UPDATE 29th June 2014 *Cleaning up my chapters, this is the newly updated and edited version ;)


Chapter 2. An old song

"This is absurd!" Poppy Pomfrey was almost shouting. "Absurd! The girl needs peace! She can not recover from an injury like that with a gang of noisy magpies around!"

"May I remember you, Poppy" the voice of Dumbledore said sly "that those 'magpies' are the students of this school?"

"It doesn't matter who they are!" The nurse answered, gruff. "This girl is alive for miracle, she just saw his family exterminated... and your students, oh great and munificent Headmaster, would bring anyone to the brink of a nervous breakdown!"

"Technically we do not know if her family ha been actually wiped out, and..." Dumbledore began.

"That's not the point, Albus. Find her a quiet place where to recover in peace", Madam Pomfrey's peremptory voice interrupted him. That seemed to end the conversation for Severus heard her footsteps as she walked away.

"Easier said than done…" Dumbledore murmured.

"Poppy does have a point, Albus. We can not keep her here". This time the voice was Professor McGonagall's. "This is not the right place for the convalescence of an Auror and member of the Order. Anyone could see her here. You well know many of the Slytherins come from Death Eaters families."

Severus grunted. All that chatting was very annoying and, useless to say, he didn't like McGonagall's statement at all. He snuggled in the warm and fragrant sheets, eyes shut trying to hold back the last drops of sleep not yet dried by the voices which sorrounded him. He sighed with relief when they were swallowed by a blessed silence. Maybe he could finally to enjoy some sleep before classes started.

A ray of bright light hit is back, gently massaging his shoulders as he let himself been lulled by silence into the sweet arms of slee-

"Ah, there you are!" Mad-Eye Moody's voice shouted as the door slammed violently. Severus nearly jumped down from the bed. "I have searched the whole damn school for you scoundrels! "

"Alastor!" Dumbledore exclaimed. "You're welcome", he added ironically. "This is an infirmary, you know".

"How are the lads?" Moody asked moderating his voice volume as he approached with heavy steps.

"What happened, Alastor? Why didn't you get the Potters?" Professor McGonagall asked, a not too slight irritation interweaving her words.

"The whole Godric's Hollow was surrounded by Death Eaters. We were stuck. Thankfully we had no casualties, but there was no way to overcome the cord. The Dark Lord wanted to make sure that no one would interfere", the Auror answered.

"Yes, but it seemed he made briks without straw." Dumbledore remarked and his eyes fell upon the young man crouched in the bed, wrapped tightly in the white sheet as in search of a more intimate contact with its white embrace.

Moody also looked at the boy. Severus had succeeded where he and the Order had failed, something he could say to be grateful for. Lily was alive, if they had succeeded to convince the young man to stay at Hogwarts probably she would now lie beneath the ruins of the house with her family. On the other hand, however, he could not stop to call himself a fool for not having considered the occurrence of a Death Eaters cordon around the town. Severus had passed it. Of course he did, he was a Death Eater himself.

"What news of little Harry?" Minerva asked bringing everyone's eyes on her. "Severus said he knows nothing. Is he alive?"

"We heard that too. Well, all I know is that..." Mad-Eye started, but he was interrupted by Madam Pomfrey as she returned in the room with clean bandages and a blue little bottle in her hands.

"For Merlin's holy sake!" The Mediwitch barked. "This is a hospital not a pub! If you need to talk go somewhere else! And stop huddling around the beds of these poor lads! Get out!"

"Come, lets leave Madam Pomfrey to her patients." Professor Dumbledore said motioning to Minerva and the Auror. "We shall continue the discussion in my office."

The three walked slowly toward the exit while the nurse watched their steps carefully as to ensure that they were really going.

When the door was closed behind Professor McGonagall, Madam Pomfrey breathed a sigh of relief.

"Oh, thanks Merlin!" She sighed. Then she gently put the bandages and the bottle on the nightstand between the beds of Lily and Severus and turned to the girl. The fresh light of the moon, still uncorrupted by the rays of dawn, gently stroke the girl's fiery hair. The light's fingers caressed ther pale skin watching over her sleep, wishing her sweet dreams.

Poppy smiled. She pulled back the sheets discovering Lily's chest. The bandage that wrapped it was no longer corrupted by the red rust of blood, however, it showed the yellowish stains of the Essence of Dittamus that had been eagerly absorbed by the cloth as much as by the wound.

Madam Pomfrey vanished the old bandage with a light flick of her wand. She watched the wound and shook her head. Minerva had told her what Severus reported. If indeed the window in the room where the battle had took place had blown up, then it was likely a shard of glass was responsible of the cut. After all, it was not imbued with Dark Magic or something like that, it was simply a long, deep cut across the girl's chest from her right shoulder to above her heart. Some Dittany and the right spell had been enough to clean and close it. The girl had lost a good amount of blood, though. Nothing a Blood Replenishing Potion couldn't fix.

The Mediwitch grabbed the dark bottle and uncorked it with little effort. She then put the cork back on the nightstand and poured some drops of Dittany over Lily's wound. That would have been enough from now on, no more spells to help the cut heal.

The healer smiled gently and wrapped new bandages around Lily's chest before tucking back the sheet. Poppy looked at her for a few moments with a critical eye: the girl slept peacefully, she would wake up away from Hogwarts, hopefully, in a safe place where Dumbledore and the Order would protect her.

Poppy finished composing that thought and turned to the bed behind her. Severus was lying on his side, his back turned on her. She leaned toward him. Minerva said she had cleaned and bandaged his wound and gave him a Dreamless Potion... and she had done well, Madam Pomfrey thought: the boy was indeed too tense when he came back.

She gently placed a hand on his shoulder. Severus took a moment, then turned towards her; his dark eyes glittering and sharp, a strand of obsidian black hair had fallen over his left eye splitting its light as in many small fragments of mirrors.

"It's all right, young man?" Madam Pomfrey asked.

Severus did not speak, but nodded with a weary movement of the head.

"Let's have a look." Said the nurse peremptorly and, with a nod, she invited the boy to sit up. Severus obeyed and leaned his bare back against the cold wood of the headboard.

Poppy Pomfrey looked perplexed the bandage around the young man's waist: Minerva McGonagall may have been an excellent teacher of Transfiguration, but thanks Merlin she had not decided to become a healer!

Madam Pomfrey muttered something unintelligible as she undertook to remove the bandage. She pulled it away and vanished it. Severus' wound was just like Lily's: a deep bloody cut caused by a shard of glass or wood. It still dripped small drops of red liquid that flowed on the pale skin like fiery rivers through a desert of salt.

The Mediwitch grabbed a clean towel from the bedside table. She rubbed it gently on the cut cleaning the blood and the Dittany then took a more accurate look at it. And it was then that she saw it: a little shard of glass deeply enceased in Severus' flesh.

"I must pull out the shard, Severus", she said without looking at the boy.

Severus looked vaguely at her, than nodded slightly. He hadn't really heard what Poppy had said. The black irises were lost in equally obscure labyrinths of his mind. He was brought back to reality as a sheer pain hit him in his side.

He hissed in pain as he saw a small and bloosy shard of glass slipping out his wound and floating for a second in front of him, before landing on a piece of cloth on th nightstand.

"Done", Madam Pomfrey said. Severus looked at her as she masterly applied the Dittany. The bandages came after few moments and immediately covered up the crimson line.

Madam Pomfrey tightened the gauze and fixed it, then she looked up on the inscrutable face of the boy.

"That's it", She said, satisfied. "Don't play with it and it will heal quickly." The young man looked at her puzzled.

"Play? What do you think I'd do with it? Using it for tic-tac-toe?" He asked polemically. He didn't actually know if Poppy Pomfrey knew what tic-tac-toe was, since it was a Muggle game, but the look the Mediwitch gave him made him lower his gaze at the instant.

At that moment the door opened, and the hooked nose of Albus Dumbledore peered into the infirmary.

Madam Pomfrey looked ominous as the rest of the Headmaster followe the nose into the room. Dumbledore raised his wrinkled hand as to apologize for the intrusion and a silent promise to not disturb.

"I would like to speak with Severus. Just for a few moments." He said under his breath as he approached. The boy laid his eyes on the Headmaster while Madam Pomfrey nodded and walked quickly away taking the bottle of Dittany with her.

Dumbledore sat heavily down on the edge of Severus' bed. He took off his half-moon glasses and passed a wrinkled hand over his eyes. Albus took a deep breath when he looked upon the young man without wearing his glasses back, as if he wanted to really see Severus with his true eyes and not altered by the games of the lenses.

"Severus", the headmaster began, "first, I would like to apologize. I tried to hold you back when, in fact, I should have run out there with you. And I lost time. I thought I still have a little time... to prepare a plan... to take away all of them from that house before He arrived, but I have miscalculated. I allowed Voldemort to kill James Potter, and perhaps the child. I have allowed Him to come to them. I have convinced Sirius Black and Remus Lupin not to run to Godric's Hollow as you did, I convinced them to go with Alastor. And now they, like everyone ... like you, in fact... can not forgive themselves for not arriving on time, for not being able to save their friend. Forgive me. The fault is mine alone."

Severus looked at him. His fault? Dumbledore was telling him the responsibility for what had happened was his? No. No it was not his fault... it was all the Dark Lord's fault... it has always been the Dark Lord. As it had always been him. He knew what he was, no one and no thing would have ever denied it. He was a Death Eater. A Death Eater who had felt true relief and pleasure when he had seen James Potter's body lying there, staring into nothingness. A Death Eater who had abandoned a child to satiate his own yearning for a woman who should have been his but was not. He knew what he was.

"It'd been my fault, sir". Severus said slowly, giving voice to his thoughts. "You don't know what I felt when I saw Potter dead. I was happy. I was happy he was dead. I left there that child. I have left him at the mercy of the Dark Lord. I left him because he was nothing to me."

Dumbledore shook his head, raising his hand to stop the rough roar, so unpleasant, of the torrent of words coming from Severus' lips.

"You have no guilt, my boy", he said quietly, lowering his hand. "You're human. Just as everyone else. Don't torture yourself about your feelings for James Potter. Nor about Harry. You could not do anything else. Minerva said that you spoke of an explosion... "

"Yes. I don't know what or who caused it", the boy shook his head. "All I have seen was a white flash, like a lightning, and then... everything was blown up. The house shook. The windows shattered throwing splinters and shards all over the room. "

"Seems like you and Voldemort messed up a little with magic." Dumbledore said thoughtfully. "The real question, now, concern the child. "

"What does that mean?" Severus asked.

"It means we don't know what happened to him... he simply disappeared." Dumbledore said gravely. Severus couldn't help but felt relieved from that news. Maybe the Dark Lord hadn't taken him, maybe the child was alive.

"Like as someone has taken him away?" He asked, hoping to receive a definite answer. But his expectations were disappointed. Dumbledore shook his head, narrowing his piercing blue eyes.

"We don't know. We don't know if he's alive, if he's dead, where he is now... "

"This is nonsense", Severus said.

His eyes fell on the girl asleep in the bed next to his. It was the first time he dared to lay his eyes on her since he had taken her away from Godric's Hollow. She was beautiful. She had always been. She looked like one of those fairy creatures who extolled the ancient myths; a glittering queen of the elves from ancient legends. A princess of fire. A queen of fairies.

At that an old song came to Severus' mind... one of those his mother used to sing, long ago, when she still cared about something. It was about the Queen of Fairies and a Prince of the Night... Wait, what did the chorus say?...

Don't cry oh Faerie Queen,
I'm your Prince of the Night.

The sweet words echoed in his mind. He thought he could hear his mother's low voice humming the words slowly...

Don't cry, it will be all right.
I've lost myself in your sheen.

And the first stanza spoke about the Prince of Night. It said that he would ride out of the darkness for he had fallen in love with the Queen of Faerie, that he had left his father's, halls, he had crossed the seas at the head of the Shadows army.

Severus closed his eyes, letting himself be enveloped by the soothing melody of the ballad. It was not an happy story. That prince died for a love that was never his to receive, for the queen of fairies can't love a shadow. That prince had offered his sword to the King of the Elves, forever a shadow behind the sun, snatched out of the night where he belonged. Severus smiled bitterly. He was just like him, soldier and servant of the sun, but a shadow nonetheless. And his mark was still there, clearly visible, as well as the darkness that shook his soul.

"Severus?" Dumbledore's voice interrupted his thoughts. "Severus, are you listening?"

The boy did not answer. Dumbledore sighed, his half-moon glasses were back in their place; mysterious moons to contain the heaven of his eyes.

"I was saying — and it's my humble opinion — that Lily should be entrastuted to your care." The old professor said with a smile.

"Me?" Severus repeated, confused, "But I have a job here. How can I teach Potions and at the same time take care of her?"

"You can't teach here anymore, my boy. At least for a while. It's too dangerous". Dumbledore began, standing up. "Voldemort will hunt you down, Severus. He won't accept defeat, he won't let you unpunished. He will seek you... he will seek Lily. You can't stay here. He knows you work at Hogwarts, Severus, and it is in this castle he will be looking for you. I already have on my conscience what happened with the Potters, I can't stand endangering your life, Lily's and those of the inhabitants of this castle."

"And where shall we go?" Severus questioned then.

"To my house. It 's a safe place and you know it." Dumbledore said.

"And you think the Dark Lord wouldn't suspect..."

"He wouldn't. He doen't know I've already exposed myself for you, Severus. He ignores the fact that you live with me... that you've always lived with me, since you came to seek my help." Dumbledore smiled. Severus looked at him suspiciously for a few seconds, pondering what the Headmaster had just said, then he nodded.

"Very well. You will be transferred immediately. Brix will take care of you both." Dumbledore said, smiling, as he looked upon Lily.

Severus followed his gaze toward her. His best friend. She has always been 'his best friend', indeed, she was much more than a friend for him, even if she had never forgiven him. But now he was desperately struggling to come back from the abyss into which he had fallen. Now he felt so tired of climbing on those walls of sharp rocks that cut his hands and opened large wounds in his already tortured heart... now he needed his Faerie Queen. He dared hoping she would accept him back, he hoped that she would not reject him as she already did once, that she would give him a second chance. He had blown his cover as a spy, he had shown himself to the Dark Lord for the traitor he was, earning a certain death sentence hanging on him like a sword of Damocles. He rode out of the shadows, he made the King's crown fall and as his arrows fell on the ground, his plead would not go unheard.

I ride from the Shadow,
On a coal-black steed.
You'll feel my arrows,
You'll hear my plead.


Here I am! I finally finished to translate the second chapter. It took a while, but in the end it has come. The ballad is all my work, I hope you like it.

I wait for your reviews!