Snape In Love: Chasing Darkness Away

Chapter 9

Abomination

The tardiness of their arrival in the Great Hall for dinner did not go unnoticed. The absence of two members of what was a party of fewer than two dozen remaining at the school for the summer was too noticeable. Naturally enough, Ella and Severus blamed their infant daughter for their delay, but their still-damp hair and the secret smiles spilling over from their eyes as they glanced at one another told a far different story. They were still deliciously aware of one another's bodies and remembered well the sensation of wet skin sliding and slipping on wet skin in their luxurious bathtub.

Once dinner was over, the group splintered off into smaller factions, making their separate ways to all corners of the castle to spend the few hours before bed following their own pursuits. Severus and his family found themselves strolling through the corridors with Caius, and by unspoken agreement they ended up in the staff room. Conversation at dinner had been easy, and had centred on Caius' forthcoming trip and his previous adventures in the Emerald Isle. Now, after several generous goblets of claret, Caius was in the mood to reminisce, and so Severus sat back on a deep, sagging sofa nursing a post-prandial snifter of fine cognac, his long lean legs stretched out before him on the hearth rug and crossed at the ankle. His arm was holding his wife, who sat beside him with her legs curled under her, leaning into him and warming his heart as she in turn absorbed the warmth of his body.

Severus was far more relaxed than he had been two hours earlier, Ella knew, and he had needed to escape from his memories. Now that the floodgates of recollection had been opened they could not be closed again against the tide of thought and opinion and emotion that raged through him. But while she was more than willing to be his confessor, be everything to him, she feared for his frame of mind. He had still not told her what she most dreaded to hear, either, which was not with regard to her parents but was exactly what Voldemort had made him suffer. The pain of their separations and the losses of him were still fresh in her mind, and Voldemort's continuing liberty was a constant threat. Every day she offered fervent thanks to the Fates for allowing her to succeed in removing his Dark Mark. At least now, she reasoned, she could persuade him to stay safe, at Hogwarts, with her.

Before long, Caius had wandered off to the farthest corner of the staff room in search of another bottle of claret from one of the cupboards there, and Ella took advantage of the few moments of privacy it afforded them to embrace her husband and nuzzle his cheek and hair. She knew it should be easier for her to resist his physical pull on her by now, but still she found him utterly irresistible and she revelled in his languid acquiescence, covering his face with light kisses and moulding her body to his.

"Mmm, oh, love," he murmured suggestively as he returned her kisses, his smouldering, hooded eyes devouring her. "Shall we...retire?"

"It seems a little rude," Ella replied, sucking gently on his lower lip and hearing the low clink of crystal on oak as he set down his glass on the side table next to the sofa. "We've only just got here..."

Severus now had two hands with which to embrace and caress his wife, and he began to run his long fingers along her spine and then trailed one hand up under the full, heavy curve of her breasts.

"Don't worry about him," he whispered with a smirk. "He won't even notice we've gone, he'll just keep on talking to an empty room..."

"Don't be so mean! Oh, Severus..."

"He'll talk all night, I'm warning you!" he said, pulling back a little to raise a knowing brow at his protesting wife to illustrate his words. "Ah, too late," he tutted as Caius returned with his prize and flopped into the old armchair before the fire.

"Here we are!" he beamed happily, all flushed cheeks and ebullient bonhomie.

"...And here we go..." muttered Severus in an undertone.

"Have I ever told you, Ella, what Sev and I used to get up to when we were kids?"

"What do you mean, 'what we used to get up to'?" Severus grumbled.

"A little," smiled Ella warmly, resting a loving hand on her husband's knee and leaning into him again. "But I'm sure there's more!"

Severus exhaled deeply and slumped further down in his seat.

"Wake me up when he pauses for breath, will you?"

Caius could, indeed, have talked all night. The bottle of claret was empty in no time, and he and Ella were laughing about the occasion when an eleven year old Caius had unwittingly evacuated Madam Malkin's Robes For All Occasions by waving his brand new Ollivander's wand rather injudiciously while reciting, incorrectly, a spell he had overheard his elder brother use on one of his favourite shirts. Far from turning all the school robes in the shop from black to white, which in itself would have been sufficient to incur his mother's wrath, the misremembered incantation had caused several small, localised fires and the resultant panic in the crowded emporium had resulted in four minor injuries, three panic attacks and one theft.

Severus' fingers were restless around Ella's waist, and his thumb stroked the curve of her hip. She turned to smile at her husband fondly. His eyes were closed and his head rested against the back of the sofa, a small smile threatening to curl the side of his lip. Then Caius said out of the blue,

"Hey, Sev! Remember that spooky Muggle funfair?"

Severus' eyes snapped open and he stared straight ahead, unblinking, then lifted his head and turned his gaze on Ella, showing fear, confusion, hurt and shame. Her eyes widened in mute horror as she made the connection between the childhood memory and Voldemort, and she saw the steel shutters come down over his eyes until he wore a cold, impenetrable mask.

Ella was vaguely aware of an oblivious Caius droning on in the background, his voice seeming to come from far away, but gradually his words penetrated her consciousness.

"...of course, Mother was furious afterwards...she hadn't intended that we..."

Never taking her eyes from her husband's face, Ella said numbly,

"Caius, I'm sorry but it's time we said goodnight."

As soon as she could once they were safe in the sanctuary of their rooms, she went to her beloved's side, cradling his immovable, shuttered body in her arms.

"Tell me, love! Oh, Severus, my love, tell me!"

**************************************************

He had been just nine years old when it had happened. A faulty Portkey, the cause of a trauma that would last a lifetime. His mother had been returning with Severus and Caius to their family seat after a short family holiday, but the usual feeling of disorientation had quickly given way to terror when the young Severus had realised that he and his brother were unexpectedly alone in a dark, alien place, with no sign of their mother. Holding tight to his young brother's hand and complaining at the unconcern of the three year old Caius, Severus shrank against the wall behind him, starting in surprise when he realised it lacked the solidity he had expected.

It was dark, very dark, and the grinding drone of machinery was deafening to young ears more accustomed to studious silence. He made a half turn, reaching out to the wall with his free hand and touching it to find that it was made of a thick weatherproof fabric and was tethered with ropes and pegs to the muddy grass underfoot. To his other side was a huge white metal wall, raised two or three feet off he floor by means of a set of wheels the size of Caius. A Muggle vehicle of some sort, he realised to his horror.

Where were they, and more to the point, where was his mother and why had she taken them there and left them?

The only way forward appeared to be up a steep grey ramp that led directly into the vehicle. Caius was pulling him by the hand, keen to explore, but his more wary elder brother was unwilling to move at all.

"Mother?" he quavered, his piping voice indistinct when pitted against the generator noise all around them. "Mother, where are you?"

There was no answer, and he set his pale young face into a determined frown and took a few steps forward. Thus encouraged, Caius dragged him onwards, to the top of the ramp, and through the heavy black curtain that concealed what lay beyond.

"Is Mummy in here, Sevvus?" asked Caius with buoyant curiosity, still holding his brother's hand.

"No, I don't think so...maybe she's waiting for us outside whatever this place is. We need to find a way out."

"Alwight then Sevvus. Let's go over here! Come on! I want to go this way!"

They passed several towering wooden structures, painted to resemble buildings and forest scenes of various types, weaving in and out of them in their search for daylight and a possible exit.

To Severus' nine year old mind, hours seemed to pass, although he would look back from the relatively safe distance of adulthood and accept that their ordeal could not feasibly have lasted for more than a quarter of an hour. An intelligent and analytical child, he was nevertheless a child and subject to the same night terrors and lurid flights of fancy of many children his age.

Thus it was that when a sudden upsurge of power and shifting of gears illuminated everything around them in fluorescence, and screaming disembodied laughter came at them from all directions, Severus though that he would surely die of fright. That was assuming the incorporeal monsters didn't kill him first, of course. There were monsters there, he was sure of that, and so when the harshly lit and brightly coloured props surrounding them began to move of their own accord he screamed long and hard, scouring his throat until his voice gave out and his opened mouth could only gasp at his little brother to stay there, not to move, not to leave him on his own.

Black light had reminded him, ever since. Ever since his mother and father had appeared moments later, scooping a laughing, heedless Caius up into their arms while their eldest son stood mute and shaking with black eyes wide as saucers. Ever since he had seen the impatience and disappointment in his father's eyes at his son and heir's evident lack of stoicism in the face of unknown danger.

With adulthood came the knowledge, albeit received too late, that there were, indeed, monsters. Attracted to the charismatic Tom Riddle, or self-styled Lord Voldemort, it had been all too easy to allow the older Lucius Malfoy to persuade him that pledging allegiance to Riddle would open up a whole new world of knowledge and the opportunities to put it into practice. Disillusioned at the consistent failure of his best academic efforts to win the approval of his stern authoritarian father, and flattered at the attention paid by the older men, who seemed to appreciate his hunger for knowledge and thirst for perfection, he had been only too eager to accept the branding of the skull-and-serpent insignia into the tender young flesh of his forearm, and everything that he believed it to represent. He had spent his school years immersing himself in the study of dark magic, and his quest for more knowledge was insatiable.

Voldemort's power waxed, and his abuse of it matched it step for step. For every piece of dark magic Snape learned, he soon found that Voldemort would exact a payment. He was a master of manipulation, a powerful dark wizard with a cruelty that was unsurpassed, and his ability to hold his coterie of Death Eaters in thrall was incomparable.

Snape had exulted in his freedom at first. To escape from the constant reminder of his filial shortcomings and the unwanted responsibility of protector for his foolhardy, careless young brother had been liberating and exhilarating, and he had willingly turned a blind eye to his fellow Death Eaters' Muggle baiting. And the opportunity to brew and simmer, to create and adapt, to bottle and steam, was irresistible.

There came a point, in Voldemort's rise, where Snape could no longer pretend he remained a moral man.

Voldemort had found a new way to indulge himself. Several new ways, in fact. He had grown in arcane power and had found the means to reach into the minds of men and pluck from their psyches one single memory with which to torment and control them while at the same time assure them of his supremacy over them.

For Snape, it was a Muggle funfair ride, a mistake, an accident, a terror of abandonment and faceless demons, an awareness of disappointment and unworthiness, an insecurity and overwhelming bitterness and undeservedness. No matter where Voldemort chose for his headquarters, no matter what meeting-place was used, Snape always found himself in a cavernous room filled with the grinding of unseen machinery and lurid moving mannequins with leering faces and jeering laughter. He neither knew nor cared what the others saw, but he imagined that the terror on their faces was, for the most part, reflected on his own.

He never lost the horror he felt each time he was summoned to Voldemort's side, but he did learn to mask it remarkably well. He wondered whether this was partially responsible for Voldemort singling him out for special treatment, although he did not flatter himself that he was alone in receiving such intimate attentions. And he certainly did not see it as a validation of his perverse attractiveness.

Sex was simply another word for power. And Voldemort lived for power.

Later, years later after it was all over, when James and Lily were long dead and Dumbledore had blessed him with a new life at a high price that was nevertheless well worth the paying, he had gone back to Voldemort, this time at Dumbledore's behest. The Dark Lord had a new body and a new lease of life but the same old prejudices and predilections remained and the years of weakness and exile had not dimmed his venom or reduced his manipulative abilities.

The instinctual shielding of his thoughts from his erstwhile Master was reinforced now with months of training in Occlumency, at which Snape discovered he was a natural, and its related skill of Legilimency which Snape seized upon with alacrity as a means of increasing his authority with the dunderheads who populated Hogwarts School during term time.

Snape needed every skill, every talent and every ounce of courage he possessed the first time he went back to his Master. Fortunately, the return of his favourite to the fold was sufficient sop to Voldemort's vanity to allow him to 'overlook' Snape's desertion, and only a few hours of flogging and Cruciatus were required for him to be satisfied once more of his servant's sincerity. Snape had steeled himself against the physical torture, but the mental torment was more difficult to bear and his regular nightmares had become even more terrifying than before. All of his childhood insecurities, so much a part of his psyche for all of his life, had been flayed bare once again, old scars reopened and made raw. Once more he faced the funfair and all its terrors with every Death Eater meeting, and once more the revolting obeisances were made to the now hideously deformed fairground freak master.

****

Voldemort remained convinced of Snape's loyalty for several years, although the constant backbiting and jostling for position amongst the higher ranks of the Death Eaters meant that Snape would never know from one meeting to the next whether or not his true role would be suspected and acted upon, and as the Dark Lord's power grew the risk Snape took grew ever more severe.

As soon as he saw Lucius Malfoy in Diagon Alley he knew that surely now the game was nearly up. However, he could not ignore the insistent summons of the Dark Mark, and when he left Ella alone and shocked in her room at the Leaky Cauldron he knew that their kiss might be the last they would ever share. All that he could do was to hope that the Fates would deliver her speedily to Dumbledore, and safety. He had done all that he could. And he had more motivation than ever before to try to stay alive. Unfortunate for him that Voldemort had soon realised that, too.

He ran through the dank, dark tunnels as quickly as he could, slipping and sliding, bouncing off the narrow glistening walls, knowing he would incur the Dark Lord's displeasure if he were to keep him waiting any longer. Skidding to a halt immediately before the tunnel opened out into the garish facsimile of his thirty-odd year dread, he straightened his robes and tossed his hair, his face assuming its mask of impassivity as he endeavoured to empty his mind of all thought. He crossed the room towards the atrocity sitting on the throne in the required number of long strides before throwing himself forward on to the floor and crawling the rest of the way on his belly, his cheeks tickled by the long thick blades of grass that only sparsely populated their packed-mud home. Nice touch, getting the floor right as well, Snape thought grimly, closing off his mind as he felt icy tendrils of Voldemort's consciousness reaching out in an effort to read him.

"Ah, Severus, dearest Severus," came the hissing whisper. "Come closer, my darling...let me...smell you..."

"You honour me, Master," answered Snape before setting his mouth in a thin line and inching closer.

"Rise...rise for me, Severusss"

Snape slowly got to his knees, keeping his head bowed until yellowed, taloned fingers scraped under his chin in a foetid caress, almost piercing the skin as they pressed underneath, forcing his gaze upwards. Black eyes met red slits, and Snape tried to keep steady both his breathing and his resolve, the kiss he had shared with Ella so persistently memorable that he could almost feel her in his arms still. If anything should happen to -

"Have the mandrakes been troubling you again, dearest?"

"My lord?"

"I smell jasmine, Severus. I sense that it surrounds you. Were there not mandrakes at Hogwarts, growing alongside jasmine? Or were you, perhaps, hiding something from me? Something that you hide from me still?"

"Master, I fear I don't know what you -"

"Crucio!"

Snape's back arched as searing needles of pain stabbed into every nerve in his body, but Voldemort's tightening grip on his chin, sending trickles of warm, coppery blood running down either side of his neck, prevented him from falling to the floor.

"You dissemble, dearest! There is a woman...I can smell the sharpness of your lust for her and hers for you." He ran a weeping, cracking finger along Snape's cheek and into the corner of his mouth, forcing it in and scraping around his tongue until Snape had to fight the urge to gag. Then he removed it slowly, and held it up to examine it, slick with Snape's saliva. "And now I shall taste her..." he mused, inserting his finger into his own mouth with a sickening squelching sucking.

"She is unimportant, Master, that is why I - "

"Silence!"

Snape felt his balls constrict as a nauseatingly light touch drifted across the front of his trousers.

"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?" Voldemort lilted, before lunging forward and, belying his fragile appearance, grabbing Snape in a grip so hard that Snape grunted in pain, his eyes bulging. "Crucio!"

This time the pain of the curse had a definite centre, and Snape saw silver stars twinkling their way across his suddenly blurred vision as the agonising burning in his genitals blossomed until it spread in waves like gooseflesh and his entire body complained of the agony.

Voldemort laughed shrilly, before growing serious.

"No distractions, dearest. I command your full loyalty and your unswerving support. There is much to be done!"

"Of course, my lord."

"So, then, who was she?"

"A half-blood, Master, a passing fancy, a trifle...unimportant."

"It is...enticing...to know that you still have it in you, Severus. Tell me, have you inserted your ...aahhh...delicious manhood into her fragrant cunt yet?"

"My interest falls far short of such things, my lord, as you are aware."

"Pity...your coupling with her would be a diversion, indeed..."

Snape inclined his head respectfully and fought to control his emotions as Voldemort fondled him insistently.

"My lord, surely you can't just allow him to get away with this disloyalty?"

The whining, wheedling voice was even more familiar to him than was its son's. The only surprise for Snape was that the dissenting voice did not belong to Wormtail. Malfoy was approaching the throne, almost wringing his hands in his disbelief, Snape noted with disgust.

"Crucio!" This time it was Malfoy's turn to writhe in pain. "You know better than to interrupt, or to question my judgement!"

"Yes, my lord," Malfoy gasped, his eyes screwed shut as he forced out his apologies.

Snape was not dismissed from the Dark Lord's side until a few days later. He had been charged with a mission of the utmost importance to Voldemort and so dared not return to Hogwarts. There was, indeed, much to be done, but on Albus Dumbledore's behalf, and Snape had to be content with ascertaining via owl post that Ella was safely ensconced at Hogwarts. And he feared that Malfoy would seek to exact his revenge on Snape, and needed no more ammunition or motive than he already had.