Chapter 41

For One Moment Free


As Amsu led Osiris off and the minister went to change himself, Nebthet moved around in front of the still seething Severus Snape.

"You do not like what you are feeling right now, that you are feeling at all," she said to him.

He wanted to leave, but he didn't. And it was not just because he wanted the boy to be healed, protected, and whatever else they could offer him to make up for the fact that Osiris had undertaken this for him. Right now, he would almost much rather be dead.

"Let me help you." She did not wait for an answer. She took his wrist in soft fingers but with a sure grip he found as he tried to pull it away.

She spoke again. "Breathe."

There was a long pause before she continued, "Let me show you what Ata spoke of. He will not let you stay for the ritual if you are not calm. It is why he said he would speak more later when Osiris is recovering. You are too agitated."

"Let. Me. Go." Even as he said it, he did feel something. He had felt it the moment she had touched him. He realized that she never really had touched him before. It was an odd sensation. Bad only so much as it was foreign.

"If you want to help the boy, you must do this. Ata was not using hyperbole when he said those of the Sacred Sands, especially young ones, do not do well alone. Though you are young too, and uneducated in our ways, you could have prevented some of his illness, Severus. Will you cling to stubborn imperiousness at Osiris' expense? He needs you. What has he learned to do for you? What pains has he undertaken for you?"

Trust a woman to easily strike a chord. She spoke a logic that also intertwined itself around what remained of his heart and squeezed it back to life, where it then rebounded with a hard thump.

"No." It was all the answer he could manage. He was fairly certain he would not do anything at Osiris' expense.

"Do not deny that he has changed you for the better. Why begrudge that, why push it to the outskirts, to the background? It does not belong there. You will not hurt him. The very opposite."

The tension in his tendons pressed hard against her fingers. The man lingering deep within that skin was so far withdrawn from this that it was tangible to her, pressing beneath and passed the boundaries of flesh. It was that which she knew Osiris did not like; for a child who had no explanation for it, coming aware of it would be fairly terrifying. This was arm's length from what she could generally feel, so closed the young – to her – man proved to be.

For long moments, nothing was said. She breathed calmly, waiting for the moment where he accepted her hand was not going anywhere. Finally, she loosened her grip on his wrist, holding it more lightly.

"Close your eyes." She waited until he grudgingly, by the momentary arch in his eyebrow, complied. "Do you feel it?"

"Yes." This feeling of her hand on the skin of his wrist was foreign. His ability to form any words was drastically reduced. There was a warmth to it that was more than skin on skin, a magic that radiated outward like the sort of transference they'd used for healing. It was not the same, though.

"Did you see Amsu put his hand on Ausar's shoulder while you were talking to Ata?"

"Yes." There was little he missed, but he had put it to familiarity, like an uncle.

"This was why, what you feel now, it calms you. Amsu did the same for Ausar. Your upset, it upsets the boy; he felt it inside and Amsu helped him. Now, let me help you. Don't push back at me."

He swallowed the bitter, metallic taste in his mouth and exhaled a weight a bit greater than carbon dioxide. What she meant by push back, he did not know.

"You do not like not knowing, not having answers, and not having a way to find them," she observed. "You will have a way to find them, but if you wish to ask them while I do this, I will answer what I can." If it would take his mind off the rest of it, his mind might open just enough to do some good.

"You are right," he replied in his deliberate but measuredly slow way. "What have you been calling the minister?" he finally asked.

"Ata? And the more proper honorifics your Ausar used?" she nodded although he could not see her face. "Our language does not have very literal translations to English. Words mean many things in the different ways in which they are used. Metaphor, symbolism, and such things are ripe in our ancient words, just like in the languages of magic. All is more than the sum of its parts. There is more meaning than what is said. The most direct answer is that Ata means father, but it means far more than that."

She put her other hand on his wrist and then he found her original hand moving up his arm. He opened his eyes and while he looked at her hand moving up, he did not prevent it.

"The honorifics mean Great Revered Father. He is not our first minister, Severus. He is not our leader. He is our father. Our guide. Our guardian. He bears and distributes the greatest burdens of balance and culture. He guides peace in the Duality. That is why he will not have us attack your country's problems. Would you wish to use us that way, enslave us to police that which is not ours, of a people that mistrust and hate us? I do not think that you mean that. I am absolutely certain you do not mean that. You know what that is like; Ata mourns that for you, for the boy's choice of his path, and he will not do that to us." While she was speaking, she unbuttoned his cuff and ran her hand up to his Dark Mark.

She continued, "You are unseated that he challenges your mind when you are not used to any having the capacity or care for such, but we feel you. We feel this Mark on you, what it does. You do not fathom the pain of that. That is why Ata is called as he is called; what you felt when it happened to Osiris, even in so firm a denial and repression as you have for what you call 'feeling,' is the shadow of the pain that he felt. Ata is fully open and mindful. Many of us, in fact, felt it."

"Is that the significance that he bothers so greatly with the boy?" Severus asked, remembering quite vividly what he had thought and felt in that moment, and everything he had thought or felt in the thousands of times analyzing it since it had happened. Osiris being marked had been one of the most painful moments of the last decade for him.

"He is Ata, and the boy is a lost Son of the Sacred Sands. He has not found himself, but we have found him. The Gods bring you to us, we answer their call. All of us," she said. "He would do the same for you Severus, but you are..."

"Broken?"

"Closed," she corrected. "Which is a choice." She looked him in the eye. "Do you harbour jealousy of the boy right now?"

"Not in the least." And yet, he did, deep within him. Nobody had ever shown the least bit of unmotivated concern over his pain or his protection; Albus has surely flaunted not caring over his (or many people's) protection many times and only cared for his pain as it related to his ability to continue to be useful. If he was honest with himself, he was more than the least bit bitter right now, which was simply when one had learned jealousy of anything was a rather fruitless emotion; it never altered things. Bitterness was the pit that was left after the jealousy was gnawed away.

If Nebthet sensed the lie, she did not call him on it, and he knew that she must have known. Instead she answered a question that he could not form himself.

"One day, it will call for you too, Severus, and you will be ready to answer. Ata does not need to Legilimence you, or anyone, to tell," she added. "You do not know him, but Ata does this type of protection often here. It is what he does, his calling."

"He did not touch a person nor nary a thing whilst at Hogwarts..."

"And he would not. They are not of the Sacred Sands. Your apprentice is of our Sands; He needs more than wizard-magic. And why would Ata touch anyone who did not understand our Power, Severus."

"Does the boy truly understand it?" Concern. He felt it a bit more acutely in that moment.

"Yes and no. He has lived it. He feels its absence. His magic knew you were like him, yours knows the same, but you have even less practice in it than he does. Even the weakest magnet still draws and, close enough, a bond still forms, but it can be greater." She exhaled. "So much greater."

"This ritual will heal and protect him?"

"Yes. Ata is a very strong magnet. It will weave our magic around him, in a way, and it will remind him of how to live his life. It will make it easier for you by freeing him of his fears. You must try to do the same on your own, Ata cannot do the same ritual on you as you are. Powerful magic is best summoned at the proper moment. It is not your time. It takes different things for a boy to open his heart of hearts so that this might work. He has been only the better part of a year without his mother or his brother. How long have you been without anyone, Severus?"

He conceded with a nod. "Well over a decade."

"The boy has loneliness. You have emptiness and many states and feelings you choose to repress instead of confront, but that is changing. The boy does good for you," she informed him. "Far too much intelligence and talent within you to waste, as has been. Do not think Ata just means the boy when he says the young among us do not do well alone."

"Is that meant to be reassuring?"

She chuckled, but changed the subject back to what she held her hand over. "Do you even remember what it was like before this?" Her eyes flickered downward toward the Dark Mark as if to make sure he would not miss her meaning without a better segue.

That question was met with much silence, and he had first thought he would have to concentrate at least somewhat to keep his heart from speeding up, but it didn't.

Finally, he shook his head. "No." Everything became a ghost of what it had been after so many years. Memory could not match reality; at least not in the saturated sort of way.

"I think, perhaps, we can remedy that without removing it for a short time."

"Remedy?"

"It is magic like anything else that is magic. It can be manipulated, not that your wizards would know how since they stick their heads in the sand with 'Dark' magic, but Ata can do that for you while you are here. Only if you are open enough, as you are now."

Not wishing to express his incredulity with his face or words, he redirected the conversation. He had his own answers he wanted now, and for some reason it felt easy to speak the truth. There was certainly magic he was not used to afoot. "How does he, do you, know about…my wife and my son being killed?"

"I do not wish to always say there are no easy answers. You did hear the explanation, but you have no framework to understand it. Or no links to piece what you know into a framework you've been excluded from, but do realize that was not by our choice."

He was not used to being given answers and information so freely, as if there was not anything being purposefully kept from him. That was wholly different from his life.

"What you feel now. That you ask that question. That you find it easy to speak now. There is far more to magic, to energy, than spells. That is the help I give, that I offer. It does not matter how far removed, how long one has been away, how diluted in our blood. Closeness, blood relation, or even blood sharing and ritual makes it far easier, but it is our magic even without any of those things. Yours too. Your mental skills, Severus, are not a product of study and necessity; they are a magical trait of ours and nothing like the Legilimency or Occlumency of the new world that you've funneled them into. I assume you noticed how quickly you could teach Osiris? Did that not strike you? He is an intelligent and capable boy, no doubt, but it is because he is of the Sacred Sands as you are; it is because you each gave your life for the other that it was so easy, that it becomes easier. Not just to teach him that, but to teach him anything. He understands you beyond words."

"It did strike me," he replied, honestly. Several times he had noted Osiris was a quick learner.

"It is because you are both one of us and have shared blood. He will learn very easily from you if you learn more of our ways so that you might use every tool you have at your disposal. Did you not wonder why he has so much natural ability in Potions? He learned from his mother, our way. Not our way of teaching magic. Our way of being. If the situation were not what it is, Osiris would have learned many things from us that way, and still might. Our power that so seems to frighten the newer world is nothing to do with magic in their sense. I wish I could tell you in the beauty of our language, but it is our bonds; more than love, greater than love."

Simple questions were difficult ones. Making him verbalize things made what he said undeniable, and he was not yet ready to confront that. Thoughts were not so concrete. He had a difficult time saying anything.

Seeming to know that, she continued, "What you sense as strange in the magic around you is your sense of this bond. You feel trust though you do not think it and that confuses you. You know your magic acts protectively. If it tells you to trust, should you deny that? We are no threat to you. Not in any way. Your lack of blood, your lack of being taught, your 'Darkness,' your choices, your faults; none are unforgivable, none are an obstacle here, none require some penance.

"Ata wishes you to know that only your denial holds you back, and you will not be open enough for him to do anything of it, so he gives you what you need in confronting you with it. There need be no journey of acknowledging the pain or the past, no speaking of it. Ata knows what pains you, what fuels the worst parts of you, parts that hold you back, parts that drive you on. He pricked at them so you would feel them, so that you would remember them. We all can feel how much you wish to help the boy, and you are the sort of man who prefers a clean break than tip-toeing around. You have it now. What will you make of it?"

"A clean break." He repeated. What did that even mean.

"From how you have lived."

He scoffed. It's not that simple.

"It is that simple. It is as simple as the choice you made to let me help you. It is making that choice again, and again, and again."

"Then you wish me to feel and cultivate this with the boy?" he stated, for some reason ignoring that she had read his thought.

"No, Severus. You wish to. You wish to help him. You brought him here. We simply wish to make it easier. To show you how to do what you wish, to end this rough torture, to pull the curtains away; that is what brought you both here. There is no coincidence in our world; what we perceive as coincidence is Heka, it is the energy of all things, putting something in our path or showing us our path. You put out the signals in your energy; coincidence is your answer. Osiris knows this but forgets because he is young, and because he is alone." She paused and said with a soft poignancy, "He does not have to be alone."

His jaw set. This was a magic he did not know.

And like her father, Nebthet seemed to know without touching his mind, for she said, "It is not foolish wand waving. You do know it. You will see."

He was quite sure that she did not fathom the depth at which he had buried anything which might be useful in accomplishing this task.

"Stay calm, watch, and trust. Nothing can touch you here. No memories from this can be invaded."

His eyes narrowed some, though the action felt off.

"It is difficult for you to believe, but it is true. In fact, you yourself decided so already by asking why Ata did not vanquish your Dark Lord over his coffee." She could not help but snicker some. It was not often someone said such brazen things to the great Amun're. "What we do, it is not wizard-magic. Ata's power you have already decided is far more powerful, so of course everything here is safe."

The desire to analyze and be suspicious was still there, latent, in some strange shadow of back of his mind.

It had been so long since anyone had told him anything valuable, by his standards, and now his mind keenly replayed value that had already been supplied him here in an hour's time. His magic was already telling him he was safe; the construct was just so foreign to his mind that he could not fully bridge the disconnect. He had tried to tell Osiris to listen to it, to his magic, but here he was with no idea how to do that either.

"Feel," she said, instructively, with a nod. "It will help when Ata blocks your Mark."

They rounded back toward the open area where they had started. The Minister was alone, now shirtless and with looser pants. He had many magical tattoos. An amulet of some kind was all that remained around his neck. He greeted them with a nod.

Severus caught a look shared between them, and he had an odd feeling that they spoke their thoughts aloud merely for his benefit.

"My daughter is skilled where I am not," the Minister said. "Sometimes we must be jolted to appreciate the calm, though."

"It will be easier during the ritual if you were to block that Mark from his arm," Nebthet then announced.

The Minister chuckled, "And see, she even tries her skill on me, but fathers know even easier when their children are lying."

"Ata…"

"If you have told him that I can and he wished for me to do so, then he can ask me. You needn't couch it in my interest of the ritual." Amun're looked to the younger man expectantly.

"I do wish it, but if you do so, will it still-

"Function?"

"Yes."

The elder man nodded, "Explaining shall make no sense to you today, but I will do so and it is safe by any measure you would wish to take."

He felt strangely pulled to a need for this. When Nebthet had asked if he remembered what it was like without it and that they could do something of it for a time, the thought that he did not had made the decision for him.

He held his arm out. He had never buttoned the cuff again.

All it took was the Egyptian's hand over it. No words. And seemingly very little effort.

His eyes closed. The sensation was immediate, like a shift had pulled the carpet of his world from under him. Sucked out a pressure from within his very skin. In that moment, the first thought that came to his mind was right then he was as free as he had ever been in his life.

And that moment suspended, lingering exquisitely in the blanketing warmth of the sun radiating down and then back up from the sand. Held between the two, weightless and warm.

Dumbledore could not touch it. The Dark Lord could not touch it.

He opened his eyes to an over-bright world. He looked at the Mark and then looked at the Egyptian who had done it. Truly done it like plunking a cube into his coffee. And Severus had thought his former accusation had been heated hyperbole. Vanquishing Dark Lords over coffee…

And with his first breath in, there was a rush of sensation. Like he was smelling a fresh life that had been blocked from him. And he knew then that the Dark Mark had far more Dark Magic to it than he had already surmised.

"Ah, much better," the Minister said. "Such magic is best blocked from here."


AN - Awww yeahhh, you know I did it!

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