Title: Snape: Scoundrel or Saint? Or, The Autobiography of a so-called Byronic Hero, a retort. (6/6)
Author: ianthe_waiting
Recipient: absolute_tash
Rating: MA/NC-17
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter books and their characters are the property of JK Rowling. This is a work of fan-fiction. No infringement is intended, and no money is being made from this story. I am just borrowing the puppets, but this is my stage.
Genre: Dark!fic, Angst
Warnings: DubCon, M/F, Oral, Anal, Fetish, S/M, Hurt/Comfort, general angst, oh, and AU/AR
Summary: 'Had to save him, said the one thing that made all the difference—almost sweet, but too sad. Almost kissed him then…' I dropped the book on the bed, falling face first into the mattress beside it. There it was, in a tiny, penciled scrawl, the possible motive of future suicide attempts.
Original Prompt: From Prompt #2: Hermione stays with a dying Snape in the Shrieking Shack. Thinking he is about to die, he confesses to her the one thing that means the most to her - she was the best student he ever had. He ends up surviving, and what was a dying man's ramble has made Hermione look at him in a whole new way. No fluff please.
Author Notes: I do hope the recipient enjoys this ficlet and that it fulfills the parameters of the prompt, it was loads of fun to write! Please refer to chapter notes for further, informative information, and most of all: Enjoy!

Chapter Thirty-Seven: The Complaint

'No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.' –Euripides

Dying, I found, is akin to drowning in Veritaserum. Oh, there is pain, of course, and perhaps regret, but for me, I could not stop myself from speaking truths best left unsaid.

To set the scene, the Dark Lord's snake Nagini had bitten me—to put it simply without getting too specific about the extent of the gore. I lay on the dusty, disgusting floor of the Shrieking Shack, trying in vain to staunch the blood gushing between my fingers from my throat. I had given up my memories as a last ditch effort to somehow keep Potter from letting the world go straight to hell, and, I was contented to die alone, my duty done.

However…

However, I was not alone, in my most vulnerable moment. I wanted my last moments to be quiet, with no fuss. I had idealized that when I did die, it would be quick, and hopefully painless. A Killing Curse, so that the last thing I would see was a flash of green and then blissful nothingness.

Instead, all I could see were large golden eyes peering down at my face, hands, and a wand moving over me in an intricate motion. I was quite aware of what had taken place after Potter collected the memories that would save him, and perhaps myself, after I was worm food. I never really wanted to be known as a villain even after my consciousness had slipped into the great beyond.

I knew that Potter and Weasley had witnessed my demise, and that they had run away to impending battle. However, one of the three stayed behind, perhaps thinking that I would need company before I died. The sentiment was wasted.

Hermione Granger, Potter and Weasley's brain, felt some twisted sense of duty to stay with me, though I would never know why for a long time. She pitied me, just as everyone pitied me. She laid my head on her lap, so that I stared up at her face over the womanly swell of her breasts. The rats nest that she had for hair framed her young face as those large golden eyes watched me passively.

At least, she was not crying.

Then, as she tried to heal me, I started speaking. It was as if I had to vent my spleen at the very last moment, to say something suiting to her, urge her to let me go. I wanted to go, I wanted to die, and no one, not even the insufferable little know-it-all was going to stop me.

I spoke, my words coming out weak, wet with blood, and very true.

"Leave me," I had said first.

The girl did not seem to hear, or pay attention, her lips moving in silent incantation, her eyes hard but glowing with determination. It was if she were praying over me.

"Miss Granger…"

She blinked, but kept moving her wand over my body, a body that was beginning to numb and grow cold. I knew very well that the venom in Nagini's bite was killing me just as quickly as the blood that was oozing from my throat to stain the girl's trousers and the floor beneath her.

"You were…" I wheezed, feeling my lungs begin to constrict, my tongue begin to stiffen. "…the best student…"

Merlin, what was I saying? I wanted to scream at the girl to run, to catch up to her silly, heroic friends, and play her part in history. Why was she wasting her time with an old, bitter bastard like me?

"…I ever had…"

I barely realized what I had said; I did not know that I had lifted a hand up to touch her cheek, smearing black blood onto her perfect alabaster skin. It was some strange gesture that part of my mind realized was a farewell of sorts. It was very unlike me.

"Professor? Severus?"

My hand dropped dramatically to the floorboards, and my eyes began to slide shut.

Ah, this was it, I thought, this was death. But it was not.

My eyes were fixed, as venom-induced paralysis set in. I was surprised how slow the venom seemed to act upon my nervous system, but considering I never learned what sort of snake Nagini was or how much venom was injected into my blood stream, I could not anticipate the exact moment of paralysis.

"Oh no…" I heard Granger whisper, and through my eye lashes, I could just see her chin, dripping sweat down onto my lips. I could still feel a bit, and taste her sweat as it trickled into my mouth.

"Oh no, you don't!" she shouted suddenly.

If I could move in reaction to the shout, I would have, as it was, the only thing of me that moved was my chest. Involuntary responses were still functioning, and I wondered for how long.

"Shit. Shit!"

I wanted to smirk at the blatant profanity that streamed from those lips. Hermione Granger, a thorn in my side for the past seven years, could be interesting after all, especially with her varied use of the word 'fuck.' Of course, I had hoped to die before I thought much about the girl, especially that she might be interesting. I wanted to die before I found out how interesting…

"Please, Professor, just hold on…" I heard her say, no tears straining her voice, but anger, culpable anger directed at something, but not at me.

I felt her hands upon my body, and if I had the ability to speak, I would have scolded her, as it was…

Even so close to death, I knew Side-Along Apparition was taking me. The compression and decompression of space was not painful, and I knew that I was edging closer to the state of quiet I had been wishing for since being bitten by the Dark Lord's white, hideous serpent. However, the sounds around me alerted me to the fact that the girl had taken me somewhere busy, crowded, and exposed.

"Help here! I need some help here!" the girl shouted, her voice booming over the din of other voices, a palpable wave of unintentional magic laced in her words.

From what I could see through my lashes, I knew I was in the lobby of St. Mungo's. If I could, I wanted to be sick.

The sound of footfalls running toward me stopped just short.

"Is that…?" one voice hissed, disgusted.

"Yes, now, can you please get a cot or help me Levitate him?" the girl asked, gruffly.

"But he's… There's a battle at Hogwarts and he's…"

I did not know the soft male voice, and I could not see the face. I could only assume it was a Healer by the lower half of the man's robes, for it was all I could see.

"He's Severus Snape, damn you, and he's not what you might think. Now, are you going to treat this man or not? Or am I going to have to hex your poncy arse, because if you don't start helping now, I will!"

The power in the girl's voice could have frightened the Dark Lord, and I had to admit I was impressed. She frightened me.

"You'll need to fill out some forms," the Healer blathered quietly as my body was lifted from the floor amidst gasps of other people waiting to be seen in the various wards.

"You said yourself that there is a battle at Hogwarts, and that is where I need to be. Bugger the forms.

He has been bitten by a very large snake, magically enlarged…vipera ammondytes, a horned viper, I believe. If he is not treated soon…" the girl shouted as I felt my body being moved away from her.

"Yes, yes, miss-knickers-in-a-twist," I heard the Healer mutter next to my head.

Already, my limited vision was failing, and just as my dangling fingers were shut into the jamb of a ward door, crushing the digits, I had hoped I died. Instead, I lost consciousness.

I did not die, but I suffered. I was hovering in a realm between life and death and I was convinced it was hell. In this hell, I could hear the voices of Healers, then of Aurors. Besides those voices, I could hear my own heartbeat, sluggish and still beating.

I counted the hours by my heartbeat, trying to compensate for the slow rhythm by adding ten heartbeats to my one. I counted days. When I did sleep, it was to dreams of sock puppets at the foot of my hospital bed playing out the 'Battle of Hogwarts,' as I heard it called.

A dingy grey sock with a comical white face for the Dark Lord was hissing threats to the huddling sock puppets of the people in the castle. Then a brown sock with Longbottom's face stepped forward with a butter knife and cut off the end of a shoestring that I supposed was the blasted snake that put me in this hell.

In my dream, I would always laugh as a red sock with Molly Weasley's face 'Avada Kedavra'd' a black sock that represented Bellatrix Lestrange. In the end, the Potter sock puppet and the Dark Lord sock puppet fought, the dream hands inside the socks wrestling together until the Dark Lord cast the Killing Curse with the Elder Wand, a piece of drinking straw, and comically fell over the on the foot of the bed, dead.

The puppets rejoiced, and on a string, dangling over the group was Albus' sock puppet with purple pointed hat made of a rubber glove and cotton ball beard.

'Very good, very good,' the somewhat angelic Albus sock puppet would said in a contrived voice.

And that was how the dreams ended…with Albus sock puppet's blue button eyes twinkling. A black tunnel closed in over the scene with 'The End' in big block letters flashing behind my eyelids.

I was in hell.

What decrepit part of my brain made such a stupid dream every night? I still have yet to understand.

In my waking hours, I still could only see the backs of my eyelids as Healers came and went. Aurors hovered about, asking when I would wake.

Dying should have been so easy.

Damn girl.

"He cannot speak, Mr. Potter," the poncy Healer said at my bedside even though I was staring at his fat face, glaring.

Edgar Wiscombe, he was a First Year while I was in Seventh. I barely knew him, but I knew I hated him. He had been the one who let my fingers be crushed in one of the swinging doors to the Creature-Induced Injuries Ward. The poof…

Harry Potter stood at the foot of my bed, not a sock puppet, but a young man. He seemed larger than I remembered, older. I had been in a medically induced coma for two months, and upon waking, I could not speak. The damage to my throat had been healed, the venom eradicated from my body though it actually was not what had nearly killed me. It had been the bite, the blood loss, the tearing of muscle and sinew, the crushing of my vocal cords, etc.

"I'll leave you now," Wiscombe sighed, and I knew that the man was in awe of the boy, as was everyone else in the ward, thankfully blocked out by screens.

There was a chair provided at the foot of the bed, but Potter did not sit. I hoped it meant that he was not planning to linger long at my bedside.

"I'm sure you've heard the news…"

I nodded. Though I could not speak, I did have the ability to move. In fact, besides the weakness of two months of atrophy, I felt well enough to attempt an escape from St. Mungo's very soon.

"I just wanted to…erm…thank you, sir."

I supposed my face twisted in some unnatural way because Potter blushed and then scratched the back of his head for lack of something to do with his hands.

"The memories…they helped."

I tried to sigh, but it ended up just being a loud exhale. The Healers had somehow managed to inhibit the compulsion for my vocal cords to move, allowing them to heal. I could communicate by writing on a tablet with a Muggle biro someone had thought to give me, but I left the implements on the bedside table. I really had only one thing to say to Potter.

Go away.

However, if there was a chance that Potter might grovel at my feet, I was not about to prevent it from happening.

"I just wanted to ask you a few things…about my mum."

I crossed my arms before my chest. Granted, my hospital gown was a sickly shade of pastel green and not black, I brooded as I always did when Potter asked a stupid question in the classroom. Potter was waiting, expectantly, his green eyes softening as he looked at me as if I were someone friendly.

Those eyes galled me.

I snatched the writing tablet and biro and began writing. Several times the tip of the pen tore into the paper, but it did not matter. Ripping the page, I tossed it toward the boy, watching him deftly catch the floating sheaf in his hand.

"'No thanks necessary, after you read this, bugger off'?" Potter read aloud. He raised his eyes from the page and frowned. I turned my eyes to the ceiling, dropping the tablet and biro onto my lap, crossing my arms again.

"'You have the best memories, everything else is a blur. Whatever you might think of your mother, she was no saint…' Professor, surely...?" Potter protested, but I did not look at him. He continued, however, mumbling the rest of the words. "'My debts are paid as I gave you everything you needed to kill the Dark Lord. If it had not been for your meddling friend, I would have died in peace. Tell her not to ever show her face to me again, and for that matter, you either. Go off and live, I am done being pitied by you and your kind…'"

Potter crumpled the paper in his hand when he finished and stuffed it into the pocket of his cloak. He straightened and stared at me for a long moment. I still was staring at the water stain above my bed, a pattern that had become very familiar after several nights staring at it. I thought it looked like the outline of troll with a club up its bum.

"Very well, Snape, if that is what you want. I also wanted to tell you that the Wizengamot has been over the memories you gave, and Dumbledore's portrait was interviewed…"

At this, I let my eyes move from the perverse water stain to Potter again, my arms falling to my sides.

"When you're well, you can walk out of here knowing that you're not going to get the Kiss."

I narrowed my eyes at the boy. Where there should have been an edge of hatred, there was none. I had been so used to the boy hating me. He did not pity me, he did not hate me, but he did not care for me much either.

"You're a free man, an exonerated man. You should look happier, Snape," Harry sighed.

I was not happy.

Potter nodded to me, and that, thankfully, was the last time I would see the boy again for a very long time.

When I could speak again, five months after the 'Battle of Hogwarts,' the first thing I asked was: when I could leave this lower ring of hell?

"Leave?" Wiscombe echoed and than began twittering with laughter. "Oh, Mr. Snape… You still have quite a bit of healing to do. Therapy for your voice and your limbs…"

I was astounded. Of course, Wiscombe was right. My voice was a shadow of what it once was, and trying to raise my voice resulted in tooth aching pain. My body was almost wasted, my muscles nonexistent. I wondered if somehow I were being neglected by the Healers, surely they wanted me gone. I was not a model patient by any means.

I tried to get up from my bed many times without the aid of a Muggle 'Zimmer frame' and twice I fell, too weak to hold my own slight weight upon the frame of my bones. I had to acquiesce to the fact that my body was not healing fast enough as I would like and for the meantime I would stay where I was.

"I want something to read," I said, knowing that my voice was gravelly, a whisper.

I was presented with a newspaper. I had hoped for a medical journal, anything except a newspaper. I should have been more specific. Everyday a newspaper would be waiting for me on the bedside table, and everyday between potions treatments—which were of a low quality, a point I mentioned constantly to Wiscombe—and grueling physical therapy conducted in the Ward, I would read the Daily Prophet front page to back.

The front page usually sported news about Potter or his dull friend Weasley. Worst of all, at least once a week, I had to stare at Longbottom's stupid face, smiling and waving back at me. It seemed that he had become somewhat of a celebrity due to his courage facing the Dark Lord.

I usually avoided the front page and went straight to the second.

I read about myself on occasion, usually a mention in Ministry news. That was how I learned about my 'absente reo' trial and eventual acquittal. It seemed that the process had taken several weeks of closed court proceedings. The transcripts were made public, and many letters to the editor came in, either calling for my blood, or praising me. The names at the end of the letters varied. Some were former students; others were of people I had gone to school with decades before. Those that called me a 'hero' were mostly from my House, those who called me a 'murderer,' oddly, were from Hufflepuff.

I read about the rebuilding of the Ministry and of Hogwarts. I read about the memorials erected and the ceremonies to bestow Orders of Merlin. I even saw my name on the list of those to receive the Order of Merlin First Class, but I did not expect an invitation to the event. Overall, the matter of my existence was debated as if I had actually died. Everything written about me was in past tense.

Then, on the day that marked six months of my confinement to St. Mungo's and the death of the Dark Lord, my world was suddenly in present tense.

In the very middle of the Prophet was a full-page advertisement that had my hands shaking the paper as if I were having a fit.

In large block letters that flashed black to green were the words: 'Rita's Done It Again! Presenting… Snape: Scoundrel or Saint?'

I have always avoided cameras ever since I could remember, but somehow, at some time, someone managed to snap a photo of me in my teaching robes, my wand drawn, my face set into an angry scowl. It was this picture that stood on one side of the page, as in the middle of the page, Rita Skeeter's publicity photo smiled and winked from some generic book cover.

My eyes scanned the smaller text, describing the book, resulting in me gaping at the promotional testimonial blurbs, and gagging at the price listed in the smallest lettering at the very bottom of the printed page.

I tried not to vomit as I read Skeeter's synopsis.

'From his birth to his downfall, Severus Snape's life is now revealed to the public. Born into a dysfunctional household, abused by his father, Severus Snape fell in love with a Muggle-born witch, the mother of the Boy-Who-Lived. My book takes an in-depth look into the mind of Severus Snape, Death Eater, Potions Master, Spy, Headmaster, and unlikely hero.

Read my book and answer for yourself, was Severus Snape a Scoundrel or a Saint?'

I balled the newspaper in my hands with a growl, tossing it over the screens around my bed, hitting someone across the ward. I did not care that the person began barking at me, I did not care if some lycanthropic patient attacked me. All I wanted was to tear my eyes out of my skull and wish I did not see the quotes from various people I had encountered in my life.

Longbottom had said: 'Scary, but worthy of respect.' Lucius Malfoy had said: 'A dear friend…haunted and disturbed…' Kingsley Shacklebolt, the current Minister of Magic, had said: 'A powerful wizard…not to be dismissed as a mere villain…' Even Potter, whom I wished had been stillborn, said: 'I owe much to Professor Snape. We never saw eye to eye, but the Professor is as much the reason we are free of Voldemort as I am…'

I stared into the screen at the foot of my bed, at a loss of what I should do.

Should I find a solicitor? From the impression I got from the advertisement, I was being written about as if I had died. Merlin, I wish I had.

Mortification, anger, sickness, I cycled through those things over and over again.

I had read Skeeter's biography of Albus and the sickening style of prose she used. I knew she had manufactured some information and misquoted those she interviewed. The woman did not know what professionalism meant, and now my life was about to splashed on the pages of literary journals, in the Prophet, and in every media outlet of the press.

I eyed my biro on the bedside table. I could stab myself in the neck and try to die by blood loss again. I could swipe something from Wiscombe to stab myself in the heart. Better yet, I could hoard my pain medications, but the small phials of mild analgesics would never be enough for overdose unless I wanted to spend another six months in the hospital.

St. Mungo's had been my prison and my sanctuary. Eventually, I would have to leave, and then be at the mercy of the big, bad world, post-Dark Lord. I doubted that I would be welcomed back with open arms.

At the very least, I began penning a letter in ballpoint pen to inquire about a solicitor. I had not given authorization that a biography be written about me, and surely I could cause a bit of misery bringing Skeeter down.

That was the only satisfaction I could find.

Seven months and eighteen days after Hermione Granger saved my life, I was released.

The morning of my release, I was sitting on the edge of my bed, slipping into a pair of boots, ready to run if I had to from the ward. It had been a makeshift home, and only the day before I was informed by a Ministry letter that my residence at Spinner's End had been confiscated and demolished by the city of Sheffield. In fact, everything I owned was now property of the Ministry of Magic.

Though I was no criminal, my legal 'absentia reo' representation had cost money, as did the paperwork my activities as a spy incurred within the Ministry. When all was said and done, I was destitute, homeless, and in debt. I owed St. Mungo's approximately ten thousand galleons for my hospital stay, treatment, and rehabilitation. To add the icing to the cake, I was also unemployed.

To my credit, I had my wand, which mysteriously appeared one morning atop a new edition of the Prophet. My suit against Skeeter was going forward, and though I had nothing to pay my solicitor, I was assured that I would receive a modest settlement. I also had my health, which I was not sure whether to consider a credit or not.

It was as I was adjusting the buttons of my left cuff that the screens parted and for the first time since Potter's visit, a new person stood before me. I blinked at the figure, a wild array of crimson tartan assaulting my eyes.

"Minerva," I said.

Minerva McGonagall was the same as in my dreams, at least the plaid bit, and not the fact she was a wrinkled sock puppet.

"Have you finally come to castigate me and…"

"You're coming with me, Severus," she announced in her sternest Scottish bristle.

I think I gaped. "Why?" I asked with a hint of surprise.

Minerva, in her hideous tartan traveling cloak, was quaking with repressed anger. I felt as if I had been caught after curfew.

"I have been made aware of your situation, your debts, the slanderous book, and your need for a place to live. I will provide a room, board, salary, and my help…"

I stared at her, my eyes narrowing. There was always a catch with this woman, and I had a very good idea what it was…

"We take care of our own, Severus. Did you think I would let you simply walk out of this place without somewhere to go?"

I was not sure what 'our own' meant, but it somehow sounded nice. All the same, I knew…

"You'll get your post as Defence Against the Dark Arts professor, you will get your regular salary, and you will have the protection of Hogwarts. It is the least we can do for you, my boy…"

Who was 'we?'

"Now get up, get your cloak. It's snowing in London, a truly rare thing…"

Imperius, I thought, as I walked with Minerva stiffly out of the ward to the front desk. She tutted at me as if I were a petulant child when I stopped to fill out my discharge papers—Minerva did it for me, peering through her spectacles and muttering angrily about something in the fine print.

Soon, we were out in the open air. My chest hurt breathing in the cold London winter air, my head spun. After seven months and eighteen days, I was free.

I had a second chance at life at thirty-nine years old, but whether I decided to squander this chance was totally at my discretion. I still wished I had died.

I was in no way suicidal, but I was bitter. I was going back to the one place that held the best and worst memories of my life, but it was the only home I knew. Even as Minerva held to my arm, her small, aged body so fragile against mine, I wondered if the hard part of living were over.