Chapter 27: Ostara

Ostara and Easter unusually fell close to each other that year. Petunia said goodbye to Lily and Severus before going back to the Belby Cottage. Damocles thought it was beneath him to take part in what the village had to offer, so it tended to fall on Petunia to keep up a relatively pleasant façade in front of the village.

A lot of pureblood families were an intricate part of their surroundings. But nowadays a lot of had withdrawn, much preferring to play gods in the lives of those around them. Petunia couldn't fault them. The church was nice enough and the local primary school allowed Petunia to coach their netball team. She was the one who played the simpering girlfriend to Damocles' excellence.

Petunia resented the dynamic but still walked into it because it was what he needed. She had rushed back from her home the moment the early morning church service had ended due to the frantic nature of the owl sent by Belby. Only to find out that Ostara was underway. Petunia did not know much about the traditional forms of wizarding celebrations. Eileen had always made sure that they had gone to church and did not even like them uttering about the Olde Ways.

It was not the kind of worship that Petunia was thinking about. She was still in her Easter clothes and her hair was messed from her helmet, only to find the property full of wizards and witches along with half-a-dozen house-elves. When she had insisted on the week off, she had made sure Belby understood that she would only come around for an emergency. It made her feel used when things were not critical at all. She didn't like these kinds of events, whether they be muggle or wizard. The blatant and unnecessary show of wealth.

"It's Ostara," Damocles said as she stormed right past the garden to the front door.

"I don't have the energy for this Belby, but what about this looks like an emergency to you!" Petunia hissed, keeping her voice low. "You don't get to tug me to for your foolish whims. I respect Ostara, but there is no way it qualified as something that needed me to be there. I missed Easter lunch for this 'emergency'"

Petunia didn't usually get visibly upset with Damocles. She could keep him in line for the most part and when she couldn't she tried to work around his whims. He didn't make life easy for her and she didn't expect him to but this action had crossed almost every boundary he had promised not to cross.

"I need a shower and if I'm in a better mood after it, I'll come. If not, you can find me in the dungeon with some Ogden's after all this is over," she gestured to the garden.

Her room at the Belby Cottage was in the attic with its slanted ceiling and the tiny bathroom had become home. She flopped on her bed, letting her hair loose from the complicated threads of flowers Severus weaved in. She felt bad that his hard work hadn't lasted long, but she was also tired. A part of her berated herself for being harsh with Belby. But he had deserved it, he didn't understand why she wanted to be away from this. It was a way of reminding herself to not be too comfortable in a world that would be ready to throw her out when it had no use for her.

She picked out a textbook from the many that littered her room. This time it wasn't potions but the set of exercise maths problems she should have completed over the week. Petunia hadn't touched them in a while and it took a moment for the rhythm to come back to her. She tended to be ruthless while going through her mistakes. As mindless as the task looked on the outside it was her way of defiance. The tables were thrown against Damocles and she would be pleased when he decided to give her a proper apology.

The knock on the door wasn't him or the house-elf either. She grabbed the bat from beside her bed, a gift half-jokingly given by Darren when she had moved out of his home, and a bottle of one of the newer potions she had created. Those things made her feel safe and she opened the door. Severus stood on the other side, looking younger and more innocent than she had seen him in the last few months.

"How do you make it stop?" he asked her.

His voice lined with desperation and she lifted the sleeve of his left arm. He was supposed to be at home, safe with her mother, and the gravity of what was going on downstairs in the garden made her want to puke. Petunia dragged him in the room and warded every entrance with hedge magic that Fenwick insisted worked on everyone as long as they knew what they were doing.

The skull with the snake lazily moving through it was pretty considering the flesh around it. Petunia pulled out a first-aid kit and stuck a burn patch on his arm, hoping that it would counteract some of the burning. Severus was sobbing quietly as she looked in the box trying to figure out which combination of muggle and wizard treatments would help with pain management.

"I hope to God you are happy." Petunia said as she stripped a piece of aloe and cut thick gel to place on a bandage.

The relief on his face the instant she taped the bandage to his arm was almost worth the disobedience. It also confirmed that the wound seemed to be warded against forms of wizard care. Typical for wizards to ignore the fact that there were entire branches of healing that needed no magic at all to effective.

"They will miss you at the party," Petunia said after a few minutes had passed.

Although Severus still looked like he was in pain, the pain would be manageable and at least heal. He was not a child anymore and he didn't need her to protect him from the horrors of the world. She wished she had it in her to be crueller and mean to him, but he was already suffering for an ideal that she knew he would regret. In all the universes ever created there would not be a universe where Severus Snape was not completely smitten by Lily Evans.

She made Damocles beg for an apology the following day. When she had a little less fear and went down to raid the alcohol cellar for the crappy beers that Darren usually had bought when they were broke. While she didn't enjoy being drunk while working on potions, she needed the bravery that came with a full moon. She took the back entrances and lit the lamps around the room.

Dungeons were cold and nothing like the kitchen where she had first learned to make potions. There was still work that she needed to do for school, but she ignored it in favour of finishing a project that she hoped would make life a little easier for them all when it came to brewing the potion. Damocles had already thought of a name "wolfbane" something to tame the wolf.

The ready surrounding werewolves had told them nothing when they first started sifting through the information. So, Petunia had spent the first of the early weeks in Knockturn Alley trying to get anyone who would talk to her over a meal after work.

It was a slightly abusive and manipulative system but it was the only way to get people to talk. She wasn't any better than the wizards on the outside. Petunia was just as cut-throat and exploitative. She wasn't in the position to judge regardless of what she thought.

The party above seemed like it wasn't going to unwind anytime soon. The potion tests bubbling didn't have a stasis charm on them. Damocles was trying a new method that if it worked would be great but bring up the expense of the potion. Not that, that mattered to either of them.

They didn't address what had happened during Ostara. Petunia had gone to the village and activated the old Belby protection runes over the village after she sneaked off the farm. She spent the night at the church, pretending that she was praying for the soul of her mother, who she told the priest was going through a "difficult time". It was a lie, but one the priest didn't question, instead, he gave Petunia old clothes to sleep in and asked her to join the bake sale the following morning. The morning after the bake sale she had gone home and holed herself in the dungeon surrounded by potions that did damage upon vaporization. Petunia had never been more scared for her own life.

It was the last point of the lunar cycle for this potion and for them to be not talking would mean that the work was done this month would have been for nothing. Damocles had invited a few people over to watch this last point and it showed that he had confidence in this iteration of the potion. At least enough confidence that it would lead to some sort of tangible result.

Petunia and Damocles made sure that their breathing synced up. Every addition and stir had to be done together otherwise this method would not yield a pleasant result. They then slowly swapped ladles full of the potion every hour on the hour until the new moon reached its zenith, the potion was complete. A thick brown sludge that didn't look or smell very pleasant. It was piping hot, a werewolf had come forward. Greyback himself had offered to drink every ladleful that needed testing before he released it to the world. Unlike the rest of the Death Eater's, he did not hide his mark, nor his disgust for Petunia.

Petunia had taken to wearing a lot of silver and carrying a silver dagger with her. Guns didn't work in the wizarding world and Borgin and Burke had a nice silver multi-tool on sale. Overall, the incentive to protect herself outweighed any sort of stupid pride. Greyback grimaced at the smell.

"You must be able to add sugar to this." He talked in a low growl and the demand for sugar made Petunia fear him a little less at that moment.

"It'll change the structure of the potion making it useless. No sugar," Petunia was firm, she had tried it.

Greyback gulped down the potion in a couple of long dregs. Pulling his face every time. Petunia brought out a box of biscuits she had gotten from the bake sale and shoved it to him along with water and tea. She could hear her mom telling her she wasn't a good enough host. As Damocles was talking excitedly about the next set of steps he could take with regards to the potion, Petunia took her notebook and pieces of parchment to begin putting together what would be their final draft for the potion journals. If she did the labour now, then she wouldn't have to worry about trying to find pieces of paper the house-elves cleaned away.

She sat at the kitchen table eating vegetables without salt on them. A habit picked off from Darren when he was trying to be "healthy" before the starvation phase. The chemical symbols and explanation of the potion as they began their first round of human testing was quite interesting. Petunia had gotten the idea from birth control that Clara had, had to beg for. She hadn't told Damocles that but had made sure he understood what she thought would work. To get a person to think independently of the wolf inside.

The best protocol would have been to have a werewolf potion maker on the project. There was only a handful as far as she understood, they didn't like to draw attention to themselves. She kind of understood why now.