Self-control? I don't think it really exists.

I've updated twice within twenty-four hours, so be sure you read Chapter 82 before coming to 83.

XOXO

Chapter Eighty-Three

National Anthem by Lana Del Rey

22 October 1979

Severus, what the fuck? What the actual fuck?

Why in the name of Helga's left tit didn't you tell me, that you went and fell in love with your little mudblood, forgive me muggleborn, pet? If I wasn't already dead and in the ground for seventeen years by the time you got to read this I would throttle you. And yes, I am well aware that you would have handed me my arse, but it's the principle of the matter. You're my best mate and I had to find out from a fucking, thrice-damned vision of Delphi that you not only got married but are going to have a kid! I was looking forward to being Uncle Reggie… Well until that wanker I was in love with went and triggered about six hours worth of visions while I was in bed with him, but I'll get to that later.

In all seriousness though Sev… Why didn't you tell me? Of all the secrets you've kept for me, surely you must have known I would have kept this one for you. You literally saved my life. You could have trusted me to help you keep that witch and baby of yours safe, with or without claiming the life debt between us.

I guess it is fair though, I didn't tell you I was a Seer. Not that you would have believed me anyways.

Now then, where to start… The simplest answer is the beginning but even that is a little difficult. The why, less so, so I'll start there. After Tom, the Dark Lord, began his grand plans of producing a dynasty, I started meditating on the future. On a side note, that's something I need you to help Theo accept. There is no suppressing the Seer within him, he needs to stop fighting it and learn to live with it, only then can he achieve peace with his curse and see it for the gift it is. The two of you have to stop forcing the visions back, the walls will always crumble and the damage that it will cause his mind will drive him mad far faster. But we can talk more about Theo later, I've digressed.

Tom never knew what I truly was and I never knew what he was truly capable of. I was so naive, hell we all were, falling for his grandiose speeches. You remember though, he was magnetic. You couldn't help but want to be around him, be seen by him. I spent my entire life around powerful and commanding purebloods but no one could command a room like him. He was so charismatic and I think I may have fallen in love with him the moment I met him. And if I am being completely honest with you, and more importantly myself, I still do. Had I lived, a part of me would have always loved him despite it all, at least the part of him that was Tom and not the Dark Lord.

So the why of it all. Though Tom never knew, I would meditate on the future and glean as much as it would allow me to, about the possible outcomes of his decisions. It was how I used to guide him one way or the other when he would talk his plans out with me. At the time I didn't need to worry because he had decided that Bella was the perfect choice to bear his children. Everything circling around that choice always led back to her never getting pregnant and him further pursuing an alternate route to immortality he had started while in Hogwarts. It was months before I found out what exactly that plan was and when I did… well it didn't give me a lot of time to get things into place before my death. I'm well aware the route I went wasn't the best course of action, but I did have less than three weeks to get it all together. Besides strategy was always your forte.

Yes, Severus, I foresaw my own death. Regardless of the choices I made, I would have died before the Dark Lord's first fall in 1981. This way at least, I was able to go out on my own terms, die clear of the life debt I owed you by securing their lives in return, and make you aware of the horcruxes that would need to be recollected and destroyed.

Sirius chose to leave and forge his own path and I never once faulted him for that, even if you always did and probably always will. The only fault I lay with my brother is from that final year you both were in school with me. My decisions may have been my own up to that point, but when I realized what you had always known, that I didn't have the stomach for this life it was too late, I was in too deep. He turned me away and you… You did what you had always done and will always do. You took matters into your own hands and protected me in the best way you knew how. I would have been killed if not for you, Sev. And don't roll your eyes at me and say I'm over exaggerating, we both felt the unclaimed debt hanging between us after you took my Marking kill for me. Always there, urging you to claim it and bind me to your service. You never did though, no matter how many people you had to terrorize, torture, or kill so that I wouldn't have to.

I swear that bloody hat should have put you in Gryffindor.

Everything was good for a time. Bella wasn't getting pregnant just like I had seen, Tom was going to resume his discarded plans, you had your little muggleborn to play with and squeeze information out of, and I was happily living my life with Tom, on top of the fucking world thinking the most powerful man in living history loved me. Then the aforementioned muggleborn began to draw his attention and he wanted to know more about her, and slowly she became an obsession. He was convinced that if you sired a child with her, that the offspring would be worthy of his name. Stupid I know, the child of a halfbreed and a mudblood, as if those twisted fucks at the table would have ever bowed down to your child, regardless of their power. They would have tried to kill that baby and your witch for good measure. Which leads me to the visions that were triggered that night.

A few weeks ago I was in bed with Tom and I really can't remember what he said to set everything off but there we were about to go to sleep and for the first time in several years, I was thrown into the visions. I was trapped inside watching hours of the past and future, trying to decipher everything. It was nearly dawn by the time I was released from it all. Sev, the things I saw... I couldn't believe it and yet it was all there, plain as day for me to see.

I'm a fucking Seer, it should be impossible to fool me, and yet he did. He fucking made me think he loved me and cared for me. All that time I thought I was sharing my love and myself with Tom Riddle, not the Dark Lord. Turns out they're one and the same, there is no separating the two and like a fool, I fell for his act and still love the man I was shown.

They say the Blacks are cursed with madness but I think we're all cursed to be unhappy fucks and that's what makes us go mad in the end. Except for Bellatrix, someone seriously screwed up with that deranged cousin of mine.

I saw dozens of ways he won the impending war, the wizarding world forever destroyed after he took the helm of government. His reign of tyranny went on for decades, all because of those damned horcruxes he gave us during that meeting last month. How none of us realized that's what they were, I'll never know. I mean we were all practitioners and students of dark magic and yet not a single person knew what the hell those things were besides, pretty little trinkets gifted to us, his favored few.

Every vision I saw, circled back to you and your witch. Or rather your daughter. Something tells me that after reading that if you didn't already know has pleased you beyond belief. I don't need to be a Seer to know you would love nothing more than to have a daughter to dote upon. You always did revere women and personally, I can't picture you ever living a life not surrounded by them, so it's rather fitting.

Now we're getting into the part that is a little convoluted. I filled an entire journal with all my notes about this for Theo, so he'll have more details that he will be able to decipher and hopefully explain it better to you later. For now, this is what I have to offer you.

Almost everything I saw hinged on how the events of today played out. If you aren't already sitting you probably should, Sev. This won't be pleasant for you to read. Just remember though, if you're reading this she's already back in 1997 with you, they're both safe, and your plans and mine are beginning to merge together.

Today, the day I ended up dying, they had been waiting for her. Bella, Rodolphus, Rab, and Barty, they were all waiting for her, and her werewolf friend who used to take her places when you couldn't, to arrive at that muggle bookshop she went to every week. Since those amulets you and Cissy are working on as I write this weren't ready, she would have had no defenses against what they had planned to do to her and it would have been so much worse when they saw that bump you put in her.

I tried to spare her the pain and loss of future children for you both, Severus, I really did, but no matter what events I changed, Hermione being tortured was inevitable. They say no one moment in time is fixed, but they're wrong. It was always meant to happen; it was just a question of when and what you both would lose upon it happening. I did everything I could though, to buy you as much time to finish as was possible.

What I had initially been shown and had to begin to play with to avoid coming to fruition, was the death of both your unborn daughter and wife. Let's just say that doesn't end well for ANYONE. The last thing our world needed was for you to get supercharged from absorbing your wife's magic upon her death. Salazar and Merlin's bollocks Severus, you may as well have become Thanatos reincarnated for the way you rained fire upon the world in your grief and rage.

After seeing that, I began meditating on the visions asking for things to play out in a world where at least Hermione survived. It was better, but I couldn't allow you to go through everything you would for that to have been your ending. It wasn't fair or right to either of you and the sacrifices you both would have made in that possible future to secure peace.

You were both so devastated at the loss of your daughter that your marriage never recovered. She was a shell of her former self, unable to cope and you retreated so far into yourself so you didn't have to feel the pain that you never saw how much she needed you. By the time she went back to her rightful year, the two of you had drifted so far apart that your bond had died. Over your years without her, you grew to realize what you had lost and upon her return begged and pleaded for another chance to be there for her. She did eventually forgive you for shutting her out and the two of you were slowly coming back together only for your task from Dumbledore to happen. She went on the run with the Potter kid and youngest Weasley boy looking for the horcruxes and the two of you didn't see each other again till you were dying. Tom was defeated but she had paid for that with her daughter and husband's lives.

The anguish she felt and lived with every day after the war took a toll on her magic and eventually her life. She didn't even live to see thirty before passing away in her sleep one night at Spinner's End, her core having been drained to that of someone nearing two hundred years of age, as it fought against her for the will to live.

The final variation and the one I acted upon, was moving the day of my death up. It wasn't enough to be sure she had the magical protection of your bond and the amulets. A life had to be given in exchange for another life. When I started toying with delaying when she was taken as well as having someone die on the day she should have, things began to change, more favorable outcomes of the war and the destruction of horcruxes presented themselves. Finally placing myself into the role of dying I was given what we have now.

You both still have so much to do, but you're almost there. You know of the horcruxes and you have the means with which to destroy them. Now with your wife's inheritance, you also have the financial means to fund your side of the war.

Do what you have been planning Severus and defect from both sides before the end of the term. It will work out for you both and for the war effort, I promise you. Until the time comes for that to happen though, my family name and title will protect her. You two can go public with any version of the truth you wish and between your position beside the Dark Lord and the claim I have placed on her as my heir will keep her safe. At least from our side, that is. Her side is another story, you know how those bloody Gryffindors can be after all, but she wouldn't have captured your heart if she wasn't made of stern enough stuff to handle what will be thrown at her in the wake of your marriage coming to light.

Now about Theo… You must help him become one with his Seer. They cannot exist as two separate entities. It's as much a part of him as he is of it. The occlumency walls need to be engaged around the storage of his mind that holds his visions, not where he sees them at. That connection has to remain open in order for him to master it. Once he stops suppressing it and embraces it, he will be so much happier and more stable. The visions have to be released otherwise they will obliterate his mind and it can only handle that so many times before he breaks from reality completely.

He needs to take several hours a day to listen in on what Delphi wants to show him. To start he should do a single hour, three to four times a day, and work to eventually bring the meditation practice to one uninterrupted session. After he masters that, he can begin working on four hours one day and one or two the next and alternate it.

I did not want to leave him. It was my job to guide him, mentor him, and protect him from the outside world and more importantly himself. He's more broken inside than the both of us combined. Take care of him for me, Severus. And love him like your own. He needs you, he will bond and open up with Hermione and love her with a ferocity to rival your love for Cissy, but it's you he needs and craves to please. He will deny himself the love and happiness he knows he can have in the future if it means not disappointing you.

Now put this away and go love your wife, Severus.

I love you, brother,

Reggie

PS: When the time comes for your daughter and… well I'll leave that surprise unrevealed. I just hope when the time comes, I'm somewhere that will allow me to look in on you finding out just how like her mother, your daughter will be. Anyways, when they start thinking of names for their son, remind her of her Uncle Reggie. I did play a big role in her existence after all, I should at least rank getting a middle name.