He first felt the silence, a bone-deep deadness of sound which burrowed deep into his body and chilled him to the core. Darkness wrapped around him in a grotesque parody of a loving embrace, dragging him deeper and deeper into the nothingness where he belonged. Or did he belong there?

He was frightened to realize that he didn't know.

Time passed, uncaring of his pleas to stop, to turn back, to save him from the eternity of darkness and coldness and nothingness which spun around him mockingly, gleefully. There was nobody to help him, nobody, nobody there...

Until it appeared.

Until it spoke.

Severus, it whispered, a warm little beacon of light, so near yet so unattainable. Severus, my childe. Let go. Fly in the winds of chance, dance in the sands of time. Be free. Severus...

With a gasp, Severus jerked up. Struggling to breathe under the near crushing weight of fear and loneliness, he took a while to realize where he was. Breathe. He dug his fingers into the hard ground, relishing its solidness, its presence. Breathe. Slowly. Calm. Calm. Just a dream. A blasted nightmare. He clenched his teeth and dug his fingers into the ground even harder. He wanted, needed a dose of Dreamless Sleep, but knew that he had no chance of brewing it here. Severus thought of the possibility that he might forever be denied that little luxury, and felt sick.

Something suddenly moved in the periphery of his sight. Severus twisted his head sharply around, body instantly on guard. Sometime during the night, he'd forced himself to loosen the magical death-grip he'd been struggling to maintain on his protective charms. It had taken awhile, but he had eventually managed to separate common sense from paranoia, to wrench his mind into, not just knowing, but truly believing that he was no longer in the War. Acting like that loathsome Moody here would just drive him right into magical exhaustion.

No harm in staying alert, though, Severus reminded himself firmly, as he realized that he'd been poised to attack...a crow. Which was calmly preening its uninjured wing and staring at the jumpy human out of bright beady eyes. Severus scowled at the bird, feeling vaguely silly. It was ridiculous how tame that bird was. Once he had applied medicine to its wing, it hadn't cawed, hadn't shied away when he moved, hadn't shown any fear at all.

Come to think of it, though...it was almost too tame. Severus narrowed his eyes at it in suspicion.

The bird narrowed its eyes at him in return.

What the...! Severus jerked away from it. Birds were certainly not so intelligent as to mock people. Something is...different about this bird. In fact, something is different about me. He had never cared much about animals outside of their usefulness as potions ingredients. Why had he taken the bird in and healed its wing? Why had he changed?...What had changed him?

Carefully, Severus directed a narrow, subtle beam of Legilimency at the bird. Gently, he let his mind skim the surface of the animal's thoughts, looking for inconsistencies.

Of course, it might help if I knew what passes as an inconsistency in a bird, Severus thought with exasperation. Legilimizing an animal was strongly discouraged, mainly because of the danger in penetrating the minds of creatures with utterly alien thought processes to men. Of course, this increased the hardships of learning Legilimency, as it was illegal to Legilimize Muggles, and no sane wizard would let an amateur practice on their mind.

Correction: no consenting wizard, Severus' lips pinched together sourly, as he attempted to find something, anything, which might explain the crow's strange behavior. Memories of how two Slytherin seniors had nearly ripped his mind apart with their bumbling, substandard Legilimency skills kept him distracted from his task. The subsequent memory of his retaliation, however, brought a grim smile to his lips – he had learnt Occlumency and Legilimency as quickly as he could, and turned the tables upon them, when they had least expected it.

A croaking caw from the bird brought him back to the present. The crow was fidgeting, showing uneasiness in its thoughts. Which, as far as Severus could tell, was made up of completely normal things like sleeping, eating, and wonder at the big strange being looking at him. And yet, Severus couldn't let go, couldn't shake the strange feeling that something was different about this bird. Shielding his mind tightly, he strengthened the beam of Legilimency and delved deeper, pushed past the crow's surface thoughts...

And involuntarily let out a harsh cry as their minds clicked. Agony lanced through his head as his shields crumbled and disappeared. He fought to wrench free, to stop, to release the link that was forming, strengthening, even as the crow let out a pained shrieking caw of its own, even as the caws of other crows rang out around the clearing...

When, suddenly, the link – or, links? – snapped fully into place. Through the throbbing pain, Severus vaguely felt, rather than saw, a flock of crows swoop in, hiding their injured comrade from view and surrounding him completely. Hah, he thought dizzily, fighting to remain conscious, I knew there was something odd about the crow.

Severus was forced to admit that he was beginning to understand why his glare had always seemed so intimidating to schoolchildren. There was something particularly disconcerting about how soulless a pair of pitch black eyes could look. Or, in his case, a whole flock of pitch black eyes.

"So," he finally spoke aloud, as the silence was beginning to unnerve him. If he hadn't been the recipient of the crows' speculation right now, he thought wryly, he might even appreciate how utterly like him they were. He, too, had employed the Silent Strategy and the Black Look before. However, he was too impatient to play their game. "For all intents, you are now my familiars. I believe that you should have gained the ability to comprehend human speech now?"

His words seemed to trigger something within the crows. Suddenly, an onslaught of feeling, of presence, of crow seemed to resound within him. Us, it said. Ours. Flock. Comrade. Flock. Severus gasped as he was overwhelmed by a wealth of knowledge, by memories of forests and waters and flying and eating and nesting and oneness and...

It felt like an eternity before his consciousness returned to the little clearing. Looking at the crows – no, they called themselves Crebain – Severus felt an unfamiliar tightness in his throat. Albus had often spoken of his closeness with Fawkes, of how Fawkes was more than a pet, more than a friend, more than a lover to him. However, all that he'd told Severus had not prepared Severus to feel any of those feelings himself. He no longer wondered at why he had cared for the injured Craban. His instincts had guided him well in this case.

"Alright," he said, surprised by how hoarse he sounded. Had he cried out? He hoped not. "Alright. Thank you." The Crebain cawed affirmatively.

It's amazing how much animals know about people, Severus thought reflectively as he walked along the narrow dirt trail. He'd decided to seek out the closest large human city, and the Crebain had immediately clamored to guide him there. This was only one of the many ways in which his familiars had proven useful. Earlier in the morning, they'd helped him filch some clothing from the nearby village. The tunic and shoes he wore now was a far sight more comfortable than the lopsided clothes he had attempted to Transfigure from leaves the night before.

Also, though the Crebain had no concept of grammar and vocabulary, they did recognize certain human noises and could imitate human voices convincingly. Severus planned to slowly decipher the strange new language, as well as review all that he'd learnt about their new world. About strange beings like Elves and Dwarves, about strange things like magical rings and dark castles, about terrible people like...Sauron.

The thought of there being a Dark Lord here brought a soft frown to his face. He was disappointed but unsurprised at the fact that this world wasn't as peaceful as it'd seemed, but that wasn't the main problem here. The fact that his familiars had been well-known spies of the Dark was going to have far-reaching consequences. The Light side would doubtlessly be suspicious if he showed up in their cities and villages with Crebain in tow. Similarly, their old master, Saruman, was likely to investigate their disappearance and be alarmed to find out that a new magic-user had stolen his spies.

All these problems, however, were balanced out by the fact that the little spies had given him priceless information about the war. As a fellow spy, Severus could recognize the importance of all that they'd witnessed, even if he couldn't fully understand yet what was going on.

Glancing to the side, he smiled as his little Crebain guides swooped around playfully. The Craban which he'd healed, in particular, flew about with unconstrained glee. If I could, I'd apologize to Longbottom. Toying with his familiar had been an unnecessarily cruel act. Though I still maintain that it is the most useless familiar I have ever seen. Toad, indeed...

A warning feeling through the link distracted Severus from his thoughts. Looking ahead, he saw a couple of the Crebain scouts flying towards him agitatedly. Dead monsters, they sent, filling Severus' mind with the image of large goblin-like creatures. Unlike the goblins he'd been used to, however, these looked rather more vile. Hurt humans. Dying humans. Images of groaning men now assaulted him.

Severus stopped. Considered. His first reaction was to avoid the little battlefield. He was free now. He had no obligation to help strangers, nor did he feel any inclination to be sickeningly noble or Gryffindorishly heroic. For a moment, he toyed with the idea of asking the Crebain to guide him away from the battlefield, away from civilization, away into the mountains where he could live alone and free...

But no. As much as the idea attracted the fierce loner within Severus, he knew that it was far too unrealistic. Without his magic, he was ill-equipped to live out his days in the wilds. He was better off sticking to his original plan of finding a large city and creating a quiet life for himself there with his little familiars. And in the interests of attracting as little attention to himself as possible, it wouldn't hurt to further observe the people of this world so that he might gain a better understanding of the culture.

Mind made up, Severus continued along the path, drawing closer and closer to where two Rangers had just battled against a group of Orcs.