My thanks to AngelAriel, SofiaDragon and Cortamone. Without your reviews, I wouldn't have thought about writing a second chapter for this fic, and having delved a little more into the mindsets of both characters I think that would have been a mistake.
Chapter One – Or some fierce thing replete with too much rage,
Why? Dear Agamemnon, but the boy was perfect at asking the densest questions for the most stupid reasons possible. He was a teacher. Suicidal pupils were not encouraged at any school, especially not at Hogwarts, and most certainly not the Boy-Who-Kept-On-Going.
Answering the question would have been beneath his dignity, so he gathered the boy in his arms and stood – Merlin, but the boy was light, even with the water-drenched ruins of his school robes. The frown that life had made his relaxed expression deepened at the edges. Something wasn't right.
With steps made elegant by the sheer lack of speed possible when carrying said boy, he headed towards Hogwarts' walls. Not the main door – that would have been too obvious – but along the walls to a door which led directly down into the dungeons. Some enterprising Slytherin of years past had created it – the rumour was it had been Salazar himself, of course that couldn't be confirmed, but he had always liked the idea.
Shoving the door with his shoulder whilst murmuring the required password was easy, as was navigating the cool dampness of the dungeons to his room, the phosphorus lighting increasing in strength as it sensed two magical signatures passing through. He couldn't help the sigh of relief as he stepped into his own quarters, through the prickling rush of wards.
Normally, they brought him a sense of peace, today, well... He looked down at the boy in his arms, and instead of insensible peace found the tight lines of awareness and something close to contempt in eyes that had somehow abandoned spring for the darkest heart of the forbidden forest.
The corner of his mouth quirked. "Why Potter? Why not?"
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Why not?
Why not!
The look in beetle black eyes glimmered, as if all of this was some sort of game. And perhaps it was, perhaps stopping the actions of students was all a bit of fun to a Death Eater turned spy. Something to keep him amused when there was nothing else to do. Anger stirred in the darkness within him like some great Lovecraftian horror within the black abyssal reaches of space, reaching out of the icy night to strangle, crush and burn…
Around them the room shook, the stone wall he could just about perceive behind Snape flickered suddenly with colour, sickly greens and yellows, highlighted with red and black and a shade of purple he was certain nature had never seen.
The pupils in the eyes looking down at him became tiny, pinprick dots before flaring outwards in the darkness that suddenly swallowed them and he felt something within him open up and swallow his rage and pain, something deeper and darker, and oh – warm – warm where there had been nothing but cold before flooded into him. Promising a sleep without dreams and a blanket of peace, if only he'd fall…
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Lid's fluttered closed over eyes so close to madness it had shaken even him. So near to a familiar vermillion stare that he had confronted through the holes in a mask since he was sixteen – right down to the bruises of tiredness only darkened by the shadows of long lashes.
"Academic malpractice, I can hear the board hearing now," he murmured to himself as he carried Potter into his bedroom. Albus would understand, he was certain, but only if he broke the boy's confidence, and he was reluctant to do so. Slytherin had always been the home for waifs and strays, those who had cunning built into them, and those who had been forced to learn it to stay alive. He'd never considered the Potter boy to be like that, but then, he was marked as Lord Voldemort's equal and something of that had to have rubbed off surely.
Perhaps more than just a scar and an affinity for talking to snakes.
With gentle hands made slender and nimble by years of slicing and chopping potions ingredients, he removed Potter's robes and winced at the body it revealed. Apart from the scars he himself had healed on the boy's arms, there were older marks; ribs malformed that possibly had been broken, and those he could see were too visible – maltreatment, or some sort of psychological disorder?
He shook his head in gentle worry. When he awoke, something would have to be done about Harry James Potter.
Just what that was, he didn't know.
