Into the Mouth of Hell

Into the Mouth of Hell: Prologue

The Ransom

The expense of spirit in a waste of shame

Is lust in action; and till action, lust

Is perjured, murderous, bloody, full of blame,

Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;

Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight;

Past reason hunted; and no sooner had,

Past reason hated, as a swallowed bait,

On purpose laid to make the taker mad:

Mad in pursuit, and in possession so;

Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;

A bliss in proof, and proved, a very woe;

Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.

All this the world well knows; yet none knows well

To shun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

~William Shakespeare, Sonnet 129

The portraits on the walls had quit speaking abruptly when he had been escorted to the office by Professor McGonagall, who took no pains to conceal her shock at finding Severus Snape on the front steps of Hogwarts just as the students were filing out of the Great Hall after dinner. The silver instruments whirred as he waited, some of them emitting gentle puffs of smoke. The phoenix eyed him wearily from its perch. He felt foreign here, horribly out of place.

Severus slowly wrapped his thin hands around the spine of the book, which now seemed ancient for wear. He had always loved books, but this one was special. This one was important. He flipped open the front cover, and read the inscriptions for perhaps the millionth time. You do not deserve such chains as these. Love, T. And below, in a different hand: There are more things in heaven and earth, dear Severus, than are dreamt of in our philosophy. ~A. It was so long ago, it seemed that lifetimes had passed since he received this book as a gift for a friendship he had come here to betray. But then again, he reasoned, it was not I who was the first to betray. Nor was it the friendship alone he was betraying.

The book, however, was not alone in being the worse for wear. Severus himself had aged tremendously since last he was in the headmaster's office. He had still been a boy then, a boy set on a very dark path. It was because of a boyish prank that had brought him here then, and it was the same boyish prank that brought him back. And now, several years after leaving Hogwarts, the events of his school days were again haunting Severus.

He crossed and uncrossed his legs, staring out the oriel windows at the black sky surrounding Hogwarts castle. It was the first really chill night of the season: the twenty-second of September. He was sure, however, that he had had longer, colder nights before. After all, somewhere out past the black grounds of Hogwarts, past the black lake, past the black forest, past the little black village of Hogsmeade, a party was being thrown in celebration of a friend. It was Bella's birthday, and he was expected at Malfoy Manor for the festivities. He ran his right hand along the inside of his left forearm. The wind rattled the glass menacingly. He didn't have much time.

The door closed behind him with a gentle flurry of soft robes, but Severus did not turn. He kept his eyes fixed on the black windows. I must not be weak.

"Hello, Mr. Snape. I wondered when I'd be seeing you again."

"Hello, Headmaster."

"Please," Dumbledore said, placing a gentle hand on Severus' shoulder, "call me Albus. You are no longer a student here."

Nor am I a friend, Severus thought.

Dumbledore sank slowly into the chair behind his desk. He raised his blue eyes to meet Severus' black ones. Severus had always found that intense calm a bit unnerving. He stayed eye contact for a moment, then dropped his gaze to the book in his lap.

"Do you have a favorite?" Dumbledore asked.

Severus felt the cracked leather spine. He had meant to give the book to Bella at the party, and it was the only thing he had thought to bring with him. "The sonnets."

"Ah, yes, poetry," Dumbledore said, leaning back in his chair and clasping his hands in front of him. "I prefer number one hundred twenty. Do you know it?"

Severus nodded. He knew them all.

Dumbledore cleared his throat to recite the poem.

That you were once unkind befriends me now

And for that sorrow, which I then did feel,

Needs must I under transgression bow,

Unless my nerves were brass or hammered steel.

For if you were by my unkindness shaken,

As I by yours, you've passed a hell of time;

And I, a tyrant, have no leisure taken

To weigh how once I suffered in your crime.

O! that our night of woe might have remembered

My deepest sense, how hard true sorrow hits,

And soon to you, as you to me, then tendered

The humble salve which wounded bosoms fit!

But that your trespass now becomes a fee;

Mine ransoms yours, and yours must ransom me.

Severus listened to the rhythm of Dumbledore's deliberate voice. When he finished, Severus did not move, but continued to stare at the headmaster's thin hands, his fingers laced across his heart.

"Before we begin the interview Severus, is there something you wish to tell me?"

Severus met his gaze. "Yes, Headmaster. It's about the Potters. They--" Severus faltered.

Dumbledore nodded slowly, a warm gleam in his eye. "Why don't we start at the beginning?"

"The beginning, Headmaster?" Severus wished he knew when that was.

"I find it is always a very good place to start."

Severus ran one finger where the pages met the back cover of the book, catching the corner of a faded photograph he kept tucked there. In his heart, it started with Bella. But truthfully, in his mind, he knew it had been before that. It started before he even went to Hogwarts. All of it, every last outcropping of pain and sorrow in his body, had its roots anchored in the histories of families, in the setting of the sun and the cycles of the moon, in the turning of the very Earth itself. In this spot of time now, he was acutely aware of the forces of magic, fortune, tradition, and love acting upon him. Severus sat still for a moment, then raised his black eyes wearily to look Dumbledore in the eye. He took a very deep breath, and began his story.