The Witch\'s Hair Shirt

Damnation was neither heat nor the dreaded flame, he concluded. His eyes still closed, his cheek pressed into the hard ground; he had fallen onto his left shoulder, his knees splayed awkwardly beneath him. He was freezing, the blood in his veins sluggishly wending its way thr mus muscle, bone and organ, his skin a searing enclosure.

He heard the ocean roaring beneath him and the cry of a bird. He decided to open his eyes.

He was still where he had been when he stumbled through the door of the muggle house. And where was that exactly, he thought bitterly. He remembered re-warding the door so that he could step out into this place, but what was this place. Slowly he knelt and swallowed a yelp of pain as his blood picked up its tempo and began to warm his icy skin and limbs. His bones felt as though released from a vise. How long had he lain there?

He was on a cliff, above the ocean, the ground beneath him rock smoothed over with a mossy growte sae saw no trees. The sky was a thick silver, midday. A bird hung suspended on an air current off to his right, her wings spread wide, stillness above the raging sea.

He stood. He reached for his wand and it was there, tucked into the Death Eater robe, in the same pocket as the mask. He fished out the slender wood and moved it into the front pocket of his trousers. With both hands he began to tear at the robe, ripping it from his shoulders, it caught around his neck and the clasp tore a gouge of flesh from his collarbone and still he ripped it from his body. He was like an animal tearing at a restraint and finally he was free of it. He rubbed fiercely at his mouth with it, rubbed at his hands, and then stumbling to the edge of the cliff he threw the robe over. A stiff breeze caught the black material, twisted it down through the air until it landed on the breaking waves below, and he watche it it was pulled under the dark green surface of the sea.

He stared out over the seemingly endless ocean and felt it call to him, he felt its age old pull, the insistent lure of its depths. Like the knife that wanted to cut him, like the poison that wanted to be drunk, he felt the sea request his drowning. He bowed his head and considered the option; to breathe water. He stepped closer to the brittle edge. The sea was now all he could hear, its voice roaring nd hnd his head, lapping at his ears with its salty tongue, pounding his eardrums with its wet promise of oblivion. He opened his arms wide, balanced on the balls of his feet, threw his head back and considered…

He could do it, he should do it, he heard the voices batter him inside his head, his mother, his father, schoolmates from his youth. But there was another voice now. Not his own, not the voice of the waves, but her voice. He could hear the silent plea that had been int into his mind by the sheer will of the witch. The witch who was being tortured under the Dark Lord’s command, the witch who had somehow chosen him. He realized that that was how he had come to be where he was, it was her will that had shown him this place.

But why.

He stepped back away from the cliff’s edge and with his wand out, he attempted to transfigure the thin material of his shirt into a woolen jumper. He half succeeded and the additional bit of warmth pleased him. He turned away from the sea, and there was a woman standin fin front of him.

A lifetime of tamping down his reflexes allowed him to remaiill ill and straight, a small twitch at one corner of his lips and a slight widening of his eyes onl only things revealing how startled he was. Her steady gaze betrayed nothing. She was older than anyone he had ever encountered, her face a weathered visage of flesh-gilded bone, her hair so white it seemed nearly transparent. She had her left arm raised, a dark grey gyrfalcon perched on her forearm.

She looked relaxed, standing easily, observing him and he decided that she must have been there since he came through the door.

“Would you have watched me jump,” he whispered this, “Grandmother?”

She stared at him for a long time, then spoke clearly, “You did not choose to jump, Child.”

“But if I had…” he pressed her. “If I had, chosen, then…”

”Then I could not have stopped you.” She inclined her head to him and he pursed his lips together, scowling darkly.

“Why are you here?” she asked. “Who are you?”

“Who am I? Who am I? I would have answered you differently this morning.\" He covered his eyes with a long-fingered hand. \"I do not know anymore.\" His hand dropped to his mouth and his fingers traced his lower lip absently, \"I found my way here, through a muggle place.” She flinched at the word. “A witch is being murdered. I think she sent me. I do not know why.”

The old woman nodded and Snape’s attention was drawn to the movement at her back, the white braid of hair trailing to the ground.

“She is from the Norn Coven,” he said thickly.

“Yes.”

Another silence stretched between them.

“Could you tell me where I am?” he asked.

“You have found your way to Hornbjarg,” she answered him. “And to the Norn Coven.”

They stared at one another.

As he looked into her pale blue eyes, he remembered the intense gaze of the other witch. What had she filled him with? Snape felt at the hollowness inside him, the hollowness which had always been a part of his existence. It was different. This day had been a lifetime it seemed. Could he even remember awakeningt mot morning, in another place? The summons to that house, seeing the pregnant witch, finding himself here. of of this day was pouring into him and like filling a cold glass with a hot liquid, he wondered if he could survive it.

She was watching him. “There is nothing for you here, Grandson. You must return.”

“She will die. Her child will be sacrificed,” his voice was pleading.

“She will die. Her child will be sacrificed,” her voice was resigned.

“She sent me here.”

“That was unexpected. And that is why you must return.”

“I do not know what is wanted of me.”

“Nor do I.”

“I will be broken.”

“You will be tempered.”

He covered his face with his hands. And as he had stood upon the sea cliff’s edge just moments before, he found himself, again, on an edge, but this time over a looming chasm and its shadowed depths. There were voices urging him, again, but this time the voices were spoken in tones of nobility and honour and courage. They were the voices of The Fates speaking the words of destiny. He spread his arms as wide as they would reach and dove.