Chapter 2

A New Place in London

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Where a very particular structure (re)appears in London

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The night that Sirius Black died a most peculiar structure appeared in Muggle London, between two shabby office blocks in a small street hosting underground the Ministry of Magic. The Muggles saw it as a new construction project with a big title in bright orange letters: "Lyra's. Grand opening in June."

No one found it strange that the large structure did not even exist a week ago and that somehow it crept in-between the existing buildings that were usually there. Older people could swear it had been there before or that it had never gone missing in the first place. The house number was shaped as a pattern of stars resembling number thirteen, which was somehow adequate as the house inserted itself between numbers twelve and fourteen even if that side of the street was supposed to have only even numbers...

An old drunk sleeping on the bench between two trees across the new building tried to tell the police that there was something wrong. The police gently tapped him on the back. One of the agents felt particularly merciful that night so he bought dinner to the old man as well as a night in a cheap hotel. This agent believed he could participate in charity at least once a year and indulge in beating his wife on all the other days. The drunk hugged him enthusiastically and thanked him so many times.

Be as it may, the wife-abusing police agent decided to venture into the grounds of a construction site and saw a strange cuddled figure sleeping on a floor. It was a rather tall, unattractive woman, with dark chestnut-coloured curly hair tied firmly on top of her head. She could have been in her late thirties or early forties. Before he knew what happened a female voice started talking in his mind, "You want to leave all your possessions to your wife and go and spend the rest of your life in Brazil". Splendid idea, thought the policeman, and retired slowly back to the street, with the intentiom to find his family lawyer as soon as possible and make the necessary arrangements.

To witches and wizards the structure looked like an apothecary shop similar to establishments that could be found on Diagon Alley, the main shopping street of the wizarding London. However, it had a large hall on the back side, which looked from the outside like a library or perhaps like a seclusion wing for incurable patients in St Mungos hospital.

The truth was that no one, Muggle or wizard, could see it as it really was. The back structure was lifted from the ground and it somehow floated in the air, supported only by two thin irregular buttresses with claws, similar to the legs of a giant bird or perhaps a prehistoric snake before the natural evolution left those animals legless. A sharper look could perhaps reveal it to be a large wooden family house neither standing fully on earth nor hovering in the skies. The house looked like it had flown to London overnight with the intention to stay there for a while, balancing in the void.

But the most disturbing thing was that many wizards suddenly remembered doing their shopping there on a daily basis and went on enthusiastically talking about the establishment to their friends and acquaintances. Oblivious to the extraordinary nature of the house, they saw it as a nice shop with large storage room in the back. Now, normally it was the Muggles, the blessedly non magical people, who could see and perceive many things that in reality were not as they seemed. But it had to be duly noted that witches and wizards rarely made similar mistakes on such a large scale.

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Severus Snape spent the night in the Ministry of Magic staring at the Veil of Death.

He arrived well after the battle between the Order of the Phoenix and the supporters of the Dark Lord as a double spy both for the Order and Lord Voldemort. He convinced both his masters that there was a need to investigate the aftermath of the skirmish. He surprised even himself by cold-blooded lying to both of them, lost in wondering whose side he was on. There were times when he wasn't sure from so much pretence.

Be as it may, Severus had always been on his own side and he had to admit at least to himself that the real reason why he hurried up to the Ministry of Magic that night was that his biggest enemy, Sirius Black, had died. The Gryffindor jumped thoughtlessly at first real occasion to protect his godson Harry Potter the-boy-who-might-one-day-vanquish-the-Dark-Lord and didn't come back.

Severus remembered treating Black with disdain, laughing at his uselessness for the Order while Sirius sat confined against his will in the headquarters, forced not to fight, no matter how much he may have wanted to, by the Head of the Order of the Phoenix no less, the seemingly invincible Headmaster of the Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry Albus Dumbledore.

Snape was glad on many occasions not to possess the exuberant outgoing character of the now late Gryffindor. Sirius, the rebel, Sirius, the innocent, imprisoned for twelve years for no reason at all in Azkaban! Great Sirius Black who wasted his youth in the company of the prison guards, the Dementors, magical beings able to suck out a soul and force inmates to relive the worst moments of their lives. And what for? Only to end up as an outcast, the hunted, locked up in his childhood prison – his parents' old house he had donated to the Order for Headquarters...

It looked as if Sirius had finally broken free. It made sense. And Severus should have been pleased. His childhood enemy, the boy and the young man who bullied him, was dead. Bellatrix Lestrange, born Black, cast a Killing Curse on her own cousin and his lifeless body dived into the Veil and disappeared, according to eye witnesses.

Bella is certainly going to be proud, she outdid herself this time, Severus judged briefly, remembering a different Bella, an older colleague in Hogwarts who was oddly protective of younger colleagues in the Slytherin house, full of life and so very similar to her Gryffindor cousin in nature before she plunged into darkness and became one of the most powerful Death Eaters and close confident of the Dark Lord himself.

Snape was genuinely, profoundly astonished by how terribly, dreadfully guilty he felt about the death of Sirius Black. He tried to rationalize this feeling by telling himself that Harry Potter saw a father in Sirius, and Snape wanted to protect the Potter boy only because he never stopped loving his mother Lily over the years, despite that she had died and had never loved him. Even before he formulated the argument fully in his consciousness, he knew it was rubbish.

If anyone could look into Snape's mind, and no one could, not even the Dark Lord, given his extreme ability at Occlumency, and even more extreme propensity towards general and constant hiding of what was in his soul, they would know an embarrassing fact. Severus regretted that Sirius Black died because Black, like so many others lost in war, did not deserve death.

And whilst the blame lay squarely on Voldemort and Bella and their Death Eating kind, Snape's taunting may have just given a tiny little nudge to the insufferable mutt, forcing him to rush into his premature death.

Snape would surely never admit it, maybe he was even unable to grasp it, but in the very bottom of his aged, injured soul dwelt a certainty that the light was the only way out of the darkness. Sirius, like many others, like Lily before him, had died for the light. And Snape knew he was going to do the same when his time came.

In the meantime, he surprised himself further wishing that the idiot of Black had lived.

The Veil of Death loomed high above the stony dais while Severus spent some time suppressing all his feelings with an enormous well-practised conscious effort. He was focusing on the facts, an endeavour he excelled in. The tattered curtain was black. It hung motionless and gave no sign of life. Occasionally he believed that it was dark blue in colour instead of black as if it reflected a cloudy sky many floors above in the streets outside the Ministry. His sharp mind started running through the premises of how a powerful magical object as the Veil clearly was could work. The most logical assumption would be that it was a transportation device of some kind as no body was found. But for what kind of travel, from place to place, through time, to another dimension, to another universe, to afterlife if it existed, or simply to the void, Severus could not tell. Not yet in any case. For a moment he was tempted to walk into it himself but that would be of no use to anybody before he could learn more.

Next to the edge of a pointed arch holding the Veil he noticed a few long dark hairs, which could have belonged to either Sirius or Bellatrix except that the smell reminded him of some tropical wood he would use in a rare potion against the aftereffects of unforgivable curses he sometimes brewed for days. Not having any other clues, he tucked them in his robes and remained seated like a statue, lost in his thoughts until dawn.

In the morning Severus cornered one of the Unspeakables, the employees in the Department of Misteries where the Veil was stored, and forced her to hand him over a pile of parchments describing the Veil's characteristics and known history. The woman, a distant relative of Amelia Bones, was very nervous. Severus noticed it and turned awfully nasty towards her until she started shaking and mentioned, first looking behind her back to be sure that no one was listening, that an ugly, short old man was seen around the Veil right after the battle, but as soon as the Aurors present on the scene tried to approach him, the wizard vanished into the thin air.

Carrying more questions than answers, Severus stormed out of the Ministry followed by a swish of his long black robes. Before Apparating, he noticed an old wooden shop sign saying "Peverell and son" in the street just above.

He remembered buying Venomous Tentacula leaves in that shop with his mother when he was just a little boy. There was something disturbing about this otherwise innocuous memory but he couldn't pinpoint the cause.

Wishing for a distraction from his murderous night thoughts about his role in the demise of Sirius Black, he gently pushed the door and entered. The shop was empty. He turned around to leave when a woman dressed in smooth black robes emerged from behind the counter under which she had been presumably crouching and arranging goods or perhaps even sleeping. Her robes were even simpler than his own, a rare occurrence in a woman and a witch, yet elegant and possibly self-made. Dark chestnut-coloured hair was pinned tight on the top of her head so that the length of it could not be seen, giving her a hard look, and her eyes were pale blue until they suddenly flashed with the tiniest flicker of... Was it bright green?

Impossible! Only Potter and Lily had those eyes! It had to be the effect of the light. Taking a better look he made sure that her eyes were clearly a mixture of grey and blue. One or two strands of curly hair escaped the bun and played on her face giving her a younger look for a moment. He could not tell her age and she certainly wasn't beautiful but she seemed vaguely familiar. Before he could ask her anything, a short old man whooshed into the shop and addressed him. The man was chubby and half-bald yet he moved too fast for his age and his demeanour was between self-assured and threatening. Severus was many things, but he was not a fool and the old man made him weary as very few people could.

"Good morning, Sir, how can I help you?" asked the newcomer cheerfully.

"Would you happen to have some leaves of asphodel and wormwood?" Severus asked in his most threatening tone failing to greet the seller, focusing again on the woman in his peripheral vision.

"Wormwood is in standard packaging of 100 grams. We have asphodel in jars of ten or of twenty leaves, what would you prefer?"

"Twenty will be fine."

The man moved or almost rolled to the back of the shop to retrieve the ordered goods. Severus looked around, impatient as hell, and the feeling of uneasiness grew on him. Being a spy, his survival sometimes depended on checking on his uncanny feelings. So he couldn't resist casually asking the lady some questions, trying to be civil and painfully failing in his efforts as usual.

"Have we met?" Severus sounded as if he had just read out loud somebody's death sentence.

"I doubt it, why do you ask?" were the first words the lady in question. She pronounced them trying hard to sound bored, but Snape could tell that she had been deeply disturbed by his inquiry, precisely as was his intention, so he continued without mercy:

"I seem to recall visiting your shop before but I doubt that I have ever seen you."

"You seem to recall? Have you been here before or not?" The woman looked at Severus Snape in a most suspicious way as if he had just sprouted wings and tail.

Severus decided to change tactics and to try his best to put into good use his barely existing social skills and capacity to be polite, which he occasionally had to use at work if he didn't want his fellow Transfiguration Professor Minerva McGonagall to turn him into an inanimate object.

"I believe so," Severus said, suddenly very unsure about remembering anything properly.

"We have many clients, Sir. However, we haven't met in person as I have just returned from Brazil to help my father with his business. I used to live there with my husband. He died several years ago."

"I'm so sorry to hear that, Madam," the empty reply came with a hint of real emotion and regret of being impertinent to this woman.

"How could you be? We haven't even met. I thank you but I do not require your sympathy," she snorted in a mocking tone, clearly despising his attempt at small talk. "Who are you anyway?"

"My name is Severus Snape and I teach potions at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. I may come and buy supplies here more regularly so perhaps we should get acquainted." Now angry, Severus spoke in that hateful tone that would give cause to the entire class of first years to burst into tears and run out of his classroom.

The female seller kept eyeing him with distrust and loathing. Severus Snape came to expect that from most people who ever bothered to consider his physical attributes from the bottom of his robes to his lank, black, greasy hair. After a while, she seemed to have relented.

"Well, then, Mr Snape, I am Val Peverell, at your service," she said with cold politeness.

In that instant the male seller returned with his order and wrapped it in fine dark blue paper with a pattern of silver stars, somewhat more luxurious than required for a decent apothecary.

"Father, please meet Mr Snape," Val said curtly.

"Ignotus Peverell, at your service."

"Professor Snape, Mr Peverell," Snape presented himself properly in a stern tone, noticing briefly that the shape of Mr Peverell somehow shifted as if he was and was not in the room at the same time. Severus did not believe in miracles, or in any deity, wizarding or Muggle. Hence he knew there had to be a rational magical explanation for the strangeness of the shop's owner and his own most probably false memory of ever visiting it before.

"Slytherin, I reckon, always maintaining the appearances and pursuing their own goals. Please excuse me if I'm wrong", commented Mr Peverell merrily, "Myself I was in Huffelpuff, graduated in 1942, I just wanted to embrace everybody I met and I didn't much care for either cunning, intellect or bravery… That's how I became a shopkeeper I guess, for wanting to work with people."

"I am the Head of the Slytherin house at Hogwarts," Severus retorted trying to suppress his extreme annoyance at being addressed in such overly familiar manner. "I assume your charming daughter was in Hufflepuff as well. How curious that I don't recall her. We should have been in school at approximately the same time."

"I went to Chile Academy for Advanced Witchcraft, Mr Snape. A much better school if you ask my opinion. My father told me about Hogwarts houses but I don't recognise myself in any of them," Val said in an arrogant tone of a person who found English educational system despicable.

"If you want a hint, Mr Snape, I could never imagine her in Hufflepuff. She's way too stubborn for that. It runs in the family on her mother's side," said Peverell with conviction.

"Dad, let's not annoy Professor Snape with our stories. I believe he was just leaving," Val smiled to Snape, ushering him through the door before he could continue the conversation. Mr Peverell yelled behind him: "Have a goody good day! We can chat some more next time!"

Severus let himself being shoved out with even more questions in his mind than before he had entered the shop. He wondered what Hogwarts house the daughter or her mother for that matter would have been in, while Apparating in direction of Hogwarts. He considered the words of the Unspeakable, a short old man, a few black hairs… Black or chestnut? Did she say her name was Val? She had brown chestnut-coloured hair.

Peverell was an old name but Snape believed that they had all died out. They were from Godric's Hollow, like Potters and Dumbledores. He put a mental note to check the information on the old man in Hogwarts yearbooks. There was something so wrong, so very wrong about Peverell and son, other than the shop being run by Peverell and daughter. Severus could smell it, he was sure of it. He went to the dungeons to put his new herbs in a storage closet admiring again the elegant wrapping paper of the parcel.

Later on, at night, while brewing the Draught of the Living Dead from his newly purchased ingredients in the mouldy peace and quiet of the dungeons, he paused to discard the wrapping and froze.

The paper exhibited the constellation of Canis Major and burning in the middle of it was the brightest star of them all.

The Dog Star.

Sirius.

The Potions Master did something he hadn't done for years, since his mother died. Softly, he said a Muggle prayer for the dead, may they all rest in peace. Snape had a premonition he was going to join them soon.

And he found it a much better idea to pray than to allow himself to think about dead enemies, or begin to cry.