Barbarism to Decadence.

He lovingly placed the precious vial of memories in the heavily warded trunk under the loose floorboard in his closet, and extracted the only other item hidden in the case. He closed the lid, tightened the wards further and replaced the board, standing with a groan as he swayed on his feet. He would have to take a bit of his Pepper-Up to get through the next few hours. Heavy, drunken steps drew him to his potions cabinet and he took out the small bottle with its sharp, brilliant orange contents.

As the potion flowed down his throat, energy burst through his body and staggered him with its intensity, making him jitter for a moment before it sunk in and replaced his fatigue. With a final, steadying breath, he lifted the golden chain and draped it around his neck, eyes fastened to the tiny hourglass at the center of the circular pendant. One, two, three...four turns and then he stopped, sucking sharply as time flowed backward around him and through him. When it slammed to a halt, he let out an involuntary groan before slipping the precious treasure into the neck of his robes. Now, the hard part.

------

He waited in the shadows outside of the classroom, heart pounding and his brain aching as memories were added and altered within it. Thankfully, he had experienced this before and he could work through the agony. He stepped forward when the door opened and a familiar figure with curly brown hair stormed out. A swift silencing spell halted her shriek before its birth and he grabbed Hermione, jerking her into the shadows with him. "I know you are familiar with time-turners, Miss Granger, so I won't bother explaining the situation on that front."

"Now, I haven't much time, and I'm trusting your brilliant mind to believe me when I tell you that I can not risk wasting so much as a moment. I need you to stall me, in whatever manner you deem necessary, so that I can save Vance's life. I promise that when this is over, I will tell you why I have to do what I am doing, but for now you are going to have to trust me. Can you do that?" He studied her intently, trembling with the feeling of minutes ticking by all around them, then exhaled with relief when she nodded. He removed the charm, warning her to continued silence with a glance. "Whatever means, Miss Granger."

He left her then, fleeing through the castle, cloaked with a disillusionment charm that could only be penetrated by two other men in the entire wizarding world. Thankfully, one was busy elsewhere and he could only pray the other would not choose this moment to wander the halls. When he reached Vance's suit undiscovered, he sent a mutter of gratitude to the Fates, and slipped into the man's unguarded rooms. Really, he was entirely too trusting sometimes. His silent footsteps brought him to the doorway of the kitchen he'd only recently vacated, and he found the irreverent American bent over a steaming cup of coffee.

He could ill-afford the moment he indulged himself in silent awe of the beauty who had proven to love him with a faithfulness that spanned almost two decades, but he could not resist. The feeling was soon shaken off and he silently Stupefied him, watching as his head dropped forward onto the table. Time pressed him forward, and he rushed to lay Vance on his bed, took a snippet of silky brown hair, then closed him away in darkness. Another check of that bastard master called Time, and he nearly choked with the rate it seemed to be escaping.

"Hurry, damn you!" He snapped himself from his encroaching despair and fetched forth the bottle of Polyjuice he'd liberated from his stores, popping the cork and dropping in those soft strands. He smiled to himself at the pretty yellow glow the potion acquired, before gulping it down with but a second's savoring of the familiar sweet, tangy flavor. His love tasted of lemonade. He dropped his disillusionment charm and stood just inside of the kitchen, waiting as his body was molded by the hands of magic into that of his beloved. A few simple transfigurations later, he was dressed in Muggle denims and a plain white button-up shirt, the sleeves rolled to his elbows.

Half of him wanted to explore the form he had only been able to savor from afar, or as Phineas, but the other half felt that doing such would be an unforgivable violation of a man who genuinely trusted him. Anyway, there was no time. Merlin, but he was beginning to despise that word. He called forth all of his indomitable will, forcing himself to slip into the role of his beloved, to recall every nuance of the scene that had gone before, though now he knew that he'd...well, that was a paradox he wasn't going to explore. He stepped from the kitchen when his instincts demanded, and reached for the blue robes on the couch.

------

His head was ripping itself open, had been since he'd come face to face with himself as he'd opened the door to Vance's suite. He suffered the incredible torment without letting it overwhelm him, pushing it to the back of his mind as he played his part. Everything was as it was, and yet not. The world was strangely skewed through the golden eyes, like sunshine seen through a white cotton sheet. He wondered if he was going mad, or dying one cell at a time, but couldn't focus on those thoughts for the pain shooting through him from the end of Bellatrix the Bitch's wand.

His screams carried high and husky as she toyed with him, forcing his naked form into positions that strained tendons and made bones creak. His vision was further blurred as vessels in his eyes burst and suddenly everything took on a crimson hue. Bella's face was awash in blood when she bent over him, grinning and stroking her filthy hands across his slick skin, nails slashing to bring forth more hot shards of pain. "So pretty...Do you want me, sweet ickle baby?" He tried to work up enough saliva to spit in her face, but his mouth was bone dry and he could only wheeze. "Who would?" Managing to force disgust into his voice, despite the blinding agony in his awkwardly-bent limbs.

Her shriek raised a smile to his lips, but it was soon replaced with a grimace as she poured a vial of some smokey grey fluid over his shredded chest. The liquid bubbled and hissed in his wounds, sending gnashing teeth into his flesh. She cackled again, and her wand dipped, the quiet, giddy 'Cupidus!' bursting from her lips to set off an unwanted passion in his veins. He cursed her breathlessly and she merely snickered, bending and jerking his contorted form up so he had to watch as her mouth touched him. It stoked the spelled lust, but inwardly he moaned in disgust, struggling in his invisible bonds, trying to deny what he knew was coming.

"I think you want me more than you pretend, sweet ickle Vancelot." She crooned and climbed, biting deep into one golden, flayed pectoral and wrenching a fresh scream from his raw throat. It trailed off into a groan of mingled horror and pleasure as she wrapped her skinny legs around his waist and impaled herself on his throbbing length. Her arms encircled his neck, eyes flashing into his as she raped his mouth with her sour-tasting tongue, bouncing upon his tortured flesh like a child on a pogo-stick. His skin crawled in repulsion, even as his hips jerked to drive himself deeper into her.

"Yes, ickle Vancelot...Mmm...Cum in Bella's tummy and maybe she will have your beautiful babies." The very thought made him dry heave, but she fastened her hands in his hair, jerking painfully as she bit his neck, covering it with weeping wounds. His shoulders ached from being pulled back so tightly by the unseen ropes binding them to his ankles, but his lust burned ever hotter and he was soon pounding into her. His growls were loud, bestial and she seemed to revel in them, nails opening more of the skin on his chest, the fabric of her dress scraping them raw as she rocked wildly on his thighs. He tried desperately to fight it, his mind a gibbering madhouse of conflicting emotions, but the spell did its work and he was soon howling as he slammed into her and spilled his seed deep inside of that cesspool she called her womb.

Her screech of triumph followed right after and he could feel her tightening, pulsing around his softening flesh, making him gag once more. He was covered in her abominable fluids, coated in her saliva and that toxic sludge that flowed from between her legs. He had never felt dirtier and more disgusted with himself in his entire life. Thankfully, she tumbled off of him and sprawled on the floor, cooing and rubbing her belly as if it were already generating the child she seemed to desire. He wondered if she might not be rabid, if her madness and filth could be transmitted by the fluids she had bathed him in. He prayed that it was not so.

A familiar face intruded on his haze of pain and nausea, the face he saw in the mirror, to be exact. He looked up at himself and felt the magical ties dissolve, his body lifted on the wings of Levicorpus, and then darkness.

------

He came to in his bed, blinking and shuddering as he felt the foulness that still coated his skin, heaving when he realized that he could smell Bella all over him. A hand lightly touched his forehead and he jerked, convinced he was not truly free, and was about to be subjected to more horrors at the hag's hands. "It's just me. Or you. Us, if you will." His voice rose from his right and he turned his head with a grunt of pain as the movement reopened the wounds in his neck. Through the ruby haze of his blood-filled eyes, he saw himself sitting at the edge of the bed, looking haggard and spent. "I have to go. But, I wanted to give you the Iuvo before I went, so we can finish this finally."

He nodded weakly to himself, hissing as more agony burst through him from the bites on his throat, then greedily swallowed down the navy potion that immediately went to work numbing the worst of his pain. "Hurry." He told himself briefly and sharply before rising from the bed and leaving the room. When he heard the door to the suite shut, he rose and forced himself to stumble into his bathroom, seeking the healing potions in his cabinet and the much needed confines of his tub.

------

An hour later he emerged from his bathroom and slipped into fresh robes, trembling with exhaustion and longing desperately for his bed. The escape that sleep would bring seemed to call to him, but he shoved the urge away. He was not quite finished, though it seemed he had been living this night for centuries. The questions of paradox battered at the walls of his sanity, but he was skilled with the workings of that trickster Time, and set them aside. Some things were simply too intricate for anyone to understand, so it was better not to try.

He fell to the floor of his closet and pulled back the loosened floorboard, revealing the chest, opening it with shaky hands. Relief flooded him when he spied the bottle of smokey silver memories and the golden time-turner lying on the velvet interior. Another unanswerable question regarding the turner popped into his head, but he batted it away. What did it matter how it had been returned, as long as it was there? Its stillness told him that time was once more flowing properly and he was once more only one, and no longer two, though he'd guessed as much when the torment in his brain had ended while he was furiously scrubbing Bella's stink from his skin.

No marks from the night of nearly unendurable anguish remained, other than the memories that writhed like maggots in his skull. He closed the small trunk with a final loving look to the smoke-filled bottle, then covered the hole and rose to his feet. Weariness dragged on him, but he pushed through it to gain his living room, dropping on the couch finally with a heavy sigh. His eyelids drooped and he almost let them fall, thinking he might just rest for a moment, just a moment...but the siren's call of sleep sent fear riding like a bolt of lightening through his veins. No, not yet. One last task before he succumbed.

"Miss Granger." He muttered with a flick of his wand, and a moment later the shocked-looking Gryffindor was standing before him in her ankle-length red and gold flannel nightgown. He wrinkled his nose at the plaid, then twitched when she gasped and reached for him looking worried. "Don't. I'm bone tired and I want to tell you what I promised as swiftly as possible so I can sleep. Don't ask questions, I beg of you. I am not sure how long I can hold off before I just collapse." She nodded slowly, lips pressed together in a tight line and her eyes filled with tears, making his insides crawl at the notion of being pitied.

"Earlier tonight I went to Vance's suite to tell him about my being Phineas, but, before I could say anything, the Dark Lord called me. Unfortunately, Vance thought I was suffering from a heart-attack and he grabbed me, which ended up with both of us being pulled into Voldemort's presence. I refuse to go into detail, but circumstances behooved me to prevent this from happening at all cost. Hence, the time-turner. I expect you to keep that a secret, by the way. I believe that I may own the last one in existence, since the others were destroyed during the raid on the Department of Mysteries. However, considering I have a secret one, there may be others peppered throughout the wizarding world. That's a thought for another day."

He heaved a sigh and swallowed, somnolence tugging at the frayed edges of his will. "Suffice it to say, that I managed to keep Vance from harm, but I have a request to make of you. I have removed all tender memories of me from his mind, because my life is clearly not safe enough at the moment for love. You know that Voldemort would destroy anyone I care about, simply because he doesn't believe anyone should be allowed to feel what he, himself, can not. Tonight proved to me, very firmly, that for the time being, it is best if Vance thinks us nothing more than colleagues. However, I have sworn to him that I will return his memories once it is safe to do so."

He glanced up and saw the calculating look in the lioness' eyes. "Yes, Miss Granger. I expect you to hold me to my word, in case I should begin to think that he would be better off finding someone more suitable. I love him too much to break a promise, even one he isn't aware is being broken. However, I am also aware of my own tendency to be disgustingly noble and self-sacrificing. It's one of my less admirable qualities." He felt a ghost of a smile flit across his lips in response to her own, then shuddered. "But, I am begging you...please..." He let himself slide off the couch to his knees before the young witch, looking up into her face as tears slid from his eyes. "Do not reveal to him, or anyone else, that I am Phineas Verdey. I won't touch him, or look at him in any way other than a student is supposed to look at a teacher. I will put all of my formidable acting skills into never letting him know who I am, or how I feel, but I need those four blessed hours every Saturday."

"Please..." The word came out as a sob, and a part of him moaned in horror at the manner in which he was humbling himself and being so wretchedly open with the girl. It was almost as disgusting as what he'd done with Bellatrix, but both were done in the name of a love that was all-consuming. He twitched from the hand that touched his hair, lacking the energy to pull away, and the voice to protest. "You did something amazing tonight, Professor Snape. I...I never knew you had that sort of...person inside of you. I won't tell him, or anyone else. You have my word." He sighed with relief and felt himself sway, darkness filtering in to narrow his vision. "And...will you...keep me...true?" His mouth felt numb, the words sounding strangely fuzzy to his ears, and just before night claimed him, he heard her answer quietly. "Try and stop me."

((I realize that these last two chapters are going to raise a whole -slew- of questions regarding the paradox that comes with time-travel, but if I had the answers, I'd be rich, famous and probably lounging in some naughty 19th century brothel. Time-travel involves paradox, but that's one of the gifts of magic, folks. It doesn't have to be explained, and it's better not to try. It's enough to know that everything is as it should be, sort of.

Abbi Cee- I'm always thrilled to read your reviews. I promise that Severus' soul will be revealed eventually, and Hermione is still essentially a good girl, despite a slight temporary insanity brought about by her crush. They'll be discussing the book in the next couple of chapters, and we get to see more of Phineas, yay! Oh, and regarding the wards...I think Dumbledor left a tiny hole with Severus' name on it, so that Voldemort would think he was pulling a fast one over on the Headmaster. And, since -technically- both people being jerked from Hogwarts were Severus, they both went along for the ride. There's that nasty paradox again.

Casbuz- I'm glad you are enjoying Vance and am pleased you approve of my writing. I am ashamed of my penchant for advrbs, but can't seem to stop using them as liberally as a waiter with a pepper-grinder. Everything sound's better with 'ly on the end of it. I hope you will continue to read and enjoy!))