Kill or Be Killed

Kill or Be Killed

Chapter Two: Memories Forgotten

Severus looked at the clock. The train would be arriving in twenty minutes. He quickly changed out of his work robes and into his more formal ones. He glanced at the clock. Five minutes.

He sighed, but then a thought flashed across his mind, 'I'll get to see this mysterious new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. Surely they wouldn't miss the Welcoming Feast.' With that, the infamous Potions Master ascended to the Great Hall intent on meeting the new teacher.

As he stepped into the Great Hall, he savoured the last few minutes of quietness. A quick look around showed him that almost everyone was in place for the arrival of the students and the new sorting. Snape stalked up to the Head Table and glanced around. The Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher's chair was still empty. He scowled. New teachers were always present at the Welcoming Feast. He glanced up at the ceiling. It was completely overcast. The moon was hiding and not a star was to be seen. The scowl was firmly in place when the students arrived. He hardly noticed what was going on around him. He ignored the First Year Sorting. All he could think about was where the new teacher was and why he hadn't shown up. Snape's brain clicked back on when Dumbledore began to speak.

"My dear students and colleagues, welcome to a new year. This year will be a struggle. Voldemort has come back into power," he paused and let this sink in. "Some of you have lost friends and family to the war already. I am truly sorry. None of us will go untouched by this, indeed even now we are affected. We must forever remember those that we have lost. Please, let us stand and raise a glass to the memory of Ronald Weasley, Jenna Wylette, Adam Trip, Mark Travis, Ana Kalin, Justin Finch-Fletchley, and Mathew Wallace." Throughout the Great Hall benches scraped and glasses were raised silently. Sniffles and sobs were heard all around in the silence.

Severus stood and looked out at the silent student body. It was definitely going to be a long and difficult year. Snape glanced at Dumbledore. The Headmaster hadn't told him the names of the students who had been killed. Of course Severus had known that some of them had been killed in the terror attack on Diagon Alley, but he never asked the details of attacks. He didn't want to know. He just did as he was told, kept an ear open for Dumbledore, brewed whatever potion the Dark Lord wanted to be brewed, and stayed as far away from it all as he could. Snape dared a glance around the room. The Hufflepuffs were all silently standing, holding their glasses with tears running down their faces. The Ravenclaw table had a stifling quiet to it. The Gryffindors were in total silence, except for the occasional sobs. Snape quickly glanced over to his own table. They were just short of jovial and a number of them remained sitting. It turned his stomach. He was about to berate them, but Dumbledore closed his eyes and quietly continued.

"These were your classmates. No one goes untouched when this sort of hatred is allowed to run rampant. If we are to survive we must ban together. We must be loyal to each other. My students and colleagues, ban together. Without each other we will surely fall. Now, with that said, let us eat and enjoy the company of each other."

'How many of these children are already lost to the Dark Lord? How many have already sold their souls to the devil among us? How many have actually been on attacks? How many are already branded? Useless questions, Severus, you will never know. You don't want to know.' Snape jerked himself out of the morbid thoughts that attacked his mind and shook his head slightly. He was about to get up to excuse himself from the table but was stopped when a barn owl swooped into the Great Hall. All eyes were on it, silently warding the owl away. Hoping it wasn't a letter from the Ministry baring bad news. A collective sigh of relief was let loose when it dropped its letter on to Snape's lap. He looked at the letter for a moment and opened it slowly.

'Professor Snape, I'm sorry that I wasn't there tonight to meet you. If it is possible for you to meet me in the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom in the morning during the first class I would be greatly appreciative. I can then explain everything to both you and the students at the same time. Yours sincerely.' he read.

He scowled but said nothing. Of course he would go. His damnable curiosity was too high not to go. He excused himself from the Head Table and walked from the Great Hall down to his dungeon rooms.

He paced his worn rug. His mind was a torrent of thoughts, each one pulling him in a different direction. Finally, at three in the morning he gave in to the exhaustion and went to bed, his mind still buzzing...

He woke in the morning and glanced at the clock. It was twenty minutes until the first class of the day. He cursed fluently in several languages and dressed quickly.

He was up and moving towards the Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom by the time class had started. He paused halfway down the corridor. Loud, raucous music was playing. Severus stopped and listened.

Bright is the moon high in starlight

Chill is the air cold as steel tonight

We shift

Call of the wild

Fear in your eyes

It's later than you realized

Shape shift

Nose to the wind

Shape shift

Feeling I've been

Move swift

All senses clean

Earth's gift

Back to the meaning of life

I feel I change

Back to a better day

Hair stands on the back of my neck

In wildness is the preservation of the world

So seek the wolf in thyself

Shape shift

Nose to the wind

Shape shift

Feeling I've been

Move swift

All senses clean

Earth's gift

Back to the meaning of wolf and man

Snape's brow furrowed and he continued down the corridor. He paused at the door to the room when he heard a guitar riff start up. He decided to put an end to the caterwauling right away and opened the door and stepped through.

His brow furrowed even more. There was an entire band set up in the centre of the room. There were no desks anymore, only cushions, and those were set up along the sides of the room where the students now sat and stood. He turned his attentions back to the band wailing away in the centre. On the drums was a man who looked about twenty-five. He had an auburn shock of hair and was a little stocky. He was banging away with his shirt off. Tattoos covered his arms and back. To his left, on the bass guitar was a short woman with her mousy brown hair put up in a hasty bun. She was in shorts and a sports bra. To her left was another man on the guitar. He was tall and thin, almost to the point of looking sick. He was in a short sleeved shirt and black jeans. Like the other man he too was tattooed. To his left and the drummer's right stood a well built man in his thirties. His shirt was off and he had a number of tattoos as well. His black hair was long and he had it braided back. He was belting out about misery when he noticed Snape out of the corner of his eye. Abruptly he stopped singing and turned to face the Potions Master's head with amber eyes. He had a scar running from his left temple across his nose, narrowly missing both eyes and ending on top of his cheek bone. He had an odd, knowing smile on his face. The rest of the band and the class of sixth years turned with him.

Snape felt a dead weight in the pit of his stomach. 'Where do I know him from?' he questioned himself.

The man spoke. "Now that our beloved Potions Master is here, I will introduce myself and explain a lot of silly things to you," he started in a playful tone. "I am your new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher. My name is Connal Loupacier. Call me whatever you like, I don't really care, it makes little difference to me. I will be doing something a bit different for your year. It's my intention to have each of you building immunity to the Dark Lord's favourite potions and some of his favourite curses. This is why we have our beloved Potions Master here. Who better to brew this extensive list for me except Professor Snape? If I were to try a number of these I would surely poison every last one of you. He's also going to be at certain classes with us to help explain the effects of the potions, and to make sure I don't kill anyone. Now, questions?" the new teacher perched on a table to his right. Professor Snape stood with the door to his back and just stared.

"Who are they? And why are they here?" Hermione asked gesturing over to the three people behind Loupacier.

"Let's see, on drums we have Jake MacLeod, on bass is the lovely Adrianna Faust, and on guitar is the ever infamous Maverick Biere. They are here to help me teach you all. You'll find out soon enough how they're going to help me," he smiled cheekily.

"Professor Loupacier, why do all of you have the Dark Mark tattooed on your arm?" Harry asked quietly.

The professor looked very confused for all of two seconds before glancing down at his left forearm and bursting into gales of laughter. Snape looked at him as if he was crazy as did the rest of the class. The only ones that seemed to get the joke were his band members. Once he got himself under control, he walked up to Harry and showed him his arm.

"This is not a Dark Mark, nor will it ever be. During the Dark Lord's first rise to power a bunch of friends and we four got together and formed this party crowd to keep our spirits up and to laugh in Voldemort's face. We would advertise the party's location by sending this signal up into the air. Look at it closer, Mr. Potter and you will see that it is not a skull and snake, but a skull with a cig and a beer," he smiled. "When in the air, like this -" he waved his wand and muttered a charm, "it does just as it is doing. It smokes and drinks. At the really great parties, when it got early the sign would actually heave. It was brilliant."

"Why?" Neville asked.

"Because if you loose your sense of humour when your back is against the wall then you have lost it all. There's nothing better than to be laughing in the midst of it all. Learn to laugh with Nero, ladies and gentlemen. Never underestimate the power of a joke when faced with your own doom. Plus it was always after we seriously pissed the bugger off that we'd throw a party."

"How did you make him angry?" Terry Boot asked.

"Blood Hunts and the like. We took blood for every friend lost. There is no turning the other cheek nonsense with us. Kill one of our own and you will be hunted down and killed, when we were younger it was as simple as that. This vengeance is what the two columns on my back are for." He turned around and pointed to his back. In cursive, the words Je voussouviens were written to the left of his spine with about three rows of fifty tallies each and the word Vengeance was written opposite it with a significantly smaller number of tally marks. "The tally marks under je vous souviens are the number of friends I've lost that were close to me. Their initials are below their mark. The marks in red under vengeance are all those that I have killed with my hands. Those in black are the ones I killed with magic. I never once used the Killing Curse on one of them. That would have been too good, to easy, too painless a way for them to go. They all died as a result of a duel, but the Blood Hunts were what really pissed the bastard off." He finished. The class was silent. Snape took it all in.

Snape paled. The memory finally struck him...

It was at dusk, around seventeen years ago. Snape had just been summoned to the Dark Lord's side. He stood on the step to MalfoyManor. He gathered himself and stepped inside. With not a word to the house elf, he started the familiar descent into the Malfoyfamily dungeons. There, in the centre of one of the dark dungeon rooms, was a boy on his knees with his hands tied in front of him. The Dark Lord was dealing with this one personally. Snape wondered who this unfortunate soul was. As Snape approached he inwardly cringed at the blood constantly dripping down the boy's face. Voldemort held out his hand for the vial Severus had in his pocket. He turned over the vial. It was a Veritaserum. They were sweating the boy. He wasn't more than seventeen, what could he know that was of any use? Severus cringed. He was too young.

"What were you doing snooping around the house, boy?" Voldemort snarled at the child.

"Blood. Blood. Hunt.Kill. Blood. Vengeance," the child's snarl back held more venom than Severus thought possible.

"Vicious bastard," Lucius cut across the child's face with his cane, opening a gash from his temple to his cheek.

The child looked up at Lucius with golden eyes. He broke into gales of cold, harsh laughter and lunged at him. He hit the ground hard, landing in a pool of light from the torches. He lifted himself as much as he could onto his hands and laughed. It was cold, cruel, and insane. It made Severus' stomach turn. Lucius backed away from the boy.

"Who are you working for?" Voldemort continued the questioning.

"Myself. I hate you. If it were up to me I'd take your throat in my jaws and snap your spinal cord and feast on your organs. You..." he was cut off by a vicious kick from Lucius.

He slowly struggled to stand, looking directly at Voldemort the whole while.

"Never," he hissed. "Never will I answer another question from you. Never will I bow. Always will I join the Full Moon on a Blood Hunt. Die slowly, snake. He calmly walked up the stairs, favouring his right leg, blood still dripping from the open wound across his face.

The three men in the room stared after the boy. One too shocked to move, one relieved that he was leaving, and one stiff with anger.

When the Dark Lord shook himself into action through his rage, he shouted at Lucius and Severus to go after him. When they followed the bloody trail to the door, all they found were the bindings that had held him and a wolf in the distance, limping along, under the now rising full moon, guarded by another large grey.

Snape shook himself out of his memories and looked directly at the young professor. Loupacier turned his head and looked at him with those unnerving amber eyes.

"You're the one I saw..." he started in a quiet voice.

The young professor just nodded without letting his eyes leave Severus'. "Stay here and we will talk after class."

Severus nodded his ascent. Loupacier looked at the rest of the class, then at the clock on the back of the wall.

"Seeing as you have no more questions and I have nothing more to tell you, I will see you all next class. Harry Potter, please stay behind, I must have a word with you," he said as he turned to the centre of the room and conjured three comfortable looking chairs and a table with tea and a setting for three.

TBC