Confusion. Fear. Pain. Screaming. His flesh seemingly replaced by some kind of suit or armour. A voice screaming in his head to get out of there. A few times some kind of fast projectile hit him, it hurt. But his wounds were immediately healed.

And then came the blood.

Blood, so much blood. He didn't want to kill, but it was out of his control entirely.

His hands were shaking – but were they his hands? – as he snarled at the corpses of his captors. His vision was so blurry he could hardly see.

A bunch of men carrying some kind of weapons that kept hurting him. But instead of fighting, he ran.

He had to get away. Get away.

"Get away!" he roared.

Climbing a wall, he somehow found a way out through a very tight space making a lot of whirring noise.

The whirring noise echoed in his ears as he kept crawling fast and faster. And then he was outside, standing in the fresh air in an alley-way. He looked at his hands again, and his vision wasn't as blurry anymore but his heart was beating so hard, he thought it would escape his chest.

His hands were covered in a weird dark purple, close to black slime. Except it wasn't slime, it was alive. It was breathing.

"Calm yourself", said the voice in his head. No, it wasn't a voice. It was almost like a rumbling in his head. A rumbling forming words.

"Why did you kill those people?" he spluttered.

"Unfortunately, there was no other way."

He felt sick.

He punched a wall, in some sort of feeble attempt to get rid of the thing.

"Get off me, you bloody creature!"

"If that is your wish. But we could become something more. Something that would make others respect us. We could put a snare around the throats of others and make them wish they were dead."

He liked the thought of that. Something that would make even Spider-Man respect him.

He looked at his own reflection in a window and saw a monstrous creature staring back at him, razor-sharp teeth baring and a tongue half the length of an arm. His eyes were big and freaky.

"Snare", he said quietly. "That's brilliant. But I look like a monster – again!"

"Then fix it. Be who you've wished you could become, and I will make it so", rumbled the creature.

Who he always wanted to be? Something more than someone at the side of the person that always saved the day, who almost always got all praise and reward for himself?

He thought of the person he looked up to, who he always wanted to be: Spider-Man, and just like that he assumed the form of the web-slinger.

What looked back him was better than any Quidditch-match he ever won or any test he somehow got a good grade in: he was Spider-Man. The tongue was gone, so were the teeth, eyes and he was dressed in Spider-Man's red and blue suit.

"This is…"

"What you wanted, is it not?"

He felt a bit sick looking at himself. No. This was wrong, this wasn't him, not his identity. It needed to be different.

His suit morphed from the red and blue to a sleek, dark purple suit without any web patterns, a giant green emblem spreading from his chest almost reaching his shoulders, smaller, green eyes and spikes going across the underside of his arms.

He stared into the window at himself, liking what he saw. He punched a hole in the wall, feeling no pain. Yes. This was perfect.

Now it was as if he and the creature was one, acting as one entity.

"We are Snare. We are more than someone to be used and pushed aside."

He looked up towards the rooftops, took a leap and he didn't even need to do use that much energy to come crashing down on top of the roof.

Now he saw he was somewhere close to London, as he could see the city in the horizon. The first target was hiding somewhere in that city.

He wanted to be Spider-Man, but now he wasn't so sure. He loathed him, made him feel sick.

"He's going to regret leaving us here to rot, to be used and experimented on."

He squinted his eyes, smiled behind the mask and threw himself off the building before swinging off towards his target.

Harry woke up from another one of his nightmares about Voldemort with his scar burning intensely and his spider-sense going highwire. It felt like his head was about to explode, and he could almost taste the vomit in his throat.

He put on his glasses and quickly looked beside him seeing Hermione fast asleep, and got out of bed without making a sound. He put on one of the shirts hanging neatly on his chair and made his way out of the room.

Stumbling towards the bathroom, he had to contain to urge to scream. This kind of pain hadn't been present for a long while. As he passed aunt Petunia's bedroom, seeing the outline of someone in the bed through the dark. She must have worked overtime and got home around midnight at the very least.

In the bathroom, he grasped the sink and staring right down in it with an urge to stop fighting this feeling and just let it take over.

"Just for once, stop hurting and let me sleep", Harry thought to himself.

He was so very sick of waking up like this, with the pain in his scar triggering his spider-sense.

He turned on the faucet and splashed his face with water, fighting hard to not throw up. He stood there with the faucet running for minutes just staring blindly at himself slack jawed and hurting.

Breathing was the only thing he could focus on because he absolutely did not want to give neither aunt Petunia or Hermione a reason for him to stay in bed the next day or two.

Even more minutes passed until his scar had stopped giving him hell. His spider-sense was still going about, like someone tickled him from inside his skull.

A soft knocking on the bathroom door broke the complete silence and startled him so much that he lost his balance and fell on the floor with a heavy thud.

The door opened and a tired person whose face he didn't quite register at first peeked in. The door opened a bit more.

He wondered for a second if he was still dreaming, until his brain could catch up with what he was seeing; it was just Hermione, wrapped in a blanket. Her eyes were closed to the point that it looked like she still was asleep.

She spotted him sitting the floor and went in as Harry stumbled up on his feet.

"Can't sleep?" she asked and slammed the still running tap off.

"Just nightmares", mumbled Harry blinking hard a few times trying to get rid of the last lingering feelings in his scar. "Nothing to worry about – I just want to go to sleep."

Hermione opened her mouth as if she wanted to object but closed it and nodded.

"Okay you can tell me about it in the morning", she said slightly slurred.

They went out of the bathroom, heading towards Harry's bedroom. Harry had a strange feeling of being watched, but that was absurd because there were no one else in here except them and aunt Petunia.

"Was that you thumping in there?" Hermione looked annoyingly at him.

"No, I didn't—", he stopped himself in mid-sentence as his spider-sense overwhelmed him and something fast was coming at him from the pitch-black darkness.

He pushed Hermione out of the way, swung his fist towards the threat, but missed and felt a kick between his ribs, sending him through a bookcase and into the wall. Instantly he threw himself away from the wall upwards and stuck to the ceiling.

The attacker somehow could stick to the ceiling too, punching and kicking towards him as he dodged and struck back as much as he could.

They were fast. Way too fast.

Harry didn't see or know who was attacking him, all he could do was keeping himself as far from Hermione as best he could so she didn't get injured.

"Harry?" she yelled.

He couldn't even hear his attacker; he was completely blind except for his spider-sense helping him dodge and manoeuvre through almost every attack.

And Harry started to understand what they were doing; wearing him down.

"Who are you?" Harry yelled. He needed to make a distraction.

His webbing didn't seem to hit anything either, and he paid dearly for attempting to hit anything with it.

Absolutely no answer, just the unrelenting attacks.

Was this one of the Spider-Men he had briefly met earlier this year? Or… whenever and wherever it was.

"Are you—are like me? Because if then we can stop fighting!"

"We are nothing alike!"the attacker growled. He sounded human enough – the voice sounded muffled but familiar.

"Then who— ", a kick in the chest sent Harry flying down from the ceiling and tumbling onto the floor.

He could barely scramble himself back up again before the attacker was up in his face again grabbing him by the collar, and now his eyes were used to the dark.

A sudden ray of red lit up the entire room and hit the attacker. The lights in the room turned on. The sudden bright light was overwhelming, but he could finally see the assailant lying on the floor.

He indeed wore something resembling a Spider-Man suit, but it was dark purple with green details and had a few spikes along the arms.

Harry shook his head and checked with his foot if the intruder still was conscious. "Did you make your suit ugly on purpose?"

"I believe he asked you a question!" Hermione walked up beside him, pointing her wand at the attacker.

"Good thinking", he said and nodded at her wand as the pretender was getting up from the floor.

The attacker laughed.

"You can call us… Snare."

Harry stared at him grinning, in complete disbelief of what he had just heard.

"That has to be the dumbest— ", Snare shot two webs on either side of Harry and kicked him before he could do more than hit back but it wasn't enough.

He flew into the wall with such force that he went into the wall and left a human-sized dent in it.

He shielded himself with his right arm just as Snare was on him yet again.

"Come on. Is that really all you got?" whispered Snare, grabbed him and threw him into the same wall.

Harry didn't quite process the next few seconds, it felt more like a fuzzy dream - just pieces of wall flowing around him, him flying in what seemed forever and furniture breaking as he went through it.

Snare walked slowly towards him.

He shot out a web with his right hand and managed to catch himself, creating just enough momentum to sling himself back at Snare and knocking him down.

They tumbled around on the floor. As Harry tried to get up, he noticed his left arm didn't want to support him and gave out a scream in pain when he tried to push himself up.

Harry grimaced as he grasped his left arm as he stood up and looking down at Snare lying on the floor. He was exhausted, injured, still recovering from the heatstroke, dehydration or whatever it had been and he was pissed off.

Just as Snare was getting up, Harry threw his entire body at him through the coffee table punching him in the face with his good hand.

"You have all that power", whispered Snare. "Yet you restrain yourself."

"You don't get the first thing about power."

Snare kicked him off, got up and made a run for the closest window.

A flash of purple light hit Snare in the back, making him unable to move and hitting the floor.

Harry looked over his shoulder, where Hermione stood holding her wand. He nodded to her and focused back his attention on Snare.

He put his hand on his left arm aching with pain, walking towards the unmoving body.

"You're angry and want to kill me or what it may be but you lost because you don't have any morals. When you use your powers without rhyme or reason, you've already lost. I learned that the hard way, and so will you – one way or another", Harry crouched down beside the poor excuse for a copycat.

He blinked for a few times, remembering what Sirius had told him a few moments before he was murdered.

"My uncle told me before I got angry at him, ran away and he was gunned down looking for me: that with great power there also must come great responsibility. That the world isn't split into light and dark, we all got capacity for good and evil, and who we really are is the part of us we choose to act on."

There was an eerie silence but yet it felt like they had a sort of mutual understanding. Harry at last stood up. "You can let him go now, Hermione."

"Are you sure?"

Harry nodded.

A slight flash of light hit Snare, releasing him from the spell. Snare slowly stood up and stared back at him. "I'm sorry", what he said was barely in a whisper but audible. He had leapt out the window before Harry could tell him another word.

A sudden loud shriek startled him and made him twist around immediately. There in the doorway to one of the bedrooms stood aunt Petunia convulsively grasping the doorframe, looking at the damage done to the apartment.

It looked like two angry gorillas had trashed the place.

Harry wanted to say something to calm her but all he could do was stand there in a shirt and his underwear.

And the next few words she yelled were just a long string of curse words mixed with an almost incoherent rant about how she should've never accepted her sister's son into her care and how he was exactly like his father, always keeping secrets and being reckless.

When she was done shouting, she looked almost insane with a contorted facial expression somewhere between crying and angry, sobbing uncontrollably on the floor and her hair covering half her face.

Harry didn't say a word. Half of that had been justified, the other half not so much.

Hermione gave him a quick uncertain look. Without saying anything she went ahead and started repairing all the damage.

Aunt Petunia was too shook up to notice magic going on in her own home. Finally, after what seemed like a very long uncomfortable moment, Harry went and put on a pair of pants and sat down beside his aunt.

But as soon as he did, she got up rushing into her bedroom and slammed the door shut.

This was much worse than how he'd imagine her reacting.

Author's end of chapter notes: There were some neat ideas I juggled with for Snare, first he was going to be just straight up Venom or black suited Spider-Man but I want to give this character their original symbiote (at least I think it is) Can you guess who it is?