The night wore on, the talisker finally doing his bidding, warming his guts and bringing the sharp drumming in his mind to a slow beating he could bear. The room was buried in shadows and the flames from the fire danced in time to his breathing.

After what seemed like hours spent slumped in the chair, rolling the empty tumbler between his palms, Snape arrived at the place inside his thoughts where he knew that the next step would take him into the memories from that long-ago day. That place was no stranger to him, he recognized its landscape clearly from his other visits, but for the first time he found himself wishing he could return to the memories of Gerda Solveig's murder with fresh eyes, from an outsider's point of view. He wanted the pensieve of the Gods to be set before him, a mystic third party observant, which would clearly reveal the terrible course of events that led to his turning from the Dark Lord and seeking out what had become his reformation.

He had spent years of his life reconstituting the now dry memories from those days. His body had become the waterbath for the brew which he insisted on mixing from the vast stores of his recollections. Each memory, each smell, each touch had become an ingredient as he willed the brew to coalesce into something tangible he could hold in his mind. He wanted to boil away all the material and be left with something hard, something worthwhile, the elusive philosopher's stone that would transform him at its touch. But, he was missing something, something in the stirring of the cauldron…and the brew would not turn.

Even now, to return to it, with the knowledge that he would be in the presence of a Norn sister within less than twenty-four hours, he could only collect the same memories, brew the same impotent tincture, always lead, always lead.

And yet…

He closed his eyes and stepped back into the house where the witch was held captive, her death less than day long hours from her, her body still fresh, before the torture shattered it, her mind still intact, before the agonizing pain would melt it.

There had been a rumbling in the magical world the moment that the Dark Lord succeeded in capturing the Norn. It had felt like tremors in the Earth, a fault in the physical world opening and shifting. He had felt it and when he was summoned to the place where she was being held, he found himself staggering from the realization that it had been her abduction which had moved the ground under all their feet.

Voldemort knew that he couldn't hold the force of her in the magical world, so Snape had found himself in a Muggle place, a non-descript house in a neighborhood of other such houses. Each one alike, each filled with lives that were nothing like his life or the lives lived in his world. At one point, he had inquired about it and been told that they were in a place called Los Angeles. He could feel the despair of all the souls trapped there and he wondered at the depravity of humans who would choose to live out their lives in such a manner. Later he would wonder if it was an unseen power of that place - the pain of souls tortured by their own hand – that had turned Voldemort's plans inside out. The City of Angels, indeed.

The family whose house they were occupying lay in the front room, swimming in congealed pools of their own blood, shredded by Death Eater foot soldiers. The Death Eaters were a concentric entity, building from an outside circle to the center where Voldemort stood. The first circle was a vicious collection of wizards and witches who were little more than murdering puppets, finding their purpose in the more mundane exploits of killing. As each circle tightened closer to the center a depravity of skills grew exponentially around the bull's-eye of throned horror. Snape knew he stood very near that throne. He was one of the younger Death Eaters, at twenty-one years of age, and the only alchemist among them.

As he strode through the house, his nerves stretched painfully under his skin; he would soon be called upon to play his part. This killing field was fresh, far more so than he was accustomed. He was usually summoned by the Dark Lord much later in an encounter, his skills being honed for precise extraction, harvesting for the darker brewing, not the brutal felling that occurred in the beginning of an encounter. The sickening smells of fear and blood and slow death were undeniable in this place, he was unused to it and found that he couldn't stand it. He sought a neutral place.

Over the course of that first day, the small house began to fill with the more powerful players and he realized that this was intended to be one of Voldemort's triumphs. The capture of this witch was a coup and it had all the markings of dark destiny upon it. Voldemort would not appear until the bitter end, with his hands clean, grasping what he insisted be taken.

Snape had found a corner for himself and silently occupied it, ignoring the comings and goings of the crowd. An introvert to the core, he preferred to wrap himself in isolation. He had contained his thoughts by mulling over an idea borne from a dream; he was failing to brew a particular potion because of the way the ingredients were being harvested. Voldemort had encouraged him to explore the darkest aspects of potions-making and he had indeed created brews he would never have been able to discover without the Dark Lord's permission, this latest struggle, however seemed to be hinged upon the concept that the ingredients could not be murdered for and instead needed to be given.

The hours of contemplation had cocooned around him but when he heard the woman begin to scream, something drove him towards the back room where she was being kept.

He came up to the door, stopping at its threshold. The curdling smell of urine washed over him and he restrained the urge to cover his nose and mouth. Two figures moved aside so that he could see the inner workings of the room. She was there, being held upright by some spell of restraint, her arms pinioned over her head and her hands reaching for the heavens in supplication. The process had begun. The crude physical beating would be first, then the lengthy sexual attack before the curses and finally….he suppressed a shuddered.

She was clothed in the robes of her Coven and still veiled. Snape knew that he wasn't the only one present who had never been this close to a veiled witch. It felt surreal, these women were the highest order of witches in the magical world and before this moment he had never come close to contemplating one being trussed up for slaughter. His stomach gripped. A figure moved towards her and began to rip at her clothing; each move in protest bringing a brutal blow to her face. Then she hung naked, her head lolling on her shoulders, the telltale floor length braid of her Coven swinging freely down her back. Blood dripped steadily from her nose and mouth and one ear.

And she was heavily pregnant.

Snape felt his stomach turn over again, he had known that this was what the Dark Lord had wanted, but to be within the presence of it was not what he had expected for himself. From some deep curve in his intestines, his guts convulsed and cramped and a dry pain surged up into his lungs and around his heart. He had never felt anything like it and as it squeezed his organs, he gasped. His brain recognized this mutiny. He was feeling shame. A heart-twisting shame brought on by his involvement with the torture of this human being and her unborn child.

Suddenly, her head lifted and she looked directly at him. His eyes widened and something passed between them and he was knocked backwards by an invisible blow. His body hit the wall of the hallway and he fell forward onto all fours. He heard her scream out as a Death Eater stepped forward and delivered a terrible blow to her torso. He felt as though he had been the one to receive the pain. He threw up and his vomit covered his hands. Again she was hit and again he retched. Someone reached down for him and he violently repelled them with his voice and wandless magic. "Irae!"

He had to get out of that space, away from her and the screams which seemed to be tearing out of his own lungs. He pulled himself up the wall and shouldered his way through the small group of observers. He stumbled towards a door that led outside and quickly altered the wards so that he could step out into a magic place, he fell heavily against it, twisted the knob and found himself on the edge of a cliff, the ocean raging below him and the freezing cold of the place shocking his skin. Again, he was on all fours and he dropped his head and looked behind him, the door now gone. He fell to his chest on the rocky tundra and welcomed the loss of consciousness.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

Damnation was neither heat nor the dreaded flame, he concluded. His eyes still closed, his cheek pressed into the hard ground; he had fallen onto his left shoulder, his knees splayed awkwardly beneath him. He was freezing, the blood in his veins sluggishly wending its way through muscle, bone and organ, his skin a searing enclosure.

He heard the ocean roaring beneath him and the cry of a bird. He decided to open his eyes.

He was still where he had been when he stumbled through the door of the muggle house. And where was that exactly, he thought bitterly. He remembered re-warding the door so that he could step out into this place, but what was this place. Slowly he knelt and swallowed a yelp of pain as his blood picked up its tempo and began to warm his icy skin and limbs. His bones felt as though released from a vise. How long had he lain there?

He was on a cliff, above the ocean, the ground beneath him rock smoothed over with a mossy growth. He saw no trees. The sky was a thick silver, midday. A bird hung suspended on an air current off to his right, her wings spread wide, stillness above the raging sea.

He stood. He reached for his wand and it was there, tucked into the Death Eater robe, in the same pocket as the mask. He fished out the slender wood and moved it into the front pocket of his trousers. With both hands he began to tear at the robe, ripping it from his shoulders, it caught around his neck and the clasp tore a gouge of flesh from his collarbone and still he ripped it from his body. He was like an animal tearing at a restraint and finally he was free of it. He rubbed fiercely at his mouth with it, rubbed at his hands, and then stumbling to the edge of the cliff he threw the robe over. A stiff breeze caught the black material, twisted it down through the air until it landed on the breaking waves below, and he watched as it was pulled under the dark green surface of the sea.

He stared out over the seemingly endless ocean and felt it call to him, he felt its age old pull, the insistent lure of its depths. Like the knife that wanted to cut him, like the poison that wanted to be drunk, he felt the sea request his drowning. He bowed his head and considered the option; to breathe water. He stepped closer to the brittle edge. The sea was now all he could hear, its voice roaring around his head, lapping at his ears with its salty tongue and pounding his eardrums with its wet promise of oblivion. He opened his arms wide, balanced on the balls of his feet, threw his head back and considered…

He could do it, he should do it, he heard the voices batter him inside his head, his mother, his father, schoolmates from his youth. But there was another voice now. Not his own, not the voice of the waves, but her voice. He could hear the silent plea that had been fed into his mind by the sheer will of the witch. The witch who was being tortured under the Dark Lord's command, the witch who had somehow chosen him. He realized that that was how he had come to be where he was, it was her will that had shown him this place.

But why.

He stepped back away from the cliff's edge and with his wand out, he attempted to transfigure the thin material of his shirt into a woolen jumper. He half succeeded and the additional bit of warmth pleased him. He turned away from the sea, and there was a woman standing in front of him.

A lifetime of tamping down his reflexes allowed him to remain still and straight, a small twitch at one corner of his lips and a slight widening of his eyes the only things revealing how startled he was. Her steady gaze betrayed nothing. She was older than anyone he had ever encountered, her face a weathered visage of flesh-gilded bone, her hair so white it seemed nearly transparent. She had her left arm raised; a dark grey gyrfalcon perched on her forearm.

She looked relaxed, standing easily, observing him and he decided that she must have been there since he came through the door.

"Would you have watched me jump," he whispered this, "Grandmother?"

She stared at him for a long time, then spoke clearly, "You did not choose to jump, Child."

"But if I had…" he pressed her. "If I had, chosen, then…"

"Then I could not have stopped you." She inclined her head to him and he pursed his lips together, scowling darkly.

"Why are you here?" she asked. "Who are you?"

"Who am I? Who am I? I would have answered you differently this morning." He covered his eyes with a long-fingered hand. "I do not know anymore." His hand dropped to his mouth and his fingers traced his lower lip absently, "I found my way here, through a muggle place." She flinched at the word. "A witch is being murdered. I think she sent me. I do not know why."

The old woman nodded and Snape's attention was drawn to the movement at her back, the white braid of hair trailing to the ground.

"She is from the Norn Coven," he said thickly.

"Yes."

Another silence stretched between them.

"Could you tell me where I am?" he asked.

"You have found your way to Hornbjarg," she answered him. "And to the Norn Coven."

They stared at one another.

As he looked into her pale blue eyes, he remembered the intense gaze of the other witch. What had she filled him with? Snape felt at the hollowness inside him, the hollowness which had always been a part of his existence. It was different. This day had been a lifetime it seemed. Could he even remember awakening that morning? The summons to that house, seeing the pregnant witch, finding himself here. All of this day was pouring into him and like filling a cold glass with a hot liquid, he wondered if he could survive it.

She was watching him. "There is nothing for you here, Grandson. You must return."

"She will die. Her child will be sacrificed," his voice was pleading.

"She will die. Her child will be sacrificed," her voice was resigned.

"She sent me here."

"That was unexpected. And that is why you must return."

"I don't know what is wanted of me."

"Nor do I."

"I will be broken."

"You will be tempered."

He covered his face with his hands. And as he had stood upon the sea cliff's edge just moments before, he found himself, again, on an edge, but this time over a looming chasm and its shadowed depths. There were voices urging him, again, but this time the voices were spoken in tones of nobility and honour and courage. They were the voices of The Fates speaking the words of destiny. He spread his arms as wide as they would reach and dove.