I Saw You

Chapter 4: Suicide.....To Those Who Speak Them

Voldemort arranged his facial muscles into a distorted smile. His chalk white skin was so translucent that Snape could see the fine veins that spread like a spider web under the Dark Lord's corpse-like face. He tried to imagine that blood ran through these veins, but failed. Voldemort inhaled and exhaled the air like any mortal, but the spark of intelligent lunacy that ignited his eyes was pure demon.

"You would not tell me? Your master?" he asked silkily. The silence that resonated against the cold brick walls surrounding them signalled the beginning of a long and deadly battle.

"Legilimens!" shouted Voldemort, and Snape let out a howl, as the attack descended upon him like a thousand deadly icicles. His mind fortified itself, but already, the secret that he had fought to suppress for almost two decades was being unearthed at a dangerous velocity. Snape bit his tongue to curb his screams, and the other Death Eaters noted uneasily the dark, viscous liquid trickling steadily down the corner of his mouth.

His body was suspended by hooks and chains ten feet above the dungeon ground, and the pool of blood under him had an expanding circumference. Snape's breath came in short gasps, but Voldemort's strikes were relentless. For days, Snape was hung and tortured in the nameless dungeon. It all began when his treachery was exposed. Voldemort knew that Snape kept a mortally-guarded secret with him, and the incarnated wizard didn't mind if he had to severe Snape's life strings to uncover it.

The bricks of the fortress started to crumble. Snape prayed that he would die before the Dark Lord found out where the last refuge of Harry Potter was. Harry, upon finding out that Snape was his father, entrusted his life to him by naming Snape as his Secret-Keeper. It was all foolishness and naivety that culminated in this moment, Snape thought as the last remnants of existence slipped through his broken fingers. Harry never should have found out that he had a father! His mind was still too weak, and when the Dark Lord breached his mind……

"No, you will not die," breathed a vicious voice that echoed with virulence and cunning. "You will heal, and then we shall start again."

The thorns that pierced Snape's naked skin untangled themselves from around his body, their needles still dripping with fresh blood. Underneath, a very short man with watery eyes sighed.

Down in the chilly dungeons of Hogwarts, a hooked-nosed man awoke to find himself shivering and bathed in cold sweat from the aftermath of his dream.

Snape's eyes flew open, and as his vision swirled into focus, he found that he had dozed off while marking his student's papers. The protruding veins on his gnarly hands reminded him of his dream, which made another unsolicited wave of terror wash over him. He licked his lips, only to find a salty taste lingering in his mouth.

"Damn," he swore under his breath. He'd even bitten his tongue in his sleep.

But what if it wasn't a dream? As far as he knew his mastery was Potions, not omniscience. An invisible dagger penetrated his stomach, when a sudden remembrance of an unrequited memory presented itself to the man. His mother's cousin was a Seer. But Seers voiced their Prophecies out, not dream them, he thought. After all, Harry's memories were robbed from him. Voldemort couldn't have known…..

But it all seemed so real. The cold walks, the pool of scarlet blood, the hooded Death Eaters who watched his limp figure dandling in the air above them…..Snape shuddered involuntarily. He did not doubt that it his nightmare would turn into reality, if he had allowed Harry to continue knowing that his father was still alive.

Nevertheless, he jotted down his dream on the nearest piece of parchment that he could reach. It wasn't an easy task, and for a moment, only scribbles that resembled waves appeared.

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"Where is he?" demanded Ron as he thumbed through Diabolical Manipulations and their Counterspells. A glossy page, quite different from the other ones, caught his curious eye. All that was on the page was a convoluted symbol that looked like a bone helmet that looked like a bull's skull with a sword through its eye socket.

"Nistrous Minorus Impulsio mort," he read the antiquated text below the picture. "What a strange-"

The class gasped when the piercing shriek of a terrified Ron smashed through their chatter. A hideous bone helmet with no visor except two eye sockets had formed on Ron's head, and constricted his skull. Harry noted with shock that it was exactly like the symbol in their Defence Against Dark Arts textbook, which was glowing with malicious red. Ron screamed again, but his voice died in midair, as he was slammed against the wall by invisible talons that ripped his robes, exposing his wounded chest.

"Finite incantatem!" shouted Harry, but it had absolutely no effect on Ron's invisible attacker. Hermione dug her nails into Harry's arm, and shouted above the chaos that only a trained wizard could undo the spell, which was exactly what Harry didn't want to hear at the moment.

Ron's screams grew into cries of pain and terror, when a his unseen attacker's form began to emerge from invisibility. The bull-like head and scarlet eyes that rolled madly came first, followed by a muscular human body and powerful arms which clenched a blood-stained two-handed warhammer, which it swung like a berserker as it let out a bone-chilling roar. Each time its hoofed foot stamped the ground, Harry felt a the desks tremor. Lavender Brown had already fainted with shock, before someone shouted the creature's name.

It 's a minotaur, thought Harry. He had seen their drawings in many books, although nothing could compare with the strength and bloodlust in this beast's eyes. Several students pointed their wands at the minotaur and shouted, "Expelliarmus!" but it nothing seemed to work against it. Worse, the minotaur had spotted Ron, and was advancing towards him. It was strange, thought Harry, the way it ignored the others.

Why didn't anyone get the new teacher? His sneakers skidded on the floor as he ran out of the classroom, and into the wizard who was about to enter.

"Dissendio," said the newcomer, just as the hammer swung by two muscular arms was about to meet Ron's limp, frozen body. It halted so fast that the sickening sound of metal cutting through air could still be heard, even after it was frozen in midstrike. With an exasperated sound of a failed hunter, the minotaur's body faded into nothingness. Even as it died away, Harry could see that it hungered for Ron's death. It shocked him. What had his friend done to that beast?

"Well," commented Remus Lupin with a half-smile, "I can see that you still have an aptitude for trouble, Ron."

The Sixth Year Gryffindors let out a cheer, and even Lavender Brown took her eyes off the flamboyantly-dressed blonde wizard gracing the latest Witch's Weekly long enough to clap her hands. Dean Thomas set off a couple of Instant Suns, which exploded with an eardrum-shattering bang into thousands of miniscule orbs which soon formed a magnificent replica of the galaxy. The diminutive planets and constellations then floated above Lupin, and ended the spectacle by raining comets and meteorites on him.

"The Weasley Twins'?" asked Lupin cheerfully, as he basked in adulatory glory. Dean nodded proudly. "It was worth every sickle," he grinned. "I saved these for a special occasion. Welcome back, Professor!"

"Yeah," chorused the class—Ron's voice was still faint, though. His temples bore the bruises where the helmet had tightened its iron grip on his head.

"Before I send you off to Madam Pomfrey," said Lupin, and his voice took on a harder note, "There is something that you must know. Never speak the words of a spell freely—some spells are disguised as harmless captions to deceive the gullible."

Ron harrumphed indignantly, at being branded as the gullible sixteen-year-old that he had proven himself to be.

"It's a Concealed Curse, Professor," offered Hermione, although her face was still pale from the aftermath of the minotaur's attack. "It is used to trick others to call for their own death."

Ron spared Hermione a half-smile. "Precisely."

"This one was, fortunately, one of the lesser Concealed Curses that was designed purely for educational purposes, and that was why I could lift it. It summons a minotaur, which would not rest until it has killed its summoner. But some, like the Astraqah Poisendio Mort, otherwise known as Death by Venom, would do much more than reduce you to a pulp of redness on the floor."

"You ought to recognize a Concealed Curse immediately, and it is fairly easy to, as most of them end with 'Mort', which means 'Death'. A Concealed Curse will only function accordingly if its speaker knows what its corresponding symbol looks like. I survive, of course, due to the fact that I have never laid eyes on the Astraqah Poisendio Mort. Another crucial fact to bear in mind is that they all bring suicide……to those who speak them."

Suicide…to those who speak them, repeated Harry mentally. As he listened to Ron's complaints on their way to Madam Pomfrey, Harry's mind was alleviated from the letter he had apparently written to himself. For a while, he forgot that he was Snape's son.

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"Do you know where the Mirror of Erised is?" asked a voice that was redolent of poison, just as Lupin turned to see who had blasted the door of his office open. "Because I would like nothing better than to see the interfering werewolf who intruded my affairs, slain!"

"Greetings, Severus," replied Lupin smoothly, but he saw that his colleague's temper was not to be trifled with. "Careful with that plexiglass sphere over there—it contains some very valuable-"

"I don't give a damn about Nymph blood! Not when Potter's actions would bring bloodshed—and not just mine!" shouted Snape, his voice ringing with iron. "And he told me that you wrote him a letter," he continued more calmly, but his voice lost none of its deadliness.

"He told you?" asked Lupin delightedly. "I knew that he was bright! So he figured out-"

"That I am his father, yes," interrupted Snape brusquely. His black robes fell about him in creases; he didn't even bother to charm them with a Creasecounter Charm. "And who the hell are you to decide if he should know?"

Lupin faced all this with the calmness of one who had seen many painful nights of feral transformation. Snape had the appearance of one who needed no consent to murder him, and but Lupin felt no tremor. Lily Evans, after all, would never take up with a ruthless murderer.

"Remus, you know how James is so excited about my baby….how everyone are wondering if it would take after him or me?" asked the red-headed woman anxiously. Her eyes avoided Lupin's, and even if he managed to catch her eye, she dropped her gaze almost immediately.

"I'm sure it'll look like you," he reassured her with a smile. It seemed odd that she should come to him without her husband—normally, it was James who had to drag her to meet his friends. "Fate would never be so cruel, to give the baby his looks."

Lily laughed uneasily. "I hope he looks like the both of us," she said suddenly. Again, there seemed to be something wrong with her words.

"Of course," said Lupin slowly. "Why wouldn't it look like the both of you?"

She swallowed nervously. "This isn't a social call," she confessed. "I…We, James and I, need your aid."

"You would never tell him," answered Lupin simply. "Not even if Voldemort were to kill him tomorrow. You'd rather if he died as an ignorant orphan."

"You have no idea how much trouble that you've unleashed. And I went through equally much to put it right."

"Put what right?"

"The baby is not his," concluded Lupin, stunned. "Of all things-"

"I know." Her voice was void of emotion, and Lupin was surprised that no traces of remorse tinged her expression. "And so does James."

Lupin wanted to grab her by the shoulders and demand that she break out into her usual cheeky smile and say, "April's Fool! Got you, as usual!" but he did not. For the first time, he looked at her with a gaze slightly more scrutinizing that she was comfortable with. She couldn't conceal the ignominy combusting in the depths of her eyes from the werewolf. He knew.

"Of all people," he whispered softly, and shut his eyelids in escalating disbelief. "It had got to be him."

Snape had closed the gap between him and Lupin with two great strides and now, he stood before the haggard-looking man with an air of virulent fury and….more anger. But Lupin noted that Snape's true hatred wasn't for Harry or him, but Snape himself. He could sense self-abhorrence gnawing mercilessly at his colleague's flesh and bone—it showed in his face.

Something was wrong. Snape lifted an arm to brush a lock of hair that had fallen into his eyes, and to Lupin's shock, it was bloodied; the wound was still raw and oozing. His arm looked as though a large patch of skin was scraped roughly, exposing the flesh beneath. He shuddered with disgust or morbid fascination. The worst thing about it was that the wound was self-inflicted. It had to be. That was why Snape wasn't at the hospital wing.

Snape saw him staring at his arm, and smiled bitterly. "The Dark Mark used to reside there," he spat. "Now it's at the bottom of my fireplace, along with the skin that I ripped off."

Lupin took it all calmly. But inside, he knew that Snape had succumbed to folly. Nobody could get rid of the Dark Mark simply by ripping off their skin, he knew. It was a membership of a lifetime.

"At least I don't have to see it every single day," continued Snape with the same mocking tone. "I feel it, that is indisputable, but the visual reminder is gone."

"Severus," said Lupin in a tone that Hagrid usually adopted with beasts that would sink its talons into your throat at the slightest scent of an opportunity. "What did you 'put right'?

Please review! I'm looking for a beta for this story. If you're willing to help me, please tell me in your review….I'd be eternally grateful.