Casting Shadows

AUTHOR'S NOTE

Thanks to all who have read and reviewed so far. The last chapter was a little intense, and in case you're wondering, Ella's neuroses are all too authentic. Yes, I admit to a degree of 'author insertion' in this story!

The angst won't let up just yet, I'm afraid...

Chapter 4

A Breakthrough

There was a small room at one corner of the courtyard that Ella supposed had been a guards' shelter at one time. She shivered and looked up at the weeping sky, where several Dementors had turned their featureless faces towards them.

"Come on in here for a moment," she urged.

She led her husband across to the entrance. There was no door, but at least the room afforded some small shelter from the rain and a modicum of relief from the guards' incessant, draining watchfulness.

"Where is Celsus?" Snape demanded.

"With Albus. I couldn't bring myself to leave him at home. It - well, somehow it didn't feel right, knowing that he was there and I wasn't. I thought he'd be safer at Hogwarts."

Snape nodded. "Hmm. And are you alright?"

"I am now," she said, reaching out to her husband and laying her hand on his chest. He covered it with his and she swallowed hard, aching for news of their firstborn.

"What did Malfoy tell you?"

He scowled. "He told me nothing that I didn't expect. I don't believe he knows anything at all. He is quite mad, of course."

"Ten years' subjection to the avidity of the Dementors will do that, I should think," shuddered Ella.

"No, he has always been like that," Snape mused. "The difference is that he used to conceal it more effectively."

"And what about Rita Skeeter?"

"I haven't seen her yet."

"I'll come with you, then," Ella said decisively.

"Very well. She's up there," he replied. Ella's gaze followed where he pointed and she reached within his voluminous travelling cloak to grasp his hand.

Rita Skeeter had been housed at the top of one of the highest towers of Azkaban prison, a jagged grey finger accusing the sky. Ella wondered at the reasoning behind the allocation of cells. Lucius Malfoy languished in a deep, dark dungeon while the scheming, evil harridan Rita Skeeter, nevertheless surely less culpable than the Machiavellian Malfoy, seemed to have been afforded the luxury of a view.

Only upon reaching the lofty cell after climbing what seemed to be an interminable spiral staircase did Ella began to understand the particular cruelty of the incarceration. The tower was windowless for most of its ascent save for slender arrow-slits that barely illuminated the musty staircase, apart from at the top. There, windows were on all sides. The monolith could have been a lighthouse were it not for the dearth of light therein. Rita's cell was a room with windows for walls and for her there was no escape from the sight of the Dementors circling outside, relentlessly watching, skittering fleshless fingers across the rattling windowpanes.

It was apparent that even a Death Eater and convicted murderer could, with sufficient funds and influence, buy what passed for a comfortable imprisonment; for Lucius Malfoy definitely had the superior accommodation.

The reporter was huddled on the floor in the centre of the room, her arms in a defensive position over her head, shielding herself from the menace beyond the glass walls of her cell. Darkness had fallen quickly and all that Ella could see were grey clouds roiling into black. She could still hear the Dementors, though, and feel their attention; a tapping of bone on glass that made her stomach churn in an unconscious echo of the storm gathering outside.

She heard a rustle of parchment in the corner and saw Rita Skeeter's old Quick Quotes Quill busily scratching away, preparing to document the conversation that was to follow.

The woman flinched as Snape said her name coldly, drawing her arms around her knees and rocking herself. He repeated,

"Rita Skeeter, show yourself! Or would you prefer that I open a window latch?"

Skeeter started, and blinked at Ella and Snape through mother-of-pearl framed spectacles.

"Snape. Why are you here?" she asked tremulously. Have you come to take me away?"

Snape snorted. "I have come for information," he replied shortly, squeezing Ella's hand behind his back before taking two deliberate steps towards his quarry. She scrabbled backwards before casting a terror-filled glance over her shoulder to the window behind her, and stopped in her tracks, unwilling to leave the centre of the room.

"They don't tell me anything, you know!" she began. "But they're always there, always! I can't sleep, I can't rest - they bring me food but they never come in, they don't need to...they never leave me!"

Ella looked down at the wretch before her. She supposed she ought to pity her but she could not. Here was the woman who had abducted her, demeaned and derided her, followed the Dark Lord and betrayed everyone with whom she had ever come into contact, quite apart from the scurrilous gossip-mongering of her journalism. Ella turned away contemptuously, preferring to examine the constant rolling and unrolling of the sheaves of parchment that littered the floor and the somewhat threadbare appearance of the ten-year-old quill. She turned her head this way and that, reading odd snatches of florid reportage.

"Intrepid journalist Rita Skeeter enjoyed a private interview with the saturnine Severus Snape this evening..." and "Dilettante Ella Redemte Snape arrived at Azkaban Prison..."

Ella rolled her eyes and turned back to her husband. He had leant over Skeeter placing his hands on his knees as he stared into her eyes.

"Tell me all you know about my daughter's abduction."

Rita shrieked a high, shrill laugh. "I can't get out, you know! And no-one comes to visit, you're the first people I've seen in months!"

The quick Quotes Quill scratched away furiously.

"Legilimens," Snape said softly, and a prickle of fear sent gooseflesh racing along Ella's spine. He was predatory and terrifying in his intensity, pinning the ruined woman before him like a bug on a specimen board.

He had never experienced a mind like it; then again, he had never before delved into the psyche of one touched by Dementors. It was still Skeeter, of course, and unmistakeably so; flashes of lurid colour, leopard skin undergarments and sycophantic conversations dripping with acid observations all confirmed her identity far beyond any shadow of doubt. In between the memories and experiences, however, was blackness, huge ragged patches of nothingness. A soul-leeching néant that threatened to pull his questing mind down a deepening spiral into itself, never to emerge.

He pulled back, unnerved. Skeeter's eyes were glassy and she did not move. Any skill she might once have possessed in the art of Occlumency had evidently been lost long since. He flexed his fingers, a nervous habit, and looked across at his wife, seeing their daughter's eyes stare back at him. Steeling himself, he plunged back into the eerie patchwork of Rita Skeeter's mind.

Easing through her memories, he saw much that he would have preferred not to know. Ignorance could, indeed, be comparative bliss. He saw the Daily Prophet offices, the Ministry of Magic, scurrilous headlines, lives ruined. He saw Madam Malkin's finest couture cast aside in favour of animal prints and stretchy, glittering confections in garish colours. He saw misery, outrage and violence and felt the woman's perverse delight in them all.

He saw Ella, his wife, his beloved, in an unnaturally darkened alleyway being sucked into an old-fashioned tapestry carpetbag. He felt Skeeter's glee as she snapped the clasp, felt her surge of hatred as Ella was pulled backwards into herself, unharmed. He saw Dementors circling the windows of her cell, ten or more of them pressing up against the glass, rattling the panes and lifting the latches, reaching fleshless fingers towards her and caressing her cheek, prying open her jaw -

Again he pulled back, taking several steps back towards the door, wanting to turn and flee. He put a hand on either side of the stone frame, leaning forward with his head bent, lank black locks curtaining the horror writ on his face.

Persephone. He had to find her. Ella and Celsus depended on him. His sanity depended on it. Steadying his resolve once more, he plunged back in, ignoring the silent siren call of the empty spaces that beckoned to him. How easy it would be to succumb to the darkness, to lose himself in her mind, to take a few short steps over to one of the many windows, open the latch and offer himself to the circling Dementors, close his eyes and accept their lethal embrace...

There it was again; the carpetbag. Surely that was the key. He examined it closely; the bamboo rods that held the clasp, opening now; the yawning, gaping maw of the bag beckoning him, the long hinges at either end, their mechanism smooth and lethal.

There was the key.

The tapestry, all sage and beige and black, burnt umber and vermilion, flowers, birds and paisley swirls. A spell contained therein, an invocation that both made and destroyed itself, cyclical, first growth and then decay. An incantation to understand, to memorise, to recreate to save his daughter.

Probing the memory, he learned all he could and finally withdrew. Skeeter, her back arched as vestiges of her will struggled against his lengthy invasion, crumpled to the floor unheeded.

Snape turned to his wife. "I've learned all I can. Take me from this place before I decide I deserve to stay."

Ella nodded swiftly and took his arm, half pulling him don the narrow stairwell and back out into the courtyard before stopping to ask,

"Why, what do you mean? Why would you stay?"

His only response was a desperate, anguish-filled look.

"Severus, that was all years ago! Why has it returned to haunt you now, of all times?"

"Because I escaped this!"

"By dint of your own good sense, yes! You changed, Severus! Years ago! Years before I even met you, over half a lifetime ago!"

Snape's shoulders sagged and he tried to turn away from her but Ella grabbed his arms angrily.

"Focus on the present and on our future, not the dim and distant past!"

"It's the Dementors, Ella! I can feel them reaching out to me. Skeeter's a mess, her memory is full of holes, and they live there, and they felt me - they know me, Ella, and they want to feast on my memories, on my misdeeds, my neuroses - I can't fight them!"

"Don't you think I'm scared? Don't you think I feel them too? Severus, I'm terrified! But we're doing this for our daughter and you have to tell me, you have to - can you find her?"

He nodded. "Yes."

Ella sagged against the cold stone wall. "Then take me home."