A House Homecoming for All

\"Is this a present for me?\" Tiera nodded and dieverted her eyes sullenly, as if aware of the immense danger she was presently immersing herself in and in making an attempt not to tare the devil in the eye, created her pathetic penitence.

The Dark Lord, charmingly known as \"Big D\" by his most devout and cousinly followers, smiled awkwardly at the gift and searched the trembling girl\'s frame for some explanation. Being only semi-exposed to muggle religions as a boy before he ran off and dispersed himself freely in a fleet of notorious animal-torturers and the like before attending Hogwarts, Big D was at a loss for words - not even a hiss.

So, as Tiera\'s face whitened and Big D\'s hand slipped the little cross pendant into his suit pocket, he had to mentally force himself to recount a time in which he would\'ve preferred never to reflect upon. But, in order for this disturbed child of God to find any piece with what she was doing and who she was ultimately condemning (indeed assuming the role of God as in his own patented role of blasphemy), he had to reassure her before she caught on entirely... it was the most annoying part of the recruiting process really.

With a brief wave of his hand, Tiera picked up her temporarily abandoned violin and played some sad Vienna thing she\'d learned on an exchange trip after getting her ARCD in conservatory; it was her one real regret since coming into the wizarding world and being inundated with the overcompensating magic for that loss of composition and timing.

She had been preparing to go out on tour with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra as a featured and paid performer for once, but now those aspirations were tunnelled in a little void not so far away from insanity; to be estranged from something that had defined her for so long was incredibly painful and thus she turned to her precious faith for irrefutable guidance.

Suddenly, she stopped as Big D and Pettigrew were just dozing off; she knew that his need for her playing was partially due to the fact that the echoing screams from his newly restored torture chambers were just too irritating to get a good night\'s rest in between. However, she couldn\'t rightly concentrate upon her beloved Bach and needed answers, no matter how severely she could undoubtdly rile him.

\"Master...\" Tiera remembered just in the nick of time, \"have you found Jesus?\"

Big D\'s eyes twitched open and he poignantly stared at the ceiling\'s mildew for some semblance of self control in order not to kill the mindless Hufflepuff where she stood.

\"Doesn\'t he find us, my dear girl?\" Tiera\'s brows hightened considerably and she set down the instrument and knelt down before the footstool in front of him.

\"Well, I just wanted to know... if the reason you...\" Tiera\'s body shook and her mind nearly choked inself into upchucking as she attempted to ask a possibly life altering question.

\"The reason you didn\'t kill me... was it because you were h.. o.. or that we share a faith which will ultimately redeem our souls?\" There was a brief pause of unnerving silence in the room with Big D still not making eye contact in that absurd muggle suit of his, Pettigrew looking purely dumbfounded and Tiera kneeling submissive with her eyes glistening and the desperate timbre of her voice floating one last reverberation about the place.

\"My dear girl, I doubt anything could purge my fetid soul of its nefarious attributes...\" thinking quickly albeit still half asleep, he rememberd his carefully alluded coersion, \"but perhaps yours...\"

Gritting his pointed teeth he added, \"Perhaps yours will be passed unto the light for making such an effort with us... and for our cause.\"

At this, Tiera\'s face broke into a manic grin from a maelstrom of denial, rushed up to her feet and actually hugged their turgid master who remained impassive and adamantine in his hypocritically comfortable lazy-boy; Pettigrew continued to look on in disbelief but hurriedly looked to the open doorway where Lucius hobbled through, barely conscious.

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\"Dobby! Dobby, for heaven\'s sake, stop hitting yourself!\" Tackling the mangy little devil wa no easy task and it took a good fifteen minutes to settle Dobby down... from off of the table, all of the chairs and near that coveted whopping-lamp he seemed so very fond of. At last, he collapsed in a heap in front of the eaten away heart with Jessica close behind, murmuring the reasons as to why she was hounding him with chrieks of indignation her only reply.

\"What do you relaly want from Dobby? Dobby has sent you no dream, Miss! Dobby doesn\'t even trust Miss; why would he send her an explanation for anything!\" and with that, Dobby clasped his pipe-cleaner-like fingers beneath hisd doughy nose and grasped a stray candle off the shelf. Grimacing in empathic preaparation, Jessica watched as she jabbed himself in the eye several times before discontinuing his masochistic behaviour. With that dissolute temerity only ever achieved once one has devled into the inner realsm of oconcuipance ala Slytherin, Jessica pulled the house elf\'s face up level with hers and hissed in his ear like a mad woman.

\"You listen to me you little gremlin, I know you\'re in cahoots with that Tiera! How could you be so blind, you diminuative little spy?! Orw all just under a blind veil of disbelief when it comes to the serile and sanguine race of house elves? Are they really as dangerous as vampires or as lurid and goblins?\"

\"Ah-ah, Miss!\" then something completely unforseen appeared upon the wretched\'s visage which interminably made Jessica\'s dissertation a bit less lengthy.

\"Miss is forgetting her little escapade with the Professor before she returned last time. The Dark Lord had Tiera sent specially to prevent such things from happening but...\" and at this, the imposter gremlin\'s eyelids twitched most unbecomingly, \"somthing went awry in his masterful plan...\"

Jessica\'s mouth dropped as she realised that indeed, a house elf could be physiologically possessed just as a human witch or wizard could be; briefly, a scenario shot through her mind\'s eye, picturing Tiera being subjugated and methodically abused under Imperio but she quickly negated them. She couldn\'t pretend that Tiera\'s choice was one out of necessity and brutality - she was aware what the price ahad been for her upon arrival at Hogwarts, and had ed ted the tremendous discombobulation upon that first tedious half-night in the dreaded cellar. The cellar.

Jessica scooped up Dobby\'s form and fled down the stairs with a whirl and billow which could\'ve easily competed with Snape\'s best. Beating the door stupidly until she muttered a delayed, \"alohomora\" to Dobby\'s snickering delight, Jessica crept in through the doorway and was witness to the greatest amount of blood she\'d ever been privy to in her life.

Pools of it were everywhere, as if someone was attempting to gather the contents of a thwarted lifesource and map it together again. It smelled horendous and there were bits of gore and other unmentionables plastering the moss covered butterbeer kegs obscenely. Shoving Dobby to the side unceremoniously, she searched for something that would serve as an elemental portkey for the time being... not that she all together knew how to make a portkey, but she would try her damndest to reach Severus before it was too late and there were to invectives appropriate to shriek when all were dead and ruined.

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Severus had laughed aloud at himself several times upon his return journey, mostly about his own fatuity and indecisiveness exemplefied in this last battle imminent. As he approached the all too familar castle gates, his eyes cast a dim glaze upon the fields in front of him in a vague attempt to disguise its overwhelming hopelessness; there would never be a way out of his pergatory - at least he knew there was a hell and the contingency to be pardoned seemed all the more likely from then on in.

Glumly sauntering onward, he had to stop several times before he was sure he caught the sound of a wail warbling desperately on the wind\'s measure. Feeling somewhat rejuvenated at having another temporary assignment to attend to, he ran to whereabouts the sound was emanating from- his least favourite place actually, Hagrid\'s cabin.

From the moment he\'d stepped into the dingy place, he could tell that there was more than one soul skipping about inside; he\'d assessed that the sound had been heard from the cellar, though how his ears could\'ve aught it, he didn\'t know. There was an unearthly stillness of rancor and defilement, pungant inits intensity and coelesced with a defiant acrimony unique in its obtuseness. Snape sloughed his robes upon the nearest bench and made the descent to the cellar cautiously; he remembered that first night with Lucius cackling behind him and the spry insults at Dumbledore\'s expense; it was almost a feeling of dejavous if Snape believed in any of that as he approached something entirely unknown and foreign.

He\'d been lucky that once in discovering the sweetest surprise of his life; he couldn\'t allow himself to be so open a second time. The door nearly leant open from the number of times it had nearly been beaten down; it was odd to see it nearly off its hinges considering the amount of fortitude it had outwardly displayed in a play of personification last thime they\'d come into contact with each other.

Assuming his regular cerfew- regulation- executioner- mystique, Snape edged into the shadows soundlessly and assessed the room around him. There were three figures on the ground dimly lit by the one, painfully yellow torch which had a tendency to highlight colours of crimson or sedia... the colour of blood was everywhere and it smelled of rotting flesh - not nearly as unsettling or foriegn as Snape would\'ve liked to admit.

Turning his head at an awkward angle into the crook of his arm, he heard someone approaching from behind and immersed himself in the remaining darkness of a corner. As he\'d expected, it was Big D with his latest subjugated passe (lol) felled into that subserviant pathos Snape detested. He was, of course, speaking in an emolliant tone in order to prepare anotheothe them for the heanous act they were about to commit. Snape watched idly by until he observed one of the motionless bodies twitch a finger; then he knew.

Admitting to himself that with one explicit act of defiance, his cover would be blown completely and the headhunt would officially begin, Snape reached out and pulled Jessica\'s limp form ontop of his lap and apparated them to Hogsmeade where he roused her as soon as possible... with herbal tea.


A/N: *Cantankerous laugh* Although it seems as if very few are actually reading and enjoying, I am not dissuaded! Next chapter will be a series of enticing diatribes, denials and revealing turns in the sack at the appropriate venue of the Leaky Couldron. My Remus/Cait pairing and LM/SS/Jess will at last become immortalized in generic smut! By the way... Please review!