He got to Dash Morell too late. He found him in an asylum, drooling on himself from a botched lobotomy that attempted to cure his seizures. Morell thought he'd be safe hiding in a concentration of muggles. He committed himself to lie low, get off the Ministry's radar, and recover from injuries inflicted during war.
He had scampered away from Voldemort's camp with a number of vengeful curses assailing him. A particularly nasty Tourrettes jinx appeared to muggle doctors like severe schizophrenia, and left Morell too disconnected to defend himself at times. Given enough time, it would wear off, but the doctors who performed his prefrontal leukotomy didn't know that. When Snape thwarted the hospital's best security to confront him, he found Morell locked in an upper tower, using a stash of bread ties, twisted into a long antennae wire, hiding mice corpses behind loose baseboards and playing with them. He'd been practicing the killing curse, utilizing what little magic could be channeled through the wiry ties. Snape walked right through the halls, having studied the layout of the building before enacting his plan to kidnap Morell. Muggle security guards and cameras were easy to distract and disable.
His appearance induced instant recognition from the sputtering, balding wizard looking up at him.
Morell's state, obese and mentally compromised, inspired doubt as to whether the former Death Eater would recognize him. Snape remembered an affluent wizard, if not good looking, then groomed to make up for it, and confident that between mastery and money, he could get anything that other men used their appearances to get. Now he sat, playing with dead things. His scalp puffed like rising, sweaty dough beneath congealed strands slicking the sides of his head. Something like a sheet slid amorphously down the swells of his excess body meat, staining where the creases trapped between folds of skin. Old stains smeared the front of him and ammonia stung Snape's nostrils from ten feet away. The scent of sour bacteria told him how long it had been since anyone tried to help this man bathe.
His conscience remained firm as he considered the night that Morell, and four other wizards, changed Harry's body. Far from aloof, the damaged man began to shake as he recognized his old colleague.
"S-s-severus! It's you." Even without the missing pieces of his brain, his crimes brought Snape's identity, and why he was there, into sharp focus. Snape saw it in his panic. It was in the way his hunched frame prickled, rising like a cat's spine, at the thought of what he was there to do.
He dropped his little wire wand and held his palms up to ward off any attack.
"I should've known. If anyone could find me, it's you..."
"This is not a house call."
"I know. I know you've come to kill me."
"I've come to get answers." There was no point in making threats and wasting time. If he'd had more time, Morell might've been right.
"Then to kill me." Morell nodded, his lips spreading into a crazed grin. "I know you too well. Even though we all followed orders. Even you followed orders. You're not going to let us get away with it. I told them. He'll come for us."
Snape considered this, not bothering to deny the truth in it.
"I have not come to kill you, I've come to retrieve you. You're leaving with me."
Illogical laughter tumbled out of Morell. "Breaking me out of here? What, just to torture me? Your hands are just as stained as mine are. As all of us. Collin murdered his own wife, so that Voldemort wouldn't torture her because of her muggle blood. Voldemort convinced all of us to do unspeakable things. Even you. Do not take your strange ideas of justice out on me now. I've lost everything, my wife, my children, even my magic. They cut it out of my head. I can only make dead mice dance with a bit of aluminum. That's my only entertainment. I'm no threat to anyone anymore. Surely you can see that."
Snape's mouth went tight. "For a lobotomized wizard, you can still connect impeccable reasoning. One who thinks, doesn't require a wand in order to be a threat. You're just as dangerous as you ever were, magic or no. You could be using your magic to stall your death right now."
"So you admit why you're here. What right have you to judge me, when you were right there with us? I've paid for my crimes, have you? You're the one who fooled everybody. You got away. You tricked them all. Why kill me now?"
"You self-absorbed idiot. I wouldn't subject myself to the miserable sight of you, unless I had no other choice. I certainly did not escape the reach of that reptilian fiend, to come back for the likes of you. The fact is, you have answers that I need. You are one of five medical experts who performed a very customized and complex curse, and I need to know its counter. I need it undone. For that, I need you alive and cooperative. As long as you are, you shall live. Consider that my judgment and my mercy."
Morell's mouth hung open, revealing a glossy tongue and the excessive salivation of an aging man who didn't realize his mouth was open. "I knew it. I knew you'd never forgive us for that."
"Will you help me or not? We leave now."
"Or what, you'll kill me?"
Snape rolled his eyes. "What is it with you? I'm offering you escape for answers."
"Then you're going to kill me. I know your work, Severus. Voldemort took to you for a reason. Don't forget that I shared rank with you and saw what you did to earn his favor. I may have lost my mind, literally, but I haven't forgotten how good you are with your hands. Slight of hand, I should say."
"It's true that I will never forgive you and your colleagues. Are you going to give me answers, or are you going to rot in this place?"
"None of us wanted to do that to those boys. Either of them. The curse was benevolent to Draco. It has his father's protection in it. Harry just got in the way, so it took to him like a foreign virus. It was more of an attack for him than it was for Draco. We didn't mean to harm him. "
"Let's go where we can talk."
"I can't apparate without my full magic. You'll shred me if you try."
This gave Snape pause. "Fine, we'll leave through the door." He made a jabbing motion with his wand, summoning a holographic mist to surround them and reflect the environment around them. It wasn't complete invisibility, but a very effective camouflage to non-magic eyes.
"We'll use mine. I'll take you."
"No, no. That's how they got Lonas." He stammered as if unsure he wanted Snape to know the full truth. "Dansby Lonas. He was one of the five of us. He designed the curse."
"I know who he is." There was no fondness at the memory of Voldemort's top ranking mediwizards.
"Who he was. They cornered us, the aurors. They found me and him by illegal means. Used Goblin magic with a tracker on our wands. They got their own justice. Turned us into ticking time bombs, nothing Ministry approved about it. Stripped our magic without evidence, without a trial. Hexed us to implode upon any attempt to apparate. I stayed put. Lonas risked it. By the grace that has kept us both alive, I swear to you, Dansby, the boy I grew up with, the wizard initiated into our secrethood, husband and father who survived Voldemort's madness by the sweat of his brow, and deep regret in his heart, turned inside out before my eyes."
His lips quivered as if he were seeing it all over again. Snape denied him the reward of reacting.
"Hell of a weapon. I can't describe how it happened. Like a puffer fish. The core of him. Entrails, organs, brain, all burst through his skin in an instance. He swole up, but it was all grey matter instead of face, shredded heart and intestines sprung and unstrung like dripping slinkies. Lonas didn't deserve that. Those bastards kept him alive with magic. Dark magic. The very methods they were convicting us by. His raw, exposed muscle kept splitting, spitting parts out of him. Even bones. I can't describe those sounds. Not screams. His mouth was long gone, churned to nothing beneath all that meat. They reduced him to hamburger. That's what the apparation did once the hex was upon us. It was such a vile, nasty affair, even the aurors were startled by the violence of it. He lay on the ground becoming ground beef, the way those old firecracker snakes, black snakes we called them as children, sizzle and spark and twist grotesquely until they're nothing but a mangle of winding char. He turned into something like that.
"I don't know how I had the presence of mind. I don't even think I was being rational. I just ran. They didn't catch me. I hid for days. I avoided magical people. I wandered along until I thought of where to hide myself."
"And you arrived at this?" Skepticism laid bare.
"I was injured, and not a clear thought in my head. I couldn't always control my body. It did things. Jumped. Twitched, call out when I didn't mean to. I was damaged and needed time to recover from their torture. I had no where else to go."
When people lie, they broadcast fear. In order to process fear, brain chemistry changes, releasing flood responses at a cellular level. Anyone can be afraid while telling the truth. Only liars gave off a mixed biochemical cocktail that broke the protein spectrum of light and enzymes interplaying through their skin. To Snape, who possessed energetic sight, those people looked short circuited and dim, felt stagnant when they talked, and gave off choppy rhythms of disconnected intention and language. Even smooth talkers gave him the impression of people navigating mud trenches while balancing china teacups. That was because they couldn't lie without looking at the truth, to know how to avoid it.
He, himself, was quite skilled at it. Lucky for him, he hadn't met many wizards with the gift of sight. Most could see the supernatural spirits and creatures that shared their physical plain, if it was in close enough proximity to their belief systems. But few could see the layers of valid realities which stretched beyond translation of the physical eyes. He attributed his gifts to his mother's protection, and the sacrifices of unborn bodies prepared but never used, before deciding that Morell was telling the truth.
They were either going to have to fly on a modified broom under a ton of discretion wards, or use non-magical transport. He would just have to see to the possibility of restoring what he could of Morell's health once he got him out of here. When he opened the door for the humbled wizard to go first, Morell nervously hoisted his weight on shaking legs. Snape could see that they were not going to get far like this. Already, a plan was forming. Get him to the closest hotel, scan his magic and re-connect as many points of intersection as possible. If necessary, graft some of your own to him, to get him to the underground cell prepared for him and the others.
Morell looked out the door, wide-eyed. "There's ten orderlies and three security guards on every floor. I don't think I trust myself not to get us caught."
"Go on. Leave the thinking to me. They won't be able to see you."
Morell started forward. His face couldn't hide the fact that he simply did not have Snape's faith. He leaned out, looked both ways down the landing, then out over the railing. A big open square presented a drop-down view of all twelve levels of patient rooms, game rooms, therapy gyms, and visitor lounges. Stacked, right-angle stairs looked more like an apartment complex than a hospital. It was one of the nicer, newer wings, designed for low risk patients and the families who visited them. Morell had no family. As he leaned out the door and looked back at Severus, he gave pause. "It's unusually quiet tonight. I like it."
Snape was about to tell him to start walking for an exit, when Morell turned, "You know," he said, "A new hospital is better than an old prison. I wish I could help you, my old friend. But I can't do this anymore."
Gloss unclouded in his eyes and he looked at Snape with greater clarity than he had before. "If I leave with you, this torment will just go on. I've done such terrible things. There's no peace for me in this world. And none for you either. Thank you. Thank you for freeing me."
In that next instant, he was gone. His foot hoisted on the railing, and his body vaulted, rolling across steel supports faster than Snape would've thought someone of that size was capable of. It made him swear that Morell had plenty of magic inside him after all. He fell like a cannon ball. Dull grunts and a metalic thud was all the noise and fanfair to be heard as Dash Morell hit an obstruction on the way down, and ended his life.
At first, Snape suspected the use of magic to save himself. But when he looked over the railing, Morell's body lay twelve stories below, displayed in an optical illusion of rectangular levels. He apparated quickly to the body, landing in blood. Morell remained intact for the most part, but teeth were everywhere. He must've hit his head, particularly his dislodged jaw, on the way down.
That was unfortunate. He stepped back and wiped the blood from his boot by sliding his soles. He gave Morell one second of acknowledgment as his once fellow colleague in a lifetime of charades and darkness. He walked around the body, to the side clean of blood. He let the toe of his boot touch an arm. He could tell that this wizard's spirit was getting away, already done with the body even though it still had a fading pulse. No point in letting a perfectly good corpse go to waste. If Morell wouldn't talk alive, would he talk, bound to a dead body? Since there was no risk now, with apparating, Snape flicked his wand and Morell's body disappeared with him.
