A/N: Hello all! This is my first Harry Potter fic, and I plan on it being just a few chapters. I hope to update it in a somewhat timely manner, but please bear with me, as my class schedule this semester is a bit taxing. This story is set right after the deaths of James and Lily (as well as the conversation with Dumbledore in which Snape agrees to help protect Harry). The quoted stanza at the end of this chapter is from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's The Poets. Please feel free to leave a review/comment! All rights go to J.K. Rowling.
Severus Snape ascended the grassy slope that led to Hogwarts' doors and, as he drew nearer to the castle's entrance, he found with some surprise that Dumbledore was already outside. The older wizard was pacing fretfully back and forth, his hands clasped behind his back as he muttered something that was lost to the wind.
"You were expecting me?" Severus startled him out of whatever thoughts he had been absorbed in; he stopped his pacing and turned his eyes to the dark figure before him.
"Oh no, I simply thought a bit of fresh air would do me some good. As quaint as my office is, I'm afraid it feels a bit suffocating now and then." At this he paused, and a strange, distant look crossed his face, as though he had forgotten that Severus was there.
Snape narrowed his eyes, but before he could speak, Dumbledore returned from his reverie. "I must say that I am surprised to see you again so soon, Severus. But no matter—I assume that there is something you need from me, and desperately so, or it could have waited until morning. Walk with me." He turned and started out across the grass without waiting for Snape to follow. Severus suppressed his irritation and caught up in a few strides, cutting a sideways glare at the old man as he matched his pace.
"I have come for information. Earlier this evening you mentioned that Lil—that the Potters put their trust in the wrong person." Dumbledore gave no response, although Snape caught a brief glint of something—regret, perhaps?—flash behind his half-moon glasses. The ground began to level out; they were approaching the Black Lake.
Severus did not look at the tree, although he knew it was there, just down the shoreline, a painful reminder of one of his worst memories. He set his face to the water instead.
"Their Secret Keeper, Dumbledore. Who was it?" Again, no response. Dumbledore continued walking until he reached the edge of the water, where it lapped mournfully against the shore. A breeze caught his beard and lifted it slightly off his chest. Snape leveled his black gaze on him again, waiting for an answer. "Tell me, Albus," he growled, and his bass-toned voice was quiet but forceful, a thin cover that precariously masked the torrent of emotions he so desperately did not want to feel.
After some time, Dumbledore sighed heavily and looked up into the sky, searching for the brightness of a moon that was shrouded in darkness. "I know that you have suffered a great loss tonight, Severus, but the Aurors are more than capable—"
"Do not pretend to understand what I have suffered, Dumbledore. It is insulting."
"Perhaps you should consider the consequences of what you plan to do with this information—"
Severus spun with sudden force to face Dumbledore straight on, his robes billowing around him like a gathering storm. "Consequences? Tell me, what could be worse than the punishment I have already received? This Secret Keeper, this betrayer, deserves what's coming. Azkaban is too light a sentence, and unlike yourself, I do not trust the Aurors to do what needs to be done." His black eyes glittered with fury; the older wizard watched him with a surprising measure of calm, waiting for a moment before replying. Again, he sighed.
"I don't doubt your abilities, Severus. Indeed, I'm sure that you are more than capable of finding this person before the Aurors do. It is your motives—and what you plan to do once you have succeeded—that concern me."
"I hardly care whether they concern you or not." Severus looked out over the water again, his face etched with the hard lines of sleeplessness and determination, giving him the appearance of a much older man. For what seemed like the thousandth time, he began sifting through the most probable candidates in his head. Pettigrew had no spine, Hagrid was too kind and therefore too vulnerable, and both of the Longbottoms had been tortured into madness. The other members of the Order were unlikely to have been chosen; they had never been as close to the Potters as the Longbottoms or James' wretched Marauders.
Snape speculated that it had to be either Lupin or Black. Before he voiced the question, though, Dumbledore confirmed his suspicion.
"Sirius Black," he said, so quietly that it was almost a whisper. "Sirius Black betrayed Lily and James to Voldemort."
Snape's face twisted into a sneer as he turned to leave. Black. He should have known—the rotten prat. Out of all of the Marauders (aside from Potter, of course), Black had been a particularly sharp thorn in his side. When he found him—and he would find him—there would be no mercy, no second chances, no holding back. Not because of what he had done to Severus (although that warranted more than a few curses), but because of what he had done to Lily.
He was several strides away when he heard Dumbledore raise his voice again. "Severus," he said, and Snape caught the precarious balance of sorrow and warning in his tone, "killing him will not bring her back."
Red hair and splintered wood and green eyes forever shut.
Snape paused but did not turn around. There, on the shore, he looked very much like a raven or a bat, his cloak wrapped about him like a pair of black wings. Then he, too, looked up at the sky, but he knew that to search for the moon would be futile; its light was gone, hidden, dead. And so he saw only what he expected to see: darkness. "No," he said, so softly that it was caught and taken by the wind. "Nothing will." He had strayed close to the water; the remnants of a small wave slipped across the sand, dampening the grains beneath his shoe and taking some back into the lake when it receded. Severus watched the exchange in silence for a moment before he addressed Dumbledore again. "I wish to bury her," he said, loud enough this time that the wind did not conceal his voice. It was not a question or a request, but a simple statement; he was not quite sure, exactly, what prompted him to say it—after all, it was not something that the old man needed to know, not really—but he turned so that he could gauge Dumbledore's reply.
"I believe the muggle authorities have already taken the...bodies. Have they not?" His blue-grey robes shimmered in the darkness; Severus could not see his expression, but he heard when the old man's breath hitched.
"Yes." He hesitated, but only briefly. "They are being kept at a facility in Godric's Hollow."
Dumbledore did not ask how Snape knew that. Another gust of wind tugged at his beard, lifting it up and sideways, toward the lake. "Ah. Then they will likely defer to the next of kin... Lily's sister, perhaps?"
Severus scoffed. "That daft woman hasn't taken an interest in Lily's life since we were children. Why would she take an interest in her death?" He realized with a pang that he didn't know that for sure, not anymore, but he didn't care.
"Mmm. I assume you plan on using occlumency?"
"Obviously."
"And what of James?"
Snape's eyes flashed angrily in the darkness. He lifted his chin, just slightly, a few black tendrils of hair swept across his face by the wind. "I will take him as well." He paused, and when he spoke again, his voice was low and cold. "For Lily."
Dumbledore watched as Snape took his leave, following the shoreline for a while longer before striking off toward the nearest boundary to Hogwarts' grounds. There was a distant crack as he disapparated, and old wizard was left with the quiet hush of the wind and that mournful lapping of the waves against the shore.
"Not in the clamor of the crowded street / Not in the shouts and plaudits of the throng / But in ourselves, are triumph and defeat," Dumbledore murmured. Then he sighed once, deeply, and turned and made his way back to the castle, through the corridors and up into his office, where a mountain of paperwork and a dish of lemon drops awaited him.