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Snape's Apprentices	By : Lalani Category: Harry Potter > Het - Male/Female > Snape/Hermione Views: 26336 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, everything that you recognize belongs to the amazingly talented JKRowling! I do not make any money or profit off of it.

Chapter List
- 12
- 13
- 14
Chapter Thirteen

SPOV

They had taken Miss Granger and Mr. Malfoy back to Hogwarts, letting Mr. Malfoy go off on his own, while he had taken Miss Granger up to Minerva’s office, just so she could see her precious Gryffindor Princess return in one piece.

To be honest, he had dragged the girl into an alcove, just to kiss her. The weird guilt of doing this at Hogwarts had set in almost immediately and he had stopped himself from doing more. It wouldn’t happen again and she had agreed, feeling as weird as he did at doing this at school.

Now he was inspecting the hidden door to the Vampire’s lair with Lucius and trying not to think about the next months without being able to touch her. He wouldn’t admit it, but he almost missed her.

“Well, well, well, didn’t think you had it in you, old friend.” Lucius said with barely suppressed mirth, basically skipping around Severus and making him grind his teeth.

“I know, Lucius, I am not the most attractive man, but do you really have to rub it in so much?” he returned on a grumble.

“That is not what I meant. You do have a certain appeal with women, since they like the tall, dark and dangerous type. I just did not think a little girl like Miss Granger would prefer that type.”

“You are not making this any better. And the reason, my dear friend, is that she is a submissive. A natural one. For her, I am the reasonable choice, since I am the only male in her vicinity that she saw as dominating and self-assured when her sexuality started asserting itself. It is almost like a hatchling imprinting on the only adult around them. It will fade, in all probability.” He answered, readying the runes needed for the rather powerful and extremely dark spell they needed if there was a vampire in there.

“A submissive, eh? That explains you taking the girl up on her ‘offer’. Are you going to enjoy her charms as long as it lasts, then? That is rather callous off you. And out of character, if I may say so. You are one of the most possessive Bastards I know.”

“She is young. There is no way for me to hold on to her and stop her from flitting from male to male.” He replied, not even noticing how much of his emotions showed in that answer. Lucius just harrumphed behind him.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she did stay. Treat her right, I say, a little trinket here, a compliment there and always listen to what she has to say. It works with Narcissa and that woman is a crazy bitch. And it certainly works with my dear Poppy.”

“I still can’t get over the fact that a woman named Poppy would name her child Lavender.” Severus replied, choosing not to answer to what Lucius had said. He would think about it, that was for sure, but he wouldn’t give Lucius the satisfaction of thinking he was right.

“Go on, Severus, mock my relationship. I did manage to hold on to a woman for 20 years, though.”

“As have I. And like yours, she is married to someone else. I say none of us are truly successful in our love lives.” He replied, thinking of Lily Potter for the first time since he had come here with Miss Granger. Or even longer if he was honest with himself. Ever since that day at his office, when he had seen her last, he hadn’t truly thought about her in a romantic way.

“I do have to say though, that my situation with Lily is a bit different. She wasn’t already married when we started our affair.” He added.

“True. On both accounts. Let’s get this done. I don’t think there is an actual vampire in there, but I understand your caution in how to handle this. No need to start renovating and have the workers be a possible snack.”

With that, they finished the runes created the shield that could kill a vampire and moved towards the door. It was an odd combination of a simple daytime spell and a slew of mirror-shields. Why ever this had been outlawed, he didn’t know, but as long as it wasn’t an Unforgivable, he would use it.

He stepped towards the shelf and pulled out the purple tome. It started creaking and shaking, until swinging inwards, into a darkened room. He lifted his wand, whispered a quick Lumos and moved inside, while Lucius used his to keep up the shield around both of them.

The room was narrow, making the light from his wand enough to illuminate it completely. There was a coffin resting against the far wall. It was open, but nearly completely charred from what he guessed had been a fire. He relaxed a bit and felt Lucius do the same. Apparently, the vampire really had been gotten rid of. A small pile of dust on the floor was testament to something having been burned. Lucius let the shield fall and moved closer to the pile, waving his wand over it.

“Apparently, the creature really has been disposed of. Lucky you, I guess. And...What is that? It looks like a necklace.” Lucius said, already bending closer and picking it up with his wand. He got closer and looked at it, finding it to be a heart-shaped locket, made out of actual amber. He had never seen anything like it.

“It used to belong to the former owner’s late wife. Here, put it in here. I will look at it later.” Severus said, holding out a little pouch he had transfigured his handkerchief into. He tied it off after Lucius let the necklace fall into it and warded the fabric, all the while concentrating on keeping the illumination charm going. At the same time he felt despair grip him by the throat and his heart started hammering in his chest.

Do you really think you can make her love you? A voice whispered in his mind, making him whip his head around. He looked at Lucius, to see if it had been him, but Lucius just stared at him.

“Did you say something, Lucius?” he asked, watching the shadows in the room intently.

“No, of course not. Severus, is everything alright?”

“I don’t know.” He answered while carefully backing out of the room, Lucius following with a frown on his face. He kept his eyes on Lucius, watching to see if the other man might be pulling a prank.

She is young and pretty, while you are nothing but an ugly, sarcastic bastard. She is using you! She is sleeping with you because she wants the apprenticeship!

He froze on the spot when the voice started again. Obviously Lucius wasn’t the cause of this, since his mouth hadn’t moved at all and neither had his expression shifted. He looked around again and saw nothing suspicious.

“I hate to say this out loud, Severus, but you are acting even more peculiar than ever. What is it?” the blond man asked, already lifting his wand and taking a defensive stance.

“I am…hearing a voice. It is mocking me.” He replied, looking down at the pouch he was carrying in his left hand. He frowned at it and then let it drop to the ground, breathing a sigh of relief when the crushing despair lifted off of his chest. His heart stopped hammering at an accelerated pace.

“The locket. It seems to be cursed. I felt desperate and started hearing a voice” he said, while already stepping away from it. Lucius just stared at it, then grabbed him by the arm and pulled him out. They both shut the hidden door and started throwing wards at it.

“Interesting. Say, how did you hear about this estate, Severus?” Lucius asked while still looking at the shelf.

“I get what you are thinking. And you are right. This is way too convenient, isn’t it? First, the rather low price, then actually finding a desk littered with research on the kind of potion Miss Granger has been slipped. And now something that, judging from your reaction, you have encountered before.” He said, turning his glare at his friend.

Lucius just stared back, pale and worried. The other man started pacing around the room, obviously thinking about how much he could say.

“It was given to me by the Dark Lord. I was supposed to keep it safe and away from prying eyes and fingers. Since I have the sub-dungeons at Malfoy Manor and they have never been discovered, he thought it would be a good hiding place. At first, I didn’t know what exactly it was. But then I got curious and started researching. I thought I was the only one, but Regulus had a suspicion that something was off, too. After talking to me about it, he went off to find another one. He returned but we never got to talk before he died. I know that the Dark Lord killed him, Severus. And I know why. And I never said anything, because I did not want to risk my son’s life. “

Severus just kept on staring at Lucius, bewildered by the other man’s attitude. He had always thought that Lucius was a devoted follower. The only reason he had kept on associating was because Lucius had always protected him, especially after refusing the Dark Mark.

“Lucius…you were working against him? Is that why you never wanted me to take the Mark and covered for me after I refused? That bogus story about me being a Spy at Hogwarts?” he asked, his voice hoarse with feeling.

“Yes. Regulus showed you…he showed you a revel because we wanted you to refuse the Mark. We didn’t want you to finish that Potion. We sabotaged everything, Severus, everything. Especially your ingredients.”

Lucius had stopped right in front of him, staring at him intently.

“Why?” was all Severus asked. Now he could ask this question and not mean it in a malicious way. If he had known back then, though, he would have killed Regulus and Lucius both.

“He created Horcruxes. Seven of them, Severus. He murdered seven innocents to split his soul and make himself immortal.” Lucius replied hoarsely, turning the chair at the desk around and sitting down wearily.

“Did you just say….Horcruxes?” Severus asked in disbelief.

Horcruxes were the ultimate dark magic. They ripped the soul apart and saved those shards in an object. But every rip took away more and more of your humanity until there was only a monster left. He knew about them because Lucius had once…

At the realization that his best friend had been playing him, he launched himself across the room and grabbed him by the collar.

“Back then, you had been trying to make me a traitor, too, hadn’t you?? You weren’t even trying to save me, you just wanted me to pass Dumbledore information! That was why I wasn’t supposed to have that Mark, right? Are you crazy? Do you know what he would have done to me had he suspected anything?” he seethed at Lucius.

“We thought we needed you back then! You were finishing that Potion and he would have been even more powerful, needing no sustenance! He would have been able to feed off the energy of a living being! Then James Potter killed him and everything was over. I hid that blasted Horcrux he had given me and I have been looking for a way to destroy it ever since! And you have been distancing yourself more and more from what we used to believe in, Severus. I thought you were on the side of good.” Lucius’ voice descended into a whisper at the end.

“Of course I am on the side of good, now at least! Back then, though, I was young, stupid and way too cocky. And so misguided I was ready to clap for a madman who thought it was ok to kill half of our magical population! That doesn’t change the fact that you risked my life, Lucius, without giving me a choice!”

“I know! And I have risked it again, I know that! But he needs to be destroyed for good, every piece of him.” Lucius answered through gritted teeth, keeping his hands by his sides.

“Yes, and you thought to send me here and have me figure that out for you, too, didn’t you? How could you? Did you even, for one moment, think about Miss Granger and what your stupid stunt with that potion would have done to her?” he bellowed, scared for his young lover and angered at that kind of betrayal.

“Miss Granger? What the hell are you talking about? I only needed you to buy this place and get curious! So you could figure out what would destroy such an artefact. I never did anything to Miss Granger!” Lucius answered. The look of bewilderment on the other man’s face seemed real, but Severus wasn’t going to take any more chances.

“Legilimency!” Severus whispered and delved into Lucius’ mind. It was a mess of fear and anger and hard for him to navigate. Then he found what he was looking for and dropped out of his mind to stare at the other man.

“You are telling the truth.” Severus answered, letting go of Lucius and causing the other man to slump back into the chair.

“Of cou…”

“DON’T YOU DARE!” Severus interrupted the other man with a bellow. “There is nothing ‘of course’ about what you did, Lucius!”

“Very well.” The other man answered quietly. “But, as you saw, I did not give Miss Granger that Potion. Although I am not quite sure how that would pertain to the issue of the Horcruxes.”

Severus stared at Lucius intently, wanting to make him squirm and feel uneasy. When he started shifting in his seat and evading Severus’ stare, he started explaining what he and Miss Granger had found out.

At the end, though, he thought it way to convenient, even with Lucius’ involvement.

“So, how did you learn about this place?” he asked Lucius, leaning back against the desk close to Lucius.

Lucius just sighed and leaned back in the chair, getting comfortable.

“Ministry records. I found the report about what had happened here and the ‘mad muggle’, as they called the owner.”

“Hold it right there Lucius. You little, scheming bastard! You knew the Vampire was dead!!” Severus seethed at his friend again, whipping out his wand and throwing a mild stinging hex at the other man’s lap. Lucius howled in pain and started rubbing his thigh, where the hex had stung him.

“Seriously, Severus! I AM sorry!! And I was trying for a little bit of subterfuge, here! I didn’t think you would figure it out!”

“And I wouldn’t have if there hadn’t been a Horcrux here!”

“I know! Anyway, I found the reports, read them and started ‘scheming’, as you put it. There was no mentioning of a Horcrux or a Potion, per se, but when I heard that the Muggle insisted there was a ghost following him but there was no sight of one, I got suspicious.” Lucius went on, now gripping his own wand and watching Severus through narrowed eyes.

“How?” Severus asked,while whirling his wand around like a baton.

“Stop twirling that wand, Severus, it’s dangerous. Anyway, I got suspicious when the Muggles told the Aurors that ‘it’ got corporal enough to push a maid down the stairs, but only appeared as a ‘ghost’ to the husband. I figured he was carrying the Horcrux with him, since he died a madman, yelling about ‘her’ haunting him while in Bedlam. Now, though, I am thinking it was more because of the Obliviation than because of what had happened. MY take? He was a Squib. The Aurors found Potions equipment that they took with them and then they warded this place sloppily and just left everything else here. Sloppy work if you ask me, but they probably thought the wards on the mirror were enough.”

“Hmmm. So, his wife was wearing a Horcrux all the time, but didn’t go mad. But the husband wears it and starts communicating with the soul-shard trapped inside?” Severus said aloud, trying to figure out why the wife hadn’t been affected.

“How do you know? Maybe the wife killed herself?” Lucius said.

“No, he said she died of a fall. She fell down from her horse and broke her neck.” He replied absentmindedly. “He starts wearing the locket….no, the husband has been hearing the soul before he ever wore the locket, as far as his diary says.” Severus continued, having grabbed the Diary and starting to thumb through it again.

“Ah, but the Horcruxes magic can act over distances, especially if the soul has latched itself on to someone.” Lucius said and bent closer to look at the diary with Severus.

“Do you think that maybe the wife bought the locket and the soul within lay dormant until the husband came along? She was from Cornwall, after all.”

“Yes, that might be it. And through the soul in the locket, he ends up here, where a Vampire resides, that can help him bring his wife back. The Vampire and the soul were probably lovers at one time. Anyway, the nearer mystery of how the soul got in there or the Vampire got in here does not interest me. I need to know how to destroy those bloody things!” Lucius said, obviously impatient.

“That, and we need to figure out how a Horcrux got to Hogwarts.” He replied.

Lucius startled in his seat, obviously connecting the dots for the first time.

“Dear Circe.” The blond man breathed, staring off into space, before turning his grey eyes on Severus again. “Someone is trying to get the Dark Lord back by having her get magically pregnant. Inserting a soul into a ready womb and a little bit of dark fertility magic and voila, you have a new body for the Dark Lord.”

“And since the soul is adult, it will have accelerated aging and be an adult in no time. A few weeks at the most.” Severus finished.

“Alright. Here is the deal…”

“No. We will remove that coffin, collect the Vampire dust and empty this room. The Horcrux I will put away safely in Gringotts.”

“No, not Gringotts!”

“Don’t tell me there is a Horcrux in there that belongs to the Dark Lord?” he said between gritted teeth.

“Unfortunately, there is. It’s in Bellatrix’s vault. I don’t know what exactly it is, though.”

“Alright. How about this, I will take it to Spinner’s End. You will stay here with the House Elves and clean this space out.”

“Wait, with the House Elves? What do I look like, your servant???” Lucius raged back at him, but Severus wasn’t really listening anymore. He had already started for the hidden door to take care of the Horcrux.

“Yes, you are, at least until I have forgiven you, Lucius.”

AN No1: I have finally found a Beta-Reader for my story! Much thanks to the lovely M!

AN No2: Well, how about this. I have been asked what we Snapers like about Severus! Here is my answer: it’s different for everyone. For me, it is his honesty trough everything. As mean and snarky as he ever was, he was always honest and the only one to not shy away from saying what he thought. As mean as it sometimes seems, when you say what you are thinking and are honest, that’s the best thing you can do. I would rather have someone like Severus Snape in my life than someone like, say Albus Dumbledore, who would never tell you the truth and rather smile the problems away.

On a sexiness level? There is nothing sexier than a dominating man in bed ;) And I think, from his friendship with Lily, he would stand by you if you gave him the respect he needed. If JKR actually thought out that as an aspect of his personality or not I do not know. But I think if Lily or anyone else had stood by Severus, he would not have gone down his path. Sure, he betrayed Voldemort for ‘selfish’ reasons, but can any of us honestly say we wouldn’t ‘wake up’ only when a loved one was hurt or threatened, if we think we are doing the right thing? Very few people ever have the courage to stand up to what is right. Rather most of us are more similar to Severus Snape, in that we see injustice only when it either hits us personally or we see the results of an injustice destroy someone’s life.

Wow, that was a rather lengthy answer!
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Snape's Apprentices