::Stops chasing Lycoris with her Death Eater flags long enough to turn and face her audience::
Hello again! Here is Chapter 11. Slightly longer than the others and the cliffhanger isn't nearly as bad, I think. It's very memory oriented, though, not sure how that happened.
I go to Japan on Thursday until July 8, but I'll try to update while I'm there. Not sure if I'll be able to, so after Thursday, just check here periodically. Unless I email you with updates, then I'll email you as usual.
Athis and Aeris Gainsborough: Not sure what to say to you... Interesting review and, since I think you enjoyed the story, I'm glad you enjoyed.
Ankha: Get back to writing, or I'll make my next chapter end with the mother of all cliffhangers! ::grins evilly:: I can use the practice, y'know... Am trying to see if I can't talk some nice Sci-fi mag into letting me do a serial... ::stares dreamily off into space::
Anyway! ::Calls for a beautiful unicorn with a bright red mane and tail, glistening pearlescent coat and a golden horn to match golden hooves before hopping on the unicorn's back and resumes chasing Lycoris::
Enjoy!
Snape stared up at the dark imposing figure of Lord Voldemort and felt...nothing. His heart seemed to have become an empty void that could not even be categorized as dark. His eyes were blank dark voids, his face a physical representation of what now existed inside him, but they were the only characteristics present of the void that now grew to encompass him, body, mind and soul.
Voldemort, on the other hand, stood with an evil smile stretching the serpent-like features of his face. He'd caught a rat that wasn't Wormtail and gotten rid of Harry Potter. It was the best night of his life and he planned to enjoy it to its conclusion.
"So," Voldemort all but drawled in a voice Snape recognized the one that promised all within hearing range were destined for a lengthy, painful death. "I've caught the traitor in my midst. Not only that, but I've caught him crying over the dead Harry Potter. Life this time around is sweet to me, wouldn't you say, Severus Snape?"
Snape simply looked on his old master with unseeing eyes. For a moment Voldemort was afraid that Snape had died as well and he growled deep in his throat at the thought of someone else escaping him.
"Have you joined your student, Traitor," Voldemort asked coldly, anger lowering his voice even more dangerously than before.
Snape didn't answer, simply continued to stare into nothingness. He seemed for all the world to be nothing much a lifeless shell.
Voldemort gave a high pitched scream and pointed his wand at Snape, "Crucio!"
Snape fell over, something finally visible on his pale, sallow face - pain. Pain forced him to writhe on the floor, his body instinctively attempting to protecting by curling into a fetal position. His face contorted in agony and his already torn robes tearing further against the stone floor. His mouth flopped open in a silent scream, but no sound but the slight ripping of cloth made itself known from him.
Finally, after a minute of the torture, life snapped back into Snape's eyes and with it: the memories. He saw Harry as a small first year, once again laughing and plotting to outwit both him and Voldemort. He saw Harry flopping around on his cursed broomstick as it flailed uncontrollably about the Quidditch field.
He saw him as a scrawny 12 year old, calling out to a snake to not hurt his classmate. He saw him attempting to look innocent as he caused chaos in his class. He remembered the pain in the boy's eyes as his classmates turned on him in favor of a juicy rumor.
He saw him, thirteen years old and bravely ignorant of the past. He watched him again as he defended his father with the passion only a innocent child could muster. His heart tightened again (or maybe that was the curse) at the knowledge that Sirius Black had almost killed, had been only a bed away from it. He panicked once more as he saw that Harry was with both the treacherous werewolf and Sirius. He grew angry as the boy once again outwitted him and denied him the proper reward his efforts to protect him deserved.
He felt fear as he knew that Harry would be a Tri-wizard Champion and risk his life where he, Snape could not protect him. He grinned with pride and sighed in frustration as he realized that Harry had used gillyweed to compete in the second task. He sighed once more at the boy's soft-hearted foolishness to make sure all the contestants returned unharmed, nearly costing himself the task and tournament. He gasped in horror at the knowledge that Harry had nearly died many times during the year as he simply walked down the halls of the supposed safest place in the world. He saw him, a shaken wreck as he dealt with his near-fatal battle with Voldemort after his return to a body and with the knowledge that someone was dead because of the madman's obsession with him.
All the while, Snape did not make a sound. He allowed the memories to bombard him, pride for the boy's accomplishments and fear for his life returning full force. And he never once compared him with his father, he saw only Harry, a boy who looked much like another Snape had once longed to befriend and then longed to be rid of.
He had not always hated Harry's father, once he'd dared to believe they could be friends, if only James and the others would give him a chance. But they never did. His scalp's natural inclination to over-oil his hair and his cold nature and placement, not to mention the 'friends' he already had, prevented that. He was Slytherin, they were Gryffindor. It was never meant to be.
That was what Snape saw now, the son of a man he'd secretly admired and longed to be like, no longer the son of the man he'd hated. It changed Harry immeasurably and suddenly Snape hated his sarcastic, arrogant personality and wished he could turn back time. He wished he could bring Harry back, if only to apologize for not understanding, both himself and what things should be like. He wished he could have befriended both the boys that had come to Hogwarts as scrawny, awkward, but brave eleven year olds and won his admiration.
"Have you anything to say now, my silent fool," Voldemort asked him, his voice once more high with sadistic pleasure.
Snape looked up at Voldemort, the pain receding somewhat without the spell to fuel it. He felt no fear and somewhere in his mind a warning bell went off the realization, but he ignored it. He remembered the boy's pleas with him to live, but he didn't know if he could go on without him. Harry was more than just the symbol of good victory over evil, he was Snape's personal symbol of hope. And even if Snape could live without that hope, he doubted he would be able to now that he was trapped by Voldemort. He no longer had the strength to fight.
Snape decided to take his chances, whatever fate decided, and looked straight into Voldemort's inhuman red eyes.
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Harry was swimming in a sea of hopelessness, of lost souls and their pain. He thought he recognized some of the lost there, but he couldn't quite place them before pain began to sweep through him instead.
'Is this my afterlife,' he thought as he tried to scream through his pain. There was no sound, he did not have a mouth to make any here.
He felt himself being drawn out of the dense sea and was terrified. Were they planning on taking him somewhere worse? He wanted to cry out for Snape or Sirius. He'd even take Professor Lupin or Dumbledore. Maybe Mr or Mrs Weasley, though he didn't want them hurt if they didn't have to be. He wanted someone to rescue him, someone who he knew he could trust.
Non-existent tears wanted to spill over as he realized that the one out of all the people he'd met and known love from couldn't save him. Snape was probably still fighting for his life in the Labyrinth. Snape, the one man who had been there for him since he was a gawky first year. The only one to see him for who and what he was. And Harry knew he loved him.
Harry allowed the invisible pull to take hold of him as he remembered Snape and saw him in a new light. Snape had always protected him. He may have treated him horribly, but had never been like the Dursley's, whom Harry knew did nothing in the interest of their nephew. Snape, however, had risked discovery to rescue him. He'd chased after him into what he'd considered dangerous and tried to keep him shielded from it. In his own strange way, he'd been like Mr Weasley had been.
Now Harry knew that love came in many forms. And he knew that loved Snape back for it. He loved him as though he were like Mr Weasley or Sirius. Snape was more than just a mentor and teacher to him, Snape himself had made it so when he had bothered to care for the foolish little adventure boy who looked like his long-dead rival. Harry only hoped Snape survived to share his special brand of parental love with someone a little less blind to it.
Light penetrated the sea and dragged Harry the rest of the way out and into it, blinding him. He screamed and startled himself with his own voice. The pain and blindness receded and he tried desperately to see where he was at. Voices were coming at him from all sides and he panicked as he realized he could not move.
He quieted and put all his energy into moving. First he got his fingers moving, his hands twitching into motion, followed by his arms. Next came his toes. They moved nicely enough so he moved his feet and legs and then his body. He lay twitching on his bed, which he realized was an infirmary bed. He finally let himself be soothed by the voices around him, feeling an exhaustion threaten to pull him back into healing slumber.
"Harry! Harry," an insistent voice called desperately. Harry turned to see Sirius standing next to him, right beside Dumbledore, both their faces blurred by his bad eyesight.
Harry refocused his gaze on Dumbledore as sleep threatened to overtake him. He opened his mouth, but sound refused to come. He reached desperately for Dumbledore, becoming frantic again. He had to get help for Snape, he had to save him!
"You're safe now, Harry," Dumbledore told him. "Try to clam down."
Harry shook his head frantically, his unruly, sweat soaked hair flying. His mouth opened and closed as his throat worked to gather enough air to force out some sound.
"Snape..." Harry finally croaked.
"Snape," Sirius repeated in surprise. Dumbledore simply stilled in surprise.
"Snape..." Harry said again. "Help...Vol...Vol...Vol...de...mo...mort..."
"Shhh... He's safe, Harry," Mrs Weasley tried to calm him from his other side. He ignored her, his eyes locked on Dumbledore's as his movements stilled in an effort to reserve all his energy in an attempt to speak.
"Lab...rinth," Harry said, finally losing his fight to stay awake. "Damn."
"I'll say," Ron said miserably as he watched his friend's eyes close once more. Hermione gasped on a sob and his face in his robes. Ron wrapped an arm around her.
"Harry," Sirius cried, trying to shake Harry back awake. "Harry! No! Wake up!"
"Stop it," commanded the firm voice of Madame Pomfrey as she pushed her way to the bed and began to check Harry over.
Dumbledore stood silently by the bed and watched her work, mulling over her words.
"He's only sleeping," she finally announced. "He should wake again on his own."
A collective sigh of relief went through the room.
"Thank God," Sirius breathed as he practically collapsed onto the bed next to Harry.
"Watch it," commanded a startled Molly Weasley as she watched him almost sit on the boy she considered as one of her own. "You may be next to nothing, but you could hurt him again!"
"I could never hurt my godson," Sirius snapped back as he recovered from the instinctive urge to cower that all motherly figures can inspire in even the bravest of men.
"Well, you almost-" Mrs Weasley stopped abruptly as Dumbledore whirled and rushed hurriedly for the door. "Dumbledore! What? Where are you going?"
"The Labyrinth of the Damned, Molly," Dumbledore yelled over his shoulder as he past the doorway. "To rescue Severus!"
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Wormtail watched Harry disappear from Snape's arms and felt a sinking feeling in his stomach. Harry had saved his life when he had deserved anything but and all Wormtail had done was watch him die.
He shivered as the Dark Lord approached and attempted to scare Snape. The broken figure of the once formidable Potions Master didn't even flinch, though Wormtail cowered enough for both of them from his vantage point. It was eery how unresponsive the man was and Wormtail wasn't sure what was the matter at first. Was the man too petrified to even show fear?
He turned from the scene as the Dark Lord cursed Snape, but looked back up at the lack of sound to reach his sensitive rat ears. His eyes widened as he watched Snape writhed on the ground in almost perfect silence.
'It's not fear that keeps him silent,' Wormtail realized with a start, 'it's shock. Or grief. Or maybe both...'
Wormtail stared in awe at the Slytherin who had more courage than most of the Gryffindors he had ever known. It was almost unfathomable that this man could not be afraid of the most terrible creature in history. It shamed Wormtail and made him regret that he, a Gryffindor, had failed his friends so horribly when a Slytherin could serve and protect so bravely.
He hesitated for a moment, the familiar feeling of fear crawling through his gut, before creeping unnoticed to Snape, who had stopped writhing by now. He hid in his robes as Snape sat up to look at the one who would kill him. He had hidden behind his cowardice for too long, now he just had to make up for it. He would save Snape. Maybe they wouldn't send him to Azkaban then....
Bravely, Snape looked Voldemort in the eye and spoke the words that forced Wormtail to wonder if he shouldn't just turn tail and run as a new wave of terror and shock rolled through him.
"Kill me."
Next Chapter: That He Lived the Best