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The darkness surrounds me	By : lilith395 Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 1898 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters. I don't get any payment from this story

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A/N: this is not a very happy story. Just thought I'd warn you. Thank you. On with the story.

I wake. The floor I’m lying on is dirty, and the room smells of death. My death. I hear the rats scurrying about, and feel deserted. I can hazily remember the snake attack me. I can still feel my life-force draining out of me. I shiver, not because it is cold, but because it’s hard. It’s hard to wrap my mind around what has happened. Am I a ghost? I carefully look down my body at my hand. I try to twitch my fingers. The pain tells me I am no ghost. I live still.

Oh how cruel a world this is. Why am I still alive? I should have died. I know I should have. Has someone come back for me? Turning my head ever so slightly, I find the horrid shack empty. If someone has, where are they now? And who thought it necessary to safe me? Who could be so cruel as to condemn me to such a life any longer?

I fleetingly wonder if I could just lie here until death once more claims me. I cannot, but it was nice to think about. I cannot kill myself, I never could. Maybe I am in some ways a coward, or maybe this life has taken all of me out of this empty shell, but I merely have a wish to die. It is the guilt I still feel, the responsibilities weighing so heavily on my heart, which keep me from it.

I drag my aching body across the floor to where I know the door to be. I am sure the accumulated layers of dust cling to my once pristine robes. I do not care, I am too far down this empty black hole to care about anything. I have never felt this alone. There is nothing worse in the world than waking up after an attack which should have been fatal, knowing there is no one who even cared to get your body. They were going to let me rot. Literally.

Who won? Did I fail? No, I can’t have. There is no way they lost. Not with what I gave the boy. Not even he could’ve screwed it up now. I hope to Merlin I am right. That I do not put too much stock in him. That I do not believe in him too much. Even I can hope the child has potential. Through his eyes, his mother shines, and I hope the boy has enough of her talents to last him through this fight. Is the war still raging? I really do not wish to find out. But I need other things more.

I reach the door and try to stand, hoisting myself up on the doorpost. My shaking legs have trouble to support me, but I manage. I stand there for several moments just to catch my breath. Even getting up into a standing position tires me. My nose wrinkles in disgust at the foul smell that reaches my nostrils, but then I realize it is me.

Ah, so I have actually died. So someone must’ve come to safe me, and found me dead. Who was it? And what did they do to bring me back? Did they leave me because they thought it hadn’t worked? Or merely to spite me? But if that was the case, why not let me be dead?

I do not have my wand, and though I do not usually need it, I feel my body is too drained to attempt wandless magic. I feel exposed and vulnerable, even inside of this wooden closet. Coffin, if you will. I am not too proud to admit that I am afraid. What will I find when I go outside? Will I be welcomed or arrested? Or killed again? Though the latter doesn’t really worry me, it does mean I have failed. If someone tries to kill me, it is probably the dark. The light would merely have me arrested.

The pain wrecks through me, both my body and my soul. Hugging the doorpost, I cry. I cry like I have never cried before. I should’ve died. Please let me die again.

I can feel my knees quiver under my weight, fighting to support me. I grip the doorpost a little harder. I know that, were I to give in now and sink back to the floor, I would never get up again. The last ounce of strength left in me is burning up fast, and I have to make it out. Now that I am here, I need to know if I have succeeded. If he succeeded. If I go outside only to find that he hasn’t, I will gladly die for my crimes, but if I find him victorious, I would die happy. I pray to any deity who will listen, please give me the strength to make it outside.

As I stagger out towards the staircase and down, I can feel my mind slipping further and further away from sense. The dark hole I have found myself in has gripped my ankles and is dragging me down. I fight it, but I know it is a losing battle. I only hope to fight it off until I know for sure.

Down the stairs I let myself drop onto all fours, dragging myself towards the tunnel leading to the Whomping Willow. Please let me make it. I have to make it.

The darkness around me doesn’t help. It reminds me of the darkness in my soul, in my heart. But it also calms me down. I have one way to go, and that is forward.

As I start ascending, the slope becoming more and more difficult to master in my weakened state, the darkness doesn’t let up. I hang on to enough of common sense to realize it is night. The chance something is blocking the exit is incredibly slim, if not impossible. Night. I hear nothing but the sounds I make myself, my breathing, my heartbeat, my dragging myself forward.

I emerge into the dead of night. The scent of the recently dead fills my nostrils, and my head. It is a scent which I fear, a scent I wish to never smell again. I glance around, and though my vision is hazy and the night is dark, I can spot the outlines of the corpses which litter the ground. I wish I didn’t have to pass them, afraid of whom I might find, but I know I have no choice. As long as I do not find the boy, there is still a chance, still a spark of hope.

From my vantage-point under the tree, which is swinging it’s branches angrily, but doesn’t seem to know I’m here yet, I can see the state of the castle. It breaks my heart to see the once formidable castle in such a state, and I can feel the tears well up inside me when I notice the astronomy tower is no more. The most awful of all my deeds has no more corporeal memory. Only in my head, and hopefully that of Lily’s boy, it lives on. It had given me closure when I was up there, but now, I am only overjoyed it’s gone.

I spot a stick close enough to reach it, and have the willow freeze. I am going to need some time to make my way out of its reach. Dragging myself over the blood-soaked grounds of my home, I pass body after body. Each one both pains me and makes me just a bit more hopeful. Though the men and woman lying dead around me were once what some would consider my friends, I find only Death Eaters. It is a good sign. I am not naive enough to believe only the dark has lost their men, but it’s not bad that the bodies of the light, my true side, have been cleared. That means there are enough still alive to clear them. Either that, or I’ll find their heads on stakes near the doors. From this distance, it is hard to see anything.

My hand grabs something cold, and I know the feel of it instantly. It’s a mask. Drawing it close to my face, I swear I can feel my heart breaking. I know I should hate him, I know he was one of the worst, one of the most cruel, he was also the one with the most heart. He was the one who, if he had had the same chance as I, would’ve taken my place in a heartbeat. He hated the man he served under more than I did. He was the one who loved me. As I loved him. Lucius. I search around a little, though my body doesn’t permit me too much. He is not there. I can only hope he has merely lost his mask somewhere in the fight.

Pushing the thoughts of my best friend, my brother, out of my head, I have to go on. I can feel my body giving up, and my mind wrapping itself inside a blissful cocoon off unconsciousness. But not yet. I first have to know.

Moving closer towards the heavy oak doors to the entrance hall, I see people milling about behind the huge windows of the great hall. I cannot make out anyone I know and care for, but at least I’ll have my answer soon. I only have to go in.

At the bottom of the steps leading to the doors, there’s another pile of bodies. My heart sinks as I see the dark unruly curls, though somewhere in my mind I know it’s not her. As I come close enough, I can see the curls are black. Bella is no more. The biggest part of me rejoices, doing summersaults of joy in my head, making me a little dizzy, but a small treacherous part of me feels I am going to miss her. Back before Azkaban she had been a good companion, and even though she had gone insane in the last years, you never wish someone you have shared your bed with dead. Not if it had been a good union. I can only muse about whether she had been still alive if she had chosen me instead of Lestrange. Or if I would’ve been dead now if she had. I touch her face softly, closing her unseeing eyes.

“Rest, my dear” I croak out.

I don’t like the way my voice sounds, thick with more unshed tears. But I have no time to ponder it, I have to move. I am so close now, I cannot give up. I feel sick as I crawl up and over the pile of bodies, thinking they could’ve found a better place to dump them. It seems disrespectful, even if it’s the enemy. But maybe it’s just me, merely because I have known and worked side by side with these people that it seems so heartless. Now that they’re dead, I can see the only crime they have ever committed was choosing the wrong side. Every one under the man’s command had gone insane, some gradually or even just momentarily, and others, like Bellatrix, had never recovered. Though I knew I was being a little shortsighted, it didn’t matter what I thought. They were dead.

I make it up the steps, trying to get back on my feet but failing miserably. I am much too weak to manage. With the very last bit of strength, all of my bodyweight and an awful lot of willpower, I push open one of the doors.

The light floods out, blinding me momentarily as I let myself fall into the entrance hall. When my vision clears, my heart swells to an unimaginable size. I see her, my longtime friend, without who’s guidance I had been lost this past year, looking shaken and injured, but alive. I register her turning my way, but not until I feel her arms around my shoulders and my head in her lap, I know that she has come to me. I open my eyes long enough to stare into her aged ones.

“Minerva” I gasp. Even speaking hurts. “The boy?”

I cannot speak more. She knows what I mean. Her face is pale, a ghostly white from her injuries, and I know sitting on the floor holding me while I draw my last breaths is painful to her. She nods at me.

“He made it. We won. ”

That is all I need to know. I smile up for a moment before closing my eyes, and I let the darkness claim me.

A/N: Please let me know what you think.
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The darkness surrounds me