Daunted Death

It's literally been years, but this story has taken over my mind again.
________________________________________

Hermione and Snape met in an alley behind the Three Broomsticks, barely glancing at each other. He grabbed her arm when none appeared on either end of the alley, and they were off. Two apparition points later, they arrived at a chilly hill top where a teacher from Durmstrang met them. He was an old, hunched, nearly silent man who spared them one glare before reaching out for them.

Hermione saw Snape discreetly withdraw his wand, and when the Durmstrang professor reached out, Snape pulled Hermione close to him and offered his left arm to the other man. In a snap they were gone. All of a sudden a fortress stood before them, glittering maliciously behind the snow fall. This building was a kind of castle, but far more uniform than Hogwarts, square and lined, the stone nearly black even in the daylight behind snow and ice. The Durmstrang teacher began marching directly up to the front doors. Hermione stepped to follow, but long fingers curled around her upper arm and pulled her back.

Snape’s lips were flat, his eyes still searching the fortress in front of them.

“Miss Granger,” he said quietly, his voice not dark but serious, “I realize now it was an oversight allowing you to come here.”

“What?”

“The kind of people that populate this school are the people I have a very close history with. Do not leave my sight at any point. Do you understand?”

Eyes wide, she nodded.

He let go of her and briskly followed the footprints up to the castle.

They did not see much of the inside, but what they did see was high ceilings and archways replaced by rectangular holes. The inside stone was gray rather than brown. No art plastered the walls. Instead beside every doorway and on every landing was a quotation intended for inspiration, but now and then took a dark turn.

The weak are there to be moulded. Power is there to be taken.

A bit of fear streaked into Hermione’s face as she read it. She looked up at Snape who was already passed but paused when her footsteps stopped. He turned towards her, his eyes flitting over the carving, and beckoned her forward.

“Alcon Jur-Mykus wrote that in his book on how human slavery is actually beneficial for society. It would give the less intelligent, less capable of the population a stable environment and provide a free workforce for those who were more worthy of the world,” he explained.

“That’s horrible,” she said, but Snape cut in immediately, saying, “This is a place to keep those opinions silent.”

No other words escaped her, not when they were led up to the door of the library, not when it opened to reveal bookcases three stories tall, and not when Snape spoke to her.

“I’ll find books for you to search,” he said, “It does us no good for you to look through books I have already been through. Do you remember the incantation?”

She nodded. Snape took off down one of the rows, scanning titles as he went. That was true, it would be a waste of time, but more importantly there were some books he did not want her looking in and some books she would not know were cursed and required special handling. It was better if she only touched what he handed her.

Soon thick tomes were thrown across a few of the tables. Hermione attacked them with vivation. Snape stood, three books levitated up to his line of sight, the pages magically turning as he looked, his skin never making contact. It looked promising, all the books, none restrained or concealed, like in the Hogwarts’ restricted section. Dark and usually dangerous books were free and available in sheer numbers that astounded Hermione. As she paced up and down an aisle(Snape taking two steps to the right to keep her in his line of sight), the transfiguration section was pitifully small, and the charms area was wholly inadequate. Yet, by four in the afternoon, neither one of them came across Nexforis by any mention.

“Professor,” Hermione asked hesitantly.

Snape glanced up from the book he held with dragon hide gloves and resumed his reading.

“What happens if we do not find it?”

“Then, Miss Granger, I will give you a portkey back to Hogsmeade and stay until I do find it.”

An hour later, Snape was hunched over a book on horcruxes with a red lens held in his left hand, right hand waving his wand to turn pages.

There.

“...unlike the Nexforis, where the soul is bound to an object yet trapped in the body. At the instance of horcrux creation…”

“Miss Granger,” he said, his voice more breathless than usual, “It is soul magic. Here, this way.”

The two of them turned the corner and sprinted down the neighboring aisle to a particularly gray section of books. Snape’s eyes ran over the covers with a quick concentration. After a couple waves of his wand, he pulled three down and handed them to Hermione.

“It’s binding a soul inside the body,” he said.

She nodded in response, took two steps back, and sat on the floor, top book already open. He levitated down one that would have otherwise burned his hands. In ten minutes, he had another, then another.

“Professor, look,” Hermione said suddenly, looking up at him with wide eyes.

She was pointing to a specific passage. He dropped his book flat on the floor and got down on his knees beside her. He lifted the book out of her hands, reading as he did so. The passage before spoke of Nexforis by name.

“As with all Dark Magic by definition, it needs a source for the magic to continue to exert its effects on someone or something else, but unlike the binding of most soul magic, Nexforis requires something quite specific. Only one thing in nature, natural or otherwise, has the power to pull an entire soul. Unlike Horcruxes and Slave stones, which deal with only pieces of souls, Nexforis wants all of it. Star Ice is the only object that holds the power to anker such a curse, and most believe that is due to the Ice’s elusive origin.”

Snape let a long sigh out into the silence.

Hermione whispered, “What is Star Ice?”

“You might know it as Gyltock,” he answered, but when she shook her head he continued, “It is what gives a dementor life, the cold stone that resides in its head. They are exceptionally rare, and all of their uses are in Dark Magic…. This should not be so important to the Dark Lord that he would risk losing one.”

“If Nexforis needs a source to bind,” Hermione continued, “Could you just destroy it and remove the ability for the Gyltock to bind?”

“That depends,” he replied with a frown, “Pieces of Gyltock are still functional. It couldn’t be blasted or shattered. And even so, I will have to locate it in the house, and it is going to have at least as much protection warding as Lily.”

“So… what will you do?”

He closed the book and stood, replacing the tomes on the shelf one at a time, saying, “I’m going to burn the house down with wizard’s fire.”

~

Severus Snape could change his opinions, change his side in the war, but all his skill stayed, the deception, sneaky slide-hand, were still part of him just as the dark magic was. Even Miss Granger did not see or suspect three of the books disappearing: the one that led them finally on the right path, one on soul binding, and one on dementors written in a shaky pen as if the author wrote it directly after discovering the information first hand. He needed these books. Research would make him more comfortable, more confident with all of this. The school probably wouldn't ever notice they were missing. He planted them firmly on different shelves in his rooms when he was not using them so they weren't out to be stumbled upon by the headmaster or McGonagall, who would certainly report him.

He kept Miss Granger close all the way up to the gate, but once through, he let her go and drifted away towards the dungeons, leaving her to sprint to Gryffindor Tower and fill in Potter on their discoveries. Snape did his best to believe they had enough brains to speak in complete solitude or in a bubble of silence.

He kept his notes in a book so extensively warded, it weighed more than his thickest tomes, but no one would know because only he could touch it or move it by contact or magic, though it had a safety. Potter's blood would open it so that the research would not go unknown, so that the boy could save her. It was a terrible, bleak prospect, but better than her dying because something happened to him.

Without being able to examine the house or test his theories on a Gytlock, he soon ran out of research to do.

What now?

Roughly nine hours until he was guided to see her. After that, days after when the Dark Lord was busy with something catastrophic, like an incompetent Death Eater accidentally spilling a vial of oxygen deprived courger acid in Malfoy Manor, he would get her out. As soon as courger acid hit the air, it would expand. It ate through anything, stone and bone alike. A vicious smile twisted his mouth as the scenario played in his mind. With any luck it would kill a couple of them in the process.

He packed for what would hopefully be his last visit to Lily in captivity, as much if not more food packed into his pockets. She would still need to eat, and he could show no indication of a plan. If he failed she would still need food for the rest of the week. If he failed this could be her last meal.

He took to pacing from the kitchen to the living room, mentally going through his inventory of potion ingredients shelf by shelf. It was a long list. As soon as an object crossed his mind, it evaporated. Shelf by shelf.

A most welcome pain seared his arm. He lashed out and ripped his cloak off the hook, his metal mask in its pocket thudding against the side of his leg. He practically sprinted down the dungeon, struggling into his cloak as he went. When he hit the stairs, he forced himself to stop with a breath and shook his body. Knowing he looked rattled at best, he kept his head down, black hair closing around his face. He exited the castle at a decent pace and crossed the grounds, disapparating the moment he resealed the gates.

~

He was always observant, but this time he was ridiculously so. With his wand lazily hanging from his hand, a couple scans escaped him at opportune moments. The only result he got was that the power sources in the entire house were scarce on the first floor and highly concentrated on the lowest stairs and basement. He did one last scan after the Dark Lord opened the wards and for a second Severus was taken aback. The wards were not sourced from the door or the house. They were sourced from the walls of the basement, the walls that surrounded Lily as she sat and waited for him, and for the first time he wondered if perhaps the binding was not meant to keep him out but keep her in, like the walls that so stoically hid their magic.

He rushed up to her, knelt, and rested his hands on her shoulders, scrutinizing for injury.

"I am fine," she told him softly before he could ask.

His eyes still traced her features, considerably less enthusiastic than minutes before. He watched her, waiting for some horrible truth to spring forth, waiting for a revelation about the entire situation, something he blindly overlooked in his desperate need and want to have her back.

"What is wrong?"

He blinked and covered his tracks.

"Nothing is wrong," he told her, pulling her closer to him, folding her limbs into his lap, "Do you remember when we were young and your insufferable sister tried to keep us from the park?"

A small smile pulled at her lips, and she told him, "Yes, and we made all the bees come out and chase her away.... What made you think of that?"

"Nothing in particular. Your son was complaining about her the other day, and I missed being able to make her sorry for arrogance."

Which was all mostly truth. The bees, only Lily would know about those.

"Or when you used magic on her at the train station, and your parents nearly exploded."

"She had a lasting fear of frogs after that."

Yes, frogs--Lily had turned Petunia's shoes into frogs, and Petunia screamed and screamed.

Part of him fell slightly more at ease, but he knew it was foolish to ignore his instincts and the things that just didn’t add up in favor of a foolish hope. He watched her eat ravenously, slowed her down a couple times, and gently ran his long fingers over the back of her hand. A deep sadness was growing in him, as if all of this was just ripped out from under him. Melancholy--that was a perfect description, the thing that was consuming everything inside him.

“Do you ever think about James?” he asked.

She paused in her chewing, glancing up at him, her eyes lingering on his face longer than necessary.

“Sometimes. Why?”

“Dumbledore informed me it was his birthday the other day. I thought you’d want to know.”

“Thank you, but I’m sure you’d rather not talk about him.”

He sighed, trying to bring the conversation to a place he needed, “I do not need to like him to respect what he did. He died protecting his family, you…. Do you remember that?”

She blinked several times before she said, “I remember taking Harry upstairs. I remember the laughter. He blew the door in and spoke to me. He said… he said I didn’t have to die.”

“Severus, it’s time.”

He clenched his jaw in frustration. He unfolded all their limbs and whispered in a hush as if sniffing her hair, “Did he say or do something strange?”

She frowned, as if thinking about it was agonizingly frustrating. Severus never asked anything of her, just gave help, information, food, comfort, but he wanted this from her, and she wanted to give it to him. He tucked her into the corner and turned. When he reached the door, he glanced back at her as he so often did.

She gazed at him intently. Her hands were held in front of her, palms facing each other, finges curled as though she held an invisible apple between her hands.

~

Snape didn’t bother to take off his shoes or acknowledge the Potter boy who stood in his rooms. Instead, he walked to the couch and sank to the floor in front of it. His eyes fell to his feet where he gazed unseeingly. Potter came over and hesitantly sat down beside him.

“What happened?” he asked softly.

Snape breathed in and blinked several times, coming back to the room.

He said, “I can’t burn the house to destroy the Gyltock.”

“Why?” asked Harry, “We’ll destroy it, and then it can’t bind you.”

“It’s not there to bind me. He says the incantation before I enter not to keep me from doing something stupid but to keep me ignorant. Lily is bound to the Gyltock. I think when he says the incantation when I visit her, he’s releasing the bond so that I won’t sense it in her. You know that magic always leaves a trail. Soul magic is the most obvious. If I destroy the Star Ice while she’s bound to it, it will kill her and keep her soul.”

Snape paused and spoke softly, “I can’t defeat him. After she’s unbound I can try to fight him as long as possible, but it will be dangerous to her. You… and your friends will have to be there to get her out while he’s distracted.”

“You mean to die,” Harry stated, now also looking at Snape’s sleek shoes.