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The Spoils of War	By : tambrathegreat Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Snape Views: 16618 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own the characters and settings from Harry Potter. They are owned by JK. Rowling. I make no profit from this endeavor nor do I intend copyright infringement.

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Into the Dark

The Dark Lord had won over twelve years ago and I, Severus Snape, was surprisingly not killed for my treachery to either side. Not that the Dark Lord didn't attempt it, not that I hadn't tried to die any number of times since Potter's friends, the last of the resistance, fell.

Several months ago, I watched as Weasley met his fate, a public stoning after being disembowelled by hippogriffs whilst his viscera was set on fire. It only bothered me a little that I was numb to the young man's agonised screams. How could I care when it was my own foetus that had been ripped from Granger's belly only days before that spectacle? I hadn't flinched when she was left to haemorrhage to death from the forced abortion on the Gryffindor tower walls, after all. No Muggleborns were allowed to breed anymore, and Granger was the most notorious Muggleborn there was. Not that anyone knew she carried my child. I was no fool to advertise that I had slept with a Muggleborn without having a cadre of revellers to watch, and brutal rape to commit. No. I had fucked her a few months before in her cell at her request. She asked for gentleness from me, for some reason still trusting me even if I had ultimately failed us all. Perhaps she entreated me because I had been her instructor, perhaps it was because I was a face she knew, but I gave all the gentleness I could muster to her. I only admitted to myself later that I was just as starved for that type of experience, and hoped that my twisted and bitter spunk would imbue her with the strength she would need to endure what we both knew was coming for her. It was the least I could do after the abuses she had endured because of my brethren, and those inflicted due to my own failures as Dumbledore's spy.

Potter has not been found. The Dark Lord, though weakened by some strange magical illness, still wields the same menace that he did before his death during the first war. Potter is his first priority, and thus ours, his remaining lieutenants, his Death Eaters, this family whom he has cobbled from the dreck and dregs of pureblood culture, whatever is left. The Malfoy, Black, Lestrange, Longbottom, Dumbledore, Selwyn, Nott, Goyle, Crabbe, Zabini, and Weasley lines are all extinct and others are quickly following. The Dark Lord was instrumental in their demise and he relishes each murder with the delight of a petulant child too long denied candy. It was always his aim to be the one and only wizard to survive. Those of us left who follow him know this now. We all await the summons that will end our lives. He commits more murders everyday.

Thus, we all search half-heartedly for Potter, and none of us hope we find him. Whilst Potter lives, there is hope that some portion of the prophecy is true. Whilst he lives, we can draw one more breath even if we are mired in a cesspool of our own creation. I suspect I will be last to die simply because of my blood status. The Dark Lord does so love that I am as much a halfling as he is.

Contrary to widely held belief, the Dark Lord does possess a sense of humour. It's simply that what he finds hilarious is horrifying to everyone else.

I saw Potter everywhere I went for a long while. I wanted to. I felt that my conscience was appeased when I imagined him in the world, not dead in some mass grave.

It wasn't his dead mother's ravening spirit I wanted to appease, but my own guilt. I had failed Potter in all ways. I could have been his mentor, his friend, some one as important to him as his dogfather. I could have been the one who shaped him, honed his skills to defeat the monster I had married myself to all those years ago. But I wasn't. I was simply my bitter, fallible self with him. I was too mired in my torturous past to see that he was the future and thus I failed him. I am just as much the author of this dystopia as the Dark Lord.

I walk daily in the markets, more an exercise in futility every day as fewer products appear. The Dark Lord’s pogroms are as effective as any other despot’s in any other century. Tyranny does not breed efficiency, especially when the brightest of society are killed in the name of progress.

On my treks, I normally avoid the slave markets, disliking the stench of despair, illness, and inadequate facilities. I hate to hear the non-musical clink of chains, the discordant haranguing of the slaver as he or she sells their fleshy commodity, but I most especially dislike the silent counterpoint of the slaves on the auction block. It unnerves me to see them in the extremity of their despair, unable to give voice.

The Dark Lord has taken their ability to communicate, the one thing that sets humans apart from the beasts in the field. It is his special brand of humour that had caused him to do it, but as with all things, his pragmatism is apparent. Voiceless slaves, unable to communicate in any form, cannot foment dissent. There will be no Spartacus to rise against his Roman might.

My Lord's cruelty always has a cunning edge to it.

Today I walk through the market, as is my custom, avoiding the piles of rotting food, the second, third or fifth-hand garments strewn on mats in the street waiting to be sold to someone desperate for clothing, just as I avoid the other refuse that serves as trade goods these days. As is my habit, I keep my head down, my hands behind my back. My face is known to all as one of the Dark Lord's favourites, even after he attempted to murder me during what might have been the Final Battle, had Potter answered his challenge. Regardless, I am not in the habit of flaunting my favoured status. I am still the same man who terrorised generations at Hogwarts; I still crave solitude, even if it is less self-imposed than it was before the Dark Lord won.

I pass a bookseller, not deigning to look at the stacks. Her stock is most useful for fuel or bog paper as the fare she is forced to sell is substandard to say the least since most books have been confiscated and burned. Still, I see her look to me hopefully. I am known to rifle through mounds of shit to find a single tome of worth. I can see by the fit of her clothing and by the gauntness of her cheeks that she needs a sale, even if it is to someone such as myself. I grip my wand in my fist tightly. I have been accosted in this alleyway, and am fully aware that I often walk in the market for just such a purpose. When I fight, I feel alive. When there is a chance for death, I court it.

Potter was correct all those years ago when I fled Hogwarts on the night I killed Dumbledore. I am a coward. I want to die, but am unable to commit the deed myself. Not, at least, while there is still hope that Albus' child saviour might appear and save us all.

I am a fool.

I wander along the twisted alley and happen upon a scene that is all too common in these post-apocalypse days. A man stands over a bleeding, semi-nude slave, I can tell the creature's state of bondage by the twisted brand on his cheek and by the lack of sound as blows rain down upon his back and limbs. The slave's blood mingles with the filth of the walkway, diluted by a spreading stream of piss that surrounds his body. It is not an extraordinary sight by any means, and as I begin to turn my attention to dodging a bit of filth, a nearly forgotten flash of green arrests my movement.

I pause, transfixed by a pair of grass-green eyes below a deeply scarred forehead and a greasy mop of unruly black hair. I draw closer simply to see a sight that has been both dear and hated. I am unable to speak around the gorge that has risen upon realising that I had the one person who can spell both my doom and my salvation lies probably broken before me.

The brute kicks at Potter who has, by now, recoiled in on himself, protecting his wraith-thin frame, only emitting a huff of air as a boot-shod foot makes contact with a thin arm. The man aims another blow at the hunched figure before I can think to intervene. A soft crack of a breaking bone propels me forward and I once again assume the air of menacing authority that I now so despise.

“Do not strike the creature again.” I let the cold softness of my tone carry my command, hoping it covers the elation that shoots through me at such an unlikely sight.

“What's it to you how I treat this dog?” The brute whirls about, cudgel raised as if to strike me. He falters, his mouth going slack as he realises exactly who commands him, but he doesn't retract his question.

Indeed, what is it to me?

I dig into my pocket for my coin purse, thrashing about in my mind for the reason I might want to save a lowly slave. In my despair, I have lost the knife's edge wit that saved me under two masters. I bestow a false smirk as the man blanches in fear, before I bring out the sac, clinking the coins within. “I simply wish to unburden you of this creature. I find myself in need of test subjects for the Dark Lord, and am looking for unworthy slaves to fit the bill. I prefer them... whole.”

The man looks from my purse to the body at his feet, a sly smile creasing his fleshy features. He has seen through the lie I’ve just told him, but comes to his own lascivious conclusions as to why this unattractive Death Eater might want a moderately young male servant. I let him have his assumptions as I throw two Knuts at his feet. The man bristles almost imperceptibly at my high-handed treatment, but remembers who threw them and stoops to gather the coins nevertheless.

I direct my wand at Potter, levitating the young man’s body, aware that I jerk his broken bone in the process. It‘s theatre that I‘m aiming for and the sudden grinding sound of the broken bone dispels the crowd that has gathered. Potter has gone limp, but as I jerk him up, I am heartened to note a scathing look of resentment along with the pain that ghosts across his face. It is an emotion that is shuttered quickly behind lank hair and a dull expression, but there nonetheless. I feel a delightful tingle at the thought of such continuity.

Once away from the bazaar, I move quickly to Disapparate us from the scene. I pull Potter close to me and feel the uncomfortable fevered heat of his body against mine. It is a sensation that lingers through the vacuum of Apparition and long after I set him aside to dismantle the wards on my cottage.

I pull him through the gate and up the lichen-covered path. As far as the Dark Lord knows, I still occupy the two up, two down at Spinner's End. I spend no more time at Hogwarts, the Dark Lord's seat of power, than I must. He has made it easier for me by dismantling the wizarding educational system. Hogwarts has become a place of terror and despair. I throw up the wards again, haphazardly as I notice Potter's eyelids flutter and his face blanch.

"Hold on, Boy." I lift his slight weight with one hand, propelling him forward as I finish the wards with a flourish. I sound harsher than I intend to, but know that we are exposed even for all my precaution.

Once inside the house I push Potter down to the floor. If we have been followed, it will not do for one of my compatriots to see a slave being treated as an equal or well for that matter. Potter's strength seems to give way and he slumps to the side, falling on his injured arm. It is unnerving that he is silent as his mouth opens in a scream.

Once I have secured the interior against prying eyes, I turn to Potter. He is unconscious and I proceed to set his arm with a quick Episkey before I fashion a splint out of a cardboard box and some spello-tape. I don't dare too much before I get him to our destination. The state of his health is alarming. Aside from the wounds from the beating I witnessed, he is malnourish, infested with lice, and suffering from infections in old wounds marring his skin. I see all this just from my cursory examination.

I fashion a Portkey out of bit of trash left from the breakfast I procured this morning from a Muggle vendor. I make a second and third, before I am satisfied that we cannot be followed. I would prefer to Apparate because it is more expedient, but know that the boy's body cannot take much more stress, and my magic is already taxed from what little I have done for him.

I pull his too hot body to mine, vowing that the first thing I will do when we reach our destination is get him clean. His sickly sweet stench curls around us as I say, "Hold tight, Boy!"

We spin into darkness.

&*&*&

Thanks as always to Jilliane who not only red-moused this, but also gave me the challenge. I hope this story will break the writer's block that is crushing my psyche at the moment.

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The Spoils of War