Turncoats And Cold Fire

This is the second edit of Chapter One, done October 13, 2001. Whooo…13…hehehe!

* * * * *

You know what I must ask you to do.

Yes, yes indeed. Severus Snape knew what to do. Step towards the face of a beast and snarl at it, when he only had a puny little wooden wand to wave at it in defense and its minions were crawling out of the woodwork by the hundreds, drawn by the scent of a rotting corpse reanimating again. Voldemort, that is.

A self-mocking smile curled his lips upwards as he padded down the hall, his soft-soled boots making barely a sound against the floor. Ah, yes, my chance for glory, for vengeance against that bastard with a severe psychological problem. Whoo hoo. It left him shaking, when he really thought about what he was going to do. Voldemort might be a bastard with a mental-health issues, but at times he was uncannily smart and clear-thinking. At the same time he was also ruthless and cruel. The Dark Lord had charisma, too; he could argue like a good lawyer and make you feel like you belonged and were worth something. Two important things to the human psyche that people never noticed until they were gone.

It was so easy to take things for granted. But when your eyes opened, and you saw every kind gesture and thoughtful action as a rare gift, how could you not struggle to repossess the protection of ignorance, that shard of foggy hope? When every thing someone did for you piled up another debt? As if he could pay the debts he already owed. Of course, the entire Karma thing with the idea that every action you did came back to you threefold was not something he really believed in, but with people like Dumbledore around—whom he knew considered every action he took—it was hard not to feel like he had to give something back in return.

Thus he was snarling at the beast, was going to do what he and Dumbledore had planned should Voldemort ever come back. They had known he was not truly gone; wouldn’t the Dark Mark have lost its power or something? The Mark had still been on his forearm, though, had still glowed with power when charms and spells made to detect embedded magic had been used, and so both he and Dumbledore remained convinced that Voldemort was not really gone. It just remained a matter of time until he came back.

And now Voldemort had. And now Severus was going to play the spy.

Not that that would last for long—he was sure if Voldemort didn’t try to kill him on the spot Voldemort would take him in just to feed him false information, and it’d be the dangerous game of trying to second guess what information he had was correct and which was lies. The chance of actually being readmitted to service as a real member, and being able to get true information, was so slim it really wasn’t a true chance. The probability that he would die was high. The probability that he would die after being tortured was higher. Maybe he did believe in Karma.

A few stray fourth years quickly got out of his way when they saw the extremely dour face he was making as he hurried towards his quarters. He considered finding some excuse to take points off of them but then discarded it when he realized he would have to break that habit; it was part of his Flaw, and if he was going to be able to face Voldemort’s elite Death Eaters—the Green Flames—he’d have to reclaim his own Green Flame training. That meant starting with the meditation and the mind-control exercises. Which also meant controlling his temper. Damn it all. He liked the fire in his personality; it was a change from the dead numbness he’d felt as a young adult. Anything was better than that. Anything. Except if he didn’t learn to be that cold creature again he’d die.

Seems everything’s leading that way now. Do this, and I’ll die. Don’t do that, or I’ll die. He grumbled to himself and took the stairs down to the dungeons, which his quarters came off of. Quickly scanning the area for students—visually and auditorally because some (namely Potter and his friends) used various invisibility spells to snoop around undetected—he walked up to a suit of black armor which was standing in front of the entrance of his rooms. "Move, you!" he snapped at it, annoyed. How many times had he told it not to stand here? Most of the passageways in Hogwarts were hidden in paintings or behind statues, or near a select few unmoving suits of armor, or they were hidden in the center of blank walls. His entryway had the nice advantage of being off-center of a bare dungeon wall and nowhere near any paintings or any such objects. Not even the Weasley twins had ever found it, and he was sure they had tried—if only to plant some foul curse on his underwear or to jinx his bathtub.

The armor just stood there. Angrily he flipped up its visor and looked down in it, searching for a mischievous first year (the only students who could manage to wiggle in through the rear…entry…) or Peeves. Nothing. The armor was just being moronic. Too bad making scathing remarks at it wouldn’t do anything—all it really was was charmed metal. He kicked it, clanging loudly. It jumped, and turned its helmet to stare at him for a long second. Then it turned to move off down the hall, jangling all the way. "Dumb piece of scrap," the Potions Master muttered.

Quickly he undid the seven different charms and submitted to a tiny pinprick (to test his blood for adverse magic). Then the wall faded away to reveal one of the beautiful cast-iron bound doors that graced Hogwarts. Here he inserted a muggle-type key. Sometimes he felt as paranoid as Moody, but at other times—like now—he was glad he’d put so much protection on his door. If his door couldn’t be found or opened, how could anyone get into his chambers?

Shortly he was in his bedroom, rooting within the chest that stood at the foot of his bed. It was much like Moody’s, having different keyholes so he could open different compartments in it, but right now he was seriously thinking of replacing it or putting a spell on it so you couldn’t stick a human in there. He shivered. So many spells designed for innocent every day use could be twisted to do harm. Take a decomposing spell for a garden compost heap—what would it do on a human? Or a bleaching spell? He’d seen that one used once; the victim’s hair had been eaten away by the spell and weird white scarred blotches had appeared all over his body. In some parts the more delicate flesh had dissolved and seeped blood while the man had screamed himself hoarse.

No, don’t think. Just do. You have work to do and people to see before trying to get into the Death Eaters again. Time is precious. Hurrying, he pawed through the dress robes that were neatly folded on top, digging down, down, down and towards the bottom where one leather bag, shiny and scarred from past use, was. He also grabbed a pair of slightly dusty boots. Putting these aside on the floor, he closed the lid, locked the compartment, then unlocked another and raised the lid. He then removed two pairs of muggle-type clothing (he hoped they fit; he’d not entered the muggle world for fourteen years or so) and some light summer-weight travel robes.

Then he went to the potions. He had many, carefully stored in a cabinet on the wall by the door in his bedroom. Most of them were of the kind that had to age to become the strongest; some were, like the boots and the leather bag, fourteen years old and at the peak of their power. He only wished he could brew up a few that faded in power quickly—for obvious reasons, he had none stored here. Too late now, though; perhaps later he’d have the time. Hopefully. Getting a special bag made just for carrying the glass phials that held potions, he packed them. There were drinkable spells that made one strong, or fast, or invisible, or invulnerable to certain curses. There were poisons that mimicked true diseases but progressed at a much faster rate. Severus hesitated before packing these, then decided that Dumbledore probably would never know unless he went snooping in his stuff, which he probably wouldn’t…and if any Death Eaters went through his stuff the diseases and poisons would make it look all the more convincing.

The packing didn’t take long; it never did. He never needed much. And he’d be coming back here for the rest of classes anyway—this stuff he just had to put in a storage vault outside of Hogwarts. But then his eyes wandered and caught something hanging on the wall of his small living room, right across from the door into his bedroom. It was his viola. He made a face. He wanted to take it…it was one good memory of his Death Eater days, when he’d picked up playing stringed instruments from another Green Flame Death Eater. It was ironic what he’d done for comfort right before he’d turned completely; music had been his angel and muse. At the end he’d enchanted the instrument and case with a shrinking spell so it’d fit in his pocket so he could always play it if he had a private moment. It became an obsession. And when Voldemort had been defeated, in a sense, he’d not touched it again. How could he touch a beauty he’d tainted with darkness?

He packed it anyway, along with the other stuff, and the old shrinking charm acted, well, like a charm. He knew he’d probably need its soothing effects. Being a turncoat, caught between two sides of a war, was not easy.