Chapter 6: Ye Shall Know What I Know

Severus Snape wakened in his own chambers. His eyes felt as if sand had been poured in them; they were dry, gritty and terribly painful. He could barely see in the light of the one lone candle flickering on his bedside table. He sat up painfully; every joint in his body ached as if he had been beaten. His skin hurt as if sluiced with acid. He sat miserably on the edge of his bed; worse than the pain of the body was the void within him. It is a mean chamber into which I have avoided looking, he thought. Now I look within, and I see it is empty, void. His chest shuddered painfully, and the sobs he had repressed because voicing them would have brought even more punishment burst through his throat; his head drooped into his hands and he wept from the depths of his soul.

He was a small boy, thin and pale and silent, running towards a promise of safety that turned into a toothed and fanged tormentor. He was a young fellow, withdrawn, introspective, with his many-times-broken nose pressed against the glass of the rest of life, watching the colour, the motion, the liveliness within as the sleet beat against his back. He was an accomplished student, burying himself in his studies, avoiding his fellows, avoiding their laughter, boisterousness and silly chatter, watching the woman he loved (though he dared not tell her so) give her hand and her heart to someone he had thought was his friend.

He was a demon, a monster, a Death-Eater, vassal to the embodiment of evil, participant in the most heinous and abominable crimes, and celebrant in depraved and sadistic revels. He inflicted pain; he stole souls.

Now, he was a schoolmaster, entrusted with children's lives, passing on his talent for chemistry and magic to the next generation of wizards. Entrusted with children! His way was harsh, his method was to hone and temper those worthy of his interest by passing them through fire and Detention. His coin was terror, not encouragement. Those who succeeded did it in spite of him, not because of him.

And where was he in all of this? He was jailed in his cold, ugly cell like a snail in its portable house. It was his armour. There was no love in him, or for him. He recalled the dream in which the Mother lifted him and nourished him, comforting him in her warmth. The pain was unbearable.

"What am I to do?" he whispered. He knew of no anodyne for this agony; now that he had confronted his misery, his fear and his loneliness, was he to be forever in its thrall? Better had he never looked within. Perhaps if he slept - but then, those dreams.he lay down, weary beyond words.

His door swung open, its lock dripping green fire. Snape closed his eyes. "Go away," he said. There was no answer. He heard a "whoosh!" as a fire kindled in his hearth; a moment later the warm air reached him. He heard a click as his window swung open. The sweet odour of night blooming cereus drifted in, on a white shaft of moonlight. He turned away, burying his face in his pillow. The edge of the bed moved as someone sat down on it, and he rose up on his arms to confront the intruder.

"'Tis only meself," said Brigit. "Lie down again, now." Women. Druids. She read his mind: "What do ye want with me? Ye do not know yourself. I know what I want of ye, and when ye give it me, ye'll have all ye want and need."

"Riddles!" he groaned. "Get out of here and leave me in peace."

The bed shifted as she tucked her feet under herself, and she chuckled. "I bring ye peace," she said, "though ye may not recognize it at first."

Snape sat up, trembling with - fear? Anger? He flung out his long arm and pointed at the door, a gesture with which his students were most familiar - "Get out! I want nothing of you!" he roared.

Brigit smiled that small, inscrutable smile. She leaned forward, gazing into his furious face, and seized his ear. "Ow!" he yelled. Her fingers were unimaginably strong, and as he struggled to rid himself of her pincers grip, she aimed a fist at his other ear and boxed it soundly. His jaw dropped with astonishment, and Brigit laughed in his face. She seized his shoulders and pinned him down on the bed, climbing on top of him and sitting down firmly on his thighs.

"Now," she purred, "that I have your attention."

Snape's ear rang, and his lips trembled. He was at once a small boy whose ears had been boxed for some infraction, and he felt tears gather in his eyes. "What - what-"

Brigit leaned over him, her bright hair more gold than red in the firelight. He noted that her eyes were bright blue with flecks of gold: unearthly, and that her small ears had finely pointed tips; elven. She placed the palm of her hand on his chest, and his focus shifted from his aching head and his outrage, to her. Fey, those ears. Brigit took his hand and placed it on her shoulder. He could feel the delicate bones. Like a bird, thin fine bones.I feel something, what is it? Trembling, hungry, needing something needing him..

Brigit began slowly to unbutton his jacket. He touched her white arm; soft, with fine golden down on it. He drew his finger over the traceries of blue veins, and she shrank and giggled: ticklish. Then she held out her arm for more. He ran a finger over the porcelain skin again, and felt the tickle in his own arm. He looked in her eyes questioningly, not knowing what he asked. Brigit heaved him upwards effortlessly and pulled his jacket off, then let him fall back. She unbuttoned his linen shirt and bent forward until her hair touched his naked chest softly, ticklingly.

He gasped. Slowly, she ran her hand over his breast, down over his ribcage, and he squirmed with the unfamiliar sensation of being tickled: tiny beings running over his skin, leaving trails of shivers behind.

Hesitantly, he traced the line of her collarbone to her neck, to her cheek. She turned her head and her lips brushed his palm. She leaned closer, and he could see, in the low neck of her cambric shift, twin white does, as the Psalmist called them. She needs, she needs. She kissed him, a soft, sweet kiss. She tasted like honey and fruits, like green plants and moss. He undid the three buttons of her shift, and she dropped it off her arms in back of her. The white does that were twins rested in his palms.

Her hands stroked down his ribs, along his arms, and then she moved off him and began to unbutton his trousers. He had been so absorbed in her that he had not noticed his own growing desire. He looked up at her: he had no idea of what to say, so he said nothing, only found and pulled the ribbon that held her girdle.

Brigit sat back on her heels and looked at him for a long moment. She pulled his trousers off in one smooth movement, and then she bent over him, fastened her teeth in the waist of his small breeches and pulled them straight off. As she did so, her skirt collapsed down to her ankles and she kicked it aside.

He knew, he knew what she craved, and his only thought was to provide her with what she needed, to feed her hunger, to hold her and give her release from her aching longing. "Now ye will know what I know," Brigit whispered.

He lay over her, feeling her hot and bedewed with sweat and soft and slippery all at once. Then, his mind was inside her mind as his body was inside her body, and he felt the trembling shocks that racked her; felt her skin under his hand as he touched her and felt her skin melt from the inside out; felt her pounding heart in his chest and the clench of her muscles in his loins. At one point his back arched and he screamed mindlessly, as every nerve in her body threatened to explode at the same time. Brigit rolled over on him, her hands in his hair, her breathing ragged, her skin flushed, and again, with complete certainty, he knew because he felt what she felt. He brought her to the edge of the abyss of passion and over; holding her, moving with her until her she detonated into a million little moving points of light around the supernova that was he.