WARNING: Torture.

Intermission: Back Into the Storm of Ravens

Snape stepped into the throne room a half hour after Voldemort had called his other Death Eaters. All the muted conversation among them immediately stopped. Masked faces turned towards him, and then no one moved. Snape wondered, with an amusement that was buried deep under the shields he had piled on his mind—shields woven of both Occlumency and the coldness that his mother had taught him as part of survival—whether they had expected him to run, as other Death Eaters did when they decided they did not belong to their Lord anymore.

But Snape would not run. How could he? No matter where he went, he bore a brand on his arm that would identify him at once. So he was made to kneel at the feet of the dark throne, by his own choice. What had changed were the amount of control he had over his mind, and the amount of foresight that he was using to predict his future, and the consequences of failure.

Those supposedly minor changes would give him more freedom than any of the kneeling fools now contemplated. Snape supposed he would feel a distant pity for them, too, if emotions were now part of his regular mental carriage.

"Severus."

The Dark Lord was speaking to him. Well-trained reflex made Snape drop to one knee and bow his head. "My Lord," he murmured.

"You know that you will be punished." Voldemort's voice was almost friendly. That didn't fool Snape. He had heard this tone before, and the Dark Lord used it only when he was about to go into one of his deepest rages. "You did not come when I summoned you. You know that no excuses are sufficient for this."

"Yes, my lord," said Snape, and kept his head bowed. Inside, far behind his shields, he was laughing. Inside, he was free. His mind had become a haven full of ice scorpions, and all his weaknesses were frozen. Voldemort would never know how little it had cost him. Snape did not plan on telling him.

"Lucius. Bellatrix. Regulus." Voldemort's voice as he spoke the names was sharp, resonant, a voice Snape had not heard before. "You will stay. Others of my children, depart."

The other Death Eaters did not have to be told twice. They all but ran from the room. Snape remained kneeling where he was, his eyes on the floor, and yet he knew what would be happening behind him, because he knew all of the three Voldemort had invited to remain so well.

Lucius would be taking off his mask, so as to display his perfectly composed face to his master; what mattered most to him was not the reality but the show. Bellatrix would be leaning forward, her black eyes liquid and intent as a hunting panther's. She loved the torture of disgraced Death Eaters, and often complained that her Lord did not punish enough of them.

Regulus would be struggling against letting his face pale or his eyes fall, even as he pulled off his mask. Voldemort had chosen him because Snape and Regulus were close, and he knew that. So this was a test of Regulus's loyalty as well as Snape's own. If he made a single gesture in an attempt to restrain the Dark Lord, then he would be placed under torture as well.

Snape hoped that Regulus would hold firm, but he couldn't do much about it if Regulus chose not to. What he could do was kneel with his eyes on the floor, and accept the torture that came with his supposed betrayal, and decide to survive it.

He knew that most of the disgraced Death Eaters died. Everyone knew that. But the fact was only one of many icy stones in his mind, such as the part that counted how soon he might reasonably slip away to Dumbledore with a report on the Dark Lord's activities. It was not any more important than they were.

Voldemort spelled the door shut with wandless magic. Snape was unimpressed, in the haven of his deepest self. He could have done the same thing if he wished to, and was truly angry.

"Let us see what a little pain may teach you about loyalty, Severus," Voldemort whispered, a sound hardly louder than Nagini's scales on stone, pointing that long yew wand at him. "Obscurus."

And his eyesight was gone. Snape gave a little flinch at that, because he knew it was expected. There was another way to see his mind, he thought, beyond shielded and the home of ice scorpions. It was a stage. He had all his emotions and reflexes on pulleys, like cardboard scenery that he could lift up or lower down as it was needed. Lucius would be jealous, did he only know how easy it was.

"Incarcerous."

And his limbs were splayed out and held by ropes. Snape fell in an awkward position, and heard his wand tumble from his robe pocket. He also heard Regulus's indrawn breath. He felt a touch of exasperation. Can he keep nothing to himself? I can play my part perfectly, and he will still draw the Dark Lord down on him through his own clumsiness.

"Crucio."

Voldemort usually began with milder pain curses and worked his way up. But then, disgraced Death Eaters usually came in cringing and gabbling excuses, or simply ran and had to be hunted down. Snape had strode in half an hour late as if he had every right to be there.

He had done it to test the Dark Lord, and he had done it to test himself. If he could not stand even one Crucio from the Dark Lord's wand, then he could not stand his spying, which ran the constant risk of it. Having encountered the reality, he would comprehend the risk better. And he was eager to see what his own response would be to the torture. He regarded it as he would have a Potions experiment, to see what would happen when extreme pain was added to the base of one Severus Snape.

He screamed. Of course he screamed. The pain running up and down his sides was like ten thousand hot forks jabbing him, like acid that started in his chest and ate outwards, and his limbs were flopping like the limbs of an art burnt to death by aiming sunlight through glass. It hurt. The Crucio was a spell that Voldemort had perfected during his Dark Arts studies in other countries; he added a twist to it that enabled him to keep it up indefinitely, while most Dark wizards soon became exhausted by the effort to pour magical strength into the spell. Well, and they became distracted and disheartened by the screams, Snape thought. Most wizards still had a reaction to the sight of a fellow human being in such pain.

The Dark Lord did not have that problem.

He screamed, and he felt the first stab of true agony as some internal organ ruptured under the strain. He gasped as a rib broke and pierced his lung. He knew his lungs were filling were blood, and he rode the edge of death.

It filled him with exultation, cold as the breath of a winter night. If he died, he did it on his own terms. He was not the like the cowards who ran away or came back crying and hoping to be forgiven. Fear did not rule him. His mind was his own, and his mind was free.

He was unsure how long it lasted. He only knew that it was done, sudden as falling off a mountainside, and he heard the measured tread of his Lord's steps coming towards him. The hem of the robe brushed over his face. Snape pursed his lips and managed a competent kiss to it.

Voldemort paused. Then Snape knew he was bending down, his face coming so close to Snape's that he smelled the scent of stone and old, dead flesh.

"You kissed my robe, Severusss." Voldemort's voice grew into a hiss when he was surprised, which did not happen often.

"You are my master," Snape whispered. It was difficult to talk. He heard the wheezy breath that indicated blood was bubbling in his lungs and his air was running out. Well, blood was bubbling in his lungs and his air was running out. His voice, if not his words, could reflect reality. "I would not—cry for mercy. You are my master."

Voldemort was silent for long moments. "And if I tortured you again?" he asked. "If I brought you to the brink of death and then asked you to acknowledge me, Severus?"

"I would do so," Snape said. He forced himself not to remember that he could be on the brink of death already, for all he knew. "I took your Mark of my own free will. I am yours."

He heard the swish of robes as Voldemort moved away, and the Finite Incantatem that ended the binding on his limbs and restored his eyesight. He lay staring at the ceiling, while Voldemort instructed Lucius and Bellatrix to feed him healing potions and insure that he survived.

They picked him up and moved him, none too gently. Snape coughed blood, and cried aloud when one of his ruptured organs brushed another one. Bellatrix's distrustful eyes glared down at him, so dark that he could see them even past the black spots dancing in front of his vision.

"You are lucky," she whispered, with the sound of jealousy clear in her voice. "You do not deserve so much of the Lord's good will."

Snape closed his eyes. He knew that he might still die from the Crucio, which he estimated must have endured for at least fifteen minutes. He knew Regulus's absence might mean that Voldemort was keeping him behind to torture him. He knew that he was probably far from sane at the moment, at least in some eyes.

He did not care.

He was free.