Anything But Forgotten

Anything but Forgotten

The Malfoy dungeons stretch for close to a mile underneath the estate, twisting corridors and uneven levels of ancient mortar and stone. Lucius likes to tell of the distant past when wars with heathen Muggles and unworthy clans filled the bowels of the manor with prisoners, moaning and clanking decaying tin cups against the iron bars as they wasted away until they were all but forgotten.

Now, in the days after, the dungeons are occupied again, though the scores of captives are nowhere near enough to rival the mythical past.

So the prisoners are kept in corridors apart and lonely half-levels below ground, unable to see each others' ragged faces, hear each others' pained moans as Dolohov and Lestrange and Macnair come with the torture.

They are left alone, fed on meager scraps from the Dark Lord's table, kept alive in their own filth and grime. They are not given the glory of martyrdom--they are merely forgotten.

When he can convince himself that his absence will not be missed, Severus Snape creeps away from the intoxication of revelry and power and descends the claustrophobic, twisting staircase into the dungeons. He walks the corridors in silence, feeling the eyes of the prisoners as they crave the silent visitor acknowledge their existence, and reminds himself.

He knows how little has kept him from sharing in their fate, how narrow the line was that he walked between loyalty and self-preservation, acceptance and defeat.

Had the fortunes of battle gone the other way, he does not know his fate. But they have not and he cannot dwell in a past that must be wiped from the memory, and so he walks, his boots echoing footfalls in the near-empty passageways, before he returns to his chambers to brew potions in silent determination.

He does not look at the faces, though occasionally he wonders if the fading personalities ever recognize him.

* * *

The voice, scratchy from misuse, hoarse from dehydration, calls to him.

"Severus!"

In the flickering torchlight, he turns to locate the source from among the empty cells. The woman stands, stained hands grasping the iron bars, hair tangled and knotted around her grime-splotched face.

"How dare you call me that, Mudblood," he says, surprising himself with the words. Part of him is temped to adopt a tone of formal disdain and lecture the girl that he is her Professor and, no matter how much she thinks she knows, she will address him as such. Fifty points from Gryffindor.

"That's your name," she says, matter-of-factly. A dry, painful cough punctuates the end of her sentence.

"Not to you it isn't," he says, turning down the corridor.

"I thought you'd answer." Her shout echoes through deserted passage and into the empty cells.

"What do you want with me?" he asks, fumbling with the heavy door to the next ward.

"Nothing," she says and, in the faint yellow light streaked across her face, he can swear her chapped lips have curled into a smile.

He lets the thick, wooden door slam behind him, but the next day, he is back.

* * *

"Severus," she says quietly as the cloaked figure makes its way down the corridor.

"What do you want?" He wraps his hands around the bars, his long, pale fingers close to her filthy ones.

"In making Veritaserum, do you use powdered or minced asphodel root?"

"Minced," he says. "Powder will cause the truth-teller to speak in incomprehensible tongues."

"Thank you, Severus," she says, receding into the darkness.

The clicking of his boots on the stone floor echo down the corridor as he quickly makes his way back above ground.

* * *

"Severus."

He stops, though he had told himself earlier he would not. He is here to remind himself what he could have been, nothing more, nothing less.

"Does one use wormwood or nettles in a forgetfulness draught?"

"Both. I thought you would have known that."

"Yes," she says quietly, as if lost in thought. "I must have forgotten."

* * *

It is daytime next when he descends next into the dungeons, sensing the disappearance of sunlight and day and time as the door at the top of the stairs falls shut and latches behind him.

He has been unnerved by the encounters, and against better reason, peers deep into the cell. He knows the prisoners have been given nothing, not even a washbowl or chamber pot, and he knows that they have been searched most thoroughly before being sent beneath the manor.

Hermione sits in the corner, robes graying and worn to the point of indecency. Her head drapes downwards, her closed eyes all but invisible beneath the scraggly mess of hair, which he doesn't doubt has become home to parasites.

Severus reminds himself that he is not there to watch her sleep, but to check for signs of contraband: cauldrons or vials or unexpected fumes.

Quietly, lightening his footfalls as to not wake her, he removes the torch from its bracket on the opposite wall. The firelight shines across the back of the cell, where the crumbling stone mixes with dirt and dust and the occasional skeleton of a stray rat. The sides of the wall are marked with stains of blood and filth, but otherwise empty. He shines the light on the ceiling, but by then is expecting nothing and finds nothing.

No steaming cauldron, stashed-away ingredients, no wand or spells or secret plans of escape.

He comes back that night when she has awakened. He does not tell her of his earlier visit but smiles when he reminds her that dragon blood must stew a fortnight, from the new moon to the full and never, ever, the other way around.

* * *

Lucius wakes him early in the morning with a violent shake. The sunlight has not yet begun to filter from behind the curtains and Severus groggily figures by the darkness that it mustn't yet be five.

"You have work to do," Lucius says, his voice cold.

Severus wants to ask what unforeseen happening has forced him to awaken at such an ungodly hour of the morning. He wants to remind Lucius that the war is over and the Dark Lord has more than means to eviscerate any stray enemy who might arise. But the look on Lucius's face leaves no room for questions, and he rises, pulling his robes on over his naked body.

Lucius hands him a roll of parchment. "The Dark Lord has need for Polyjuice, Veritaserum, Mismnemonia Draught, and Wakefulness. He does not wish to see you outside of your chambers until they have been brewed."

"But..." Severus stammers. "That could be weeks."

"So it could," says Lucius, with a hint of commiseration. "I bring our Lord's orders, Severus."

Lucius closes the door behind him.

* * *

Severus slaves over the cauldron over the next weeks, feeling every bit the prisoner of the Dark Lord, though when the door opens thrice daily with rations, it is not moldy bread and contaminated water, but the same roast meats and wine served at His table. He does not live in his own filth or sleep against the cold stone with nothing but his fraying robes. He is occupied, not with his lonely madness, but his potion stores and the hot fumes rising from his cauldron as an added root or brisk stir cause steam to rise. Nonetheless, he cannot but wonder if he's been left there to be forgotten.

* * *

When the preparations are finished, Severus stoppers the bottles and casts unbreakable charms on the vials as he nervously returns to parlor. The Dark Lord smiles to see that his work has been done in little more than a month, and calls for Wormtail to bring the potions to his personal stores.

"Thank you, Severus," he says politely, and Severus feels silly for thinking the weeks of solitude had been due to anything more than simple need of the elixirs.

When he has been granted leave from his Lord's presence, he feels an urge to remind himself of what he has not, and will not, become.

Carefully checking that nobody is within sight, he casts the charm to reveal the heavy door to the narrow staircase.

His boot heels resound as he passes from corridor to corridor, staring in at the empty faces stained with months of unwashed grime. He cannot help but watch with a smile as he sees them huddled in the corner with nothing but regret and memories to pass the time from incarceration to death.

He is ashamed to admit to himself a sense of increasing excitement as he makes his way down the familiar corridor where she was kept. Will she ask about Mismnemonia or Polyjuice? Perhaps he will tell her of the weeks spent in front of the cauldron, regale her with the preciseness of his instructions.

He places his hands upon the slightly rusted iron bars and peers into the cell.

She is gone.