"Machiavelli and the Doe"
by Rain Hawkins
The shack looked just as she had always imagined — the same cracked plaster and ruined draperies, the same rust and rot and broken windowpanes. The only thing Remus could not have done justice in his description was the feel of the place, the eerie sense that she was standing on the edge of an unknown world full of perils and passions she could not yet imagine. And perhaps she was.
With a flicker of shadow he appeared, black robes swirling, dark upon darkness. A twirl of her wrist, a muttered lumos and there he stood, transfixed in the wandlight, her mortal enemy, her childhood friend. "You came," he said, a rasp now in the voice once soft as feathers, but still so gentle she forgot how to hate him even as the curl of his mouth brought ruinous thoughts unbidden to her mind.
"Why here?" was all she could answer. James was here; the scent of the stag lingered in the air as solidly as flesh. It was for the kindness he had shown here that she had come to admire him, the kindness of which he was always silent. Though he boasted quite brazenly about his many other (often invented) virtues, James had never mentioned the selfless act of friendship he had performed in this crude little house, not to Lily, not to anyone. It was Remus, the night she had demanded to know what loyalty he could feel for such a bullying fool, who had finally told her how James had stayed by his side month after month through the painful and shameful transformation from quiet boy to raging beast, how James had protected his secret and his dignity.
Then, and only then, had she begun to see James in a new and less loathsome light, and all for what he had done here, in this shack, in this dank little room. Why would her old friend choose this place, of all places, to say what she knew he had come to say?
"It seemed appropriate, considering the day," he replied, lifting one gaunt shoulder very slightly, as if to suggest supreme indifference. The words, indeed, seemed indifferent, but the gesture she knew dangerously well, and the knowledge was as intimate as a kiss.
"Why Halloween, then? Why now? Why ever?" She had received his message less than an hour ago, half-dressed for the party. James would be there by now, Apollo awaiting his Daphne. Absent fingers touched her hair and came away spangled with silver glitter. She wondered why she felt so guilty.
He stepped further into the golden pool of light cast by her wand, lank dark hair swinging in his face like a gallows victim, like a metronome. "I've heard congratulations are in order. I wanted to deliver mine in person."
Pure venom, his words, yet it was not with rage that his thin frame trembled. His face was as thin and sallow as old parchment; surely it would shatter at a touch. Yet between the pale cheeks and knitted brow his black eyes glittered savagely.
Infinitely familiar, his eyes told her that he was still somehow himself. Perhaps she was wrong to think he had changed. Perhaps she knew him, after all, better than James and Dumbledore and all the rest. They called him a traitor, but there was no treachery in those eyes now — only sadness.
"It's true, then?" he continued when she did not speak. "You're going to be married. You've made your choice."
"Severus... please..."
"Please what?" Though she knew it was not meant for her, the loathing in his voice made her recoil. "Tell you to be happy? I want that, more than you can know. But with him? Of all the ways you could have hurt me —"
"I didn't fall in love with James to hurt you!" she burst out suddenly, though her mind screamed for her silence. "It's nothing to do with you! It's what he is, what he stands for. We misjudged him, Severus. He's so much more than he was at school. He's the bravest man I know. He makes me believe we can change things, make things better, without hurting anyone." Her faith restored by the sound of her own conviction, she couldn't help adding contemptuously, "Not even Mudbloods like me."
Her wand clattered to the floor, its light extinguished, as he lurched forward and caught her hands in his; the long, thin fingers were strong but shaking violently. "Don't say that word," he begged. "I can't bear it." And she really felt that he could not.
"I'm sorry." She wanted to say more, but his touch in the engulfing darkness made the words seem hollow and coarse. Nothing she might say could fill the hunger she felt in his hands.
In a whisper he repeated, "You've made your choice."
"You made yours first," she shot back, desperate to be angry. It was true, wasn't it? He had been seduced by evil, as Dumbledore was fond of saying. Time and again, she had tried to pull him back into light, but in the end he had chosen the wrong side of this war. It wasn't her fault; her choice was between not people but ideas, not who to live with but what to die for. Wasn't his the same?
"I would give it up for you," he answered her unspoken question, reading her mind as he used to do. He kissed the hands he held, reverently, a gesture more servile than sensual. "I would give up everything." She knew he would. Perhaps she knew him better than anyone. And perhaps he knew her too.
She saw her world suspended by a silver thread, spangled like her hair in the darkness, and for one gleaming moment she prayed that it would break, that they would fall together into whatever abyss lay below. Then, in one swift, decisive motion like the breaking of a spell, she freed her hands, retrieved her wand, and repeated the illuminating incantation; the softer shapes she had just begun to perceive were dazzled into shadow by the dim light, and the thread held fast.
She tried to sound caustic, though she felt her face betray her. "I can't ask you to sacrifice your beliefs."
To her acute surprise, he laughed — a wild, feral, joyless sound, but a laugh just the same. "My beliefs?" he repeated incredulously. "You think this is a mark of faith?" Brandished like a blade, the tattoo on his left arm glowed wine-red in the wandlight. "A political emblem, nothing more."
Unable to voice her horror at the reign of terror he so lightly dismissed, she muttered helplessly, "I don't like your politics."
"Of course you don't, because Dumbledore teaches you to revile what you don't understand and calls it loyalty."
His contempt for the man she idolized was shocking, and the shock was worsened by the doubt it cast in her mind. A little too fiercely, she exclaimed, "Dumbledore is a great man!"
"Dumbledore is a great fool," he retorted, excited now, and she recalled against her will the days when they walked together beside the Hogwarts lake, heatedly debating anything from complex magical theory to an Arithmancy problem they had both got wrong to (and she flushed violently at the memory) whether it was birth or breeding that made James Potter and his ilk such bloody gits.
"A great fool," he continued as her throat burned for reasons she did not fully understand, "and all who follow him are lesser fools. He tells you that we choose destruction, but we seek only preservation. Our world is being swallowed up, can't you see that? Our traditions, our powers, the deepest mysteries of our kind" (he did not say "race," and she wondered if he had meant to) "are vanishing because we don't see the importance of keeping them. Ask your precious Dumbledore what he has seen in his great long life, what magical gifts have withered into extinction because he would not fight to save them. Our way of life is dying, and it is worth dying to save. That is my philosophy. If you understood, it would be yours too."
"Your philosophy kills children."
"Only for the greater good! Do you still not see that some lives are worth more than others?" His hands fluttered in the same erratic way she remembered, like spiders or hummingbirds, and the same prickling warmth spread through her, filling her mind with new thoughts that did not seem to be, yet undeniably were, her own. The stakes of their latest debate were higher, the chasm between them wider than she could have imagined in those happier days, but still they were connected by a chain as invisible and indestructible as magic itself.
"And what," she whispered, "is my life worth?"
"More than anything." He reached for her hands again; this time, she gave them willingly. "You are the only true thing I have ever known. You must know all the rest means nothing without you."
He touched her dark red hair and filled her with the strange, savage smells of cold sweat and lightning and deadly nightshade. She remembered how those scents had once drifted to her from a cauldron in Slughorn's potions class, how Severus had smiled his quiet smile and she had blushed and looked away, refusing to wonder what it meant.
She did not look away now. "I don't know what I know."
"Know this, then," he said hoarsely, and he reached for her and kissed her, and she swam in his black eyes and could not breathe, and his skeletal fingers twisted in her hair and came away spangled silver. "Say the word and I'll leave it all behind."
For years she had pushed down and pushed away this thought, this chance, until it was no more than the barest ghost, but now it crashed upon her, howling, and consumed her. It would be the easiest thing in the world to say yes, easier than dying, easier than being born. She could love him; she ached to love him. They could escape from everything, no more choices, no more memories, only life. She could say yes, and then he wouldn't need that other world, that dark, villainous home of lost souls. She would be his world; she would fill him up until he forgot the sting of emptiness, and he would know her as he always had, as no one else could. It would be enough — more than enough — it would be everything.
And still her heart would not surrender. The chasm between them was widening by the moment; the only way across would be to fly unsupported, and not even wizards could do that. "You would risk everything," she said slowly, cursing her tongue for every word that wasn't yes, "your leader, your friends, your life — only for me, not because what you're doing is wrong?"
"I don't believe it is wrong." Her face must have fallen at this, because he added hastily, "But I would never do anything to hurt or displease you. I would fight for any cause if I could fight by your side."
Lily looked at the broken man before her and thought of the boy she had known, the boy who had shown her a world of magic and beauty. He had been thoughtful and gentle and lost, and he was all those things still, somehow, and still he longed for nothing in the world but to love her as he had never been loved.
And then she thought of James, James who bullied and boasted and drank too much, James who was noble and generous and strong, James who never thought his blood was better than hers and never thought hers was better than anyone else's, James who fucked her with his eyes closed, James who would die for what was right, James who did not need her and would never understand her, and she realized that Severus was right, after all: she had made her choice, and no magic in the world could change it.
"Look at me," she said softly, and in his submissive gaze she saw the reverence and passion she would never understand, and she saw herself as she never would again. "I've seen how your master rewards his most faithful." He winced as her fingertips found the still-raw flesh of his arm where the skull and snake were just beginning to burn black. "I pray you never feel his wrath. Go."
Tears that were not her own fell hot on her hands, and then he was gone, obeying her command without objection or complaint. She stepped out into the clear night and followed the full moon into Hogsmeade, leaving the vestiges of the world she had almost known on the floor of the shack behind her.
There were already plenty of troubles to be getting on with in the world she knew. Besides, James was waiting, and she knew how he hated to be late.