Author notes: Thank's to Electricity a grand reviewer and beta reader. I must insist on perfection, even with annoying 'fragments' - they are for effect, I swear! Thanks to others who review!!
(ie. this could be you, so REVIEW)

Acknowledgements: Snape belongs to JK Rowling, which has sparked my lifelong jealousy. Using him for whatever moment in time is merely for fun and no profit is to be seen. Shakespeare is dead and gone so I blatantly steal his words with humility and humbleness.


What Dreams May Come

He pulled his cloak tighter around him. No matter, he was still freezing cold. Severus Snape sat on a tall dark chair in a cold empty room. There were no windows in this room.

He tried again to read the large musty book resting on his lap. It was difficult to concentrate. The words looked foreign to him. He tried to identify them, yet they mocked him and blurred into a grey scribble.

His eyes stung for want of sleep.

He sat there and shivered again trying to fight the cold. His fingers a ghastly blue unstead of thier usual unhealthy pallor. He was beyond thought; his mind hummed only deafening silence. Nothing. Sleep was wanted, pray needed; however Severus was used to dark sleepness nights trapped within these walls.

He slumped his head onto his chest. His long dark mane of greasy hair falling across his face. The ends of his hair tickled annoyingly as his head rocked back and forth with each deep breath taken. He groaned. Lolling his neck back stretching and looking around the empty room once more.

The fire was dead. Small embers were all that remained, they shone dully emitting only the tiniest amount of light. Severus's eyes were well adjusted to this type of darkness and he scanned the room's stone floor. A small sleek black spider scuttled along the cold granite flooring.

Absorbed only by emptiness he watched the spider scurry about the floor. The small spider had soft black hairy legs and moved with unnatural grace upon them. Severus Snape was not one to be easily entertained however this spider he watched had him thoroughly mesmerized.

The small spider tried several times to climb the wall. These walls were too silky even for a spider to attempt. It scuttled around the floor looking for a way out. Aren't we all? Severus mused.

The spider had found it. From inside the room you would have never known it was there. Even in the dark this part was utterly unobtrusive.

The smallest crack of light. It was the door. The room was so tightly bound even the spiders thin furry leg couldn't fit underneath it. The spider crawled about the door, enticed by the freedom beyond it.

Severus watched, through narrowed eyes as the spider helplessly attempted escape. It was interesting how these creatures were so drawn to light. They could sense it, smell it, even taste it. Severus, however, rarely saw it, felt it, or revelled in it.

Light for all it was worth was never better than darkness. Powerful, Severus himself would not deny it. As if to prove this the small embers glowed and cast shadows of the spider on the wall in a frightening puppet show. But light, was never strong enough. Never fast enough. For all the talk of the speed of light, Severus knew that darkness was always faster, always there first, waiting for light to arrive.

He laughed at the spider cruelly, a real mad mans laugh. Was he going crazy already? The spider was perhaps the only one with whom he could identify. Grasping onto a chance to reach the light, yet still trapped in the darkness. Sensing its presence, but realising it is utterly unattainable.

The spider was relentless, with urgency scampering around the door, looking for weakness, looking for release. Unconsciously Severus fingered around the mark on his forearm. Circling it with soft pale fingers, it was so sensitive to the touch. All the while the spider crawled up and around the door looking for an exit.

In a cresendo of agony Severus gripped his forearm scratching at the mark and willing it to leave his body. He felt nothing as blood seeped from under his fingernails.

Severus exhaled deeply as he dropped his bloodied arms before him. Rolling his head back, eyes cleanched shut and emiting a low painful moan. The spider, however, would not admit defeat. It slowly continued to paw at the light pensively.

Severus released his heavy hooded eyes. He had given up his prayer for sleep, even death would provide him comfort at this hour. He sighed, it would be his unlucky fate that even in death he would not find release. For in death what dreams may come?

When he opened his eyes the embers had completely died and Severus was cast in a darkness he felt all too familiar with. He knew he would have to face the morning now and he stood gracefully, gathered his book without making a sound, he would need it for class. Resignedly he moved toward the door.

The spider remained. No longer moving. Crushed. Dead. Between the door and the floor. Between darkness and light.

The sight saddened Severus, and he spared another moment for the spider. A slither of light, of hope. A spider that would not relinquish. It must have been attempting liberation all night. He looked to the small black legs that protruded out his side of the door. He asked of the spider softly,


What dreams may come?


What dreams may come?