Chapter 81: A War of Compromise
"Message from Master Regulus," came that now all-too-familiar, raspy elf-voice. Snape glanced up from his student markings, barely spotting Kreacher's stooped form from over the edge of his office desk. With an air of inevitability, Snape set aside his quill to give his attention to this inanity.
'Gibbon and Wilkes have taken an interest in Dung Bombs from Zonkos. Their stash is kept within a trick wall by the fourth corridor in the deeper dungeons,' it read.
Snape glared over the desk at the creature who glared right back at him. "Noted," Snape said and the elf took that terse response, quite rightly, as a dismissal and whisked off without a trace.
It wasn't that he didn't appreciate what the young man was doing, feeding him information about the goings-on among his students of darker alignment. A constant stream of banalities was the result of that endeavour. They were small infringements on matters of discipline that would bear little weight on the grand scheme of things, transgressions he was forced to care about owing to his position as the teacher and Head of House.
Black had initially offered far more lucrative information, from within the devil's maw. Machinations from within the Inner Circle that the pure blood boy had a position within, but Snape had shut down the offer the moment it emerged from the boy's lips.
Snape knew better than most that spy work from within the ranks of darkness was not a game to be played and not one he would task a young man with so heedlessly. Having the young Black report to him the misbehaviour from within his House was more a negotiated redirection of the young man's zealous nature. Regulus Black did not defect by halves, it seemed, and the boy needed a task to vent his vengeful energy.
Of course, the result of his benign request was no end of annoyance, as the boy's House Elf would haunt his personal hours. Regularly appearing in Snape's office to convey some pointless piece of dormitory insight or set a scroll on his unoccupied desk. Snape would regularly return to this room to find it piled high.
Snape sighed as he set the note aflame with a dip of his wand. Though he was in no mind to discourage the child's eagerness, neither was he in the business of chasing down disciplinary issues that did not have the Gryffindor carelessness to wander into his sights.
With a muted sigh, Snape stood from his desk, intending to refreshing his coffee cup. Stepping through the trick wall into his private quarters, he locked eyes with his wife, who had set up her own paperwork on the dining table.
Snape never felt it quite right that they did not have a desk for Lily to call her own. He would always find her cramped on that tiny dining table, making the most of her space for juggling her scrolls and writing resources. It was in these situations that the muggle equipment for writing held a distinct advantage over the inkwell and quill set up. Snape personally still greatly preferred the quill and ink method, if nothing else because the feel of the quill felt a familiar fit in his hand, even one that had forgotten the weight for the passing months. Lily, it seemed, shared the sentiment, for even in those cramped conditions, she would still choose to laboriously set out her inkwell.
Snape measured out enough water for two cups and set the kettle on the boil. There wasn't any need to ask if Lily fancied a cup; he had yet to see her reject one.
With cups and saucers floating before him as if set on an invisible tea-tray, Snape directed the cups before him so that he might sit opposite his wife. Lily glanced up when he set down her cup and saucer on the sliver of table still visible under her scrolls. She beamed him a grateful smile as she reached for her tea, which was topped with sugar and cream.
Snape glanced about the scrolls piled high on her table, curious as to their content, when he realised the inkwell was black, rather than the red ordinarily associated with rendering judgement on the drivel from students.
Upon the parchment Lily had unfurled before her she had scribbled unfathomable sketches accompanied by equally chaotic writing. Likely attempts to render the likeness from the far more proficient rendering of a static image upon the page of a thick tome she had propped open by her elbow. That lifelike image of a human hand, disassembled and labelled meticulously in a print font that no wizarding word press would use.
"It's a muggle medicine book, much like what Dad used to read from," Lily answered his unasked question, no doubt noticing his stares.
Snape needed no confirmation of that fact, for he had seen the very same book bookmarked on Dumbledore's table as he took to his limb-conjuring experiments. He took a low and slow sip from his cup of tea, his quick mind drawing conclusions as his black eyes flickered past the silver glow of his hand to meet those soft green eyes.
It didn't surprise him that his wife would find her way into exploring this newly created branch of magic, but her enthusiasm compensated little for her lack of background and experience in this field. After all, not everyone could be as naturally gifted as Albus Dumbledore, to be able to dabble in a field they had little experience in and generate an entirely new branch of magic. Naturally, Snape assumed the next in line to assist him in the maintenance of his magical appendage would be Poppy Pomfrey, a woman well entrenched in the world of healing. By comparison, Lily could barely prove her hold on the basics in their seventh-year transfigurations class.
"I know what you're thinking," Lily muttered with a sigh as she, too, took a draw from her cup of tea. "I don't have any prior healing knowledge; how could I possibly be trusted with something as delicate as conjuring your hand?"
"I thought no such thing," Snape quickly lied, wondering yet again if his wife held some ability with the mind arts. The little upwards twitch of Lily's lips seemed a little too knowing for Snape's liking.
With a wave of her hand over the scroll she had been working on, Lily dried the ink. "Learning the physical form of the limb is the most important part of this spell, did you know that?" she asked as she handed the parchment to her husband. From further away, everything had appeared a mess of poor art and confused nonsense, but upon closer inspection, he could see the method in her madness. Especially so when she held up the muggle healer's tome so that he could see their illustrations better.
Snape glanced through the little squares, circles and rectangles she had drawn as her attempts to illustrate the carpals and phalanges that made up the skeletal structure, attempting to make sense of the twisting mess of lines that seemed to web their way around the bones in a chaotic yet exacting pattern.
"I have never studied the topic of healing myself, so I struggle to understand what I'm looking at," Snape confessed as he glanced up from her sketch.
"Good to know you're only human," she chirped, seeming a little too pleased by his surrender. "I was learning the anatomy of the hand, starting from the bones and the nerves."
Snape glanced nervously at her rendition of the alleged limb, his own bare understanding of the subject matter not making him any more confident in his wife's ability to master it to a standard he would be confident in wearing. This was his wand-hand, after all, and he hesitated at the thought of entrusting upon a novice the vessel of his magic, even if that novice was the woman of his affections.
"Are you sure it's supposed to look like that?" he finally asked.
Lily snatched the page back, her smile taking on a sheepish tinge. "I'm not exactly an artist, okay? And I just started. Cut me some slack."
Snape brought his free hand back to his balanced teacup. Free hand… that was a concept he hadn't held in a while. With a slow draught of his tea, he watched his wife take one last sip of hers and return to work, slicing off another swathe of parchment and turning her already filled sheet over.
Slowly, she began to fill the page with those clusters of circles and oblong shapes. He set down his cup and saucer on a tea table he had conjured for that very purpose and began to rifle through the rolls of parchment piled high on her table. In it were those same scribbled lines, practiced ad nauseum at varying degrees of proficiency.
"Was this what you have been doing all day?" Snape asked, scrutinising one particularly abstract iteration of what must have been be the same illustrated appendage. While reading his paper in the staffroom, he had overheard Slughorn talking about Lily taking a personal day. Had Snape not assisted her in her marking, he would have assumed that what this was all about.
Lily didn't look up from parchment. "Yeah. Nose to the grindstone. I spent the first half of the day watching Poppy and Albus trading turns practicing on Silvanus' missing feet. He seems the perfect soul to model the spells, what with having so many limbs to practice on. He's got a sweet patience too. He's even offered to let me try my hand on his when I get the hang of the basics."
That was a relief. Though Snape trusted Lily like he trusted no other, that only extended to as far as her intentions were concerned. He by no means thought little of her ability or dedication; he simply doubted her caution, and the healer's field was one that required caution in abundance.
Snape had once thought to learn the spell himself so that he would no longer be bound to his dependence on others. His sense won out when he understood what went into the spell. This wasn't a simple prosthetic, but a mimicry of a true hand. An in-depth construction of what flesh and blood should be. A complex network of constructed nerves, bones, and tissue conjured in its function and connected to the end of his arm by what remained.
The nerves were the most complex part, the heart of this magic. A biological concept Snape had not placed any effort into grasping before this experience. These were what allowed the limb to be regulated by the same impulses that governed flesh. Magic was able to mimic the movement of muscles and the structure of bone, but for magic to mimic the will of its wearer, it needed a connection to their mind. This required a true connection with what nerves remained in his mangled arm, a connection that thankfully did not require any parting of his own flesh. Several fractions of a millimetre's worth of skin was hardly a barrier to spell-work.
But this complexity surrounding nerves was exactly what gave Snape pause. It was by these delicate tendrils that the possibility of this spell working at all existed. For him to prod at it clumsily with his own left-handed attempts would be to invite ruin upon himself should the possibility exist for him to burn those delicate biological bridges. What he didn't understand scared him, and the healer's magical field was one he knew in his heart of hearts that he lacked.
A task best left to professionals. Snape had thought to himself. And the likes of Albus Dumbledore. There were few who could claim mastery of a subject as complex as healing after several months of intensive study. Dumbledore was a rare breed of genius, able to pick up concepts that took his fancy and delve as deeply into them as he saw fit.
By comparison, Snape was a master of few. And Lily… Lily was the epitome of the Jack of all trades. A natural skill in magic and a rapidly changing focus on a variety of interests in a vast number of studies, she rarely ever delved deep enough to reach the heart of a single topic. She had her heart set on Charms in school, and barely a year out, she already had a hand in enchanting and another in potions. Healing was not a path she had ever considered or even held a passing interest in or a talent for, if Snape were terribly honest.
But watching her now, he could not deny her dedication. Lily had penned the image of the skeleton of the hand in her own abstract way and proceeded to label the bones, not by name, but by function. Then, stroke by meticulous stroke, Lily penned out the functions of each of these lines, giving names to their imperfect portrait.
He felt his critical thoughts silenced by that of gratitude. The self-reliance he had once taken for granted had become the privilege of a time that only existed in memory. He had learned to trust Lily before he had even learned what trust was, and all too quickly, he had to learn to trust more than his past life had ever allowed. So much of his life was no longer his to control.
He was not a risk-taker at heart - that was a Gryffindor's game - but he found doubts silenced on his tongue. He leaned back in his seat, content to sip his tea as he watched his wife toil away on this complex endeavour, knowing every second spent she did for his benefit.
He parted his lips to thank her but found the words too caught on her tongue. What words could suffice? Lily's gift to the world was more than just her raw talent. Her gifts to him went further than just mere companionship, and that she was willing to give more was a gift in itself.
Silvanus Kettleburn was ever so a good sport. Even with his limbs restored by the magic of professionals, he was expressly willing to have his hand dispelled to risk the practice of an amateur.
But as gung-ho as the professor was, Madam Pomfrey was contrastingly hesitant. Wisely so, perhaps. The very fact that Kettleburn only had one limb left spoke most loudly about his take on risks. The Professor was living proof that you didn't have to be Gryffindor to flirt with death.
Perhaps Severus was rubbing off on her, but Lily found herself favouring the safer route of study and compromise. She did her job during the day, but in the evenings, it was all hers. Sure, she had marking to do and readings to keep up with. One didn't make the Potions masterclass course without some elbow grease. At the very least the little flower bulbs she had been growing in the bathroom needed little attention, preferring to sleep out the dry cold winter in their little magically sheltered pots. Severus, however, needed a little more love than a winter-bound plant. And she, too, by that extent.
Lily's father once said the hardest thing about his early years as a doctor was the sacrifice of time. There were not enough hours in a day to allocate to every task that needed doing. That meant something important in life needed to take a backseat. Those had been the years before he had met Lily's mother, so for him it was friends and fun during the prime of his life. For Lily it meant time spent apart from the man she loved. Time he, too, would choose to spend on toil, for his work took him beyond that of a simple professor.
She would see him occasionally at dinner, occasionally at bed time, occasionally striving in their own separate spaces in their living quarters. Perhaps a soft touch when the candles burnt out…
Striving for lofty goals was a lonely experience, and it was little wonder that Slytherin children found it difficult to find solace in others when ambition was their driving force.
Madam Pomfrey was so kind to offer her lessons on healing, whenever she was free. This branch of magic was a lot more complex where basics were concerned. There was so little she understood about how and why healing spells worked, and that, she realised, was the reason she never took to the skill as naturally as other walks of magic. And the only remedy there was to apply herself.
But it wasn't easy for the good matron, with students coming in and out of her doors at all hours of the day and night. Lily knew of no others qualified in this field so specialised. Perhaps those that tended the wards of St Mungo's could claim greater achievements within the craft, but among those in Hogwarts perhaps the only person who could claim to be her equal was the man who invented the spell that no healer in history had dreamt of.
This was why, when Lily received her invitation to the headmaster's office, she had thought it all had to do with the direction of her education. She had thought the headmaster was going to take it upon himself to personally bestow upon her that precious spell.
The great circular office seemed smaller than she remembered as a prefect. Perhaps she had been smaller then, but she doubted it. Her mind certainly had been, at least to the knowledge of what was truly happening in the world around her.
When she met those clear blue eyes behind those half-mooned spectacles, she could not help but feel the gravity that lay behind them. The weight of the war that pressed upon that vast and fathomless mind. That far-reaching weight of consequence she had seen all too many times before in eyes as black as pitch.
"Lily, so good of you to come." His voice was light, calm, devoid of that weariness she had thought to expect. A voice no different from the headmaster she had known before the world became that scary unknowable place.
"Well, you invited me," Lily replied, more calmly than she felt. She didn't know why she felt anxious. Perhaps it was the knowledge that she stood before the man within the heart of the war.
Yet, despite the weight of the world pressing upon him, he could find it in himself to stand with shoulders straight. "Had you told Severus that I asked to speak to you?" he asked, an odd point to make when the note never mentioned Sev.
"No, I didn't. Was I supposed to?" Lily asked with a grimace.
Those blue eyes flickered away for a brief moment, as if in consideration. "Perhaps I had hoped that you wouldn't, not before I said my piece with you." His blue eyes met hers through those half-moon glasses, impressing upon her that measure of gravity behind them. "But I will ask that you share with him what we discuss."
"I had no intention of keeping secrets from him," Lily replied, feeling a little flicker of relief at the thought that she was not being asked to be deceitful.
With a gentle smile, Dumbledore beckoned her forward, gesturing for her to take a seat across his desk. She obliged, perching upon the leather-backed chair that materialised upon her approach.
The headmaster laid a piece out before her. A small rectangular object crafted in silver and inlaid with an intricate pattern. As Lily perched she glanced quizzically at the object, not quite fathoming the significance.
"This is my work." He slid the silver object forth, which Lily obliged to pick up. "Enchanted with a spell of my own creation, its core a Focus Stone created from my memories."
She turned the object in her hands, her fingers feeling the smooth inlays upon its surface. Her finger found a button and pressed down, feeling a click before the candle that sat upon the table extinguished in a ball of light. Lily gasped and fumbled the artefact, almost dropping it. With a prompt click, she sent that orb of light right back into its wick.
"I call it a Deluminator," Dumbledore explained as Lily began to click the artefact, pointing it at different light fixtures about the room and snuffing them out. "Its heart is a stone made of my own memories. A privilege I enjoy as a dabbler of both Alchemy and Enchantment."
With a click, Lily sent all the light she had stolen from about the room shooting back into their holders. Those little orbs of light dancing in feyly as they settled snugly back into their braziers, coaxing back the warm golden glow of firelight.
As her eyes met with those of calm blue, the first question she was met with was not what she had expected. "May I see your ring, Lily?"
Lily set down the Deluminator and then hesitated on that precious piece of jewellery, her mind briefly glancing upon that soft and subtle connection with her husband it granted. Barely noticeable in her day to day life, yet so impossible to ignore if they so much as stepped a foot out of range.
Like the pop of a bubble, she felt the magic slip from her as surely as she slipped that ring from her finger. He, too, would have noticed, for it was in his nature to keep count of her in his heart.
The headmaster held up her wedding band, turning it in his expert fingers, allowing its soft silver surface to catch the orange glint of candlelight. "I understand this was your first attempt at enchantment."
"Yep. While I was in seventh year," Lily confirmed, unable to keep the swell of pride from her voice. Her previous employer, Selena Swelley, had taken every opportunity to assure Lily of how miraculous it was to have found success in her first attempt at enchantment, never mind doing so without any kind of formal training.
"Its heart is an Alchemical Focus Stone, I've heard," Dumbledore continued, his blue eyes fixed upon the ring he was turning in between his fingers.
"It is. Sev made it," Lily confirmed.
Those blue eyes met hers. "And what memory did he use? If you don't mind me asking."
"Umm… Love?" Lily replied, unsure if Severus would appreciate her spilling on him.
A twinkle touched those deep blue eyes. "A memory not foreign to you, I presume." He did not give Lily time to form her indignant response. "Among Alchemists it has been widely thought that a Focus Stone was most effective in the hands of a person who shared the memories that created it. A theory that I have only recently confirmed."
Those blue eyes fell upon that ring once more, gazing on it with a distant pondering. "In the hands of an alchemist who had never felt love, that Focus Stone would be nothing but a pebble. A magical pebble that he could not move. Conversely, an alchemist who knows true love might find use in that stone as effectively as its creator. This is the same for non-alchemists." He paused in thought, turning that ring between his fingers almost absently.
Lily could only stare, not grasping the significance.
Dumbledore took pity on her unspoken confusion. "In the hands of an enchanter who shares in the experience enshrined within that stone, this Focus Stone would make a mischievous core, playing havoc with the material as well as the magic. It is not a core a beginner should ever expect to find success, never mind to the extent you had. I have no doubt your natural affinity to wandless magic played a part, but that alone would not have guaranteed you success with the fickle reagent."
He handed to Lily back her wedding ring. Dipping her head to keep the garish pride off her face, Lily slipped the piece back on. She felt the sensation of that link between her and Severus slip about her, like being enveloped in the arms of a familiar friend. Which was a most appropriate analogy, come to think of it.
Those blue eyes were upon her again, piercing, as if peering into her soul. A request upon his tongue she did not expect. "Lily, there is an enchantment that I need done before this war can be won, and it is one I cannot do myself."
"And you think I can?" she asked feeling utterly perplexed and more than a little overwhelmed. In what world could there possibly be a skill that she had that the legendary Dumbledore did not.
Blue eyes met green. "I do," came the answer, more confident than Lily truly felt.
Once upon a time she would have dove right in without a second's thought or doubt. Her confidence lay shattered upon that fateful night, beneath the weight of learned mortality. Her willingness to help warred with the weighty promise to keep herself from the war that so very nearly took that choice from her. But beneath these chains of learned wisdom her spirit strained against these bonds. Breaking a promise to Sev was something she could not do in good conscience, but to hide from the war and allow others to sacrifice on her behalf was not something she could live with.
"I won't keep this from Severus," she stated, a compromise struck within herself that still did not sit comfortably for the worry she knew she would cause her husband.
Those blue eyes twinkled again, "And I do not expect you to."
She felt that much more absolved about her decision. "What do you need me to do?" she asked, trying to feel as capable as Dumbledore seemed to think she was. All the while feeling the excitement build within her, a freeing elation at the prospect of being able to contribute in some small way to the war effort.
A strange smile came across Dumbledore. "And strangely enough, we have hit upon the very point I cannot make."
Lily's apprehension gave way to a quizzical brow raise. Dumbledore continued, with a smile of a man fully aware of how contrary his words were. "There is one thing I need you to do before I can even make this request of you." Those blue eyes met hers, holding it. "I need you to learn Occlumency. And there is only one man I would trust to teach you."
Snape narrowed eyes as he peered across the headmaster's oaken desk.
One did not simply make the request for Occlumency to be taught without an agenda. Especially not when the request made of Snape would be to teach his own wife.
Lily had approached him with such coyness that Snape's suspicions were instantly piqued. He had never known his wife to be shy, let alone shy in the privacy of their own rooms. When she wouldn't even speak of what wore on her mind, insisting that he speak to Dumbledore, Snape did as bade.
Without any prior appointment, Snape found himself in the headmaster's office with a cup of tea already awaiting him. Behind the desk sat the man who had made the request, sipping his tea, seemingly nonplussed. A zesty number, one that Snape did not care for, but he accepted its offering nonetheless. Though Snape had never found a tea among Dumbledore's collection that met his palate, the act of taking tea was a tradition he had found with this iteration of the headmaster and one he found himself loathe to break.
"At the very least, why did you not come to me first?" Snape finally asked.
Those blue eyes were upon him, a pause, almost contemplative. "Because it would be impolite of me to assume you as her keeper. The help I sought was from Lily. It does not behoove anyone to make a request through a third party."
"I told you. I don't want her involved in any of this," Snape growled, tasting his frustration in his words.
But Dumbledore calmly reminded him. "That choice was made long ago, when your life met with hers. She is already involved, whether you like it or not."
Reality was not something Snape had come into this conversation expecting to face. Nor was it something he was willing to accept. "You know what she means to me."
"There are few things in the world that I know with more certainty," Dumbledore replied with another sip from his tea.
Snape's eyes narrowed. "Does the task you have framed for her in your mind bring her into the path of danger?"
Snape expected a straight response. Though Dumbledore rarely dabbled in simple answers, so too did he rarely reveal the heart of his thoughts. Perhaps today was to be a rare day among many. "We have one Horcrux hidden within that pendant, but that is by no means the last one. There is still one Horcrux within Voldemort's soul. As we draw towards the end, he may be spurred beyond his ego to forge into a Horcrux we have not prepared for. For that, too, I have a plan. One born from the properties of the stone you created and a sword lost to legends."
Those blue eyes did not falter as they met his. "For this task, I need Lily's assistance. I plan to ask her to draw the properties from the Deathly Focus Stone you created into an enchantment. The danger is all to do with that task."
Snape's black eyes narrowed, not understanding the implications. He had never feared Lily's ability. She was a natural at the wandless arts. He trusted her ability to discipline the magic that would writhe raw and formless on the experimenter's table.
Enchanting was not his strength, and to a comparative degree, neither was Alchemy. He did not understand. "Do you know something that I don't?" he asked, meeting those blue eyes that hid so much from him.
"If I knew the absolutes of its danger, I would not hide it from you, Severus. Nor Lily," answered Dumbledore in a tone sincere. "My only certainty I have is that the stone misbehaves greatly in my hands owing to the memories I borrowed from you. And though there are others in this field that are proficient and certainly more experienced, few are among the trusted in our circle. Fewer still I would burden with the secrets we share. In this matter, your wife is uniquely situated."
Black eyes bore holes through those half-moon glasses. "You seemed to have made up your mind."
"And I am only grateful that you have not made up yours."
Snape's eyes flashed but no words of rebuttal passed his lips. The fears that Snape held about this venture were little to do with the dangers of experimental enchantments, for she had the wild formless nature of magic well leashed beneath her natural talents. It was the precedent it set that Snape feared.
To hand to her Occlumency… to allow her to step into the dangerous world that surrounded the conspiracy between himself and Albus Dumbledore…
He did not wish for Lily to mire herself in this war and take upon herself the responsibilities and burden of life and death. But the moral high ground upon which he had once made such decisions on her behalf had dissolved beneath his feet. She was not ignorant of the truth any longer and knew the stakes at play. Permission was no longer his to give. Only the practical barrier of Occlumency separated Lily from the machinations of the war effort's heart. A barrier that Dumbledore could have remediated, for Snape was not the only master of the mind arts. But he hadn't. A token of respect to afford Snape the choice to induct Lily into their scheming.
Snape ran his fingers across his eyes, steeling himself for the conversation he would be bringing himself to face. "I will speak to her, but I make no promises," Snape uttered as he stood to leave.
The headmaster sipped again and set his teacup down. "That is all I ask." Perhaps confident in his knowledge at how set a Gryffindor's heart can be, because Severus knew that stubbornness all too well.
The truth of the matter remained that as they allowed the war to progress, the luxury of choice may become no more.
Seated upon the couch, Lily stared holes into the book resting upon her lap, taking in not one word written upon the page. In her mind she played out various points she would be prepared to put forth in support of this arrangement. But when the grating of the hidden wall sounded, Lily glanced up from her unturned tome, trying her best to rearrange her face to one that did not radiate anxious expectations.
Sev stepped through and set his eyes upon her, his eyes seeming to soften upon meeting hers - perhaps an illusion cast by firelight. He stood for a moment, averting his eyes in wordless thought, before stepping towards her.
Lily shuffled across the couch, leaving him the side he traditionally would sit on. He was a creature of habit and would feel immediately out of sorts if he sat on the wrong side. He would insist, of course, that he was adaptable and could make do around her spontaneity. But home was not just about her comfort.
He perched upon the seat, straight-back and tense. Not at all the posture of a man at ease. Lily might have chalked it down to the quirks of a man displaced in time, but then she was reminded that he did not spontaneously change the moment he revealed his origins to her. His discomfort was entirely the thoughts that roiled within.
"I take it that you disapprove?" she broached with a nervous smile. Those black eyes averted, so hesitant to speak the truth.
Sensing the truth her heart fell. "I guess not…" she muttered, turning away. Frustration clawed from within, that inescapable suffocation of uselessness. She understood why Severus was how he was… she got it. But he must realise why she was how she was.
Those black eyes touched upon hers for but a moment, a flicker of hesitation reflected in those fire-touched orbs. "I am not as familiar with Enchanting as you are. I do not understand it and it puts me to ill ease," he began in a soft voice. "Please explain to me the risks and dangers of this school of magic. Tell me what you risk in dabbling with its unknown elements?"
Lily paused, not at all prepared for the question posed, for it wasn't the negatives of the issue she had considered deliberating. There was no denying there was inherent dangers in the craft. Lily really only learned when she attempted to take a professional path into the craft. No doubt Sev's own ignorance of the matter was the only reason he had never objected to the entire venture.
"Well, there's explosive magical expulsion, just like Charm-weaving could risk," she conceded slowly, trying not to wince as those dark eyes fixed upon her. "But umm… often with the added risk of shrapnel since there's also a physical object to factor in. Then there's always the possibility the completed enchantment manifests in a way unpredicted and dangerous. Accidental cursing, it's called. Not to be confused with true curses – which, in some ways, are far safer than the ones that manifest accidentally - simply due to unexplainable processes owing to how difficult the curse breaking could be." She paused and grimaced, realising how bad it all sounded when she uttered it aloud. "Look, Sev. Don't freak out or anything. I'm just talking about, you know, extreme cases. I mean, you can't really expect any form of magical craft to be without its risks, right? And I'll be working with Albus Dumbledore. I mean, if anything would go wrong, he'd be the best person to have overseeing it. Not that anything would-"
Severus held out a hand in a gesture to halt, and Lily's rambling ceased on her lips. She glanced away, so mired with frustration. So flustered by the unexpected question, she framed her response in the most unflattering light possible. She didn't have the suave eloquence that Severus possessed. A trait he no doubt gained through his own infinitely more risk-laden role as spymaster.
This was a double standard she had never called him out on. She knew better than that. He had flirted so willingly with death in his first lifetime because he had little else to live for. He took risks sparingly this lifetime, never unless required. He was a man of wisdom tempered with courage.
But his courage faltered when it came to her. Refusing to risk her, even when that choice ultimately was not his to make. But nor was she willing to deny his wishes, knowing what she now knew about their entangled lives.
But she couldn't live her life wrapped in cotton wool. It was not her nature to hide from the world. Not even for him. She was willing to compromise, and in her mind, the idea of taking on a non-combative role was compromise enough.
"What is it going to take?" Lily asked finally, making no efforts in hiding her weariness from her voice.
Severus met her eyes, his face blank but so transparent in his thoughts. His concerns. His doubts. "I don't doubt your abilities-"
"But you doubt my intentions?" Lily interrupted, unable to stop her voice from raising. She could not keep the calm that her husband emanated in his silence. It was all she could do to keep the tears of frustration from her eyes. "Why is it so hard for you to believe me when I say that I won't get myself killed?"
"Because that isn't up to you." Severus replied in a voice tempered with an unknowable gentleness. "But, it isn't up to me either. I cannot protect you from everything that might come… And things will come for us as long as this war wages on… We are marked, you and I." Those black eyes drew away as an introspective silence fell between them. The implications of his conceding words hung heavily. "I have come to a realisation, Lily. The only way to survive is to end this war as quickly as possible. And to that end, we need your help."
Lily's heart skipped a beat. When those black eyes met her again, they held a steely weight. "If you still determine upon this task, I will teach you Occlumency."
His words had not finished upon his tongue before Lily's arms found themselves about him. "Thank you…" she whispered, feeling the tears that had welled out of frustration, spilled forth in a catharsis of emotion.
She felt his arms envelop her, felt the vibration of his deep voice through his firm chest. "Don't thank me for something I have no control over. And no right to try to."
A/N: The lengthening of the chapter waiting periods begins.
A thank you to my Beta readers Sattwa100 and cookeroach for your work on this chapter.
Next Update: Saturday 11th April 2020
Chapter 82: Tightly held Memories
Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter universe and do not seek to profit in any way, shape or form from this fan work.
