In a Dark Room

It was already dark when Severus Snape came home. The door creaked as he entered into the darkness within. He muttered an incantation, and flames burst from dry wicks. He looked briefly at his barren surroundings only to nod grimly as his hands moved to the satchel under his left arm.

Eyes spied him from portraits, their stern features appraising him coolly. He turned down the hallway ignoring their looks, his footsteps echoing in the void of silence. At last, he was at the parlour door.

"Is anyone in there?" he asked, suddenly acknowledging the portrait of the fifteenth century Cassius Snape.

"Of course not," the portrait spat out and prepared to insult his descendent, only to find him gone.

The room was empty. He laid the bag in the corner and carefully removed the blue mat from its folds. He placed the mat in the centre of the room and began his work. Upon the mat, he arranged the incense in the shape of a triangle before laying a small bed of rosemary into the shape of a broken circle. His voice whispered softly in the blankness.

"Are you trying to exorcise me again?" came the soft whisper from the floor. Snape did not turn his head. He felt her, a few feet away from him, her body lying prone on the floor. He could feel the hairs on the back of his neck rise, but said nothing.

"Ignoring me? Of course you are." She laughed bitterly into the floor, her dark hair creeping like black serpents across the wood.

Severus began to whisper under his breath as he spilled the pomegranate juice over the broken circle.

"How far are you going to get this time, I wonder? I mean, you could hardly stand to be here for two minutes last time. But, before that, I was almost certain you got it, but you botched that up badly." She turned her head toward him. A spider web of silver blood shone upon her cheek as the shadows played across her face. "You really are quite pathetic."

Snape lit the incense of wormwood before him, walking along the path of the broken circle.

"Can you forget us?"

Severus opened a dark flask of green liquid and tilted a drop upon the sticks of incense.

"Perhaps you've already forgotten. You really are quite careless. It was October, how long ago I can't be sure of. It must have been years...your face tells me so. I had gotten home late from work, damn Brian Pinckney was an hour late, that arse. It was still light outside though, so I decided I'd go for a walk. I always loved walking--"

Suddenly, the incense began popping and tittering as Snape's chant grew in rhythm and pitch.

"Of course, I forgot, you don't give a fuck about a story unless it's about you. No wonder you were such a disappointment. Well then, let's think about your part in all of this then. I think you need a little help remembering." She screamed, her voice inhuman and hoarse. Her form twisted and jumped like a live wire until at last she crumbled into herself in a whimper. "Hmm, not enough? How about, 'what are you doing in my house?' Still not enough, then look back. Remember that scarecrow of a boy who wanted some friends, and what wonderful friends he made. Nothing still? Well then to hell with you!" She turned her head away from him.

Snape kneeled down to the concoction before him and kneaded in the ashes of an ash-winder. His voice grew sore with the long chant, until his sallow face pinked with the effort. A small wind picked up across the room, carrying with it a strange cold dampness.

"I will not be forgotten though, the bramble has yet to cover my name," she whispered softly as she wrapped her arms around herself, as if seeking warmth.

Snape paused and then resumed his work. She rolled over. In the shadows, her white face and hands gained definition as the dark cloak that surrounded her dissipated into a shimmering outline. Her hands and face lay there, dismembered, but still there. Snape knelt, scattering shrivelled rosebuds into the circle, his face hidden in the shadows.

"Look in the mirror, in the darkness, I am more real than you."

He did not look in the mirror. Her long fingers trailed across the silver lines upon her cheek as she stared at the mirror curiously.

"Why is it that some stains never go away?" Her voice came out as a raspy whisper, her arms wrapping around her wispy body. She shivered again. "How cold it is."

Snape laid his palms out over the strange mixture before him, slowly dripping in the essence of manticore. His voice rang loud and clear in the stark room.

"You will never forget me, no matter how many others you've harmed. You will not forget me."

Snape's voice continued on without falter.

"You brought me here."

His body grew rigid, but yet he continued. He drew out his wand and began to twirl it slowly over the unfinished circle. The flames from the incense grew and turned a deep shade of red, the peaks of flames reaching higher and higher.

"To think of all that might have haunted you, it was only I. Imagine if it had been one of them instead. Oh, you think I don't know do you? Even now your dear ancestors are whispering about it. Sometimes you see it in me. How cold it is, oh, can it be?"

Snape began unravelling a piece of cloth to reveal a small white bone.

"You have brought a piece of me, oh from there, from there. How cold it is there. How cold they all are. Can you feel them? Their eyes blind and withering in the blackness. Oh, is this the end?"

As Snape laid the bone in, completing the circle, ashes began to burn. Snape's face hardened with concentration, his lips thinned into a grim line.

"Is this where they went, into the coldness of the night? You can't believe in what can't be seen. Quiet ironic, especially considering what you are and I was."

Snape stood, his form towering in the small space. "Spirit of ether, without form, visitor upon this world I will behold you."

Suddenly, she was lying across the blue mat, her dark eyes staring upwards.

"Sometimes I wonder if this is real, and whether or not--"

"Stranger upon this world, you have trespassed that which is no longer yours. With this circle I do bind thee." The circle arose into the air, dragging her form upright. Its intensity dissolved all of her face, except for her dark eyes. Still, her voice carried without lips to move it.

"And whether or not this is hell. That we have both died and gone to hell and our punishment is to vex each other. Then I wonder if I'm real or a thing--"

"That which has come and that which has gone, keepers of the gate, by the blood of the living I do call you." Here, Snape withdrew a small blade and let flow blood from skin. The shadows in the room seemed to stretch forward, betraying it's aversion to the light as a dark band of heads and teeth lifted slowly from the floor and encompassed the wounded hand. Snape pressed his eyelids shut. His skin prickled with the cold contact. At last, he could feel they had let go His hand was white, no blood shown on the wound. He wiped the sweat from his brow.

"I wonder if I'm real, or if I'm just a thing of your imagination." She laughed. "Think, all this trouble for a psychotic episode. Can you just imagine?"

"Creatures of that place none of the breathing may dare trespass, smell out that which is of thy own." The shadows slithered and twisted across the room in confusion.

"You're not imagining it, are you? Tsk. It really isn't so hard, is it? A reminder of what you cannot erase, perhaps not enough so."

"Search that soul without body, the foreigner upon the waking world." He closed his eyes to shiver as one of them passed through him.

"Think of it, think of what might come. If not me, than another."

"Creatures of the void with that which I have given, and that which I have bound, capture this spirit that defies your laws." He stood with his body erect, his eyebrows drawn in a tight line.

The shadows surrounded her, her face real once more. Snape clenched his wand sharply and pointed it at her face.

"Perhaps they will come next, or just her alone," she whispered. Her dark hair slithered across her face as the shadows changed the definition of her features. Her black eyes bore into him.

* * *

It was still dark when Severus Snape left home.