Ashes of Armageddon

“Wake up!”



He woke up when someone kicked him in the ribs. Severus moved on the floor, uncertain of how much time had passed since he had blacked out. It could have been minutes, or it could have been hours.



He blinked slightly, and another brutal kick was delivered, this time, to his face. He tasted blood in his mouth, and he spat furiously.



“Don\'t kick him in the head,” someone else warned. “We need him conscious, remember?”



“Wake up, traitor!”



A pair of hands lifted him up and threw him onto a chair unceremoniously. He bolted to get up, but a bodybinding spell was cast on him, holding him in place.



“Where are they?” an angry male voice demanded.



Severus opened his eyes and stared at one of the Aurors, who was shaking with rage, leaning over him.



“Where are they?”



Severus shrugged apathetically.



“It\'s over,” a female voice said despairingly. “Forget it. We\'ve lost.”



“Truer words have never been spoken,” Severus confirmed solemnly.



“This isn\'t over!” The Auror was bending over Severus, staring at him intently. “It\'s only been fifteen minutes since the little Riddle\'s departure. If we know where the traitor sent the boy, we can retrieve him, before the entire thing blows straight to hell!” The Auror grabbed Severus by the throat. “Where are they?”



Severus glared at him. “Sorry. Can\'t help you.”



“Can\'t, or won\'t?”a reasonable, impassive voice inquired dangerously.



“I can\'t. The port-key transports the bearer to randomized locations. I have no idea...”



“You are lying!” the first Auror said confidently. “You\'ve reconfigured the port-key. Where are the children?”



Severus kept his mouth shut, and forced his facial expression to be at least somewhat neutral.



“I told them we should have killed the brats the moment they got here,” the cold, calculating voice said grimly. “But no, the Security Council wanted to be humane. Wanted to give the little Riddle a chance. Have him grow up with supervision, run tests on him.”



“It\'s not too late,” the first captor said. “We will extract the information out of him, if we have to pull his brain apart neuron by neuron.”



Severus tensed slightly, when he sensed a movement behind him.



“Crucio,” the cold voice said, and the all-too-familiar agony began to spread throughout his body. It seemed worse than ever before, and he struggled desperately to maintain at least a semblance of control. It wasn\'t entirely surprising, he thought absently. The results of the curse were cumulative, and each time it was cast, it progressively weakened the nervous system.



He was biting into his lower lip, but eventually cried out, as the intensity of the pain continued to grow.



“Crucio,” the female voice said, and another layer of agony was added on top of the first. He convulsed as much as the bodybinding spell permitted, maddened by his inability to move.



“Legilimens,” a third voice said, and a hostile presence pushed against the barriers of his mind.



Panicked, Severus realized that they were trying to weaken his mental discipline by the curse, in order to extract the information from him. He struggled to reorganize his mind, burying the piece of coveted information deeper and deeper.



Just as the agony increased, and the probing into his mind became more invasive, and more insistent. The man in front of him was scanning through random memories and events.



The agony ended abruptly, and Severus sucked in a deep, painful breath. His entire body felt weightless. His head was pounding. Even his vision had began to blur. He could do this, he told himself, desperately summoning the remnants of his mental discipline. Only for a few hours, he reassured himself, and after that, it wouldn\'t matter.



Meanwhile, could have anything at all from his mind, anything other than that.



“Resume,” an order came, and the Cruciatus, cast by two people at once, hit him again.



He felt them push through the initial barriers, and start scanning through his memories. For all of his insistence that minds were not like books at all, the imagery was not all that inappropriate. His life was a book, an open book at this point, and the pages from it were being opened at random, examined, crumpled, and discarded.



Someone laughed.



“You know what he did as a teen, growing up? Shot down flies with his wand.”



“Disgusting.”



“Pathetic.”



Doesn\'t matter what they think, Severus thought stubbornly.



Control. Control.



Another scene flashed, with him writing lines, Harry leaning over his shoulder. Severus shut his eyes tightly, as he became aware of the other present there with him, witnessing his degradation.



Multiple images kept flashing, back and forth, different memories, each more horrifying than the former. He gave them up, he had no choice, he had something else to protect, and the agony made it impossible to hide everything; he had to prioritize, so he was still hiding that, the location of the children... He needed to give them time, time to expose the conspiracy, time to ...



Prioritize. Comparmentalize. Hide. Control.



Memories flooded them, with the intruder in his mind bearing witness to his abuses and mistreatments.



In the ocean of fiery agony, Severus saw it too, almost as an outsider to his own memories.



He saw himself, showering naked under Harry\'s contemptuous scrutiny...



He saw Harry\'s hand rising, and striking his face...



The tip of the nail, pressing against his eyeball, threatening to puncture it...



The recollections became more and more vivid, more and more real, and soon enough, he was no longer simply remembering, he was reliving those memories, in front of the intruder invading his mind.



He did not remember – he felt and experienced himself being dragged across the dining room of the Godric\'s Hollow, being forced to bend over the table, being exposed and degraded by his former students. He heard their laughter, he struggled furiously and wildly, and he felt the belt striking his backside and then, his fingers...



“And still you are protecting the brood infected with Riddle\'s dust,” the intruder said angrily. “Was it really that much fun for you?”



His arms were restrained above his head, and he stared down at his exposed body. He saw the knife, slicing into his chest, cutting his skin, separating the thin, bloodied strips from his flesh, tearing them off....



Someone laughed again, and Severus could no longer tell whether the laughter was a memory, or whether it belonged to the person who was scanning his mind, pulling it apart, neuron by neuron, shred by shred, just like he had threatened.



...And then, he saw himself, bloodied and naked, sitting up on that bed, surrounded by his rapists, with Harry\'s arms wrapped around him, soothingly stroking his hair and back, Harry\'s voice making veiled threats, offering false hope and insincere mercy. He heard his own whisper, forgive me, Master, and then, someone laughed again.



The agony was still enveloping him, but he was barely aware of it, as he sat, immersed in the memory that seemed to have frozen and materialized around him in vivid detail.



The intruder\'s face stared at him, scrutinizing his naked, battered body with contempt.



“So this is what it\'s all about,” the intruder mused. “You thought if you saved Little Riddle, your true Master would finally forgive you. You\'ve never changed loyalties, have you? Not really. Not deep down.”



Severus shook his head furiously, eager to break the Legilimency hold on him, and escape the vision of the past he\'d been forced into reliving.



He could not break free.



It was too real, too palpable. He could not end it, but he could feel it all, all over again. He could smell his own sweat and blood, and he could feel Harry\'s – no – Tom Riddle\'s - hand on his back again, stroking him, soothing him...



“Tom Riddle is not my Master!” Severus screamed voicelessly.



The intruder heard it, and chuckled mockingly. “Could have fooled me.”



At that moment, all higher thought abandoned him, and, enraged, Severus stared directly ahead, unable to see anything else, and perceive anything else, other than the intruder\'s sneering face, and his taunting laughter. At that moment, there was no more reason, no more shame, no more fear, no more caution, no more concern for others... the only thing that still remained was rage.



Along with the rage, came a burst of power that he had never felt before.



Giving in to the horrifying, agonizing fury flooding him, Severus struck out against the intruder. For a brief moment, the two of them locked together in a furious struggle that felt entirely and stunningly physical. Severus found himself pushing against the intruder, crushing him in his grip, fully intent on destroying him, obliterating him. He struck out, again and again, until finally, something snapped, and the intruder\'s image disintegrated before his eyes.



The Cruciatus ended a moment later. Severus heard a sharp, piercing scream, and became vaguely aware of someone falling at his feet.



“He\'s dead,” Severus heard the trembling female voice. “Oh... dear god, he killed him!”



“Motherfucker,” the male voice gasped in shock.



What were they talking about?



Still immobilized in the chair, Severus opened his eyes and stared blankly at the lifeless body of the Auror at his feet. He really did kill the man, Severus realized, he killed him when their minds had clashed in the furious struggle, as he was attempting to cast the intruder out of his thoughts.



“I don\'t bloody believe it,” the woman said.



His eyes fixed on the dead body on the floor, Severus found himself laughing softly, with a slightly delirious note in his voice.



“Any other takers?” he dared, even as his swollen lips formed what must have been a genuinely ugly sneer.



Long silence ensued.



“I\'ll cast the Cruciatus,” the man said finally. “You scan him.”



“Me?” the woman said. “Forget it!”



“You are an Auror,” the man said. “Don\'t tell me you are afraid.”



“I don\'t see you volunteering,” she pointed out. “Besides, normal death is one thing. This... is creepy.”



“And I am your superior officer, and I am telling you...”



They continued to argue, and Severus found himself in a hyperstimulated, trans-like state. His heart continued to pound wildly in his chest, and he was ready for anything that might follow. It was a relief of sorts, to finally surrender to the fury, and fight to the end, without any reservations, without any second thoughts or regrets.



He was barely aware of the noises and commotion around him. He thought he heard hexes and curses cast, and people rushing into the room, but he was no longer certain of what was real, and what was a delusion.



Was he falling, or did the body-binding spell release him?



He got his answer when his body hit the floor.



Someone knelt next to him, and Severus felt someone grasping his shoulder, and a pair of hands reaching for him.



That couldn\'t be – he thought, disoriented, - it was a lie, it must be...



“Get away from me!” he screamed, his limbs flailing around, pushing and striking against someone\'s chest. “I\'ll kill you!”



Strong arms scooped him up and a familiar body pressed against him, absorbing his blows without as much as flinching.



“Severus, it\'s all right,” Harry whispered. “It\'s me. I\'ve got you. I am sorry it took me so long.”



To Be Continued...