Twice Bitten ~ COMPLETED

Chapter 2 ~ Snape Returns to Hogwarts

Midstride, Snape pulled out his wand and disillusioned himself. It seemed he retained his magical powers, which was quite convenient. Other than a taste for blood and Eternal Life, he wasn’t completely sure what other powers he had as one of the Undead. More importantly, he didn’t know if this were a permanent condition. Was there a way to become mortal again? Spending eternity as a bloodsucker wasn’t the least bit appealing.

Sentries stood on the steps of the castle, watching the night intently for Death Eaters or other minions of the Dark Lord. Due to the situation, they were quite vigilant, wands drawn and ready to hex at the slightest motion. Snape had no desire to touch them and possibly raise an alarm, so he stopped on the outskirts, remaining hidden in the dark.

How to get in?

He stood there a moment, his eyes narrowing as he saw, or rather sensed Harry Potter leaving the castle, covered in his Invisibility Cloak. The boy must have discovered his destiny and was going to face the Dark Lord alone. More than likely, he hadn’t told his friends, otherwise Hermione and Ron would have been hanging off each arm, their feet dragging as they tried to convince Harry not to do this.

Good thing the boy was brave to a fault. Albus had cultivated his foolhardiness well.

Snape watched him walk out into the darkness, stopping to talk to Neville Longbottom, who was out collecting the bodies of the fallen. Snape heard the conversation.

“Neville.”

“Blimey, Harry, you nearly gave me heart failure! Where are you going, alone?”

“It’s all part of the plan. There’s something I’ve got to do. Listen—Neville—”

“Harry! Harry, you’re not thinking of handing yourself over?”

“No. Course not . . . this is something else. But I might be out of sight for a while. You know Voldemort’s name, Neville? He’s got a huge snake. . . . Calls it Nagini . . . ”

“I’ve heard, yeah. . . . What about it?”

“It’s got to be killed. Ron and Hermione know that, but just in case they— just in case they’re—busy—and you get the chance—”

“Kill the snake?”

“Kill the snake.”

Snape nodded. Nagini was the final Horcrux. She had to die if Voldemort was to be rendered mortal. The Potions master wished something as simple as the death of a cobra could restore his mortality.

He looked up at the sky. Yes, dawn was approaching. He had to get into the castle soon. He streaked around the perimeter, looking for a way in. He noted a huge gash in the stone several stories up. Yes, that could be a way in and most likely everyone was in the Great Hall or at least the Entrance Hall. The wizard looked up, then used the spell Voldemort taught him, the spell that helped him escape Hogwarts when he served his short stint as Headmaster and was being pursued by Minerva and several other staff members.

”Locomordres,” the vampire hissed, lifting from the ground and ascending. He leveled himself outside the hole in the wall, then willed himself forward, carefully looking inside for sentries. Still disillusioned he drifted inside, landing on the corridor floor.

Not wasting a moment, the transformed wizard streaked down toward the lower levels, his speed and disillusionment making him seem no more than a sudden, strange breeze as he passed by individuals milling about the castle. Most were congregated in the Great Hall, and Snape could smell death and tears. The dead were there. Sobs rang in his ears as he zipped down the dank, empty dungeon corridor.

He stopped in front of his Potions office, let himself in, then proceeded to his private rooms and library, where he quickly removed several thick tomes, reduced them and put them into his robes pocket. Then he walked over to his liquor cabinet and retrieved an unopened bottle of Firewhiskey and a glass, also reducing and pocketing them. He didn’t know if blood was all he could consume, but he’d damn well find out. If there ever was a reason to get shit-faced, this was it.

Snape exited his rooms and office and turned right, heading further down the corridor and stopping in front of a rather shallow niche. Using his wand, he tapped several bricks in a specific pattern and the wall dissolved. He entered, standing on the landing of a long, cobwebbed stairwell leading down into the bowels of the castle as the wall fuzzed back in behind him.

He descended, walking at a normal pace, torches flaring up, igniting cobwebs as he passed, smoke swirling behind him. As he took the long stretch of stairs, his mind went back a decade or two, back to when he was a newly initiated Death Eater on a quest for the Dark Lord, before the death of Lily Potter, before he became a spy for the Order of the Phoenix and Potions master for the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

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Eager to prove his worth to his new leader, Snape was in the process of developing a brew that would increase his power and needed to find a rare herb necessary to facilitate a transformation in Tom Riddle. This required him to travel. Armed with his wand, a Translation charm and raw ambition, the young wizard traveled by Port Key to an isolated location in the area once known as Ancient Babylonia, a state located in southern Mesopotamia.

The main city was located on the banks of the Euphrates, south of the city known Baghdad in modern Iraq. Babylonia had once been an area intensely irrigated, and strategically located for trade routes and commerce. It had a long and bloody history since it was often under threat from outsiders throughout the region's history. Rulers rose and fell, and savagery was the order of the day, necessary to maintain control of the masses. Some of the rulers were legendary for their cruelties.

It was also the only location where the rare herb Taku Soma grew, and it was a herb jealously guarded by the superstitous people who populated the area, those who had not truly converted to Islam in their hearts but secretly kept up the practices and rituals of their forefathers, a very dangerous thing to do.

Taku Soma was a low lying leafy plant on which formed one blood-red, heart shaped pod. The locals called it “The Heart of Evil” and it was sacred to Lilutu, the Mother, the original Queen of Blood who had lived and ruled long before recorded history, and according to legend, still ruled. When slit, the pod would emit a thick, crimson fluid that had the scent and taste of blood, called the Queen’s Ambrosia. Combined with other ingredients, it gave great power . . . at a cost. That cost was the imbiber’s sense of humility, empathy and mercy.

Tom Riddle wasn’t big on any of those attributes anyway. Nothing of value would be lost and Snape’s place in the hierarchy would be assured. And so would Lily Potter’s survival when the wizard overthrew the wizarding world.

The young wizard’s motivation had been Love. That love led him to seek out this herb, intending on cultivating it when he returned. He had been quite good at Herbology. The ability to grow plants was one necessary in order to be a good Potions master. He had been successful . . . when he did finally return.

Snape had to remain disillusioned much of the time he was in the area, slinking about, studying the inhabitants, trying to locate gatherings of those who believed in the Old Ways. After a month of skulking and stealing food and drink, he managed to stumble upon a meeting and observed the High Priest preparing a drink from the dreaded Heart, consuming it before the chanting, fearful group clustered around him in the firelight. His brown skin turned pale and his eyes luminous. His face contorted, evil plain in every fold and contour. He raised his hands to the sky and shouted something undecipherable, his voice ringing through the night.

A great wind rose, and sighs and whisperings filled the air, the worshippers huddling together as a dark shadow fell over them, its origin undetectable. One word was whispered, sounding above the wind, hissed in a feminine, husky voice that made the hair on the back of the young wizard’s neck stand up.

“Beloved.”

Then the bonfire that lit the area went out, leaving the worshippers in darkness. There was a choked male cry, then the winds died down and the fire relit itself, showing a woman desperately feeling about for her husband, who was gone.

”The Mother has found us worthy,” the priest intoned as the woman sobbed, then lowered her head to the ground. The priest’s features returned to their normal benign expression.

”We are blessed,” the woman declared in a quavering voice, raising her tearstained face to the starlit sky.

Snape made it a point to shadow the priest for the next three weeks, finally hitting paydirt when the brown-skinned man exited his home in the dead of night, holding a torch and dressed in black robes with symbols in red scrawled over them, a pouch tied to his side. He walked far into the night, occasionally turning to see if he were being followed. He was, but never saw the cautious, disillusioned wizard.

Presently, after about a two hour walk, the priest stopped, reached into his pouch and spread some type of dust on the ground before him, carefully stepping on it as he advanced. Snape watched him carefully, then sucked in his breath as he saw several Taku Soma plants in various states of growth on the ground before the man, who fell to his knees before one of them, bowing his head to the ground, then muttering some sort of incantation or prayer before withdrawing a knife from his pouch and carefully harvesting the pod, placing it in a small black bag with symbols on it and putting it and the knife back into the pouch. Then he touched his forehead to the ground again, muttered another prayer, then rose, carefully walking on the carpet of dust out of the area, the dust vanishing behind him.

Snape didn’t follow him back, nor did the young wizard believe in the primative rituals performed. He felt no magic, although he wasn’t sure what he witnessed at the gathering. He believed however that the woman’s husband was simply taken away by others in the darkness, a move meant to keep the followers compliant. Religious fanatics worked that way.

The dark wizard waited until the priest’s torch faded in the distance, then pulled out his own wand, removing his disillusionment spell.

”Lumos,” Snape breathed, then boldly walked toward the plants.

As he suspected, there was no earthquake or frogs falling from heaven as he walked on the supposedly sacred ground. There was just him, standing over the plants and studying them. One had gone to seed, and it was this plant he went to first, extracting a bag from his satchel, catching the plant around its stem and carefully shaking the seeds into the bag without killing the herb.

Yes. He had them. Snape magically sealed the bag and placed it back in his satchel, then withdrew a small, sharp knife, eyeing the blood-red heart-shaped pod on another plant. Carefully, his pale hands steady, he cut the pod from the plant. He placed a stasis spell on it to halt decomposition, and placed it in another bag, satisfied with his work as he rose. He turned and began walking back. He had to return to the Port Key transfer point to return to Wizarding England.

As he walked through the darkness, he had a sense of not being alone and lit his wand. Before him stood a very beautiful woman, with dark eyes and wrapped in what seemed to be black scarved. She was shapely, with almond shaped eyes and red, red lips. Her black hair was waist-length and whipped about as if in a strong breeze.

But there was no breeze.

On her wrists and ankles were a number of bracelets. She smiled at Snape, a dull light rising from her body.

”You are not one of mine,” the woman said, her dark eyes washing over him with interest, “You are too pale. Your scent is odd. Unfamiliar. Who are you, thief?”

Snape pointed his wand at the woman.

”Get out of my way,” he snarled at her.

He had come too far to be stopped now.

The woman laughed.

”You are brave. Foolishly so. Not many men would be so brave,” she said, approaching him.

”Stay back!” Snape said to her, “I warn you!”

The woman continued to advance, her bracelets tinkling prettily. Snape fired a stunner at her, the red light passing through her as if she had no substance.

”Expelliarmus!” he cried, trying to hex her again. Again, the hex passed through her, the woman still smiling as she approached him. Snape began to back up. Whatever this was, it wasn’t human.

“Lower your wand, Sorcerer,” the woman said.

Snape lowered his wand helplessly, compelled to do it as the woman walked up to him, her eyes studying his face.

“I am Lilutu, the Mother. And you have stolen from me,” she said to the stricken wizard softly. “The Taku Soma belong to me. Tell me why I should not kill you?”

Compelled to speak Snape said, “I need these plants to save the life of a woman I love.”

Lilutu blinked at him, then her smile broadened.

”Love? How human,” she said, walking around Snape now, considering him.

“I despised Love when I walked among your kind. But I loved men. They were my playthings. They brought me much pleasure in many ways. With their bodies . . . and with their screams,” she said, her smile looking more predatory as she once again faced the wizard.

Snape couldn’t move.

”You are not handsome. Your nose is too big and your hair is too thin. But . . . there is something about you that appeals to me. You are different than what I usually have to amuse me. What is your name?” she asked him.

”Severus Tobias Snape,” Snape replied.

”Forget about Love, Severus Tobias Snape,” she breathed at him, “Love is for the Living, as is Death. Neither will be for you. You please me. I will take you.”

The woman kissed him and suddenly there was no Lily Potter, no Tom Riddle, nothing but the hot mouth pressed to his.

”No mortal can resist Lilutu,” the woman said against his lips. “Now, be a man.”

Reality ceased to be as Snape threw off his satchel and grasped the woman, hardening against her.

”Yessss,” she breathed, “I will take you, Severus Tobias Snape.”

Together they fell to the sands. Snape only experienced glimpses of what occurred afterwards. A nude body beneath his, nails raking his back, pleasure, hot pleasure, the taste of blood in his mouth and an unearthly shriek, followed by an unbearable pain in his neck.

Then he was alone, feeling his life draining away. He had been bitten and poisoned. Desperately he felt about for his wand, found it and cast the Lumos spell, scrambling for his satchel as he felt himself weakening. He found it, threw the flap open and felt about, finding what he was looking for.

A Bezoar stone. He tossed it into his mouth and prayed to whatever gods were listening that it would stop whatever it was that was killing him.

The vampire enzyme was a type of poison and parasite that transformed the human body into a new creature. It was stopped, but not destroyed. The Bezoar stone strengthened the wizard’s ability to fight infection as it neutralized deadly toxins introduced into the body. But the Life of the thing, it could not take and it fled through Snape's body, fleeing along the veins and withdrawing into his brain, curling in the mysterious Pituitary gland and falling dormant. It could only possess a dying body where the cells were vulnerable.

Snape had saved himself.

He lay there, exhausted and nude, aware of his back aching from Lilutu’s scratches. After about an hour, he rose, scourgified himself and dressed, slowly heading towards home and his Destiny.

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Snape entered the subdungeons and made his way through the winding labryinth-like passageways until he came to a small room deep in the midst of the castle’s depths. He transfigured several broken bits of foundation into a chair, desk and torch, which he attached to the wall. It flared up, spreading light and shadow.

The wizard reached into his pockets and removed everything, returning them to proper size, then sat down, resting his forehead in his hand for several minutes.

At least he wasn’t dead. Technically. But what kind of life would this be? Not one he would choose as much as he liked darkness. He had to find out his options. If he had none, no way to return, he would not live like this.

Death would be better.

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A/N: Another chapter. The dialogue between Harry and Neville was taken verbatim from "Deathly Hallows." Thanks for reading.