It was the same in every vision. He saw the same face, the same eyes, the same shocking revelation that both he and Voldemort were forged of the same mettle.


And every night he would lay hissing into his pillow, desperately clawing at his arm to remove the trace of his great and present shame, trying to bite back shrieks of pain that still returned to him, almost three decades after he had been branded.



It was no different here, in this place, though Severus suspected it was made worse by his strange and utterly unsympathetic surroundings. At least in his chambers he would create useless potions with his deteriorating hands and trembling fingers.


Here, he was forced to sit back and watch himself decay. A living, breathing corpse whose soul had long since fled.


He suspected he knew what it was like to have a Dementor's Kiss performed. To carry around the dead weight of a body that wasn't really existing, to breathe in a futile effort to create further disorder in this already irrepairable universe.


The water was no relief to his mysteriously aching muscles. He suspected that his body was perfectly entuned to his new home, and was therefore trying to make every simple feat an extraordinarily difficult fiasco. He rubbed the soap listlessly over himself, closing his eyes as the metallic smelling water coursed over him, each droplet thrashing his skin in a surprisingly soothing manner.


It felt like tropical rain, this shower. He smiled, almost gratefully, into the metal sun whose liquid rays could alleviate, if only temporarily, the very constant pain he suffered.


Severus had learn to overgrow his resentment that his students could never, ever share or partake in the torture he had endured. He was angry because they hated him baselessly. What were a few scathing remarks and pitifully little points deducted compared to rotting in one's filth in the basement of a Malfoy mansion? Or grovelling in front of God's most loathsome creatures? Or, slowly but surely, becoming a half life? These children would go about their lives, dreaming of Quidditch and families of their own, while he would dream of a mercifully short, torment free death. And, just to throw in a bit of narcissistic luxury, a proper burial.


He knew, and perfectly well, that redemption was and never would be an option for him. He had already traded his soul for power that he never aquired, and had squandered good intentions on misspent missions. Saving Potter's life was one of the last selfless acts, pathetic, he knew, but still. He couldn't bear it himself to think that an otherwise promising, if not hateful boy, was to be killed by a stuttering, painfully inept fool who thought he ruled the world because he shared half a head and brain with a repellent serpent.


His torso relaxed in the heat, as did his loins. He leaned back, tilting his head and offering up his throat to the steady stream of water that ceaselessly wept on him.


Women, Severus Snape had concluded, were a mystery and puzzle for men like Sirius Black to configure. In practicality, he had never fooled himself into thinking women would swoon over his beaked nose or oddly misshapen teeth. Not to mention his fiercely defensive comments that were merely that: a defense. He had too many times found himself biting back stinging tears for the sympathy of the victim whom upon his tongue had uncoiled itself.


He cringed underneath the water, then feeling the warm rivulets slowly feed themselves into the lines of his face. He had kissed Hermione Granger once, a lust that had befallen him out of Gods know where. She was weeping in the corner, emotions and words choked up and trapped in the fragile entity of her being, after Mcgonagal had been killed. She had her arms crossed, a fleshy, ineffective human shield against guilt and all things that come of surviving something that one shouldn't have. He had seen her, bristled hair on end, brown eyes shattered and glassy. And he had taken her, nearly swooped down upon her in his black, funeral swathed arms. She had looked at him in terror, her fear and revulsion blinding her to reality. She had pressed against him urgently, hungry little hands and mouth everywhere at once. Her breasts, firm but not overripe, were straining against his own chest, and her heartbeat was erractic and quivering in comparison to the steadiness of his. She was not mewing piteously, or groaning erotically; she was weeping into his mouth, he could taste the salty biterness of her tears and the dormant furor at herself for being too panicky to save her beloved. She gnashed her teeth together, kissing him with a bruising forcefulness that left its mark upon his lips, and her scratches engrained in the wood of his being.


He had furled his hands into her hair, pulling her head up, her eyes open and bland, not seeing anymore, but somewhere farther, and hopefully happier. Severus didn't care that she couldn't see him, rather the opposite: he was glad. She never closed her damning eyes, her accusing stare and buttery lashes. She screwed her face up, trying to mimic passion, but found she could only unleash a scream of frusturation that equaled his own. She had pulled away from him then, and had said something that Severus doubt he could forgive her for.


He turned off the taps, water becoming uncomfortably hot in his most private areas, and his skin starting to pickle. The condensation was syruppy on the glass, and he wiped it with the palm of his hand, the indent crackly where he had scarred himself so many years before.


She had backed away from him, eyes widening in terror and self disgust, hands over mouth that had hungrily suckled him. And he felt disgusted himself, feeling a damp and sweaty pedophile.


Why did you stop.


He was trying to mock her, trying mask the imminent and overwhelming pain that suddenly began, a knife between his ribs, interrupting his heartbeat for a grave second.


.


She was trembling, hesistating because truths, as Hermione Granger had learned early on, were never the thing that you never wanted to hear.


Because how could anyone love you.


And Severus' eyes were blackened, vision temporarily dismantled, outermost senses dulled. All he was left with was his constant, disparraging inner voice, and the beat of his heart, which was gradually weakening anyway.


He had often heard the dreadful tale of Beauty and the Beast, and dismissed it as maudlin, muggle sentimentality. But now he suddenly knew that there were no Beauties, and that only Beasts could exist in this non-paralleled universe. That for every rose, the thorns outweighed the prize, and that eventually some form of natural decay would conquer it anyway.


And Hermione Granger stared. Stared with an emotion so fastidiously fascinated, but loathesomely repelled: pity. She pitied him, the girl whose teeth had grown to outsize her head, and whose hair any number of Hippogriffs could have nested him. She pitied him, this abominably smart creature whose mind and bluntness had alienated her. She gave him a cloying look, a pleading look, a self servingly beseeching look that begged of him to allow her to help him, for her own soul's sake.


And Severus Snape, being the descpicable victim that even he could no longer reliably able to be, tried to strangle her. He had tried to wrap his fingers around her ivory throat, feel the wonderful malleability of her too-nasal voice chords against his fingers, the collapsing of her larynx, the gurgle of her last, unintelligble words, the frenzied, animal desperation hidden behind her eyes. But he couldn't. He could only buckle, weakened and confused, utterly venemous to anyone in sight, but utterly defenseless as well. He felt much the cat without claws, or the snake without fangs.


It was not the first time that Severus had cowardously retreated. And he knew that it would not be his last. The burn of her gaze, and her hot, sudden charity were driving him back, stinging his very skin in their youthful earnestness.


She was right.


No one could love him, and he expected nothing less. However, knownig things and hearing them are very different. The comment still took his breath away, the abruptitude of his whole life uttered in a single sentence was a malignant shock. And he was not fond of, nor ever would be, of surprises.


He lay down in his bed, actually feeling reassured at the uncomfortable pressure of the springs against his spine. He fell into sleep, stumbling and screaming and thrashing every second. He fought sleep with an adrenaline tipped sword, but he could not win. Sleep was irresistable, irrepressable and irreconcilable.


He was jolted awake suddenly, by the presence of another in his bed. There was a soft indentation where there should only have been a cold and deserted plane of empty matress. He felt fingers trail across his forehead, and in spite of himself, he felt his features relax, his furrowed brow finally release itself, and his frown subside.


The girl. She was trying to comfort him somehow, trying to relieve him of pains and plagues she could never comprehend. He smelled her, gently, she smelled like warm vanilla and citrus. But something slightly hardened, almost metallic. Her fingertips were refreshingly chilly, and he found his face gravitating towards her, his nose and skin seeking out her magically soothing touch.


His hand was entwined in something, someone else's equally dexterous fingers, and their embrace had been overlong, for the dense matrix between skins had grown damp, beads of moisture sliding down the satin of her own palm and the roughened face of his. But it was comforting in ways that Severus would never be able to explain, this stiflling touch. The fact that another being was prolonging unecessary contact.


Her hand had cupped his face and he felt her lay her head against his chalky, skeletal shoulder , and nestle there, chilly tip of her nose nudging his jugular vein slightly. Her hair was fanned out, as well as it could, for it was rather short, and had a pleasant, if not slightly artifically clean smell. She spread her arm out over his chest, over his beating, hardened, but still painfully sensitized heart. He felt the warm plushness of her breasts, but more importantly, the warm plushness of the beating core that seperated, yet conjoined as her own rythym slowly steadied itself to his.













A/N: Sorry for gramatical errors, but my muse has been so quickly ignited,that I had to start writing this, or else I would be punished by another week's writer's block. Anyways, thanks for all the helpful criticisms and whatnot. I would really appreciate reviews.