Disclaimer: I still don't own HP, which is kind of sad really. I wonder if wishing upon a shooting star really works? *lol* Not that there are any shooting stars in Singapore though. Maybe JKR would give me HP for my birthday present. *grinz* For now, HP still belongs to JKR and however she sees fit and the only thing I own is the plot I guess, though it's not too original in the first place. *sighz*
Author's Notes: To put you all out of misery, I've decided to post a new chapter ^.^ but, due to inevitable circumstances, this will be the last time I'm updating for a long, long time. The dreaded exams are starting in three weeks *damn*. I'm planning to start mugging soon. My mum would kill me if I flunk them. I can already imagine her screaming at me and banning me from the computer for a month. Now, we won't want that would we? I would probably resume my update-everyday pace after mid October, when my finals end.
Alright, enough with the depressing stuff. I must again warn you people that this is an abuse fic, and there will be hints of abuse and /rape/ in this chapter, though it isn't coated too strongly. I encourage people who are against this to scram now, before we all regret it. Also, this is SLASH, a gay relationship, Severus/Harry in fact, so get lost if this disgusts you.
And, oh my god! 34 reviewers!!! Thanks a lot you guys! ^.^...
Melinda
Whitethorn
moonstar – About the mentor thingy, I was thinking about a
progressive development of their relationship. Anyway, I bet you'll love this
chapter, coz Sevvie's starting to think about Harry in that way ^.^
Slyffindor Protegy
SammiSnape
Serpent Tongue
Elvin Goddess
Tiffany
Nicky
Wiccan Angelle
The Red Dragons Order
Mierin
kimberly
Maeglin Yedi
mnemosyne
Lambada_1
Sarah
TelegramSam
pinkdevil
PetraLynne
Not A Muggle
s0ccerstar3000
brigidt startly – lol. I love cliffies! Both as a reader and as an author. It really spices up the story don't you think? It gets boring after a while without it, absolutely no space for imagination. ^.~
JaiyAlex
Louise -- *rises eyebrows* three times? *squeals* I'm glad you loved my fic so much *hugz*
Reaper
kat
Death – that's sad…why don't you go and read something else and stop wasting your time here? I'm sure there are thousands of more original stories out there (you could look at my list of fav. authors if you want to, they are all really good…), so scram!
BabyPufoo
mythtry
and 4 other anonymous people that didn't leave their names
I love you peeps!!! *coos* This chapter is for you…
A Fallen Angel
By chibi-tenshi
He pushed it open, took a step inside and was unable to suppress a gasp. And he thought just now was bad. Without the door as a barrier, the undiluted desolation hit him at full force. What's worse was that the room reeked of sweat, blood…and ("Good Merlin!") stale sex. He involuntarily took a step back to prevent himself from falling over. Steeling himself, he forced himself to enter the room.
The very first thing that caught his eye was some sort of a rack beside him, to his left. What shocked him was what the rack held. Belts of all shapes and sizes were laid out neatly next to each other, about six or seven in all. Leather belts, aluminum belts, polythene belts… (you name it, we've got it!) Some of the lighter colored ones were dyed brown, others red. Upon closer inspection, he found it to be blood, at varying stages of dryness. The belts were laid out on the rack the way trophies were in a glass shelf.
Feeling sick at the sight, Snape turned away, only to meet with something more horrendous. At the right-hand corner stood a single table. On the table were all kinds of sex toys available to humankind, and all of them looked used, covered with blood and cum. He shut his eyes, not able to take it any more. "Concentrate! You are supposed to be looking for Potter!" he berated himself.
Looking around the room, he caught sight of the windows, barred with metal bars. The gaps in between were so tiny that mice can barely pass through. ("That explains the dimness.") A small bed stood in the middle of the room, empty. Scanning through the room, Snape found no more offensive objects. "At least it can't get any worse," he mused. Now, as we all know, when we say that things cannot get any worse, they always do.
Something to his right stirred, a slight shuffling sound came from the bed. "I thought that it was empty?" Snape murmured to himself, as he edged nearer to the bed to take a closer look. Squinting through the darkness (A/N night has fallen), he made out a slight hump on the bed. It was so small that he had to wonder if he had imagined it. "Lumos!" he whispered as he remembered his wand. And dim light filled the room (or rather, the torture chamber as Snape had came to name it), just enough for him to see without blinding him.
What he saw made him gasp. On the bed laid a boy. He was stripped naked. Manacles were cuffed around his wrist and connected to the bedpost. He was breathing, but just barely, and was shivering in the cold night air. He looked malnourished, with his slight build and his ribs protruding against his skin. His body was covered with bruises of all colors, yellow, purple, blue-black…all starkly contrasting with his pale skin. His raven-black hair was bringing out his pallid complexion.
"Wait a minute…raven-black hair?" Just then, the face that was facing in the opposite direction slowly turned over. Emerald eyes met coal-black ones. Snape drew a long stuttering breath at the sight of the eyes. Those eyes, which were once ignited by an invisible fire, which once sparkled with great intensity, were now cold and dull. It was empty, no emotions whatsoever. It was like staring into a deep dark Abyss. The boy on the bed was merely a shell without a soul, his spirit confined deep with his mind, walls carefully built to prevent himself from further hurting.
He could feel his wish for death, his plead to free him from this torture. He had never seen one so broken before, never, despite his many years serving the Dark Lord. Though the Dark Lord dealt out punishment without mercy, not even he was this cruel.
He reached out to the boy, only to see him flinch away from his touch. His anger grew as he saw this. No kid deserved such treatment, especially not the Boy-Who-Lived, the Boy-Who-Saved-The-Wizarding-World tons and tons of times without a single complaint! Not this gentle, caring, considerate boy!
He was surprised as he felt a solitary tear run past his cheek, the first time he had cried in more than twenty years! And he wasn't crying for himself, no, he was crying for the boy that laid prone in front for him. As much as he loathed to admit it, he felt sorry for Po-…, no, Harry. The boy had enough on his hands as it is, and he had this abuse to add to the list.
He was began to regret all he had done to him, the years of taunting, scolding, detentions…just to put him in his place because he thought he was pampered by those relatives of his. But, oh, how wrong he was! This reality was far from what he had imagined.
He recalled the way Harry acted around people, how he flinched when someone so much as touched him, how he seldom talked to anyone besides his two sidekicks, how he came back to school every year all skin and bones, how he never complained about his injuries after his debuts with Voldemort, how he…all this bits and pieces of information that he had waved off as insignificant before came flooding back to him, fitting perfectly into place, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.
How long ago had this bout of exploitation started? How could the Dursleys be doing this to a mere child? At this thought, his anger flared up again, this time redirected at the Durlseys. He raged down the storm menacingly, causing Petunia and Dudley to shrink back at his wrath, shivering with fright as their eyes flicking around the room, desperately searching for an escape route.
Snape took a deep breath in an effort to quell his rising temper, and spoke, "Bring me Potter's belongings and make it snappy!" Petunia and Dudley just glanced at each other, indicating for the other to speak, as if they were afraid that their answer would further annoy the already pissed off wizard. "Well? I'm waiting………" Fully aware that the wizard's getting angrier and angrier at every passing second, Petunia finally gathered up her courage to speak, "Vernon made him burn everything once we got home from the train station. We will not stand for anything abnormal in our house!" The defiant tone was present in her voice as it slowly escalated in pitch.
Snape, struggling to keep his temper in check, raised his wand and stunned the two trembling idiots. "I'll deal with the three of you later," he whispered in that velvety, yet deadly, soft voice of his before gliding up the stairs again, rather pleased at the effect the scare factor in his voice had on the muggles.
He entered the room once more, and turned toward Harry, again resisting the urge to puke there and then. Their eyes met. Is it just him, or had his eyes recovered some of their previous shine? Shaking off that thought, he used the Alohamora spell to unlock the chains round the boy's wrists as he moved nearer to him to allow him into a position whereby he could lift the boy up with relative ease.
Just then, a loose floorboard creaked below his right foot, wobbling dangerously as it threatened to dislodge itself. "Curious." He bent down to pry it open, and uncovered a relatively large hole beneath it. Reaching in, his hand came into contact with some soft, silky material. Using both his hands, he pulled out everything he could find in the hidey-hole, and found himself with some kind of light, silvery cloak ("Potter's invisibility cloak"), a thin photo album, and a stick of about 11 inches ("Must be his wand"). "Looks like he isn't as dense as I thought he was," Snape mused inwardly.
He shrank the wand and the photo album with a flick of his wand, put them into his breast pocket and proceeded to cover Harry's state of undress with the invisibility cloak. He then lifted him up carefully as one would hold up a newborn baby, afraid that any sudden movement may jar the fragile boy and cause him even more pain. He was surprised at how unnaturally light Harry was, the weight in his hand seeming to be almost inexistent. The boy recoiled from his touch yet again. It was only after a while, when Snape made no attempt to harm him, that he gradually began to relax into embrace, eyes slowly closing as a soft sigh sounded from his lips, as if strangely content despite his traumatic experiences.
Snape had to stop a soft smile from gracing his lips when he saw this display of innocence and trust. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a small button. "Hogwarts," he whispered, afraid to wake the sleeping child. With a familiar jerk at the bottom of his navel, he disappeared from 4 Pivet Drive and reappeared at the Great Hall of Hogwarts.
As he pulled the cloak off the boy's head to check if he was all right, he found that he had fainted on the way and was currently dead to the world. Worried that the blood lost and injuries had gotten into the boy and was resulting in his state of unconsciousness, he went into action.
Using the Sonorous charm, he called out, "Albus, Pomfrey! I'm afraid we have an emergency in our hands! Come to the Hospital Wing immediately! Quietus." Rushing up the stairs as fast as he could without shaking up the boy in his arms too badly, he reached the Hospital Wing in a record time. Both the Headmaster and the school nurse were already there, Albus appearing to have this ability to apparate around the school though it was not supposed to be possible, and Pomfrey because she was in her room, just beside the infirmary, when she heard Snape's voice booming through the hallways.
Dumbledore looked worried as he drank in Snape's demeanor. Snape never looks flustered unless something seriously bad was going on. He looked like he was carrying an invisible bundle in his arms, leaning down towards a bed and set something onto it, only that there was nothing there. As if sensing Dumbledore's questioning look, Snape pulled the cloak off Harry's head, revealing his bruised, battered face.
The sight elicited gasps from both Dumbledore and Pomfrey as they looked sickened at the scene before them. Then, with a snap from Snape for them to do something, Pomfrey clicked into her nurse mode and began checking over Harry's injuries.
"Bruising on 95.7% of his body, three broken ribs, punctured left lung, severe malnutrition, influenza rapidly worsening into pneumonia, loss of 12.9% of blood, developing of stomach ulcer," Pomfrey muttered to herself. "Most of the scars are too old to heal…………and………….oh my god! How could they do this to a child?!" "What is it?" the Headmaster asked sharply. "Th-th-they raped him!" she choked out, her eyes flooded with tears.
Dumbledore's eyes widened at this, as in really widened, definitely portraying his shock as he buried his head into his hands, yet another uncharacteristic action. His shoulders were slumped in defeat and you could almost hear him berating himself for leaving Harry to his own devices with his abominable excuses for relatives.
Even Snape, who had already guessed this from before, looked taken aback at this confirmation as he slowly sank into a chair beside the bed.
The ward was eerily silent, except for the shuffling around of Pomfrey as she worked diligently on her patient. With the injuries he had, it was a wonder he had survived. After loads of healing spells and numbness potions carefully administered to the injured child, she finally got his condition to more or less stabilize and almost collapsed in exhaustion subsequent to the one whole day of hard work.
As the Headmaster and the Nurse retired for the night, Snape firmly refused to leave the boy, opting to keep in vigil by his side after he saw the boy thrashing about his bed when he so much as stepped out of the room. He had also felt Harry desperately clutch at his shirt when he tried to put the boy on the bed earlier on, as if refusing to leave a perfectly safe sanctuary.
He tried to convince himself that he was staying here because he did not want Harry to further wound himself from his thrashing, not because he cared for the boy and wanted to comfort him with his presence. Resolutely chanting his mantra ("I do not care about Ha-no! Potter!"), he waited patiently for the child to awake, though his chant was frequently interrupted by thoughts like: "He looks so innocent just lying there, like a lovely angel from heaven…" or "He looks enchanting even with those bruises in his face…", before he brushed away these unwanted thoughts and continued with his "I don't care for Potter damn it!" speech.
The Headmaster had come to visit twice, once to tell him that the muggles in Pivet Drive had been evacuated to protect them from Voldemort's pre-planned massacre, and once more to inform him that the Dursleys had been taken into custody by the Child Protection Council and are pending for trial.
Pomfrey checked in regularly, about three times a day to examine Harry's condition (taking his temperature, checking on his fever, making sure the wounds are healing properly and that the bones are set correctly, ensuring that his condition had not taken a turn for the worse, etc), as well as to make sure that Snape actually ate.
Finally, about a full week later, Snape woke up in the morning to see emerald green eyes staring at him………
***
End of Chapter
Wow! This is the longest chapter I have! 2000++ words! It's almost twice as long as the rest of the chapters! *insane cackle* Ah well, treat it as an apology from me for not being able to update for a while. I promise I'll come back once the exams end ^.^ I've already got the next few chapters planned out………
This is the nicest chapter isn't it? Yeah well, I'm a major sadist, so sue me. No don't, I was just joking, you will never get any money from me, I'm totally broke for this whole month. Why else am I sitting in front of a computer with nothing better to do *sighz*. Anyhow, I really do hope you liked this chapter. In fact, to show how much you appreciated it, please REVIEW!!! I'm a sucker for compliments *laughs*
