Well, here's chapter 3. Sorry it took so long, but I did have my gull bladder out and it was bad. Doc said that if I had waited any longer I'd've died. Lovely thought that. As it is, you've got a chapter written while my mind was unable to keep my mind on any one thing due to pain and sleepiness brought on by pain medicine. Anyway, I think it still turned out ok. We'll see what you all think.
Shandethe Sanders: Grammar and punctuation in a fictional story are subject to the story and how the author wants the story to be read. Most of my 'mistakes' are due to this reasoning. However, I'm sure there are a few mistakes. I'm only human and my comp has a habit of paying games on me. Such as, in this chapter, Snape's name would more often than not come up "snape" even though I hit the 'shift' key at the same time as the 's' key. I try to catch all my unintentional mistakes, human and otherwise, as I write and as I prepare for posting, but I do miss some. As for how to spell deatheaters, I'll check it as soon as I can get my hands back on my books. They're in my dorm room at the moment, which is about 100 miles away. My surgery has prevented me from returning to school for over a week now.
Anyway, thanks for the reviews and remember: NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS IN THIS STORY.
Enjoy!
Regret. Regret was an awful life's companion. It never let you go for an instant, always reminding you of what you once had and what you might have had.
Regret becomes even worse when you have the reminder of what you gave I all up for standing beside you, cursing you whenever he feels like it. I wonder what he would say if he knew I was indebted to Harry Potter. I wonder if he would say it before or after he cursed my sanity from me. I regret that he will one day discover that secret and it will have been my own fault. My own fault for bringing him back and not abandoning him. My own fault for betraying my friends in the first place.
Regret. Regret is what rules my life now. Its funny because it's a welcome change. A welcome change from the feeling of nothingness and guilt.
I regret now the facts I once tried to escape in sleep because I know I will pay for my sins one day. My past will catch up will me.
I guess what I truly regret is that I have a past to regret. I regret ever hearing the name, Voldemort. No one likes to say or hear his name, but only I truly understand why. I loathe being his lackey.
He's calling for me again. I scuttle over to him and hope he isn't in a bad mood, the curses always last longer when he is.
"Wormtail," he says looking at me with his bright red eyes. "Where have you been?"
"A-a-awaiting your order, Master," I tell him, hating my stammer. That stammer is a sign of what led me to this place fourteen years ago. Or has it been fifteen now? Does it matter?
"Stop shivering, Wormtail," he commands me as though he were an emperor speaking to the beggar on the corner. "Go into the maze and help the deatheaters find Snape. He must not reach the center of the maze."
My heart stops in my chest as my fear escalates. Me, the cowardly Wormtail, in the Labyrinth of the Damned?
"GO," my master yells viciously at me and curses me for a short moment.
I fall to the ground as pain racks my body, but I have hardly hit it when it subsides. My body's memory of the pain has not faded away when I change into my rat form and begin to runit the maze.
I can only hope that being so small will protect me from the dark creatures that inhabit the labyrinth.
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A tremor worked its way up Severus Snape's body and through each of his limbs until it had finally reached his brain where it finally exploded like a stick of dynamite. He fell back into the wall behind him with a hoarse yell, certain his eyes lied.
"'Harry,'" he gasped, his eyes wide his pale flesh now deprived of all color as he stared at the vision that was Harry Potter.
"Yes, Professor," the vision answered calmly, which Snape found remarkable given the circumstances.
"How..." Snape choked out. He looked Harry over desperately, trying to explain what his eyes told him stood before him.
Harry stood before Snape dressed as he had been before he had been kidnapped, but now he GLOWED. A blue glow surrounded his form and blurred it enough that Snape could hardly tell that he could see the wall behind Harry through Harry's body. But he could see it, and that scared him more than anything else.
Harry looked around the maze corridor slowly, not having noticed his condition, "I don't know, Professor. The last thing I remember is the grove of trees outside that house and the deatheater finding us."
An emotion Snape had never felt before began to squeeze his heart, causing him to realize it to be softer than he had thought. Tears pricked his eyes, but he blinked them viciously away. He'd lived through worse.
"What happened to 'you,' Potter," he asked Harry gruffly. "You must remember something. Fifteen year old boys who have been lying unconscious in a hospital bed for a week do not just appear in the Labyrinth of the Damned, 'glowing.'"
Harry looked surprised at Snape's assertion and glanced down at himself. His jaw dropped on a gasp and his eyes widened as he watched himself lift his glowing hand into the air.
"I - I'm - I'm glowing..." Harry whispered to himself in awe.
"Yes, that has been observed," Snape drawled, wondering if death had somehow made the boy even more stupid than he once believed him to be.
Harry snapped his head up to glare at his potions professor through narrowed eyes, "Not by me, it hasn't."
For a moment Snape stared at Harry stared, stunned. Had his student just talked back to him? That had never happened before. Then again, he'd never spoken to a dead student before.
A noise from further down the corridor startled Snape, causing him to forget the scathing comeback he'd finally managed come up with. He glanced nervously down toward where the noise had come from as he stood and brushed himself off.
"Come along, Potter. We can't be caught here," Snape told Harry as he started back on his original at a bit of a faster pace.
"What was that, Professor Snape," Harry asked he practically ran to keep up with Snape's pace.
"That was the deatheaters. They will be hunting me in this Laybrinth. That's one of the reasons why it is called the Labyrinth of the Damned," Snape answered, a bit annoyed.
"Labyrinth of the Damned, what is that," Harry asked again. Snape could hear his desperate hope that he would not anger his professor in the boy's voice.
"It is a labyrinth that the dark lord created to hunt down his enemies. It's his preferred sport," Snape answered absently as he tried to decide which direction to go at a junction in the maze.
"Try left," Harry told him. Snape glanced at him and started down the right path. He heard Harry sigh and knew the boy was still keeping up with him.
"How do you escape," he asked, finally inciting Snape to let some of his anger boil over.
"You don't," Snape snapped at him. "The labyrinth is filled with dark creatures, plants, traps and deatheaters to prevent your ever reaching the center, the only place you can apparate. Now be silent, unless you want me to be killed."
Much to Snape's annoyance, Harry's questions were only replaced by heavy breathing.
"If you were any louder, you'd be a firecracker, boy," Snape told him.
"I'm not a boy," a voice said, just before Snape heard Harry gasp his name and a heavy hand landed solidly between his shoulder blades.
Snape landed hard on the maze's stone floor, but managed to roll to a crouching position facing his attacker. He watched as Harry attacked the deatheater that stood there and flew straight through him.
"So, the great Harry Potter is dead. The dark lord will be pleased with me for this news, don't you think, Snape," the deatheater asked him, laughter tinging his voice.
Snape growled and reached for his wand, only to meet empty robes and the memory of his missing wand. A look of fear crept into his eyes as he began to realize that he would be joining Harry a lot sooner than he had thought.
Next Chapter: Into The Unknown His Footsteps Lead