Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter!

No chapter yesterday because I had to re-outline, but now we're cooking again. All the Intermissions, by the by, are Snape's dreams.

Intermission: Before the Darkness Cower

"Really, Severus, come along." One elegant arch of Lucius Malfoy's eyebrow, as much to say that he didn't know what he was going to do with Severus if he couldn't follow a simple instruction like that. "You wouldn't want to keep your future Lord waiting, would you?"

Severus—who thought of himself as Snape in those moments when he could, determined to pound out both his mother's surname and the name his mother had given him from his head—kept his face calm while Malfoy was looking, but allowed himself a sneer the moment he turned away again. Malfoy embodied all the reasons that Severus hated purebloods, even as he envied them. Casual grace, yes, with a promise of steel beneath, but little real strength. Lucius's tactics lay in devastating remarks, in noting breaches of manners and making those who committed them feel like children, in facial expressions and soft, coaxing words. But he had taught Severus to feel magic, too, as pain, in the way that Malfoys did, and the first thing Severus had realized was that he was stronger than Lucius Malfoy.

And only fools rely on raw strength, his mother's voice sang in his head.

Severus grimaced. It was always like that, a thought that might praise or steady him coiling around with a scorpion's sting in its tail.

The tunnel widened ahead of them, and Malfoy made a pleased sound beneath his breath, then halted. Severus could see his nostrils flaring wide to sniff. He wondered that Malfoy would be so obvious about it. He himself had already smelled the odd scent flowing down the corridor: rich, dark, earthy, with the edge of a tang that Severus could only describe as night.

"Ah," Malfoy said, and then raised a hand and motioned Severus forward, stalking softly forward himself.

Snape followed him. They were walking through the catacombs beneath a monastery so abandoned that Muggles didn't even remember it had existed any more. Now and then they passed alcoves filled with bones. Severus had wondered at first that the Dark Lord chose to meet in a place like this, but Malfoy had explained it to him. The Death Eaters took their name, and the Dark Lord gave his word, as a promise of immortality. They were not, of course, afraid of death, and they would show it by standing among bones and skeletons.

Severus had kept, tightly clenched in the center of his own mind behind the Occlumency shields he had already learned, the treacherous thought that someone who sought immortality was, of course, afraid of death.

But he was not joining the Death Eaters because of any riches or glory or eternal life. He was joining because this was the one place in the world, as Malfoy had promised him, where he would be able to give his bitterness and hatred free reign. All of those people the Dark Lord would target—Mudbloods, Muggles, Light-devoted purebloods who would refuse to join him—were those who had places in the world, places that Severus was outcast from for one reason or another.

His hand tightened on his wand for a moment as he and Malfoy rounded a corner, and he remembered Tobias, his father. Tobias and Eileen had been involved in a great gyre of self-hatred; Severus remembered first realizing from the time he was four that his parents had married each other in order to destroy each other more effectively. But Tobias had at least regarded his wife with eyes full of satisfaction. He understood her. She was a witch. He had not known how to regard Severus—born to a Muggle, and yet magically stronger than his mother was—and that had pushed Severus forever, if he ever would have thought of it, out of trying to live as a Muggle. He was the child of no world, not of two.

"Kneel."

That was the only warning Malfoy gave him before he abruptly dropped to a knee. Severus had been ready, though. Malfoy was always pulling shit like this, trying to catch Severus off-guard and make him look bad. It was the way Malfoy reminded him that, however strong he was, he would always be a halfblood.

Severus's knee touched the stone floor at the same moment Malfoy's did, and he bowed his head. He had not seen into the room ahead of them yet, had not seen the Dark Lord sitting on his dark throne.

He found that he did not need to. The breathing darkness that surrounded him, the earthy scent, was enough to give away its owner's personality. For Severus, it was like being in the belly of a beast. The beast lay licking its jaws contemplatively, while all around him great coils of strength stretched into the darkness. In a short time, it would arise and devour the world. For now, it was content to lie still and dream of its future conquests.

Severus had never been in the presence of someone so strong. Dumbledore was a Light Lord, yes, but he had long ago harnessed his power, and mostly used it to play silly games. Something about not intimidating people, and wanting them to see that not all Lords were evil, he had said the one time Severus asked.

This was someone who was not afraid to use it. This was someone who understood that limitations on power were just another form of weakness.

This was someone whose strength Severus could join in and ride, and strike back with at the ones who had hurt him.

All those thoughts raced through his head in an instant, and then the Dark Lord's voice spoke, high and cold and perfectly in tune with the fall and rise of the beast's breathing. "Lucius. Leave us."

"My lord," Malfoy said, although Severus detected a faint hint of confusion in his voice. Severus did not dare to smile over that, but he pictured Malfoy as a beast dragging a wounded leg as he escaped, and that was enough.

And then Malfoy was gone, and he was alone in the room with the Dark Lord. Severus felt Voldemort turn his regard on him.

It was not easy to bear. But Severus had not needed Lucius's warnings for that. Rumors had traveled through Slytherin House ever since the Dark Lord's sudden and spectacular appearance eight years ago. They had whispered that this was a real Dark Lord, one who made Grindelwald look like a whipped dog. A large part of Grindelwald's strength had come from his allies, and from the Lightning Guard he hollowed out into mindless fighting automata and arranged about him. This Lord was a force to be reckoned with all by himself, either the most powerful wizard in the world or almost there, a Parselmouth, an absorbere, the last descendant of Salazar Slytherin himself.

All those features added enormously to the legend, Severus had to admit, and made it easier to know what place in life the Dark Lord would take up; continuing Salazar Slytherin's work of eliminating Mudbloods was only fitting for a descendant of his. Slytherin had tried to make it happen by keeping Mudbloods from a wizarding education that would teach them to control their powers. Lord Voldemort was simply more…direct.

"I can feel your mind moving."

The words were calmer and colder than the ones spoken to Malfoy. Severus had expected that, too.

"Rise."

He stood, his eyes still carefully on the floor. He could see the bottom of a dark throne, now, the slick stone gleaming as if polished by blood. The only light in the chamber came from a group of torches arrayed about the circular walls. The light showed they were not actual torches, though. Their light was the color of death, pale white and constantly shifting, and Severus allowed himself a touch of wonder. He had heard the Dark Lord had rediscovered witchfire; he had not known he would ever see it.

The serpent wrapped three times around the throne lifted her head and hissed lazily at him. The Dark Lord laughed, and then hissed back, his hand descending in a slow caressing motion to slide along the snake's neck.

Severus listened to the breathless hissing in clinical detachment. Yes, he could see why this had captured Malfoy. Merlin knew why, but Lucius had a wild dream of becoming a Parselmouth someday.

"Why have you truly come to me?" the Dark Lord asked abruptly. "Nagini smells such bitterness in you as would become a wizard many times older than you are."

Severus started to reply, but Voldemort cut him off before he could. "You may raise your eyes and look at me."

Severus did that, cautiously. For one thing, meeting the eyes of a Lord-level wizard was almost never a good idea, even if he didn't have the gift of compulsion the way both Dumbledore and the Dark Lord did. For another, he knew the Dark Lord was a Legilimens.

The Dark Lord's face was wrapped and warped with shadows, the legacy, Severus knew, of long years of study in Dark magic outside of Britain. His eyes burned out of the middle of that, though, smoldering coals. Red. The force of his Legilimency reared out of them like the wolf from Norse mythology who was meant to eat the sun.

Severus had been prepared. As the Legilimency came at him, he flattened his Occlumency pools, shimmering silver shallows over the most important secrets he wanted to keep. He let the Dark Lord see everything else: the bitterness piled on bitterness that he endured when those who should have been his peers in Slytherin House discovered that he was a halfblood; the endless exploits and tricks and attempts to kill him that the Marauders engaged in; how every corner of their world granted him uneasy respect for his magical ability while putting barriers in the way of everything else; how even Professor Slughorn, his own Head of House and Potions instructor, had favored Lily Evans over him, Mudblood though she was and inferior student to Severus though she was, because she was pretty.

The dark tide sluiced over him, allowing him to somewhat study Voldemort as Voldemort studied him. Severus could feel hatred in it, and the thick film of long contact with magic based on blood and death, and the oil of indifference to suffering. The Dark Lord used pain and fear and hatred as tools to achieve his goals. He would not let himself be distracted by the chance to make someone suffer just a bit more. He could judge torture and murder to a nicety, and know when they would be effective and when they would not.

And, of course, the Dark Lord was letting him see all this, and he knew what Severus knew, and some of those impressions might be wrong. Severus accepted that. What mattered was the magic, and the knowledge. He had no doubt that the knowledge was real. The Dark Lord had been gathering support for eight years, and that support was moving faster and faster, as almost the whole of Slytherin House rippled with growing tendrils around its sixth- and seventh-year students, as the Dark pureblood families forsook their stubbornness and listened more closely. As an avalanche gathered more power the more it rolled, so the Dark Lord was very close to his first great rising.

"Well, well, Severus."

Severus looked up. He had been lost in his own mental impressions of the Legilimency, and had not used his physical eyes in some moments. He found the Dark Lord regarding him with—

Approval? Surely not. But he does seem to recognize something in me.

"You are utterly willing, are you not?" The Dark Lord's voice was soft with something that might have been amusement. Severus did not mind. Amusement was one of the mildest reactions he received. Besides, the Dark Lord could be amused and still let him torture and kill and strike and use the magic that flared so restlessly inside him. He nodded.

"Very well," the Dark Lord said. "Your initiation will be a month from now, in the middle of that first great rising."

Severus nodded again. Unspoken were the words that if he told anyone about this, he would be dead. Of course he would. He had come into a world where the realities were simple: life and death, blood and power.

But it was a world where he had a place, a defined relationship to all of them. He was contemptuous of life, unafraid of death, a means to release blood, and a possessor of power. He was here, and they were there, arrayed about him, in directions he knew precisely.

"You will be a valuable addition to my ranks," the Dark Lord said softly. "You know by heart lessons that many of my Death Eaters must spend months or years learning." A long pause, while Nagini sang a crooning song and laid her head in the Dark Lord's lap. "Your mother taught you well," the Dark Lord finished at last.

Severus nodded again. Of course, he had not truly hoped to preserve his mother's identity or teachings as a secret.

"You are dismissed," the Dark Lord said. "I am pleased with you, Severus, very pleased."

Severus bowed, and then turned and trekked out of the chamber. The passage was not long, and he had memorized all the ways that Malfoy brought him out of habit.

He had not spoken a single world in the entire audience with the Dark Lord, he realized, while for years he had tried to justify himself with words—in Slytherin House, to his father, with his professors. That, more than anything, told him that he had found a place where he belonged, and a perfect understanding with a man who would use him and discard him if he were useless—but who would also offer him the opportunity for revenge.

Severus was willing to be used, for that.