Title: Artificium Magum
Author: Calliopeia17
Chapter 10: Interlude - Snape's POV
See warnings and disclaimer in previous chapters. Please read and review!
A/N: The reason I'm posting this little snippet is hopefully to tide you all off for the next two weeks or so, while I finish an overload of schoolwork. As soon as the workload lightens up a little, I'll have the next real chapter up. Thanks so much for your patience!
A/N Number 2: This is a repost of this interlude, thanks to a wonderful review from anonymous SB, who pointed out to me that it featured a character who, inconveniently enough, was already dead. Um...oops. I'm terribly sorry about this, and I consider it a very sharp and pointed lesson in why one should never post a chapter without beta reading. (Though in my defense, I would like to mention that even JKR makes such mistakes, e.g. the wand order in GoF, and Mark Evans.) So, to clarify, Lucius Malfoy is dead. He was not at a meeting of the Death Eaters, and Severus was not hallucinating. My humblest and most sincere apologies for any confusion, and my deepest and most heartfelt thanks to SB.
"Finite Incantatum."
Macnair's piercing screams cut off suddenly. The circle around the Dark Lord was silent. They were always silent now; years ago, during the first war, they had laughed and cheered when their fellow Death Eaters were tortured for incompetence. These days, though, every call to the Dark Lord ended in beatings or hexes or the Cruciatus Curse. Every one of them was at risk; every one of them had writhed at the tip of Voldemort's wand.
Snape had rather a lot of sympathy for the others now.
"Severus," the Dark Lord hissed. "What news of Hogwarts have you?"
"My Lord, Potter, the clumsy fool, has had several accidents, though I suppose that it would be too much to hope that he would finish himself off," Severus replied. He knew full well that the "accidents" were hardly that, and he didn't doubt that someone in his own House was behind them, but if the attacks were Voldemort's will, well, Severus wasn't supposed to know about them. Better to keep quiet.
"Yes, yes," the Dark Lord muttered impatiently. "But what is that old fool Dumbledore planning? That, Severus, is why I am benevolent enough to allow you to remain at Hogwarts. My patience is growing thin."
"Dumbledore sits in his office day after day and attempts to analyze your plans, my Lord. If he makes plans of his own, he has not communicated them to me—"
"Enough, Severus," Voldemort snarled. "It is clear to me that you are just as useless as the rest of these imbeciles. All I ask is for information, and you cannot manage even that."
Severus didn't bother to beg for mercy. He wouldn't receive it, and besides, those idiots who pleaded with the Dark Lord only annoyed him further. He knelt before the man he had once served, and waited for the curse to hit.
An instant later, as the pain ripped through his wiry frame, he fought to pull his mind away from the agony. A memory of the Granger girl's face in the Infirmary that morning floated to the top of his mind; he clung to it, focused on it, tried to see her through the red haze building behind his eyes. She was only wearing a thin nightgown; she'd been so embarrassed that he could see the rising and falling of her breasts as she breathed, that he had seen her without makeup, hair mussed, and still lovely. He saw her leaping to protect Potter, saw the way the racing of her mind was visible on her face as she brewed potions.
He saw her eyes; even as the rest of the world blurred around him into darkness, he could see her eyes, bright and clear and sharp and beautiful.
He awoke to a sharp kick in the side. "Get up, Severus." Augustus Nott's disdainful sneer.
Severus staggered to his feet, nodded at Nott, and Disapparated, landing, thank Merlin, exactly where he had intended, just outside the Hogwarts gates.
His mind flashed back to the memory he had clung to through the pain of Cruciatus. Granger's face? Why in Merlin's name would he focus on an image of the insufferable child? It was just a reaction, he told himself, a reaction to the pain, in which his mind clung to the first thing he thought of. A reflex. Nothing more.
Severus stumbled back to the dungeons, collapsed onto his bed, muscles still twitching slightly with the aftereffects of the Curse. With any luck, the spasms would fade by morning.
Seeing Granger's face in the Circle had been a reflex, he thought fuzzily, closing his eyes and picturing it once again. Yes, just a reflex. Her eyes looked gently down at him as he fell almost instantly asleep.