A horrific bellow latched onto the air as two bloodthirsty fangs sank deep into Snape's neck. All blood drained from his face, blue veins slowly protruding inside his pale skin. His black eyes, so familiar with narrowing and squinting, widened. The snake receded its teeth from her victim, who buckled to the floor on his knees. Voldemort frowned.
"I regret it."
Snape attempted, after the cage unburdened his shoulders by a flick of Voldemort's wand, to regulate the thumb-sized gashes in his neck with colorless hands. The wounds spurted in protest against them. Snape clenched his teeth, his eyebrows creasing. Through the painful portal, the eyes of Voldemort, Harry witnessed Snape's expression suddenly slacken, and his eyes cross. The body in dark apparel swayed, then retreated to the ground. The floorboards painted red as Snape's staunch of fatal injuries failed.
Voldemort turned his back, pitiless, and glided out of the pale room past the three hidden teenagers, one of whose scar receded paining. Harry stared into the slit made by the crate and the wall, where the dying man's foot trembled, where gasps and pants of agony issued.
Harry's faculty of consciousness and thought was doing things to his body against his will. Involuntary messages were circuiting without his consent. Absentmindedly, Harry pointed his wand at the crate that blocked his way. The box levitated and transported above the ground, leaving enough room for Harry to proceed.
"Harry!" criticized Hermione.
But he was already inside the room, bent at Snape's recoiled, bleeding side. Harry's mind became thoughtless, all sound deaf against his ears. The struggling man before him now lacked his extremities' muscle mass; already, they became limp.
Harry didn't want to do it. He didn't want to watch him die...
...but his mind did.
He withdrew the Cloak off himself and his companions, all of whom Snape's eyes bulged at. Life seemed to frisson through the handicapped man, and he wavered his free hand toward Harry's collar, seizing it for dear life. Harry made no protest; simply allowed, and stared. When Snape opened his mouth to speak, a horrid, choking voice mouthed barely audible words.
"Take...it...take...it..."
Harry was saved the necessity of asking what to take by suddenly observing the almost pellucid silver puffs – neither liquid nor gas – leaking like incense smoke from Snape's eyes, ears, and mouth. The nearly transparent memories billowed into tiny clouds, erupting and weaving toward the ceiling. Harry's eyes followed them, but he was unsure of what to do with them...
Hermione shoved a flask into his hands, into which Harry conveyed the smoke with Draco's wand. The thoughts swam inside the imprisonment of the bottle, mesmerizing. Snape's piteous audio broke the silence and Harry's transfixing.
"Look...at...me..."
Harry saw nothing. Harry felt nothing. This was a stranger's eyes he looked into. So many things he once was: a teacher, a savior, a murderer. None of them seemed to fit the man Harry saw now, crippled and helpless, lacking the pretense of power, his neck ushering the remainder of life away onto the floor. The dark eyes, however, were conspicuously intrigued with the green's, as if he were attempting to fight away the dying reflection in Harry's eyes, and see their true interior.
And in seconds, Snape's breathing came to an end. No compunction, no sorrow, came in seeing the man's eyes fix, on no particular object before him, lifeless.