The Man Who Sold the World
By Meggory

Vasiliy hastily excused himself from the gently lit room as Severus arranged a pair of chairs to face each other. The slim Russian man tucked his canvas-wrapped tools in one of his trunks, drew out a cloak and gave Hermione a wink. She was torn between concern for his safety and wonder at the new, gleaming foot of blackthorn resting comfortably in her fingers like an extension of her hand. He patted her on the shoulder fondly and directed a sidelong glance at an oblivious Severus. “Don’t worry about me, my dear. I am a fully grown wizard. Besides, you’ll learn better if I am not here to distract you. I don’t want Severus to eat you for dinner. Po’ka,” he said as he walked out the door with a little wave.

“Otvali,” Severus snapped in reply, and Hermione could hear Vasiliy chuckling to himself.

“So rude, Severus,” he called as he shut the door behind him.

Hermione heaved an annoyed sigh, and Severus raised his head to peer at her. “What is it?” he asked dryly.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” she complained. Severus motioned for her to take a seat, and she dropped onto the wooden seat ungracefully.

“What?” he inquired, a bit too innocently, as he smoothly eased himself into his own chair. With a flourish, he extracted his own wand from the depths of his outer robe.

“Speak in Russian like that. It really is rude.” She crossed her arms over her breasts in a picture of female irritation.

A tiny smile quirked at the edge of his lips. “Very well, I will try to avoid speaking in foreign languages unknown to you in the future.

“Did Vasiliy make your wand?” she asked suddenly, her exasperation giving ground to her newly kindled curiosity. From her vantage point, she could not quite see the carved handle beneath his long, pale fingers.

In response, he gripped the wand tightly with his thumb and forefinger at the top of the handle and moved it closer towards Hermione. In the soft, glowing light of Vasiliy’s magical lanterns and her own bluebell flames, she could make out the sinuous form of a dragon twined around the handle of Severus’ wand. As she squinted a bit, she realised the darker lines of wings and scales were not simply relief shadows, but lines of inlaid darker wood. “You can tell a custom Gregorovich wand by the carved handles; you can tell a wand of Vasiliy's friend by the effort he puts into them,” he said softly. She thought his voice held a note of fondness.

As if he remembered his role as the unpleasant tutor, his face hardened and he again gripped his wand properly. “When practising Legilimency you must know exactly what you are looking for. Since you are relatively untrained, it will be easier for you to find some information within my mind if you keep that in mind. The more accomplished you are, the more you will be able to see without having some kind of specific goal. I, for example, could rifle through the entire contents of your brain without much trouble. I could sort information and memories alphabetically or temporally. You will have difficulty finding the things I wish for you to see.”

“Thanks for the confidence,” she grumbled, and he looked at her sharply.

“This is not about a lack of confidence in your abilities, merely an accurate assessment of your inexperience. I expect you to learn this quickly and correctly. You were a formidable student, long ago. I expect you to live up to your reputation.”

“Will you honour our agreement from this afternoon?” asked Hermione quietly but firmly. He nodded ever so slightly.

“I will.” His reply was drier than she had thought possible. Suddenly he shook his head slightly and rested his wand in his lap. “Wand up, Miss Granger.”

“Yes, Professor,” she said with a smirk. Lifting her wand, she pointed it at Severus and stared directly into his dark, troubled eyes. “Legilimens.”

She was running her hands over rough brick walls--only there were no notches, no holes to make the walls rough, only their nature. She tried moving to the left, and found only more wall. She moved to the right, and found only more wall. The wall climbed infinitely, and spread further than she could see or touch. Confused and slightly distressed, she pulled away.

Hermione’s heart was fluttering in her chest as she found herself back in her solid chair, facing Severus. He wore a small, slightly amused smile. “Take a deep breath, Hermione. Calm yourself, and try again.”

With a calming inhalation, Hermione raised her blackthorn wand again and gazed into Severus’ still-black eyes. She exhaled and breathed, “Legilimens.”

Again she found the brick wall. It was a dark red brick, the colour of congealed blood, with bone-white flecks ground into it. She dragged her fingertips across the faces of the bricks and winced; the bricks were sharp, and her fingers ached and throbbed. She could not climb over this wall, and once again she tried to go around it to no avail. Frustrated, she returned to her own mind.

“Are you doing this on purpose?” she bit off, angry not at her frustration but the little secret smile he was now wearing.

“It is not my fault,” Severus replied, “but I will offer you a hint. Just remember that my mind does not work on the principles of three-dimensional space. Just because you can’t go up doesn’t mean you cannot go down.”

The harsh sound of her teeth grinding together filled her ears as she said, “Legilimens.”

The brick wall returned, spanning in all directions. What would have been a sigh if she had lungs or a mouth or a nose escaped her, and then she remembered what Severus had said. Glancing down where her feet would have been, she saw that the brick wall continued down. But perhaps it did not continue down forever. So she let go of the wall and dropped down. Her sensitive fingertips skimmed against the brick of Severus’ mind. An opening. That was all she needed--an opening, a crack in the mortar. As the image of a little spider webbed crack formed in her own imagination, her searching fingers caught on an edge. Peering closely at the brick, she found her heart’s desire. A crack, small enough to allow an ant’s passage. But she could not fit through that slim little space. She pounded a nonexistent fist against the rough material in frustration. “Open up,” she called, her voice ragged with exertion. No reply, and she leapt away.

Shaking her head to clear the gentle fog settling on her brain, Hermione glared at her tutor accusingly. “I thought you were going to help me learn this,” she snapped.

“I had much harder lessons,” Severus replied darkly, “and you will finally understand if you just keep working. Legilimency isn’t meant to be easy. The gods forbid the Weasley twins be able to ferret out your worst fear, or Minerva discover your masturbatory fantasy.”

She clenched her hands, feeling several knuckles pop under the pressure, while a blush crept unbidden to the tips of her ears. “Then what am I doing wrong?” she demanded impatiently.

“Not wrong,” Severus corrected firmly. “You’re thinking in the same way you would if you were running an obstacle course. Remember that when you are inside my mind, inside anyone’s mind, your mental image of your own physicality can easily be altered. Your fingers are not really fingers; they are extensions of your mind, your will. Now, try again.” His eyes, rimmed underneath with dark smudges from his recent lack of sleep, snapped wide open.

Hermione lifted her wand and hissed, “Legilimens.”

She found the crack easily now, knowing exactly where it lay. Her fingers caressed it absently as she mused on what Severus had told her. Her fingers were not really fingers. They were extensions of her mind, tendrils of thought searching for a weakness in this formidable barrier. She wanted to worm her way in and bring down a part of the wall for her to enter. As she pondered, the texture of the brick changed under the tips of her fingers. The miniscule crack was still there wholly, but the rough, hard brick around it now felt--supple. Malleable. Like she could widen the crack if she could just pry it open.

Pressing her fingers against the split in the brick, she imagined a vine creeping in and gripping the exposed surface of the crack. She sent out tendrils, strong as steel, to edge further into the wall, to grab ahold of more material. Every minute particle of that crack became part of her; she was that break in Severus’ wall. With a firm grasp, she yanked her vine tendrils out of the wall. A satisfying shower of brick and dust was her reward. The dust disappeared as she glanced at it disparagingly, leaving only a ragged hole large enough for her to wriggle through. With a smile, she plunged headfirst into Severus’ mind.

Her feet hit solid ground as she clambered out of the brick hole. Hermione straightened and found herself looking at what looked like an Escher lithograph. With the world in black and white and gray tones, her eyes became lost trying to determine which way was up. The lines of stairs and railings and landings became the lines of ceilings and doors and floors; she put a hand back against the brick wall for support against the rising tide of vertigo only to find the wall had disappeared. In its place a stairwell rose sideways.

Shaking her head irritably, she muttered aloud, “Now what?” There was not an icicle’s chance in hell that she would go back and ask for Severus’ help now. Somehow she knew he had already given her all the hints she would get for this lesson.

The only problem was: where to begin?

She did not dare set foot on one of the stairways, lest she lose herself forever in this complex puzzle that defied physics and logic. “Wait,” Hermione mused. “What did Severus say about this?” She found that talking calmed her brain, which was jumpy from trying to follow the pattern of this strange place. “He said that I have to know exactly what I am looking for. Okay. So what exactly am I looking for?” She glanced in all directions and took a step forward, as if petitioning his mind for help. “I am looking for the answer to my question.”

The scene blurred around her, and she felt herself shift--somehow--in space. When the world around her slowly came back into focus, she glanced around. She was no longer standing on the floor with a stairwell rising sideways behind her. Halfway up a staircase, she faced the stairs going up and opening to an upside-down door. With a shrug, she climbed the remaining stairs and wrapped her hand around the gray doorknob. It was cold under her fingers, like brass, but it did not budge as she attempted to turn it. She took a step back and said aloud, “I want to know what happened to Severus.”

Again the world of stairs shifted in shades of gray. Hermione was hurtled past doors and stairs and landings for a few heartbeats until her feet touched a random landing. Two doors, one sideways and one properly upright, stood in front of her. She tried both knobs to no avail, but the one lying on its side had a keyhole at her eye level. Cupping her hands around the small hole, she pressed her eye to it.

In the room beyond the door, a bleeding and emaciated Severus Snape prowled a small, nondescript room somewhere in the ruins of London. A rictus of rage and pain contorted his face as his fingers peeled the fabric of his ragged clothing from a slice on his chest. “Gods damn you, Severus Snape,” he spat. “Why couldn’t you have just died?”

Shocked, Hermione jumped back from the keyhole. So, she was getting closer, was she? Squaring her shoulders in preparation for the next journey through Severus’ mind, she called, “I want to know what happened to Severus after the Battle of Diagon Alley.”

Whirling faster than before, the stairwells looked like the inside of a monstrous tornado as Hermione fell. A wind came from somewhere, whipping at her face, and she squeezed her eyes shut to protect them. She landed hard, and the jolt forced a grunt from between her teeth. Rubbing her chafed eyes, she noted three stairways ahead of her, all going in different directions. Only one, however, led to a door. That set of stairs climbed along a ceiling.

She inhaled deeply. “Don’t worry, Hermione. Gravity doesn’t exist here. It’s just all in your imagination. Or Severus’ imagination. Just grab the banister and walk up.” Hesitantly, she snaked out her hand and gripped the slender rail that ran parallel to the ceiling. Then she took the first step up.

The scene before her eyes shifted, but not in the same way as before. As though she had been suspended upside down before, a sense of pressure resettled on her body. She felt like she was still standing properly on the landing, only she knew she was walking on the ceiling. Or was she? According to her eyes, everything else had now ran up or to the side with abandon. With a little sigh, she continued up--down?--the stairs towards the door.

This door, too, had a locked handle and a keyhole, and she eagerly knelt down to glance inside. The bloodied but exalted Inner Circle of the Death Eaters knelt before Voldemort as Diagon Alley burned. Severus knelt with a fan of blood across his cheek, and Lucius Malfoy knelt beside him. Malfoy’s eyes were fiery. It looked like he had washed his hair in blood. On Severus’ other side, Bellatrix Lestrange wore a smile of ecstasy, while her husband appeared thoughtful. Voldemort’s featureless face seemed happy, if that were even possible, and his high cold voice carried a note of pleasure as he spoke to his disciples. “We have nearly won. By dawn tomorrow we will have the Secret Keeper and the location of the Order’s headquarters. With one final strike we will kill them all in their weakened state. Severus!”

“Yes, my lord?” Severus bowed, his head touching the ground.

“I know that Dumbledore refused to tell you the identity of the Secret Keeper. What you can tell me is how many of the Order we dispatched today. Wormtail, bring in those who need identification.”

With an ingratiating smile and a deep bow, Peter Pettigrew leapt from his master’s side and worked his wand furiously as he faced outside the circle. Through the gap Pettigrew’s absence made, a jumble of unnaturally animated corpses pushed their way into the middle of the circle. They presently collapsed. Severus’ face was a blank mask as Pettigrew closed the gap. “Well, Severus? Do tell all of us who sits before us.”

“Yes, my lord.” He took a silent, deep breath, and recited, “Mad-Eye Moody. Hestia Jones. Sturgis Podmore. Kingsley Shacklebolt. Dedalus Diggle. Mundungus Fletcher.” He paused for another breath and said flatly, “Albus Dumbledore.”

Bellatrix Lestrange laughed softly and moved her head to say something in Severus’ ear. As she did, Hermione could see the withered frame of Albus Dumbledore lying on top of the pile of corpses. In death, he looked what he would have been had he not been the greatest wizard of the age. He looked like a frail old man, weary in his final rest. And yet, he did not appear glad to shed his body; he seemed dejected and deflated. In his death, Albus Dumbledore was just a bloodied heap of wrinkled flesh and obliterated hope.

Voldemort began to laugh. The terrible noise forced Hermione to flee.

She stood up straight with a hand feeling her heart beat staccato in her chest. “So that’s what happened to Albus,” she whispered. Minerva had announced the death toll immediately after the Order retreated to headquarters, but Hermione had been ordered to send owls to Madame Maxime before any details--if any--were covered.

With a sense of dread that both made her tremble and spurred her on, Hermione turned to face the topsy-turvy representation of Severus’ mind. “I want to know what happened to Severus before the Headquarters of the Order of the Phoenix were discovered and destroyed.”

Instead of a violent shift in any and all directions, the flat floor moved under her feet almost gently; she suddenly stood at the bottom of the upside down stairs. One door faced her with finality. She had come to her answer, and she would finally know what had essentially destroyed the harsh but noble man who had taught her. She would understand the fragility of this new Severus Snape, who offered to protect her and yet left her to Death Eater officers, who yelled at her as though he could never see her side of things and tearfully apologized in the dead of night hours later.

The primal thirst for knowledge that drove Hermione Granger compelled her to cup her hand around the keyhole. A sense of entitlement pushed her to press her eye against it. A horrid fascination ensured she did not look away.

It did not strike her as odd that Severus’ memories played like Muggle films, seen through the eyes of a third person not involved in the scene. She watched silently, raptly, like a good audience, as freshly drawn blood seeped from parallel, slightly ragged wounds sliced across the span of Severus’ bare, pale back. The bright crimson fluid ran along his spine in runnels and dripped from his smooth buttocks into a growing puddle on the hardwood floor. Naked, he knelt at the foot of a rumpled bed like an obedient slave awaiting his master’s order. His head sank between his shoulders; Hermione could not see his face.

The faces she could see were the heavy-lidded visage of Bellatrix Lestrange and the triumphant profile of Lucius Malfoy. Under a gauzy, translucent slip of fabric draped over her shoulders in a mockery of modesty, Bellatrix was also stark naked. There was blood under her long painted fingernails. As she knelt, Hermione could plainly see the dark thatch of pubic hair between the Death Eater’s long shapely legs. One bloodied finger shot out and jerked Severus’ head up sharply. “You’ve been very helpful, Severus,” she said, her voice low and throaty as she chuckled without any mirth. “To the Dark Lord, of course. I’ve had better.”

Severus was despondently silent until Lucius stepped over to him and slapped him jovially on his wounded back. A terse grunt escaped the Potions Master’s lips that sounded like it should have been a scream. Malfoy also squatted next to Severus and said quietly, “It seems your cock has betrayed you twice today.” Bracing his gloved hand purposely on the now-coagulating missing strips of flesh, Malfoy hauled himself up and glanced back down at Bellatrix. From Severus came another groan, this one high and keening. “I shall inform the Dark Lord of this new information. Dress yourself, Bella. I wouldn’t want your husband seeing you like this.”

Bellatrix rose sharply, and her eyes snapped wide open. “You will not claim this for yourself, Lucius. I did all the work. I intend to reap the benefits as well.” From the chaotic bed sheets she drew a silken dressing gown. She slipped into the pale blue fabric quickly and tied the sash around her hips, then glared at Malfoy. “Let’s go.”

His platinum eyebrows rose markedly. “You’re going to leave this wretched traitor here alone?”

“He can escape, for all I care. He won’t be free for long. Besides, he’s served his usefulness.” With a haughty toss of dark hair over her shoulder, she strode past Malfoy and wrenched the oaken door open. “Are you coming or not, Lucius?”

He chuckled as he followed her to the threshold. “It seems to be a dangerous pastime today,” he joked quietly, casting a disparaging glance at the huddling form of Severus. They left the room in a cloud of laughter and shut the door firmly behind them.

Left to himself, Severus heaved one terrible sob in the silence of the room. A few heartbeats later, he struggled to his feet and pulled a sheet from the bed. He wrapped the length of cotton around his waist and stumbled to a tall dresser with peeling paint. His hands scrambled to grab ahold of his wand, but once the handle was firmly in his palm, he simply stood with his bleeding back to the dresser. Facing the room, he held out his wand in a shaky hand. A furrow of concentration appeared on his stricken face, as if he were trying to muster the focus to Apparate or otherwise escape this little room. The calmer he appeared, the worse the shaking in his hand; his eyebrows met above his prominent nose, and Hermione could make out failing muscles beneath his unnaturally white skin. Another few moments in this rigid posture passed before his knees wobbled a bit too much for his beleaguered body. He collapsed in a heap of limbs on the floor.

Tears of agony streamed from his eyes as he threw his head back and screamed like an animal having its heart torn out.

The horror and disgust finally clicked inside Hermione’s own thoughts, and she fled from the keyhole. The hole in the brick wall came to her as swiftly as though she had called it aloud, and she dove through it and back into her own mind.

The force of wrenching away from Severus nearly threw her from her precarious seat on the edge of her chair. Every line, every contour of the body across from her howled despair, but he did not drop his eyes to the floor. Instead, he continued to fix his haunted gaze upon her. “Now you know,” he said hoarsely, his words stilted as his mouth worked to bring moisture to his lips. “I won’t blame you if you want to leave me. Or kill me, for that matter.”

A lead weight had attached itself to the end of her tongue. Silent, she managed to rise from her chair and stare down at him. Revulsion seethed in her veins; he repulsed her as forcefully and as surely as two magnets of the same pole. Her knuckles cracked as she gripped her wand more tightly. There was nothing she could say to make him feel guiltier, and there was nothing she could do to him to bring back Remus and Minerva and Tonks and the last vestiges of the Order killed in that final raid. There was only one thing to do.

Scraping her chair back on the floor, Hermione fled Hagrid’s hut for the comfort of the Forbidden Forest. Severus’ silence behind her was nearly tangible.

The darkness outside wrapped Hermione in a blanket of comfort. Without the harsh light of the sun, she felt she could retreat into herself without self-reproach. Her exposed skin threw up scores of goose bumps as she walked slowly into the trees. Unaware of her immediate surroundings, she gasped aloud when a hand clasped her shoulder. Whirling, she found herself face to face with a cloaked Vasiliy. His face was grave. “What is wrong, my dear?”

Now here was a good and kind and honourable man who would never betray his friends to Voldemort. With a hitched sob, Hermione threw herself into Vasiliy’s shoulder and spoke into his neck. “Did you know about him?” she asked, trying for her sanity’s sake to hold back the torrent of tears waiting to fall. “Did you know what he did to us?”

His slim arms rested easily around her shoulders and squeezed slightly. “I know many things about Severus, my dear, and not all of them make me sleep easily at night,” he replied gently. His breath, smelling of tea and slightly stale Toothflossing Stringmints, tickled her ear. “We all make mistakes in our brief lives. Severus has made more than his fair share, but before you condemn him to eternal suffering, I want you to remember what he did for your Order of the Phoenix. He could have died dozens of times over after he forswore his allegiance to Lord Voldemort. I am amazed he does not have a permanent room in St. Mungo’s for all the torture he suffered to keep your school and its students safe. Do you really have the right to judge him?”

Hermione released her hold on the Russian man and stepped back, her face grim. “I judge on behalf of those who are not here to do so,” she replied flatly. Without another word, she spun on her heel and returned to her furious, random stalking through the trees.

Her brain in all its heightened, carefully honed power, refused to be silent. The snarling, primal voice in the back of her mind shrieked for vengeance, swift and vicious. He killed your friends. He slaughtered the Order. He ensured Voldemort would triumph over Britain.

A slightly calmer, rational little voice countered, He didn’t kill them himself. It was Bellatrix and Lucius and the rest of the Death Eaters, not Severus. They must have tortured him to get that information. Don’t you remember all that blood? He still has the scars on his back.

Snidely, another voice cut in. All I remember is a naked man and a naked woman and some rumpled bed sheets. He fucked Bellatrix Lestrange and gave her and Malfoy the Order.

Her feet trampled through the underbrush as her maniacal thoughts quarreled. Beneath the desperate desire to kill Severus outright was the slim thread of reason. There must have been more coercion than she had seen, some compulsion that forced him to betray his failing organization. There must have been a reason, some godforsaken and unfathomable reason, for such a damning act. The human body and mind are neither immortal nor inviolable; perhaps that day Severus Snape had truly been broken. Perhaps the man she knew was not a man at all, but a broken figure held together with vestiges of personality and skeins of revenge.

She pondered this as low tree branches scraped her arms and tangled her feet. An iota of sympathy rose in her throat. She tamped it down violently. There was no way she would forgive this man, not yet--she needed to be angry, to rage against him. Her conscience demanded it. The fury simmering under her skin clouded her observational skills; she was surprised when another shadowy figure stepped out from the trees.

Hermione raised her wand in a classic duelling pose and heard a female chuckle with little amusement. “It’s just me, Hermione.” Ginny approached her as she pulled her cloak hood away from her face. “Nice wand.”

“Thanks,” replied Hermione, lowering her new magical implement but not putting it into the waistband of her pants.

“I was coming to see you,” Ginny continued. A slight furrow graced her forehead. “Where were you going?”

Hermione shrugged, hopefully casting an image of innocence and nonchalance. “For a walk. I needed to clear my head.”

Ginny snorted, not kindly. “I couldn’t imagine living with Snape.” She did not seem to notice Hermione’s lack of response when she said, “I want you to come with me. I have something important to show you.”

Severus’ sharp warning forgotten in the jumble of her churning mind, Hermione nodded. Ginny turned back to the direction she had been coming from and motioned for Hermione to follow. Dutifully, Hermione hurried and fell into step with her school friend as they walked deeper into the Forbidden Forest.





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Author’s Notes:
1) Time for a good old fashioned disclaimer. Not mine. Big fat surprise.
2) Thanks to all my lurvely readers and reviewers! You guys make my day...
3) Once again, anyone wanting update notices and who haven’t already done so should send me a quick note through the contact button on my author’s profile page.
4) Gasp! How awful for Severus! Are you now satisfied for a while? Don’t believe everything you see...
5) Otvali is Russian for “Fuck off” (in the sense of “go away”). Severus really was being rude.
6) Anyone wishing to look at an M.C. Escher lithograph should go to his official website and have a look at “Up and Down” and “Convex and Concave.”
7) The whole concept of Hermione finding what she wants in Severus’ mind is loosely stolen from Robert Jordan’s concept of Tel’aran’rhiod in his Wheel of Time books.