotional man. Every moment of his life was lived with intensity. To see him stripped of it was like seeing a glove left carelessly, unmoving, on a dresser.
***********************************
Hermione was used to living a solitary life. She enjoyed the quiet of it, the simple pleasure in relaxing entirely from considering one's appearance. In the year since graduation, she had happily roamed Snape manor with only the very aged Crookshanks for companionship. When she had to leave each morning for work, it had always been with a slight tinge of regret.
Work was now a pleasant retreat. When home, she shut herself away in the library, reading and researching with the focus of her NEWT-taking days. The halls were no longer empty.
She had always been a sympathetic person, but there could be no sympathy for a being without feelings, and Professor Snape would have scorned her pity.
She still thought of him that way. She'd replaced the ugly brown prison robe with black robes she remembered so well, always with the accompanying memory of dim fires and swirling fumes. The brown one was burned. Professor Snape deserved his dignity.
But she could do nothing for him.
Forsaken
Everyone's first impressions of the Wizengamot's holding cells were always the same. Cold wrapped itself around you, sliding through your clothing to slick smooth against your skin. The hall was long and unlit, leaving your eyes to follow the disappearing grey walls into oblivion and your terrified, half-crazed mind to wonder if, perhaps, the hall never ended. If perhaps the cells went on forever, and the echoes from the endless screaming rebounded into eternity.
Although, only people who had been there before heard the screams that night, in their minds and in their memories. That night, everything was still, and silent.
Hermione Granger followed the guard without even lighting her wand. If she'd lit it, someone might have seen the tears dripping over her nose as her own painful memories swarmed around her. With each holding cell they passed, she stomped carefully on another raw thought.
When the guard stopped and turned to face her, she finally muttered the spell. The tip of her wand flared into life to show her eyes, calm and dry. The guard, now visible as a blonde woman with a blank, indifferent expression, explained, "You'll have to be specific in your instructions. Umbra follow commands to the letter without a much sense for its spirit."
Hermione kept her eye contact even. "You keep them in cells when there is no possibility of a threat?"
"Procedure, Miss Granger. Until released to their owners, they are prisoners whether the procedure has been preformed or not. To Umbra, there is no difference between a stone floor and a down mattress. Collect your property and register with the agent at the front, please."
Hermione stepped into the open cell and swung her wand about. With a soft word, the light increased, and she walked to the small bench to the right. Her new property watched the far wall without reaction.
"Hello, Professor. Stand, and follow me. Stay slightly to my left rear." Hermione allowed the guard to lead her back out, blinking at the sudden light when the door to the stairs was opened. At the top of the short flight, another indifferent-seeming guard sat at a desk, holding a book and quill.
"Hermione Granger, in possession of Severus Snape."
The heavyset man frowned at her. "Use of prior names is discouraged, Miss Granger. An Umbra is not a person. His number, please."
She glanced behind her, at the simple brown robe. Stitched across the left breast in orange was the three-digit numeral.
"Umbra 001."
***********************************
There was an old, worn path, winding through dead trees and a forest of chin-high weeds. It had apparently once been a beautiful approach, full of flowers and neatly-kept bushes. Hermione's next thought on the subject forced her lips into a mocking smile: that it looked like the way to a witch's house. Reminded of her situation by the sound of footsteps just behind her, she felt quite a lot like an evil, twisted old hag, luring some innocent child into her lair. Her expression falling back into introspective grimness, Hermione heightened her pace, and soon reached the open lawn and the manor it preceded.
When the war was ended and Voldemort gone, the Ministry hunted down every Death Eater it could, brutally handling even the newest and most misguided of the Dark Lord's servants. The entire world had screamed for their blood. With the faces of those dead and missing staring back at them from their closed eyelids, the Wizengamot, one by one, sentenced each dark wizard to lives of complete emptiness.
During the war, someone had developed a new, terrifying process. A complex potion, that quickly, but very painfully, ripped away the drinker's magic. Within the next day, aspects of his emotions, opinions, and beliefs followed. First courage, then hope, then every other distinguishing characteristic of a human being. The last thing to be taken was always his despair, making the last few moments of humanity spent in agonizing screams and sobs.
Lucius Malfoy was utterly destroyed that way. Avery, Nott, Crabbe, Goyle, Lestrange, Macnair… and Severus Snape.
Albus Dumbledore was one of the missing faces for whom the world mourned. Snape had been the first trial, and the first sentence. Without the only man who could vouch for his movements for the Light side, Severus Snape ceased to exist.
And Hermione Granger, a victim of the Death Eater's atrocities, had been given one of these emptied people, one of these 'Umbra'. A servant, as part of the compensation for her sacrifice.
Many of the other victims had been students of Snape's. Not knowing the man for what he was, always thinking he was a traitor, they could have taken so many terrible paths of vengeance. The Ministry never would have protected the Umbra, who was no longer, in their eyes, human.
So he'd come home with Hermione.
Home in more ways than one, actually. The manor house Hermione was busily taking down the door-wards on was what used to be Snape family estate. It was the rest of her compensation, with the sole condition that she take a few orphaned muggle-borns in on the summer holidays. Having no home of her own, she'd accepted.
She entered the house and slid her muddy boots off onto a mat next to the door and her cloak onto a nearby rack that reached for it, wrought iron uncurling to gracefully receive the light material. With only a slight hesitation, she turned to Snape.
She was ready to deliver the instructions she'd been planning out ever since they'd left the ministry: a careful schedule of necessary activities she didn't know if he would perform without her command. She opened her mouth to begin.
Snape watched her without a flicker of emotion. She'd never seen his eyes so indifferent to the world.
Professor Snape taught her potions for seven years. In seven years, she'd never caught his eye without his lip curling, his eyes flashing, or his shoulders stiffening in irritation. Snape, although admittedly tactiturn, was an emotional man. Every moment of his life was lived with intensity. To see him stripped of it was like seeing a glove left carelessly, unmoving, on a dresser.
***********************************
Hermione was used to living a solitary life. She enjoyed the quiet of it, the simple pleasure in relaxing entirely from considering one's appearance. In the year since graduation, she had happily roamed Snape manor with only the very aged Crookshanks for companionship. When she had to leave each morning for work, it had always been with a slight tinge of regret.
Work was now a pleasant retreat. When home, she shut herself away in the library, reading and researching with the focus of her NEWT-taking days. The halls were no longer empty.
She had always been a sympathetic person, but there could be no sympathy for a being without feelings, and Professor Snape would have scorned her pity.
She still thought of him that way. She'd replaced the ugly brown prison robe with black robes she remembered so well, always with the accompanying memory of dim fires and swirling fumes. The brown one was burned. Professor Snape deserved his dignity.
But she could do nothing for him.