First off, to anyone following this story, I'm terribly sorry for the long wait. I'll just put the blame on real-life getting in the way of creativity.
This time again, a big thank you to Irymia for beta-reading and also to the talented writers on the Writers Anonymous forum for offering their feedback in the critique threads!
Because it's been so long since the last update, a quick refresh on where the last chapter left off: The battle is over, Sirius escaped, and Snape fears that Bellatrix or Yaxley may have heard him cast the spell that blocked the killing curse and saved Sirius' life. Well that's about it, so, without further ado, enjoy...
CHAPTER VII
LOWER YOUR WAND, LESTRANGE
"You did this!" Bellatrix aimed her wand at Severus' chest, and his heart flinched.
She stepped towards him, without haste, her focus unwavering. For all the times Severus had witnessed her blind frenzy wreak havoc, to now watch her advance on him in calm, deliberate intent sent a shiver running up his spine.
Centred, she was more terrible than ever.
Severus remained outwardly calm. His face said nothing. His eyes were cold. His heart was pounding, his mind – racing.
To fool Bellatrix into believing he had kept Black alive for the Dark Lord would leave him to persuade the Dark Lord of the same thing, under torture and legillimency. With the probability that he would break and fail. Or he could provoke Bellatrix to grant him a swift death before all hell commenced.
To think that her wrath could feel so sweetly tempting – a lazy man's way out… How bitterly ironic!
"You believe I did not see what you did?" she spoke. "How you left the door wide open for Sirius Black to flee?" Bellatrix didn't smirk. Nor did she scowl. Her face set in stone, she took another step.
Before her, her magic unwound – magnificent and maniac, like the shimmer in her eyes.
Severus closed his fist tightly around the handle of his wand, but did not raise it. Wounded, he was no match for Bellatrix. He would not delude himself with the apparent comfort of weakened magic.
A strange sense of emptiness enveloped him as the knowledge sank in that he could not rely on his magic. It felt cold and frightening, like standing naked in a blizzard.
Close enough for Severus to feel the power of her wand thrumming over his heart, Bellatrix stopped before him.
"The Dark Lord, " she said hushed, "trusted you with the honour of bringing Sirius Black before him."
She lifted her chin. She wasn't tall; her stature didn't mirror the strength she held within.
"And this is how you repay him? Too arrogant to prepare the attack properly? Too self-assured to cut off the escape routes? This – this failure – is your doing. The result of your negligence."
Her glare was feral. His face – inscrutable.
Around them, the air stood still, all sound arrested. No one spoke. Not a word. No further accusations. None at all…
Which could only mean Bellatrix had not heard Severus block the killing curse. Neither had Yaxley.
It was not Severus' treachery that infuriated Bellatrix but his negligence, his sloppy planning that had allowed Black to escape.
Against her will and through no fault of her own, she had been dragged by Severus into deceiving the Dark Lord. Bellatrix had let him down. A pain, to her, comparable to severing her wand arm from her body.
"Tell me," she said, "what should hold me from killing you where you stand?"
Severus scoffed, bitterly. Nothing. The truth was: nothing. After the night's fiasco, she could get away with killing him, and the Dark Lord would not begrudge her.
She frowned. Her power grew and sharpened and focused. Beneath her feet, the ground threatened to crackle and crumble under the force of the magic that emanated from her body.
Instinct tugged at Severus' arm to raise his only defence against her, but he disregarded it stubbornly. If he stood any chance before Bellatrix tonight, it was not by magic. Though by what else, he couldn't tell.
Where her thoughts and emotions had been an open playground for Severus in the past – volatile and helter-skelter, an invitation to toy with her will as he liked – she now stood before him impenetrable as marble. Her fury and anguish channelled into one single, immovable intent: to end his life.
There was no fissure through which to break into her thoughts. And besides magic and his mind, Severus truly had nothing else to fight with.
Yet his heart pumped madly to spite his predicament – trapped with no escape: neither fight, nor flight. He wondered whether Bellatrix could read the weakness in his eyes. Whether she had ever expected to find him trembling before her?
Of course she had. The ridicule of his own ignorance struck him. For someone of her power, to feel unfeared must have been unthinkable, he realised. Unconceivable. Unphasing, even… Somehow, with the strange thought, an idea shaped up, a way to breach her focus, possibly.
"Answer me!" she thundered, and the unspoken power that lured at the fore of her wand stirred like the wind in a storm. It hovered over his heart, sharp and white and tenser than a bolt pulled back in the string of a crossbow, ready to dart, to strike.
His wand held low, Severus stood before her. Bare of armour. But he was not unarmed. There was no greater weapon than a prepared mind, he reminded himself.
With a confidence he didn't feel, he smirked.
Then, slowly, Severus moved his free hand to open the front of his robes, and, unknowingly, Bellatrix played into his hands.
She glanced at the shifting robes. Then down at his wand, held low, and by the lines that suddenly creased her forehead, she was only now seeing that his wand wasn't trained on her. She watched wordlessly as he holstered it in deliberate calm.
She frowned. Her eyes shot back up, burned into his, silently impelling him to raise his weapon.
He did not grant her the favour.
Her frown deepened, fazed to be refused, distraught to see him unarmed, unarmoured, yet unflinching before her terrible power.
"Raise your wand, you coward," she spoke. "I will not hesitate to strike you unarmed."
The survival instinct thumped inside Severus, animalistic, raw, as though it wasn't his own.
He matched her stare, cold and ruthless. "I have no need for it against you."
She scowled. And her magic swirled and bubbled, no longer centred but savage, explosive as the sun.
To have perturbed her calm brought him more of an advantage than any magic could tonight. Severus seized her hesitation.
"Lower your wand, Lestrange."
Her breath stuttered. He did not blink.
"Or I will lower it for you."
Barely perceptible, a shiver ran through her. Her hand twitched, and she pulled back her wand the fraction of an inch.
For the briefest of moments she stood frozen, lips parted without words. Reflected in her eyes, Severus looked not unarmed. It unsettled her and left her mind open to treacherous games.
As her mouth turned to a scowl and she pressed her wand once more into his chest – not pointing at it, but physically pressing into his ribcage – Severus knew he was one word away from either victory or a swift death. He played his only card.
"I said, lower – your – wand. Whatever my fault…" his eyes searched her face for the shimmer of a reaction. "It is for the Dark Lord to decide the just course of action. Unless, of course, you do not trust his judgement. Unless, of course… you believe you know better than him."
Brown eyes glinted, bewildered. Her lip quirked. To besmirch with doubt her fanatic devotion to the Dark Lord cut sharper than a sentence in Azkaban, and Severus knew that.
He held her gaze as it flimmered deranged, watching the battle she was fighting inside. Her eyes darted from his face to his chest, to his hand that held no wand. Back to his face.
The incommensurate power she had summoned was dissipating, like a pile of sand held in the palm of the hand, which, once the fingers are parted, trickles down in rivulets until there is barely anything left but dust.
Then, as if something unseen had burned her, she withdrew her wand briskly and tottered back four paces.
They stared at one another in silence.
Disarrayed and taunted by her inner demons, she was but a shadow of the witch that had, only seconds ago, conjured a power so great it would have made Albus Dumbledore shudder.
Where Severus had found the strength in those moments to stand before her undaunted, he couldn't tell. But that strength was now fleeting as if it had never been his. He was becoming aware of the prodding ache in his injured side, and a sudden yearning to lean against something for support overcame him.
Despite his efforts, Bellatrix must have noticed his growing weakness, because her look of bewilderment morphed to inquisitive interest. She searched his face for an answer, thirsty to learn what powers he kept hidden.
She sized him up, inch by inch. Her glare travelled down with unnerving thoroughness until it stopped, affixed to his left side, below the ribs. And Severus regretted not having had the wit to pull his robes closed over the ugly injury; to do so now would only incite her curiosity further.
"You're wounded," she whispered, rather to herself.
When she lifted her head, an indiscernible emotion was playing on her face. "You – You were bluffing."
For a moment, Severus had no answer for Bellatrix, and so he simply stood, taking her in: her heavy breathing, the hard lines that edged her face, her chin lifted to appear taller despite the exhaustion that weighed down her shoulders. He wasn't the only one that the botched battle had taken a toll on, Severus realised, as an inexplicable sense of defeat overwhelmed him.
"Don't rejoice," he finally said, no longer fighting to hide the fatigue from his voice. "You're looking at nothing more than dried blood on fabric. The injury is healed already."
Bellatrix took another look. In the dim light, it wasn't easy to make out the blood stain on the dark fabric, but she took her time. "That… ? I doubt," she said with cold humour. "Even for a man of your talents, Snape."
Without another word, she turned her back to him and walked away.
Severus looked on as she headed for the door. He pushed back the impulse to rub a hand over his temples and instead glanced around the room; from a safe distance, Yaxley was gaping with a sour look on his face – disappointment, probably, with the anti-climatic denouement. Surely, the ladder-climbing bastard would have loved to watch the Dark Lord's first lieutenants tear each other apart and free his way up in the ranks.
But Severus had other concerns, more pressing than Yaxley's disgusting opportunism. Walking back to the apparition barrier with a freshly sutured injury, to begin with.
He tried not to dwell too much on the inconvenience. After all, word had it that in muggle hospitals, patients were up and walking hours after abdominal surgery, which involved, literally, cutting them open and sewing them back together like patched-up coats.
For what his pride was worth, Severus liked to think of himself as no less resilient than a fifty-year-old muggle lady who just had her appendix removed.
With such inspiring thought to motivate him, Severus grit his teeth and stepped forward towards the door, doing his best to ignore the pain in his side and the awkward wobble as he walked to meet the Dark Lord. It was going to be a long night.
Autor's Note: Much as I would like it to be otherwise, I can't take credit for the phrase "There is no greater weapon than a prepared mind". It doesn't belong to me, but to Zhuge Liang (181-234 AD, China) one of the most brilliant military strategists the world has ever seen.