Severus Snape hated going to the Ministry of Magic. He prided himself on being a rational and orderly man, and surely "rational" and "orderly" topped the list of things the Wizarding government was not. Case in point: as necessary as this particular visit was for him, he'd outed himself as a Death Eater on more than one occasion, and to the Minister for Magic, no less, yet Apparated in as if he owned the place and marched right by the so-called "Security Guard" who paid him absolutely no attention.

With a scowl, and his face carefully hidden in the shadow of his hooded cloak, he stalked across the dark wooden floor past the Fountain of Magical Brethren to the lift and smashed the "down" button, impatiently tapping his foot while he waited for the lift car to arrive.

When it did, he was relieved to note it was empty as he was absolutely in no mood for tedious explanations. He only had one floor to go, so the chances of meeting anyone were slim. He breathed a sigh of relief when the door closed and hit the 9 button.

A short lurchy ride later (Muggles did lifts much more justice than wizards did, Snape had to admit), and the doors slid aside once again. He walked down the long corridor toward the single plain black door at the end, reached out, turned the handle and stepped inside. He closed his eyes as the room began to spin, and once it stopped, he chose a new door and continued on into the depths of the Department of Mysteries.

He arrived in a room with no light. Suddenly, the door closed behind him and all light vanished from the room, plunging him into a darkness so complete it was as if light had never existed. A tight, enclosed feeling enveloped him and he felt his breathing quicken. Short breaths over rode his instinct to be calm and panic overtook him. Gasping, desperate, he couldn't think of what to do. Suddenly, the worst parts of his life played before him . . . Snivellus, you coward! Snivellus, you weakling! Snivellus, you worthless half-blood! A logical part of his mind screamed It's a Dementor, Occlude, OCCLUDE! but he couldn't seem to do this.

After long moments of torture, he deduced it wasn't a Dementor after all, but a Boggart, and he brandished his wand, snapping "Riddikulus!" with a little more force than was probably strictly necessary, at the same time as he cast a non-verbal Lumos. brightening the area immediately adjacent to him.

A noise from somewhere to his left caught his attention and he whipped about, trying to identify this new threat and stifling his emotions.

The noise, however, turned to be no threat, it was only a door swinging open. With a sigh of relief, he stepped through the door and blinked.

When he opened his eyes, he had to stifle a burst of nausea and cringed. He suddenly found himself walking on the ceiling of what appeared to be a courtroom. There were rows of benches laid out beneath him, and on the other side of the room, high above his head on the floor was the door.

He shook his head to clear it - the initial reaction of fear was instinctive. He rolled his eyes at himself - he'd brewed the immensely complex anti-gravity potion for Hogwarts' Tri-Wizard Tournament and had even prepared the mister, but hadn't tested it, knowing his preparation was correct.

Still, he checked for his wand, and wrapped his hand around it tightly, and stepped forward toward the door, mentally bracing himself for a crash into the floor.

When he stepped forward to step away from the mist, he experienced a dizzying, whirling sensation that threatened to overcome him with nausea as the room appeared to right itself. Instinctively he crouched into a ball with his arms above his head, eyes clamped shut lest he lose his lunch.. Being upside down was never something he'd relished, even as a child when his father had playfully held him upside down over the stairs, and many years of torture at the hands of Potter and Black had given him further distaste for the sensation.

He pried one eye open almost imperceptibly and was able to discern that he was, in fact, standing on what was supposed to be the floor, and brushed his robes down to straighten them, and made purposefully toward the door at the other side of the room.

He opened it, saw a non-descript room full of nothing, and stepped through the door, shutting it behind him.

As soon as the door shut, it disappeared with an odd squelching noise and suddenly every wall in the room was identical. He'd been in a similar situation once, when he'd first been indoctrinated into the Death Eaters, and calmly waited for smoky riddles masquerading as instructions to appear in front of him - but that's not what he saw.

With a sinking clarity, he realised the walls were closing in on him, and when he instinctively tried to Disapparate, he found himself contained by an anti-Apparation jinx. His heart pounded in his chest and he conjured a dragon prod and braced it between the walls to keep the walls from crushing him, but the prod didn't bend, didn't break - it simply disappeared into the walls. He thought, then, that it was an illusion and went to stand next to the wall, but it was solid for him, and gradually pushed him toward the center of the room, where all the other walls were converging. He realised if he didn't act soon, he'd be flatter than a hotcake.

And suddenly, it came to him. Angry with himself, he flashed his wand out at the walls and snapped "Creoportus!" and stalked toward the door that appeared on the wall next to him.

Angrily, he yanked the door shut behind him, and whirled about in a swirl of robes, wondering what new threat awaited him. He spied nothing in the room except a soft armchair. He approached it warily, wand brandished, and eyed it carefully.

A few cautious diagnostic spells later, and he was reasonably sure that it wasn't a brittle Acromantula corpse, a bugbear covered by a Lethifold or a Chameleon Ghoul. Suddenly remembering Dumbledore's humourous tale of how he and the Potter brat had managed to re-recruit Horace Slughorn, he stabbed his wand viciously into the cushions. When no flinching or squeal of pain greeted him, he determined it to simply be a chair, and sank gratefully down into its welcoming, soft cushions.

He'd been on his feet for sixteen hours and his back and feet were killing him. A non-threatening chair such as this was just what he needed until his next challenge appeared. He sighed contentedly, and thought that a foot massage would be quite in order. He stretched his back and neck and shoulders, sinking more deeply into the cushions, and contemplated lifting his feet up to remove his heavy boots, but decided that was too much effort.

He leaned his head back and breathed deeply. He couldn't remember when he'd been so relaxed, so at ease, if ever. Certainly if he had been, it was before the war. Probably before his mother had died. Certainly before he started Hogwarts, maybe even before he started studying the Dark Arts.

That alerted him. Occlumency was so little known because it took someone casting Legilimency against another to perfect, and Legilimency was considered a Dark Art. As was Imperio. And the same talents that lent one to be an Occlumens taught resistance against Imperius.

Alarmed, he slammed his mental doors shut, and shot the walls up. The calm sense of relaxation left him immediately and he shot out of the chair as if he'd been launched from it. He whipped around, only just restraining himself from casting a blasting curse at the chair, and backed slowly toward the exit.

He slipped through the door and walked into an enormous room that was about half the length of a Quidditch Pitch. There was a large stone pit surrounded by stone, stadium-type seating. At the bottom of the pit lay a large stone platform, initially bringing to mind a sacrificial altar, except for that above the platform, a threadbare drape fluttered in a non-existent breeze.

The night the Dark Lord re-revealed himself to the Ministry, Snape had stayed at Hogwarts on orders - both of Dumbledore's and the Dark Lord's. However, he'd heard a detailed report at the next Order meeting about what had happened, and recognised the veil room from the description he'd heard from others.

He sauntered down the stone bleachers, a smirk on his face. So this is where Sirius Black met his end. The Unregistered Animagus who escaped Azkaban, spent the better part of the year evading Dementors even whilst he was right under whatever passed for their spectral noses, and for nearly the next two years evaded capture by the Ministry of Magic, was defeated by a ratty old piece of fabric dangling from a stone archway in a deserted coliseum.

As he approached the stone platform, shadows passed from one side of the room to the other, whispering gently. He hopped up on the dais, and as he approached, a familiar ghostly voice called out to him, telling him the way out.

He was drawn to that voice, wanted to reach out and touch it, but recognised that reaching out to the veil would bring him to the same ignominious end as his school nemesis, and held steady.

The voice called to him louder still, persuasive, seductive in its power, and he strained to not listen to it - it was telling him to come through the veil - that he would be free of this room if he did.

And while that was probably true, he also suddenly realised the drape had been described as black, yet this one was grey. And that the stones had been described as grey, but these were a dull brown. He wasn't quite sure where he was, but he realised he was in the wrong room, and conscious of how close he'd come to a fatal error, backed away from the dais and veritably ran to the door opposite the one he'd come in.

Bursting through the door in a rush, Snape suddenly found himself under water. He kicked hard to the surface, the weight of his boots working against him the whole way. He flailed about - swimming had never been one of his talents - and tried to take in his surroundings. On the far side of the room, there was a door, with a key hanging beside it. In his heart of hearts he knew that, with all the other obstacles he'd encountered, there was no way the solution would be that easy. He looked around and saw two more keys, one at the bottom of the lake, and another hanging from the ceiling some twenty feet above him.

Although he didn't happen to have any Gillyweed on him, he highly doubted that whoever had come up with this idea would have put the necessary key on the bottom of the lake when he was both known as a Potions master as well as exceptionally gifted at spell casting, and never mind that he was on the staff at Hogwarts during the most recent Tri-Wizard tournament and was perfectly well versed in knowing about the Bubble Head charm. It came in handy when he was brewing from time to time, after all.

He was going to have to get the key that was hanging from the ceiling.

Well, no matter, he thought to himself. He kicked vigorously enough that he felt comfortable taking his arm out of the water, and then waved his his wand and cast a casual and non-verbal Accio key!

He stared at it, as it did not move, and then nearly took a lungful of water as in his shock he'd quit treading.

This is ridiculous, he thought, and paddled over to the door. He tried the doorknob which was, unsurprisingly, locked and kicked at the door in frustration.

But at least being near the doorknob gave him something to hold on to. Hauling his body out of the water by one hand, and with the precision that allowed a bored boy to shoot down flies in the dark, he took careful aim at the ceiling, blasting the key from where it hung without damaging the key. As the key fell free of its prison on the ceiling, falling precariously closer to the surface of the water as it gained speed, he Summoned it to himself.

The key slapped into his palm with a satisfying sting, and he opened the door.

He walked into a room that reminded him not so much of a room in the Ministry as a giant culvert. His boot steps echoed ominously across the walls, seeming to amplify with every rebound. In the corner, near the door opposite the one he'd come in, he saw a spiral pile of stones vaguely reminiscent of of Cahergal fort in Cahirciveen, materialise as he walked further into the room. He was headed that way, and had just figured he'd take a cursory glance on his way out when the stones began to rise and elongate . . . and flare.

He instinctively Disapparated just as the enormous stone cobra struck at him, but found himself at door he'd come in.

Horrified, he moved to flatten himself against the door when he tripped over a heavy chain coiled up in front of the door. He hadn't a clue what it was doing there and dared tear his eyes away from the ominously weaving snake to glance at the other door. As he'd suspected, there was a chain at that door, too, but it wasn't coiled - it was leading to the back side of the cobra's head.

He stared unblinkingly, wondering exactly how one secured a chain around the neck of an animal that was all neck.

Of all the times to have a Patronus of something without any natural predators! he thought to himself. Good God, this is like dragon meets Medusa!

He had two sparks of inspiration, and without the slightest inkling of remorse, conjured a large white rabbit which hopped around the room, its ears flopping about. The snake was momentarily distracted and struck for the rabbit, and as the predator's head reached ground level, Snape saw a ring at the base of the snake's head. Although he didn't think it would work (if it did, would a stone snake bleed dust?) Severus cast a powerful Sectusempra at the golem as it was distracted.

Whoa! BAD idea! he thought, as he Apparated to the other side of the room, the snake having looked up and lunged at him with a positively murderous expression on its face.

Somehow he didn't think that attack was one of the mock-strikes cobras are so well-known for.

He realised something, however - the chain didn't reach all the way across the room, and while the snake, when facing him, could certainly reach the other side of the room with its tail, it wasn't the animal's TAIL he was worried about.

It was a common misconception amongst some that didn't know him very well that Snape was inept with a wand, owing largely to his introductory speech in Potions. However, he didn't have a dislike or lack of interest for spell casting in general, he simply disliked some of the more useless spells that had been invented, such as the Leek Jinx. What possible purpose could something so inane serve? He felt such things were foolish and useless, and refused to demean himself by casting them.

However, utilitarian spells he was quite adept with, and due to years of studious practice at shooting down flies in dark rooms, he had quite deadly aim.

Dreading the idea, he Apparated back to the other side of the room and grabbed the chain, finding the end link. Not taking his eye off the snake, handled the link to get a good idea of how it was constructed. He conjured another rabbit, and with a bit of intricate wand waving, when the snake struck, he attached the link to the back of the snake's head.

When he was sure it was secure, he severed the original chain, Apparated to the other side of the room, and slipped through the door.

He closed the door behind him to find himself floating, initially making him concerned that he'd circled back around to the courtroom and moved to step forward - only he didn't see his foot move. He looked around confused, and discovered that his body was still on the ground. He was separated from it, floating around in the air above his body. Alarmed, he tried to move toward it only to find there was some sort of barrier keeping him away.

He stifled both panic and nausea, not caring to find out what nausea experienced during an out of body experience would do to his body lying there on the ground. He was terrified that if his body lost the contents of his stomach he'd end up aspirating them and looked at his body in concern, suddenly realising that aspiration wasn't that much of a concern as his chest was not rising and falling.

This spurred him into action. He remembered reading about some ancient Egyptian soul magic in a book of the Dark Lord's, and he knew he'd read a spell that would reunite body and soul, but he couldn't remember the words.

He floated about the room, looking at the ceiling and walls, hoping to find a clue, but the blank white paint and acoustic textured ceiling offered nothing.

He circled the ceiling in a remarkable imitation of a caged animal pacing, trying to force the memory of something he'd only read once and in passing to the forefront of his disembodied brain. "Khat - yes, that's right, Khat, Ka, Ba - Khat, Ka, Ba, Khaibit . . . Khaibit . . . Khaibit, Akhu, Sahu ? Hm, I think so, yes, Sahu, Sekhem, Ab, Rem? No, Sahu, Sekhem, Ab, Ren. I think that's right, Khat, Ka, Ba, Khaibit, Akhu, Sahu, Sekhem, Ab, Ren," he recited to himself, ticking the nine pieces of the Egyptian self off on his fingertips, including the name, the body and the seven parts of the soul.

"Now what the devil is the word to reunite them?" he demanded of himself ruthlessly, wracking his brain. He'd been sure that if he could but think of the pertinent parts of the soul, the spell would come back to him, but he was not so lucky. In fact, he was drawing such a blank that he began to question whether he'd ever read a reuniting spell, or if what he'd looked at was all soul-splitting and separation.

No matter, he was the Half-Blood Prince, and he'd been inventing spells since he was fifteen. He was quite confident both in his knowledge of Latin and his knowledge of magic to invent another one. He'd been casting non-verbally since he was fifteen. He'd even been inventing non-verbal spells that he had never once uttered - he could do this.

And he relentlessly squashed the voice that tried to remind him that he was able to use his wand, and utterly ignored the voice when it tried to point out that even the Dark Lord, when reuniting his own soul with a corporeal body, had someone to wield a wand for him.

Steeling himself and taking the proverbial deep breath, he mentally incanted mens in corpore, and with a great sucking and whooshing sound and a whirlwind of motion, felt himself slammed back into his body.

He lay there for a few minutes, reorienting himself. Unable to prevent himself from taking great gasping breaths, it occurred to him that his body was in danger of imminent death. A bizarre tingling sensation danced across his body, eerily reminiscent of the Cruciatus Curse, only without the pain, and it was a few minutes before he trusted himself to walk without stumbling, so he lay there gazing blankly at the acoustic ceiling.

When he felt that his heart and breathing rate had returned to something resembling normal, he sat up slowly, mentally checking himself for any ill-effects before gingerly rising to his feet. He stepped carefully forward, mindful that he might have as-yet untested balance issues, and made his way to the door with precise steps. He wrenched the door open and stepped across the threshold into a dark room - the moment he'd done so the door slammed ominously behind him.

He looked around the room and noted that the walls were shimmering faintly. He walked across the room to the wall opposite him, intent on investigating, when he discovered he was looking into a mirror. But he realised he was not alone. Behind him, he could see his greatest wishes and desires, and the thought of so seeing them on a mission for the Dark Lord was horrifying. He wrenched his eyes away to look back at himself, and saw his mother, his father, his grandfather, his cousin, and many friends walking out to greet him, surrounding him. Even Albus Dumbledore smiled at him benignly, his blue eyes twinkling.

He started. Surely the Dark Lord would consider such thoughts sacrilege. He jerked his line of sight away and began backing away from the mirror, but his mother reached her hand out to him, and said "it doesn't matter any more, you are home, you are safe."

He cringed. He hadn't heard her voice in so long, and he missed her horribly. She'd been torn from him at such a young age. He looked to his father for assistance, but Tobias' expression was like his wife's -- complacent and calm. "Y'cn stay, y'know," he said, and Severus clenched his eyes shut and backed away.

This was cursed -- worse than the Mirror of Erised that had been set up to guard the Philosopher's Stone. He'd faced that, too, but it hadn't been quite as heart-wrenching. Then again, that was before the Dark Lord had risen again. Before he'd assassinated Albus Dumbledore. Before many things. And without even another glance at the mirror, Snape resolutely stalked from the room in a swish of robes.

As he crossed the threshold, he entered the room which had been his goal the entire time. An enormous room, larger than a Quidditch pitch, the ceilings were nearly impossible to see he shivered in the frigidity that wrapped itself around him like a lover.

As his eyes adjusted to the near-absolute darkness, he saw intermittent bluish flames spaced at intervals along countless numbered rows of shelves on which several thousand small, dust-covered orbs, some of which were glowing faintly, sat above jaundiced peeling labels.

He waited a few more seconds for his eyes to further adjust to the light, then stepped off purposefully toward row 78, passing several orbs that were dull and dark in appearance. He resolved not to think about that and kept walking.

When he arrived at the far end of row 78, and began searching the writing, mindful to keep his eyes only to the ones still lit from the inside. A few moments of browsing the dirty and aging labels led him to the one he wanted.

CV to ? re: Tom Riddle? and Severus Snape?

He removed it from the shelf carefully, but instead of tucking it carefully away in a fold of his robes, held it up to eye level and looked at the mist swirling inside it. With a soft sigh of regret, he glided out of the room and slipped into the lift. He proceeded unmolested across the long expanse of the Ministry Atrium, past the repaired Statue of Magical Brethren, to the lift that would take him to the phone booth that marked the Visitor's Entrance, the small glass orb clasped tightly in his non-wand hand.

After gliding through the crust of the earth for what seemed an interminable minute, during which time he made judicious use projective Legilimency, Severus stepped out of the booth to the dirty and near deserted streets of London. As he'd predicted, even dared hope, a vagrant, stinking of stale alcohol, old tobacco and too many days since last bathing, staggered out of the shadows in his general direction toward his exposed back and shoved him. He tripped and dropped the Prophecy, which shattered on impact, and he spun around to face his "attacker". He "dueled" with the man for a few moments, the words of the Seer vanishing unheard into the empty darkness. Snape cast surreptitious cleaning spells on the unwary man, and finally wrenched free of his grip. "Fine! Take this!" he spat, tossing a phial of sobering potion and a few pound notes at the man. He stepped into an alley, pulled another vial from his robes and tossed back the contents, and Disapparated silently.

He arrived at the old Riddle house to find the Dark Lord waiting. Although far from a masochist, Snape had spent entirely too much time
securing his position within the Dark Ranks to let a prophecy come between him and his lifelong goals. He flung himself at the Dark Lord's feet quivering slightly which was not entirely for effect.

"Severus?" the Dark Lord hissed hissily, cold anger seeping through every syllable.

Snape refused to look up, and mumbled his words clearly into the ground at his feet. "My lord. I retrieved the prophecy, however when I left the Ministry I was accosted by a Muggle and lost it."

Snape steeled himself, waiting for a curse that didn't come -- yet. He knew it would, and most likely sooner rather than later.

"You -- lost -- it? Define for me, Severus, the term 'lost'?"

"It fell out of my hands, my lord -- the attack by the Muggle took me by surprise, and I -- I dropped it."

The Dark Lord didn't even insult him by casting the curse verbally. As he writhed in insurmountable pain, he reflected that the preemptive nerve-numbing Draught didn't seem to be helping much, but the pain was worth it. It was unlikely the Dark Lord would waste time torturing him if he meant to kill him -- and he most assuredly would have killed him had he heard that prophecy.

After what seemed an eternity, the Dark Lord lifted the curse and ordered him out of his sight. Mindful that he'd lost control of his bodily functions, Severus merely rasped "Yes, my Lord. Thank you, my Lord," before fingering a Portkey to take him away.

* * *

Note: the idea of a dragon prod was taken from a fic by WhiteRaven, which is not hosted on MNFF.

Creoportus, with the help of an online Latin dictionary, is my own creation from an earlier fic, from needing to know a counter to the canon Colloportus.

http://www.karott.com/ireland/journal_2002.asp

http://www.touregypt.net/

http://www.hp-lexicon.org

http://www.m-w.com

http://www.thesaurus.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki