Chapter 4

Green Fields of the Mind

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Where Snape is mocked by the unusual

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Professor Snape's investigation of the Veil of Death reached a dead end. He would rarely admit that he could not move any further without assistance but that was the unadorned truth. It was almost the end of the school year. He knew for a while that some time soon he would have to commit an atrocity promised to an old friend, following an act of emotional extortion that even Molly Weasley would have been ashamed of. After the conversation with Albus, Severus felt as if both of them deserved to wear one of the infamous Weasley jumpers in kitschy family style colours and perhaps a party hat marking them as worse dunderheads than even the most stupid among the students.

There was also a tiny issue of the Unbreakable Vow Severus had sworn meaning his death if he failed. He very much wanted to complete his secret personal project of retrieving Sirius Black from the Veil, if that was possible at all, prior to his suicidal mission of killing Dumbledore for the greater good.

Almost a full year of brooding brought him no closer to the clue except that he was fairly certain that the Veil was rather a time-travel than a space-travel instrument. And wherever Sirius was, blood magic was referred to as a likely clue towards reversal of such spells with the intention to save persons lost in deep inaccessible spaces governed by the darkest magic. Severus devised a complex incantation and a special potion to bring Sirius back. But in order to succeed, he needed a close living relative, a parent or a sibling, willing to project the essence of their living soul onto the surface of the Veil in the middle of the spell and call Sirius back. There was no likely candidate to do this as both Sirius's parents and his only brother had died.

Obviously, the procedure, if discovered, would be deemed highly illegal by the Ministry and ensure the ticket to Azkaban. Severus snorted knowing that his other master the Dark Lord controlled Azkaban anyway so it did not matter too much. The times were favouring experimenting with illegal magic or creating new one. And the best chance Severus had to bring Sirius back would be on the anniversary of his death, coming in two weeks. Severus considered asking Sirius's cousin Andromeda, or even her daughter Nymphadora for help, but the relation was not close enough.

Consulting Hogwarts yearbooks on the Peverell family gave no spectacular results either. The family seemed to have liked the name Ignotus which appeared in every generation. The last Ignotus effectively graduated from Hogwarts in 1942 and was by all standards a completely non-remarkable student, not quite a disaster like Neville Longbottom, but a dull mediocre individual who did nothing noteworthy in his seven years at school. His marks were average and he didn't even serve a detention in all that time. Perhaps this last detail should have raised Snape's interest as almost no student managed to graduate from Hogwarts without serving at least one detention. But everything else about Ignotus Peverell was so dull that he just disregarded it and closed the dusty yearbook again with a reckless feeling of lack of fulfilment, and an almost certainty that something was escaping his shrewdness when it came to the Peverells, despite all his efforts to uncover the truth.

One morning when he returned to the dungeons after another sleepless night trying to find something of interest concerning Ignotus Peverell in the library, he found an owl from Dumbledore carrying a piece of blackened parchment saying, In two weeks.

The time had come.

Severus was overtaken by a strong desire to break all his jars and vials with expensive and rare potions and potion ingredients the Muggle way and to cause havoc in his perfectly ordered working space.

Before he could give in to these fairly basic urges caused by long term frustration, his legs decided to carry him out of the castle to the grounds of Hogwarts.

A crack of Apparating resounded in a street full of trees leading in the direction of the Ministry of Magic. It was very early in the morning. The scent of thousands tender white blossoms in the trees, which bathed in the bright daylight of one of the first summer days, felt profoundly disturbing.

Severus Snape couldn't explain, not even to himself, why he decided to take a walk to the strange new shop in the immediate vicinity of the Ministry on a warm day. He was never one for sunlight and he enjoyed the damp darkness of his dungeons where he spent most of the time as a teacher. They were generally safe. And he would be left in the privacy of his musings, working hard at the same time on potions for school and for the Dark Lord, developing the latest strategies for defeating either the Light side or the Dark side in the ongoing war, depending on who ordered his services at a given moment.

But on that particular day even Snape needed warmth and careless feeling of being alive more than ever. There was very little time of relative freedom left before going into hiding and before all people he knew and very few people he respected would start loathing him much more than usual.

The known feeling that the shop was new and that it only appeared in London a year ago filled up his mind as he was approaching and trying to control such thoughts.

Since last year it has been well established that the shop had stood there forever. As far as he knew Severus was the only wizard still haunted by the suspicion concerning the veracity of that fact. The paranoia of his spy profession must have messed with his perception.

It was not only that the shop had always been there, but it had recently become a place of refuge and healing for hurt Death Eaters in exchange for generous rewards. The healing spells were at a far more advanced level than those used by the staff of St Mungos hospital for magical illnesses and no questions were asked regarding the nature and the origin of injuries.

The Dark Lord intended to kill the shop-owner and his daughter as soon as the war was over. The rumour in Voldemort's inner circle had it that Peverell the pure-blood fathered a Squib daughter on an unsuspecting Muggle woman. Severus could not say what he loathed more, the fact that the Peverells made a living by helping Death Eaters recover and attack more innocent victims, or the fact that they were blind and could not see what the Dark Lord had in stock for them as a payback for their services.

Snape didn't go to see the Peverells since the first time. There were better suppliers of potions ingredients in Diagon Alley who didn't help Death Eaters, or stir unwanted sensations of déjà vu of any kind.

But that morning was different. There were precious few days left for Snape to satisfy his gnawing curiosity.

He noticed Val, perched on the window sill, her hair in a tight bun, her robes plain black and perfectly straight. Her eyes were closed: she seemed to be absorbed in her thoughts and thoroughly enjoying the sun. She stirred as Severus approached.

"Good morning, professor, what can I do for you? You haven't stopped by for a while!" she said in a rather serious demeanour, in stark contrast with playful defiance he remembered from the time when they met.

"It's a beautiful morning, isn't it?" he replied stiffly, feeling silly and regretting he was there.

"I could not imagine that what brings you here is the beauty of the morning," she replied, coming towards the door and letting him in, still absorbed in her thoughts whatever they were.

He was all of a sudden compelled to access her mind through Legilimency; not to read her thoughts, no, but to get a glimpse of her true character which eluded him. As soon as he cast Legilimens in his mind, wand hidden in his robes, and pointed in her direction, the image of green meadows on a sunny day invaded his senses, the smell of flowers and freshly mowed grass after the rain. He could inhale, touch and taste the sensation. He felt like a man dying to whom someone administered the elixir of life.

"This is not a very polite thing to do, Mr Snape," Val looked right through him as if he was made of water, undeterred by his intrusion, inside her shop filled with darkness, different than the bright light outside and the imaginary landscape as day and night.

"Stop it!" she barked.

Severus remained impassive as if he hadn't been performing a highly illegal curse on the unwilling individual. Val didn't seem to be physically hurt by his intrusion and he just couldn't help himself taking what little joy he could get, before a dreadful phase in his life leading to his inevitable messy death would begin. He stared nastily at Val and showed no sign of weakness, no hint of either excusing himself or leaving. He took a step forward in her mind and walked on a meadow when his reason, drugged for several minutes, kicked in again and sounded an alarm.

It was not possible to create such an elaborate landscape as a defensive Occlumency shield. So what was he seeing? Her memories? The landscape was too perfect to be a memory of any real plot of land as far as he could tell. Her daydream? Snape was more bewildered than ever. A butterfly landed on his hand and the most natural thing to do was to give in to the overwhelming beauty, whatever its origin, and take a deep breath.

A pair of arrogant, cold black eyes pierced Val as if mental aggression towards her was Snape's acquired right, violating her private space to secure a healing for his soul, long time due and never received. Val shrugged but she didn't break the eye contact. Severus's vision of her mind slowly darkened and showed a blurry room with beds, some of them occupied, and walls lined with shelves full of books, large stock of potions, neatly stored ingredients of all kinds and magical healing equipment.

"You are the one running the hospital for Death Eaters that the Dark Lord's followers have become so fond of and not your father?" Severus blurted in disbelief, still not breaking the eye contact.

"Yes. Someone has to. It's right here in the back. Do you wish to see it? You were once here as well when you were injured. Just that you were too unconscious to notice. The Dark Lord was displeased with the continued failures of someone called Draco and punished you instead. It took me three days to patch you. Afterwards we shipped you to Hogwarts tied to a broom. I take note that you survived. How convenient," Val spoke as if she was convinced that Professor Snape would finally stop looking at her, seeing how she personally cured some of the most evil wizards in existence, and hid them from the ever less watchful eyes of the Ministry of Magic right below their feet.

"I guess a thank you would be in order then," Severus grinned like an idiot maintaining the eye contact, "from a fellow Death Eater."

Before she knew he grabbed her, grasped her left forearm and pulled up the sleeve revealing unblemished tender skin, damaged only with some tiny traces that could have been caused by the regular exercise of a magical healer profession or negligent daily care of some larger magical creature. Snape wondered if she shared Hagrid's taste for pets as he mustered his most murderous tone and said: "Except that you are not one. Should I inform the Dark Lord of his… omission?"

Slowly, the dark mark on her forearm formed and danced before his eyes, as real as his own, always hidden deep under many layers of thick black robes as if covering the accursed imprint could make Snape forget his greatest mistake. Her mark was at once as real as the green land where he yearned to stay only a little bit longer, before his vision returned to the usual darkness of his own mind.

"Am I not?" she taunted him. "Is that the best you've got? Threatening me?"

Severus let her go with a feeling of déjà vu at her last sentence and the defiant look she gave him. He could swear that she had no Dark Mark. Yet now the Mark was there and so was the idea in his mind that the Dark Mark had always been there, just like the shop they were standing in must have always been in London. Except that Snape could not believe it, any of it. It was all plain wrong.

Still not breaking the eye contact he shuddered and admitted inwardly to himself that he had been defeated. She could not, she would not help him. It was all an illusion. And he didn't want to spend his last free days chasing after dreams of any kind.

As soon as he thought all that, the image projected from her mind returned to the beautiful landscape which filled his heart with peace.

Severus could swear it was she intruding his consciousness now and not the other way around. Yet she didn't cast a Legilimens spell nor any other spell Snape had known. It felt like she had no magic, like she was indeed a benign Squib with peculiar imagination. His black eyes widened in surprise and for a brief second when he was not protecting his thoughts from others Val could read in his eyes without using any magic, plain as the day, the depth of his despair.

There was only one thing left to say. Severus used the word scarcely and if he did, he almost never meant it.

"Thank you," he said in a completely changed sincere voice, after what seemed like long hours of contemplation, when he finally let his eyes drop, standing up to leave the shop.

"Wait!" she called after him. "I know what you are up to. And you must suspect that my father and I are up to the same. You're still trying to bring Sirius Black back from the Veil of Death, aren't you? My father and I have been thinking about the solution but he couldn't devise the proper incantation or establish the best timing to give it a try. Maybe we have a chance if we work together."

When Severus looked at her again, not believing his ears, Val swayed on her feet, suddenly looking old and frail as if she was twenty years older than he. The lines around her eyes and on her forehead deepened and her skin suddenly gained an olive hue. But she seemed sincere and content, radiating a contagiously positive mood he hadn't seen in her before.

"Wait," she repeated supporting herself on the walls as she scurried to the back room from where she soon returned with a large manuscript entitled: "Illegal and Untested Transportation Devices for Witch and Wizard, Bouncing Through Space and Time: Enchanted Animals, Crystal Time Bubbles, Veils of Death and many more."

Dusk coloured the air outside and the shop sank further into almost intimate darkness. Severus indifferently watched the spiders, patiently weaving their nets in the far corners, as Val sat down and continued babbling in an excited voice.

"It's an incomplete copy my father made long time ago from a scroll lost to the wizarding world. He found it in the house of one of his schoolmates, he never wanted to admit which one," Val commented as she turned the page dedicated to "Veils of Death" and read: "In order to forcefully call back a traveller, a parent or a sibling has to face the Veil, on the correct date, and sing the incantation describing the key elements in the traveller's life. How far did you go with the incantation?"

"I am certainly no poet, Mrs Peverell, however, I was vaguely acquainted with Black and I dared put on paper a few statements reflecting the key elements in his life. I assume that the correct timing would be the anniversary of his death, which is in two weeks," Severus's voice returned to being nasty and low, but inwardly he couldn't believe he was actually sharing all that information with another human being. Most of them were not worthy of their existence, according to Snape's scale of values in any case.

"Wonderful!" she was beaming. "We'll go and get him!" She giggled as most witches did in the presence of Black and Snape was suddenly so glad to disappoint her. "Unfortunately, Mrs Peverell, the spell requires the support of old blood magic to make it work and even your book confirms my initial assumption that the blood has to come from a close relation. Sirius's parents and brother are all dead and I don't think that the blood of his cousins comes close enough."

Val continued speaking, not disappointed at all and overly enthusiastic, "My father is a master in charms. One of the best in England. I could let you read one of his volumes on blood magic, he theorised that the impact of the blood of close kin can be reconstructed if one can retrieve some of the victim's possessions. It's a method frequently used in healing. We need something Sirius touched and used himself, even if it was a lifetime ago. But your incantation has more chance to work than any we would have come up with as neither my father nor I have ever met Sirius before. Another element we couldn't figure was that the anniversary of the disappearance was the key, we were operating on the basis that one of the magical days in the year would suffice, such as the Halloween or Muggle Christmas."

"That is a possibility, but the illegal volume on reversal of dark spells that I happen to possess is very clear that the best guarantee for the reversal would be if the same sorcerer on the same date attempted to reverse the effects while endowing his wand with some blood from the victim," Severus continued calmly as if he was teaching a bunch of first years how to brew a most uninteresting potion.

"But then we also need the person who cast the spell throwing Sirius into the Veil, forgive me, but wasn't that…" Val went pale as a corpse.

"Bellatrix Lestrange. The Dark Lord's right arm. And his special… friend," Severus sneered thinking of the unhealthy relationship the two were having. It was one of those things that he absolutely didn't want to know any details about, yet couldn't help but notice Bellatrix's badly hidden impulses to touch their Master, possibly the only creature on Earth uglier and more repulsive than Severus Snape.

Val paced around the room like a beast in cage and counted the days. Two weeks was very little time to prepare the ritual to save Sirius. Severus got lost in dark thoughts about being on the run soon, with no easy access to the Ministry or to the Veil.

"I will help you, Mr Snape, for the blood magic part, but you have to help me first with something entirely different. I need a contact of a person able to handle dragons, who would be willing to come and work with me this summer. I will not answer why I need such a person so don't bother to ask," Val said, pulling Snape out from the abyss of his thoughts. "Furthermore, the person should preferably not be a Death Eater."

Snape was caught by surprise so he obeyed without thinking, took out his wand, conjured a Patronus and whispered to it, "Go to Charlie Weasley visiting his parents in the Burrow. Tell him to visit Mrs Val Peverell at Peverell&Son in London as soon as possible on an urgent Order business." A gracious silvery doe pranced away into the street among the trees, chasing a few bees as it went.

"I'm glad that you asked today", said Snape, "as in a few days I might not be able to help you".

"What do you mean?" Val asked.

Severus just stared through her without blinking as if he were made of solid rock. Seeing that she wouldn't be getting any answers either, Val continued with the business at hand.

"If we cannot get Mrs Lestrange to cooperate in a given time we could give it a try without her but we absolutely have to find some possessions of the victim to be able to proceed," Val said decisively closing the dusty tome in front of them with a clang that made two bats hanging asleep from the wooden carvings under the ceiling wake up for the night and nervously flutter their wings.

"Indeed. I could come and see you tomorrow night then," Severus said in his most neutral tone. "Bellatrix might visit with me as well and then we shall see. If I may inquire…" Severus paused significantly and fixated Val again with his black piercing eyes, the way he kept on doing since their peculiar Legilimency encounter had started.

"Go ahead," said Val.

"Why do you want to help Sirius Black?"

"Oh, clearly, I'm madly in love with him!"

Severus chuckled at the irony of her statement, nevertheless harbouring the suspicion that she must have fancied Black in the past or read too much wizarding tabloids in general if she was willing to go that far to help him without knowing anything about the man. The rational part of Snape knocked at the back door of his mind reminding him that this didn't explain why her father would want to help Sirius, on the contrary, fathers of Sirius's short-lived would-be girlfriends mostly wanted to hex him when they were all teenagers.

Thinking of it in detail, Black never actually had that many girlfriends, there must have been one or two as far as Severus recalled. His focus lay elsewhere, in his empty-headed friends and stupid enjoyment in being a blood-traitor, despising publicly the ways of his family.

Severus for his part tried to date a few Muggle girls over the years since Lily died but his relationships never went on for very long. Snape cared for them, in his way, but he never managed to admit to any of those girls the basic fact that he was a wizard, or show his real poisonous nature for which he was notorious in Hogwarts. It was a more benevolent and far less dangerous version of Snape that occasionally went out with girls but this only aggravated the condition that real Snape never satisfied fully any of his emotional urges or showed all of his nature to anyone, the only possible exception for the latter part being maybe Albus Dumbledore, his only friend, and the person he was about to murder in cold blood.

And dating witches was not an option: Severus really didn't like younger ones and all those roughly his age saw him primarily as Snivellus, the horrible greasy git. Fortunately, Muggle girls frequently found his robes and even his hair different in a positive sense and kind of cool. The unsuccessful attempts at dating provided at least some distraction in his state of continuous frustration.

"See you tomorrow then, Severus," Val interrupted his chain of thoughts, his name an afterthought on her tongue as last traces of giddiness faded from her voice.

Severus reacted as one shot in the leg at her use of his first name. He abruptly stood up and stumbled out without a word, before he could succumb again to an overwhelming yearning to invade her privacy without permission, and become lost forever...

In the green fields of her mind.