AN: Still not dead! Still working on this story! I promise! I just haven't been making a lot of progress in working on this story... I feel like I've deleted more than I've kept.

The good news is that I have most of the next chapter already written.

As always, thank you so much for all the great support. It's a great motivator to keep working.

Interlude 2

Between one breath and the next, the world bed once more back into familiar shapes of cracked and crumbling stone walls, a half hidden quarter moon and scorched and bloodied floor boards. Severus Snape stumbled slightly, the ground rushing up to meet him. It was almost too smooth after rushing across a pockmarked empty quidditch field and he struggled to keep his balance. He straightened quickly, arms tight at his sides, hidden within the folds of his robes.

It would be a full meeting tonight. Their numbers had swelled dramatically over the past few months. The Dark Lord's return had called home all of the old faithful. Those that had failed to return had already been dealt with. The more recent, much more public events at the ministry had only done more to attract the foolish. Some had nothing else to lose after their public disgrace. Some were attracted by the defiant image their Master had worked hard to develop. Let the Headmaster and the Ministry try to paint the events of that night as a successful defeat of the Dark Lord. What most people truly saw was defiance and power and the freedom for casual cruelty even in the heart of the ministry. It had drawn the young, the reckless and the power hungry much more effectively than any government sanctioned recruitment program could ever hope to.

They made for such an eager and disposable workforce. They would contribute greatly as a whole to the Dark lord's campaign. Despite how annoying they might be on the individual level.

An excellent example of as much was Harmor.

Their arrival had coincided enough to have Harmor stepping away from the arrival point just as Snape himself appeared, tripping over his own feet like the kind of clumsy teenage boy Harmor had been only three years before in Snape's classroom. The years had done little to improve the boy's overall lack of intelligence or wit or composure. Harmor was staring. He wasn't even trying to hide it.

Snape snarled. Straightening his spine, he flung out his arm, his wand still clasped tightly in his hand, a painful and humiliating curse on the tip of his tongue. He didn't need to bother. Harmor backed up so quickly he fell to the ground. The idiot didn't even bother trying to go for his own wand, he simply flung his hands up in front of his face as if that would do anything to block the kinds of hexes Snape had perfected as a child.

"Pathetic," Snape sneered. He slipped both his wand and his hands back into the deep folds of his robe. "Get up. Our Lord is waiting and he has no patience for imbecilic behavior," Snape said before turning and stalking down the short hall to the main room. The young man behind him actually had enough sense not to talk back.

If he had, Snape wouldn't have hesitated to elevate some of his compounding annoyance. Potter had once again managed to throw the entire wizarding world into chaos, dragging Snape along into the middle of it as well. It had been less than 72 hours since the brat went missing. Snape hadn't slept since. Certainly not out of concern for the miscreant. He really would hex the fool who even suggested as much.

By all rights, Snape should have been resting comfortably in the peace of his own home, with nothing to do but enjoy the blessed silence of three months without hide or hair of any little brats. He should have known better. Of course it wasn't beyond Potter's ability to ruin even that. For nearly three days, Snape had done nothing but run from one master to another. Hours spent being forced to listen to a bunch of hysterical Gryffindors and defending his own honor from wild accusations about his loyalty, his abilities as a spy and even his sexuality were followed by hours spent groveling at the Dark Lord's feet between bouts of Crucio.

If they did ever find Potter, Snape was personally going to remove his innards and use them as garland.

The crowd that had gathered outside the main hall was hardly the energetic mass he had seen at a meeting two weeks ago. The past 72 hours had done much to beat that excitement out of them. No Death Eater had managed to escape their Lord's wrath. They had each been cast into the burning throws of the Crucio curse. One of the faithful had already died from it and the massive heart failure it caused. Undoubtedly, there would be wide spread brain damage as well among those unable to control their won spasming. Joint damage awaited the rest of them. The cartilage was fragile, and while potions could repair some of the damage, that was one of the few medical conditions that simply never fully be restored.

Snape's own muscles and joints still ached fiercely from his own most recent round, but he still pushed through the waiting huddle. Once they saw who he was, they parted like mice before a prowling cat. Except Snape was not the feline hunter of that night, but rather simply a bigger rat. It wasn't fear or respect that sent them scraping behind him – it was relief. As if Snape's presence might sufficiently distract their Lord from their own lack of results.

Once Snape reached the edge of the inner circle, he did not hesitate to drop to his knees and lower his head submissively. The others had only a moment to stare before their Lord appeared within their midst. One moment there was nothing except the ruins of an old church with the moon above shining through the cracks and gaps in the ceiling – and before the next moment there stood the most dangerous dark wizard of their generation. He appeared as smoothly as if Apperation was little more than child's play. Perhaps, to him, it was.

Every other Death Eater in that field fell to their knees. The silence filled the night, not even so much as a murmur or a shuffling of feet. Their Master let the stillness stretch on before finally speaking. "How is it," he hissed out, his voice still quiet but filled with deadly promise, "that the finest of all of Great Britain continue to fail me time and time again in such a simple task?" Like a descending dementor, their Master glided from one end of the gathering to the other, his hands curled into claws and his red eyes literally glowing in the night. His voice rose and roughened until the very grating sound of it caused pain to those that had displeased him. "How do you lose one child? He is not even under that old fools protection any longer! And yet! And yet my finest, my servants, have not even a shred of information to present to me!"

He came to a sudden halt, looming directly over Snape. "My spy," he drawled out in a voice that felt like dark power sliding slowly down Snape's spine. "My tool, my potions master, my subtle dagger in the night to drive into the heart of the phoenix. What do you bring to me?"

It was the dreaded question. The one asked more than once a day ever since Potter went and disappeared. It was nearly the same words every time for Snape, and something similar for every other senior Death Eater. And there had yet to ever be a satisfactory enough answer from any of them.

Snape lowered his head even farther and tried to keep his entire body relaxed and loose in anticipation for what he knew was coming. "My Lord," he began quietly. "The Order knows nothing more than they did that afternoon. The Headmaster is struggling to maintain a calm control over his puppets while they are receiving reports that the Ministry is preparing to declare the boy dead."

"And what of the boy? What news do you bring your Master of young Potter?"

The muscles in Snape's back spasmed and he struggled to keep his body as still as the dead. "They know nothing more than they did that afternoon."

"You mean you know nothing more."

"Yes, Master."

The dark Lord turned away with a wave of one hand. "Crucio."

The pain, as always, seemed both to last forever but to take only the blink of an eye. If unconsciousness was like a black hole that swallowed him whole, then the Crucio curse was like a burning put of red fire and pain that blocked out all else. There was no true sense of time passing. The pain seemed to go on forever, and yet each moment seemed too terrible for there to even be a next. As suddenly as it had begun, it ended, leaving him gasping and shaking on the floor, his skin tight with heat even as chills threatened to spasm his body apart.

The Dark lord had already moved on to his next servant. The other man would have even less to offer and suffer even more. He didn't even have the thin protection of having been the first to bring the news of Potter's disappearance to their Master. While the Dark Lord was fond of punishing the messenger, he also had a very long memory. It had been best for Snape to have that dubious honor. He'd even managed to convince the Headmaster that it was for the best. At the time, they had had such little information to go on. Being privy to as much of what the Death Eaters knew could only help them. It had helped that Snape had been one of the first Order members to arrive at what remained of the boy's house. It had placed him in the prime position to know everything and to react to everything first. Only the Tonks girl and the werewolf had been there before him, and they had managed only a half-arse inspection of the grounds. They hadn't found nearly as much as he had. While some of that information would undoubtedly be useful if he needed to bargain for his own life, the cost had come very high.

The screaming continued for some time. Eventually one voice would go hoarse, trailing off into more guttural moans than rendering shrieks. There would be a brief moment of silence between one victim and the next, a softly murmured interrogation by their Lord, but it was only a matter of time before a new voice would start. It was the noise that would follow him home that night. More than the sights or the smells, it was always the screaming that would echo over and over again in his ears.

Like all things, however, it too had to end. Their Lord grew tired of their continued fails and turned away in disgust. Those that had been spared could only sigh in relief. All of them would face the next meeting with dread. All of them would scramble desperately to find something of value to present to their Master before the next meeting. Snape sighed silently and start to push himself back up into a kneeling position, already thinking of the meeting the Headmaster would in turn demand after this – and the other report expected out of him.

For he hadn't been the only one lurking about in the ruins that afternoon. And he doubted either of his current masters would ever guess that he now had a third. Neither would ever stand for such a thing but he was dead either way. His entire life was built upon silence and lies and this new complication was nothing different. That didn't mean he liked it however, or that he wouldn't betray the red-eyed bastard at the first chance he had. But if he could manage to draw enough advantage out of this new task master to free himself, one way or another, from his other masters – well, there was only profit to be had there.