37

Severus had never been to Arabella Figg's house. By the time he had openly joined the Order, she had moved to Little Whinging to keep an eye on the Boy Who Lived, and her proximity to the Dursleys had rendered her house an inadvisable location for Order meetings.

However, if he had ever had nothing better to do than to imagine her home, he would have pictured it exactly as it was: full of frayed lace doilies and fragile figurines, most of which were missing limbs, no doubt due to the plethora of mischievous part-Kneazles, who, Severus could only assume, were intelligent enough to find the figurines as disgusting as he did. Every article of furniture was coated in cat hair. Clumps of fur clustered in corners, and a strong smell of tuna and cat urine permeated the air. Severus wasn't sure if the house was always like this or if Figg had simply been too busy with her Order duties to clean, but it took all of his self-control not to cast a few surreptitious Cleaning Charms on her behalf.

The part-Kneazles seemed to enjoy the sudden appearance of so many people. They wound in and out of legs, sniffing at shoes and batting at robes, and Severus found himself backed into a corner by three of them, all of whom seemed determined to shed as much hair as possible all over his torn, filthy robes. Their curious mews reminded him sharply of Fiend, and he couldn't stop himself from tensing, impatient for Moody to return from his latest trip to the Ministry.

Around the table, only a handful of Order members had gathered. Minerva had allowed one of the part-Kneazles to climb into her lap and was petting it with a deadened expression on her face. Alice Longbottom had dropped her head onto her arms, looking as though she had aged a decade, while Frank ran his fingers over her filthy hair in a movement that might have been as much for his comfort as for hers. James Potter, against everyone's expectations, had insisted on attending the meeting, and sat glaring at the table with a kind of furious anguish; beside him, Lily glanced helplessly from him to her mother, who seemed to have followed the wizards without anyone noticing. Harry Potter stood in the corner opposite Severus, staring at his parents, while beside him Ginny Weasley was making an obvious effort not to look at her father and Prewett uncles, who were sitting in another corner, clearly trying to be as unobtrusive as possible in the face of the wedding guests' trauma.

Arabella Figg was just passing out what looked like very dry cakes when they heard the front door open and the familiar clunk-clunk of Moody's wooden leg. A moment later, a blur of orange shot into the room, scattering part-Kneazles everywhere and sending the three clustered around Severus's ankles darting for cover. Fiend sprang into Severus's arms, bristling and glaring around at the other felines with a possessive hiss.

"I have been looking for you," Severus said quietly.

She gave him a reproachful look, as if measuring whether he had been trying to replace her with Figg's inferior creatures, then settled more comfortably in his arms.

"Hope you've got some treats for her," Moody said. "She caught Pettigrew."

The other Order members, who had barely taken notice of the Kneazle's arrival, looked up in surprise and anticipation.

"Pettigrew's in custody?" Arthur Weasley asked.

"Yep. Snape brought him in." Moody jerked his head behind him, then moved out of the way as Severus's younger self and Miss Granger entered the room, looking even wearier and bloodier than everyone else.

"Dobby helped," the younger Severus said.

"Dobby?" Harry asked, looking astounded until Ginny elbowed him pointedly in the ribs. "Er," he hastily corrected, "who's that?"

Severus resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He could tell his younger self was doing the same.

"The Malfoys' house-elf," Moody said. "Former house-elf, rather. You didn't mention he'd helped," he added, looking at the younger Severus.

The boy shrugged. He looked bone-weary, pale and thin and on the verge of collapse. Severus kicked out the chair nearest him and both his younger self and Miss Granger came to sit near the corner where he was standing.

Severus gave Miss Granger a piercing look, searching uncomfortably for any sign of the "potential" Potter and the Weasley girl had mentioned, but though her eyes had brightened slightly at the sight of him, all he could really distinguish was exhaustion. She dropped into her chair with all the grace of a Blast-Ended Skrewt and began fiddling with the ring on her finger.

"Where's Sirius?" James Potter asked.

For a moment, no one spoke. Alice had raised her head from the table and was staring at Miss Granger's ring. Harry and Ginny were looking curiously at the younger Severus. It was Moody who finally answered.

"Azkaban."

After the devastation of his wedding, the death of his parents and Lupin, and the subsequent capture of Pettigrew, Severus was not really surprised that this latest blow to Potter resulted in half the figurines in the room exploding.

"Careful, boy!" Figg cried.

"Mr. Potter!" Minerva exclaimed.

Potter was on his feet. It was beyond strange to see him again. In Severus's memory, Potter had always loomed large, the rich, arrogant tormentor who had absconded with Lily's heart. Though Severus had despised him, it had been impossible to think of him as anything but an equal, a threat; now he was just a teenager, orphaned and grief-stricken. Severus didn't feel any special warmth toward him, but it was unnerving to feel a sudden emptiness where the hatred of James Potter had resided for so long.

Then Potter looked at Miss Granger and snarled, "I thought she was supposed to marry him!"

Miss Granger shifted in her seat, though whether in discomfort at Potter's accusation or at the fact that every eye in the room was now fixed on her was difficult to say.

"She married Snape," Moody said.

It was clear from Potter's expression that he had not yet made this connection, though Severus felt certain everyone else in the room had. The boy's face twisted in revulsion and abject shock. "Snape?"

Severus watched his younger self discreetly slide his hand into his robes, and knew he was clenching his wand. How many times had he himself done so, every time Potter was anywhere near? And though he was no longer afraid of this arrogant boy, it was plain his younger self had not yet overcome that itching, unshakable fear.

"Snape wasn't even arrested," James said slowly, as if trying to make sense of what Moody was telling him. "Why would she marry him?"

Everyone's attention focused on Miss Granger once more. She shrank back in her chair, turning red and looking thoroughly overwhelmed.

"That is hardly your concern, Mr. Potter," Severus said.

The attention shifted to him, then promptly to his younger self, then back again.

"I thought Snape's family was dead," Potter said coldly, though his voice shook on the last word.

"Yes. As I understand, you raised the subject with my nephew at every opportunity," Severus replied. "I daresay you were too busy reveling in the idea to verify its accuracy."

Potter flushed deeply.

Arthur Weasley cleared his throat. "We've all had a, er, terrible day. Let's just –"

"I want to know why she didn't marry Sirius!" Potter snapped, recovering. "Why does he have to rot in Azkaban while Snape gets to –"

"Because he violated the law, that's why!" Moody retorted.

"The law is WRONG!" Potter shouted.

"I know that, Potter," Moody growled. "But it would have been Snape in Azkaban a few weeks from now, and if Granger wants to pick him over Black, that's her prerogative."

Potter's face twisted. "What kind of woman would pick Snape over Sirius? He's just a cowardly, sniveling –"

"Cowardly?" Frank Longbottom asked. "He killed half a dozen Death Eaters!"

Severus felt a cold weight settle in his stomach. His younger self had killed? Now, at nineteen? He himself had only ever killed one man, and that only after Dumbledore had begged him to do so…

His younger self glared defiantly at all the staring faces, but Severus could see the lines of misery in his expression, the tension in shoulders that would have been trembling if he had not been fighting so hard to control himself.

"So he's a killer," Potter spat. "Well, that's no surprise, is it? He wanted to be a Death Eater –"

"But he's not," Alice said sharply. "We're all on the same side, James –"

"SIRIUS WAS ON OUR SIDE FIRST!"

"So Granger has to marry him, is that it?"

"YES!" Potter roared. It was several seconds before he noticed the looks on the other Order members' faces. "No," he said. "That's not what I meant."

"Really?" Alice asked, scowling.

"I just don't see why Sirius should be in Azkaban when that slimeball is walking free!"

"Obviously," Alice said, "it's because Granger prefers slimeballs. There's no point in crying about it now."

Potter looked like he was ready to keep crying about it, but in that moment Dumbledore appeared in the doorway, yellow robes stained a sickening brownish hue. The part-Kneazles sniffed at him curiously.

"The last of the victims have been identified," he said quietly.

Potter sat down.

"The losses we suffered today are immeasurable," Dumbledore continued, in a soft, tired tone that reminded Severus of so many speeches like this, given whenever the Order had failed in its mission to protect the innocent. "Mothers and fathers, friends and colleagues are lost to us. I ask you all to observe a moment of silence in their memory."

The silence would have been solemn, if not for the intermittent mewling of the part-Kneazles. Severus could not focus on the memory of the dead. Too much had happened; too much still needed to happen. He would mourn when there was time, but this forced minute in a room full of ghosts meant nothing.

He could see that others felt the same. Though Arthur Weasley, his brothers-in-law, and Minerva had all bowed their heads, Potter was gritting his teeth, and Lily was watching him with worried eyes. Severus could see that his younger self was staring at Dumbledore with an expression of deepest distrust and dislike, while the three teenagers from Severus's own world were exchanging tired, guilty glances.

Dumbledore raised his head. "It would be easy to allow the horror and pain of this tragedy to divide us. Everyone in this room is capable of great love, and yet even we may find it much simpler to hate than to forgive, to seek solace in anger rather than in the loving memories that are now tinged with grief. I must ask you not to do this. I must ask you to find the strength within yourselves to remember those you loved, and the compassion to forgive yourselves and each other for the losses you were powerless to prevent. We made every effort to keep our friends and families safe today, and yet even our best efforts failed. I must ask you to remember who is responsible for that failure, and to dedicate all your grief and strength to uniting against him."

Dumbledore paused, gazing at each of them with his piercing blue eyes. Severus met the grief and resolve in the familiar look with his own.

In a harder tone, Dumbledore said, "Of Voldemort's known Death Eaters – those who had not yet been captured and imprisoned in Azkaban – all but Bellatrix Lestrange are dead. The Ministry," and here his voice darkened, "is considering this a victory, despite the loss of innocent lives. The victims have been hailed as heroes and will be awarded posthumous Orders of Merlin, Second Class. The Minister was inclined to declare Voldemort all but defeated, but Barty Crouch has advised against it. Considering how many previously unknown Death Eaters were among the dead, he is of the opinion that Voldemort may have other allies the Ministry is unaware of."

"What do you think?" Arthur Weasley asked.

"It is my belief," Dumbledore said, "that the majority of Lord Voldemort's forces have been killed or captured."

There was some hopeful murmuring.

"However," he said, "this will likely escalate the immediate danger to innocent lives. Voldemort will wish to prove to the Wizarding public that he has not been defeated. Moreover, he will wish to increase his forces as quickly as possible. I think it can safely be assumed that his primary goal in the coming weeks will be releasing his captured Death Eaters from Azkaban. It is likely he will attempt to recruit the Dementors to accomplish this, thereby swelling his forces with the most terrible ally he could hope to find."

"What can we do?" one of the Prewetts asked.

"I have warned the Minister of the likelihood that the Dementors will turn against us. He does not wish to acknowledge the possibility. However, Crouch has agreed to set an Auror guard around the prison to watch for any envoy of Lord Voldemort who may be sent to negotiate with them. This of course means that the Auror force will be stretched even thinner than it is already. I think it likely," he looked at Frank and Alice, "that your training will end even sooner than expected."

Frank nodded, looking unsurprised. Alice had a fierce light in her eyes.

"The Aurors should ask for volunteers," Harry said suddenly.

Everyone looked at him. Until now (and probably for the first time in his life, Severus imagined), he had barely drawn a moment's notice from the rest of the room. Now they frowned at him in slight bafflement.

"You have a secret twin, Potter?" Fabian Prewett asked.

James Potter gave his son a suspicious look. "Who are you?"

"Harry Peverell," Harry said. "I'm a distant cousin." At the doubtful looks around him, he added, "Does it really matter? If you can get the Aurors to accept volunteers, instead of insisting on years of training and a million Outstanding N.E.W.T.s, you can increase their numbers right now."

"You can't ask untrained people to fight," Moody said. "Ethical considerations aside, it'd be chaos."

"They wouldn't need to take on full Auror duties," Ginny said. "Even if you just use them as a warning system –"

"Guarding places or events Riddle might try to attack –"

"They could contact the Aurors instantly, so we wouldn't have to wait half an hour for them to show their faces. The Order, too."

"We could hand out coins with the Protean Charm on them," Harry added. "We've used them before –"

"Yeah, we've seen one," Moody said. "Granger's handiwork. And you want to hand them out like candy, eh?"

"Not to everyone," Harry said hastily. "Obviously we'd have to make sure they can be trusted –"

"Not a lot of people can be," Moody said.

"We could enchant the coins to react if they're touched by a Death Eater," Miss Granger said suddenly. Her voice was quiet, exhausted, but Severus could tell from the certainty in her tone that she had already thought of a way to alter the Death Eater wards he had shown her to bewitch the coins.

"We could make the coins deactivate," she continued. "Or –"

"Add a tracking spell," Severus said, in the same instant his younger self said, "Kill them."

There was a moment of stunned silence. Severus stared at his younger self, who flushed, the lines of misery no less pronounced for all that a hardness had settled over his face.

"A tracking spell might lead us to other Death Eaters," Severus pointed out quietly.

"A curse would stop them from hurting anyone else before we can get there," his younger self replied.

Severus held his younger self's gaze. "Are you prepared to take responsibility for the deaths that might result? The Dark Lord has recruited Hogwarts students. Would you condemn adolescents younger than yourself to death for a mistake that you might just as easily have made?"

Something flashed in his younger self's eyes, something that struck Severus as less like shame than contempt – contempt for him, for the choice he had made, the choice his younger self had been wise enough to refuse.

"We don't have to kill them," Miss Granger said into the tense silence. "We can use a different curse –"

"Your castration spell?" Severus asked with arched eyebrow.

Miss Granger flushed, but Miss Weasley said, "Technically it was my castration spell."

"No," Miss Granger said, recovering. "Obviously, that was a mistake. You saw how many female Death Eaters there were. And we know Bellatrix is still out there…"

"We just need to disable them," Harry said. "We could use Petrificus Totalus –"

"Too easy to break," Moody said. "First years can manage that spell."

"There are other paralysis spells that are more… resilient," Severus said. And painful, he thought.

"Paralyzing them would be better than killing them anyway," Alice said. "That way we can interrogate them. And it's better than just using a tracking spell, too – a trace could be disrupted if they Apparate to a warded location, but if they're paralyzed first, they're not going anywhere."

"There's still the risk of him recruiting people without giving them the Dark Mark," Harry said. "So we'll have to be at least reasonably sure these coins are going to people on our side –"

"Otherwise they could lure us into a trap," Ginny added.

"Perhaps Miss Granger could draw up a contract," Severus said. "With consequences for any who betray its terms."

Miss Granger shot him a furtive, embarrassed look, as though she hadn't realized he knew about the circumstances of Marietta Edgecomb's scarring. Foolish of her; the entire school had been talking about it. It had certainly given his Slytherins pause to know what she was capable of. Even he had been surprised by her willingness to inflict permanent harm.

"Might be better if the consequences weren't obvious," Moody said thoughtfully. "Just a heads up to us that any message from that coin might be compromised – in case the betrayal isn't voluntary."

"Can you do all that?" Alice asked, eyeing Miss Granger curiously.

"I think so." Miss Granger shifted uncomfortably again. "But first S-Severus and I need to deal with these rings." She shot Severus another glance, as if calling her husband by his first name would draw his ire.

"What d'you mean, 'deal' with them?" James Potter asked, frowning at her. "You can't get around the law, Dumbledore's already tried."

Miss Granger shrank a little, glancing at Dumbledore, before squaring her shoulders and saying, "I'd like to try myself."

A few people gave her pitying looks. Moody looked intrigued. "And if it doesn't work?"

The younger Severus glared. "Then we'll leave the country."

Potter snorted. "Running away, Snivellus?"

"Would you consider rape preferable?" the younger Severus spat.

Potter flushed, then smirked, a dark, vicious look that Severus knew well but that seemed, on Potter's grief-stricken, bloodstained face, far more disturbing than he remembered. "So she doesn't like you."

"It wouldn't matter if I was in love with him," Miss Granger snapped. "I'm not complying with this disgusting law."

"Heard that one before," one of the Prewetts muttered.

"Not from Hermione, you haven't," Harry said.

"I doubt she'll have any more luck than Dumbledore," Potter said, sounding almost triumphant.

Harry's expression faltered slightly, but he looked serious when he asked Miss Granger, "Do you think you can do it?"

"I have no idea," she said. "I haven't had a chance to look at the rings yet."

"I would like to examine them as well," Severus said.

"Perhaps," Dumbledore said, "we should adjourn for the evening. Many of you need time to mourn… And, despite all the horror and grief of today, I think two of you still have something to celebrate."

Potter glanced at Lily, who blushed. Once upon a time a look like that would have tortured Severus beyond imagining. Now, he felt only the same vague nausea that always accompanied witnessing teenage romance.

His younger self was not looking at Lily or Potter, but at the floor. It was impossible to tell whether he was suffering the throes of jealousy or merely anger. Until a few hours ago, Severus would have assumed the former… but there could be no denying the way his younger self's attention had stayed focused on Miss Granger from the moment they had sat down. Whether that attention was simply attachment to an ally or an attachment of a different sort remained to be seen. It seemed almost incomprehensible that in a matter of mere days his affections might have shifted from Lily to anyone else. Surely he was not so fickle?

But would it really be to his discredit if he were?

Could he ever shift his affections with such ease?

No, he thought, unnerved by the thought. I have loved Lily for almost as long as I can remember. I love her.

And yet, he most certainly did not love the girl sitting across the room, making doe eyes at Potter.

It would be a simple matter to tell himself that she was not his Lily, but it would be the truth only in the most technical sense. She was Lily: Lily, who had chosen Potter; Lily, who would have married him within months even without the marriage law. She was older already than she had been the last time Severus had seen her. His duties for the Dark Lord had never brought him close to the circles she had entered after graduating Hogwarts. He had seen her at her funeral, but that was not the same.

This was Lily, the person Lily had become, the person she evidently would become in any world.

She was very pretty, and still had her sweet smile, but the absolutely heart-wrenching magic of her presence was nowhere to be found. Certainly not within himself.

She was just a girl.

Some kind of pain tore through him at the thought, dragging loose feelings he had never dared acknowledge: fear, chiefly, the fear that crawled out of his deepest anguish, in his darkest moods – the fear that everything he had done, everything he had sacrificed, was for nothing, for an ideal that didn't exist – that it had all been a waste. His life had struck him as worthless from the moment Lily had cast it aside, and yet there had always been that terror, deep and shameful and selfish, that it was Lily who was wrong, that she had made a mistake, and that he had made a mistake in not realizing it.

But he had been wrong, and he knew it. Whether she was the enchanting embodiment of all that was good and pure in the world, or just a pretty girl who had gotten tired of him, she had not deserved to die. None of the people who had died because of what he had given the Dark Lord, the secrets and poisons, his very soul, had deserved it. All the years he had sacrificed in Lily's memory should have been given as freely as he had given them.

But perhaps he should have sacrificed them for something else.

Nothing else had mattered to him. He knew that, he remembered it well. Even now, there was very little that did. At twenty-one, Lily had been the one and only precious thing that had ever entered his life, the only person he had ever loved, the only person who had ever been (so he thought) unreservedly kind to him.

If he couldn't love her, did he simply love no one? Was he alone, unloving and unloved? He had Fiend – he supposed he loved her in a way. But he had shut away the rest of himself and dedicated it to Lily and Lily alone. The best of you, Dumbledore had called it once. And he, Severus, had refused to reveal it to anyone; had refused to even touch it himself.

Minerva, Filius, the Longbottoms, Miss Granger… They mattered to him, but his feelings for them had never been truly deep. There was a place inside of him that nothing had been able to pierce from the moment Lily had died, and he doubted now whether anything ever would again.

Not even, it seemed, Lily herself.

Fiend's claws dug into his chest. He suspected that, Occlumency shields or no, she could sense his distress. He ran a soothing hand over her fur, but it was far from enough to soothe him.

It shouldn't have caused him so much pain. He had accepted long ago that he would never love again, that he had wasted that chance irrevocably. Yet, through it all, he had still had Lily; even dead, she was a fierce, bright, painful presence inside him, the one truly good thing in all the world.

Standing there in Arabella Figg's dirty dining room, he felt that presence disappear with such sudden force that the space it left behind was an agonizing void.

He had never, in all his life, felt so alone.

Fiend squirmed in his arms, lifting her paw up to his face and resting it against the side of his nose. He met her little golden gaze, and though of course there was no understanding there, he could see worry, and the desire to make him feel better.

He let out a long, silent breath and forced his feelings down. He could not afford to think of it now. Not with Miss Granger married to his younger self, and Voldemort's defeat within their grasp. He needed to focus again, to become the spy he had left behind. Whatever else he was could wait.