*A/N: what has it been, 2 or 3 months, well, hoefully I just get soime
random person then who is going to read it since anyone who was following
had given up ^^" Anyhow, this is a long chapter, I liked it better whn I
was writing it. adsum mean "I am here" in latin... hopefully IT will take
me alot less time to get next chapter up!^
7. The humanity I know
He had lifted her gently off him, her breathing still of short shallow breaths, she had not woken. He had gotten himself up and brushed off, though what he was brushing off could still be interpreted. He had gently shut the door, now able to let his step echo through the hall, clicking as he stepped down the stairs. And with a curt nod to the innkeeper Severus stepped out to the alley, Sighing he turned.
Facing into it all he could see was the series of small flame. The lights went on and on as he passed them, their usually constant bright, wavered as he went, unsure. He paid no head to them though; he had reached it now. The darkness.
A sheet of black. Not velvet curtain, but rather raged wool, the musty smell of black death still radiating from that sheet. And he was unsure when he looked in whether his eyes were open or shut, unable to tell. Forcing himself to remain calm he took a deep breath and instinctively his legs sprang into action. The instinctive sprint.
Severus ran, his heart beating against the darkness surrounding him. His long leg beating a silent tune on the street path. His sprint beaconing him to take a gulp of air, then immediately sputtering the poison out. His feet now crushed on the bones and skulls littering the ground. His shoes brush against their taunt fleshes now, a sharp and steady scream came for the skulls he was on. He wasn't quite sure if it was his imagination or not. He closed his eyes.
He stopped.
Severus felt his heart pounding, and his mouth desperately ached for some sort of air, he stepped calmly to the left and leaned back on the wall that had formed behind him. He breathed out the carbon echoing around the walls of the chamber. He finally felt the air burning in his lungs affect him and he stopped to feel he air, the dark growing steadily brighter, the slow dim blinding his eyes accustomed to being blind. He took his time stepping forward into the staircase that spiraled downward.
The tight circle he felt his shoulder brush against the stone the heat of the air and his breathe combating the sweat already trickling down his back. Slowly stepping sown, passed the doors had never open. Never dared, never needed, never had the nerve to even want that. He stepped down the stair beneath his feet, it was a shallow staircase, each step barley 2 inches below the next. Each was not even long enough to hold the whole length of his foot. Calculated and precise he stepped down though. The light that had no source tinged the surrounding stone yellow.
He reached the door, his door. He felt the pit of his stomach drop, as it always did. Severus reached out and turned the knob of the door, hoping what he had left was still there. Hoping it was the right door, hoping he wasn't going to screw himself over anymore, hoping the corpse he left had not rotted to the point of death. Though death would probably be a sweet oasis.
A white light spilled from the room, Severus shielded his eyes as he stepped through, not stopping them from watering. He stood there silently waiting. Waiting till he was prepared enough to begin. He shut the door and leaned back, looking at the two glittering eyes he could now see in front of him, a beam on that face, a look you could trademark. Severus sighed.
"It's been a while," Dumbledore began, his voice though wispy from it not being used in a bit of time. And Severus looked down at the old man feeling the pangs of conscience hit him. "You have been busy I suppose..."
"Yes," Severus said looking down at his feet, "No."
"And with whom have you been very productively not productive with?" The old man said joking with the shifting wizard in front of him, trying to catch his eyes. The two dark orbs flashed back underneath the lids that lay heavily upon them.
"Ms. Granger ...Hermione... Mrs. Weasley" He said the words, not stumbling over the, but precisely conveying each, marking each of the, with a soft tick mark in his mind. The differences made separate people. Severus grimaced when he thought of Ms. Granger and her bushy hair and smart attitude, bent over taking on the world. Someone who thought they knew better because they had read the most books, books anyone could read, absorbed the most information. And Mrs. Weasley, though he didn't know her very well, seemed to be a bit angry most the time, pissed off and ready to take the kill. Her world as Ms. Granger was caving in when she was Mrs. Weasley, all she had naively wanted being taken away. Put out of her reach Severus smiled at knowing it would happen all along.
But it was Hermione on the other hand she was beautiful and complex, hidden away underneath the many layers of the rest of herself. Hermione on the other hand was the rose that grew out of the rumble. She wanted something else, something he wanted to give her.
"Ah," Dumbledore murmured
"I didn't do it."
"Yet... ?"
"I don't know."
The words were said softly onto the room, the weight of them pulling at the lids of Severus's eyes. Now fully shut he was encompassed by his own self made darkness. He breathed in on his found state, wondering how he did this.
Dumbledore was dead. Well, he was supposed to be. He really was dead then, but now he wasn't. Severus had found his body on the ground untouched, undamaged. And after his funeral Severus was supposed to send him past that black curtain, never to be seen again. The curtain had shut, the end of the show, stand up and give your applause. Or have you walked out twenty minuets ago? But instead he was here. He was bright and shimmering piece of magic in this hell. It was the bad side of hell too.
Severus had breathed a new life into him. Reincarnating the soul. And Severus had selfishly smiled then, because his life had order again. He had looked into the eyes of the new old headmaster and asked what he should do now.
The head master had told him to save those poor souls. And unfortunately for him that meant only one thing. Severus picked up his knife. And waited, he waited in the confines of the room of that 'inn', visiting Dumbledore to report himself. To report his accomplishments, and never once had he recorded a defeat. Putting their souls out of these dark powers, being killed by the damned have saved them.
"There is something a bit different about her." Dumbledore said knowingly to the man in front of him. Severus swallowed and nodded, his stomach dropping, his conscience telling him he should be ashamed.
"She opened the room, number nine." Snape said in trying to convince himself that is what the old headmaster had meant. Thoughts of Hermione lying sleeping peacefully lingered in his mind.
"You never quite got that far did you?" Snape looked up his eyebrow questioning. That far? It was supposed to be bad thing to go into the past. To dissolve yourself into the horrid memories. God had even knew if something of the old magic was in that room that would cause some sort of reawakening.
"Beg your pardon?"
"It took courage to open that door"
"Stupidity you mean." Me earned a hard glare from Dumbledore, who shook his head. Severus felt the blood in his veins thicken, anger heating him.
"This has been why I've been doing this, hasn't it? To try and protect them, right? I've been trying to save them from themselves, and how they are tormenting themselves. And here comes Ms. Granger, a favorite of yours, and suddenly her doings seem 'Courageous?' "Severus yelled out at the man who smiled in spite of him, the chuckle grating his nerves.
"I said, courageous, not right. You need to do the right thing" Dumbledore said to him.
The right thing...
Her sleeping form, the rising and falling of her chest, and him brushing the hair form her face. He wouldn't be able to stop a smile from the innocent bliss of sleep. And then he would quickly ruin the knife through her chest. A sharp intake of breath her eyes would open, Horror, and then her breathing would stop. Severus would pull the knife out, gazing at her glassy eyes, a pain he had not felt in a long time seeping from his heart...
A silence fell over the room, the old man twiddling with his thumbs and Severus feeling as though he would like to purge. The realization of everything he had done washing over him. Sure he had felt about it before, but now in context, his stomach lurched... How could Dumbledore been promoting him this whole time.
"Nothing I have been doing has been right, has it?" The horse voice called onto the room, as it seemed to be suddenly closing in. What had he been doing, killing because this 'wise' wizard told him to? Killing innocent people trying to deal with their past, 'putting them out of their misery?'
He felt a shiver run down his spine as he looked at the old man in front of him. He wasn't Dumbledore, Dumbledore had never pledged his sole to the dark lord let alone the devil, how could the black magick have brought him back?
Severus let out a shudder, a total body convulsion as it all came back to him. That young boy, throwing him to the ground on this very room. Four separate knives and stabbing him through his wrists and ankles pining him to the ground, as the bone tried to fight against the foreign material as the blood curdling screams of pain issued forth. Severus pledging in the name of the dark lord and the darkest lord. to the life sprit issuing from this boy, desperate to escape from his bloody body into the spirit of Dumbledore. Chanting unpronounceable words that cant have issued from his mouth, for no human could speak them...
Until the boy coughed up the last bit up blood from his lips, the drip trickled down his chin, and Dumbledore busy sitting up and coughing up its own blood, the old man's eyes still closed as Severus had waved the body away with his wand.
Severus stumbled away from the man in front of him, the demon, grasping for the doorknob behind him shakily turning the knob and slamming the door leaping up the stairs to the wall of stone he came threw quickly sliding threw it and franticly running through the dark, his steps hardly as deceive as before. Demand of his mind spearing in the black, as he stumbled on the ground, the bones under his feet seemed to grasp up for his ankles and pull him down. Severus kept on pulling himself forward in a sheer blind panic.
Severus pass a black curtain, the candles of the ally now calmly shining on him. His stride stopped as his legs gave away, sinking to the ground, coughing up his own blood and vomit. He placed his head in his hands and wrenched finding nothing more inside of him, nothing but that feeling of indecency. And he closed his eyes to try to escape, but was only greeted by the blazing image of the eyes of a demonic man with his goat horns and teeth flashing in the gleam of white light.
...
The bulky man had dumped him on his bed, without any hint of elegance. Hermione stood up and handed him a galleon and he quickly left her alone, the man on the bed lying in his own grimy sweat and vomit, splashed randomly on the black shirt. Hermione grimaced at the smell, leaning down to unbutton the shirt.
The small buttons unwillingly let up from the shirt, as her hand dodged brushing into the sticky spots. Finally managing to pull the shirt off his body, his lean chest bared, the faint line of the inverted pentagram lingered on the bare skin. She traced it every breath of his lifting and sinking the flesh underneath.
She had her own shielded with a concealment charm a long time ago. Hermione looked perplex running her hand up his arm, the dark mark had disappeared, but the real scar remained. Hermione bent over to reach for the warm wash cloth, dabbing it on the corners of his mouth, and setting it to rest on his forehead.
Hermione shifted and straddled his form, shaking slightly though she had no reason as to why. And bending over, cupping her hands on the circle of his scar, and leaning over taking a few calming breaths breathed the word "adsum" closing her eyes and breathing into her hands.
She breathed in harder, the air dashing into her longs worth something else now. The black of her eyelid faded away to sunlight plain, just the grass, the cloudless sky and the distant sound of a sheep running off their belled collars jingling a soft welcoming sound. And in front of him lie was the body of Dumbledore, a mahogany coffin set flush to the uneven grass. The face of the man, so loved, was pale and cold. Still as the breeze wisped but a few stray gray hairs into the face.
She felt his need to cry, to let it go, but like the person she knew he was, he gritted his teeth, put on a unidentifiable face and Snape turned to the crowd of people standing behind him. Skimming over the faces. Dumbledore had known many, he had touched them, and the field there was full of them, sweeping out and in, closely bond together, leaning in on each other for support. Severus took a breath, the air catching in his lungs.
"I don't know why I am the one to do this. I'm not a man of compliment, kind gestures, and I in no way compare to the man who is behind us." His word floated in the air, unable to echo like they did in the walls of the dungeon. His word could hold no sting, he felt vulnerable.
"But he was one of the best of our kind, too good to be here, but sticking with us anyhow. Perhaps his last big trick has ended, he left us, because he knew that we were too accustomed to him standing around the next corner knowing exactly what's coming, but still making us see for ourselves. I wouldn't doubt if he saw this. But instead of leaving us with proverbs and last words, he left us empty handed, and is chuckling at us in heaven, for putting up such a big fuss about him.
But he was worth this big fuss, and we don't appreciate being left behind. Yet we are.
God rest your soul Albus, you were the best one I ever knew."
Hermione opened her eyes to the man in front of her, and wiping a tear from her eye she held a cup of broth to his mouth, making him down it, before Severus could speak, which he was so frantically trying to do so. And as she tried to shush him. His words bolting out, in a packet of extreme fear...
"We need to leave now."
7. The humanity I know
He had lifted her gently off him, her breathing still of short shallow breaths, she had not woken. He had gotten himself up and brushed off, though what he was brushing off could still be interpreted. He had gently shut the door, now able to let his step echo through the hall, clicking as he stepped down the stairs. And with a curt nod to the innkeeper Severus stepped out to the alley, Sighing he turned.
Facing into it all he could see was the series of small flame. The lights went on and on as he passed them, their usually constant bright, wavered as he went, unsure. He paid no head to them though; he had reached it now. The darkness.
A sheet of black. Not velvet curtain, but rather raged wool, the musty smell of black death still radiating from that sheet. And he was unsure when he looked in whether his eyes were open or shut, unable to tell. Forcing himself to remain calm he took a deep breath and instinctively his legs sprang into action. The instinctive sprint.
Severus ran, his heart beating against the darkness surrounding him. His long leg beating a silent tune on the street path. His sprint beaconing him to take a gulp of air, then immediately sputtering the poison out. His feet now crushed on the bones and skulls littering the ground. His shoes brush against their taunt fleshes now, a sharp and steady scream came for the skulls he was on. He wasn't quite sure if it was his imagination or not. He closed his eyes.
He stopped.
Severus felt his heart pounding, and his mouth desperately ached for some sort of air, he stepped calmly to the left and leaned back on the wall that had formed behind him. He breathed out the carbon echoing around the walls of the chamber. He finally felt the air burning in his lungs affect him and he stopped to feel he air, the dark growing steadily brighter, the slow dim blinding his eyes accustomed to being blind. He took his time stepping forward into the staircase that spiraled downward.
The tight circle he felt his shoulder brush against the stone the heat of the air and his breathe combating the sweat already trickling down his back. Slowly stepping sown, passed the doors had never open. Never dared, never needed, never had the nerve to even want that. He stepped down the stair beneath his feet, it was a shallow staircase, each step barley 2 inches below the next. Each was not even long enough to hold the whole length of his foot. Calculated and precise he stepped down though. The light that had no source tinged the surrounding stone yellow.
He reached the door, his door. He felt the pit of his stomach drop, as it always did. Severus reached out and turned the knob of the door, hoping what he had left was still there. Hoping it was the right door, hoping he wasn't going to screw himself over anymore, hoping the corpse he left had not rotted to the point of death. Though death would probably be a sweet oasis.
A white light spilled from the room, Severus shielded his eyes as he stepped through, not stopping them from watering. He stood there silently waiting. Waiting till he was prepared enough to begin. He shut the door and leaned back, looking at the two glittering eyes he could now see in front of him, a beam on that face, a look you could trademark. Severus sighed.
"It's been a while," Dumbledore began, his voice though wispy from it not being used in a bit of time. And Severus looked down at the old man feeling the pangs of conscience hit him. "You have been busy I suppose..."
"Yes," Severus said looking down at his feet, "No."
"And with whom have you been very productively not productive with?" The old man said joking with the shifting wizard in front of him, trying to catch his eyes. The two dark orbs flashed back underneath the lids that lay heavily upon them.
"Ms. Granger ...Hermione... Mrs. Weasley" He said the words, not stumbling over the, but precisely conveying each, marking each of the, with a soft tick mark in his mind. The differences made separate people. Severus grimaced when he thought of Ms. Granger and her bushy hair and smart attitude, bent over taking on the world. Someone who thought they knew better because they had read the most books, books anyone could read, absorbed the most information. And Mrs. Weasley, though he didn't know her very well, seemed to be a bit angry most the time, pissed off and ready to take the kill. Her world as Ms. Granger was caving in when she was Mrs. Weasley, all she had naively wanted being taken away. Put out of her reach Severus smiled at knowing it would happen all along.
But it was Hermione on the other hand she was beautiful and complex, hidden away underneath the many layers of the rest of herself. Hermione on the other hand was the rose that grew out of the rumble. She wanted something else, something he wanted to give her.
"Ah," Dumbledore murmured
"I didn't do it."
"Yet... ?"
"I don't know."
The words were said softly onto the room, the weight of them pulling at the lids of Severus's eyes. Now fully shut he was encompassed by his own self made darkness. He breathed in on his found state, wondering how he did this.
Dumbledore was dead. Well, he was supposed to be. He really was dead then, but now he wasn't. Severus had found his body on the ground untouched, undamaged. And after his funeral Severus was supposed to send him past that black curtain, never to be seen again. The curtain had shut, the end of the show, stand up and give your applause. Or have you walked out twenty minuets ago? But instead he was here. He was bright and shimmering piece of magic in this hell. It was the bad side of hell too.
Severus had breathed a new life into him. Reincarnating the soul. And Severus had selfishly smiled then, because his life had order again. He had looked into the eyes of the new old headmaster and asked what he should do now.
The head master had told him to save those poor souls. And unfortunately for him that meant only one thing. Severus picked up his knife. And waited, he waited in the confines of the room of that 'inn', visiting Dumbledore to report himself. To report his accomplishments, and never once had he recorded a defeat. Putting their souls out of these dark powers, being killed by the damned have saved them.
"There is something a bit different about her." Dumbledore said knowingly to the man in front of him. Severus swallowed and nodded, his stomach dropping, his conscience telling him he should be ashamed.
"She opened the room, number nine." Snape said in trying to convince himself that is what the old headmaster had meant. Thoughts of Hermione lying sleeping peacefully lingered in his mind.
"You never quite got that far did you?" Snape looked up his eyebrow questioning. That far? It was supposed to be bad thing to go into the past. To dissolve yourself into the horrid memories. God had even knew if something of the old magic was in that room that would cause some sort of reawakening.
"Beg your pardon?"
"It took courage to open that door"
"Stupidity you mean." Me earned a hard glare from Dumbledore, who shook his head. Severus felt the blood in his veins thicken, anger heating him.
"This has been why I've been doing this, hasn't it? To try and protect them, right? I've been trying to save them from themselves, and how they are tormenting themselves. And here comes Ms. Granger, a favorite of yours, and suddenly her doings seem 'Courageous?' "Severus yelled out at the man who smiled in spite of him, the chuckle grating his nerves.
"I said, courageous, not right. You need to do the right thing" Dumbledore said to him.
The right thing...
Her sleeping form, the rising and falling of her chest, and him brushing the hair form her face. He wouldn't be able to stop a smile from the innocent bliss of sleep. And then he would quickly ruin the knife through her chest. A sharp intake of breath her eyes would open, Horror, and then her breathing would stop. Severus would pull the knife out, gazing at her glassy eyes, a pain he had not felt in a long time seeping from his heart...
A silence fell over the room, the old man twiddling with his thumbs and Severus feeling as though he would like to purge. The realization of everything he had done washing over him. Sure he had felt about it before, but now in context, his stomach lurched... How could Dumbledore been promoting him this whole time.
"Nothing I have been doing has been right, has it?" The horse voice called onto the room, as it seemed to be suddenly closing in. What had he been doing, killing because this 'wise' wizard told him to? Killing innocent people trying to deal with their past, 'putting them out of their misery?'
He felt a shiver run down his spine as he looked at the old man in front of him. He wasn't Dumbledore, Dumbledore had never pledged his sole to the dark lord let alone the devil, how could the black magick have brought him back?
Severus let out a shudder, a total body convulsion as it all came back to him. That young boy, throwing him to the ground on this very room. Four separate knives and stabbing him through his wrists and ankles pining him to the ground, as the bone tried to fight against the foreign material as the blood curdling screams of pain issued forth. Severus pledging in the name of the dark lord and the darkest lord. to the life sprit issuing from this boy, desperate to escape from his bloody body into the spirit of Dumbledore. Chanting unpronounceable words that cant have issued from his mouth, for no human could speak them...
Until the boy coughed up the last bit up blood from his lips, the drip trickled down his chin, and Dumbledore busy sitting up and coughing up its own blood, the old man's eyes still closed as Severus had waved the body away with his wand.
Severus stumbled away from the man in front of him, the demon, grasping for the doorknob behind him shakily turning the knob and slamming the door leaping up the stairs to the wall of stone he came threw quickly sliding threw it and franticly running through the dark, his steps hardly as deceive as before. Demand of his mind spearing in the black, as he stumbled on the ground, the bones under his feet seemed to grasp up for his ankles and pull him down. Severus kept on pulling himself forward in a sheer blind panic.
Severus pass a black curtain, the candles of the ally now calmly shining on him. His stride stopped as his legs gave away, sinking to the ground, coughing up his own blood and vomit. He placed his head in his hands and wrenched finding nothing more inside of him, nothing but that feeling of indecency. And he closed his eyes to try to escape, but was only greeted by the blazing image of the eyes of a demonic man with his goat horns and teeth flashing in the gleam of white light.
...
The bulky man had dumped him on his bed, without any hint of elegance. Hermione stood up and handed him a galleon and he quickly left her alone, the man on the bed lying in his own grimy sweat and vomit, splashed randomly on the black shirt. Hermione grimaced at the smell, leaning down to unbutton the shirt.
The small buttons unwillingly let up from the shirt, as her hand dodged brushing into the sticky spots. Finally managing to pull the shirt off his body, his lean chest bared, the faint line of the inverted pentagram lingered on the bare skin. She traced it every breath of his lifting and sinking the flesh underneath.
She had her own shielded with a concealment charm a long time ago. Hermione looked perplex running her hand up his arm, the dark mark had disappeared, but the real scar remained. Hermione bent over to reach for the warm wash cloth, dabbing it on the corners of his mouth, and setting it to rest on his forehead.
Hermione shifted and straddled his form, shaking slightly though she had no reason as to why. And bending over, cupping her hands on the circle of his scar, and leaning over taking a few calming breaths breathed the word "adsum" closing her eyes and breathing into her hands.
She breathed in harder, the air dashing into her longs worth something else now. The black of her eyelid faded away to sunlight plain, just the grass, the cloudless sky and the distant sound of a sheep running off their belled collars jingling a soft welcoming sound. And in front of him lie was the body of Dumbledore, a mahogany coffin set flush to the uneven grass. The face of the man, so loved, was pale and cold. Still as the breeze wisped but a few stray gray hairs into the face.
She felt his need to cry, to let it go, but like the person she knew he was, he gritted his teeth, put on a unidentifiable face and Snape turned to the crowd of people standing behind him. Skimming over the faces. Dumbledore had known many, he had touched them, and the field there was full of them, sweeping out and in, closely bond together, leaning in on each other for support. Severus took a breath, the air catching in his lungs.
"I don't know why I am the one to do this. I'm not a man of compliment, kind gestures, and I in no way compare to the man who is behind us." His word floated in the air, unable to echo like they did in the walls of the dungeon. His word could hold no sting, he felt vulnerable.
"But he was one of the best of our kind, too good to be here, but sticking with us anyhow. Perhaps his last big trick has ended, he left us, because he knew that we were too accustomed to him standing around the next corner knowing exactly what's coming, but still making us see for ourselves. I wouldn't doubt if he saw this. But instead of leaving us with proverbs and last words, he left us empty handed, and is chuckling at us in heaven, for putting up such a big fuss about him.
But he was worth this big fuss, and we don't appreciate being left behind. Yet we are.
God rest your soul Albus, you were the best one I ever knew."
Hermione opened her eyes to the man in front of her, and wiping a tear from her eye she held a cup of broth to his mouth, making him down it, before Severus could speak, which he was so frantically trying to do so. And as she tried to shush him. His words bolting out, in a packet of extreme fear...
"We need to leave now."