Summoned

Chapter 33: August 2, 1995 (Part 1: There is no God...)

"But the means I used to break the memory charm upon her were powerful, and ...her mind and body were both damaged beyond repair."

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

August 2, 1995, afternoon-early evening

...Red glowing eyes, sinking into his thoughts, into his soul...

...Dumbledore glaring at him across the room, angry and disappointed - again!...

..."We are so much alike," the transformed Tom Riddle told him. "Look at what Dumbledore has done to you!"...

... "Why is tonight different...?"

"No more!" He was losing strength, he could feel it. It was as if he'd taken some of his own accursed Weakening Solution. His ability to fight off Dumbledore was diminishing, now, not growing stronger. His entire body felt washed out, as if he were little more than a skeleton. "No more," he repeated, his voice little more than a whisper.

"Deletrius, then," Dumbledore said.

"Oh, please! Just leave me alone!"

Dumbledore said nothing, and Severus turned pleading eyes to him.

"Extremis!"

"No!" But there was nothing he could do to stop him...

... "Legilimens!" Dumbledore cried, and the fourteen-year-old attacked right back this time, his wand out, his "Protego!" overlapping Dumbledore's cry and for a moment, he felt the thoughts that weren't his...

... Dumbledore, a very young man, trying to ward off three other boys from attacking a little girl. The boys were Muggles: they were attacking out of anger, and maybe fear. The girl was on the ground, screaming for help, her clothes askew, her face bloodied. And Albus was trying to beat them off. Finally, he pulled a wand from his back pocket, fully aware of what he was doing, and aimed it at the boys.

"Get off her! Now! Or I'll turn you into toads and snakes!"

The boys paused long enough to see the wand and they all turned white. They ran, and Albus reached down to grab his sister. She was crying hysterically, and he gathered her close and whispered to her, and finally helped her up and then he carried her back home...

... "Do you know who they were?" his father demanded. "Do you know where they live?"

Albus nodded. The Healer was still with Ariana and his mother in the girl's bedroom. She had stopped crying, but that was just because the Healer had given her a draught of some kind.

"Tell your mother that I'll be back shortly."

... "Under arrest, Percival Dumbledore, for the unwarranted and brutal attack of three Muggles..."

"Azkaban..."

Dumbledore finally blocked his thoughts, and he staggered backward a bit, but didn't lose his balance. He looked angry: really angry. But he said nothing. He watched Severus.

And all Severus could think was: He knows what it's like! He knows what it feels like. The shame, the embarrassment... The pain of being unable to stop the attack, the way he hadn't been able to stop the attack on his mother, how his sister was never the same, just as Severus' mother was never the same...

Dumbledore had felt his own sister's pain, he could do that, he could see her thoughts, he could feel other peoples' emotions, just the way Severus had seen into his mother's thoughts after that awful thing that happened to her, just as he could always feel her emotions and Dumbledore could feel Ariana's...

And his father went to Azkaban, just as Severus' mother had...

"I could be just as much like Dumbledore," he thought, "instead of being like Tom Riddle..."

Without a word, Dumbledore broke the connection. It took him a minute before he spoke "I wasn't aware," he said, his voice distant. "I never knew..." He looked immensely sad. He took off his spectacles and rubbed his eyes.

Severus stared at the desk, remembering with horrible pain how close he had been after that lesson to trying to be more like Dumbledore instead of Riddle. How close he'd gotten to convincing himself that he could be like the Headmaster!

And then, when Lily turned away from him, would never accept his apology...

He summoned tea for them both, fixed his, and waited for Dumbledore to come and prepare his own. The Headmaster did, after a moment, but his hands were shaking.

"This is not the time to examine the memories, Headmaster. Just to protect them."

Dumbledore retook his seat and sipped his tea and stared at his cup. "I wish you had told me..."

Sighing, Severus put down his cup. "You were furious at me for seeing it. You were so angry I thought you might use a Cruciatus on me!" In fact, as Severus remembered it now, he had grabbed his wand and fled the room, certain that having seen those intimate memories would cost him his life!

"You know I would never-"

"I know that now. I did not then. - Please, can we not discuss this?"

Dumbledore nodded and stared at his lap. Finally, he set aside his cup and took out his wand. "Enough of a break."

Severus was so tired, so emotionally exhausted. He shook his head. "I am not improving right now," he said. But in the next second, he realized that didn't matter to Dumbledore...

... "Why is tonight different..?"

Tobias had already pulled out the bricks and the whip. He never did what he was supposed to do. Severus had schoolmates who celebrated Passover, and they even had classes that discussed Passover and Easter and what they meant. None of the Jewish children ever got whipped or had to carry bricks on their backs back and forth across the rooms...

This wasn't the way it was supposed to be!

He hated this day! He stared at the door at the end of the hallway: his mother was in there. She never stayed. She never helped...

"Ask the first question!" Tobias ordered.

"Why do we eat Matzoh..."

"Stop! No!" He couldn't break the spell, he couldn't stop it...

... "Why do we eat - b-bitter herbs?" He was already scared. This was the awful question, this is when Tobias showed him what it was like to be a slave in Egypt...

They never made it to the last two questions...

"NO! NO!"

Dumbledore broke it off. Severus couldn't remember his head ever hurting as bad as it did right then, he couldn't remember ever having relived that night before, he couldn't remember...

"Severus." Dumbledore was at his side, a glass of water in his hand. Severus couldn't move, he couldn't even breathe.

Dumbledore stood there, his arm around the Potions master's shoulders, his voice quiet as he began reciting something that almost sounded like a song... A chant, a charm...

A Charm! Someone had put a Memory Charm around that night.

And Dumbledore had broken it!

He tried to look up at the man, to speak, but instead his vision darkened and he felt himself falling...

* * * August 2, 1995, night, shortly before 9:00

"A Memory Charm? Another one?" Minerva was at least as shocked as Dumbledore had been. They were, once more, in the hospital wing. Dumbledore had conjured a stretched to get Severus up there, then had called for Minerva to assist him.

Severus had not yet regained consciousness, and they sat next to his cot, whispering, in case he did wake up.

"I had no idea it was there. I - broke it - too harshly, I'm afraid. I - I don't know how much damage I did, but-"

"Did - Voldemort..?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "This was an old memory, a very old one. He was - I think it was the Easter Holidays his first year." He was feeling every bit of his hundred-plus years right now. "There's a holiday some Muggles observe called Passover."

"I've heard of it. It's supposed to be a feast, isn't it? A celebration of some kind?"

Dumbledore nodded. "Severus' father managed to turn it into - a horrible parody of the real thing. - And I can only think of one person who could have put the Charm on his memories back then."

"His mother," Minerva supplied. "But why would she?"

Again, Dumbledore shook his head. "That woman - I don't understand her. There were so many times, so many ways she could have protected him from his father, and she just didn't. And then she would heal him, only to torture him again... No, she's beyond my understanding."

Minerva stared at Severus' prone form. "I'm sick of seeing him in here," she whispered. "Do you think we should get him to St. Mungo's?"

It took him a minute to answer. With Madam Pomfrey gone this week, they really had no one around who could help them. "If he doesn't wake up in a couple hours - I think we'll have no choice."

He finally got up from the large seat Hagrid had left here, and began to pace the room. After two circuits, he went back to the far end where Madam Pomfrey kept her stores of potions and looked through them. Nothing he could find would help until Severus was conscious. And even then, he wasn't sure what would be the best thing to give him.

There were no potions there that claimed to heal a shattered childhood.

* * *

The darkness began to swirl, and he swirled in it, and it sucked him down into the nightmares...

... That night, in his bed, crying and hurting from the beating and brick-carrying and the rest of it, he realized something very important: there was no god. All the kids at his first schools, all the Muggles who thought there was, were wrong.

God never punished Tobias for what he did to Severus or his mother, and he never would because he didn't exist. It was all a sham, a lie, just to get children to obey their parents, to give their parents power over them, to scare them.

Well, there was no god to punish Tobias, so there was no god to punish him! There was no Hell, like the Christian children proclaimed. There was no Hades, no Limbo, no Purgatory.

And he decided, right then, that he would punish Tobias himself. He would make him pay for what he did! He would make him pay for destroying god, because now he knew it didn't matter if the children in Slytherin House thought he was evil, because he would never be punished by god for all eternity, that was just a story to scare him and no one - nothing - would ever scare him again.

He stopped crying, but his pillow was wet and he turned it over and started planning how he was going to punish Tobias.

... That summer, on a warm August night, he made Tobias Snape pay for all the evil he had committed against his wife and child, and for the evil of pretending there was a God who might, one day, hear Severus' cries...

... And then he was burning. He was burning in Hell, he was on fire, and the flames licked at his body...

No, not his body, his arm. His arm was burning, he felt the tattoo pulsing and throbbing...

His eyes shot open and he gasped and looked at his arm: he was being Summoned! He shot up, his head throbbing so hard he couldn't even see through the pain for a moment.

"Severus! Severus, take it easy, lie down..." Minerva was there!

He pushed her hands away, panic driving him to his feet. "I can't... I have to..." He couldn't stand up. He could barely stay sitting. He closed his eyes and heard Dumbledore rushing over. The Headmaster sat next to him, then lifted his arm and swore quietly.

"Severus, you're too weak, you can't..."

"I have - no choice." He opened his eyes again, but the world was red with pain. "Have to..."

"You can't Disapparate! You know that. Severus!"

Finally, he got the strength to push them both away. He stood up, his legs quivering weakly, his hands shaking, the pain radiating through his body, the whipping, the bricks... He started for the door, then stopped. "Strengthening - Solution. Does she have - any?"

Minerva went to check while Dumbledore continued to help him stand up. The Transfiguration teacher came back with a small jar. She uncorked it and handed it to Severus, but Dumbledore had to steady his hand so it didn't end up on the front of his clothes. He swallowed what he could, knowing that he had taken enough to produce a vicious backlash later. But he had to get to the Dark Lord, and he had to get there now!

He gave it a moment to begin working, and slowly, his legs began to feel strong enough to carry him down to the dungeons. He needed his mask, his cloak, his wand...

"Severus!"

He stopped a foot from the door to the wing, but didn't turn around. "Don't - stop me, Dumbledore. He will kill - me." He made it the rest of the way without interruption, though he could imagine only too well Dumbledore and Minerva restraining themselves from following him.

He had to get to the Dark Lord, he had to get there, he had to Disapparate, he had to...

He grabbed a bit more Strengthening Solution from his own store and took another swig, not paying any attention to how much he had swallowed.

He grabbed his wand from his desk, then got his mask and cloak from their hiding place. He took his broom, climbed back up the stairs to the Entrance Hall, left the castle, and mounted his broom. Everything went black for a second, and he nearly fell from the broom, but he hung on tightly, and lifted off...

"Why is this night different from every other night?"