A/N: This one's a mushy chapter guys, so it's for the Sam's, and Aariel –
the skewering is for you.
Chapter 8: Dead Love, Frozen Hate.
Beni walked swiftly down the familiar, currently empty corridor, its comforting features, this time, not calming her. She knocked clearly on the heavy, black door, but received no answer. She took a deep breath, shuddered, and pushed it open. The office was trashed - the floor was flooded with water, broken glass and stationary, among the clutter were all manner of decaying specimens. Beni rushed across the room, water soaking her shoes and socks, pushing discarded bundles of parchment out of the way. She hurried up the stairs loudly, and burst into the bedroom - which was empty and deserted. She ran back out of the office, distressed...where else would he be?
She ran to his classroom and pushed the door open roughly without knocking. She began to sigh in relief when she saw a class seated around boiling cauldrons. She moved further into the room and her gaze fell upon the teacher. She almost spat bitter disgust when she saw he was a substitute teacher, but he glared at her, sending electric, freezing chills down her spine. In a split second Beni uttered a sickening gasp and ran as fast as she could away from the classroom, the teacher still giving his burning stare, students laughter and confusion following her. There was something she really did not like about that teacher. Freaky things like that often happened to Beni Montano.
She ran through the empty great hall, which was eerie in its isolation - and through to the staff room. All of the teachers looked up in surprise, shocked by her sudden, unexpected appearance. It took only milliseconds for her silvery eyes to sweep the room and comprehend that he was here again absent. She was panicking badly now, and a few of the teachers gasped as they watched her smoky silver eyes turn to blood red as they stared, but she didn't notice, nor did she care. Her mind had stopped functioning properly, if it ever did.
"Where is he?!" she screamed into their stunned silence, everyone watching her.
"WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?! WHAT'S HAPPENED TO HIM?! TELL ME!!!"
No one moved, no one spoke. The only sound was the soft travelling of Beni's tears. Dumbledore approached her apprehensively, a pretensive look of concern on his face. "Fuck you all." Beni muttered to the ground, and whisked herself away, leaving small gasps of shock behind her, and sighs of relief that her presence would now fade.
There was only one other place to go now. She followed the scarred path of the girl in the vision, through the three corridors, and to the same door the girl had opened to find the room - that eerie, mysterious, haunted room. Beni pushed the door open, the vision forgotten, and went straight to her crystal ball. This time she saw no confusing vision, but Severus walking nervously and briskly along dark, deserted corridors, taking the route that Beni recognised as the one to the Slytherin Common Room. She stood up quickly, knocking her crystal askew, flying out of the room, even forgetting to lock the door.
She headed rapidly towards the Common Room, hardly noticing anything else in her surroundings but her central, current objective. She turned a corner and stopped dead, staring, transfixed, at the man at the other end of the corridor. He had done the same thing, and they both stood, drinking in the others appearance.
Beni swayed, frozen, taking in his image, loving every small detail about him - the way his long, black, high-necked robes billowed around him in the invisible breeze, showing his thin, abused body...his long, matted, black hair that matched his empty, hating, black eyes that only came alive when he was staring at her. She wanted to run and touch his cold, pale skin, and kiss his icy, whitish blue lips.
How long had he searched for her, and now here she was, right in front of him. He looked at her, painting her into his mind, the way her loosely fitting green dress hung off her delicate figure, her white skin against the blood red of her lips and her eyes, her long silver-to-black hair, with its burnt ends and messiness...the way her long, glittering, green ear-rings brushed against her bare shoulders, and the evil black tattoos scarred into her arm, finishing at her long, jagged black nails.
Beni unexpectedly became overwhelmed by a sudden rush of contradictory feelings – and fainted, falling rapidly and smoothly to the ground in a pile of black hair and green robes. Severus ran to her – worried and distressed, he wrapped his arms around her and she pressed her face into his chest. Beni let herself sway in his embrace for a moment, until she remembered why she had been so desperate to find him.
"Severus!" she broke away from him, and looked into his concerned, black eyes, glancing momentarily at the reflection of her red eyes in their centre.
"I think someone is going to try to kill me – we have to do something – quick – we've got to go – hide – anything!!" she said frantically, standing up hurriedly with a firm grip on his sleeve.
"Beni, wait – slow down, what are you talking about?" he asked her, pulling her around and gripping both of her shoulders, his stomach leaping.
"Someone's going to try and kill me, Severus!" she said emphatically.
"Who? How do you know?" he asked, matching her distress.
"I don't know who! And I've been seeing the signs – dreaming it! I know..." she began to cry, her heart thumping so hard she thought it would burst through her insides at any moment.
"Ok," he took a breath, and seemed to be thinking very quickly as to what they should do. "Come on." He pulled her down the other end of the corridor, and then they broke into a run, headed for his office.
They ran past questioning students, knocking people out of the way, disregarding all of their surroundings. They turned corner after corner, running to the protectiveness of the office, in the meantime throwing caution to the winds, exposing themselves to all danger in the open castle, but adopting wariness as they flew through more desolate places.
Severus began muttering unlocking spells as soon as they entered his corridor, and broke the door open with his shoulder and repaired it again when they were inside with a click of his fingers, which Beni thought was a slightly unnecessary show of strength and talent, but she didn't say anything. Instead she told him everything about the visions and the dream, and he paled ever whiter as she spoke.
When she finished, he didn't say anything. Beni assumed he couldn't think of anything to say. She felt the same, so they sat in silence, Beni sitting quietly on the desk, Severus trying to restore his trashed office to its normal appearance.
When he had finished, he turned to see Beni curled up asleep on the desk. He picked her up and carried her up the stairs to his room, laying her gently on his bed, careful not to stir her from her occasional, calm sleep. He lay down beside her, slowly wishing himself into a similar sleep.
* * * * *
Beni woke suddenly, but quietly. She silently turned around so she was facing Severus, whose heavy body was resting against hers in a restless, troubled sleep. She sensed something different, something corrupt and rancid present, the feeling rushed through her body, giving her boiling chills, but a second later it had vanished.
She shook him awake, and he sat up quickly, his wand in his hand, his eyes alive and alert. "Sorry. "she said, looking up at him, regretting waking him for nothing – but then his sleep did not look all that inviting either.
"It's alright." he said, relaxing a little, sounding haunted by fatigue. He sighed deeply, but didn't look as though he had just woken up. He also seemed untroubled by the icy coldness of the room, as Beni was.
"You don't sleep well." She noted, stating the obvious for something to say. He shook his head, and shifted his position so he was sitting up. Beni sat up too, staring sideways out of the window, watching the swirling blackness of the night-sky outside. He turned her face towards him and took a deep breath.
"Beni, I want to marry you." He said softly, his deep, nasally voice fused with nervousness and anticipation, and also an appropriate loving truth.
Beni gaped at him in shock. She had no idea that he felt that way – she didn't know what to do or what to think, she was in complete, utter shock. He mind was spinning, thoughts colliding and merging – and yet at the same time her mind seemed blank and dead. He shut his eyes, and opened them as if he couldn't believe what he was doing – what he was about to say, like he was pulling courage up from nowhere, bracing himself –
"I love you, and I want to be there for you, to protect you – forever." He whispered, looking out of the window, in an uncomfortable silence. But he had gone this far; he couldn't just stop there. "Will you marry me, Beni?" he asked her, daring himself to look into her silvery eyes, to see the fathomless expression on her face, to hear her answer.
Beni couldn't believe it; either that or she was in complete denial. She looked at him. She didn't need to think about this answer – she knew this was what she wanted too. Breathlessly she whispered into the venal, fraudulent silence that had once again taken over the room – "Yes."
"How sickly romantic." A dark voice stated from the corner next to the window, a small ray of moonlight fell across the mouth and chin. He was clearly a man, as he wore a puffy, greying goatee. Beni and Severus froze, the man brought a putrid, reeking evil into the room, chilling their bones, confirming every nightmare of terror they'd ever had. "Beni Montano." The man said, his chin twitching slightly to left, as if to fill the pause in speech. Beni looked away from him; she stared at Severus, who was even more deathly white than usual. He was staring at the man by the window, who was talking. But Beni wasn't listening, she didn't want to know what he had to say, all she knew was that she wanted him gone, she wanted to watch as he burnt to his skeleton, flames taking him to hell, eating him alive, hear his screams of pain and feel his blood spurting out onto her skin.
"You're a freak, too powerful to live with..." his voice cut on into the silence, Beni tuning in and out like a radio with pathetic reception. She looked anywhere but at the place where the man was standing, she clutched her wand in her icy hand, and said the words of the curse over and over in her mind – she was ready...
Next to her Severus also clutched his wand, ever watchful, calculating, absorbing every slight disruption of the silence, never taking his eyes off the man by the window, who continued to speak in a dull, evil, drone.
"And so, the time has come. You know what's going to happen, and you think you can stop it. But no one can change the future – whether they see it or not – you can't change it, Beni. "The man laughed evilly, a huge chin spasm distorting his face at the same time – a kind of giant twitch.
Beni whipped around. There was a high-pitched scream, "AVADA KEDAVRA!!"
The man slumped against the wall; eyes wide open, indulging in the sight before him in utter satisfaction. Beni lay on the floor, a tiny trickle of blood came from behind her head where she had hit the stone floor, her eyes a silvery mist, her hands slowly turning blue from cold, her hair sprawled across the floor, her heartbeat – ceased.
Freaky things like that often happened to Beni Montano.
Beni was dead. Severus stared at her – disbelieving...shocked...distraught. He fell to his knees beside her, and felt for her pulse. With sickening realisation he moved away from her empty, soulless, spiritless body. He stared at the man in the corner. The man who had taken away his only friend, the only person he had ever loved, the only warmth in his cold, empty, pathetic life, and he felt a hate so insatiable it matched no other.
He walked menacingly up to the man, and was satisfied when he saw him flinch. Although a second later he had twitched, and stood straighter, bracing himself for Severus' attack. Severus lashed out and grabbed the man around the throat. But the man stayed calm. Severus slammed him up against a wall, his head lolling disgustingly – blood trickling down his forehead, across his face and over Severus' bony, white hands.
The blood reminded him of Beni – and once more he smashed the man up against the wall with a new rush of strength, crushing the man's wand. At this point the man began to panic. He twisted and flailed, trying to pry himself out of Severus' tight, unbreakable grip around his neck.
Severus, who had not yet used his own wand but still gripped it firmly between two fingers, clenched it so hard he thought it would turn to powder in his hand. He put the thinnest end of the wand against the front of the mans neck and pushed, skewering him with his wand. He bared his teeth in grim satisfaction as he felt the grinding of the wand against the inside of the mans throat, as he heard the mans painful gasp, a he saw the mans eyeballs roll back into their sockets, as he watched the victim of his anger fall to the ground, blood gently oozing out of the place where Severus' wand was still jammed through the mans neck.
Severus sat on the bed, staring at the two dead bodies in front of him. He hurt as he looked at Beni. She had been a freak and a weirdo – but so was he. He had loved her when everyone else hated her, he had thought she beautiful when everybody else couldn't stand the sickening sight of her. And she had felt the same way about him.
So many thoughts of regret filled his twisted, mournful mind – but the only thing that calmed him was the face of the dead man by the window, twisted grotesquely in pain.
Chapter 8: Dead Love, Frozen Hate.
Beni walked swiftly down the familiar, currently empty corridor, its comforting features, this time, not calming her. She knocked clearly on the heavy, black door, but received no answer. She took a deep breath, shuddered, and pushed it open. The office was trashed - the floor was flooded with water, broken glass and stationary, among the clutter were all manner of decaying specimens. Beni rushed across the room, water soaking her shoes and socks, pushing discarded bundles of parchment out of the way. She hurried up the stairs loudly, and burst into the bedroom - which was empty and deserted. She ran back out of the office, distressed...where else would he be?
She ran to his classroom and pushed the door open roughly without knocking. She began to sigh in relief when she saw a class seated around boiling cauldrons. She moved further into the room and her gaze fell upon the teacher. She almost spat bitter disgust when she saw he was a substitute teacher, but he glared at her, sending electric, freezing chills down her spine. In a split second Beni uttered a sickening gasp and ran as fast as she could away from the classroom, the teacher still giving his burning stare, students laughter and confusion following her. There was something she really did not like about that teacher. Freaky things like that often happened to Beni Montano.
She ran through the empty great hall, which was eerie in its isolation - and through to the staff room. All of the teachers looked up in surprise, shocked by her sudden, unexpected appearance. It took only milliseconds for her silvery eyes to sweep the room and comprehend that he was here again absent. She was panicking badly now, and a few of the teachers gasped as they watched her smoky silver eyes turn to blood red as they stared, but she didn't notice, nor did she care. Her mind had stopped functioning properly, if it ever did.
"Where is he?!" she screamed into their stunned silence, everyone watching her.
"WHERE THE FUCK IS HE?! WHAT'S HAPPENED TO HIM?! TELL ME!!!"
No one moved, no one spoke. The only sound was the soft travelling of Beni's tears. Dumbledore approached her apprehensively, a pretensive look of concern on his face. "Fuck you all." Beni muttered to the ground, and whisked herself away, leaving small gasps of shock behind her, and sighs of relief that her presence would now fade.
There was only one other place to go now. She followed the scarred path of the girl in the vision, through the three corridors, and to the same door the girl had opened to find the room - that eerie, mysterious, haunted room. Beni pushed the door open, the vision forgotten, and went straight to her crystal ball. This time she saw no confusing vision, but Severus walking nervously and briskly along dark, deserted corridors, taking the route that Beni recognised as the one to the Slytherin Common Room. She stood up quickly, knocking her crystal askew, flying out of the room, even forgetting to lock the door.
She headed rapidly towards the Common Room, hardly noticing anything else in her surroundings but her central, current objective. She turned a corner and stopped dead, staring, transfixed, at the man at the other end of the corridor. He had done the same thing, and they both stood, drinking in the others appearance.
Beni swayed, frozen, taking in his image, loving every small detail about him - the way his long, black, high-necked robes billowed around him in the invisible breeze, showing his thin, abused body...his long, matted, black hair that matched his empty, hating, black eyes that only came alive when he was staring at her. She wanted to run and touch his cold, pale skin, and kiss his icy, whitish blue lips.
How long had he searched for her, and now here she was, right in front of him. He looked at her, painting her into his mind, the way her loosely fitting green dress hung off her delicate figure, her white skin against the blood red of her lips and her eyes, her long silver-to-black hair, with its burnt ends and messiness...the way her long, glittering, green ear-rings brushed against her bare shoulders, and the evil black tattoos scarred into her arm, finishing at her long, jagged black nails.
Beni unexpectedly became overwhelmed by a sudden rush of contradictory feelings – and fainted, falling rapidly and smoothly to the ground in a pile of black hair and green robes. Severus ran to her – worried and distressed, he wrapped his arms around her and she pressed her face into his chest. Beni let herself sway in his embrace for a moment, until she remembered why she had been so desperate to find him.
"Severus!" she broke away from him, and looked into his concerned, black eyes, glancing momentarily at the reflection of her red eyes in their centre.
"I think someone is going to try to kill me – we have to do something – quick – we've got to go – hide – anything!!" she said frantically, standing up hurriedly with a firm grip on his sleeve.
"Beni, wait – slow down, what are you talking about?" he asked her, pulling her around and gripping both of her shoulders, his stomach leaping.
"Someone's going to try and kill me, Severus!" she said emphatically.
"Who? How do you know?" he asked, matching her distress.
"I don't know who! And I've been seeing the signs – dreaming it! I know..." she began to cry, her heart thumping so hard she thought it would burst through her insides at any moment.
"Ok," he took a breath, and seemed to be thinking very quickly as to what they should do. "Come on." He pulled her down the other end of the corridor, and then they broke into a run, headed for his office.
They ran past questioning students, knocking people out of the way, disregarding all of their surroundings. They turned corner after corner, running to the protectiveness of the office, in the meantime throwing caution to the winds, exposing themselves to all danger in the open castle, but adopting wariness as they flew through more desolate places.
Severus began muttering unlocking spells as soon as they entered his corridor, and broke the door open with his shoulder and repaired it again when they were inside with a click of his fingers, which Beni thought was a slightly unnecessary show of strength and talent, but she didn't say anything. Instead she told him everything about the visions and the dream, and he paled ever whiter as she spoke.
When she finished, he didn't say anything. Beni assumed he couldn't think of anything to say. She felt the same, so they sat in silence, Beni sitting quietly on the desk, Severus trying to restore his trashed office to its normal appearance.
When he had finished, he turned to see Beni curled up asleep on the desk. He picked her up and carried her up the stairs to his room, laying her gently on his bed, careful not to stir her from her occasional, calm sleep. He lay down beside her, slowly wishing himself into a similar sleep.
* * * * *
Beni woke suddenly, but quietly. She silently turned around so she was facing Severus, whose heavy body was resting against hers in a restless, troubled sleep. She sensed something different, something corrupt and rancid present, the feeling rushed through her body, giving her boiling chills, but a second later it had vanished.
She shook him awake, and he sat up quickly, his wand in his hand, his eyes alive and alert. "Sorry. "she said, looking up at him, regretting waking him for nothing – but then his sleep did not look all that inviting either.
"It's alright." he said, relaxing a little, sounding haunted by fatigue. He sighed deeply, but didn't look as though he had just woken up. He also seemed untroubled by the icy coldness of the room, as Beni was.
"You don't sleep well." She noted, stating the obvious for something to say. He shook his head, and shifted his position so he was sitting up. Beni sat up too, staring sideways out of the window, watching the swirling blackness of the night-sky outside. He turned her face towards him and took a deep breath.
"Beni, I want to marry you." He said softly, his deep, nasally voice fused with nervousness and anticipation, and also an appropriate loving truth.
Beni gaped at him in shock. She had no idea that he felt that way – she didn't know what to do or what to think, she was in complete, utter shock. He mind was spinning, thoughts colliding and merging – and yet at the same time her mind seemed blank and dead. He shut his eyes, and opened them as if he couldn't believe what he was doing – what he was about to say, like he was pulling courage up from nowhere, bracing himself –
"I love you, and I want to be there for you, to protect you – forever." He whispered, looking out of the window, in an uncomfortable silence. But he had gone this far; he couldn't just stop there. "Will you marry me, Beni?" he asked her, daring himself to look into her silvery eyes, to see the fathomless expression on her face, to hear her answer.
Beni couldn't believe it; either that or she was in complete denial. She looked at him. She didn't need to think about this answer – she knew this was what she wanted too. Breathlessly she whispered into the venal, fraudulent silence that had once again taken over the room – "Yes."
"How sickly romantic." A dark voice stated from the corner next to the window, a small ray of moonlight fell across the mouth and chin. He was clearly a man, as he wore a puffy, greying goatee. Beni and Severus froze, the man brought a putrid, reeking evil into the room, chilling their bones, confirming every nightmare of terror they'd ever had. "Beni Montano." The man said, his chin twitching slightly to left, as if to fill the pause in speech. Beni looked away from him; she stared at Severus, who was even more deathly white than usual. He was staring at the man by the window, who was talking. But Beni wasn't listening, she didn't want to know what he had to say, all she knew was that she wanted him gone, she wanted to watch as he burnt to his skeleton, flames taking him to hell, eating him alive, hear his screams of pain and feel his blood spurting out onto her skin.
"You're a freak, too powerful to live with..." his voice cut on into the silence, Beni tuning in and out like a radio with pathetic reception. She looked anywhere but at the place where the man was standing, she clutched her wand in her icy hand, and said the words of the curse over and over in her mind – she was ready...
Next to her Severus also clutched his wand, ever watchful, calculating, absorbing every slight disruption of the silence, never taking his eyes off the man by the window, who continued to speak in a dull, evil, drone.
"And so, the time has come. You know what's going to happen, and you think you can stop it. But no one can change the future – whether they see it or not – you can't change it, Beni. "The man laughed evilly, a huge chin spasm distorting his face at the same time – a kind of giant twitch.
Beni whipped around. There was a high-pitched scream, "AVADA KEDAVRA!!"
The man slumped against the wall; eyes wide open, indulging in the sight before him in utter satisfaction. Beni lay on the floor, a tiny trickle of blood came from behind her head where she had hit the stone floor, her eyes a silvery mist, her hands slowly turning blue from cold, her hair sprawled across the floor, her heartbeat – ceased.
Freaky things like that often happened to Beni Montano.
Beni was dead. Severus stared at her – disbelieving...shocked...distraught. He fell to his knees beside her, and felt for her pulse. With sickening realisation he moved away from her empty, soulless, spiritless body. He stared at the man in the corner. The man who had taken away his only friend, the only person he had ever loved, the only warmth in his cold, empty, pathetic life, and he felt a hate so insatiable it matched no other.
He walked menacingly up to the man, and was satisfied when he saw him flinch. Although a second later he had twitched, and stood straighter, bracing himself for Severus' attack. Severus lashed out and grabbed the man around the throat. But the man stayed calm. Severus slammed him up against a wall, his head lolling disgustingly – blood trickling down his forehead, across his face and over Severus' bony, white hands.
The blood reminded him of Beni – and once more he smashed the man up against the wall with a new rush of strength, crushing the man's wand. At this point the man began to panic. He twisted and flailed, trying to pry himself out of Severus' tight, unbreakable grip around his neck.
Severus, who had not yet used his own wand but still gripped it firmly between two fingers, clenched it so hard he thought it would turn to powder in his hand. He put the thinnest end of the wand against the front of the mans neck and pushed, skewering him with his wand. He bared his teeth in grim satisfaction as he felt the grinding of the wand against the inside of the mans throat, as he heard the mans painful gasp, a he saw the mans eyeballs roll back into their sockets, as he watched the victim of his anger fall to the ground, blood gently oozing out of the place where Severus' wand was still jammed through the mans neck.
Severus sat on the bed, staring at the two dead bodies in front of him. He hurt as he looked at Beni. She had been a freak and a weirdo – but so was he. He had loved her when everyone else hated her, he had thought she beautiful when everybody else couldn't stand the sickening sight of her. And she had felt the same way about him.
So many thoughts of regret filled his twisted, mournful mind – but the only thing that calmed him was the face of the dead man by the window, twisted grotesquely in pain.