"Normal speech"
Thoughts
"Mental speech"
"Non-English speech"
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. J.K. Rowling, her publishers, and Warner Brothers own Harry Potter.
Chapter 54
"Well?" Severus demanded once Gellert and Hellspawn had returned. "Did he bother to tell you what he was hiding?"
Gellert nodded. He and Hellspawn had agreed upon a cover story before apparating back to the storage crate. He did not want Severus to die. If lying to his friend could prolong the man's life, then it was worth the risk of his anger should the deception be discovered. "The ring horcrux. It has my symbol upon it. Albus believes it might once have been mine, a ring that I had given to him before we parted ways all those years ago." He shook his head, smiling fondly. "Albus always was careless with his things."
Severus raised an eyebrow. "And this was worth hiding from Minerva and Moody?" he scoffed.
Gellert gave an artful shrug. "It had . . . sentimental significance. I believe that poor Albus is still in denial about the others' awareness of our former relationship."
Severus snorted. To Gellert's relief, he did not pursue the matter.
"And your meeting with Riddle?" Gellert asked after a moment. "I take it from your continued survival that he does not suspect?"
"He accepted my version of events," Severus said.
"You are certain?" Hellspawn asked.
"He did not deign to torture me," Severus replied drily. "I am certain."
-DVDVDV-
After Gellert left, Albus Dumbledore reflected on their conversation. In particular, he thought about the partial exchange he had witnessed between Gellert and Hellspawn.
Harry being a horcrux upset Hellspawn far more than I would have expected. It dismayed Fawkes, but Hellspawn seemed panicked. Something I would never have expected to see from a phoenix.
Mordred regrets the death of a lost love.
Either of these alone might not have been enough to arouse Albus's suspicions. Combined, they hinted at Mordred's identity.
Severus.
Albus hoped he was wrong, but knew that he needed to confirm or deny his theory. He retrieved his pensieve and siphoned off memories. He dove in.
Severus sitting in the Great Hall, casting detection spells on his meal. Mordred at Grimmauld Place, casting the same spells. Not surprising, if Mordred trained Severus, but even so . . . .
Severus at home, casually casting charms without his wand. Gellert at Grimmauld Place, implying that Mordred is an expert in charms.
Severus, kneeling naked before an equally unclothed Voldemort. Sybill's description of the half-blood prince, "desired by the Dark Lord."
Severus, raising a mocking eyebrow in a staff meeting as Lockhart preened. Mordred, raising a mocking eyebrow at Albus's indignation over killing.
Mordred's blond eyebrows were shaped differently than Severus's black ones. The contours of his face were entirely different. Even so, the expressiveness of the gesture, the timing . . . they were identical.
Albus reminded himself that this was not proof. After all, Aberforth had commented that his and Gellert's eyes twinkled in exactly the same manner and with as little provocation. If Mordred and Severus were close, then some similarities of habit were bound to cross over.
It was still evidence, though.
Could Severus be the half-blood prince? He is a half-blood, but a prince? Albus recalled Severus as a student, clad in threadbare robes and clutching secondhand books. No prince would be so ill-kept, surely. Albus tried to remember what little he knew of Severus's family. His muggle father killed his Enobarbus-stricken mother. "A dead housewife in a dead town," Severus had said while under veritaserum. Unlikely to be royalty. Unless "prince" was metaphorical? Albus remembered hearing about a muggle story, The Prince and the Pauper. He resolved to read it.
If Severus is Mordred, he is far better actor than I had imagined. It is one thing to lie convincingly to me or to Voldemort. It is quite another to assume a different personality while doing so. Mordred is cold and stiffly polite. A diplomat, alternating between barbs and placating. He reminds me of Barty Crouch, or perhaps Lucius Malfoy. A politician's politician. Severus is volatile, going from caged menace to deranged fury in an instant. He fights when he should talk, and goads when he should remain silent. They cannot be the same man.
Albus again saw the eyebrows raised in mockery.
Severus, crumpled in a grief-stricken heap after Lily Potter died. Gellert, warning Mordred's phoenix about the Resurrection Stone's history.
Severus, regaining purpose with his promise to protect Lily's son. Hellspawn, agitated upon learning that Harry is a horcrux.
The evidence was all circumstantial. Mordred could easily be someone else.
And why would Severus take on the role of Mordred?
Because we hurt him, his conscience answered. We hurt him, and like an injured animal, he lashed out. We would not accept him for himself, so he created a new persona to gain respect.
Like Tom did.
There were so many parallels between Tom Riddle, who became Voldemort, and Severus Snape, who – perhaps – became Mordred. "Superficial similarities," Severus had called them.
Albus thought he knew Severus. He had weathered his sulks and his rages, his shame and his scorn. Through it all, Severus was a man driven by vengeance.
Voldemort killed Lily Potter, and therefore Severus would devote himself fully to Voldemort's defeat. If Mordred was truly Severus, then few would be as committed to the war effort as he.
The Order of the Phoenix, led by Albus, had failed to trust Severus. They had interrogated him harshly. Too harshly, Albus admitted. Severus responded by breaking Gellert out of Nurmengard.
"Their trust will be paid in kind," Sybill had warned.
If Mordred is Severus, then he has no cause to love either side.
And so Albus hoped that he was wrong.
How could Severus have a true phoenix? Could the scene we witnessed at Grimmauld Place have been him bonding to Hellspawn? Albus shook his head at the thought, remembering his own bonding with Fawkes. He, like Severus, had been wreathed in flames. He reminded himself that phoenixes apparated by appearing and disappearing in bursts of fire. No doubt that is what he had witnessed at Grimmauld Place. After all, a phoenix bond is a beautiful, sacred thing, a fusion of hope and strength. Severus was so angry then, so vengeful. The entire tone of the exchange was wrong for such an event.
Besides, if Severus ever suffered through true remorse, surely it would have been after Lily Potter died. How could he have hidden a phoenix from me for all these years? They are rather noticeable creatures. And it makes no sense for Hellspawn to have been his boggart if they had already bonded.
Albus decided to research Severus's family tree just in case. He frowned, wishing that he still had access to the Hogwarts records. Perhaps I can ask Tonks or Kingsley to check the genealogical archives stored at the Ministry. He would have to be careful about it, though. He did not want to risk anyone learning that he was researching Mordred's identity.
Mordred has not broken the terms of our alliance, Albus reminded himself. He trusted me enough to inform me of the horcrux that Severus discovered.
Mordred cannot be Severus, can he?
A/N:
Since a lot of reviewers have asked why Dumbledore doesn't make the connection between Severus and Eileen Prince, keep in mind that Dumbledore was deputy headmaster of Hogwarts in the late 1930s. This means that he has seen a minimum of 55 years of students come and go, and probably much longer (since I can't imagine Dippet making a brand new staff member the deputy headmaster). He has dealt with literally thousands of students over the years. Unless he has an eidetic memory (and I'm assuming he doesn't), it is ridiculously unlikely that he would recall every single one of them.
Instead, he would most likely only remember the ones who stood out and those he interacted with regularly later. If Eileen Prince was a quiet, decent student who promptly disappeared into the muggle world, he would have no reason to remember her. Nor would he necessarily know the names of his staff members' parents, especially their long-dead parents. Can you imagine Snape name-dropping his mother in casual conversation at the staff table? Neither can I. At most, he'd grudgingly refer to her as "my mother" while revealing as little about his childhood as possible.
As a real life example, I had 8 teachers in my first year of middle school (one for each subject). At this point, I can remember the names of only 3 of them. I'd be shocked if even 1 of these 8 teachers remembers my name, since they would have had a larger impact on my life than I - a quiet, good student – did on theirs.
Even Lupin showed no recognition of the "half-blood prince" moniker when Harry asked him about it in HBP. It might have been something Severus wrote in his textbook, but for a Marauder not to know this about their favorite victim means that it wasn't common knowledge (except maybe within Slytherin). Hermione only found out about Eileen Prince after months of research in the Hogwarts library, and even then she didn't make the Snape connection until she found Eileen's wedding announcement in an old Daily Prophet.
Sorry for the long author's note!
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