Chapter 25: The Very Heart Of Torment
{A/N: Here's Another Long Awaited Update...}
My Thanks To All My Readers and Reviewers...Enjoy S.S.
{"I've seen the wicked fruit of your vine...Destroy the man who lacks a strong mind...Human pride sings a vengeful song...Inspired by the times you've been walked on...What if you did?...What if you lied?...What if I avenge?...What if eye for an eye?...I know I can't hold the hate inside my mind...'Cause what consumes your thoughts controls your life...What if you did?...What if you lied?...What if I avenge?...What if eye for an eye?...What if your words could be judged like a crime?"}What If,Creed
Unknown Location, Unknown World...
Haunting images of a boy with sorrowful eyes of obsidian drowning beneath the depths of a sea of blackness had come to the slumbering Hermione Granger and she found herself trying desperately to aid him. His raven hair had been slick from the splashing tide of the unruly sea that threatened to over take him but he had been fighting, his pale naked form shivering in the wake of the bitter cold that surrounded him.
"Let me help you." said Hermione feeling a good deal of sadness as she reached out to him.
The boy simply ignored her attempt to assist him drawing back due to a combination of fear and resignation.
"Y-You can't." he replied terrified at the darkness that surrounded him.
He looked down at his trembling pale hands and then back at her.
"I'm sorry." he said as black tears streamed down his sallow pale cheeks. "I-I didn't mean to..."
Hermione had not been able to reply as the make-shift raft he had built tilted via the waves of the black sea and he was once again submerged beneath it's murky waters.
"PROFESSOR SNAPE!" shouted Hermione just before everything faded and she found herself transported elsewhere.
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Strange Bedroom, Snape's Estate, Unknown World...
Hermione Granger awoke to find herself once more in the confines of the strange bedroom as she noted her surroundings. Hot and salty tears continued to stream down her cheeks as she recalled the all to vivid images from her dream and the sorrowful situation that her former Potions Professor had been in due to the short sighted and borderline barbaric efforts of the formerly benevolent seeming Headmaster Of Hogwarts Albus Dumbledore. Tears she had not even noted upon awakening continued to stream down her cheeks as the vivid images of the tormented boy plagued her mind even in her waking moments.
"There has to be a way." she said as her visibly shaken amber eyes fell upon the tome still lying on the desk in the far corner of the room.
She quickly got up off the bed thinking nothing of sitting down despite having just awoken in an attempt to find the answer to her most pressing of questions.
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The Study, Snape's Estate, Unknown World...
The shattering of yet another drinking glass as it struck the far wall echoed in the otherwise silent room as the unnerving blue eyes of Albus Dumbledore's portrait studied the enraged and rather restless former Potions Professor as he attempted to get control over much of his wayward emotions.
"Severus..." began Dumbledore only to earn a murderous glare from the raven haired wizard as he set about grabbing the half empty bottle of firewhiskey left on the top of his desk and drinking it down from the source. "You must stop this madness...let them go...the dark lord is..."
"I AM THE DARK LORD!" shouted Snape bitterly. "Was this not your intent all along?"
"Severus...please." said Dumbledore attempting his best to get his once most trusted confidante to see reason.
"Severus...Please..." mocked the enraged wizard bitterly as he narrowed his dark eyes at the portrait of the man he murdered long ago. "Were those not the very words you said to me as your useless carcass went sailing from the top of the astronomy tower."
"Severus...the dark lord is...Tom is gone you can restore the balance that his twisted ideals disrupted if only you'd adhere to reason." continued Dumbledore as if his incessant rambling had any merit or means of reaching the man long buried behind the darkness that took over his once troubled heart.
"You act as if there is some choice on my part for how this all came about." hissed Snape his rage not yielding in the least nor his bitterness. "You chose this path long before any of them would have to pay the cost...An ancient spell that renders one incapable of love and by extension compassion."
"It was not my intention to..." began Albus.
"Lies." replied Snape seemingly amused. "All lies every word that ever fell from your decrepit pale lips had been lies...at least as far as I have been concerned...one wonders what you've said to anyone else."
"What I did...it was necessary at the time..." said Dumbledore still going on with his "greater good" speech.
It was a speech that Snape had been well and truly tired of and countered with some choice words of his own.
"If I cannot inspire love, than I shall cause fear." replied Snape once more quoting from the muggle Mary Shelly's most praised novel.
"Professor." said the voice of the most unseemly young bushy haired girl.
Snape's dark eyes flickered with amusement as they fell upon Hermione Granger. She seemed to have something of an epiphany as she moved close to the desk trying her best not to flinch when faced with the predatory gaze of her former Potions Professor.
"Miss Granger..." began Dumbledore as if trying to warn the young witch of her soulless captor's mood.
"Silence." hissed Snape turning his attention to Hermione once more. "The girl obviously came to me for a reason...given how she feels about my...company I must say she is quite the Gryffindor...charging head first into the serpent's lair."
Hermione rolled her eyes choosing to ignore his callous remarks.
"I've found something in the reading..." she began despite the level of uncomfortably when Snape's gaze had not left her. "It says the curse attaches when one is faced with a devastating event in the life of the host and it is difficult to shake once it seeps into the weakened portions of the soul."
Snape seemed amused if not impressed that her reading had gotten her that far.
"How very clever of you little witch." he remarked turning his attention to Dumbledore who's eyes widened as he pondered when that moment might have been.
"Severus?" he asked almost afraid to ask aloud what had finally weakened the will of the young wizard he'd come to love almost as if he were his own son despite the treachery that brought them all to such a darkened outcome.
"Was it in the great hall...when Professor McGonagall..." began Hermione finding it difficult to recount the events that lead to the assumed demise of The younger Headmaster in the wake of the second wizarding war's climax.
Snape said nothing merely choosing to walk out of the study leaving Hermione and Dumbledore to ponder when had indeed been the means that had broken the once brilliant and honorable wizard despite appearances.
"What happened to him Professor?" asked Hermione turning her attention to Dumbledore with a narrowed gaze. "You've already admitted to cursing him perhaps finding the source would go a long way to mending him and disabling the curse all together.
"There is but one event I can think of." replied Dumbledore with a sigh as he reflected on the harrowing words of Phineas Black long dead and yet so perceptive when it came to his Slytherin ilk. "I may have pushed him further than even he deemed possible for the sake of putting an end to the costly war. "
"Of course you did." said Hermione with a sigh.
She recalled how broken Snape had been following his return from being among death eaters.
"But I need to know what finally let the curse take over...from the time frame he had been battling it just fine up until a certain point and then...something changed." she said not at all willing to let this line of question go.
"Minerva changed him." replied Dumbledore in something of a haunted tone.
"What do you mean?" asked Hermione with an arched brow. "I know she nearly beat him to death but that didn't seem the thing that could destroy a man like Professor Snape given what he suffered due to Voldemort."
"No." agreed Dumbledore. "What I mean is..."
"Miss Granger..." said the voice of Minerva McGonagall as she entered the room.
There was a haunted look on her face as she made her way toward the younger witch.
"Professor...?" said Hermione suddenly understanding given Snape's activities.
"Severus...the curse had not been what compelled him then..." said Minerva trying her best to ignore the shame and anguish from that terrible night.
"I forced his hand and it quite understandably shattered him." admitted Dumbledore coming to terms with his hand in all of this misery.
"Commiserating on my behalf." said Snape with an eerie grin. "I'd say I'm touched but then you'd all know it to be a lie."
On instinct Professor McGonagall stood in front of Hermione as if trying to shield the younger witch from her unwanted husband's predatory gaze.
"Severus..." she began. "Let us help you."
"Help me?" he asked as if it had been a wild accusation. "I've told you before I rather like the new life I have."
He walked toward McGonagall pulling her away from Hermione and pressing his harsh pale lips into hers.
"SEVERUS LET THEM HELP YOU!" shouted Dumbledore when reason had fallen upon deaf ears.
Hermione seemed to be at a loss for words before she suddenly found herself with yet another epiphany.
"It wasn't Professor McGonagall." she said having a brief recollection of the look that filed across the dour wizard's face when he arrived at Hogwarts to find that Harry James Potter had been lying on the ground with his face caked in mud and his body bloodied following his final confrontation with Voldemort. "It was Harry."
Snape glared at her as a wave of fury seemed to seep beyond his chilling demeanor and petty taunting.
McGonagall's eyes widened as she too recalled the events just before she and Snape engaged in battle before she had been brought to this place and imprisoned by him.
Dumbledore looked upon the wizard in amazement.
"Severus...did you truly care for the boy?" he asked stunned in his own right.
Snape narrowed his eyes at Hermione.
"Your supposed theory means nothing to me." he said moving away from Professor McGonagall and toward her. "But just the same I believe your usefulness is at an end..."
"Severus." said McGonagall some how getting out her letter opener.
Snape seemed amused at the gesture.
"Now Minerva...this isn't the time for foreplay." he hissed wrapping his fingers around her throat only to draw back in pain as she pet his gaze.
Images of a boy murdered by the despot amid mud and unending rain water as he lied on his side never again to see the light of another day. The bloodied wizard paled from the moment of his birth and suffering the tortures of the damned via his curse and subsequent beating due to the rage of the then Headmistress.
"I..." he said before collapsing onto his knees as black tears streamed down his sallow pale cheeks.
Professor McGonagall had been on the verge of tears herself as she took in the brief glimpse of the cursed wizard she'd known since he'd been a child.
"Severus." she said unsure what to make of him.
Snape let out a furious growl before suddenly launching at the older witch wrapping his hands around her aged throat and attempting to strangle her for all she was worth.
"THIS IS YOUR FAULT!" he shouted enraged. "IF YOU HAD JUST MINDED YOUR OWN BUSINESS THE BOY WOULD STILL BE ALIVE!"
"Professor stop this...it doesn't help anything." said Hermione attempting to reason with the wizard before drawing her wand.
Snape pushed McGonagall away from him and charged after Hermione.
"Insufferable know it all...you have but one function and you can't even do that without veering into things that are of no concern to you." he hissed tackling her to the floor and pinning her at the wrists while he toward above her.
Hermione struggled to break free of his hold only to find his strength more than she could have ever hoped to out maneuver.
Snape glared at her his obsidian gaze blazing in the wake of his unleashed fury.
"I think I'll have you now...a small consolation when one considers the potential you will lack but a very just reward." said The deranged wizard pinning her arms above her head with one hand and ripping at her attire with the other.
From the onset of the fabric ripping Snape found himself impaled in the torso via the letter opener McGonagall had threatened him with more than once.
Hermione's eyes widened when she noted the spilling of the deranged wizard's blood being a sickly dark red almost black as his grip weakened on the young witch's wrists allowing her to get as far away from him as possible.
There was an eerie smile on Snape's face as he collapsed onto the hard wood floor.
Professor McGonagall helped Hermione to her feet and they raced out of the study attempting to find a place to stave off the inevitable onset of the deranged Severus Snape giving chase.