Chapter 44 - "And after all. You're my Wonderwall

The post-funeral wake for Cedric was winding down. The staff had indeed gone down to the Three Broomsticks for a drink after the memorial to dry their eyes and feed their souls. As Circe had been making her way out of the castle, she had spied Fred and George smuggling their own few bottles of firewhiskey under their coats into Gryffindor tower but she decided to look the other way. The kids had to mourn too and whatever brought them together made them stronger. Plus, the twins had only managed to get one or two bottles and given the amount of people they'd have to share with, there'd be no danger of finding any drunk students upon their return.

Down at the pub, Hagrid had beguiled them with a few traditional Irish wake songs and he soon had the whole pub singing along to 'The Parting Glass' with him. His voice was perfectly suited to it: gruff, rough, soulful and folky and Circe had been taken a little by surprise when Minerva had been the first one to join him.

"Of all the comrades that e'er I had

They are sorry for my going away.

And all the sweethearts that e'er I had

They would wish me one more day to stay

But since it falls unto my lot

That I must go and you should not

I'll gently rise and I'll softly call

Good night and joy be with you all."

Circe had sat by the window, in the very same corner of the bar where she had sat with Remus on their hungover morning, as she watched the other professors swinging side to side, belting out the tune with Hagrid. It had been soul soothing to listen to, but ultimately it too had come to an end as the staff dispersed and returned to the castle one by one. She simultaneously wished she had Remus with her or Tonks or Minerva, but also wanted to be left alone. Remus was plainly falling in love with Tonks, based on the increasingly frequent letters from him that talked of her more and more. It made her smile to think of her two friends falling for one another in Edinburgh as they went for coffees in the Old Town, or met for a walk through Morningside… perhaps they'd even gone to the same Gallery her and Severus had been known to frequent. But they too were on borrowed time with talk of Dumbledore reforming the Order any day now. Remus had informed her that Sirius had offered up Grimmauld Place as the Order headquarters and Circe was beginning to wonder if she would be paying for Remus's room up in Edinburgh for much longer. Still, she didn't regret selling her Jaguar to her Dad, even if the whole reasoning behind the sale would be made a moot point soon. Remus would be back with Sirius when the Order re-converged, or when he realised he was head-over-heels for Tonks, whatever came first.

When she eventually did decide to return to the castle, Circe was at a loss for what to do with herself. The Beauxbattons and Durmstrang boys were due to leave Hogwarts that evening and the castle was morose and quiet. She lingered in the Staff Room, completely alone, hunched over in one of the great armchairs by the fire. She stroked the velvet on the arm of the chair, staring at the ridges she created in the fabric. The firewhiskey in her belly sat uneasily in her stomach, her thoughts once again turning to Voldemort, to when she would be summoned, to Severus…

She felt another presence at her back but did not turn around to acknowledge them. Her eyes were still glazed over in far-away thought when Dumbledore took his seat in the chair opposite to her, folding his hands onto his lap silently.

"He still loves her, doesn't he. Lily." Circe said, matter of factly, still staring into the fire.

"My dear, he will always love her." Dumbledore replied quietly.

Circe nodded gravely and wept silently.

"But that does not mean that he loves you any less." Dumbledore continued. "The human heart is a beautiful, wonderful thing. Capable of great deeds, sometimes beyond our understanding. You loved Odette, did you not?"

"Well yes, but…"

"And when you were both seventeen would you not have vowed to move heaven and earth for one another? And Samuel too? Did you not love him? And William? Does any of that diminish how you feel for Severus now?"

Circe thought to herself. She wondered how Dumbledore knew the names of her ex-boyfriends, but then again Dumbledore seemed to know everything... and hearing their names said aloud made her chest ache with the memories they conjured up.

" I think… When we choose to love a person, we give a little bit of ourselves to them forever. Even if.. Or when it ends, there will forever be a version of our past selves that loves that person. They made us, moulded us. They are us. You cannot change Severus's past, my dear, but you can be his present. His now. You know, I think Severus knows how to love better than any of us."

"Why?"

"Because that's why he finds it all so painful."

Circe sobbed. Thinking back to the words Severus had used when they had fought in the Defense Against the Dark Arts office. How he had blamed himself for Cedric's death because he had dared to be happy. The hurt that had shone in his eyes when she'd told him about how she felt about Harry and Lily. "I don't want to hurt him, Albus. Not any more than he already has been." she muttered through her tears.

"Ahh but we cannot truly know love without knowing pain. The real crux of the matter is how much happiness you bring one another. You make him happy, my dear."

"Do I?" she asked dismissively. "He didn't make it sound that way."

"Has he shown you his patronus yet?"

"No."

"Ask him to. Ask him to show you the manifestation of his happiness."

"Yes, thank you Headmaster…" came Severus's irritated voice from behind Circe's head.

They both wheeled around in their seats to turn their faces towards Severus's voice. There he stood, standing with his arms behind his back and his face a fierce red blush.

"Ahh, Severus… The Durmstrang boys are all packed up and ready to head off?" Dumbledore asked brightly, rising from his chair.

"They are. Pomona is ready too to accompany them back to their home and already on her way down to their ship."

"Ahh good." he patted Snape's shoulder as he passed by. "I shall leave you two to hash things out then. Discuss your plans for rendez-vousing with Voldemort and such…"

Circe cleared her throat awkwardly as they both patiently waited for Dumbledore to leave them. As the door to the Staff room closed, Severus finally moved to sit himself in the seat Dumbledore had just left and placed his fingers together before him.

"Well go on then." Circe said suddenly. "Let's see it."

"What?" Severus asked, a little surprised. "Now?" Circe scoffed and moved to leave. But Severus interrupted her before she could go. "Alright, alright… Just before you see it, you need to know that my patronus is susceptible to change. It changes sometimes due to bereavement, or a shift in character… or falling in love."

"Change? What was it before?"

"A doe." he answered in a low voice.

"I see. Lily's?" she asked coldly.

"Yes. But sometimes it still is a doe…"

"This isn't helping, Severus." Circe stated shortly.

"But it hasn't manifested as a doe for quite some time now. Not since… well, do you remember that snowball fight we had?" he asked with a small smile.

Circe did not respond. Severus sighed and stood to his feet. He withdrew his wand, closing his eyes for a brief moment as he summoned a happy memory, the memory of that very same snowball fight, and waved it in the air above his head.

"Expecto patronum."

From the end of Severus's wand emerged the most beautiful, silvery arctic fox. It bounded around them both, flicking its long and bushy tail as it went. She realised she had seen it that day Severus had covered for Remus's lesson, when she had peered through the keyhole. An exact mirror of hers. The fox padded around her armchair and looked up at her curiously as it emerged on the other side. She watched it bound off into the ether as it faded away and she was left teary-eyed and struck dumb once again.

"I should never have said what I said to you before we found Barty…" Severus almost whispered. "I didn't mean it. You and I both know how death can change and warp a person's thoughts, how it can make even the sweetest things in our lives seem bitter."

Severus waited for a heartbeat. Circe thought of that time after her mother's death when her Dad had refused to see her. The pain and sense of abandonment that she had felt when he'd shut himself away from her. A pain that still made her ache even now. Severus saw the memory of that trauma play across her face, knowing that he had unintentionally caused her a similar wound with his own words. He sucked in a deep breath as he prepared to continue.

"And… I'm sorry. Once again, I have betrayed my own insecurities and wounds by inflicting them upon you. But for the longest time I thought that I was finished. That it was better for me to be singular, whole and broken... than to be half of something that made me complete. I thought that this world held little for me and my battered soul and I'd forever be bent double with a weight that I never wished to carry. I thought I knew this castle and every little secret and story in its walls. And then I met you." he paused, his black eyes finding hers swimming with tears. He smiled his sad smile and glanced down to his shoes.

"But I understand if... If you feel that you couldn't forgive me and the fire has gone out. Just… before you ended things and left me I wanted to say these things to you. For you to know without the shadow of a doubt that you saved me and you have been nothing but absolute salvation to me."

Circe rose from her chair, dropping to her knees and moving over to Severus until she knelt before him in his own chair. She took his face in her hands, pulling his head up off the floor until he was forced to look at her. When he found her beautiful green eyes again, his resolve finally fell and he wept. He kissed her before she could say what he assumed would be her parting words, pulling her close and feeling her soft lips one last time.

"Today, tomorrow and as far into the future as I can see." she uttered breathlessly, tucking a strand of his long black hair behind his ear.

"You can't possibly still want-" he choked out, holding on to her face.

"I do. I do still want you."

A sob escaped from Severus's chest and he let her kiss him again and again and again by the gentle light of the fire. Each kiss sealing up a wound that lay between them.

"The road ahead of us will be long, Sev. And harsh and winding. And perhaps at times we won't know which way is forwards or backwards and it'll seem like we're stumbling around blind. But we'll traverse that road together."

"I love you." he replied simply.

"And I love you too, you silly git."

Circe stood on the parapets of Hogwarts's walls, waving goodbye to the boys still on the deck of the Durmstrang ship. It seemed like so long ago that she had stood on the deck of The Brizo at the beginning of the year with Krum and Karkaroff. She felt like a different person back then, before all this grief, before all this worry, before her and Severus. The cannons on the galleon fired off, sending a ripple of shouts through the students around her, also watching the ship depart. Circe could just about see the ant-like figures of the Bulgarian boys disappear below deck and a few moments later the ship sunk below the waters of the Black Lake.

Circe looked around her, at the children waving enthusiastically and calling out to the Durmstrang boat as the last mast disappeared under the water. She saw Harry with his friends, a small smile on his face as they looked out over the highland hills. Her heart soared upon seeing the shadow of something resembling what the boy had looked like before that awful night in the maze play across his face. Harry caught her as she watched him and she smiled back at him warmly. His face seemed older now, more weathered, more lined with a burden that never should have been his to bear. Circe had spent so long mourning the loss of her and Severus's time to just be a normal couple, she'd forgotten all the things that this ordinary boy had had snatched from him. He had his childhood taken from him, his innocence… And Circe knew that this was the very beginning of the road for Potter. She looked from Ron to Hermione, grateful that Harry at least had friends like the two of them by his side. She remembered her own friends from her Hogwarts days, marvelling at how the bonds created and crafted in these castle's walls stay with you forever. If Circe could have shouldered some of the burden off Harry, she would have taken it but she felt a little comforted knowing that he had his friends with which to share that burden, and he likely always would. She was once again reminded of Dumbledore's words at the memorial:

"We are only as strong as we are united, as weak as we are divided. And in the face of the raging storm heading our way, we must endeavour to have those whom we are bonded to by love by our side, to keep us strong, to keep us united."

Harry broke away from Hermione and Ron, fixing Circe with a determined look. Circe was a little taken aback, wondering what the boy had to say to her.

"Hello Professor." he began a little stiffly.

"Hello Harry." she replied, slightly embarrassed. Had he felt a little affronted when he'd caught her looking at him like some fairground attraction? The whole world would want a piece of Harry soon, once his story of the graveyard broke. The least he could expect from his teachers was that they continued to treat him like a normal teenager regardless of whatever happened, or would happen. "I was just… remembering my own friends from my Hogwarts days. And you standing there with Granger and Weasley got me reminiscing."

"Do you still talk to your school friends, Professor?" he asked curiously. "Now you've outgrown Hogwarts, are they still… there for you?"

"Some of them not so much…" she offered truthfully. She knew Harry wanted reassurance in this moment and she carefully thought of what she wanted to say next. She thought of Myron, of Tonks, and everyone else who she had known when she was a student in these walls. She also thought of those firm friends whom she had found since school, Remus and Minerva, her unmoveable rock's of support and solidarity. All the people she loved as dearly as Severus, who she would fight with and fight for to keep them safe. "Others… I could go for months or years without speaking to them and it's like we never spent a moment apart. Even when everything changes… and you've changed too. They're still there. They're the people to lean on."

Harry nodded, glancing back to Ron and Hermione as they looked up into the bright sky.

"That's what I hoped."

Harry turned to rejoin them and Circe too moved to leave but he wheeled back around all of a sudden, "Oh, Professor...!"

"Yes, Harry?"

"You were right. About my Mum." Harry said levelly.

"Your mum?" Circe asked as she frowned back at him.

"What you said before the final challenge. About her being proud of me. She was proud. They both were."

In the next moment, in the sky above them, the Beauxbattons carriage went careening over their heads. Whatever Circe could have said next was lost in the flutter of the wings of the pegasus horses as they pulled the carriage off into the crystal clear blue sky. Harry rushed back to Ron and Hermione's side, leaving Circe wondering exactly what he had seen in the graveyard that night. Again, the students waved and shouted their goodbyes after them. As the carriage flew off into the distance, Circe suddenly remembered the note Maxime had given her before the commencement of Cedric's memorial service. She delved into her pocket, feeling the bumps of the wax seal that held it shut. Circe backed away from the parapets and stole herself away to a quiet corner in the corridor, casting a nervous eye over the delicately folded, expensive paper before she broke open the seal with trembling fingers.

"Dear Circe,

Our Master summons you and Severus Snape to the conclave at Pettigrew Manor next week.

Magic is might.

It is good to hear of you, ma cherie.

Odette Lestrange"

The note was brief, but each word written on the paper sent shockwaves throughout Circe's entire body. Her hands were trembling as she read each sentence over and over again. The perfume that Odette had sprayed on the parchment was just as she remembered her smelling back when they were both seventeen: bergamot and jasmine, ethereal and other-worldly. But back when Circe had known Odette, she had been a 'Guillaume'. The name that stared at her from the page, written in her sprawling cursive was unknown. It was unsettling. Circe knew it.

She gathered her senses and ran off to try and find Severus. She knew that he would be waving goodbye to the foreign visitors with the Slytherins and she jogged from location to location, looking for anywhere where he might be. She eventually found him, out of breath and puffing, outside by the shores of the Lake. He heard her panting breaths before she approached him and turned to greet her with a puzzled look on her face. He thought about whispering something crude and flirtatious in her ear about her not being able to wait until they had agreed to meet in their Room of Requirement that evening, but when he saw her expression of worry he dropped that thought like a hot coal. Circe tugged on his sleeves and pulled him behind the large oak tree with a fear in her eyes that unnerved him.

"What is it? What's wrong?" he asked, laying a hand on her shoulder.

"Lestrange." she said bluntly. Severus tensed and his expression turned sour in a heartbeat, telling Circe everything she needed to know. "Why do I know that name, Severus?"

"They are one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. A pure-blood wizarding family. The most notable, infamous member of that clan being Bellatrix Lestrange." he said in hushed tones.

"The witch who tortured Frank and Alice Longbottom into insanity?"

"The very same. Vicious, unhinged little bitch, she was." Severus spat. Circe was taken aback with just how brutal Severus's summation of her was. "I had the unmitigated delight of meeting her during the first wizarding war. Voldemort's most ardent general, she was... Her family forced her to marry Rodolphus Lestrange when she was just eighteen. She is Black's cousin. Draco's aunt…."

"Look…" Circe said gravely as she extended Odette's letter out to Severus. He took it and scanned it with his dark eyes.

"We have been called then, finally." he whispered. Circe almost hadn't consciously registered that part of the note, her attention firmly grabbed by Odettes' new surname. But as Severus uttered the words of their summons, she felt a chill go through her. But she pushed all of that aside for now, returning back to the name scrawled along the bottom of the paper.

"Severus, look at her last name. 'Lestrange'. Odette can't be one of them. I hoped… I prayed that she'd managed to escape her father… what her family wanted of her…." Circe muttered, leaning heavily against the oak tree as this eventful, awful day drew even more tears from her eyes.

"Rodolphus had a brother." Snape stated plainly. "Rabastan."

"But... " Circe thought. She suddenly remembered why the name had felt so familiar to her. Minerva and her had discussed them all when Barty had gone missing. "They were all arrested in, what? 84? 85? I remember reading about their trial just after I'd left Wizengamot tracked them down after years on the run and sent them packing off to Azkaban after what they did to Frank and Alice. That would mean…"

"Bellatrix was forced to marry at eighteen, Circe…. It's what these pure-blood wizarding families do." he tried to say comfortingly. But Circe felt sick to her stomach. Odette had agreed to more than just cutting ties with Circe, after they were discovered, it seemed. It appeared like she'd also agreed to marry. Marry a man whom her father approved of.

She has children… Circe suddenly remembered. She has children with this man.

"The Lestranges have always had strong pure-blood views. I'm not surprised they used Odette to summon you to the conclave." Severus whispered gravely. "But how did they know that there was a prior connection between you two?"

"Maxime… Maxime wrote to her and told her how to find me."

"So, we are to both present ourselves at Pettigrew Manor. Next week." Severus sighed and kicked the trunk of the oak tree. "Damn!"

"What? It's the end of term, school will be over by then." Circe said as she cast a furtive eye at the students around her.

"No, it's not that. I thought… well I thought I'd at least have a little while longer to at least attempt to fulfil my promise to you." Severus said, leaning in close to her.

"What promise?"

"To teach you occlumency."