Chapter Five

"in the secret places doth he murder the innocent" Psalm 10:8

Hermione had been living in the Snape Manor on and off for 10 years and still did not know her way around it. There were still wings that she had not even been in. To her surprise, Severus was the same even though he'd grown up there.

"Why have you never explored this place fully?" Hermione had asked him on one of their first stays in the Manor during the early stages of its restoration.

His face had closed over instantly. "I never really liked this place. Apart from that, I was always under the supervision of nannies until I went to Hogwarts and they never let me do much. Once I got to Hogwarts, I spent little time here even during school holidays," he had said, his voice with an undercurrent of tension.

Hermione guessed quite accurately that he had also been very unhappy during any time he'd spent there growing up. Neglect and the perfectionistic strictness of his parents had marred his memories of the place. "Did your parents drag you off on boring ski-ing trips during the holidays?" she had teased.

"No, I got left at Hogwarts a lot. My parents were away on Death Eater business more often than not," he had explained without self-pity.

Hermione had sighed deeply. Her family life had been awful in most respects but at least she went home for school holidays. She had gone over to him and put her arms around his lean waist. "No wonder you have no real passion for this place," she had said compassionately.

He had stroked the thick, shining hair with one pale hand, his deep-set eyes glowing with repressed emotion. "A house isn't a home without a loving presence in it," he had observed quietly.

She had nodded, her face pressed against his dark robes. "No," she had said and sighed again.

That conversation she'd had with Severus had stayed with her for a decade but it wasn't until recently that she thought to ask Hermatica and Severus- the-first about it. "You know, he really doesn't know a great deal about this place," she had remarked to the two in the portrait one day. Hermatica and Severus-the-first exchanged meaningful glances. "What?" Hermione asked suspiciously.

The two were silent for a moment longer, then suddenly seemed to come to a mutual decision via eye contact alone. "He knows nothing really about this place," Severus-the-first said significantly.

"Oh?" Hermione said with raised eyebrows. "Would you care to inform me?"

"Meet us in the West Wing, near the top of the staircase. We'll be in the rural landscape there," Severus-the-first replied.

With a nod, Hermione got up and went directly there. Sure enough, they were waiting for her. The staircase ended in a long hallway that went in both directions. One way led into the West Wing that was never used and the other way went to the main foyer section in the middle of the Manor. Hermatica and Severus-the-first led Hermione deep into the West Wing via a long and winding corridor. It was eerie there and had a bad atmosphere. The stone work was slightly damp, the timber work was rotting, the tapestries and brocades were faded and had holes in them, there were mice scampering along the edges of the corridor, spiders had left huge webs hanging like curtains in the corners and there was not enough light. Not only did it feel desolate but it also had that brooding malevolence that some long deserted places had. As though a great evil had been committed there and it had poisoned the atmosphere too much for anything as healthy as sunlight or laughter to exist in it.

"Lumos," Hermione whispered, holding her wand high as the light got less.

Hermatica and Severus-the-first passed silently from frame to frame. The paintings had darkened with age to such an extent that it was almost impossible to see what the painting were of. All Hermione could see really was two points of light from their wands moving quickly through each frame.

Finally, she reached the end of the corridor. "Under the rug is a trapdoor Hermione but you need to know the password even to see it," Severus-the- first explained from the final darkened frame. Hermione levitated the moth- eaten rug and rolled it back. "The password is 'Targitaus'," Severus-the- first hissed to her.

"Targitaus," Hermione said. A metal trapdoor quickly took shape in the wooden floorboards.

"Now, take that small frame off the wall once we've gone into it. There are paintings where we are going but it would not be either safe or pleasant for us to enter them," Severus-the-first instructed. Hermione waited until they had gone into the frame preceded by their small wand lights, then took it off the wall and held onto it while she used another levitating spell to open the heavy metal trap door.

Carefully, Hermione made her way down the steep, narrow stairs. They were stone fortunately as wooden stairs may well have rotted and been dangerous. After doing down to what Hermione guessed was ground level, she found another trap door in the stone floor. "Same password, my dear," Hermatica said from the small frame in Hermione's hand.

"Targitaus," Hermione said clearly and levitated the heavy metal door back once again.

"Be warned, Hermione. You will encounter many charms put there to discourage anyone who may have stumbled across these secret passages. All of them are illusions," Severus-the-first said authoritatively.

Carefully she descended more stone steps until she noticed a huge chasm in the staircase where stone had fallen away. "It's an illusion, Hermione. Close your eyes and keep going," came Severus-the-first's voice. She nodded and did as she was bid with a pounding heart. Soon, the chasm was behind her and she was fine. The stairs seemed to go down forever and Hermione's legs were getting sore. There was a faint breeze along the stairs which meant fresh air was getting in somewhere. It was just as well otherwise she would have passed out from stale air long ago.

Finally she hit level stone but a long tunnel stretched out in front of her filled with an unnatural sickly yellow light. The tunnel was low and unalleviated by any features. It was smooth stone and had no bends or openings. It was like an endless tomb and oppressed Hermione's spirit almost unbearably. "It does end fairly soon, it's just an illusion that it goes on forever Hermione," came Hermatica's voice reassuringly.

She nodded, took a deep breath and continued. Sure enough within 5 minutes Hermione came to the end which was just more smooth stone. "Use the password again," Severus-the-first commanded.

"Targitaus," she said clearly and the stone melted away to reveal the snarling fangs of a huge, black hound whose head was the same size as Hermione's entire body and whose red eyes were fixed right on her.

She was frozen, almost unable to believe her eyes. "It's not real Hermione," came Severus-the-first's clear voice. "Take one step forward and it will disappear."

It was the hardest step Hermione had ever had to take. She closed her eyes, held her breath and ignoring the deafening snarls of the dog and its hot breath on her body she took one small, shaking step forward. The snarling stopped abruptly.

She finally opened her eyes and found herself looking into a huge underground room with a high, cave-like ceiling. She stepped inside over where the hound had been and looked around. It seemed to be a combination of laboratory, library and. dungeon of some kind, Hermione thought. It was a very unpleasant place; cramped, dark, cluttered, dank, and full of nasty smells and heavy silence.

Slowly she walked around starting from one side and working her way around the room. On one side was a laboratory with potion making equipment still set up. It looked as though there may have been some experiments in progress Hermione assessed professionally. And not particularly pleasant ones either judging from the ingredients, she thought.

She looked at the library selection with interest that quickly turned to repugnance. She had no doubt that if Dumbledore had assessed this library for its suitability, not many volumes would have survived. One book however caught her attention. It was called simply, Darke Creatures. Her own animagus was a dark creature and there was a very small section on the Black Unicorn which surprised her as it was very hard to find any written material about the creatures. Apart from out-lining what Hermione already knew about the black unicorn, the book offered one more bit of useful information.

"The blacke unicorne's haire, if used in a wande of ebonie will create a powerfulle magikal instrument beyonde the powere of wands mayde with whyte unicorne haire, phoenix tail feather or dragone's heartstring. The properties of these art unknowne as there art no record of such a wande ever mayde."

She slipped the small book into one of the capacious pockets in her robe.

She moved over finally to the dungeon section but found she could not make her legs take too many steps into that area. They simply felt too weak. There were instruments of torture there, amazingly crude ones considering that the wizarding community had fairly sophisticated spells and charms and potions to torture each other with if anyone cared to learn them, and there had been plenty who had especially at the height of the Death Eaters reign of terror.

Her eyes wondered but did not linger over the iron rings set high into the stone walls, the sharp iron rods, a dunking stool, a rack, an iron maiden, branding irons, garrotes, piles of rusting chains, man sized metal cages and other disturbing items that she was unable to identify.

Taking a deep breath, she walked up to one of the walls near the iron rings and pointing her wand at the wall said, "cruor aetas". It was a simple spell for checking the age of blood stains. It was a useful magical forensic test that she had used often in her field research when developing tools for Aurors. The reading from the spell was thirty years. Hermione gasped. Thirty years ago Severus would have been 15 years old. Her parents were almost certainly responsible for this set of bloodstains. This dungeon most likely had been fully operational during his parent's life. Of course, until further forensic tests were done it wasn't confirmed but it looked pretty damning.

Hermione felt very, very sick suddenly and rushed back to the laboratory section of the room to sit down. She put her head between her knees and took deep breaths, putting the picture frame of Hermatica and Severus-the- first onto the bench first.

"What is it dear?" Hermatica said kindly. "What did your spell tell you?"

"That Severus' parents were probably murderers," Hermione choked, sitting up again.

"Not probably - most definitely. I saw many wizards and witches disappear down that trapdoor never to be seen again. On one occasion I did follow the portraits down here while they were torturing some poor bastard. He died. I never went back again, I just couldn't bear it. That and the inhabitants of the portraits that you see around you are quite dangerous characters. I barely made it back out the first and only time I came," Severus-the-first explained.

Hermione looked around the hard, cruel faces in the portraits on the walls; all watching her rather contemptuously. She shuddered, they certainly did look dangerous. "Don't worry, they can't hurt you where they are," he added when he saw her look at the portraits with horror.

Hermione swallowed. "You must never, never tell Severus about this place. Not ever!" she said, her tone unyielding. "He would never get over the shock and I don't want him torturing himself over something his parents did and he knew nothing about."

"Most definitely not!" Severus-the-first agreed emphatically. "Why do you think I never have before now?"

"He was always a sensitive boy. I know as an adult he protected himself with sarcasm, moodiness and harshness but it was only because he'd been hurt so much as a child and young man," Hermatica said empathetically.

"I know," Hermione said in a small voice, her face distressed. "Let's go. I've had enough for one day." Tiredly she made her way back the way she'd come, her feet dragging. "We'll have to destroy a lot of that stuff," she commented quietly as she trudged up the stone stairs. "And it won't be easy. I'll need to get help from experts at destroying Dark Arts materials like Padma."

"You can organize that for when Severus is teaching," Severus-the-first stated.

"Yes," she agreed, gratefully coming back out of the final trapdoor. She covered it up again and put the small picture back up on the wall so Hermatica and Severus-the-first could escape it back to their own frames.

The pair watched the small figure of the woman walk tiredly back out of the West Wing. "Do you think it was too much for her?" Hermatica asked Severus- the-first putting one arm around him.

"Once the shock has worn off, Hermione will get that hell hole cleaned out and the evil garbage in there destroyed in the best possible way. I trust her common sense and strength of character as much as I trust yours," he replied, moving closer to her.

Hermatica put both her arms around him and kissed him.