Disclaimer: Barbara is my own invention, but the other main characters and the situation in which they find themselves were created by JKR. I have taken great liberty also in making one glaring difference to the story.
Barbara smiled in delight at the celebrations going on around her. It had been a hard night and the battle was well won. The boy who saved it all was in the center of it all, with people milling around as though he were the center of a giant storm.
While she was a part of the celebration, it wasn't really her thing. She slipped out of the great room and out of the castle, walking carefully through the rubble of last night's battle and into the breaking day. She was standing over the lake, breathing in the morning air and just enjoying the moment when she heard the sound of great sadness. Over by the willow tree a man was sitting and weeping as though his heart were thoroughly broken.
At any other time, she would have left the man alone, but today was not an ordinary day. She sat next to him and put her hand on his sleeve. "I'm so sorry for your losses."
He said, "My greatest loss is myself. Everything I've lived for is now over and I don't know how to go on." As he turned his head, she saw dark, shoulder length hair, a pronounced nose and then the empty, lost eyes of Severus Snape.
"Professor Severus Snape! Voldemort said you were dead! What...?"
"I was mostly dead. That beastly snake...I gave Potter my thoughts to look at in Dumbledore's pensieve and...er...well then Draco Malfoy came along. He must have found the path under the willow, here. He definitely found the potion of dittany and phoenix tears I was carrying. My own formulation, you see."
"I'm well familiar with your work, Professor Snape. I'm Barbara Merrill, of the Quality Testing dungeon."
He did know the name. He looked her over. "How nice to meet you... Mrs?"
"Miss"
"How nice to meet you in person, Miss Merrill."
"You were saying about Draco Malfoy..."
"He used the potion to cure the bites on my throat, here, and when I was able to sit up, I sent him away to find his parents. Then I made my way through the tunnel to here. I saw the flashes of light and heard the cheering and knew everything was well."
"You are fortunate to have the affection of your students. Harry Potter was telling all the things you've done against Voldemort. You must be Mr. Potter's favorite teacher."
Snape almost laughed. "You could hardly consider our relationship up to date to be friendly. I have, unfortunately, given that boy a great deal of my mind, which he has no doubt published to the skies, but it was all I could think to do. Now, I've lost my Lily, his mother, for good this time. Everything I've done is for her and now she doesn't need me so I don't know how to go on."
"I'm afraid I don't understand."
A long sigh next to her was followed by silence. She waited. "I might as well start at the beginning. I'm sure various versions of my story will show up in all the papers. I met Lily just about 30 years ago. She was perfect and my life was less than so. Far less than so. She was muggle-born, playing with her muggle sister, but she could do magic. You remember how as children, it just comes out sometimes?" Barbara nodded. "Her sister called her a freak when the magic came out. I introduced myself and we became friends. I convinced her that she wasn't a freak and we started to plan our futures. My life at home was horrible, and she was the one good thing I ever had.
"We were in the same class here at Hogwarts, but separated at sorting. She went to Griffindor and I to Slytherin. James Potter dogged her steps from the day we arrived and she hated it. But then, I don't know exactly when it happened... sometime during fifth year, but she stopped hating him so much. She and I had a terrible falling out after we took our OWLs and by the time we graduated, those two were inseparable.
"I couldn't stop loving her, just because she loved someone else. I had been interested in the Death Eaters before but now I turned to them in earnest. I have certain -- skills – for which Lord Voldemort had use.
"I made myself invaluable to the Dark Lord on the day I overheard that a child was to be born that would destroy Voldemort forever. I just never realized that it meant the murder of Lily Evans and the intensification of my own personal torture. I, I..."
Barbara thought he would start to weep again, but after a few minutes he sighed and continued.
"Albus Dumbledore asked me to work with him against Voldemort and I have from that time. The things I've had to do. Each time I had to do something awful, I've tried to do it in such a way that it was at least better than it might have been, and I've tried to find ways to keep worse things from happening. My skills as an occlumens were put to the test often, but I was able to put my love for Lily where he could never find it. Today, though, I don't know what to do any more. Voldemort is gone, my Lily is gone in a way she never was before...I couldn't be with her before and if I had gone on I couldn't be with her now...I love her so much but now it's all changing..." Another memory hit him. "I killed him you know...Dumbledore"
She had heard it, of course, and it was a bit awful, but there was so much pain in his eyes that she put her hand on his arm again and quietly said, "Tell me."
"He was dying. I don't know what he was doing, but he was searching for certain objects. He summoned me to his office one night where he was sitting at his desk. There was a horrible object on the desk in front of him...a ring he had put on, cursed with some of the worst magic possible. He should have known, but there had been some connection to his youth...impetuous. I did all I could but I could only force the spell back into the hand. I couldn't remove it and could only notice it getting worse over the course of the next year.
"Voldemort gave Draco Malfoy the task of killing Dumbledore. Narcissa begged me to fix it. She put me under the unbreakable vow. She didn't realize that Dumbledore had already determined that I would end his life when the time was right.
"That night on the tower...I don't know what he had been doing. Something with that Potter boy, but whatever it was allowed the poisonous spell to move all through his body. Albus had only minutes, perhaps an hour left. Draco had disarmed him, and Death Eaters were coming up the steps. Albus gave me our pre-arranged signal, and...and...I did it. Then I made sure the boys were ok and left as quickly as I could. I barely got away before I was sick. How I hated myself! I still think...there must have been a way..." He looked at her. "I've done other terrible things, too."
"Weren't there orders from both sides for this to happen? Did you not work your hardest to keep the worst from happening?"
"I sent Potter to his death, too, didn't I? He had to die so that Voldemort could be destroyed."
"When I arrived, they were carrying his body from the forest..."
"So I did that, too."
"No, wait! I'm not sure what happened, but just as the worst was happening in the great hall, suddenly we were all protected from the Death Eaters and were winning the battle and then, he was there...Harry Potter! And he told us how all of the things you did for Voldemort were because Dumbledore and also Lily...well, actually he told Voldemort, and then suddenly it was all over. Harry's alive, and Voldemort is dead."
An even longer silence ensued. He looked at the witch sitting next to him. She had such an open face. Brown hair and eyes, not beautiful, but somehow sweet and friendly. He collected himself. "What brings you here, today?"
Barbara took a breath, hid a shudder, and then paused. "I'm not sure, really. I just wanted to be helpful, maybe? Do you remember, last, fall, when Harry Potter, Hermione Grainger, and Ron Weasley broke up the meeting investigating muggle borns?" A raised eyebrow, a nod. "Well, you're talking to the daughter of two Chemists from Manchester. I was one of the subjects of that investigation. I'm sure those kids saved my life that day. I made my parents transfer to a lab in Basel and worked with them there in the muggle world. I've been looking for a way to come back and help the fight ever since. So when a friend contacted me about the coming battle at Hogwarts, I got here as quick as I could."
"So why aren't you participating in the celebration?" He had regained his composure enough to sound as though he had found a student ditching class.
"I know I should be, but I don't really have any one in there. It's a time for close friends and family and while there are many up there I consider to be friendly, I don't wish to intrude."
They watched the sun rise a little higher. The birds finished their morning song and the bees started to hum.
He remembered his loss and slumped again. "So what happens next? How do we...go on? Now that it's over, my love is gone, my mentor is gone, my great purpose is complete. What happens, next?"
"Severus...I'm going to be forward and call you by first name...I think we do exactly that. We go on. This is a time of mercy. Most of us will have something to forgive and also something to apologize for. Is it possible that some of your love for Lily was because she was the one person who understood you and was kind to you. Others, now that we know what you've been doing, will want to be kind to you, too. I'm sure you have many friends you don't yet know."
"I doubt that. Surely you know what others have said about me?"
"Well, actually, one doesn't hear a lot in the Ministry dungeon, you know. As a muggle-born, I didn't have many friends, of course. As a scientist, all I knew of you was your brilliant mind, that so cleverly worked out complicated problems practically before my eyes. It would have been unscientific to jump to conclusions based upon office gossip. I prefer to get information from direct sources."
He almost laughed. She had said that very thing in one of her letters to him over a year ago. "I'm a direct source and I can tell you I've done some horrible things."
She shifted uneasily. "Erm...not to bring up a sore point, but you aren't going to try to curse me or anything because I'm muggle-born, are you?"
He waved his hand dismissively. "I've learned to ignore such things, although I had to repeat them in order to have credibility with the Death Eaters."
"That's a relief." She straightened up. "It's a new day, Severus. If a former muggle can sit discussing life issues with a former Death Eater, anything is possible. I tell you what I'm going to do. Tomorrow I'm going to go back to work, if they'll have me, and do my job even better than I did before. I'm going to become a better person and take full advantage of the life I have, so that this battle will have won something. I probably won't make any large changes, but after a lot of small ones, I hope to see a large change. I think that's what you should do, too. Aren't you the faculty head of Slytherin House? Shouldn't you be up there offering comfort and assistance? Right now, I'm off to help my housemates in Ravenclaw, if I can."
She stood, patted his shoulder, and suddenly leaned down and kissed his cheek. "Farewell, Severus Snape. I look forward to continuing our correspondence, now that I know you."
As she hurried to return to the castle, she heard "As do I. Farewell, Barbara," but she didn't see the fresh tears on his face.
He touched his cheek where she kissed him. It wasn't much really, but other than a few weak kisses from his mother, no woman had ever kissed him. She was right about going to help. He had promised Albus Dumbledore that he would look after the students. There was something he should be doing right now. He got up and followed Barbara to the castle.
A/N: Well there are a few things one could flame me about, but I think they stack up to differences of opinion. The idea for this story sprung from one I read elsewhere and suddenly I was completely lost in the lives of these characters. Is it worth pursuing? Is it completely foolish? Feel free to review and let me know.
