Chapter 14

That evening, Draco tried fitfully to sleep, but his father's voice kept piercing his mind nauseatingly.

"You are weak, to show affection for such a low creature."

Reading his letter had already brought back the feelings of humiliation and degradation that he had managed to suppress after a summer of silence... The same feelings of being inferior, of being 'dirty,' that had been cultured in him throughout his childhood, but culminated horrifically after his Father's failure at the Ministry. The power his father had lost... The power his father had taken from him...

A fever seizing Draco's mind. All he could see before him was his father... He wanted to hurt him.

He had been young. Eight or nine. Even then, he could sense his father's warped perception of reality, and shied away from him in favor of his mother. Lucius beat both of them, but he was their master, and they took his pain wordlessly. Draco had long been used to the Cruciatus curse by the time his father came home one evening from a clandestine Death Eater meeting, boasting about the way he had tortured and murdered some poor witch...

As soon as Draco heard his father open the door, he quickly pushed his pet cat off his lap. His nameless cat, because once Draco gave him a name, he knew he would love it too much. And in Malfoy Manor, loving anything would only get you hurt.

"Don't you want to do that someday, boy? Hear someone's screams and know that you are the cause of their pain? Know that you control their fear, their anguish?" Lucius laughed coarsely. "I will teach you to rip off a woman's clothes slowly...so that she knows your intent. I will teach you to bite her neck like a ripe white fruit, and plunder from her body its only worth."

He strode towards his son, smirking.

Draco said nothing.

"Answer me, boy!"

He was not scared. He had elicited the wrath of his father many times before, and he was not afraid of pain.

Draco felt carefully beside him and let his fingertips discretely brush his cat's tail, all the while watching his father warily.

Lucius rushed over to where his son was frozen and pulled the cat into the air, eyeing it with a smug disdain.

"You are weak, to show affection for such a low creature."

Draco held out his hands to grasp the cat away, "Father, set him down..." His voice shook. Now he was afraid. He could not protect his mother, those many, many times... he could not protect the girls he heard behind the locked doors, the ones who could not scream any longer, but surely... surely he could protect this small creature?

"Father, please..." Draco rose, arms stretched out. He knew what his father would do.

"You disgust me." Lucius threw the cat hard against the wall beside him, without even turning his head. The poor tomcat lay still where it hit the floor, a pathetic dribble of blood flowing from its skull.

Crying angrily, Draco ran towards his pet, but his father caught him around the waist and threw him back to the floor.

"You will understand someday boy... what it means to be a man... You will be strong, like me... and serve the Dark Lord... Your Master... for THIS is your inheritance." Lucius' breathing was ragged, his eyes wild, as he pulled back the sleeve of his robe and showed his son the Dark Mark.

"Isn't it beautiful..."

"I don't want it!" yelled Draco, running to the wad of fur that lay slumped by the wall, petting it vigorously, as if willing it to come back to life. Turning, he ran sobbing into his father's arms, beating him with child's fists.

"Crucio!"

The memory ended there, for when Draco had awoken, he was shivering in shock and had to work his mind hard to remember much of anything.

---

There were other memories though, worse memories. Like when he had returned from school last semester, his father humiliated from his failure at the Ministry.

The older man was quiet, but his eyes shone with a sadistic fire. He grabbed his son's wrist and pulled him down the hall.

"You WILL obey me. Respect me... I am your fucking Father! You will obey me..."

Lucius stopped in front of a door, the calm on his face more intimidating than that of any prior madness... "I am your Master. You will remember that."

Draco was flung into a bedroom, he didn't remember which one... The Malfoy's mansion was so huge it could have been one of any couple hundred. He hated that house. And every room in that house that was suspect as being the room that housed his misery that night - his humiliation, his horror...

What started out as a salvo of curses mutated that night, into a fight for power and superiority that he was doomed to lose.

When Draco finally regained consciousness and left that room, he was broken.

---

Firelight danced around the walls to singe the corners of the room. Snape sat in front of the fire in a tall, stately armchair, letting his coal-black eyes fuel the flames. He tucked back a strand of hair behind his ear, and reached out a hand to touch the ruby tongues... He pursed his lips into an acrid smile and retracted his hand from the fire's scorching womb.

He often sat like this. Thinking... letting his thoughts flit from wall to wall with the flames... Hermione was foremost on his mind tonight, as the embers crackled, the fire dimmed. She gave him what he needed - a taste of vitality, to remind him of the fire, to remind him that he was daring it to touch him, daring his skin to feel the biting breath of the flames... Snape batted the air with one slim-fingered hand. He was forgetting he had a purpose with her. It would not do to forget that.

Decades of bitter thoughts - the first which had ever passed through his bright intellect - had left a film around him, a fire-proof shell.

And what if I do not carry through with the plan?

The embers crackled. A log rolled over. The fire dimmed.

Severus Snape, born in a dingy apartment, by firelight.

Severus Snape, swattled in blankets dirtied with ashes.

Severus Snape, who read his Hogwarts letter in the sanctuary of a cold hearth, one morning...

Severus Snape, who chose to become a Death Eater when his self-inflicted burns were not enough, and he craved a hotter fire, a more intense flame, with to play...

Severus Snape, who was branded by its bright ray!

Severus Snape, who reverted to the Light under the cover of darkness!

Severus Snape, who would be rediscovered in the fire!

The embers crackled. The wood crumbled. The sparks jumped up. The fire dimmed. They flew into his eyes and lodged there. He inhaled, thinking.

I have to do it soon, then.

Severus Snape. It was almost onomatopoetic, considering the man. Severed. Snarky. How Dumbledore had laughed one night, when a superstitious Auror had commented that Snape was destined to create discord within the Light. 'Sever us.'

How pathetic.

The embers crackled, the ashes rolled over the fading licks of flame. The shadows grew as the fire dimmed. He remembered the night he decided to turn himself in to Dumbledore and become a spy. Running through the darkness with the knowledge of what he could do as a supporter of the Dark Lord. He could taste the fire on his tongue, hear its roar in his ears, the all-consuming, screaming flames...

The embers crackled. They were all that was left.

And it wasn't enough.

Severus Snape sat in the darkness, fumbling around his body for his wand. To re-kindle the fire.

---

Harry and Ron were perched in chairs by the hearth, absorbed in a game of wizard's chess, when Hermione ran into the room, slamming the door behind her.

"Hermione!"

Harry got up and made to leave, but Ron put a hand on his shoulder. She bit her lip nervously and felt her stomach fall to the soles of her feet.

Ron broke into a fit of laughter. "Harry's been telling me the oddest things, Hermione. He says you – and that greasy bastard – Snape, I mean – that you're having an affair with him!" He snorted. "I didn't even want to hear Harry joke about you shagging him!" He laughed again, but it was cold and artificial, quickly dying out as he realized that the anger on his two friends' faces were quite in earnest.

Hermione fumed. "What makes you think right off that I'm shagging him?" she demanded of Harry.

"Well you are, aren't you?" he retorted, standing up to face her.

"I can tell as much from your face," said Ron unbelievingly when she didn't answer Harry. "I'm not dim you know. You like to think I'm stupid. It's easier for you, isn't it? But I'm not." He started to yell. "I'm a fucking human just like you Hermione! So are you fucking him or not, because you sure as hell are fucking everyone else."

His face was red with passion, his eyes glittering with anger. Hermione stood there, shivering with shock at the reactions of her two best friends.

"Yes," she gasped, slowly trying to regulate her breathing.

"How could you?" hissed Ron. "He gives all of us hell, and you... you give him your body?"

"It's not like that!" she yelled, looking up. "We read together sometimes. Or have tea... and talk about books. And... things like that..." She was suddenly aware of how stupid her words sounded.

Ron's eyes appraised her coldly. "Don't fool yourself Hermione. Not everyone cares how smart you are." He paused to scrub at his eye with a tremulous hand. "You are rather pretty, you know. I bet not many other boys would want to fuck over scones and sonnets. Maybe that's the way Snape likes it, but he just wants a good young fuck from a student stupid enough to humor him." He looked at Hermione's quivering form." Who'd have thought that would be you."

Ron's scathing words cut Hermione to the marrow. She could feel her blood slow, pain shoot within herself... She opened her mouth, but her words would not come into the world. She blinked, but her tears refused to flow. It was harsh out there. They did not want to be born into this.

Harry awoke from his stupor at Ron's last comments.

It's too much now.

"Look," said Harry quietly, licking his parched lips, "Ron, she's very upset. Leave her be for a while." He didn't feel like arguing with the revelations Ron had thrust forward. They might very well be true. Harry knew that.

"Don't fucking tell me I'm upset," gasped Ron angrily, backhanding the moisture off his cheeks. "I can't believe you, Hermione," said Ron, shaking his head in disgust. "How could you?" He was choking on his words as he yelled. "He's a beast!"

Hermione was crying silently now, taking his salvo submissively. Harry was frozen in his position on the other side of the sofa, staring at the floor, not wanting to speak. Or touch her.

Ron strode up to Hermione and leaned into her, grabbing her face. "After what I've done for you," he snarled softly. "You... never mind."

He exited the room quickly, not looking at her. Hermione sobbed harder, all her thoughts crowded to the front of her mind, jostling each other for room.

She saw red, everything was red, it was all red through her tears. Sitting in the grass somewhere, all she could see was red...

"I wish I could just forget it all..." She was crying, someone was holding her, and everything was red... She felt the tip of a wand at her back.