Meting out the Jungle Law

The twin hammers of feet and heart mingle, becoming a single throb in the fog of terror that clouds his mind. He is not used to feeling this way. Confusion is alien to the boy who tears through the night, clumsy and lost. For all his dark calculations, for all his devotion to a lost art that bears the very name of Dark, he is not at home here, in the night. He is prey.

Stupid!

Arrogant!

Vile!

A breathless insult rings through his mind every time his feet hit the cold stone floors. He is in terror, and his mind is cloudy with fear. Dimly, somewhere behind the mist that hangs heavy in his head, he hears his own voice, shrewd and cold.

Fool. You cannot escape...I thought you were supposed to be the smart one...the rational one. You are nothing. No more intelligent than those who pursue you now.

He has no time to counter, or retort, instead he files the voice's comment within the recesses of his tumultuous consciousness. He pauses, breathing in the cool night air. He is not quite stupid enough to take deep breaths, not with them on his trail.

You could certainly use the oxygen, he snipes at himself, having no energy left for any thought on a higher level.

Not this way, he decides, looking down an unfamiliar hallway-but then, all hallways are unfamiliar to him at night. A mistake that he was even out this late...his ears convey sound to his brain, now functioning on base instinct, something the boy has worked long and hard to suppress within himself.

They are coming. He sprints down the side corridor, practically flying down a twisted staircase.

"I hear him. He's down this way," one of their voices echoes behind him.

It's that crude oaf-the real beast of the pack. It is like trying to outrun a deadly gas. The voice billows through the dark, chill stairwell.

They are at home here.

This is their element.

He does not stop, though now he can hear three pairs of feet behind him, though he can just barely make those out, and he knows, with a dreadful certainty, that there are four of them. They run silently in the night, it is as though they swim through it, while he breaks twigs and steps upon leaves.

The end of the stairs.

He leaps, and nearly falls.

They are moving quicker now. Reorienting himself to what small effect he can, the boy dashes down the dungeon corridor, turning corners, looking desperately for anything. His lungs burn, and the air here is stagnant. Almost comfortingly so, but even here he feels the dark chill of night, slicing like a cleansing knife through the fetid atmosphere he can find solace in. Behind him he hears the feet again. They are gaining. He spies a classroom to his side, and rips the door open. Not until he is already under the desk does he realize he has left the door open. He is unaccustomed to this world, to these rules. Yes, deception he can understand. He lives it, but this is nothing like the comfort of lowering a spine-edged portcullis to the world, no, this is something on another level entirely, something he cannot, will not, understand. He tries to slow his breathing, to little avail. Then he hears the voices, hushed, in the room.

His heart freezes.

"Come out, Snivelly, hide and seek is over," the lackey taunts him.

His voice-almost like his cousin's. They are truly flesh and blood, for whatever that means. But there is none of the intelligence here...no Just the same cruelty.

"Olly Olly Oxenfree," comes their scout's mocking chortle.

This is the greatest injury. The greatest hurt. That he should have to hide, to cower before that simpering sycophant.

As though that disgusting sap has any right to mock me.

"I can smell him. He's afraid," he hears the oaf's voice say.

Smell me? What does he think he is?

"Good," that's the leader. The alpha, as that beast would call him.

The boy does not know it, for he never allows himself to glance into his own soul, but that voice is the true bane for him-his Achilles' heel, his downfall. Unable to comprehend his own feelings-for he has slammed a silver guillotine upon them and closed the blinds of his mind against them-he merely curses the boy, and several generations of his maternal family, mentally.

"Snivellus!" the main goon growls, "Come out, we've got a lesson to teach you."

"Yeah, you skived off Never-Insult-Lily-In-Front-Of-James class. Its time for your make-up lesson."

The three others chuckle in hideous appreciation at the lowest ranking boy's words.

"What's the matter, Severus, I thought you liked classes...isn't that what you were saying earlier? That you wish they'd accelerate you and your purebred friends? Oh wait, I forgot, you don't keep friends do you? No, they're not half as important as your precious grades, are they?"

Even in his panicked state he is taken aback by the pure hatred and contempt that marinates the oaf's jeering.

"I'm sick of waiting. Accio, Snape's Wand!"

Terror stays his hand just a second too long, and his wand flies from under the desk, betraying his hiding place.

The leader's satisfied drawl comes ever closer. "Ah, so that's where he is."

Arrogant, disgusting, loathsome fool. How in the world does anyone admire the immature jerk? He's got no real talents, just that stupid sport. Let's see how far that gets him in the real world.

The doomed boy takes some comfort in his own blind thought, and so is readied for his punishment.

For they are Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs, and they are the night, dark devotion to one another nigh eternal.