blood bound

chapter 1: Botched Ritual

Snape watched under a disillusionment spell with suspicion as a seventh year Ravenclaw pulled a sixth year Slytherin into an abandoned classroom. He carefully slipped in behind them to see that the room was set up for a ritual of some sort, the shimmering vial of unicorn blood and ritual blade made his gut clench in dread. One did not perform such magics with out a very good reason, especially with the dangerous risks to ones self and the addictive nature of the magic involved. While he had been distracted examining the ritual ingredients and trying to decide what exact ritual his students were planning to attempt they had already begun the ritual with a soft, barely audible chanting. As a result he only noticed their actions and the runes they had drawn on the floor when they burned a rope made out of hemp. The dour man turned with a scowl, dropping the spell as he stepped past an unseen rune design on the floor to loom over his recalcitrant students.

"And what, pray tell, are you doing?" Snape asked with a silky, not to mention dangerous purr bordering on a growl in his voice.

His sudden appearance caused the sixth year Hufflepuff near the incense burner to yelp and knock its newly lit contents rolling across the design on the floor. Along side the incense and half burnt rope were two pre-made potions that smashed on the stone floor, also spilling across the design only for the liquid to stop just shy of Snape's feet, earning a scowl from the man. None of them saw the two hairs fall from where they were caught on a button of his robes into the botched ritual mess. A hair each from the man currently looming over them threateningly and a green-eyed Gryffindor who had slammed into that same man earlier in the day, leaving behind a hair caught in the grip of his robe button.

None of the students were willing to meet their professor's gaze much less answer him, but the Ravenclaw did mutter something as he arched his eyebrow at them waiting impatiently for an answer to his question. He rather hoped that the young fools hadn't gotten far enough to attract too much magic or magically powerful attention to their little fiasco. If they had then the ritual, no matter how botched would have to be continued by someone, most probably him, and completed as safely as possible to dissipate the gathered power.

"Come now, I don't have all night. You've already earned a month's worth of detentions with Filch you might as well tell me what ritual you were attempting so that I can at least clean it up properly." Snape said impatiently, glaring at them with one of his best terrifying bat of the dungeons glares.

His obsidian eyes narrowed as the seventh year Slytherin shifted distracting him a split second too long, allowing the sixth year Gryffindor to throw something into the potion soaked mess at his feet. Whatever he had thrown sparked on the potion soaked stones and activated a flare of power, scaring the students into bolting, triggering a chain reaction. Between the botched ritual set up, the potion fumes and detritus sunk into his robes, the two hairs that landed in the ritual potions, his protective hair grease, and the single small paper cut on the edge of his palm the magic changed.

As the power flared it engulfed him, sinking into his blood, skin, and bone as a light shot out of the room, past the fleeing students and finding a green-eyed Gryffindor just coming from a late night jaunt to the bathroom to slam into. From both the Dark Mark on Snape's arm and the soul shard in Harry's scar the magic traveled down the powerful connecting links to slam into Voldemort waking him from his slumber, wrenching a pained screech from him and triggering a second chain reaction. The second chain reaction drew the soul shard in the diadem to the closest conduit to the main soul piece, Snape's Dark Mark, traveling along it to merge along side all of the other pieces into the main piece.

A small shard was left behind in Snape's mark altering it so that the serpent in the tattoo now wrapped around a lightning bolt after leaving the skull. Harry's reaction was different, stronger, with his scar splitting open and bleeding he lost consciousness, sinking to the cold stone floor. The soul shard in Harry's scar was buried to deeply in his flesh and interwoven to tightly to his own soul so that it refused to leave its host as all others did to return and merge with the main soul piece. As a result all of the Dark Lord's Horcruxes except for the soul pieces in Snape and Harry returned to the main soul piece, merging and mostly healing the tattered soul.