Rated – M (or a UK 15) for adult themes and death

Warnings – HP/SS Slash (very obvious, but not explicit), Execution-style events described explicitly, Sort-Of Character Death

A/N – You probably haven't heard from me in a while - insert deity/ non-deity here knows when you will again, but this story happened when stories haven't to me in a very long while. Also, this was just now finished, so it's been checked a few times by me for spelling/grammar errors a few times, but I can't be sure.

For everyone who's ever reviewed (and that's meant in the best possible way) and my entire f-list at livejournal, who I sadly haven't had much chance to keep up with lately.

'The Chair' by MiaSnape

Severus Snape sat in the chair, his head bowed slightly, eyes shut lightly, breathing in and out through his nose.

The chair was uncomfortable; made of cheap, hard wood, it hadn't been sanded enough – his robes kept catching on it when he shifted his weight, which was often because of the aforementioned uncomfortable nature of the piece of furniture. Every so often he felt a splinter stick into his flesh like a needle.

His hands were strapped down to the thick arms of the chair, his calves to the front two legs of the chair. Another piece of leather ran around his abdomen, close to his pelvis, and a fourth around his chest and upper arms. No buckles needed for these straps – they sealed shut magically. It wasn't comfortable, sitting in that chair, but he had been worse places – more uncomfortable places, that was.

He opened his eyes, looked through the curtain of his greasy hair at the faces of witches and wizards he barely knew, and a few he knew too well. They were, as usual, dressed for too gaudily for his tastes. Deep blues and reds and pinks and purples. Blocks of metallic shades and pastels assaulted his eyes. He shut them again.

His shoulders hurt.

There was a click of a door and a soft breeze blew in before it clicked again. Muffled cries and yells could now be heard – probably, he surmised, the garish people behind the glass in the magic-dampened room. He couldn't think of what had entered his room that could possibly shock them so much – not considering what they had come here for; the feast for all the senses he was scheduled to provide them with.

A swish of fabric – robes – beside him signalled a presence to his left, and a gentle hand placed on his knee confirmed it. He opened his eyes again, this time to the balm of black and green: black robes; black hair; green eyes framed by black lashes and eye-glasses. Harry.

"Potter." His voice croaked embarrassingly. Last night had been one of the more uncomfortable nights he'd spent in his life. Dementors might not have been all that discerning between prisoners – one soul is as miserable as the next and all that – but human guards were, and seemed only to happy to show their hatred for those they felt had wronged them more with their fists and feet and wands.

"Severus." Harry sounded upset. He looked eerily calm, down on one knee, robes puddled around him. "I didn't know they would do this to you. I would have come sooner."

Odd for something relating to the past to sound like a promise, Severus thought. Odd, but it fit. For them, it fit.

"Not much you can do now, Potter. Not much you could have done before."

Harry's forehead furrowed and his eyes shut as he looked away, seemingly pained by his words.

"It's okay."

Harry looked up at him again. "It's okay?" He sounded disbelieving. "It's okay for them to do this to you?"

Severus took a deep breath that hurt his chest. "I did commit the crimes they charged me with."

Harry shook his head. "That's not the point."

Severus laughed. "That is the point. That's always been the point."

Harry took in a shaky breath. "It didn't happen the way they said it did – there were reasons behind what you've done – what you've had to do. You had to do it."

He sounded desperate. He believed every word he was saying, Severus thought with some degree of shock.

"There are always reasons, Potter. It's doesn't change matters, and it doesn't fix anything - not for me, and not for them." He nodded towards the glass without looking.

"It changed things for me," said Harry quietly. Then, louder, "It changed them for me, Severus. And they're wrong. They all are. This needs to stop – you've paid your price and you've received your justice."

Severus looked into Harry's eyes. "For the crimes I've committed – for the things I've done and the people I've done them to – there is no other way for me to pay my price."

Harry was blinking back tears. His face was crumpling. "What about me?"

Severus took another deep breath – as deep as the strap and his bruised ribs would allow. "What do you mean?"

A stray tear had made its way out of Harry's left eye, and as it made it's slow journey down Harry's cheek Snape felt more helpless than he had during the whole process that had placed him here.

"What did I do that means I have to pay this price too?"

Severus was shocked, and Harry's reaction showed some tempered humour. "I thought you knew by now," was all he said.

Severus shook his head.

"I knew," Harry told him, very seriously.

"I'm sorry," Severus said, and Harry involuntarily let a sob escape.

"It's not supposed to happen like this," Harry said. "It's not."

"Not for you, no," Severus said, though his throat hurt.

"I could stop it." Harry sounded firm and assured through his tears. "I stopped Voldemort – we did, together. I can stop this."

Severus considered it for a minute – who wouldn't? – but then shook his head. "It needs to happen, Harry."

Harry looked like he'd just taken a blow to the stomach.

"He would have stopped it," Harry told him, and voice was so similar to that of the boy he had first met that Severus lost a breath.

"Dumbledore," Severus said, "would have done what you are about to do. And the fact that he's not here to do that is a stronger argument for it than everything else together."

"Severus, I-" Pausing suddenly, Harry searched Severus's face, his eyes, for something. Emotions passed over him as Severus watched. "I'll be here – right here, right in this room. When it happens."

Severus nodded. "If you really want to I won't try to prevent you. But be careful."

Harry brought a hand to his forehead to shield his tears.

"Harry," Severus said, and after a moment Harry moved his hand again.

"Harry, there was a time when, despite everything, I was happy." And he knew that Harry knew exactly when he meant, because he'd been there too.

"Please," Harry tried pleading one last time, moving his hand from Severus's knee to his fingers.

Severus shifted in his restraints and felt more splinters shards of wood stick into him. "I'm sorry," was all he could think to say, and Harry nodded once in dismal acceptance.

The door banged open, and a wall of coldness hit them, and Severus felt Harry's fingers move from his as Harry recoiled instinctively from one of the three figures that had entered the room. A pallor of darkness and despair struck the small room.

"Move away, Potter," he said before one of the two men with their wands drawn could say it instead.

"No."

"Move, Harry – it's too dangerous."

He heard Harry sob again before, at last, the rustle of his robes as he stood and his footsteps as he walked hesitantly to the right of the room.

"Severus Snape," said a cold, hard voice, "you have been found guilty of the crimes of conspiring with He Who Must Not Be Named, performing acts of gross misdeeds under His instruction, and performing each of the three Unforgivable curses multiple times – all of your own free will – and you have been sentenced by the Wizengamot in accordance with your peers to have your soul removed by the Dementor's Kiss."

Severus closed his eyes again, breathing shakily through his nose, fingers twitching nervously on the chair's arms, shivering.

He heard Harry shouting – "This is wrong!" – and the muffled calls of the people in the other room, and then the coldness took over, and he couldn't hear anything.

He felt bony, slimy fingers touch his face, freezing him as they pried open his mouth. He smelled death, rotting and putrid.

Everything he had done wrong in his life flooded through him, and everything that had been done wrong to him, and he knew – he knew – he was screaming.

Something disgusting sealed over his mouth – he no longer had the presence of mind to figure out what it was – and he choked. His body seized, no longer under his control, and from deeper inside than he knew had existed his soul rushed upwards and was expelled into nothingness.

Not even Harry's cries of anguish could reach him now. The jeers of some, the silences of others meant nothing.

He felt nothing.

He was done.