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The Humanity In You,The Darkness In Me

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Chapter One: The Unmentionable Incident
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The lone figure of a man trudged wearily through the bleak freezing winds, trying his best to keep his footing amidst the powerful gusts that threatened to topple him over like a stack of cards. He had traveled to this place at much risk, but he would always put his life in peril whenever he went out with this one loathsome objective in mind, and it was something he had come to terms with.

It was the ends that mattered, however....... unpleasant - the means.

Cursing under his breath Severus slipped on the icy ground, reeling forward as he slid down the steep embankment only to be propelled into a huge snowdrift headfirst. Snarling angrily he broke free of his icy confinement in obvious rage, his fiery countenance could melt the very snow around him if it were put to good use.

Bringing himself somewhat violently in a swift motion ot his feet he muttered vicious curses that would make a harpy blush with shame.
Snape seethed with venom as he glared about,as if challenging the bare trees around him to try and laugh. He glanced down, a twitch in in his brow as he imagined the one odd beetle crawling beneath him to be Voldemort, squashing it in relish.

‘What a bell-end,’ Snape growled to himself. Serving him was most irritating, Snape prefering in his entirety to bow to no one, hoewever; he paused reflectively, for the better good if you will, it was a most necessary task.

And this time once again had came where he would shunt his pride to the back of the line, for a man must remember - in order to further himself, it was sometimes needed for a man to be selfless.

Most selfless indeed.

“Bloody brilliant,” he groaned, lifting his wand and muttering, “Direct – onus.”
A flicker of red light snaked out of the tip of his wand, lazily; then shot forward into the sky and the direction he was headed, illuminating the crystalline snow.

Still muttering angrily to himself he trudged on, no sane man would be caught alive out in this horrible storm.

But then again, he wasn’t really considering himself to be a sane man at the moment; only a gibbering mad baboon would consent to do Dumbledore’s ludicrous dirty work.

Frowning Severus wrapped his cloak tighter around himself in an attempt to keep out the needles of cold chill, shuddering as he trudged forward into a bleak courtyard long ago abandoned that was enchanted to only be revealed to those who bore the Dark Mark.
Wincing he clenched his arm as ribbons of white hot pain shot up and into his forearm, pulling back his sleeve in one quick motion his dark eyes fell upon the glowing tattoo that made his skin crawl every time he looked at it. Yes, it was time.

Snape clenched his teeth, grinding them together as he braced himself for what would undoubtedly be another disturbing tirade of Voldemort’s obsessive and rather annoying rants of the newest irritance that had caught his fancy to bitch about.

He shuffled rather reluctantly over to a large ornate fountain that was adorned in semblances of gargoyles, their countenances frozen forever in hideous expressions; their gaping mouths open in silent shrieks, he wiped any traces of emotion from his face. The transformation was remarkable, where there once stood a man seething with irritance and anxiousness; only a cold stoic figure remained.

Snape had always been a master at masking his feeelings, as well as a master of many other things.

“Le chat noir.”

He muttered softly, clouds of hot breath escaping his lips as he let the password slide out of his mouth as if it were some filthy and vile thing.

Groaning, ancient stone moved slowly away as if in protest as the fountain slid down to reveal a hidden staircase that led into the dark musty depths of the earth. Gazing down into it was like staring into an abysmal hole, and he steeled himself for the sights that lay beyond.

He tread softly down the winding staircase ignoring the feeling of vertigo as he felt a cold dread building up inside him, the knowledge that every step he took was one step closer to The Dark Lord.

Shrugging it off he sneered inwardly at himself for his own cowardice. If he kept this up he’d be no better than those sniveling weaklings he so openly despised.

It seemed as if the staircase was endless and he entertained himself with the notion of what would happen if he were to slip and fall? He might tumble down into the darkness forever . . . . But wasn’t he doing that already by going here?
Frowning at himself he sighed as he made his way towards the cackling voices that awaited him, the torchlight casting dark shadows on his face.

Showtime.

He snorted inwardly.

Because in a way, that is what it was.


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The winter wind howled bitterly outside, ominously beating upon the window pane like the ear shattering shrieks of some damned and tortured beast. It shook the small houses in its anger, rattling them as if they were rag dolls.

The weather seemed an appropriate match for the dark cloud that hung over everyone’s head.

Pity on the man who could be caught outside in the blizzard’s icy grip, for it was a deathly grim storm that had fallen upon the small Romanian town and it had no intentions of leaving soon.

At least perhaps until it had claimed a few lives . . . .


The candlelight flickered warily in the cozy common room of ‘The Tainted Knife Tavern’ casting shadows on all the faces inside and causing even the most congenial man to appear frightening and horrific. It was a small but snug tavern, full of warm ruddy faces with bleak expressions, no one wanting to say what they were all thinking.

Yet even the most soft spoken could not hold their tongue for long.

A small fireplace blazed in the middle of the room, reminding all of the wretched weather that lay just outside.

People sat together in huddled small groups, murmuring to one another the one thing that was on every witch or wizard’s mind. Dark times lay ahead, of that it was certain.
There had been rumors . . . .

Rumors that He–Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had once again risen. They had snaked out first in short tendrils, whispers in the dark, voices quivering in fear, and had trickled out to the far corners of the wizarding countries until the rumors had split through their world of safety and comfort, causing it to come crashing down around them as they realized. . .

The rumors were true.

Chaos had broken loose and was now unleashed upon the masses, on all their quivering minds. It had driven many to insatiable madness, to hiding, to denial.

For who wanted to believe that The Dark Lord had returned?

Many denied it furiously with a passion, for perhaps it was the only way to cling to their last shreds of sanity, to hope.

Many sought some other explanation, more - pleasant, than the mind numbing alternative that had come to pass.

Many, but one.

No one seemed to notice the studious figure who sat intently hunched over scrolls in the furthest corner from the light, reading hungrily. “Seemed” perhaps a kinder substitute for “actively choosing not to notice”.

It wasn’t that this particular individual was a loathsome slimy git such as the infamous Severus Snape, nor were they decidedly cruel and malicious like the wretched dung beetle Lucius Malfoy. Although some DID find her to be worse than that inbred pig Lucius Malfoy, which was saying something considering it was a well known fact that Mr. Malfoy delighted in the sadistic, perverse torture of House Elves and Muggles on a daily basis.


Taking that into consideration; people in general had a natural born tendency to avoid the things they simply couldn’t understand, to avert their eyes to the curious abnormalities around them.

Well, that an she was a total bitch, honestly.

Perhaps she could have been considered...pretty, were it not for the long jagged scar that ran beneath her unremarkable brown eye to the edge of her somewhat small pointed jawbone, or perhaps it was the fact that whenever a person made the mistake of looking into her cold eyes that sent a shiver down their spine, for that moment they were reminded of.... something that had crawled out from under a rock to disturb them.

Something vastly unpleasant.

Her long, thin silver blond hair was meticulously well kept and her pallid corpse-like skin reflected the warm glow of the fireplace.

No, it did not make up for her scar and somewhat uneven, sharklike teeth.


Azriel Shade was not your typical auror; in fact she was not your typical anything. To expect any shred of humanity from her was a sure sign you were in dire need of being committed to a mental institution, because it was well known she had no toleration for imbeciles, as she regarded humanity in general as a foul and loathsome thing that was not to be trusted yet she knew she could not ever place it at the back of her mind and forget, such were the qualities of aurors in that they did not turn their backs upon their enemies.


Some called her eccentric, but most referred to her as stark raving mad. Not much was known about her, only the gossip that was whispered behind her back whenever it seemed she was out of range. They said she had come from a wealthy, respectable pureblood family but had been disowned when it became painfully clear to her ‘practical parents’ that she would never agree to marry, nor would she ever be the ‘well mannered aristocrat’ they had hoped for.

Her mannerisms were crass and unrefined, she had all the politeless of a troll really.

When her parents had washed their hands of her it seemed to cause no outward effect upon Azriel. It was as if nothing had changed in her mind, for to her, that part of her life, and herself, had died years ago.

Azriel did not possess the patience for such nonsensical rubbish as friends; her mind was captured by more dire matters, it was below her to associate in a congenial manner with any witch or wizard.

She possessed no desire to “waste her time” in worthless relationships, and possessed no human friends to speak of, naturally. Her philosophy could have been thought of as an excuse to being unable to own up to the mere fact that she was unable to socialize normally with other human beings. She simply did not know how.

Witches despised her, wizards loathing her in that she was a chauvinistic pig who thought that all men were generally worthless and the only useful thing about them was that they could populate the earth with their repulsive, greedy loins.

Her only passion in life was her deranged obsession in capturing each and every single Death Eater that still lived and breathed freedom, bringing justice to the whole by destroying those who had desecrated the meaning of it in the first place. Yet this minor fixation was nothing in comparison to the more grandeur and disturbing infatuation she had contained since she was a child for the only dark wizard in existence who mattered; who was continuously in her thoughts, Lord Voldemort.

In fact her obsessive fervor concerning the seriousness of her work was so great that every wall of her quarters was covered from top to bottom in illustrations of You-Know-Who; portraits that sneered and mocked her with an eerie likeness of their subject, she had drawn them as far along as she could recall; since she was old enough to hold a quill to parchment.

Perhaps she was the epitome of deranged.

Her thoughts focused on a particular portrait that came to mind and brought back the memories that were tied with it, blurring together as she felt herself recalling who had inspired her to create the portrait in the first place.

Her father . . . .

She had been eleven at the time, staring raptly at her father as he paced back and forth in front of the fireplace, the light glistening as it fell upon his black hair and ragged, tired looking face. He was speaking animatedly about You-Know-Who, apparently lost in his own thoughts as he recounted the tale of how Tom Marvolo Riddle had murdered his Muggle father and grandparents, implanting false memories in his revoltingly inbred uncle Morfin Gaunt; who had happily confessed to the murders.

They had been close, Azriel and her father. He was the only one who understood her morbid and dark infatuation with You-Know-Who it seemed, sometimes she had thought in her younger years it was almost as if he sympathized with her, as he did not really seem to be bothered on her constant implorations regarding Voldemort. On the contrary it was almost as if, he enjoyed voicing his horrific little tales of mystery and betrayal.

When she was a child her father had been god-like in her eyes, and it seemed that he could do her no wrong. Every word that he spoke was law and truth, and he always had advice or wisdom to divulge. But such is the way of children, for when you are a child things are seen in an obtusely contorted light, and it is not until you grow older that the fog clears from your perception of the world and you see things as they truly are in their ugly realities.

She recalled an unfortunate incident that had occurred in her sixteenth year. She couldn’t actually remember it herself, only what her parents had told her. Whenever she tried to remember the event her memory drew a blank; and her parents had explained to her that she was simply suffering from something Muggles liked to call ‘Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder’, when something so traumatic and frightening occurs to a person that they subconsciously block it out from their memory, as if it never happened.

Apparently she had been wandering about aimlessly once again in the forest that was close to the Shade’s Manor, and had come across a particularly nasty adult Erumpent that had somehow found its way into the woods; having escaped from a local zoo. This particular creature possessed a fluid inside its horn that once piercing something; destroys what it has hit, and the result of the encounter had left her without a right arm. Her father had promptly replaced the missing arm, with a skeletal one that was powerful and frightening.

However, whenever she had questioned her father about the incident he had regarded her with a cold gaze and told her to ‘never mention it again’. He also had told her to never reveal the skeletal arm to anyone, hence the glove she had worn upon it from that day forward that she never removed. That glove had created much teasing back in Hogwarts……

The unmentionable incident had never left her thoughts, and was only seared forever into her mind by the constant denial of her parents that it had ever even happened.

Over the years after that, Azriel and her father had simply drifted apart; their relationship deteriorating with the passage of time. That event had caused everything in her life to change, and sometimes she had felt quite confused when it was almost as if her father would gaze upon her with an expression of the utmost loathing; before whipping his head about and acting as if he had done no such thing.

They had not spoken in years, Azriel and her father; and when they heard that she had become an auror; if anything it seemed to infuriate her father to an unsettling degree.

She sometimes wished that it could have been different; and yet, somewhere all the way down in the deepest part of her she subconsciously knew that nothing she could have done would have changed anything.


Sighing, she placed her scroll down to stare absent mindedly out the window into the white snow drifts beyond. Voldemort was close by, she hoped anyway. She'd had a hit or miss effect many times in the past, luck having alot to do with it .

She actually was kind of brilliant really, but all that could have been was clouded by a sad obsession tinged with a poisoned madness to doing something right, something people would actually recognize her for.

Selfish reasons all around, but isn't it always selfish reasons what tend to motivate people in the first place, I mean really motivate them?


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