Chapter 21
The Choices of a Lizard and the Snakes
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Where an old marriage rite is celebrated
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Bellatrix hid behind a painting of the one-eyed witch at the end of one of the secret passages leading to Hogwarts.
She found herself envying late Peter Pettigrew on his Animagus form, wishing she could transform in a rat or an even smaller animal herself. That way she could find Hermione Granger much faster.
Unfortunately, transfiguration was never Bella's forte. Her strong point had been the dark arts, not any defence against them. So she had to make do with the things she had known all her life.
It was very easy to fool the other Death Eaters and get separated from them in the heat of the battle, but there wasn't much time left to spare. She had to be present when the Dark Lord would call Potter out on a duel, if she wished to live, and she found that she wanted life for just a little bit longer.
It bothered her slightly to be obliged to send a stunner in direction of Remus Lupin, purely to get him out of her way, while Rodolphus, returned from South America, duelled Nymphadora. Lupin slumped to the ground as if she had used a Killing Curse, which was definitely not the case. In her new confused state of mind, she began to grasp what her niece had seen in the wizard, an animal once a month, who nevertheless defended her fiercely from Bella, not knowing that the dark witch was merely passing by, on a mission of her own.
Perhaps some werewolves are more reliable than certain Dark Lords or former pure blooded husbands, Bella mused. She hoped that she was right for Nymphadora's sake. Besides, Andromeda's daughter was for all practical purposes also a Black; she was going to defeat Rodolphus single-handedly, without meddling from her half breed husband or her Death Eater aunt.
A piece of soft, red cotton protruded under her Death Eater robes, a consequence of skirmish and running, she reckoned. Readjusting her state of dress, she still failed to understand why she felt compelled to steal Ariana Dumbledore's T-shirt, when the house elves changed her into a clean and warm night gown after the delivery. Bellatrix was cleaning the tiny red garment with magic, hoping Aunt Walburga was sound asleep and wouldn't catch her doing the elves' job. Unexpectedly, she fell in love with the title "Bad Excuses" on it, not caring if it was a Muggle thing in the slightest. In the lonely nights in Malfoy Manor, she thought its colour could revive the smell of a young man's hair, cursing herself for turning into a pervert, and not only a killer, in her forties.
But then one day Harry Potter broke into her vault in Gringgots, and Voldemort started throwing killing curses at them all, not caring whom he would hit among his loyal Death Eaters. Lucius would have been dead if Bella didn't drag him out of the room on time, and for some reason, the red T-shirt had brought her luck on that day. Normally, she would never have been faster than the Dark Lord's spell.
When the Dark Lord ordered them to march on Hogwarts to their final victory, Bella came to terms with herself and with what she wanted in life, donned the T-shirt and hoped for the best.
And it worked again, because in a flash of pure luck Bellatrix noticed a patch of red hair in the passage, and the bushy hair appeared immediately in tow.
There they are, she almost danced with joy, releasing the Essence of Fast Fainting in the corridor and sprinting towards the girl, sprawled on the floor.
"Retracto," she whispered, summoning all the spells she used torturing Hermione in the Malfoy Manor back to herself. It took all her forces not to waver as the essence of them made it back into her own soul. The pain was strong, but she could handle it, for a while, pondering for the first time rationally the kind and the size of darkness she possessed on the inside, at her disposal to hurt other people. It was huge and unwavering, abysmal, a well of darkness where there should be light, an evil in the soul meant to be immortal, ruined by her own actions.
The pain she was enduring was nothing in comparison to a terrible certainty that the Dark Lord she had adored with all her being despised her and thought of her as a usable fool. Satisfied with the results of her experimental curse-retrieving hex, if her pain was any measure of its success, she used her Legilimency skills to sift through the surface of Hermione's unconscious mind and found it unburdened from the torture experience. For a second she considered taking back her wand and leave the Mudblood the one from Aunt Walburga, but then, her aunt may have enchanted it to hurt Mudbloods if they ever touched it, and Bella was quite done with causing pain.
Turning into purple and black fumes, she laughed hysterically and stormed out of the corridor to join Voldemort, but not before administering a few drops of Instant Enervating Tonic of her own production (yes, she did learn something from Severus, although she would never admit that to him) to the eye lashes of a girl and her red haired freckled friend, finally allowing the sight of him to stir some rather fresh and bitter-sweet memories in the black pit of Bellatrix' soul.
Dark purple fumes went forward, remembering a too young red haired man whom they did not deserve, but who could have loved them dearly, had the situation been a little bit different.
Too late for that, the fumes thought, avoiding the battle on the way to the Forbidden Forest, looking for a few precious moments of solitude before gracing Voldemort's presence once again, in a role of his most devoted Death Eater.
But that day in Hogwarts was not meant to bring peace to any magical being.
As Bellatrix materialised among the centenary trees, a wave of light, heat and hot metal crashed into her and she ducked just on time before she would be first squashed, and then roasted. From the burning ruins of a strange metallic device with two wheels rose a six-foot tall, crystal-coloured figure, muttering curses and trying to apply inexpert healing spells to his forearms, which seemed to have been severely injured.
"At least her transfiguration of matter into spirit works. I can't wait to tell her that!" whispered the apparition with strange passion, oblivious to his surroundings, among various complaints in a juicy language.
Bellatrix' heart nearly stopped at the sight of the ghost of her cousin Sirius. He was supposed to be in the past, not dead, not dead… Not killed by her hand.
She came forward to him and fell on her knees. The ghost finally noticed her, sparing her a brief look full of misplaced prudish pride so typical of her cousin as if she were a weed to be eradicated. Determined, she gripped her wand, aimed at his chest, and started uttering the extremely dark incantation she devised, which would draw back the killing curse she used on Sirius back to herself.
"Expelliarmus!" the ghost roared and Aunt Walburga's wand left her hands falling to the grass, dry and yellow from the lack of rain. "I knew that you were quite mad Bella, but not that you were suicidal. Taking back your own Unforgivables to yourself?! Are you having love life difficulties? Rodolphus finally saw the light and abandoned you?"
"Sirius! Listen…"
"Sorry, Bella, it's really nice to see you again but I'm way too busy to waste my time on you right now. Stupefy!"
Those were the last words she heard before passing out for a short period of time.
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When she regained consciousness by sheer force of her will, all that was left of Sirius was scorched grass, and some damaged skin on her own arms, for the disarming spell sent her into the burning thicket where her cousin her landed. She thought cynically how Hogwarts should award her a medal for accidentally quenching a disastrous fire with her body, while she crawled towards the encampment of the Death Eaters for what felt like hours, fighting the effects of the stunning spell cast on her with fierce strength and revulsion.
Oh, if I could only lay down and get some rest, she thought.
In the last few days, she started getting tired for no reason at all, and the magical Muggle T-shirt helped her to avoid falling asleep, without having to ingest disgusting potions, during the interminable evenings where the followers of the Dark Lord praised his ever growing power. The night before they were ordered to attack Hogwarts, she believed that not even the Cruciatus curse would have kept her awake.
She barely made it back to the inner circle on time before Voldemort showed up and spoke his ultimatum to Hogwarts. In one hour they would deliver him Harry Potter or he would kill them all. Well, actually, they were going to kill them all for Him. The idea of indistinct murder, which used to make her happy and alert, only served to enhance Bella's profound desire to sleep.
Her knees and elbows were a bloody mess under her robes from her slithering journey through the woods, and she could not use a standard healing spell because for once she didn't want to draw any undue attention to herself. A crazy giggle left her mouth but luckily that was precisely what everybody expected from her, so everything was fine.
I am not finished yet, she thought, I have to live through this to complete what I have started because it's the only thing that makes sense. She forgot to question herself on when and how it came to be that she started actually caring about things in life making any sense at all.
When the Boy Who Lived died, she wasn't surprised, because she never expected any other outcome, did she? She should have known best of all that the evil was simply too strong. Still, the fall of the Dark Lord made her heart jump with the sense of foreboding, and she played her part of a loving servant easier than ever, parroting her breathless concern for others to see.
So when Voldemort redressed himself, and when her sister Narcissa went to check, and confirmed that the boy was dead, Bellatrix noticed an imperceptible change in her demeanour. Then, she knew for sure that either Narcissa felt genuinely sorry for the boy, and it would not do to show that in the present company, or there was something fishy about the boy's death. And as attacks of authentic compassion were not Narcissa's cup of tea, something unexpected must have occurred again, as it had a tendency to, whenever Tom Riddle met Harry Potter.
Curious about what would happen next and feeling totally independent for the first time since she married Rodolphus, Bellatrix walked slowly to the castle with the other Death Eaters, through the fields of dry yellow grass, forgetting her bleeding wounds in anticipation of what was to come.
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Severus Snape was losing blood fast in the Shrieking Shack after Voldemort's snake bit him deeply in the neck.
A proper end for a Slytherin, that, worthy of a column in the Daily Prophet if anyone was left alive to write one when the day was over.
In the moment when he realized what Voldemort was going to order Nagini to do, he struggled hopelessly against her, believing everything was in vain. He had not been strong enough to give Albus's message to Harry Potter, only to trick his old Lord that he was now the true master of the Elder Wand.
Good gracious, I was lucky Harry Potter was here, always at the place he is not supposed to be, Snape thought, felling humiliated and accomplished at the same time because he finally managed to give his most deeply hidden memories to the Boy Who Might Die Soon, sparing himself the pain and the shame of retelling them in person, and in so many words…
And he started to feel tremendously pleased for having completely outsmarted Voldemort at the very end. Just like he always wanted.
Before the children left, he begged inwardly for being allowed to conserve a minimum of dignity in death, so he closed his eyes and counted to ten, clearing his mind of all considerations, waiting to be alone to die. There was nothing left for him to do, and he thought he wanted to let go.
He felt weaker, but essentially the same. He counted again, this time to 20.
Unchanged in weakness, not getting any worse or better, Snape winced when the gaping wound on his neck started causing him blunt pain. He counted to 30.
Feeling a pool of blood cooling down his skin and his robes, Snape realised he was still alive and alone. Suddenly no self-imposed barrier could hold back the unwanted eruption of his thoughts. Paralysed, he could not move. A secondary effect of Nagini's venom, he guessed. What the hell was happening to him? He remembered his life in excruciating detail and he found that now, when it was too late, the bottom line was, he was most definitely not ready to die.
Cold fear burned in his throat when he heard a sound of gentle rolling of a giant body in the outside corridor. The snake was approaching again, coiling on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. Once was enough, he thought, opening his eyes, decided to face his doom like a man. If he was one, of which he had never been too sure ever since he started his association with the Dark Lord.
The snake stopped and raised her head up high, hissing and judging her prey.
Severus's heart almost halted, pounding madly, like a drum.
And then the snake flickered at the edges in a vaguely familiar way, hinting that the reality was all wrong.
Shifted.
The snake diminished in size until she turned into a much smaller animal. Severus sensed that the bite holes proportionally decreased in size, dwindling into two small dots, which oozed only an almost imperceptible trickle of blood.
A glamour just wore off, he analysed, such a simple spell, not demanding almost any power, and yet so efficient to fool wizards.
He wished he could see the real extent of his injuries and estimate his chances for survival. The feeling of wetness on his robes nearly disappeared, but he could still not move or talk.
And the feeling of weakness increased, so he may have been dying after all, only at a slower pace.
But what the hell bit me if Nagini did not? Snape wondered.
The familiar, small grey lizard with tiny, yellow, spiked dots crawled towards Severus, who lay like an orphan child abandoned in the corner of the dark shabby room. A slender figure materialised, all clad in black, thick brown curls caressing her face. The pin was gone, the hair dishevelled, and Val an image of a witch of old; a siren with shining shadows in her hair.
Soon, a pair of warm arms grabbed Severus and hugged him fiercely. His blood trickled slowly, staining her clothing as well. Severus wondered which T-shirt he felt she was wearing, camouflaged in starkness of her imaginary robes.
"I couldn't let him. I'm so sorry. I'm as selfish as my mother must have been. But I couldn't let him kill you!"
Snape had no idea what Val was rambling about. He tried to open his mouth but only a strange blurb came out.
"Shhhhh. Don't talk for once. It was not Nagini, but it was still a bite. I had to bite you to make it look real. Otherwise he wouldn't have left. He'd do it himself as he did for my father."
Severus puzzled face must have looked priceless as Val proceeded with bandaging his neck wound, using a clean portion of black textile she tore off her robes, which were apparently somewhat real for the occasion.
He was even more uncertain about his fate when he realized that one of the best magic healers he had known did not, or perhaps could not, use magic to close his wound.
"But that's not all", Val continued, between stressed and extremely tired. "That's not all that happened, not nearly."
"As soon as you disappeared I knew I had to find you. And I knew you would have gone to Him. So I went out on the grounds when the battle began. I was wandering around, hidden in the realm I created with all the sleeping souls, looking for disturbances crossing the dimensions, for damaged souls. The biggest one came from the Shrieking Shack. I came here in a hurry and first I found only the snake, alone in a transparent cage, waiting for her Master…"
Val paused as if it was painful, or shameful to continue.
Dust flew in the air and two mice ran away, amazed at the stupidity of humans, who once gain invaded their living space conquered with difficulty, instead of going back to their luxurious dwellings elsewhere, full of riches and foods where rodents were not permitted.
"How do you think I stole Voldemort's memories for Bellatrix?" Val said finally.
"I never told you, did I? I was the snake, Severus. Or rather, what all of you saw as a snake was me in my poor little Animagus form, a cold-blooded creature from the warm, fertile lands so far away from here that I might never live to see them again."
"I used a paralysing concoction on the real Nagini in Malfoy Manor to keep her away. I shifted my Animagus form into another dimension and I showed all of you Nagini in her crawling splendour... The same way I can change my clothing to look like proper robes when I don't play the piano in our pub. Luckily lizards and snakes are zoologically related and size is only a matter of perception, so the shift didn't cost me that much energy…"
Manifestly lacking the strength to go on, she still somehow managed to go on talking, as if there was no other way out of their situation but the truth. "And the very first time that Voldemort caught me I threw myself after the snake, in order to snitch some scales which the real Nagini shed when she passed. Back in my shop I brewed several portions of Polyjuice Potion with her scales, upon a sudden attack of inspiration, I never knew why..."
Green meadow invaded Snape's mind when she stopped talking again. She must have done it almost unconsciously, to calm her beating heart and her dying man. The notion he was hers was ridiculous, yet it left a strong imprint on the potions master.
Severus looked deep into Val's crystal coloured eyes, and blurbed out a legilimency spell, lucky for still holding his wand in a stony grasp of his paralyzed hands.
Soon he could address her in his thoughts. "Let me in."
Val smiled: "I always did. I can hear you, Severus."
"You are crazy, Voldemort could have sensed the deception! You rolled around his neck! He could have killed you."
"Well, he didn't. Animals have a much simpler mind. And that makes them rather resistant and also uninteresting for Legilimency of any kind. There's just not so much to read. Even when a part of the soul of the Dark Lord is stored in them…" Val said bitterly.
"What?"
"Nagini is also a Horcrux, Severus. When I found her today, here in the Shrieking Shack, I moved her to a totally new dimension where she was alone and apart from everyone else. And when I do that, I sense the truth of things. I felt the shadow that was in her, the imprint of the Dark Lord," Val shivered as his first year students would in fear of Snape; and it was the first time that Severus saw Val afraid of Voldemort.
"I almost felt sorry for the snake and then I passed out of exhaustion. I don't know what gave me the force to maintain the shift for the snake, and I knew she would finish me off if I wavered."
"Taking Nagini's place in the crystal cage as a lizard was the first thing I did when I regained my senses, because I could not get into it my human form. It's amazing how many magical protection spells are not designed to provide defence against the illegal Animagi," Val observed with a tiny malicious grin, which fitted her far better than fear if anyone asked Severus.
"And if I shifted any more dimensions to get rid of the real cage and conjure a new one, why, with what I pulled today in Hogwarts, and after, with the real snake, a new spell would have probably killed me," Val concluded in all simplicity.
Severus looked into Val's eyes, fighting to stay awake and resisting the urge to lay down and sleep; unsure of what to expect, content to finally hear the truth at the very end.
"So I swallowed the Polyjuice Potion, as a lizard", Val stuttered. "It had a pretty disgusting taste, mark my word, and I changed into Nagini, directly from my Animagus form."
"I bit you, Severus. I'm so sorry! I am so dreadfully sorry!" Val completely freaked out at her last admission, and Snape could not understand her distress. If Nagini didn't bite him, he'd live, wouldn't he?
"And while my lizard's bite is way less devastating in physical terms, it's a ten times more potent poison than Nagini's!"
Good for fighting the Acromantulas, he told her through Legilimency, smirking and struggling not to faint.
He would stay awake only a little bit longer, to observe a good looking woman on the verge of crying over his destiny; a tribute he wasn't sure he deserved, but it flattered his ego nonetheless.
"I as good as killed you," she whimpered, in a sound totally not befitting Val, his formerly fearless associate, who served beers at the Death Eaters party posing as a Muggle without flinching; the witch who would pull his hair worse than all the Marauders put together.
"And there is no known cure against my poison!" Val wept bitterly, and Severus enjoyed seeing her tears, as if they were a most passionate declaration of love.
His black gaze did not leave her for a second, but his desire to rest started turning all-pervasive.
"Do it again. I'd rather like it if it was you," he whispered insistently in her head.
"What are you talking about, Severus?"
"Bite me, for Merlin's sake. Finish what you have started."
"What?"
"Harry is also a Horcrux. He also has to die and I sent him to his death on Dumbledore´s orders. I want to go as well."
"You and Albus and your cursed secrets! No wonder Ariana hates him!" Val exclaimed fiercely and hugged Severus tighter, until he turned almost blue from too getting too little air.
He also suffered from the most unpleasant sensation that his throat may have started swelling.
"Severus, listen to me very carefully. I think we have to wait until the battle is over to see what happens to Harry. Think of all that has happened since we met. You thought what I did was impossible, dimension shifting. Maybe there are more impossible things going on that we haven't heard about. Knowing Albus, he has kept secrets from everybody. Or he just plain doesn't know. No one knows what will happen. Not for sure."
Snape's eyes looked well and truly dead, more tired than the world could get from its incessant turning.
"Please, Val," he begged her. "I cannot do it myself. Transform. Swallow more Polyjuice if that'll make it go easier for you. Whatever. Give me another bite. My mission is over. I want to have some peace. For the first time I understand how Albus must have felt when he… when he asked me…"
Totally bewildered, Val invaded Severus's mind-scape with the even greener meadow of her own, and shushed his mind talk with a loud sound of the twittering of birds.
"You are lying," she said, understanding at last, "I don't know if you're lying to me or to yourself. You don't want to die."
There was no answer to her statement, real or through legilimency. She nervously flicked an untamed curl of brown hair around her fingers; a silvery gleam of it she tried so hard to hide from people clearly shone visibly in the dim light of the surroundings.
"A bite you said," she stated with her eyes getting darker and narrower, almost like snake slits.
But their colour remained blue, not red, or green, and they bore him no ill will.
Snape closed his eyes in surrender and felt a sensation on one side of his neck, just above his shoulder. It was something that no one had done before, not to him, something he read about in readers' confessions of their intimate exploits in adult section of Witch Weakly that he was particularly ashamed of consulting. Well… The sensation trailed up from his neck towards his right ear, gently, bit by bit. He then felt it on his cheek right before a pair of warm lips briefly teased his, only to squeeze his lower lip gently between her own in the end.
"Would this qualify?" Val asked softly.
Opening his eyes again, Severus could not focus on her face, dangerously too close to his, too close for him to feel comfortable. He didn't want to allow people in his personal space, yet there she was, undeterred by him since the first day when he met her.
Later he had never known if it was due to her kiss or because enough time had passed since the lizard bite, but feeling returned to his limbs just then and the most natural thing to do was to pull her in his arms and hold her tight, forgetting the progress of the swelling inside his throat.
He decided to stay awake as long as he could and savour his parting gift from life.
"There is this one thing," she said, "but it may not even work, and so much is at stake."
She disentangled herself from his embrace and paced the room as if she needed space to make a difficult decision.
He felt her absence acutely, and the feeling of cold where her body had been kept him awake for another moment, cutting through the urge to give in to slumber that would mean his end.
She was beautiful.
And she had always hidden it from him, her real soft, rounded face and her colourful hair.
The realization struck him that even with her stern face and hair up, and with her body buried in the black robes more old-fashioned than Minerva's, she would have been equally beautiful to him.
And he mostly managed to arrive at important realizations in life only when it was too late to act upon them.
"I will try something now," she said, tentatively, as if she had reached a decision she was not particularly happy with.
"You lost too much blood and I have to do this now if there's any chance for this to work. But just in case that your overly analytical minds will be having second thoughts, I'm going to spell it out for you. Your injury is not the only reason I'm doing it, and if it was, than the ritual wouldn't work anyway," Val explained.
She squatted in front of him and traced his eyebrows with both of her thumbs, as she had already done before in a broom cupboard. But this time he could not dismiss it as a stupid coincidence not meaning a thing, because she also kissed him right above his eyes, first above his right eye and then above his left eye, causing the bright light of revelation to shine on his sallow face.
"You are not?!… You can't be serious!" he froze when he recognised what ritual she had just started.
"Yes, I am, Severus, watch me." Val took his right hand with her left hand and tied another torn piece of her black robes around both of their hands in a tight knot, patiently waiting for his reaction. "Your turn. Take it or leave it."
The silence was long and too loud with things unsaid. The wooden floor beams cracked as Val sank down on them closing her eyes in disappointment. Her private thoughts became audible to Snape through the green meadow of her mind.
Maybe he doesn't know the ritual, she thought almost aloud in her despair, or worse, he does, as he always knows everything from the books and he doesn't want us to…
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Her eyes still closed Val felt a tentative male thumb tracing her right eyebrow and then her left eyebrow, a kiss above her right eye and then above her left eye. Severus took her right hand with his left hand, and slowly folded both of them together on the top of the knot of hands Val had already made between them.
When Val finally opened her eyes, Severus was mutely staring at her. His eyes wore no expression at all, they only trespassed into hers, endlessly.
So this is how it happens, father, Val thought, it is every bit as beautiful as I thought it should be.
For at that very moment, Val Peverell gave up her dimension shifting gift as it was written of old.
When an old ritual marriage bond that used to be common among the wizards was initiated by a dimension shifter, losing one's gift was the price to pay, and the vow could be made only if they loved someone deeply and were loved in return.
The main reason for this, as Val had learned, was that true love tolerated no lies. No deception or tricks, well intended or not, no running away, or evil jokes Val was so fond of.
The bond could not be unmade. One would live as long as the other one survived, no matter how badly injured one of the partners might be. Until one day they would pass together to the other side, too tired to resist the everlasting challenge of life.
That, at least, was the theory, which remained to be tested against the working of a rare poison with no known cure.
Once that she had done it, Val felt strangely at ease and guiltless, where a few minutes ago she nearly succumbed under the burden of obligation to keep everyone safe for the duration of the battle, which accidentally also meant leaving Severus to die.
I did what I could, she thought. So did he. No one could ask of us to do more, could they? We all have our fair chance now, to live or to die. Me and him by our bond, and all the others by their own actions.
She felt very cold, just like her Animagus in the British climate, and a desire to rest became omnipotent. Severus was already dozing from what she could tell, his neck somewhat swollen and unhealthy green in colour. The Legilimency spell was severed.
She untied their hands and sat next to him, making him lean on her, leaning on him in equal measure, trying to make them both comfortable as her healer's instincts required, and failing miserably.
The dimension shifting spell Val cast to protect Hogwarts continued running in the void, losing its point of origin. The only thing keeping it in place was the amplifying power of the Veil of Death. Val hoped before falling asleep that Severus didn't know of this particular aspect of what they did, for the losing of the gift was one of the few best kept secrets of the wizards and witches of her kind.
It was selfish, but she couldn't help it.
She didn't want him to blame himself for her choices, and to jeopardize his uncertain recovery with knowledge that if anything went wrong, and if the current dimension shift was broken, there would be no magical protection left for a single living being in Hogwarts.
And the battle was far from over.
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A/N There are no such poisonous lizards in Brazil. This fact is purely an invention of mine. Visually, I imagine Val's Animagus as either Enyalioides laticeps or Enyalioides palpebralis, or anything else you like.