PLEASE READ

This story is rated T but leaning towards M. There will be the occasional TW so keep an eye on the author's notes as you go just incase! The first chapter is mostly setting the scene, the real dialogue etc begins about halfway through Chapter 1. Each chapter begins with some relevant and foreshadowing song lyrics.

I used a pic of ~emotional movie Snape~ but imagine him any way you take your Snape. I personally tend towards a very aesthetic fan art Snape but do as you wish!

Please review or hit me with your constructive writing criticism! I'd love to know what you did or didn't like so I can improve. Please enjoy :)

Does the sun renounce it's kingdom,

As the shadows fall?

Does a fool rejoice in wisdom,

When the raven calls?

Do you embrace the dancing clayman,

As he tears your flesh?

Do you hear the souls screaming,

In the serpent's mesh?

Turn the lamp down low

Baby please don't go

-The Tea Party

1998

The Battle of Hogwarts coming to a pause in the distance, Severus Snape lay slumped against a dented wall in the Shrieking Shack. His neck was shredded, blood soaking his crisp white collar and pooling on the dusty wooden floor around him. He had been left there, his eyes closed and his head slumped, tears streaming down his greying face. And yet, against all odds, Severus was not yet dead. Unconscious and barely clinging to life, but not yet dead. Alone with countless wounds to his throat and chest, one would assume this was the end for him regardless. Voldemort's chilling telepathic message to gather the dead barely penetrated his flickering mind.

But as he came closer to passing through the curtain, his mind let go of it's primary concious objective; secrecy. A pulse escaped him, a wave of feeling, of clouded memories, illegible thoughts. Every layer of pent up conciousness spilled from his mind at once, radiating outward with the same force it had once been contained.

So powerful was this breach that even a remedial legilemens back on the Hogwarts grounds could feel it, dropping everything to sprint to the shrieking shack.

Only a few moments later, a woman barreled into the room, panting and frantic to find the source of the mental explosion.

She screamed and jumped back, nearly sending herself back down the stairs. Gagging at the site before her, she gripped her head for a moment. She paced back and forth, breathing hard, afraid to look at the corpse across the room; evidently too late to help the wretched man who's thoughts had just overpowered her own. She had seen many horrors that night, but nothing yet as gruesome as the mangled man across from her.

And then abruptly, she felt another spasm of tangled feeling radiating from the direction of the torn up man. All manner of concious and unconcious thoughts cast around them at once. Torment, repression, fear, oh god, so much fear.

She turned slowly to the mess and recognized with horror Professor Snape, as another pulse of raw feeling escaped his faltering oclumency.

Stepping tentatively towards him, her boots crunching in the mixture of dust and blood, she realized with a whimper that he must still be alive.

Tora Mayfield had an impossible choice to make. While death eaters were dying all around them, she had the opportunity to save the wretched one before her.

Severus Snape had been her Potions Master right as he began his career, nearly 13 years ago. And the year before he became Headmaster, he had been her coworker during her brief stint as Herbology Assistant.

But the many evil things he had since done raced through her mind, and she knew conciously that helping him would be pure treason. Their relationship had been... something... but Tora couldn't bare to watch him die. His long, black hair sticking to his ripped up flesh, his waxy lips beginning to chap against his pale, emaciated face. The feelings escaping his fading mind were so dark and so tragic, she could not help but act.

With trembling fingers she searched in the many pockets of her singed and bloody cargo pants for essence of dittany. Seizing the bottle in her shaking hands, she knelt in front of him, gagging as she pressed on his neck, squeamishly pouring the contents onto all of the gashes she could see. The outer wounds closed before her eyes, but the blood loss was already severe. Searching for another potion in her many pockets, she found one brewed from her garden that would stimulate blood production. Praying it would work, she squeezed open his jaw, leaving a smear of crimson across his snow white face, and dumped the silver goop down his throat. In a matter of moments he was brought from the brink of death to a few feet away from it. Fragile, but alive.

Snape blinked in and out of consciousness and saw the treasonous woman before him. In a brief moment of lucidity he recognized her. Little Mayfield? A nasty burn on her exposed, freckled shoulder, tangles in the kinky curls that barely reached past her chin. Even in his dying moment, he felt an automatic irritation. Of course the universe would send her.

She spoke to him but he could not hear over the blood rushing in his ears.

"I-I'm coming back, don't leave," she stuttered, standing up and pacing. "Fuck, what've I done," she whimpered, smacking herself repeatedly on the side of the head, Snape's blood caking in her thick, chestnut curls.

"Fuck."

She had just used precious resources on an instrumental war criminal, when minutes earlier, she had used her magic to intentionally kill one of their own.

So are you evil now too then, Tora? she thought bitterly, disgusted with herself. She gulped, whiping this from her head. Now was not the time.

Taking a shaky breath and righting herself, she pulled out her wand and aimed it at him. He opened his eyes again at just this moment, expecting this next spell to deliver more pain, or perhaps a swift death.

To his crushing disappointment, it did neither.

"Petrificas totalis."

Time passed like sleep for Snape, alone and hardly alive in the shrieking shack, before the door swung open and footsteps crashed up the stairs. Tora burst back in and ran tumbling in to his side, kneeling fearlessly right in his blood. With a wave of her wand he was un-petrified. Another witch followed behind her.

"Oh how ghastly," Madam Pomfrey muttered, raising her skirt to keep it out of the blood. Much healing had to be done just to stabilize him enough to move. The pair eventually fascined Snape to a gurney and levitated him out of the Shrieking Shack, the proper way through the front door. The walk was long but he was in and out of awareness. Eventually they came up to what was left of the front doors of Hogwarts. Tora's chest tightened as they passed through the front hall, the scene of terrible memories still acutely fresh. Whimpering, she focused down on her once professor.

Snape saw through hazy eyes the devastation around them; the trails of blood, the shattered walls, the smoke rising from the rubble, dead beasts yet to be disposed of. His heart fell. Tora watched over him as they walked, trying to focus his bleary gaze away from the heart wrenching chaos. He blinked up at her, glassy eyed, fixating on her petite, sombre face in a faltering moment of human need, forgetting for a moment all his past grievances with her.

As they floated him through the makeshift hospital in the Great Hall, everyone they passed stopped to glare, squinting and growling as they carried him in a sad sort of procession. Blood trailing from the sewn up bites on his neck and contrasting sharply against his greying skin, many saw it as a poetic justice. One young student made a go towards him, Tora having to wrestle him off like a mother bear. After all he'd done, he had no place there, Snape thought of himself. And nearly all the survivors they passed agreed.

Madam Pomfrey noted this and found a secluded spot behind the staff table to lay his gurney on the ground. Waving her wand over his throat and dosing him with countless potions, she bossed Tora to stop gawking at her former teacher and go carry out some light healing in her absence.

The moment she left Snape's side she was inundated with the noise. Both the sounds and the thoughts of the survivors.

She loathed the day she had picked up that legilemency book in her sixth year, a girl desperate to protect herself. Tora hadn't practiced legilemency in years, and she wasnt particularly good, but even she was strong enough to pick up on the tsunami of painful thoughts and feelings echoing through the hall.

She wanted to snatch up a time-turner and go punch her teenage self in the face, but grinning and bearing it was all she could do. Cheerfully making rounds for Madam Pomfrey in the most cheerless place she could imagine. Tora had long fantasized about the destruction of Hogwarts castle, but not like this. Tears streamed down her dimpled cheeks and over her forced, beaming smile as she did her best to make up for the many horrible things she had done that night.

When she made her way back to Snape, the mostly muffled silence surrounding his mind soothed her. When she had begun dabbling in legilemancy, she could pick up little snippets everywhere, except in the face of Severus Snape. The stoney nothing surrounding him had frightened her. But in this circumstance, it was a godsend.

"His heart beat is incredibly weak," Madam Pomfrey tusked, turning him over to Tora, "We've done all we can do. He may not make the night." She patted Tora on the shoulder before brisking away.

It was just Tora and Snape now. The ex-herbology teacher knelt next to him, clumsily falling into a seated position.

"Harry told everyone about you," she whispered, groping his neck for a pulse herself. He groaned, his neck still feeling raw. "Aren't you glad I didn't leave you to die?" Her attempt at dark humor fell flat. As she looked down at Snape's creased and bloodied face, she was overwhelmed with pity. His skin was like wax, and he seemed to be incapable of keeping his eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time. He had lost so much weight in just a year.

The more she stared, the more she could feel what he was feeling. He still radiated overwhelming bursts of loneliness and fear. Above all, terror at the thought of moving forward. She had realized back in the shrieking shack that he had wanted to die. And this made sense to her the minute she heard Harry's story; Snape had spent decades of his life isolated and focused on one specific goal, and that goal was realized; and he was a pariah for it. She reached for his hand, ice cold and stiff.

"If you die, I'll be right here with you," she stated, faltering, overcome with pity for the slight creature before her. Too many had died alone that night.

The fear he radiated was too much for her to bear, and a strong nurturing instinct took over. She squeezed herself onto his gurney and laid with him in his blood, not touching him, but staying close. Keeping her eyes on his chest, listening intensely for the sound of his occasional ragged breaths. Many times she wanted to wrap her arms around his untouchable, tailored black robes, seeking comfort mostly for herself. But she withheld.

Her body heat brought his up, and through the night he shivered and shook less and less; never letting go of her hand. If Snape passed away before ever really living, it would be an unimaginable tragedy. Tora guarded him that night as if she could ward off death.

She stayed up with him for almost a day and a half, watching him faze in and out of death's reach, in and out of awareness. He would occasionally open his eyes and look around in a panic, as if the ruins that were the great hall were a new shock to him, and each time she patted his face until he kept his eyes trained on hers. She talked to him about many lovely things, describing great gardens and beautiful scenery, nothing to stress him out. He tried his best to listen, to take his mind away from the feelings collapsing in on him, but he could barely stay awake long enough to really hear.

The moment Madam Pomfrey proclaimed him stable, Tora, having not slept since the battle, reluctantly left to find an empty bed of her own. Snape was mostly conscious by then, and highly embarrassed at the weakness he had shown. Having little to say, he pretended he couldn't talk at all when Tora looked down at him pityingly. She patted his arm and promised to come back and check on him later. And much to his chagrin, she kept her word.

Snape was numb, drugged, and terrified. The type of fear that erases all anxiety and leaves a deadly calm. When Tora appeared again, smiling kindly down at him, he continued to pretend he couldn't speak. Finally awake enough to fully take in his situation, he could not think of a more frustrating person to interrupt his dark thoughts.

"I brought you these from the grounds!" she beamed, shoving a handful of snapdragons onto his lap. He winced, slowly looking from the flowers to Tora. Why? He thought bitterly, grimacing at her.

"Because nature is good for healing," she laughed, barely disguising both her physical and emotional pain. While Snape panicked, wondering if she could hear his thoughts or not, Tora struggled to the ground with a moan. The feats she had performed two nights prior were finally starting to hit her.

She took a clean cloth and pointed her wand at it.

"Aguamenti," she sang. Water sprayed from her wand, soaking the cloth and just about everything else around it, "Well fuck. My bad." Snape marvelled at how much stronger her cockney accent had become; she had skipped the 't' all together.

"Hot air charm," Snape croaked, too eager to one-up her to keep pretending he couldn't speak. Classic Mayfield, he grumbled to himself, A walking annoyance.

Tora sighed, drying up the puddle on the floor with a flick of her wand.

She leaned over Snape and wordlessly wiped away any remaining dried blood, caked around his ears and all through his eyebrows.

Snape had been her youngest professor, lanky and covered in acne then, always actively cross about something. He was since impossibly distant. His expressions rarely changed throughout their time as coworkers, and he was hardly ever seen talking to others. His face had hardened; where there was once dramatically animated feelings, albeit almost exclusively negative ones, there was now a persistent, cold anger that left creases on his sallow face.

He fixed his gaze ahead at her touch, but inevitably she moved in right before him, her massive amber eyes evaluating his. He entwined his slender fingers in the snapdragon stems, embarrassed at her touch. She had grown so much since he had last seen her; almost unrecognizable. Had she not spent a semester assisting in the greenhouses more recently, he wouldn't have recognized her at all. At some point after graduating she had let go of any attempt at relaxing her hair; a mountain of tight, frizzy curls surrounding her pixie face, dark freckles covering everything he could see. She was taller, he noted, but essentially still a shrimp.

"There's a spell for this too," he rasped, pain clawing his throat.

"I forget what it is," she muttered, preoccupied.

Tora had been one of his most frustrating students, simply because of her unbreakable, unfettered sunshine during the angstiest years of his life. Always in the way while he was doing his best to sulk, Tora had been persistent in her jovialty where every other student had folded. It was as if she took his nastiness as a challenge. She even went so far as to come up to the staff table daily and say goodmorning to him. Her general magical incompetence rivaled that of Neville Longbottom's. But somehow her talent in potions was such that, despite her annoyances, he couldn't find reasons to fail her.

However, in her later years her behavior took a dive, losing 150 points for Hufflepuff cumulatively (as he'd made sure to repeatedly tell her) over various explosive outbursts. And even then, no matter how he tried to scold her, she was always sickly sweet to him again.

Brighter than the sun, no matter the emotion, Snape thought. But something was different now; there was a coldness behind her eyes.

"Now open your mouth for me," she instructed, nodding encouragingly at him. He narrowed his eyes at her but did as he was told, and she gently rubbed away the dried blood around his lips. He felt absolutely ridiculous. If he bad known a decade or so ago that his arch nemesis would be saving him and nursing him, he probably would've finished himself off right then and there.

"All done. Looking hot professor," she said flippantly. There was an edge to her smile.

His head felt like it was under water as a calming draught began to set in. Tora looked around, and quickly took a swig of that same potion.

"You won't tell," she smirked, making sure with great care to put the potion exactly where Madam Pomfrey had left it. Snape curled his lips.

Tora focused all the energy she had on taking care of him, not at all eager to leave the sanctuary of his blocked off mind. If she focused on someone else, she wouldn't have to reckon with her own sins. She stayed with him the rest of the day, giving him his potions, changing his many medicated bandages, wiping his brow with cool cloths.

In his inebriated state, Snape took her care relatively well. It felt good to be taken care of, even if it had to be by Tora, Snape admitted rather ashamedly to himself. He enjoyed a temporary rest despite Tora's ongoing noise and general incompetence. But the sedating potions eventually began to wear off, and his stomach was beginning to eat up his chest and throat. Tora's chatter became noise to him (more so than it already was). Tora had been abusing the sedation all day, and by the time she curled up next to his cot and fell into a fitful sleep, he was overcome with the reality ahead of him.

When Tora awoke on the hard stone floor sometime later, she was shocked to find Snape's blood stained bed empty beside her.

"Where's the headmaster?" She called out, running through the rows of beds to find Madam Pomfrey.

She simply shrugged at Tora and returned to nursing a young woman with a nasty bat-bogey hex. Tora wandered the great hall, calling out and asking around, the result being primarily shrugs or snarls from the grieving and wounded. Was she the only one concerned at the thought of a missing war hero?

"Why do you care?" A teenage boy called from his makeshift bed. He was barely 16, one leg left, the other merely a stump of bloody bandages.

She swallowed back tears at the child's plight, but ignored him. He had not felt what she had that night in the Shrieking Shack. Fear was a strong hand around her throat.

The first place she checked was the Headmaster's Office, which of course was trashed, papers and shattered instruments scattering the floors, but otherwise empty. The portraits assured her Snape had not been in. A sense of dread was creeping around her. Where could he have gone?

Snape sat at his old desk at the very head of the potions classroom. Miraculously, the battle had not come this far. His old classroom was clean and prim; the opposite of his mind. The irony pained him. The rest of the castle was in ruins. Destroyed, like his prisonous chains to it. He had spent his life there, forcibly, living and reliving every mistake he'd ever made with no escape from the walls that contained them. All ambitions, all dreams, all future set aside for this one soul sucking mission; and now it was over.

On his sleek black desk sat a goblet, filled with a fresh potion brewed at his own hands. He peered into the cup and his face peered back. His expression was blank. His face was blank. Calm. So old, he thought. Only 38, and yet so old.

He picked up the goblet and swirled it around like wine. An overpowering scent of licorice filled the room.

Walking to the tiny window at the back of the class, he looked out at the castle grounds. In the distance he could see a solitary tree. The place where he had ruined his friendship with Lily and driven her to James. Perhaps that one tantamount moment had set in action this whole chain of events. Other children get to make mistakes, he thought. His mistake created a war.

His lifetime of torment had solidified itself at that tree, and so it was a fitting view, he decided. The anise scent wafting from the potion became intoxicating.

He braced himself and rose the goblet to his lips.