Title: It Ends Here Tonight
Author: Rachel Hunt
Disclaimer: If I really thought I owned this, would I be putting it on a fanfiction site under 'harry potter'? 'Nuff said. And I definitely have nothing on the music featured.
Summary: SONGFIC EPIC. Taking place around the time of their Seventh Year, the war with Voldemort has become so intense that regular school/classes have been put on hold (indefinitely) because all efforts must be put into merely surviving. Hogwarts has become one of the last safe houses and is partial Headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix; only the most trusted members, generals if you will, are taken into Grimmauld Place. The dementors have gone over to Voldie, the prisoners of Azkaban are loose, and it's impossible to tell who is friend and who is foe, as the whole wizarding world is set on edge. Severus gets caught, Lucius is killed, Draco defects, and all sorts of angst and messing with of the natural order ensues. Death, love, suicide, duty, hope and loss are the main themes you'll find here. Also featuring: a grim Dumbledore, a murderous Ron, an isolated Harry, and a resolute Ginny. All will come to a head in the final battle between The Boy Who Lived and the Dark Lord. Ultra dramatic. I repeat, SONGFIC EPIC
Projected Length: 26 chapters, may become slightly longer or shorter due to requests from reviewers, my own laziness, etc (suggestions and theories welcome, I just don't promise to take them)
Musical Artists to be Featured: Saliva, Evanescence, Puddle of Mudd, Nickelback (also considering Disturbed, Element Eighty, and Tantric; open to suggestions)
Rating: PG-13, probably R later
Pairings: Draco/Hermione, and maybe a little something for a few special guest stars… If your going to try to guess, keep in mind that I have no qualms about almost anything, from slash to extreme age differences. Everything is a possibility. Except Ron/Voldemort. That would be icky. shudder
Author's Note:This came to me on an eight hour plane ride between Frankfurt (yes, the one in Germany) and Chicago. I was thinking about how all the songfics seem to only be one-shots, and decided this was Wrong, (note capitalization for emphasis), and here we go. Hope you like, and while I have extensive plans, I tend to get discouraged without reviews…. (hint) And if you like this, thank Nightshade Darkholme, she's the one who encouraged me to write it!
EDITED & REPOSTED
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR READING:
--...-- wil be used to distinguish lyrics
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It Ends Here Tonight
Chapter One: Consigned to Fire
"Storm" by Saliva
Severus stood still between the two Death Eaters, pride and dignity overlaying the exhaustion written in the haggard lines of his face. He looked much as he always had, greasy hair hanging lank about his face, black robes draping his thin frame. Perhaps thinner than he'd been before, but that was to be expected; war took it's toll, after all, and certainly on a double agent within Voldemort's sanctum. What was new to his appearance was the spreading bruise along the upper swell of his right cheekbone, the delicate line of blood that trailed down from crooked nose to thin lip, and the way he favored his left leg, ever so slightly, almost unnoticeable beneath his robes.
Death Eaters never were gentle when they found a traitor in their midst.
And there were, of course, the substantial chains that circled his wrists and ankles.
A nicely dramatic touch, he thought with the last dregs of his sarcastic humour.
At that moment, the door banged open, and in strode a figure that had been familiar to him since boyhood. Seeing that aristocratic face twisted, as it was so rarely, by some deep emotion brought a wave of melancholy up in Severus.
--Life is like a melody, sang deep within my soul, sang deep within to me--
"Severus."
"Lucius." Severus nodded at the older man, as if this were a commonplace way for them to meet.
His jaw tightened, imperceptible to anyone who had not known him for most of his life. "You two, get out," he ordered the wizards on either side of Severus.
They shifted, unsure of whether to leave one of their commanders alone with the traitor, no doubt.
Lucius pulled out his wand, deadly calm in those cold gray eyes of his. "Did you not hear me? Leave."
They left.
And Severus had to face one of the few men he truly regretted having betrayed.
"What were you thinking, Severus!" A fine tremor shook the hand that held Lucius' wand. "Why?" He actually ran a hand through his meticulously perfect blond hair.
Severus found himself at a loss. This furious apparition before him had not been what he'd expected; anger, yes, but the controlled, deadly anger that the Malfoys were so well known for. The cold flame that Draco had always lost control of when confronted with Potter, but his father had fine-tuned to an accepted art form. The anger Severus had expected was the one that would bring down an Unforgivable with nothing more than a sneer of contempt for one too weak to defend himself.
--And all these chains that shackle me
They won't let me take control--
But instead he was faced by a Lucius shaking with rage… Severus looked him in the eye, knowing he owed his old friend an answer. He owed Lucius more than that. He owed Lucius loyalty, for being the one who'd sheltered him when he had been nothing more than a frightened first year and Lucius an admired fifth year, who'd been the strong hero of the Slytherins for those first three shining years at Hogwarts. Who'd left the dungeons darker when his seventh year ended and he took his place in the newly forming forces of Voldemort, and Severus found that Hogwarts was no longer his sanctuary.
Severus looked into the dark countenance of one of the only men he'd ever called 'friend.' "I'm sorry, Lucius, for betraying your trust…"
And therein was the reason Severus had joined those same forces… a decision that had haunted him the rest of his life, marking him as other, killing what had once been in him…
"…but never for working against the Dark Lord."
…hope.
There again that minute tightening of jaw. Then dawning resignation. Lucius, looking defeated for the first time in his life, slumped down onto the one chair in the room.
"For how long?" the drooping figure asked.
Severus finally looked away. "Nearly a year and a half before the fall of the last order. Almost twenty years now…"
Silence was the only response.
They stayed like that for awhile, Lucius staring dejectedly into the space around him, Snape looking on grimly. He didn't understand why Lucius was taking it quite this way.
Finally, Lucius looked up. He had regained much of his chill control, but some of the anger still seeped out as he said quietly "We were supposed to be as brothers."
Severus winced. It had been a pact they made, when they were the some of the only young purebloods they're parents deemed suitable company for each other (inbreeding having taken it's toll on the intelligence of many a pureblood), each the only heir to a long family name. In Darkness born and Blood entwined, Brothers until the day to Fire they were consigned. But Severus hadn't thought Lucius cared for that bond in a long time.
"You're my son's godfather. Do you know—?" Lucius made a noise in his throat. "Of course you know. But did you think how this would affect my family?"
Severus felt an odd pang of amusement through his pained haze. Ah, always the politics of the family name, Lucius. He responded without the thought in his voice, though. "I know, Lucius. I had hoped Voldemort would never rise again... that this would never become an issue."
Lucius went on as if he hadn't heard him. "How will Draco survive, without either of us? Narcissa won't be in good enough stead to protect him, even after the fire dies down…"
Severus looked at him sharply. "What do you mean, 'either of us'?" What had Severus missed in his self-centered resignation to fate?
But Lucius didn't get the chance to answer, because it was then that the two thugs of wizards returned, looking much more confident now.
"The Dark Lord wants the traitor brought to him, now," one said directly to Lucius with surprising impertinence.
Lucius slipped back into his calm control with the efficiency of one who had walked on eggshells around the Dark Lord for years without misstep. He didn't correct them, however, on their disrespectful address. The two of them turned to Severus.
"Leave him," Lucius hissed at them.
They just looked at him
--They wanna take control of me--
"I'll bring him to the Dark Lord."
Lucius laid the tip of his wand to the back of Severus' neck and started walking without the acknowledgement of the others.
Malfoys never waited for others.
Scenes from Severus' life here, in Voldemort's Dark Keep, flashed through his mind as he passed by heavy wood doors, through damp stone hallways and up poorly lit stairs. The day of his initiation as a Death Eater, pride in Lucius and Narcissa's faces as the Dark Mark burned into his arm, as Severus stared in rapt wonder at his Dark Lord. Dark Revels spilling into the halls, blood and lust infused in the being and melding with pain until it all became an act of transcendence. Days and nights of companionship, of solitude, always of belonging. And then finally the night when he was ordered to kill.
Not just to kill, but to murder. No wand, no distance. No way to step back from it.
It was a point reached for every Death Eater, when they were ordered to kill without their wands. The Dark Lord used it as a test, of sorts, to weed out those who truly believed in his cause, and to rate them. There was something impersonal about Aveda Kadevra, that made it not feel like murder. A sort of delayed reaction that never quite arrived. It had been rather different to look down and see the blood, literally, on his own hands.
To the present day, he didn't know who it was he'd murdered, nor what they had done to incur Voldemort's displeasure. Severus knew himself well enough to know that there were things in him, memories and feelings and knowledge, best left alone.
It was after this that he went to Dumbledore. Not immediately. It took days for Severus to return to a frame of mind anything akin to normal after the high of taking a life, after the final layer of acceptance into Voldemort's Death Eaters. It was everything Severus had ever craved in his starved life. Power, a role to play, belonging.
But there was blood under his fingernails, blood sunken into the creases of his hands, blood soaking through cuffs of his robes and into him. It was when this hit him that he sought out Dumbledore. The benevolent man who had, occasionally, stepped in as protector after Lucius graduated from Hogwarts. Somehow, this wizened figure seemed to offer a chance at redemption, which he was coming to realize Voldemort did not. In a desperate attempt at making amends, Severus had offered to act as a spy.
Dumbledore, grimly, had accepted.
It was after the charade began that Severus grew to respect Dumbledore. There was no condemnation in him, merely… acceptance. That word again, but this time it was a kind of acceptance that would never ask anything not freely offered. It was something new to Severus, something it took him a long time to fully understand.
And in direct relation to the growth of his loyalty to Dumbledore, so grew his surety that he could not be redeemed. Severus grew a sense of morality in that time, as the acts he had to perform to keep up his pretense as a loyal Death Eater became more and more repelling to him.
But he continued them anyway. He lied and acted the part of the true Death Eater, Lucius Malfoy's protégé, to ensure the strength of his true loyalties.
He continued his aid to Dumbledore, and in so doing brought himself more into the fold of the damned.
The press of Lucius' wand in the back of his neck lessened as they found themselves before the iron-bound doors that led to Voldemort's Hall.
--I've got to rise above my life--
The thugs pushed open the doors, and Severus came face to face with the darkling throng, for the first time not looked upon as one of them, but as the enemy.
--To find the reason I'm alive--
Those who turned to him looked on with contemptuous cruelty. Here, where all were of the same ilk they didn't bother with their masks and special robes… but for Severus, their true faces were enough. The people who'd once regarded him as ally or friend now showed, at best, scorn. He scanned the crowd for those whom he'd known; most of his Slytherins were nowhere to be seen, which was just as well. Pansy Parkinson, however, stood near the front of the crowd.
She appeared to be fighting the urge to spit on him.
The dying light of the setting sun filtered in through the few windows in the room; not enough to illuminate the high arch of the ceiling that still gave back dead echoes of Death Eaters' whispers and sharp clank of his chains on the black marble of the floor. As he walked forward, the horde parting and reforming around his escort, he caught the sight of Narcissa.
She closed her eyes and turned away.
--I'll save myself, I'm all alone--
Severus stopped looking at those around him. These had not been his people for a long time… so why did his chest hurt so?
--I've opened my heart to see there's nobody home--
They reached the throne on which Voldemort chose to sit. Elegantly imposing, it was clearly intended for a strong monarch. The Dark Lord never overlooked a trapping of power.
Such was the nature of his contradictions to Dumbledore and Hogwarts.
It took Severus a moment to realize that the Dark Lord's unnatural red eyes hadn't come to rest on him, but on the man standing behind him.
Lucius stepped around Severus and knelt, making his wordless obeisance.
"Luciussss…." The snakelike gaze that accompanied the hissing voice was fixed on that bowed blonde head with the attention his cobra might show to a wounded bird.
"My lord."
"You have allowed a traitor to join my ranks, Luciussss."
A tremble of tension ran down the bowed back of the man, and Severus began to realize what he'd done to the Malfoys, began to move beyond the thought of his own death and the Order. What he'd never thought of, caught up in his own selfish intrigues. He restrained himself from trying to speak in defense of the Death Eater; any words on his part would only further condemn Lucius; with luck, it would still simply end at torture.
"You have failed me, Luciusss. You have always been weak when it came to this one. It is a failing that will not go unpunished."
"Yes, my Lord." His voice held no reaction.
Severus shifted, allowing his chains to clink in hope of drawing away the attention. He didn't want to watch Voldemort draw out Lucius' punishment. The crimson eyes snapped up, and Severus found himself regarded by the full weight of that stare for the first time in a long while; a spy, after all, was meant to blend in, not stand out.
"Take Luciusss asssside; I will deal with him after." The Dark Load didn't specify whom he addressed, or take his eyes from Severus. But with the perfect obedience of the fanatic, the very same two thugs escorted Lucius off to the side of the room.
--It's up to me, I'm on my own--
"You, traitor. You have conspired against me."
Severus didn't respond, just looked back with an attempt at keeping his face as impassive as Lucius' voice had been.
Something that might have once been a smile passed over the Dark Lord's face.
"You do not even try to deny it?"
--The message of life is turning--
Severus squared his shoulders as he continued to look the Dark Lord in the face, keeping his mind closed to Legilemency. "I do not." He sneered strategically, "although it took you and yours long enough to figure it out."
The Dark Lord's face curled in rage. He raised his wand, and Severus readied himself for the curse that would take him.
--Facing the storm--
"Cruciatus!"
Severus would have gasped with the shock of pain if he'd had the air to do it. He could feel his very bones being crushed as his muscles clenched around them too tight, his skin melting away under the force of agony. It was the second time in his life that he'd felt a thousand glass knives piercing and shattering within him, slicing him into ever smaller pieces until he was left as nothing but bloody red ribbon. The first had been the night he'd tried to stand up to his father, shortly before he'd left for Hogwarts; that night had taught him certain lessons.
--Life is filled with your memory--
He'd learned how to want to die, how to wish for it with all your soul, but also how to hold onto the spark of rage that hid beneath; he'd learned how to desire death, but to live at the same time. And how to watch someone you love crumble away piece by piece without giving way yourself.
--You were deep within my heart--
His father's dark, angry face could still loom up at him at the most unexpected times. Strangely, he had trouble remembering the exact lines of his mother's face, she who had been so dear to him.
--You were deep with inside of me--
But they were both long dead, and he was here, now, and shaking in the aftermath of pain, it's sudden absence almost as bad it's presence.
--And all this pain that I'm wrapped around--
He could feel bile rising in the back of his throat as he relearned how to breathe. He knew the Dark Lord had feasted on his memories at that moment, that he'd gotten past his occlumency, using Severus' pain to do it. He swallowed back his rage with the fact that he'd gotten nothing of the Order from it… only his painful past. He studied the immaculate gray flagstones, the way his blood glinted on them as it dripped from his mouth until he could raise his head.
He would not betray the Order.
--If there's a heaven up above--
Severus knew resolve was the only thing that showed in his eyes as he looked at the Dark Lord. Voldemort. There was no point in calling him the Dark Lord now; it wouldn't give him away anymore. No, that he'd done when his owl to Dumbledore had been intercepted.
He expected to see rage in the Dar—in Voldemort's snake face, but there was an odd kind of satisfaction glinting there. A knot of fear began to form in Severus' gut as he watched it flicker and spring into being, an evil thought shivering through the bones of an evil being.
He would not let Voldemort see his fear. He would give him no such pleasure. Severus knew then that was it. Voldemort had seen that it would not be so easy to pluck the truth and lies from his mind—and he had seen the pleasure he could take out of the trying.
It would take Severus Snape a long time to die.
--I see the angels falling down--
He finally allowed the hatred he had felt for this creature to rise to his face as he struggled to his feet. He locked his knees against their impulse to let him fall; he would face this with all the pride of a stubborn, pure-blooded Slytherin.
--I've got to rise above my life--
Blood and phlegm had pooled in his mouth. Severus took a bold step toward Voldemort, and before a loyal Death Eater could pull him back, spit it into that smiling, white face.
--To find the reason I'm alive--
Severus found himself back on his knees with pain in his head as an unseen fist hit him from behind. He could feel the rage of the assembled Death Eaters rising as soon as the shocked gasps were past. How dare anyone disrespect their Lord so?
--I'll save myself, I'm all alone--
"Traitor!" A woman screeched from somewhere amongst the Death Eaters. People hastily parted for the infuriated Bellatrix Lestrange as she clawed through the few who were not quick enough to move. Her once-beautiful face loomed before Severus, the black hatred that was the only thing alive in her heart firing behind her eyes. "You vile, mudblood-loving fool!" She raised her wand. "You will--"
"Bellatrix," Voldemort hissed.
The woman froze, then turned and fell to her knees in a flash of dark hair. Voldemort looked down on her, Severus' blood and spit still shining on his face. He took no note of it as he said to the woman, "You forget your place. He isss mine, and unlesssss I tell you to do otherwissse, you will hold your tongue." He smiled. "Or I will hold it for you."
"Of course, my lord," she said quietly as she backed away, never raising her head.
And Voldemort's attention returned to Severus.
--I've opened my heart to see there's nobody home--
Thin, fleshless lips turned up as another smile bloomed on that face like a horrible flower. Severus knew hatred was dancing in his own black eyes as a thin, pale hand reached up to touch the blood.
Voldemort regarded the fluid with the air of a connoisseur considering a fine wine. He brought his fingertips to his mouth and a pink tongue flicked out. "Ah, Sseverussss…. You have hated us for quite a long time now, haven't you?"
--The message of life is turning--
Severus didn't respond.
Red eyes circled the room slowly, lazily. "It isss interesssting that no one ssssaw it before." Voldemort's cobra suddenly came into view over the top of the throne, its cold eyes fixed on Severus. The bloodied hand reached up, and the snakes tongue flicked out to the blood just as Voldemort's had. "Not even my Nagini sssniffed out your true loyaltiesss for sssure." He looked, then, to Lucius where he stood to the side, having watched it all with dead gray eyes. "I wonder how some, some who knew you well, could have missssssed it for so long."
Lucius, as he had not been asked a question, said nothing.
"Come before me, Luciussss."
Lucius Malfoy came to the edge of the dais and knelt, never having looked anywhere through the whole audience.
"Do you have anything to sssay for yourssself, Luciusss?"
Severus saw Lucius' shoulders tense slightly. Nothing showed in his voice as he said, "Only, my lord, that I am loyal to you alone—I am your servant in all things. I never knew of Severus' betrayal. I allowed boyhood loyalties to blind me. It is entirely my own fault."
"Pretty words, Luciussss. Pretty words designed to draw me away from your family. But, I think this one time you may be right. What are you willing to do to prove your families innocence, Luciussss? What could you give me that would be worth leaving them alone?"
"My lord, all that I am belongs to you… I would give you anything you asked of me, if you didn't already have it."
"Of course you would, Lucius."
The muscles in Severus' back were knotting at this turn. He knew this kind of conversation between Voldemort and another. When Voldemort spoke in that voice, it meant someone was about to bleed. Guilt curled through him at the hurt he'd caused those around him… Severus had never, in his life, been able to do anything right without doing wrong at the same time.
Voldemort stroked Nagini's head. He never said a word, but suddenly the snake was slithering down his legs to the floor, across the dais and down to the flagstones, forward to where Lucius still knelt. The man jerked as she sunk her fangs into his upper thigh, catching his femoral artery and pumping venom into him.
--It's up to me, I'm on my own--
"No!"
"No!"
The vehement shriek accompanied his own quieter protestation. Narcissa Malfoy had suddenly come to the fore, her cool blond person finally enraged after so many years cool and calm. Color rode high on her perfect cheekbones as she stared at her Dark Lord with rage in her blue eyes. "How could you! Lucius would do anything for you, we were yours, we made our son yours! How could--"
"Shut up, Narcissa." Contempt curdled Voldemort's already sour voice. "He wasss mine, to do with as I chose. Just as you are. I am Lord Voldemort. You will return to your place immediately."
"You are nothing!" Narcissa screeched. "Nothing but a cowardly old man too afraid of death--"
"Imperio!"Narcissa was suddenly quiet and still, her face blank as she was held be the curse. Bellatrix stood behind her, wand in hand, and bowed low to Voldemort. "Forgive me, my lord, but I couldn't allow the sow to go one slandering you like that."
Voldemort waived a white hand as if clearing Narcissa's words from the air, though a tightness showed around the edges of his face. "I am done with her, Bellatrix. She issss yoursss, now. You have alwayssss sssserved me well… you may have cell 43 for twenty-four hourssss." Red eyes bore into Bellatrix's, now shining with mad excitement. "Make sure she does not die in that time."
Bellatrix bowed low again, thanking her lord for his generosity. She took her new toy back out the doors Severus had come in what felt like ages ago. No one took note of Lucius Malfoy dying on the floor as poison worked through him, blood spreading out in a pool around him.
Then Voldemort rose from his throne, stepping in a swish of robes down his dais. He came to Severus, and when they were close together, hissed so very quietly to him, for his ears alone, "They will die for it, Sssseverussss Ssssnape. People you love and people you hate, they will all die for what you have done." Cold fingers touched Severus' face almost gently. "But you will not die. No, Ssseverussss…. You will sssee it all. And when I am done with you, when everything you are has been extracted, when your even your soul has been raped…" Claw-like nails suddenly raked down Severus' cheek, tearing skin away in thick strips. But that wasn't what made Severus flinch. "Then, you will die."
--Facing the storm--
It would take Severus Snape a long time to die.
Fin Chapter One
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Alright, people, this is the part where you let me know what you think… or you stalk away in disgust. Questions, comments, suggestions, corrections, all are welcome. This story has sort of become my baby, and I'm dying to know what others think. Next chapter: where was Draco while his godfather and parents met their unfortunate ends? Brownie points for whoever figures out what song the next chapter will be. ((hint: an Evanescence song))
