Chapter Text
Back Through the Labyrinth.
SS/HG
It hurt. It hurt so bad. He could feel his breath leaving through the holes that gaped in his neck, he could not however feel the refreshing feeling of air entering his lungs. It seemed like the air caught somewhere between. Just enough air came in to keep his brain functioning so that he could feel every excruciating moment of his death, but not enough that he could stop it from happening.
The “Golden Trio” had just departed, although reluctantly on behalf of two
thirds of it. Even his dying brain could recognize the look of absolute exhaustion on the faces of Potter and Granger, not that Weasley looked much better, but the other two looked like that had been carrying the weight of the world for much too long. To see another die before their eyes, was disheartening whether he be friend or foe, ally, or enemy. Death was the end and the battle had only just begun.
.
He felt the numbness begin in his toes. He never gave his toes much thought except when they were cold. His washing of them as mindless as washing his elbows and knees. He supposed maybe a little more than those bits of him as he was sure to wash between each of them but still not a significant part to worry about. The remaining bits of his feet went next and then past his ankles and the knees unworried about, but when they creaked after kneeling at the feet of a snake faced sycophant or returning to the old man that held his leash.
His thighs first burned and then went as numb as the rest of his legs, but he was not worried. It was not as if he would be walking out of this shack alive.
His rear end as numb as it was after sitting in the library for hours on end during his studies. His back seemed to seize a bit before it too numbed. He felt the coldness run up his back and down to his fingers where they spasmed and at that he felt true regret that he would never make another potion, never feel the touch of another person’s hand upon his own. The last that he could recall was Ms. Granger’s before she walked away.
The slight amount of breath that he was able to take in, seemed to freeze in his chest as his last thoughts went to the young woman that he had forever belittled, in hopes of keeping her off of the immediate radar of the two megalomaniacs, determined to see him and everyone else that surrounded him and “The Chosen One” dead.
Just as he thought that he might finally leave the world that had defeated him behind, he felt, by means of the wind in his hair, the flapping of wings. Thinking that it might be the familiar of old goat, he slowly dragged his eyes open. Expecting to see the flash of fire and red and gold feathers, he was quite shocked to see a white owl fly through one of the broken windows that littered the shack where he lay dying. Knowing that Potter’s owl had been killed just
last year, he thought that maybe he might be visited by a wrathful ghost of a familiar for sending the boy to die. He thought it only fitting that he be sent off to hell by the familiar of the child he could not save. If Lily and James Potter, hell if Sirius Black showed his face, it would not surprise him, if only to drag out the torture of these last moments.
Closing his eyes once more, he felt again the air shift around him. Blurrily he peered through haze filled eyes to see a strange looking man, elf, being? He had no idea now, crouched beside him. His gaze cleared momentarily to see a young man with hair more unruly than even Potter’s, almost concealing the mismatched eyes that hid behind the fringe of bangs. Some sort of Fey being to be sure. The man seemed to be humming a jaunty tune, but Severus could not be certain as he felt as if his head were below water and the sounds of battle were distant from his bubble.
“Mr. Snape, or should I call you Lord Prince, as you are the last of the Prince line and should have been recognized as such for the last five years? “
“But someone never answered his mail, or else someone interfered where he had interfered so many times before. I wonder whom that could be….” Asked the strange looking fellow.
When Severus failed to answer, the man looked closer at the dying man before him and snapped his fingers. Suddenly, there was a great hiss of air as the man once in his final throughs of death began panicking as his brain became more oxygenated than before.
Looking a bit more satisfied at the living person before him, he began again.
“Why don’t I just call you Severus for now and we will go from there. After all you may one day be a relative and I would hate to be so formal with you.”
Trying to get as much air in as possible, but wondering who this strange creature was, Severus choked out. “Who’r you?”
“Me, you don’t know me, recognize me? We have met before Severus. A long time ago it was, so maybe you do not recall…. My name is Jareth. We met when you were but a small lad, no larger than a goblet, much younger than most, but remembered just the same. Same lank hair and large noble nose, thin and worn and tired as you are now. Hurt as well, but nowhere near as badly. It still does not ring any bells?”
Looking confused, but unable to voice a decent response, he looked up at this Jareth with a helpless raise of his eyebrow, about the only muscle control that could still count on.
“Severus, you must be some wizard, because you have inspired two women to run the Labyrinth for you after being one of the wished away."
Feeling the confusion rolling off the wizard in waves, he continued with his tale.
“I’ll tell you a bit of a story, young Severus. It isn’t like you are going anywhere at the minute and I have nothing but time.” Remarked Jareth while rolling one of his crystal balls from the tip of his fingers, and one hand to the other.
“Once upon a time a little boy by the name of Severus was wished away. This was not anything unusual, children were wished away daily at this time, whether in seriousness or in jest, it was a way of life. My way of life was to collect the wished away and offer the wisher a boon. A dream that would be impossible to obtain in any other circumstance, but what I could provide.
I am Jareth, otherwise known as “The Goblin King”. Jareth said with an exaggerated bow.
On the day that young Severus had been wished away, I was dispensed to speak to the wisher and offer her, her boon. I presented myself to a woman, a witch that was crying hysterically. This witch looked like she was barely surviving the war that her life had become. Her family had disowned her and her husband, whom she thought had saved her from a loveless match had radically changed upon learning that she and their child were magical and were unable to improve their lot in life. Her inactivity resulted in her husband abusing her and her son terribly, so she had wished away her only son. The light of her miserable life, believing that by doing so, she would be providing him with a better life than the one that they lived.”
Seeing the man before him with tears in his eyes as he struggled to breath, Jareth snapped his fingers again and made Severus as comfortable as he could without healing him completely. It was a little dramatic, but he could not have him running into the fray that was happening outside the shack they were in, for that time had passed and there was much to be said and done.
“I offered the witch her boon, a life of privilege. A life with little responsibility. A life with love and respect with the man of her dreams and a future family. “
“With hope in her eyes, she looked at me and asked, “Then I could have my Severus back?”
Looking at the man in front of him sadly, he had to tell him the truth, just as he had once told that beaten witch.
“I explained to her truthfully that once her child, her Severus had been wished away, there was no getting him back in the new reality, her boon could not include the one that she was leaving behind.”
Anger filled the man, lying in the pool of his own blood, the man that had been misused and mistreated, misled, bullied, and abused. His mother and he had been prisoners in that house with his father and then he had just found a larger prison in Hogwarts. What should have been his escape became his own personal hell with no one willing to help him, but those that were dark were willing to guide him to their way of thinking promising him a rose garden , though he didn’t believe in their rhetoric they offered him a new road to walk, a road that he had hoped would lead him to a better life, not a lavish life, but better than he had known, that he could find his own true love and have a family of his own, that would love him and be proud of his accomplishments. It was wrong, it was all wrong in so many ways and to know that this Fey, this being could have possibly changed his life, his mother’s life and he was standing here, while he lay dying and telling him this.
Then he felt sad, maybe this was his death, his afterlife, to be told of what could have been, while the children, the teachers and all that he had tried to protect were raging and fighting outside this building, injured and dying, while he could do nothing. Feeling just as impotent as he had always felt.
Jared could see what was going through Severus’s mind and he could feel his anger and despair. He questioned the past and his position in it, but knew that though the situation had been sad, he only was able to offer that witch the boon and choices that she had and he needed Severus to understand.
“Severus, I am not a bad being, I am not a bad king. I have my place in this world, just as you do. There are rules that I must follow as well, with truly little room for deviation. I offered that witch, your mother her boon, but the thought of a life without you in it, was unbearable for her. So, she ran. She ran my Labyrinth and reclaimed you. When the seventeen hours were reset, she had you in her arms with tears in her eyes, knowing that the both of you could have had a better future, though she never knew what yours might be. She knew that she could not give away her heart, the heart that was now outside of her body and in her arms. She loved you too much to let you go. It might have seemed selfish to me and others, knowing the life that she led, but she loved you.”
Silent tears ran down the cheeks if the man before him as he desperately tried to catch his breath. He closed his eyes and tried to concentrate on his breathing but could only remember his mother’s tears.
Jareth knelt beside Severus, gently brushing the hair from his eyes, not as a would-be lover, but maybe as a brother at arms.
“Severus, your life has inspired two women, willing to run my Labyrinth for you.”
“Pity” whispered Severus with tired anguished eyes.