Chapter 14 finally up, its been a long time coming. I've been a little lax in my writing just lately and this is not a particularly long chapter but I hope you like.

A/N: 29/11/08

Unlikely Saviour

The sound of shattering glass permeated the thick wood of the dungeon door and Rayne's resounding shriek reached the ears of Severus Snape as he sat in a quiet revere across the corridor. He'd been patiently awaiting the arrival of Lucius Malfoy, but the sound instantly snared his attention and caused a flush of anger to rise in his cheeks.

"What on earth is that damned girl doing?" He spat. A snarl curled his lips as he rose from his seat and headed towards the door.

Snape's footsteps rang shrilly on the stone floor of the corridor as he walked the short distance to his office. Roughly he grabbed the door handle and pushed, but the door would not move not even an inch. A frown ran in deep angry furrows across his forehead and his pale, sallow skin began to flush red. He grasped the door handle more firmly and shoved hard against the wooden panel. The heavy door gave a little under his force and a crack of light appeared around it's edges before it was suddenly slammed back in his face.

***

Rayne's hands covered her face, shielding her eyes from the raining shards of glass as they tumbled to lay glittering on the floor of Snape's office. Her breathing was hard and heavy as her heart pounded wildly in her chest, that had been far too close a call but how in the hell was she supposed to get out of that room in one piece?

"Don't run from me Rayne," She heard her fathers voice chime from above her as his heavy footsteps crunched across the floor, "Don't make this worse than it has to be."

She could see his feet edging closer and closer to where she lay sheltered. He was in no hurry to reach her for in truth she was sheltered but also trapped. Her entire body began to tremble uncontrollably as the reality of her hopeless situation began to sink in. She'd been but a mere pawn to them, an expendable asset so easily disposed of when things threatened to turn ugly. How could she have been so naïve and bought into their stories of power and glory. She should have known what hideous truth would lay behind their plans, after all it was the nature of her heritage.

Rayne sighed despairingly and swallowed hard on her pride. There really was going to be no escape for her and so she decided to take what little choice she had and go down the easy way, without any more of a fight.

Beneath the table she shifted to her knees and was about to move out from beneath the shelter, intending to offer up he life for her failure. She was inches away from exposing her trembling form to the inevitable when she heard a noise from outside of the door. She'd forgotten about Snape being just across the corridor, her screams must have alerted him to something amiss. A faint sense of hope began to grow inside of her once again. Maybe there would be a way out but somehow placing all of her hope on Severus Snape seemed to be a little foolish and yet it was the only shred of hope she had.

Looking up and over the surface of the table she noticed the noise at the door had also caught her fathers attention. Momentarily he flicked his gaze from watching and waiting for Rayne to emerge to focus upon the door to the office. He raised a hand, extracting some magical force from within his body to hold the door closed against any efforts that Professor Snape may put in to opening it. However it would only stay that way if he continued to hold his power against the door. Rayne, seeing his distraction, took the moment as her opportunity to move. She slipped out from behind the table and darted towards Professor Snapes desk.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw her move, sneaky sneaky, he thought to himself with a scowl. He had to think of her now a mere treacherous failure to the Order and all of his kind, he had to detach himself from her in order to make the job as simple as it could be. He moved in the blink of an eye to direct a second burst of searing power towards her but had to relinquish his hold on the door as he did so.

Rayne felt the air around her ripple with the flow of raw power, the atmosphere in the room compressing with the force of his magic, as it hurtled towards her. She felt her chest tighten, fighting against the crushing force to function normally, and the pain spread in a continual ache to every point in her body and this was before the true force of his curse had even reached her.

In a last ditch attempt to save herself Rayne tried desperately to raise a magical shield to deflect the force of the demonic power. Concentrating hard on holding the shield in place, Rayne braced herself as the force of her fathers curse crashed against her. She felt not the searing pain that should have come with that kind of magic, her shield had at least blocked its killing effects, but the force of it's impact sent her hurtling backwards. It dragged her feet from the ground and slammed her backwards against a bookcase lined with rows and rows of glass jars.

Rayne felt the impact knock the air from her lungs. She gasped for breath as the shock began to give way and the pain to set in. The jars behind her had shattered ripping through the thin fabric of her robes and piercing her flesh with splinters of glass. The rancid contents of the jars spilled out over the shelves and down to the floor, it gushed into Rayne's open wounds on its way and made her skin feel as if it were on fire.

It seemed to her that she stayed suspended in the air, pressed hard against the shelves of the ruined bookcase, for longer than should have been possible but in reality it was no more than seconds before she began to take the sudden plunge back towards the ground. She headed face first towards the hard stone floor, stretching out her hands to brace her body and prevent her nose from braking. She felt her hands smack against the cold and wet stone, shards of glass burying themselves into her palms and beginning to sting violently with the intrusion of the acidic potion Snape had used to preserve whatever he had kept in those jars.

Rayne gasped in pain, tears beginning to fill her amethyst eyes but she refused to let herself cry. She looked up from the floor, a pathetic sight of torn robes and violent red as blood seeped from her pale skin, her long and sleek hair tangled and streaked with filth and blood that also littered the floor. She met with his eyes and waited, expecting him to deliver that final and finishing blast at her broken form but it did not come.

From behind a film of tears Rayne could see the door move once again, opening enough so that a crack of light from the office escaped through the gap. She saw her father turn to shove the door roughly back into it's frame, he was fuming with how difficult Rayne was being and he did not want the distraction of someone else trying to interfere.

Rayne grimaced with pain as she tried to move, as much as she hated to admit it she longed to see Snape appear from behind that door. She moved to her knees and began to summon all of the power she could muster, forcing this outwards to slam against her fathers distracted figure. The force behind her magic seemed feeble in comparison to his but it served to make him stumble and relinquish his force that held the door closed.

From out in the corridor she could hear Professor Snape demand, "Rayne open the door, let me in this instant."

She gazed in all hope at the dark and heavy wooden panel which was cutting her off from safety, willing Snape to be persistent and try to open the door again. Rayne parted her lips and was about to call out, to cry for help, when she felt a large hand clamp itself over her mouth and a second snake its fingers around her throat.

"I don't think so." He spat viciously at her. He dragged Rayne to her feet and began to levitate, raising both himself and her high into the air, as high as the room would allow. He pressed Rayne's torn back against the rough stone wall of the dungeon and hung her there by her throat. "I'm not completely adverse to the more mundane ways of killing since you so insist on making this all the harder on yourself." He said in a harsh whisper, standing on the air as if it were solid ground.

Rayne felt what little strength she had left begin to leave her body as she struggled in vain to catch a breath against his constricting fingers. She whimpered in fear and pain, moving to try and push away from the wall to relieve some of the pressure at her neck but his fingers gripped all the more tightly and Rayne feared that he would crush her throat to a pulp.

A black fog began to descend before her eyes and her head began to spin as the lack of oxygen slowly shut down the functions of her body. The world blurred and Rayne began to slip so far away that she barely felt the fingers wrench themselves away from her throat, or how she plummeted to the floor to lay in a crumpled heap of robes, hair and blood.

***

Snape tried the door again, one final time before he would resort to blasting it out of his way and this time the door gave easily. He pushed it all the way open and hurried into the room surveying the mess that he would once have called his office. At first he could not see where Rayne was but his eyes caught site of some movement up close to the ceiling and Snape found his eyes widen in shock as what he saw there.

There was Rayne hanging pressed against the wall as a man held her throat in a death grip, draining the life from her body. No, that cannot happen. If she dies then all that she knows will die along with her, it would spoil everything. Snape raised his wand and aimed it carefully at the mans back, who seemed to remain completely oblivious to Snapes presence in the room. He formed a non-verbal spell in his head and directed a violent jet of red light across the room where it broke upon the mans skin.

Snapes spell threw the mans form away from Rayne, whose seemingly lifeless body tumbled down to the office floor, and yet he continued to hover several feet in the air. The gleam that shone in his violently purple eyes gave Snape the impression that he would have liked to tear every appendage from the Professors body, but the man did not move upon him. Snape stood, his wand poised ready for a battle to ensue but instead the man turned and walked on air towards the open door. Snape was about to call out, to order the man to stop, even to hex him if the need came to it but, as he looked on, the man headed out into the corridor and began to literally fade away to nothing until there was no trace of him remaining.

Snape blinked hard, trying to be sure that his eyes had not played tricks on him, but the man definitely was not there anymore.

He was forced to drag his thoughts back into his office, where Rayne still lay in a crumpled and lifeless heap on the cold stone floor. The longer that she lay there the lower and lower her chances of surviving her ordeal grew and if she died then everything they wanted to know from her would be taken away with little to no hope of there being a second chance to learn it again. He hurried towards her, glass crunching beneath his footsteps, and knelt down by her side. A concerned frown crossed his brow as he moved her hair and pressed two fingers to her bruised neck in search of a pulse. It was there but very faint, she would need to get up to the hospital wing, and urgently.

***

"Severus. What on earth happened here?" A familiar voice drawled.

Snape looked up into the face of his silver-blonde haired companion. "It appears that Rayne had a visitor, and I don't believe that it was a social call."

"Is she alive?" Lucius asked bluntly.

"Barely," Snape replied, "I'll take her up to the hospital wing. My apologies Lucius but I believe our informative evening may have to be postponed." He stood and placed a charm over Raynes body so that it floated, as if carried by an invisible stretcher, and he began to make for the door.

"Not a problem Severus." Lucius replied silkily, "This little incident could make what she has to tell us all the more intriguing."