"The Nature of the Damned"
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I give the inspiration for this story to two things: the books Animorphs, and the Star Trek Original Series episodes "Return to Tomorrow" and "That Which Survives".
"Without the body the brain would, of course, become a mere selfish intelligence, without any of the emotional substratum of the human being."
~H.G. Wells, the War of the Worlds, Ch. 18
Looking back, Severus Snape thought that they should have seen this from the very beginning. After all, when it came to Harry Potter, the bloody Boy-Who-Lived, nothing was normal, and the impossible became entirely plausible around him—the potions master thought it would be possible for the brat to raise the dead sometime soon, which was not something he wanted to think about considering that one of those who would be brought back would be Lily Potter. Her son's fate was not something he wanted to discuss, especially with Lily.
Sweet, beautiful Lily, compassionate and gentle and, when vexed, dangerous. Lily, with the clear emerald green eyes she had passed down to her only child, the son she had sacrificed herself for almost fifteen years before.
That sacrifice had ultimately saved Potter's life but had then later led to a far greater evil than even Lord Voldemort had become. Would the Wizarding World be in such danger if the boy had not lived?
It was too late to contemplate such a question now. Potter couldn't be killed… and he had tried to kill him. Oh, how he had tried! Poisoning, curses, hanging, even the Avada Kedavra curse! Nothing worked. Even Albus Dumbledore, at the end, had tried to kill potter himself, loosing a barrage of spells equal in power to an atomic bomb.
And Potter had stood in the dissipating smoke, his robes smoldering and burning away even as they watched.
His skin had remained smooth. Unblemished.
And he looked at Albus and laughed.
They should have noticed the signs from the very beginning that something was seriously wrong. It had all started at the beginning of the boy's sixth year at Hogwarts, after he had returned from summer holidays. From all appearances the brat was the same as always—mediocre, inconsiderate, arrogant. He stayed with his precious friends Granger and Weasley and the three of them caused the same havoc they were so very famous for. He laughed and he scowled and he talked—he did everything normally.
But something in him had changed.
Potter's hatred of Snape himself was there, a hatred the professor had been careful to cultivate; he still glared at Snape from where he sat at the dungeons during Potions. There was a new level of animosity in that familiar glare now, however, a depth of insatiable, hungry hatred that Snape could not quite grasp, nor fully understand. It had unsettled him. These new looks went beyond normal human hatred—they conveyed a desire to see Snape suffer, to see him utterly terrified and broken, a hunger to see him defeated. He managed to dismiss those looks, however, in the beginning, thinking surely he was imagining things. He told himself that of course Potter was going to hate him, since in the brat's mind Snape had indirectly killed his beloved godfather Sirius Black last year. The looks had continued, however, and they bothered Snape more and more, until finally one day he gave the boy a detention.
Potter's angry, indignant response was as normal as always, as was his sulking resentment as he settled back in his seat. As Snape was turning away, however, smirking in his victory, he caught a glimpse of Potter's face—and he felt his knees weaken a little. The coldest smile he's ever seen had twisted the boy's familiar features into a stone mask, his emerald eyes that of a demon, and that deadly smile told him: Enjoy your victory—I'll have the last laugh. The look lasted less than an instant, and it disappeared too quickly for anyone else to notice it, but Snape had, and he had finally come to Albus about it.
Something had happened to potter. His first thought was that the Dark Lord had possessed the boy, but somehow knew this wasn't Voldemort's doing. This absolute evil went farther than even Voldemort. What could it possibly be, then?
Then came another time in Potions, when Potter was cutting up some ingredients in class, and the knife had slipped—and although Potter swore, Snape noticed that the boy was not injured with so much as a scratch, where the knife should have sliced off a finger. Blood came too late, and still Snape had seen no wound—just smooth, white skin. This was nearly seven months into the year, and when he told Albus of this, the Headmaster finally agreed with Snape that something was amiss.
Thus began Snape's attempts to see what would happen to the boy if certain… accidents… were to take place. Poison in his food, curses in the hallway that should have left gaping wounds, even a rope that should have snapped Potter's neck cleanly in half. He walked away from it all, unscathed and unruffled, and although Snape was careful to conceal any hand he had in the attempts, every time Potter looked at him he knew, knew beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Potter knew all along he was the one responsible for them. Snape realized then that no one could possibly understand what Potter had become. The boy had been playing with everyone all year, masterfully instigating a game of cat and mouse with Snape, artfully manipulating with ease.
The realization came too late. He went to albus with the news, who by then had seen potter's peculiar behavior. Albus had finally decided to take part in this. The following showdown leveled a quarter of the Forbidden Forest and shaken Hogwarts at its foundation. The spells thrown at potter should have disintegrated him, never mind simply killing him—and there he had stood laughing in a fifty-foot crater, perfectly all right. It had been a truly frightening sight, worse than standing before the Dark lord. He had laughed, and then shown the extent of his power by answering Albus with spell-work so fierce it defied imagination. All the while the boy had dropped all pretense of being what his appearance aid he was—his eyes were shining with demonic eagerness, and the same chilling smile Snape remembered was on his face. Potter easily defeated the reputedly most powerful wizard ever, but did not kill him, and then he had turned to Snape, who stood frozen in that inhuman gaze. Potter's head had tilted to the side, sizing the potions master up, and then his terrifying smile had widened— that of a cat that had finally trapped the mouse.
"Go and run," had had said then, and the boy's voice—although still young—had suddenly revealed the ancient, powerful creature he had somehow become. And Snape, by grudging admission by even Alastor Moody, had turned and run, with Potter's final amused warning sounding in his ears. "Give us a chase, Professor. The longer you run the longer you remain free. Don't try to ask for help—we have them all already." He had run, and run, and hid, and run some more, all over the place, and all the while the creature pursued him, skillfully herding him anywhere he wanted, leaving Snape to dangle until he finally withdrew for a temporary respite.
But now there was nowhere to go. He had been running for two weeks by this time, and even after all his attempts, he was surrounded, caught in this run-down shack he had taken refuge in.
"You know, Professor," Potter was saying now as he stood in the doorway, "when I gave you the chance to run, I was expecting more of a chase."
There were seven of them, including potter: Albus, Granger, Weasley, Moody, Kingsley, and Minerva. All stood in a loose circle around him, waiting. It was clear that Potter was the leader here.
Snape's heart was flying in his chest. He had no wish to become part of the circle around him, did not even want to consider what happened to other seven individuals standing there. "Damn you," he snarled. "What do you want with me? What do you want with us? We're free, we're supposed to be free-!"
The monster that held Potter's form idly waved a hand, the normally expressive face devoid of all emotion. "Please," he scoffed, "spare us you humans' declarations of freedom and triumphs. You cannot defeat us, cannot even harm us—as you have already discovered for yourself. We have no real, tangible bodies—we inhabit that which we take, infusing ourselves with the host. None of us can be killed now. We cannot be cursed. We cannot be stopped."
Snape struggled against the ropes they had bound him with. "But why Potter?"
The creature smiled. "'Why Potter'?" he repeated, actually sounding surprised. "Why not Potter, Professor? After all, Harry Potter is very famous, but he was at the same time reclusive and secretive enough that we could work to extend ourselves to other people through him without being noticed—and what's more, Potter is powerful. Oh yes," he smirked when Snape couldn't help but look incredulous, "Potter is exceedingly powerful, although you have spent your years blinded from the fact. He is raw power held in this fragile body, and needed only the right key to be unlocked." He laughed coldly now, sending a shiver of horror down Snape's spine, and turned with a sweep of his arm, motioning to the six people he had under his command. "He is mine now, Snape, body and soul. I am Harry Potter. His essence is caged, trapped within itself! Having control of Potter has made it so much easier to spread our people out, to take over more and more humans.
"I first took control of him back in the summer," the creature continued easily, a chilling smile spreading on his face, "before the start of term. We got his relatives first, foolish, spineless worms that they were, not even trying to put up a fight. But then Potter's turn came." And now his voice turned positively terrifying laced with pleasure as it was, and Snape slid away from the sixteen-year-old. "Oh, he put up such a tremendous struggle," the creature continued in an almost dreamy tone, "he nearly wrecked the house, hexed a couple of my men, he actually almost got away, but he was caught ultimately. You should have heard his screams, Professor, as I took control of him. Such a fighter. Admirable, but foolish."
He walked over to where Granger and Weasley stood, but their familiar faces were transformed into cruel smiles to match the one on Potter's. "I spent the rest of the summer living potter's life, looking through his memories, figuring out his habits, learning to talk and walk in just the right way, and privately punishing the Dursleys for their actions—Potter was mistreated at their hands his entire life, Snape, starved, forced to live in a cupboard until he was eleven, worked as a house-elf." He chuckled. "Coming to Hogwarts was the next step. I immediately took Potter's friends and turned them, making them my appointed "bodyguards", if you will: Bek—," and he motioned to Weasley, who sneered at him, "and Fal." He pointed to granger, whose brown eyes were cold and dark Potter turned back to him. "And I do believe I forgot to introduce myself," he said, feigning surprise. He bowed mockingly. "My name is Nirok. The leader of this invasion." Straightening, he laughed again, and then suddenly became serious. "We are for you, Severus Snape," he said softly. "We are for all mankind."
He motioned for Albus and Minerva to step forward. "Grab him and hold his head back," he commanded them, and although Snape struggled, they were too strong and finally he was on his knees before the creature that called himself "Nirok", who was looking down at him with the same look from before, the wish to see Snape crushed and beaten, terrified.
And Snape was terrified, realizing what was happening. "Please," he gasped out, beyond pride, "please—no—"
"Come now, Professor," Nirok scoffed scathingly, pulling a small crystal pulsating a vibrant green, "you will find later that this will be much better than being by yourself. It won't even hurt."
Snape jerked back. "No! This isn't right!"
"I gave you a chance, did I not? I gave you a chance to evade me, to remain free. I must admit that I thought you would give us a better chase than this—you've only been running from us for a couple of weeks."
Snape needed to remain free. He was desperate to remain free. He jerked and he twisted and he tried his hardest to escape, to leave his captors' grips, but it did no good, and the creature was able to finally able to place the crystal on the back of Snape's neck. The green light leaked from it and spread like some bilious liquid down the length of his spine, sinking into his skin and wrapping around his neurons.
The pain was intense, and Snape couldn't help but scream. His mind was white-hot with agony, and he fell limply onto the floor, his limbs twitching and jumping uncontrollably.
All the while, he could see Potter's face, the cold smile, the satisfaction, and as crushing blackness fell upon him as he, too, was taken over, he heard something that froze his blood.
Potter.
Having the last laugh.
A/N: Well, I got that done. This was just something that's been bouncing around in my head for a while, and it finally bugged me enough that I had to write it. Do you want me to write a sequel to this? I have an idea for one, but I'll only write it if you want me to. I apologize now for my absence posting anything up recently—I'm six days away with finishing my senior year at high school, and I have got to pass my Government exam to pass the class. After graduation, I'll be able to write more often and post chapters more frequently.
Watched Pearl Harbor two days ago, and will NEVER watch it again—that night I had terrible nightmares of the men drowning in the Oklahoma and Arizona, although it was admittedly awesome seeing the soldier using a '97 rifle to shoot down a Japanese airplane!
Read and review please!