{Disclaimer:  I own nothing except for Peri and other random parts of the plot that were created from my imagination.}

{A/N: Mwuhahahaha!  *cough* *cough* *hack*Damn allergy season.  I'm quite proud of myself.  This makes two chapters in a row that have been simply Snape!  Woo-hoo!}

Chapter 7

Condemnation

**A court is in session, a verdict is in/ No appeal on the docket today/ Just my own sin/ The walls are cold and pale/ The cage made of steel/ Screams fill the room/ Alone I drop and kneel/ Silence now the sound/ My breath the only motion around/ Demons cluttering around/ My face showing no emotion/ Shackled by my sentence/ Expecting no return/ Here there is no penance/ My skin begins to burn  "My Own Prison" Creed**

Snape slowly came back into consciousness.  He could feel his head throbbing from whatever had happened before.  The floor beneath him was cold as stone, yet it was reassuring that he was out of the elements.  The room smelled dank, as if it had been unused and closed away.  The monotonous beat of dripping water echoed in emptiness.  Snape cracked open his eyes.

Darkness.  He could barely make out the lines of a door way.  Everything was shades of black.  The door could only me seen by the slightly lighter dark color that crept in through the cracks.

He was on the floor.  Obviously, they had just thrown him inside.  Snape stood up.  He found a wall nearby and paced the four sides.  The cell was not very large.  It held nothing save himself.  Snape pressed against the door; locked.  He had expected as much just as he had expected them to take away his wand.  He felt his pockets; his wand was missing.  Snape decided that he was not dealing with Muggles.  That was not a good thing.  It was not good at all.

A slot near the bottom of the door opened.  A pan of something was slid underneath.  Snape realized that he was starving.  He poked at the mush with a long finger and frowned.  It looked like it could be used as cement or at least putty.  The smell of it removed any feeling of hunger.  Snape wondered how edible it actually was.  Probably not very, he decided to himself.  He set the pan back by the door and stretched out on the floor, humming tunelessly to himself.

Snape thought about how he had failed his Master.  He was a disgrace.  The Death Eaters would never accept him again.  They would torture him.  He could already hear their laughter as they watched him writhe in pain on the floor, pleading for the agony to stop.  He could see them pointing at him with their wands, sending curses that would humiliate him.  They would let him rest for a few moments in time, then start up at it once more.  It would be repeated until he either broke completely or died.  Snape could picture his death with surprising ease.  There would be no funeral, no mourning, people wouldn't know that he was dead until he never showed up again.  Oh, yes, they would start worrying then.  It would take them a few months to find him, if they were lucky.  If they weren't…  He didn't want to think about that.

Who exactly were the others?  Were there any other people who would want to know where he had disappeared to when he did not arrive back at Hogwarts at his appointed time?  He thought about that.  Were there really any people that cared for him?  The only ones he could think of were maybe Dumbledore and a few of the professors that he had taught with.  He had no real friends; he couldn't trust anyone that far in order to completely connect with them.  He was double sided.  Most people knew only his Death Eater side or his Potions Master side.  Some knew both, but that number was small and the people that knew were rare.  Dumbledore knew the entire truth.  And Peri…

What about the girl?  She knew everything.  She knew that he was a Death Eater, but would she know enough to keep it a secret?  People would murder him as soon as they found out.  He would be out of a job and out of a life that had kept him in favor with his Master for years.  He would be useless to the Death Eaters.  Maybe he would live, maybe he would die.  His Potion skills might save him, but they were his only chance and he had failed.  Snape would have to rely on wits alone for survival.

The door crashed open with a deafening boom.  Snape could only see harsh outlines against the brightness of the corridor.  Two figures rushed in and forced him into a semi-standing position.

"I welcome you to our humble abode," the voice was cool and soft, yet held a menacing edge, a knife blade in the black of night. 

"Where am I?" Snape had never heard his voice sound this hopeless.

"You, my dear Death Eater, are in the scorpion's den, caught in the lion's jaws, under the dragon fire.  This is no Utopian place, no Shangri-La, Atlantis, or Xanadu.  Oh, no, it's not, my boy, it's not.  This is the place where you nightmares come true, your own living hell, only a level in the Netherworlds that reside below us.  This is your Room 101, your own Chateau d'If.  This is your fiendish dream.  This is where you shall never leave.  Welcome to your demise.  Welcome to Sade."

Snape face held a blank, unreadable expression.

There was a pause with a slight sigh.  The voice became more gentle, if rock hard could be called gentle.  A callused hand grasped Snape under the chin and forced him to look the keeper in the eye.  Though Snape could not make out the features, he held the gaze.  "You will die, for I see death in your eyes."

The men dropped Snape back to the floor and left the room.  The hooded figure with the voice of stone took one last look at him before slamming the door shut.

Snape was alone again with only the drip of water for his companion.  Drip.  Drip.  Drip.  He had never heard of this place, this Sade, this prison.  It never helped him much, not knowing where he was.  Since he did not know where he was, he could not know where escaping would bring him.   It would be a lost cause to try.  Snape slumped against the far wall, eyes toward the outlined doorway so that he could see all who chose to enter his cell.  He was not expecting many visitors.  Snape slowly lost track of time, letting his mind concentrate on other matters, such as the potion that he had failed with.  He knew the ingredients, but had no cauldron to create the mixtures.  From memory and logical perception to what the mixing would do, he let his mind work.

Life had taught him never to have an idle mind.  It was a pathetic excuse for living when one cannot think for his self.  Always keep a busy mind and you shall always live.  A mind that does not work is dead, useless.  Dead minds were no use to anyone, including the person that they belonged to.  He could not let himself lose his remaining shards of sanity, however few they may be.

Hours passed like fleeing wraiths in the darkness.  The door crashed open for the second time.  Two large beings hauled Snape up from where he had been sitting.  He made himself limp in their arms.  Obvious resistance was futile, but passive resistance might do him some good.

"We have a tradition here at Sade," it was the same speaker as before with the voice that made ice seem warm.  "We know how hard it is to keep track of time, so we assist you in remember how long that you have been here.  On every month anniversary of your arrival, we present you with a little gift.  Think of it as a birthday present."  The robed arm gestured to the men supporting Snape.  "To the room."

Snape kept his head high, watching his surroundings.  It didn't help much.  All the corridors were the same pale gray, dirt covered brick.  Every so often there was a corridor that they would turn down or a stairway that they would descend.  The robed figure opened up a locked door.  Snape was stripped to the waist.  His wrists were tied tightly together to a long chain winched to a pulley on the ceiling.  Snape was yanked upward, suddenly dangling just above the ground.  His ankles were strapped into leather cuffs attached to the floor.  The robed nameless figure who was his keeper gave him a quick shove to make sure he was solidly secured.  The figure disappeared out of his range of vision.

A small gasp escaped the failed Potion Master's lips.  He hadn't been expecting this.  Another crack filled the air as the whip connected with the pale skin of his back.  Snape took a deep breath to steel himself as the whip stung again.  Again and again, it flew through the air.  He could feel the welts form crossroads across his back.  Drops of crimson blood stood out against his fair skin and red weals.  A moan escaped his lips even though he knew he should be used to being torture by now.

It took him a few moments to realize that the sound had stopped and the whip was still.  His ankles were unstrapped and slowly, he was lowered to the cool, stone floor.  Snape lay there unmoving, waiting, letting himself breathe again.  He felt himself wrenched up into the arms of the guards.  He did not have to pretend to be limp as they carried him back to his dank cell.

Snape gasped as he was roughly thrown back into his cell.  He supposed he could call it home now, for a while at least.  He would stay until they were done with him, or maybe he was rescued.  If he would be rescued, which was not extremely likely.  He didn't move from the place where he lay.

The cold stone gave him nothing for his pain.  The whip hurt more than imagined.  Thirty-nine times he had been hit.  Thirty-nine, the highest number that was legal to go without killing the person completely.  One more and he might not survive.  One more to die.  He wished they had.  He wished he was dead.

No, it wouldn't be right.  He had to live.  He had to survive this place and be free again.  It was in his blood to be a survivor.  Snape had survived Hogwarts when had been shunned as a child from his father's dark past.  He had survived entering the ranks of Death Eaters.  He had lived through countless murders and attacks.  He had survived teaching ignorant morons about potions.  Yes, he would survive.  If he had done it before, he could do it again.  It was possible.  Maybe…

A sliver of doubt crept through his mind.  What were his chances?  Had people escaped from this place?  Did he have a chance?  The sliver would grow until it consumed him, devoured him whole.  A tiny splinter still causes great pain.  The smallest pebble can begin an avalanche.  The flutter wings of a butterfly can create a tornado.

Snape let the darkness around him fade into the nothingness of sleep.  He dreamed he was back at Hogwarts, teaching.  The students were horrid as usual, but he felt the same distance between him and them.  They listened to what he told them, took notes, and created the fabulous mixtures.  Every cauldron was the same shade of green, the shade that the potion was supposed to be, the shade of the Merlin's potion.  It was the only thing that he had every failed.  Severus Snape was not one to fail.  It would be the bane of his existence for the remainder of his time living.  He had failed once, might he do it again?  Was he utterly as reliable as he thought he was?  No, he had failed miserably.

The Potions Master was mentally breaking himself down, beating himself up.  There was no tougher judge than when one judged himself.  He kicked himself for failure and stupidity.  He hit himself over the head with imagined fists for being such an incompetent moron.  He gave himself thoughtless bruises with his mind for the damage he caused for himself.  He cursed himself with every curse he knew, though none were effective given that his wand was not there.

His captures knew that Snape would do this to himself.  They had time to study him and information from other sources.  They knew his major character flaw of being a perfectionist and how he was not willing to give that up for anything.  They knew him all too well.  It would be easy to break him.  Just give him enough time alone for the depression to set in and he would hate himself more than he already did.  That and a few torture sessions with various sadistic instruments, Snape would break like the fragile egg that he was.

Their Master had given him to them with the orders to break him.  Of course, Lord Voldemort would have preferred to do it himself, but being an evil Warlord set on world domination did not give him much time for the more fun activities such as personal torture.  So Snape had been sent to a group of loyal minions trained in the art of torture which worked just as well.  Either way, he would break.  Either way, he would be dead and lost from the world.  He would vanish and cease to exist.

Snape did not know this nor did he think about it.  He only knew that his life was soon to be forced out of a pleasant existence and that he would be not able to go back to where he had come from.  He realized this plainly.  Sitting in a dark room gave him too much time to think.  Thinking was a dangerous occupation.  It showed him that there was no chance of him living to get out of this place.  There was only darkness.  Every thought was of hopelessness and despair.

{Author's Note:  Room 101 comes from George Orwell's 1984.  It is a place where your worst nightmares are shown to you to get you to change your mind.  Chateau d'If is from the Count of Monte Cristo by Alexander Dumas.  It is a prison on an island where the prisoners are whipped on each yearly anniversary of their imprisonment.  Personally, just read both of the books.  They're awesome.  Sade comes from the marquis de Sade, a Frenchman that wrote books about horrid stuff.  His name is where the words "sadism" and "sadistic" come from.  If you look up "sadism" one definition is the getting of pleasure from inflicting physical or psychological pain on others, according to Webster's New World Dictionary.

 To all of you that stated Chapter 6 was not my normal style, it wasn't.  I was having a depressing couple of weeks when I wrote it.  Life is better now.  Marching Band has begun and I am going to learn how to play the clarinet this year.  Last year I was in the pit, learning how to play the glockenspiel.  (Don't ask.  It's a small metal xylophone like instrument that is extremely loud and annoying.)  And yes, for those of you who are wondering about my mental stability, it is nonexistent.

Sophie W.  Thanks, I do appreciate Cap Locks and exclamation points.

Jackie:  Read above.  You're used to the hyper, perky side of me not the overly dark, sarcastic, cynical, pessimistic one.

Anna Black:  See above note for explanation.  Yes, it was me who said that Weird Al has more than one Jedi song.  I know at least he has a parody to Copa Cabana.  ("Her name is Leia.  She was a princess…") And one about Yoda called rather ironically, "Yoda".  Just for you since you have been complaining about it, I changed the name of the cat to something hopefully more appropriate.}