Serpents and Thorns: The Building Storm

By Jedi Blu, Lady at Large

Beta: Foggy Librarian

IMPORTANT Note: Welcome, one and all, to the FLUFF chapters. The next three chapters, I am afraid to say to you angsty-Snape fans, are a bit fluffy. I posted the first today in honor of Valentine's Day. Forgive me, but it is essential to plot development.

.s.L.y.T.h.E.r.I.n.

CHAPTER ELEVEN: Pawns

.s.L.y.T.h.E.r.I.n.

Rose turned in his arms to face him, smiling a little sheepishly. "I invited Sirius to come, as Snuffles of course, to make things more comfortable for Harry," she admitted, unflinching, staring up into his bottomless black eyes. His expression was bemused, which meant he wasn't angry at least. She reached up and slid one hand through his hair, enjoying the soft feel of it. He was holding her very close, she could feel his chest rise and fall against hers.

"We were playing a sort of tag in the park, and Harry and I were dashing away from Snuffles, when the mutt jumped on me and knocked me down. I guess that's where the paw print came from," she finished her explanation, slightly distracted by his nearness.

"I see," he whispered, his eyes never blinking or moving away from hers.

Her own expression changed, swiftly, to one of suspicion. Though she hadn't felt him try to pry into her thoughts... "Legilimency will tell you the same thing, you know."

"I believe you," he said, a corner of his mouth twitched upward in an almost-smile. "I wasn't practicing Legilimency."

"Then why are you staring at me like that?" she demanded, glaring up at him, her lips pulling downward into a disapproving frown.

He leaned closer to her, still not taking his eyes off of hers. "Ego amo te," he murmured, putting his lips lightly against hers as she gasped in surprise. She immediately put her hands against his chest and pushed herself back in order to look up at him, her shocked expression would have been comical under other circumstances.

"Either my Latin is worse than I thought it was or you just said..."

His dark eyes were glimmering; a slow, real smile curved his lips upwards. "Would you like it in another language? I know three others well enough..."

"English would be nice," she said, blinking up at him in disbelief. "But Severus, why—"

He cut her words off with another kiss, stronger now, more urgent. "Why now?" he murmured as she caught her breath. "When would you like me to say it if not at this moment?" He didn't sound anything more than politely curious, even as he pulled her closer against him.

Rose shook her head, shock still written in every line of her face and in the stiff way she held her body slightly from him, and she couldn't believe he was really himself at that moment. "Severus...say it when you mean it," she answered, taking one step back. She finally broke eye contact with him, looking down at her hiking boots and suddenly wishing she was back in the Forest. What right did he have to confuse her like this? One moment he was insisting they take it slow and the next he was spouting to her in Latin that he...

"Then I should've said it before my graduation from Hogwarts." He smirked when her eyes darted up to his again, and her jaw hung completely open. "You have mud on your cheek." He reached forward, stopping his fingers from touching the offending smudge by just millimeters. To touch her now could undo everything or solidify the moment...he could not know which. He decided to avoid the skin against skin contact...until she initiated it. His hand dropped back down to his side. He could wait...

Rose shook her head again, looking for all the world as a lost little girl might. She reached a hand up and tugged her knit cap off, along with her scarf, and tossed them both on her chair. She briefly turned her back on him, shaking her head, confused and silent. When she finally did turn back to him, it was slowly, narrowing her eyes suspiciously. Rose looked up at him for a moment, putting one hand to his cheek and staring into his obsidian, bottomless eyes. She was searching for something...for a clue as to why he was there... It was then she recognized something, lurking in the black pools. "Something's frightened you," she whispered, surprised and awed to read it so clearly there...perhaps she was not as bad a Legilimens as she thought.

She had touched him...he could now touch her back. Severus covered the hand on his cheek with his own; he shuddered and looked momentarily away from her. "They want to see you. I'm supposed to take you to them in one week's time. Persuasion is the preferred method, but if that doesn't work I must drug you, or put you under Imperius, or..." He took in a ragged breath and bent, placing his forehead against hers. "I don't want to lose you again," he whispered.

She wrapped her arms around him, moving to rest her head against his chest, and wishing to sense something else...anything else other than his dread. This was Severus, he was not supposed to show fear; he was a pillar of stoic, solid ice. But her other senses told her the same of his worry; his heart was beating double-time and his body trembled as he wrapped his arms tighter around her.

"Would you protect me from them?" she asked quietly-almost the same question she had asked many years before. She had to ask again. Had to know...

He groaned, burying his face in her hair. "Rose, Rose. I would die rather than allow any of them touch you. I would have, when the Dark Lord—"

"Why didn't you?" she whispered softly, carefully. "In all those arguments we had, after all this time, I still don't understand why you didn't move."

"I don't know," he answered, bitterness tainting the words. "I couldn't—it was as if I had been frozen in place, I couldn't move or think, all I could do was watch and—" he gasped tightly, his breathing became more labored as the memory freshly assaulted him...slipping out of the vaults of his carefully guarded mind, from the mental box where all his moment of pain were hidden to come out only in his nightmares. He tightened his hold on her without realizing it, holding her so close she almost cried out as her ribs began to ache. At last he mastered the memory, locking it away again, not wanting to deal with it-to see it. "You won't go near them." His tone was grim, firm, there would be no argument.

"We need to talk to Dumbledore—"

"No, we don't," he interrupted at once, loosening her enough so that he could look down into her eyes, allowing her to see the resolve in his, wanting to lock her into place with his gaze. "I'm tired of being a pawn for everyone else to play with. Albus Dumbledore will not tell me what to do with my own wife, nor will they. You won't go near them. We lost enough the last time—" he cut himself off, looking sick. "We lost so much. I'm tired of being the one to lose, Rose." Bitterness, mixed with sorrow, laced his words. The Potion's Master was melting before her, revealing just a man...uncertain and alone.

"But, Severus—"

"Our daughter," he said ruthlessly. "Our child was murdered before my very eyes, I watched my wife tortured, and they were as much testing my breaking point as the Dark Lord was punishing you. That whole night doesn't make sense, Rose, and I'm convinced there's something else going on here. I don't want you to play into their hands. We will find a way around this, around you going to them."

She felt tears filling her eyes and she moved to burry her face in his shirt. His body was taut with repressed emotions—anger, despair, fear. Rose fought back her own feelings, determined to present to him a strong front. One of them had to do it, and he was too lost... At last she was able to stand away from him, his eyes grew puzzled but held determination as she stepped away. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you about the baby, Severus. There was so much going on—it was very wrong of me. Severus, do you really love me or is this just...possessiveness? Is it the wizard's debt or are your feelings for me real?" All else rested on this. If she knew, if he would tell her this and she could believe, then all would finally fall into place—she hoped.

He looked into her eyes, seeing the silent need in their emerald depths. He touched her cheek gently, a very light caress, then tucked an errant curl behind her ear. "I have experienced little love in my life, Rose, and I am not very familiar with it. Tell me, do you know for certain you love me?" he asked quietly. His expression was calm, even calculating as it always seemed to be...for the moment Severus Snape had returned, putting away that worried man. He wasn't just asking her a question of emotions, she well knew, but was asking for an explanation-for knowledge, the one thing Severus had always possessed and wanted to possess in abundance.

Rose shivered. "My clothes are damp, Severus. Let me change and then we can talk." She was stalling. She had to get her thoughts in order.

He nodded and stepped away from her, no longer touching her. She turned away, pulled a fresh change of clothes from the wardrobe, and disappeared into the bathroom.

The sound of the sink running also assured him she was taking care of the splatter of mud on her cheek. Severus went to her bed and lowered himself onto the edge of it, his eyes going to a photograph on her bedside table he hadn't noticed before. It was a picture of three little girls—two red-heads and a strawberry blonde, dressed in muggle clothing and grinning at the person behind the camera madly. The picture didn't move, it was also muggle, and Severus recognized Lily and Rose at once. Petunia he had only ever seen in pictures, usually sour faced or looking haughty. But this picture was before Hogwarts days for Lily and Rose, and Petunia looked as innocent and as happy as they did.

He picked up the picture, taking in the details of the background. They were all seated on the floor, a tiled floor probably that of their kitchen, with bowls and cookbooks scattered all about them. Rose had a spot of flour on her nose; Petunia's sweater was covered in the white powder, while Lily was spotless and the only one wearing an apron.

What must it have been like, to grow up in a home where you did not wonder if you were loved? Where you had security, safety, and the ease of happiness?

He sighed and replaced the photograph. Rose was right, he had been badly shaken. While she had gone on her 'outing' with Harry and...Black...Severus had been out on the grounds watching the Slytherin Quidditch team practice. They were brutal players, of course, but at least Malfoy was excelling as a Seeker.

Lucius Malfoy had come up behind him, smiling, assumingly to watch his son practice.

But the conversation he had struck up with Severus had left the Potion's Master very cold.

"How is the enchanting Defense professor?" Malfoy asked, keeping his eyes on his son. Draco was circling the field looking for the Snitch. "My son tells me her class is somewhat disappointing of late."

Severus only glanced at Lucius from the corner of his eye before responding. "Madame Umbridge changed the curriculum to what she thought would be more...age appropriate material. Most classes now bare her mark of ignorance."

"Indeed. So Draco tells me." Lucius sighed and shook his head, though his voice was mocking when he continued," The Ministry continues to take hold of that which it does not understand. Dolores Umbridge is the poster-child for them, you know—blissful, cruel ignorance. But she is not my concern at the moment. My concern, Severus, is our dear Rose."

Fighting the urge to stiffen, the urge to allow anxiety into his eyes, Severus said calmly "What of her?"

"I've been told from an infallible source that she is still hanging between two sides of the board. She stands but a step from either side of what is coming. What have you been doing to insure she ends up...on the right side?" Malfoy now turned, smiling his cold, hard smile at Severus and arching one perfectly manicured, perfectly white eyebrow at the man who was his opposite in many, many ways. "Surely you've interacted with her some if you were able to convince her to join you at my home last weekend."

The darker wizard shook his head, slightly. "It's a complicated matter, Lucius. One moment she seems ready to do anything I ask of her, and the next she despises all that is in our joint past." This was true, and Severus knew by experience that telling a slightly twisted truth was better than telling a full-fledged lie. No one could flout the truth, but a lie could be turned over and expose him to a very, very painful consequence. "I am not sure how to proceed yet, but I will find a way—If there is one—to draw her back in."

"Will you?" Lucius asked. His cruel smile became harder, firmer, his gray eyes darkened until they were as unrelenting as steel. "Tell me, Potion's Master, where does your loyalty lay? Is it with our esteemed Dark Lord, or the lovely face of a former mate?"

Severus tensed now, visibly, and he cursed himself for it. He had known it would only be a matter of time before she was made a test for him—another test for him to pass to prove his unwavering loyalty to the Dark. "Rose is a temptation, Lucius" he answered quietly. "But temptations are often over-come. I know the penalty for leaving the Dark Lord and turning against our Brotherhood a second time. I will do nothing to put myself in a position such as that." This, too, was the truth, but even Lucius knew that it was an open-ended answer. Most Death Eaters could speak riddles around anyone, and Severus—who was especially logical and quick-witted—was perhaps the best among them at such a thing. This was why he was permitted to go on teaching at Hogwarts, even if he claimed he couldn't get at Potter—because they trusted him to match wits against Albus Dumbledore.

'Perhaps not trust,' Severus amended to himself as Malfoy weighed his answer in his mind.

Apparently Lucius Malfoy was satisfied with that. "There is a job for you then," he said quietly. "I was to take it if you were...found lacking..." He spun his walking stick at his side, and then pretended to examine the silver head, where an 'M' announced him proudly. "Next week. Place eleven. Time twelve. Our Lord wants her there for...questioning."

Not trusting himself to speak, Severus only nodded once-curtly. He summoned his voice when Malfoy waited, obviously having more to say if Severus would just ask the right question. "I will do what I can. How is she to be brought?"

"Of her own free will, if possible. If not...whatever you can think of without harming her is acceptable." Lucius flipped out a silver pocket watch, checked the time, before snapping it closed. His smile reminded the wizard standing next to him of a reptile—hungry, cold, unsatisfied. "I will see you both then. I must be on my way now."

Severus murmured his own farewell. As soon as Lucius was out of sight, going towards the main gates so he could apparate away, Severus hurried as quickly as he could into the castle. Rose would not be back yet, this he knew, but he was in her chambers quickly. He would not leave them until she returned. He must make certain she was completely safeguarded—

He would not yield her to them a second time.

"Severus, are you all righ?t" Rose asked, bringing him back to the present. She had changed into black, cotton draw-string pants and a dark green jumper. Her hair, slightly damp still, was for once completely loose and hanging down her back past her shoulder-blades in thick, lovely auburn ringlets. She was frowning slightly, worry rested in her eyes. She lowered herself onto the bed beside him when he did not answer right away and laid her head against his shoulder. "You're never one to stop brooding easily, are you"?

One of his arms snaked around her shoulders, holding her carefully to him. He swallowed once, then whispered, "I'm frightened for you."

"I know you are, Severus. But our actions are not our own any more; we really don't have a choice now. We must speak to Dumbledore about this problem."

He nodded, reluctantly, then groaned and turned to press his lips into her hair. "I can't lose you, Rose. It would be my undoing."

She shuddered as his words encircled her in momentary, protective warmth. "Do you want to know what love is, Severus?" she whispered quietly. Pulling slightly away from him she looked deeply into his black eyes—which were open to her, filled with uncertainty, warmth, and yet a determination as well.

"Tell me," he said, hoarsely, reaching to cup her face in one hand. "Because I doubt either of us will make it out of this alive until we really understand it."


QUESTION: Is anyone else having problems with QuickEdit?

Hopefully not too fluffy for die-hard Dark Severus fans. We'll see.

SNEAK PREVIEW: Memories are finally shared, between Rose and Severus, in the coming chapter, and their childhood is briefly explored in The Attic. Then, with lemon drops and a twinkle in his eye, comes Dumbledore's Advice.

To My Esteemed Reviewers:

Many thanks to LadyLuck321, Evil Duckie, kiss-of-cuteness, Lydia, Arashi7 (Occlumency lessons coming up soon), heather (sorry about the 'drawling Severus'—I'm from the South, it's a habit to put that in as an adjective), Black Sheep Alone, nabenabe, and Illume. Y'all are AWESOME.

Thank you for the continued reviews! They make my day!

-JB-