Disclaimer: Don't own it, and I can't think of anything witty to go here.
A/N: Right. I think this is kind of a lame chapter, because I wrote most of it in the last fifteen minutes, but oh well. It's done, and yeah.
I hate allergies. If there is one thing that will be in hell, it is them. /scowls and sneezes at you/
Also, credit for the name of Them goes to Speed Reader, whoever that may be. Thank you very much. It's a neat name, so I took it. Muahaha. But you get this special shout-out, so good for you.
Severus was spending the evening as he usually did: pacing. It was not the normal sort of pacing either. Of course, nothing about Severus was normal. But that's beside the point.
While most people pace in a room, going wall to wall, Severus power-paced. He stalked from one side of his castle to the other, menacing the wall tapestries and carpets with his talon-like claws. This did not, surprisingly, do wonders to the castle's décor.
But this was no normal castle.
Draco, though containing magic, did not have any real control over the magic. He gave it a vague idea of what he wanted it to do, and sometimes it listened, and sometimes it decided it didn't want to do that and changed.
This was what had happened when Draco turned Severus into a Beast.
That part had worked all right. Draco had meant for Severus to turn into something ugly—well, uglier than he had been—and Severus had become uglier. But..well, Draco hadn't really meant for him to become a Beast. After all, Beasts were tall—though Severus had been quite tall when a man, too—muscular—this was an improvement over his man-body—and hairy. And Draco hadn't really wanted Severus to become a Beast. Draco had been hoping that Severus would stay human. This was because, in the odd way that nature works, Draco fancied Severus. Or at least he had, when Severus was still a man. But back to Severus. It was the last—the hair—which bothered Severus the most.
Though not, perhaps, as much as it could have. Because, as a man, Severus had had greasy, lank hair, but as a Beast…Somewhere the magic had twisted a bit, and Severus' Beast coat was full and rich, with lots of purple and blue highlights within its black depths.
Still, no one liked a Beast, much less a hairy Beast. Even if it was the most beautiful hair in the seven kingdoms.
And as for the castle…
Some of Draco's magic had decided that it didn't want to become part of a Beast, thank you very much, and so it ran away from the rest of the magic and set itself up in the castle. This had resulted in a very…different kind of castle.
It now lived, in all the ways a pile of stone and mortar can live. Which, granted, are not a lot.
It did not, for instance, skip about the forest asking trees for a piece of salt-water taffy. However, it now sensed things, and informed Severus of them, via the portraits.
That was another thing which had warped through the magic.
Things which had not formerly been portraits now were.
Things like Dumbledore and McGonagall.
Somehow they had been put into portraits, though they could still think and talk and, annoyingly, follow Severus around the castle through the other paintings.
After the first time they had interrupted him while he was in the bath, Severus had ripped all the paintings off of the walls of his bedroom and bathroom, so they couldn't follow him everywhere, but it was near enough to set Severus' teeth on edge.
And everything seemed to be self-repairing, too. His claws never did any permanent damage to the tapestries; within the next ten minutes, everything would be as clean and unripped-to-shreds as it had been. This annoyed Severus. He liked things to stay destroyed.
But I digress.
Severus was pacing about the castle, ripping things to shreds, and then coming back and scowling at them as they repaired themselves, when a portrait down the hall started screeching at him.
Severus did not like to be screeched at. Besides being a prince, which will kick out any tolerance of screeched-at-ness one might posses, Severus was just the kind of person that liked to do the screeching.
So he took his sweet time getting to the portrait.
He could walk quite slowly when he wanted to.
By the time he reached the portrait—one in blindingly bright colors depicting, surprisingly, Death—the portraitee, otherwise known as Death, was hopping about in an agitated manner.
The young girl—the artist had, apparently, had a different look on life—was swathed in a neon lime robe and carrying a hot pink scythe, which would give out strobes of light at unpredictable times.
Severus hated that painting.
"Hey, hey, hey! Took you bloody long enough! I've been yelling at you for the past ten minutes!" screeched the screecher.
"What do you want?" he asked in his third-most formidable voice.
Death was not impressed. "Listen here, young man, I've been reaping before your great-great-great-grandmother was a twinkle in her mother's eye, so don't you get all uppity towards me! I can take away your life sooner than you can blink, so don't take that tone with me!"
Severus scowled. "Fine. Accept my apologies. What was it you wanted to tell me?"
"That's more like it. Outside the gates, there's a boy in need—"
"A moronic villager has run away from home and you expect me to protect him from a few squirrels? I think not—"
"Don't you interrupt me! You think I'm gonna worry you about some stupid little problems? Not just any boy. This one was actually doing pretty well on his own, and we wouldn't have interfered, but…He's not alone out there."
"I told you I'm not helping against a few squirrels."
"Not squirrels, you little man-whore! Noctis Lemures!"
Severus jerked his head towards the painting. "Noctis Lemures? What are they doing out?"
"I told you he's not just any boy. He is special. You'd best get out there to help him. He doesn't have much time left."
But Severus was already gone.
As he could be agonizingly slow when he wanted to be, Severus could also be fast when the mood struck him. And this time the mood had taken out a baton and beaten him.
Severus was to the front door in seconds. Which was quite an accomplishment if you knew how very big the castle was.
He flew out the doors and began to run towards the gates—this is to say that before this, he was walking, which means that Severus had quite a big stride—before even thinking about what to do about the Noctis Lemures.
He was at the gates in minutes, and arrived just in time to see a man—really, Death had called him a boy, which had made Severus think that it would be a child, but then, he supposed that everyone would be a child to Death—take a spectacular nose-dive into the dirt. In the brief moment after, everything was quiet, and Severus thought all would be well; that Death had been exaggerating.
But then he saw them swoop over the man, their ghostly fingers grazing his skin.
Severus had to act. Now.
The Noctis Lemures still weren't properly here, but they were becoming more and more real as the seconds ticked by, and as soon as they were here, nothing could save the man.
Severus leaped through the gates and kicked out at the Noctis Lemures, shuddering as his foot went through-but-not-quite them.
He summoned his own little bit of magic (1) and forced it into a ball. Then he sent it out, far away, into the forest.
The Noctis Lemures stopped their advance towards the boy and cocked their almost-heads, like dogs, as though smelling something. Then, as one, they bounded off after Severus's magic.
Severus sagged a bit—throwing magic was tiring—but he couldn't take a break. They wouldn't be fooled for long, and he needed to get the man inside the castle before they came back.
Quickly, he grabbed the man and pulled him into his arms before rushing back through the gates.
They slammed behind him—even the castle wanted to keep out the Noctis Lemures—and Severus ran back to the safety of the stones.
Just as he got inside—the doors slamming so hard, he swore the wood was breaking—he heard the awful screech of the Noctis Lemures, something between the wail of a wounded child and the howl of a wolf.
Severus let out a single silent sigh of relief and slid to the ground, forgetting about the man in his arms until it let out a shriek.
A/N: Comments, questions, concerns? Lookit that, I'm a teacher. /cough/
(1) Yes, the 'Severus has magic' part. Well, he's been locked up in a castle for a few years now, with nothing to do, and only crazy portraits of Death and such to talk to. He had to do something, didn't he? So, he figured out how to access a bit of his magic. Which all of us have if we look deep inside us, blah blah.
I'm too tired and effed up from allergies to deal with this crap. I'm going to bed to dream about vampire Snape, hopefully. Yes, I'm weird.
By the way, I've lost a fic. ;-; One where Snape is a vampire, which Harry discovers during an Occlumency lesson. And then Snape goes all vampirey and bites him. And it ends up with Harry giving Snape his blood. A something Compromise. It's called something like that. If any of you have read it, could you give me the author, or title? I would love you forever. Because there is a sad lack of vampire Snape fics out there. /runs off to sleep/