A/N: Thanks again for all the reviews, they're very encouraging!
I am not happy with this chapter, and so I've decided to post chapter 4, which I personally think it much better, alongside it immediately. Unfortunately, this now means I have nothing prewritten left to post...the next update might be a while in coming...
This is still not mine, sadly.
Snape did something that the Auror had never known a condemned prisoner to do before.
He laughed.
The sound reverberated around the room, it contained neither joy nor mirth, and yet it continued for an impossibly long time, ending in a raw, drysob as Snape placed his head in his hands and held it there for a long time. She had almost given up hope of him speaking another word by the time he lifted his eyes to the darkness beneath her hood again, and his face was as composed as any newly condemned man she had seen in her service to the aurors.
"Is that my only crime?" He bit out jerkily.
"It is the only one which brings with it this punishment." The Auror replied. "There are others, of which you are well aware."
"Does seven years in this place not…" he shuddered, "provide adequate recompense for those?"
"The ministry is no longer interested in those," the Auror was dismissive. "You are to be punished for this one crime only, irrespective of the others."
Snape stared at her, hard.
"Do you think that execution is the correct punishment to fit my crime?" He asked.
The Auror hesitated.
"It is not my place to pass judgement on you, the Wizengamot decided - "
" - Yes, yes, but what do you think?"
"Why?"
"Because you are here and they are not."
The Auror understood that to speak her opinion to the murderer Snape was dangerous. She understood it and did it anyway.
"I think that anyone who would kill an unarmed man who had absolute trust in them without provocation and in cold blood should be punished to the fullest extent of the law." She shrugged. "If death is the fullest extent of the law then..." She hesitated, but he missed it.
Snape's eyes narrowed, pinching his thin face further. He leaned forwards in his seat and for the first time the Auror was grateful for the table separating them.
"Who are you?" He hissed.
"It doesn't matter who I am." She replied calmly.
"I beg to differ. For the bearer of such bad news to have such an…ah…opinionated view about capital punishment is not normal. Who are you?" He repeated.
The Auror rose to her feet, pushing the chair away as she did so. Clearly, seven years of incarceration had not dulled the man's brain in the slightest.
"You asked for my opinion and I gave it to you. What difference does who I am make?" Her eyes darted to the closed door as she played for time by answering a question with a question.
"Have you been sent to kill me? Now?" Snape had not moved from his seat, but was watching her closely.
"No!" The revulsion in her voice was clear. "No."
"Do you assume that because I would welcome my own death that I am also guilty of my crime?"
The Auror moved around the room to stand in front of him.
"You have never made any secret of your guilt, nor have you shown any remorse."
"Show me your face and I will tell you what really happened."
The offer was a startling one.
"No. I know what really happened." The Auror stood firm.
"Nobody else living knows what really happened, girl!" In some agitation, Snape pushed filthy strands of dark hair away from his face, inadvertently revealing a network of silvery scars that marked his inner arm from wrist to elbow as the sleeve of his robe was pushed back. The Auror stared at him.
"Are you saying that you didn't do it?" Her voice rose in disbelief.
"There's never been any doubt that I did it. What you should be asking yourself is why." Snape's eyes glinted with a strange fanatiscism that the Auror could not fathom.
"Because you're a Death Eater double agent…because your Dark Lord told you to…what other reasons are there?"
"Wrong. Wrong on both counts." The ghost of a smirk crossed his face, and was gone.
"Are you doing this to avoid death?"
"Not in the way that you think."
"Then explain."
"Tell me who you are."
The Auror stared at him from the concealment of her hood. She had no way of knowing if he was telling the truth, and she knew that the rantings of a man who had been driven more than a little mad by his imprisonment could be not trusted at all, but that fact remained that she wanted to know what it was he was offering to tell her. The chances were that it was nothing more than an elaborately woven lie constructed in an effort to retain his sanity during seven years of near complete isolation, but she had been hampered by curiosity all her life, should she let this opportunity pass?
No?
No.
Reseating herself at the table, she took a moment to compose herself, and then before her nerve failed her completely she lifted her hands to the edge of her hood and pulled it back from her face completely whilst averting her eyes to the rough wood of the table. In the firelight she sat before him for a long time, totally unmasked, before finally lifting her eyes to see the look of astonishment that flitted across his face become replaced by one of disgust.
"Granger!" He hissed. "Hermione Granger!"
TBC...
A/N 2: Hands up who didn't see that coming!
I suspect it was fairly obvious who the Auror was back in chapter one, my intention was only for Snape to be unaware of her identity until the end of this chapter...it doesn't work brilliantly, but it was the best I could manage!