{Disclaimer: The Harry Potter World is owned by J.K. Rowling and Warner Brothers. I own only the figments of my imagination that are not part of the original books.}
{Just to warn you, Snape, Sirius, and Andy end up in the same room, so beware…}
{A/N: "Duel of the Fates" is a song written by John Williams for Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace. It is played during the light saber fight between Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi Wan Kenobi, and Darth Maul. For some reason, it kept going through my head the entire time I was writing this chapter. It seemed to fit.}
Chapter 12
Duel Of The Fates
**Close your eyes and hope that no one else will see/ Realize exactly what you'll never be/ This time the curtain's landing on you/ So damned, I'm gonna see this come true.** "Blind" by Default, off the Spider–Man soundtrack**
Snape opened his eyes. The cell had changed, but he was still imprisoned. He lay on a small cot, hands on his chest. He could still feel the pain in them. The Death Eaters had done it just to torture him. They knew without his hands, he was nothing.
They had come into his cell and tied him to a rough board. Every one of his fingers had been snapped, every tendon is his hand cut. They had made them useless. He could feel the agony slowly ebbing away like waves upon an ocean beach. He could see them wrapped in bandages. Obviously, someone had taken him away from the Death Eaters. The followers of Voldemort would have simply tried to break him even more than he was. Someone had saved him, but who?
A stocky guard clicked open the lock on the door. Snape sat up, watching expectantly, dark eyes blazing. His bandaged hands lay in front of him, useless as blocks of wood. "Can you walk?" the guard barked. He waved his wand at Snape's hands. The bandages wound off, revealing the appendages to be whole.
Snape stood up. He had lost none of his natural fluidness from his imprisonment.
"Follow me."
Snape followed the guard down a long corridor, letting his thoughts wonder. He recognized the building as the Ministry of Magic Justice Department. He had been here before many years in the past when he had first changed sides. They had locked him in a similar cell, given him a trial, and set him free on the account that he would be spying on the Dark Lord. The guard opened another door and gestured for Snape to enter.
"How precious," Snape drawled sarcastically as he took in the scene before him. Andy had her head on Sirius's shoulder, weeping softly. Sirius was doing his best to comfort her, patting her awkwardly on the back. "Two Gryffindors sharing the same fate."
"Sod off, Snape," Sirius snapped.
Andy's head snapped up as she leapt out of Sirius's arms. "You!" she spat at him.
"Me?" Snape had no idea of anything that had just happened to her.
"You bastard! You troglodytic monstrosity! You pathetic excuse for a yellow bellied river toad! You thick-witted, brainless spawn of a demon! You parasitic, idiotic slime ball weasel! You dirty, greasy, stone hearted son of a bitch! You just had to come and ruin my life, didn't you asshole?"
"Are you finished?" Snape kept a straight face, still unaware of where the entire tirade was coming from. Sirius, on the other hand, had mirthful tears streaming down his face from seeing his worst enemy being insulted with some most interesting phrases. He wanted to know where 'yellow bellied river toad' came from.
"No. You're a moron, Snape." Andy turned and stalked back to Sirius. The guard had left, leaving the three of them locked into one tiny room.
"May I ask the reason for your tirade?" Snape kept himself relaxed. Words could never hurt him…
Sirius might have had to give the slimy git of a Slytherin something for being able to keep his calm cool exterior after being completely chewed out by Andy, but he didn't.
"No, you may not." Andy contented herself to simply glare.
Snape took a seat on a bench against the far wall, farthest from the two Gryffindors. Obviously, the two of them had been his rescuers. That would be the only plausible explanation that Peri would be here. Black on the other hand had probably been stupid enough to get himself caught.
"You came after me, didn't you, Peri?"
"It's Andy. My name is Andromeda McGee. You should remember quite well, Severus," she smirked maliciously, conjuring up memories of beating up Snape. "And yes, it was my moronic idea to try and save you."
"It was obviously a failure." Snape's mind stirred at the name. He noticed that her hair had faded back to its normal blond color and her skin had paled. Andromeda McGee… The name brought a face to his mind. She was the same had been in the same year as he had and his only major competition in Potions. That would explain much. That might explain why she had snapped at him. The old Gryffindor verses Slytherin rivalry had come back string, especially with Black here. "Your Gryffindor obtuseness ruined everything, didn't it?"
Black eyed him dangerously. "You are not omnipotent, Snape, no matter how hard you try or what you think you are."
Andy cut him off, not wanting to two at each other's throats as amusing as it would be. "No, some pack of Aurors found the building. We were caught guilty by association. So if you hadn't went FUBAR, we would all be quite a lot more content." FUBAR is an acronym for Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition
"I did what I could. I don't suppose you could have done any better."
"I probably could have," Andy sneered.
"You mean your obtuseness wouldn't have gotten in the way?"
"You don't realize what we did for you, do you, Snape?" Sirius spoke up. It was obviously going to be a two against one argument about nothing.
"And what did you do for me, Black, other than try to kill me?"
"The thought did occur to me to take you miserable life when I had the chance. It would have saved us all from quite a lot of suffering."
"Oh really? And I supposed your little girl friend stopped you?"
Andy stomped angrily over to the Slytherin, grapping him by the neck of the robes he wore. "I did not stop him. And he will not stop me if I do this." Andy slapped Snape on his left cheek, straight across his large hooked nose.
"That was uncalled for." He grabbed her wrist as she turned away.
"Let go of me."
"Not until you apologize."
"And why would you deserve an apology? After what you've implied? Never." Andy turned back around, hitting him with the other fist. Snape's long fingers grabbed her other wrist as her stood up. The Slytherin towered over her, like a dark serpent. Yet Andy was a lion through and through. She kicked him straight in the midsection. Snape's grip didn't loosen enough to pull her hands away as he fell backwards to the ground. Andy flew over him, somersaulting forward as he let go of her wrists. She sprung up into a crouch. Sirius sprung off the wooden bench.
Snape pulled himself off the ground dusting off his robes as it the contact with the mere Gryffindor had sullied them. "Temper, temper, Gryffindor. Maybe you should have been a Slytherin with all that anger."
"She's not a slimy sleaze ball like you," Sirius spat back.
"Is that all you can think of to insult me, Black?"
"I can think of better," Sirius glared. "You deserve the only the worst."
"Why thank you. I didn't know you cared."
"Snape, shut up," Andy interjected. She knew that if these two started anything, one of them was bound to get badly hurt.
"What, McGee? Worried that I might hurt your boyfriend and you'll have to stand up for him?"
"No. I'm worried that the two of you will kill each other before I can have a chance to do so."
"You would want to kill me, wouldn't you? Typical Gryffindor, wanting to stand up for moral revenge, yet can't kill me because of the high moral values."
Sirius didn't bother retorting. Morals were useless at this point in time. He was pissed as it was for more reasons than one. He grabbed Snape by his collar and flung him to the ground. A hard fist was planted in the Slytherins midsection, followed by another. Another strike hit Snape straight in his large obnoxious nose. Snape latched onto Sirius with his long fingers. The fight went back and forth with strikes and punches thrown, kicks planted, and general chaos occurring.
Andy watched, chewing on her bottom lip, not sure of what to do. It was interesting to watch a battle of testosterone driven men, but she probably should stop it before someone got hurt. It was too late to do that. She could see blood dripping from Snape's nose. Sirius didn't seem much better and was favoring his right arm. The Slytherin had his long tapered fingers wrapped around Sirius's neck in an attempt to choke him. Sirius was pinning Snape to the floor, pushing himself out of his reach. The men rolled across the floor highly intent on killing the other or at least hurting him badly. Severus pushed Black of him with a solid double kick to the solar plexus. Both flew backwards across the floor, crashing into opposing walls.
Snape wiped his bleeding nose with a corner of his robe. Sirius sat opposite, glaring with one arm held against his mid section. It was going to be another endless staring contest.
Andy silently cursed male dominance hormones. "Testosterone driven males. Why can't the two of you just get along for once?"
"And you seem to think that you get along as well?" Snape removed the cloth to check if it was still bleeding. It was.
"You deserved every word I said to you."
"What did I do to deserve it?"
"You messed up everything."
"Can you be anymore specific?"
"No. You just messed up everything. Without you, we wouldn't be here in this disaster. We wouldn't be threatened with being returned to Azkaban. Though the Dementors are gone to the Dark Lord, it is still a worse than horrible place. You don't understand what we went through there! It's a living hell, Severus. It's worse than a living hell. Everyday, you relive your worst nightmares. They play over and over in your head until it is all you can think about. Then you slowly loose touch with reality, living only in a world of torture and despair for the rest of your life."
"And you blame this on me?"
"Yes."
"Did you ever think that I could be sharing the same fate or are you too dense to think about any one save yourself?"
Andy shot him a look that if it could, would kill. "You won't. The Ministry already cleared you. You're their spy, their contact with Voldemort. They wouldn't imprison you. You're free to go. They need you. They don't need us. We're expendable.
Snape raised a neat eyebrow. "You've spent time thinking about this, haven't you?"
"Yes. As far as I can tell, we're both doomed to either be imprisoned for life or die and you get to go free."
"Rather optimistic are we?"
"I was going for Murphy."
"Murphy?"
"If anything can go wrong, it will."
"I'd say that is about correct."
"So would I," Sirius croaked. Snape's last kick had knocked the wind out of him. It was one of the few things he agreed with Snape on. Things were messed up and he had a feeling they were not going to get much better.
A door opened on the far end of the wall. "Snape, Severus, McGee, Andromeda, and Black, Sirius, please enter the court." There was a slight pause before the last name. Sirius's name still held fear in some people.
Snape lead the way, head held high. He had no reason to fear. Andy had been right. The Ministry needed him. He was or had been high enough in Voldemort's circles to be of use to them. He wasn't certain about his standings now, but over all he was too important to simply lock away.
Andy came next, glaring at everyone who met her eyes. They knew who she was now. A sliver in the back of her mind was doubtful of the outcome. There was the sense that hit her like a hammer. She was going to die.
Sirius came last, shoulders slumped is disgrace. He had escaped before the Death Eaters had taken Azkaban. The Ministry had reason to punish him. He knew that he was innocent. He could prove it. Remus might help, if he was here. And Peter… Peter had the answers. Peter had done it, for gods' sakes. Where was that slimy rat when he was needed? Sirius knew his fate would be death or something worse. No one could save him.
{Author's Note: That was interesting. The first half of the chapter was written after I had a cup of chocolate cherry coffee. The other half was written after I had gotten back from a dentist appointment. Life's strange sometimes.
My characters wish to explain their actions. Andy says that she's not sorry for calling Snape a "yellow bellied river toad" and wishes to add that he is a jackass when he wants to be just because he is a Slytherin. Sirius agrees with Andy and has no regrets of trying to beat him up. Snape just wants to kill both Gryffindors for the sake that they are Gryffindors. He also wants to explain that he really is not a nice guy and doesn't care if people hate him. He's used to it.
AlyssaC7: I'm glad you like it so far. See what you get for AIMing me? You get to put up with me! Don't you regret it now?
Eso es eso. I'm out… Carpe Carpem, Nataly Ravenlock}
