Chapter 41

Unexpected complications:

"What in the name of Merlin did you think you were doing?" Sirius yelled at his godson, as soon as they both had materialized on a stone plateau and he had overcome his first surprise.

The boy let go of his end of the quill and took a guilty step backwards, yet his eyes still carried a healthy amount of defiance.

"I had the right to come along. You cannot exclude me from this!" he answered stubbornly.

Damn it. Why did the boy have to choose this bloody moment to show that he was as fond of prohibitions as his father had been? Even if said prohibitions were only for his own good. Despite his grind, Sirius could not prevent the small swelling of pride in his heart at this thought, but he pushed this back. He would not let James ' son get away with it so easily. He had nothing against a bit of rule breaking now and then, and always thought it to be hilarious to annoy the teachers or his superiors and step all over some of their more un-fun rules, and then, preferably let someone else take the blame. That was one thing, but to risk your life for an absolutely stupid thing was something completely different.

"Do you really want to risk your life? For Snape?"

"Snape has risked his life for us too," Harry shot back.

"So what? That was his job. Nobody forced him. He knew what he was getting into."

"I know that too!"

"No, you don't know. You are still much too young and even if you tricked your way to be here now, then I will still prevent you from going into this quarry with me!" Sirius tried not to yell, but it was not simple. This sixteen-year-old would not manipulate him into something against which he had already decided.

Harry, however, only imitated his defensive attitude. "I am the same age as you were when you pulled off that stupid prank, which nearly made Remus become a murderer."

That hit home.

Sirius felt, as if its whole resistance had been drawn of him and he grimaced, as if this remark had been a physical blow. Back then, he had simply not thought about the possible consequences of this prank. He hadn't thought about what may have happened to Remus, had he truly seriously harmed Snape. All he had wanted was to get Snape off his high horse. He hadn't really seriously thought it through. At least until later, when the werewolf had learned what had happened and had looked at him with such disappointed and betrayed eyes, which Sirius would never again forget in his life. Eyes that had haunted him often in the cold and lonely nights and days in Azkaban.

"Please, Sirius," Harry continued. "I'm already having nightmares since the first vision. What I did was very stupid and unjust and this is my only chance to come clear with my conscience. Even if Snape isn't alive any longer, then I at least know that I did everything in my power."

Sirius considered this for a moment. Even if he, deep in his heart, did not really regret playing quite some jokes at Snape's expense, he still understood the way Harry was feeling. James too, had always had those occasional pangs of conscience and as it seemed, Harry had perfected the art of the self-incrimination even better than his father had done. Without doubt a gift of his mother Lily, who herself had always carried a large dislike towards any form of unfairness.

"All right," he finally gave in. "You will, however, remain behind me at all times, understood?"

Harry's face lightened up instantly and he nodded enthusiastically.

Sirius turned and strode over towards the dark hole, which gaped in the steep cliff further down. The Gryffindor did not know this quarry and this alone was enough to let a sense of nervousness settle in the pit of his stomach. This, together with the fear that some Death Eaters might still be here, made him choose to transform into his Animagus form and he, the sensitive canine nose held high, tested the air around him for traitorous smells, paying close attention as well for noises that didn't belong here. Although he could not constitute the trace of another humans' scent beside Harry's, his instincts, increased in his Animagus form, cried to him that this place was a place of death and violence, and that he had better stay away from it. His human intelligence, however, let him move forward, his body tense and his mind alert while he didn't stop to look at Harry who was walking behind him.

But they encountered nothing and no one that was trying to block their way and they were able to enter the quarry unhindered. Sirius retransformed and pulled out his wand, trusting that he could defend Harry and himself in this form more effectively.

The quarry did not look as Sirius had imagined it. The soil was even and led downward in a comfortable inclination, while every few meters, a torch threw its jerky flickering over the stone surface. After a few dozens meters the wall as well smoothed out and on both sides, heavy stone doors interrupted it at every few meters, where no side corridors -- of which there seemed to be quite a few of -- were.

The further they walked, the stickier and hotter the air became and Sirius guessed that the caves had originally been dug so deeply into the mountain that they almost reached the lava in the interior of the planet that heated the quarry, like the Biar Kobolds had the habit of doing whenever possible. Voldemort must have adapted the quarry to his needs.

Sirius moved on, trusting that the Dark Wizard, like he had announced it in his letter, would probably mark the door and therefore the way as well, if he had to follow one of the smaller corridors. So he kept on walking down the main passage, which was the only one lit anyway, until it ended at the top of a flight of steep stairs.

With a glance at Harry, who still followed him, his wand on the ready as well, he descended the steps.

There was only one single solitary torch remaining on the wall at the foot of the stairs before the corridor further down became swallowed in pitch-black shadows. Beside the torch in the wall was a single door, a skull from whose mouth a snake coiled burned into the thick wood of the door.

Voldemort's Dark Mark.

"That must be it," whispered Harry.

"Stay behind me, Harry," Sirius instructed. He did not trust Voldemort and somehow all this had been much too easy so far. It reeked of a trap.

He raised his wand a bit higher and reached for the door's handle with his free hand. With a last, encouraging breath he pushed it down, opening the door -- and immediately jumped back, his face twisted in disgust, when a most horrible stench immediately assaulted him from the room. Instinctively, he slammed the door shut again.

Harry also yielded back and choked, while his face took on an unhealthy greenish colour.

"Oh, God, what is that? Poison?" he choked, pinching his nose shut and trying as hard as he could not to vomit right there.

Sirius instantly levelled his wand at Harry's nose. "Aolere."

He repeated the same with himself and immediately the stomach-turning stench disappeared. But Sirius ' confidence in fulfilling Dumbledore's request to the old wizard's satisfaction had expired in that moment the stench had hit him. It was not poison. Sirius knew this smell. It was the stench of decay. The sweetly, nausea triggering reek, which frequently had drifted over into its cell when the guards of Azkaban had 'accidentally ' overlooked that a prisoner had died. Sirius was sure that this had happened for the mere reason to show the prisoners how much worth, even in death, they held at Azkaban. Never in life would he forget that stench.

Harry relaxed once again, as soon as his nose lost its ability to smell anything, and he looked at his godfather expectantly.

"That is no poison, Harry," Sirius reassured. "You stay here!"

He faced the door once more to open it again, but a hand on his arm stopped him.

Harry looked at him with worried eyes. "Don't tell me that you intend to enter that room. What if you're wrong and it is some poison anyway?"

Sirius shook his head. "It's not, Harry. I know this stench. But I will go in there alone. If my assumption is correct, then Snape's body will be behind this door and I must retrieve him. For Dumbledore. It is not necessary that we both are exposed to the sight."

Harry chewed on the inside his cheek nervously. He probably had an idea now, about what the stench meant and the horror and the abhorrence about the conclusions he drew were clearly written on his face.

"Go upstairs and keep your eyes open, so that we're not surprised by any eventual remaining Death Eaters, Harry. I will go get Snape's body."

Harry nodded and started wordlessly to climb up the stairs.

Sirius sighed softly. Harry was curious by nature and the Animagus did not trust him, that the boy would try to take a peek, despite his admonition. Yet, if he gave him something to do, a task to keep him occupied, then it would probably keep that curiosity in check. Sirius didn't any longer believe that there was still someone here. Voldemort wanted to give them the right message by letting them find Snape's decaying corpse. Sirius felt no real need to confront this sight either, and the thought of even transporting the body of putrid meat sent shudders up his spine. But it had to do it. For Dumbledore.

He closed his eyes for a moment to collect himself and then pushed the door handle down with determination, pulling the door open and stepping into the room.

But the sight that greeted him was much worse than anything he could have anticipated. He had thought that he would be finding Snape's dead body, but there were dozens of corpses in the small room behind the marked door. All of them thrown carelessly away in a heap, like waste. The stage of decompose of the bodies further down was long since completed and only pale bones remained of them, whereas the corpses on the top of the pile must have been dead for no longer than a day, even if the heat down here attacked the bodies quite fast.

Sirius' first impulse was to flee from this horror, as fast as he could, but he forced himself to stay. He had to find Snape. Or what was left of him by now.

The soil was slimy and dirty and Sirius did his best to not think about what he stepped on as he walked into the room. The area was illuminated by a single torch beside the door, its gloomy light letting the scene appear even more repulsive. Sirius was glad that he had disabled his sense of smell, but the sight of the dried blood, the empty eye sockets in half decayed faces and black putrefied meat and intestines, which penetrated through slit chest and abdomens, were enough to nearly offer his breakfast a return trip ticket.

But when he finally saw the corpse of a small girl with slit neck, her blue sightless eyes wide in a mute terror, burned by death onto her young face, all the horror, which he had ever witnessed in Azkaban and during the war didn't help any longer and he had to pry his eyes forcefully from her.

And then he saw him on top of all the other corpses. Or better, he saw a black foot, covered by burns and the remains of black trousers, from which the foot produced. The trousers were nothing unusual per se and many wizards wore such kind of clothing, yet Sirius knew instinctive that this leg belonged to Snape. He pulled the torch away from its holder. Holding it before himself, almost like a shield, he approached, doing his best not to pay any more attention to the other corpses and evading it carefully to touch any of them.

In the light of the torch more and more of Snape's body was revealed. The second foot, which looked just as bad as the other one, the leg clad in the pitiful remains of black and partly burned trousers, then the starved body, covered so much with dirt, dried blood and bruises that hardly another centimetre of the normal sallow skin colour was visible. Snape's eyes were closed and lay deep in the sockets and his jaw and cheekbone stood out unnaturally sharp. His cracked and blood encrusted lips were half opened, making a row of yellowish teeth visible.

"By all good gods..." Sirius breathed. What had they done to Snape? This would hit Dumbledore hard. Now he was infinitely glad that he had not let Harry come along into the room. He brushed his outer robe off his shoulder. Better to wrap Snape's body in it. He'd rather not let Harry see it, or the boy's guilt would only explode tenfold. He moved another step closer to the bodies and only then did he notice the complete destruction of Snape's left hand, which had now come into his line of vision. A deep hole gaped in its centre and the fingers were twisted into bloody claws. His eyes moved unwillingly to the other hand, which looked exactly the same, with only the difference of a rolled piece of parchment, sticking through the gap of Snape's right hand.

Again he choked the threatening nausea down, but then he remembered Voldemort's words in the letter. That must be the announced message, of which he had written. He probably should read it, Sirius thought before he exercised magic on Snape. Maybe it was a trap, which would set off something, as soon as he tried making the corpse float or the like?

Reluctantly, Sirius stepped around the pile of corpses, until he was close enough by the hand to touch it. Carefully he reached for the upper end of the parchment and grabbed it with a disgusted grimace between the fingertips of his index and thump. As he gave a tentative pull on the parchment, the hand followed the tug and was lifted several centimetres, before the parchment role slipped from the wound with an ugly noise and the hand fell back onto the mangled ribcage of another corpse, where it had laid before, and a quiet, hardly audible groan echoed from Snape.

Sirius bolted back, as if he would have been shouted at and the parchment fell from his fingers.

That noise.

It took one second, before his thoughts caught up with his subconscious realization and he was at Snape's side immediately again, moving as close as possible without touching the other corpses. With revulsion, he laid his hand upon the centre of the bony chest. There it was. Hardly noticeably, but the ribcage slowly rose and fell beneath his hand.

Snape was alive.

Sirius' eyes widened. He had seen much in his life so far. Cruelties almost too much to think about and the darkest sides in a human life, but how someone in such a condition could survive was beyond him.

He tore himself from his astonishment. Snape lived, but he looked bad off, and his condition would probably not last. The man had to be brought out of here and into medical care as fast as possible. He pointed his wand on Snape to make him float off the heap and out of this nightmare here, when he remembered the parchment.

Hurriedly, he moved back, lifted it from the ground and unrolled it.

Hello Dumbledore,

So, you've found him then. If you're lucky, he's even still alive. As you certainly have already assessed, Severus did spend quite a rough time as my guest. Despite this, I am confident that Poppy Pomfrey possesses enough knowledge to take sufficient care of him and to restore the main part of his anatomy.

Unfortunately this would also considerably diminish my revenge, so I've taken the liberty to magically overload him. Any attempt to use magic on him, be it with a wand or a potion, will further overload and harm him, even kill him perhaps.

I have left you enough freedom to transport him once with the help of a Portkey or by Apparating, but that is all that I am willing to do. He shall suffer, before he dies. The transport will probably further weaken him, and after that I'd even be careful to bring him anywhere near magical wards.

Now I wish you much pleasure with your puzzle named Severus Snape.

Lord Voldemort.

T.B.C.

Last note from Lilith:Even if it makes my heart bleed, we will have to mourn a casualty in the next chapter. What we all have learned to love through all the books and fanfics will be no more. Sniff Please don't be too cruel with me because of this sacrifice for the sake of the plot of this fic.

Thanks to Slytherin's silver snake and Sadistra for the Betaing:-D