Snape spent hours meditating, Occluding his mind deeply so that the Dark Lord would not know what Snape now knew of the Elder Wand – that he was its true master.
He didn't feel the need to be the Master of Death. He had no use for the Resurrection Stone – he wanted to live in the present – he wanted a future. He had no use for the Invisibility Cloak – he never wanted to hide his true self again or walk through the world a coward. But he needed a weapon to protect himself. He had been loyal to the Dark Lord but the Dark Lord's loyalty to him was limited. Snape understood that now.
Snape told himself he just needed the Elder Wand to protect himself.
~oOo~
It was Hallowe'en.
The Dark Lord called only his most faithful for the ritual: Snape, Bellatrix, Rodolphus and Rabastan.
It was Snape – the Death Eater who had captured the prize – who levitated Potter to the hall. Bellatrix and the Lestrange brothers had set the hall for the ritual with all the trappings of Dark Magic and marked the centre of the hall's flagstone floor with the ancient runes composed by Snape and refined by the Dark Lord. Snape laid the boy in the centre of the arcane spell as the Dark Lord entered, the Sword of Gryffindor across his palms, Nagini sliding along the floor beside him.
"Will the boy die, my Lord?" asked Bellatrix breathlessly, almost panting in excitement.
"The excision may kill him. What of it?"
"Nothing, my Lord!" she gasped, her eyes alight.
"Will there be a body, my Lord?" asked Snape, speeding quickly on as the Dark Lord twisted towards to him impatiently. "It seems to me that it would be the mark of your triumph to display the body to those who still support him as the Boy Who Lived," Snape sneered.
The Dark Lord's face split into an unnatural smile.
"Once again, Severus, you show admirable forethought. If the boy dies, his body must be preserved for display. If he does not, we must gauge what time will be the most auspicious for his public death."
Snape bowed and backed away. How like his father the boy looked with his eyes closed. How fitting that this had now come full circle, sixteen years on.
Snape found his breath caught as the Dark Lord began to incant in his high, clear voice, the Elder Wand held aloft, as the room filled with the vibrations of powerful Dark Magic charging through the Dark Lord. The unconscious boy's body began to twist and twitch violently as the spell summoned the soul shard from its imperfect horcrux towards its originator – the only being who could summon it.
Tortuously, the scar itself began to writhe then glow then the sides of the scar wrenched themselves apart. No blood came. Instead, the boy's body arched as a sickening miasma issued from the gash seemingly pulled by the Elder Wand, almost like an aberration of a memory, the Dark Lord's incantations ever more insistent.
The boy's clothes were soaked through, his visible skin coated in his own sweat, Snape noted dispassionately. He wondered if the boy could survive such an onslaught of the Darkest of magics even as the boy's skin became more sallow – the outward sign of Dark Magic. Still the miasma latched itself to the scar, as if holding on for its own life. Snape realised that was exactly what such an abomination was designed to do – to fight to preserve itself by any means it could.
"Now, Severus!" the Dark Lord hissed, and continued his incantation.
Snape now chanted the spell to perfect the Sword of Gryffindor as a horcrux, adding his own magic to the crackling energy in the hall. The Sword glowed a sickly green – just like the glow of the Killing Curse. It became brighter and brighter.
A hoarse cry was torn from the boy's throat as the Dark Lord wrenched the miasma from the scar with one wand movement and cast it to the Sword. The Sword flashed green and then radiated a blinding light which gradually faded until the atmosphere subsided into normality once.
"It is done," announced the Dark Lord, picking up the Sword with undisguised greed.
"And the boy?" said Bellatrix, her own greed for torture and death resurfacing.
The Dark Lord's head twisted around to look at Potter.
"Not dead. But may as well be," he leered. "Take him back and do as before, Severus. He may serve a purpose still."
Snape peered at the boy. He took his pulse and lifted his eyelids. The scar seemed smaller now – diminished. He briefly considered casting 'Rennervate' to assess the damage done but his own experience told him there was no need.
The boy's mind would be gone and past all magical repair. Not dead. But may as well be.
~oOo~
The static photos were spread out on the table. The Dark Lord's fingertips skimmed over them, his eyes flashing and narrowing as he looked at the injuries, the damage, death and destruction the photos had captured.
Snape had wanted to show the Dark Lord cinema footage of the damage which could be done by Muggle weaponry but no Muggle devices worked around the Dark Lord's magic: it was too kinetic and strong. He made do with photographs and books.
The spider-like fingers danced over the photo of a destroyed city and then over the ravaged faces and bodies covered with ulcerations, burns and haemorrhaging.
"What weapon did this?" asked the Dark Lord, pointing to the destroyed city. Snape couldn't help but wonder at the Dark Lord's ignorance. They were both half-bloods, but even Snape knew this part of Muggle history.
"It was an atomic bomb, my Lord." He watched the Dark Lord's cruelty shine in his face. He continued, "It exploded above the Japanese city of Hiroshima. An estimated 60,000 and 80,000 people were killed instantly. The heat from the bomb was so intense that some people were vaporised."
"Sixty thousand?" repeated the Dark Lord admiringly. "Vaporised?"
Snape then pointed to the photos of the people. "This is radiation sickness caused by the bomb's fallout. Many more died of the long-term effects of this. The final death toll was calculated at 135,000."
The Dark Lord chuckled. "Muggles – so disgusting and yet so innovative." He turned the photo around in his hands. "Is this a painful way to die?"
"Oh yes, my Lord. Painful and slow." Snape was going to detail more but the Dark Lord had moved on to another set of photographs.
"And this?"
"Biological warfare, my Lord. The controlled release of diseases. Either to kill or incapacitate. People. Livestock. Agriculture." Snape sorted through the photos of disease sufferers. "Plague, my Lord. Viral haemorrhagic fever. Pulmonary anthrax."
The Dark Lord looked transported as Snape described the symptoms and the manner of death as he picked up another set of photographs.
"And these?"
"Chemical weapons, my Lord." Snape picked up a photograph. "There are many different outcomes. They can be psychologically damaging or choking agents, gases that attack the nerves or the blood or degrees of blistering."
"Remind me what these groups of weapons are called again."
"These are unconventional weapons, my Lord."
"Ah yes. The one that aren't politically acceptable. Weapons of mass destruction." The Dark Lord seemed to savour the notion. "The others …" the Dark Lord gestured towards the books and photographs of guns, bombs, shells, rockets, missiles and cluster munitions and the damage they caused, "are conventional weapons."
Snape nodded.
"And your plan is that we will control those who have control of these weapons so they cannot be turned on us?"
"Such as are controlled by the authorities, my Lord, yes," said Snape.
"Such a variety of suffering and death." The Dark Lord chuckled again. It was an ugly, humourless sound. "I had no idea."
The Dark Lord rested his chin on the fingers on one had as his other hand spread the photos out before him.
"Difficult to gun down or poison an Inferius," muttered the Dark Lord and then laughed. "And I can conjure such an army of Inferi from their own dead as would send these Muggles screaming into the sea! And as I cut them down, I will raise them to fight for me!"
Snape's blood froze. He knew the Dark Lord already had an army of Inferi. He knew that Regulus Black was one of that army, just as the Dark Lord had told him how all the disappeared dead of the first Wizarding War had been conscripted too. The Dark Lord revelled in Necromancy. Nothing pleased him more than to desecrate the dead to torment the living. Destruction was the Dark Lord's delight, after all.
However, Snape hoped that such shows of magical aggression might not be necessary if he could consolidate control of the upper echelons of Muggle power.
"Indeed, my Lord. If it comes to that …"
But the Dark Lord's interest had moved on again and he stared at photograph of a victim covered in suppurating sores.
"Tell me more about biological warfare. How are the diseases dispersed? How can they control the spread? How do they keep their own people safe? How do we make this work for us?"
Snape smiled. The Dark Lord certainly was an apt pupil.
~oOo~