CH 5 Hiding

He did it. He had walked through the great oak doors of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry for the last time and managed not to look back in longing. He was leaving his home, a castle that had housed him for his seven years of Wizarding Studies and fifteen years as the Potions master. Twenty-two years waking up under the stone infrastructure that arched up into the dungeon ceiling that supported the rest of the school. No more would he take meals in the Great Hall or have to teach ungrateful brats.

As Severus Snape walked the short distance to Hogsmeade under his hooded cloak he felt a pang of regret that it was all over. He had hated teaching. He had hated having to get up every single morning to meet a bunch of kids who had no inclination to learn anything about potions. He gave up along time ago trying to get the children to pay attention and take in all he had to offer but after a while it didn't seem worth it. Why should he spend so much time and energy teaching them when they wouldn't give him the time of day? But even so, he yearned to be back in the classroom with his life the way it was.

The run in with Minerva had lasted a few minutes, with him on the floor at her mercy. He just sat quietly, letting her harsh words sink in to his memory. Very uncharacteristic of him, he knew—but what the hell, everything had changed. His stalwart existence could only endure for so long. He had reached the knot in his string.

It was a pity his last encounter with the woman was one of such malcontent. She had spewed endlessly on about what he had done to Hermione. He had a retort for every accusation she made, but kept quiet. Yes, yes, he had raped her. She was alive, yes, but what did that matter since it was him who had violated her. "Raping pedophile," and "child molester," was phrases thrown in, at certain intervals for good measure, but nothing hurt worse than her reminding him of Hermione, and the fact that he had drenched Hermione's soul with fear and dread for the world. Her vivaciousness was a distant memory anymore: a shell of what could have been. He only hoped his envelope held the key to unlock her soul.

Only when the Transfiguration professor's voice became raw and hoarse, did she start relent in her tirade. She stood above him, silent and shaking.

"Have you nothing to say for yourself? After what you've done! After all she's been through!

"All I have needed to say has already been said...to Hermione. I owe no one else an explanation." He rose up from the floor to face the older woman.

"How could you! We trusted you! I trusted you!"

"Have you no sense, woman! Do you honestly think she is the only innocent I have raped!" He towered over her, standing just inches away from her, his inscrutable black gaze staring her down.

"Are you so disillusioned to believe I had never before willingly tasted the essence of human flesh!"

"You're despicable…" She took a step back from him in horror.

She had no idea just how despicable he was, he thought.

"Yes. Yes I am. I am despicable."

"You abandoned your duties, disobeying orders…"

He rounded on her at her at her accusation, "My orders? What do you even know about my orders, my duties regarding my position in Voldemort's inner circle? My orders have been and always were to not interfere with individual raids. I was ordered to sit in the shadows and watch all the helpless victims be mutilated and raped. I was to not, for any circumstance, endanger my mission. Not once…since the start of this cursed war two years ago have I ever went out of my way to save incidental victims, not one…until now. Albus would have rather me remain in my lord's good graces rather than martyr myself for a muggle or mudblood. Even if said mudblood were Hermione Granger…now…What say you now to my orders?"

She stared in disbelief at him, "Albus would never…"

"Would never what? Never allow a precious student come to harm? You honestly think he would jeopardize the direction of this war for a silly little girl?"

"Am I supposed to believe you would? Is that why you went to the Grangers'? What were you doing there if she didn't matter to you?"

"Maybe she did…I am not as heartless as you think."

Let them believe what they want. He was satisfied if Minerva would think him noble enough to care for another human being.

"You don't really expect me to believe that, do you?"

"I expect you will believe whatever truth that's comfortable for you."

She couldn't stand him. He exuded power and corruption, his aura pulsing with unidentifiable emotion and feeling, and it terrified her.

She shook her head at him,"You are not worthy of forgiveness, Severus Snape," she stated plainly.

He smiled at her. A true unadulterated grin, mocking…scornful…"I have never asked for forgiveness. Not from anyone." He locked his black eyes deep into her own. "Never," he repeated.

His life ended when he stepped off Hogwarts' grounds; he felt the zing of the magic leave his body. The protection of the structure that permeated the bodies of its occupants just faded from his form like liquid, leaving him empty. The school knew his fate; it knew that he was not to return. This was the end, and Hogwarts understood he no longer required its power.

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Hermione sat stunned clutching the parchment in her fingers with the keys still occupying the space in her lap where they had fallen. Keys? He gave her keys? It made no sense. She knew she ought to read the letter but for some reason she was frightened. What did he possibly have to say? Why should she even care? She grabbed up the keys and placed them on her the table next to her bed, and laid back onto her pillows, getting comfortable. Her curiosity increased was getting the better of her.

She unfolded the sheet of parchment and skimmed her eyes over the page. Her eyes didn't get far down the sheet when she turned away from the black ink scrawled across the page. It just couldn't be…Snape wanted her to…He had…Bastard! How could he! She threw the paper away from her once she finished reading the letter entirely down the penmanship of his name.

Hermione slowly sat up, wincing against the pain that laced around her abdomen and surged between her legs faltering her movement. She gritted her teeth determined to make it across the hospital wing to the bathroom…on her own. She let her legs dangle off the side of the bed trying to catch her breath. Every little twist and turn her body made caused the cramp-like pain to shoot through her body paralyzing her. It was ten times worse than menstrual cramps. The burning sensation camped inside her made it uncomfortable for her to sit up but she needed to go to the bathroom.

The stone of the floor was cold against her bare feet and as soon as she stood up straight for the first time in a week, she immediately it her knees as she crumbled to the floor at the onslaught of agony that shot through her insides.

"You bastard! You fucking bastard!" She screamed wishing he was there to see what he had done to her, to witness his masterful work. Her eyes burned as tears flowed down her face and she resolved that she would have to crawl to get to her destination. It was a long, slow process inching her way on the rough, stone floor to the loo. Her knees were scraped up and the ache inside her was a throbbing pulse unrelenting in its torment by the time she actually made it to the door of the bathroom. The porclelain god smiled down at her as she looked upon the toilet. She managed to get up onto the seat alright and just sat there. She never wanted to move again.

"I hope you rot in hell, Severus Snape," she said as she relieved herself.

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Snape's journey to the neighboring town of Hogsmeade didn't take long and as he passed the familiar shops and taverns he did not stop his trek until he had come to the gate to the shrieking shack. He planned on staying there until he could figure out where to go next. He was being truthful when he told the Headmaster he had no idea where he would go. He had not mapped out a plan; his only concern had been to leave the castle as soon as possible and put much distance between him and the girl, no, young woman.

Hermione Granger, he wanted her out of his head. He wanted her screams to stop reverberating through his memory. He begged for the feel of her warm body beneath to disappear and leave him alone. Neither seemed to want to quit his mind. All he could think about was her. Why did she affect him so? He hated himself for his weakness, for letting Lucius get to him, baiting him knowing for a fact that Snape would not back down from a challenge, he would not forsake his teachings.

It had been a game he was trapped into during his youth by Lucius Malfoy. His first taste of blood had been a voluptuous young muggle woman provided by his instructor. He was thirteen years old and was given a dagger.

"Make her bleed, Severus," Malfoy had purred into his ear from behind him and he did.

It was messy business and the first slice of sinew and flesh sent a thrill thrumming through his body. It left him breathless, confused and scared. He then watched as the twenty-three year old man took the woman roughly. Her screams pierced into his heart and he cried along with her. He had knelt into a ball upon the floor until she was dead beneath the man's body.

"That, Severus, is how you treat a muggle."

Lucius had not been pleased by Severus's display and had yanked him up from his perch on the floor, pulled his pants down, and invaded his body, still covered in the woman's own blood. Severus learned not to cry after that. He learned that if he enjoyed the lessons he would be rewarded. He learned to like what he was ordered to do and soon was ensnared by the intoxication of warm blood coating his hands. It became his life line.

Prideful and naïve, he followed Malfoy blindly in search of sport. As he grew older the stakes were raised, their success measured in the production of carnage created their own bare hands. Men, women, it mattered not to them. He became accustomed to this way of life. By the time they had joined Voldemort, he had made name for himself for he had become as ruthless as Malfoy, almost as mad as the Dark Lord himself.

They had been original and innovative in their work, carving art work out of the flesh of the people who fell prey to their depravities. Lucius took great pleasure in directly tearing them apart, ripping the life out of the victim from the inside out. Snape, on the other hand, had been more after the mind, to force the unwilling participant to obey his every whim. He loved being able to pleasure them, to make them hate themselves at their uncontrolled response their bodies would have at his hand. Breaking their spirits was his aphrodisiac. He specialized in mental mind fucks and he was the only Death Eater able to make a straight man hard as a rock and moan for more. Once they would reach their peak he would take it away, beginning the physicalities he would then administer. It had been exhilarating and heady with the power he held over people and he hated himself for it. All it took was mindful understanding of the human body and basic psychology to be able to perform as he did.

He had reveled in his gift but soon after his initiation into the Death Eaters, he awoken to a day of servitude, bowing and scraping on the ground at Tom Riddle's feet. His life, once held in high esteem had no importance and reverence. He realized he was nothing more than a pawn in Voldemort's schemes. Nothing more than Malfoy's toy. He was being used for one man's amusement and entertainment and he did not like playing the pet to a lord with aspirations for world dominance and purgatory of all human kind. Snape had never given a rat's ass about the purity of blood. He could care less that muggles were born with the same magical ability as him. Life was life and he would take it, wizard, half-blood, squib, or muggle. He was not about to be part of a movement attempting mass genocide on a set of peoples. It was a futile and pointless endeavor in his opinion. The study of history, wizard and muggle, always showed the utter failure of such missions.

Unfortunately, his thirst for blood outweighed his concerns at being a Death Eater. He would go on raids, perform his duty, and quench his lust. As long as he got the chance to 'play' he allowed himself to be used. It was a trade of sorts. He traded his soul with the devil to be able to practice sadistic dances with bodies, ripe and full of life, his own existence revitalized at the sight of their life force draining into his hands. It had become apart of his life, an intricate addition to his identity. To rid himself of such vices would mean to destroy his very livelihood. It was all he knew, all he had come to depend on.

Snape often wondered why it was Albus Dumbledore's door he had stumbled upon late one night, drenched in blood not his own, and wreaking of death and earth. In the end, the man turned out to be just like Lord Voldemort with different intentions. Each had a vision for the wizarding world and would use any means necessary to accomplish their goals. He had been turned into a game piece on Dumbledore's side yet still played for Voldemort. He worked to bring him down but even after turning himself over to Albus's mercy he never let on that he still enjoyed the destruction and bloodshed he was still allowed to partake in. Every life he took, every body he raped was justified, accepted; seen as imperative to keep the Dark Lord from knowing of his defection; for the information he was able to collect was worth more to the older wizard than a few measly, insignificant lives. Snape never questioned Albus Dumbledore's motives, keeping his thoughts to himself lest his privileges, as he began to see them as, were taken away from him.

After the fall of Voldemort, his inclinations had come to a halt all together. It wasn't like he could practice his hobbies from within a school without detection anyway. Hogwarts soon stood as his sanctuary. It allotted him his freedom, as much freedom as a Death Eater could be warranted under the circumstances. His secret involvement with the Order paid off in the end keeping him out of Azkaban Prison. The leash and collar he was subjected to as a professor of Hogwarts was a far better alternative than a pathetic existence among the wraiths that swept the halls of Azkaban, or so he had thought.

The first few years had been the hardest. It was like going through withdrawal after much dependence on a drug. He was left to his own devices at night and that was when the itch for blood and the smell of fear would overcome him and he would be reduced to a pitiful creature yearning for the return of the Dark Lord just so he could feel real again.

He began to use himself as a source to vent his irrationality on. He introduced himself to masochism with morbid fascination. Never before had he turned his antics on to himself. Playing with his own life was exhilarating, pushing his tolerance to the brink, just to see how much he could bleed before he would succumb to darkness. Often times he wished he would never wake up from the darkness. He wanted it to take him away. His life was meaningless. Before, he had a purpose. He had direction and goals, and once he was appreciated.

He would stand in front of a full length mirror in his bathroom as he slid a knife across his torso, splitting the skin in designs. He would watch as his own blood would pour from the open wounds, see it trail along mixing with the hair at the base at his cock and drip from the tip of his erection. It would pool at his feet, liberally coating the stone around him. Soon his seed would follow and he would eventually sleep soundly to wake to another day.

After awhile he was able to find acceptable substitutes even for himself. There were plenty of whores lining the streets of Knockturn Alley just waiting for a wanton customer and they would satisfy his preferences. Needy whores made for wonderful playthings. They were willing to do almost anything for a pretty galleon. They would let him play his sick games and in the end he had done society a service. No one missed the dregs of society. It was easy enough to get rid of the bodies leaving no trace of blood on the beds or walls. He had taken to visiting the brothel's once a month, the longest time he could manage without doing something drastic to one of the cretins he taught.

Soon, he even found that his talents could be used within the classroom. With ridicule and verbal abuse he learned he could mess with the student's minds. He could get under their skin without actually touching them, forcing them to lose control and because he had authority they could not do anything about it. He had a sense of power even over them and it was spectacular.

Then Lucius had started to visit him. At first Snape had been hesitant to allow the man back into his life, afraid to share his pleasures with the man. He was the reason he felt dead inside. He was the one who had taken away any semblance of normalcy by forcing him to perform deeds at his behest as a boy. He soon found he had to comply to the man's wishes once again. The man was just as thirsty for him as he had been for blood. He allowed himself to be used by him. Lucius would come on occasion to his rooms, would strip with his prick already glistening from need, and take him roughly; relentless in his ministrations. Snape begged for it. Pleaded for it and was rewarded with using Lucius in turn. He would fuck Lucius, dragging his dagger, the very one he had used the first time at the impressionable age of thirteen, across his back and lapping at the liquid he drew forth. In those few years he introduced Lucius Malfoy to the monster he had created.

By the time of Voldemort's second return he had completely given up on his vices. No longer did he go in search of whores or call upon Malfoy for a ritualistic fuck. His entire life had been built on the pleasures of the flesh, his power and control over others, and it hurt to turn his back on the comfort it afforded him yet he did it anyway. He ached to give himself over in abandon and revert back to his sinful ways. Fighting the temptation became a diversion. Whenever he caught sight of blood or watched a student plummet to the pitch below he fought the smile that wanted to grace his lips at hearing the bones crunch as they hit the earth. Bile would turn in his stomach causing him to be sick, a negative reinforcement to stopper the triumph inside him. As Lucius had conditioned him to enjoy butchery, he conditioned himself to hate it, and it had worked for awhile.

Snape learned along time ago that there was no such thing as dark and light, good and evil, for each element lived inherently in every person. It was their actions alone that marked them for who they were. He regretted every single drop of blood he had shed, every body he had mangled. He had been molded into a weapon and had served his purpose. Then, after years of finally purging his waking thoughts of carnage he was forced to revert to the role of Death Eater turned spy to appease both parties.

Snape's redemption lied in the hands of his last victim. It was up to her whether he was damned for all eternity. It would be through her he would find his salvation. Nothing he had ever done before had affected like her rape had. It shook him to the core, terrifying him. It made no sense to him. He had done worse and loved what he did. Yet the last couple of years had taken their toll. He no longer cared to taste his handy work. He still killed yet his art had died out, his passion for the subtle art of sadism was buried itself along with his dignity. He had been reduced to a pathetic shell. He didn't know why but he felt drawn to her. His arms were lined with memories of his victims. For every single one he had killed, a knife had left its permanent mark. Both arms, from his shoulder down to the end of his wrist were littered with horizontal line drawn into his skin. He prayed for the souls of his victims as he would cut into himself. He was a sick, sadistic son of a bitch yet still felt remorse after every kill.

He would be judged before his life was ended. He would be saved before he met his end by the truth of the monster he knew he truly was. He did not want to be remembered as a martyr or victim. He was as much apart of the hatred of the world as the curses he threw. He wanted the world to know he had been a sick, perverted demon who walked the earth for one purpose and one purpose alone and that was to sate his lust. Lust for blood, lust for pain, lust for sex. No matter what he did or what he tried to redeem himself, nothing was ever enough. It was in his very nature to inflict pain on others and relish in it. He raped Hermione Granger because he truly was a monster and even though he was truly sorry and regretted ever letting his darkness touch her he would not hide from the truth. He could never stop. The wickedness within him would always prevail. His life was forfeit and he accepted it. He welcomed the chance to finally feel what his victims had experienced at his hands. One last pleasure sated as his life ebbed into oblivion.

Snape broke into the shack easily enough leaving footprints where his steps upset the years' long collection of dust. He made his way to the room on the top floor where he knew a makeshift bed was located. He had time enough to decide what to do. If he was going to go down he was going to go down on his own terms. As the moon rose high into the clear night sky it illuminated the object he held against his wrist. One last name to pay homage to, one last person to remember.

So…what do you think? Review please…Feedback tastes good…:D

Oh, you will find out what is in the letter and the importance of the keys within the next chapter…

Keep your knickers on and I will endeavor to get it posted A.S.A.P…