AN: I have been in mourning for Jim Steinmann over the last few days so I had to find a way to work his music into this chapter. He wrote beautiful songs and he was instrumental in bringing our Circe and Sev together. RIP.

This chapter was a strange one to write; it's very emotionally laden and something I wanted to take time over. I hope I did it justice.

Chapter 58 - "Can't find a better man."

Severus and Circe were both finding sleep hard to come by. The two of them lay back to back in Circe's old bed, in her teenage bedroom in Windmill Way, both of their minds reeling with difficult thoughts.

"Sev, are you awake?" Circe asked at around four in the morning. She'd been in and out of the toilet all night. Circe hoped her bladder was just irritating her out of nerves or stress but it had been bothering her every hour or so. Up she would get and into the toilet with a sigh she would go to wee and, if her thoughts caught up with her, vomit with anxiety too.

"Of course I am." Severus muttered back. So far, he had counted Circe climb back into bed five times. So far he had pretended to be asleep, but he too had been awake and riddled with restlessness.

Circe sighed, almost as if she was trying to remove the stress in her body by letting it seep through her teeth and into the dark room. She turned around to face Severus and he moved onto his back to draw her in close. She sighed into his chest.

"What a bloody mess." She whispered. "God I feel sick. Like that time I bought all of those chocolate frogs… Are you sure Tom's a wizard?"

"He made a car float, Circe. He's magic."

"B-but Jane's a muggle, so is his Dad."

"It happens rarely. But it does happen. Look at the Granger girl."

"So what do I do, Sev?" Circe asked, almost choking on the emotional lump forming in her throat. "What do I do when Tom turns up at Hogwarts in a few years time and he doesn't even recognise me?"

"So you still mean to go through with the obliviating?" Severus asked, having come to the same conclusion himself.

"If I don't, and the wrong people find him, he still may suffer. Wizard or not, his connection to me will put him in danger. So it's best he forgets who I am. And then Heaven help my poor heart when I see him entering the Great Hall with the other First Years..."

Severus flinched as he felt a pool of warm wetness spreading over his chest, and he realised Circe was crying. He held her firm until she'd ceased weeping, unable to think of any comforting words for her:

"When do you mean to do it?" He asked. "I could see you were thinking about it when we were all watching 'Hook' after dinner."

"No. Not during 'Hook', Sev." She said firmly.

The boys had begged the adults to sit and watch their favourite film after the meal was finished. Safe to say, Circe and Severus both had very rapidly lost their appetites and had picked at their curries whilst Matthew, Tom and Alec munched happily. However, Severus was glad that he had been sat down back on the terracotta sofa, in front of the film, and had not been required to converse much that evening. His head was all over the place as his eyes took in images of pirates and mermaids and Lost Boys and raucous screams of "Bangarang!". Circe too was constantly battling against a floodgate of tears springing up behind her eyes as she watched the heart-wrenching scenes between Peter and his children; a father trying to do right by his family, going through trials and hardships to keep them from harm, finding happiness and meaning in familial bonds… it had been almost too much for Circe to sit through.

"When then?" Severus asked her gently.

"Before they wake up, when they're asleep."

Severus nodded silently. "Yes, I think that'd be best."

And then there had been Severus, sat stone-faced beside her grinding his teeth.

"So, are we really not going to talk about the album?" Circe asked, whispering into the dark hair on Severus's chest. "About what Dad said about Jane's patient?"

"There's nothing to discuss." Severus replied sharply, sitting up in the bed and turning away from Circe's searching eyes.

"Severus… it's your father." Circe said imploringly. Severus groaned and swung his legs over the side of the bed, arching his back at her. "He's dying, Sev. He wants to see you."

"How can you say that, Circe? I told you who he is.., what he did…"

"And yet here you are, just as awake as me."

"Are you going to talk of forgiveness again?" He asked derisively, rising to his feet and pacing around the bed. His knuckles turned white as he gripped the cast-iron bedstead. "Let me guess: I should be the "better person" and let go of the grudge so I can live my life without the anger and the resentment. You know… I told you that I'd fight to forgive myself for what I did to Lily. Perhaps if Hell freezes over, I may one day even forgive Sirius and James for their years of torment. But Tobias Snape… No. Never. You can't ask that of me."

"I agree." Circe stated simply.

Severus was a little taken aback. He jumped back from Circe, sitting upright in the bed, his head spinning.

"What do you mean?" He whispered, his heart thumping.

"He doesn't deserve anything from you, Sev. And if you don't want to see him, then that's your call."

"He is a bastard, Circe." Severus hissed out through clamped teeth. "He beat me and my mother when he came home stinking drunk. When I would cry or scream from watching him thump her, he would lock me in the cupboard under the sink. I had to wear my mother's clothes when I was young because he spent every spare pound we had on booze. Any hint of magic from either of us, and we'd be black and blue the next day. Not even when my mother was dying did he allow her to see me. He kept my mother from me, Circe. She must have asked for me in the same way he has. And he still refused her…"

Severus's shaking hand released the bed frame and he turned from her as his voice failed him, bitter tears running down his face.

"You are a better man than your father could ever dream of being, Severus." Circe said gently, climbing out of her bed and at his side in an instant. She cupped his face in her hands and whispered to him. "So tell me you don't want to see him and we'll be gone from here at dawn, as soon as I've obliviated everyone. If that's what you want."

Severus's heart beat wildly in his chest again. He shook from Circe's grasp and picked up his green jumper from off the floor.

"Sev…" Circe called out to him gently. Yet Severus did not halt, pulling his jacket around him and opening the bedroom door with a panicked look in his eyes. He wanted some breathing space, some air that wasn't hot and stuffy, somewhere that wasn't the four walls of this bedroom where his mind played tricks on him.

"It's almost dawn. You better get started on the boys." He said in a harsh whisper, before rushing out into the landing and down the stairs.

Severus closed the front door of Windmill Way as gently as he could and walked out into the driveway, taking in huge gulps of cold night air to try and calm his racing mind. He was confounded, nauseated that even the hint of the idea of seeing Tobias Snape in the Hospice had entered his mind. More so, he was disgusted with himself that he had… considered it. Severus had always told himself that if he ever saw his father again, it would be a hundred years too soon… so why did Circe seem to sense that his heart was disquietened by what Matthew had told them?

"Fuck!" He grunted into the dark, starless sky.

"Hello?" A voice called out from the garage behind him. "Someone there?"

The metal garage door lifted up, letting a yellow light spill out onto the driveway. Matthew's face appeared in the small space in between the ground and the door, peering into the gloom with a frown.

"Oh, Mister Smith…." Severus muttered, feeling his skin grow red hot.

"Ahh, so you're up too are you?" Matthew sighed, pushing the door up to full height. "Come see the Jag, son." He beckoned Severus inside the garage with a welcoming hand.

Severus took another breath and approached the snazzy-looking car that Matthew had been tinkering on. He watched as Matthew lay down a spanner on an oil-stained cloth by the car's open bonnet and wiped his hands on a hankie.

"This is my fourth child, Severus." Matthew chuckled.

"I thought Tom and Alec weren't yours." Severus grumbled.

"No, but they might as well be. I met Jane when they were just three and one. And these days I see them more than I see Circe!" He said with a sad smile.

"Ahh." Severus replied a little awkwardly. "So this is yours?" He asked, pointing back to the car.

"It was Circe's. She said it was given to her as a gift…"

"A gift? From who?"

"Well I'm not sure. But I wish I had the kind of friends Circe has with presents like this!"

"Hmm…" Severus grumbled, knowing of only a handful of people who would be able to afford a gift like that. And his mind settled on only one person who would buy something this extravagant for an acquaintance.

"But she sold it to me, and now it's mine." Matthew continued. "Sometimes when I can't sleep, I come down to the garage and have a bit of a tinker with the engine… do some repairs… small modifications, you know."

"What I said to you before, Mister Smith, I meant it. I'll protect Circe with my life if I have to. I'll make sure she sees it through this war." Severus stated solemnly.

"Matthew. Call me Matthew, Severus." He stated as he picked up another screwdriver. "And I would say back to you… that war is not something that you can predict or make promises about. The Germans were not expecting Operation Sea Lion to fail. The Soviets were not expected to hold back the momentum of Barbarossa. The Japanese did not expect the usage of the atomic bomb on two of their major cities…" Matthew delved back into the open bonnet of the car again and began prying away at the mechanics. "But you surely must know that any father would worry about their children. Even with all the promises and guarantees in the world."

"Not every father…" Severus said bitterly.

Matthew stopped his tinkering and looked at Severus's vacant face for a moment.

"So, I've told you man to man why I'm up at this ungodly hour. What about you, Severus? Did Jane slip itching powder under your blankets?"

"No… I…" Severus stuttered, but he paused when he saw Matthew's broad grin. He smiled too, despite his morose mood, seeing a touch of Circe in her father's face in that moment.

"Is it something to do with the photo album Jane wanted you to look at?" Matthew pressed. "You seemed a little… out of sorts after you had a glance at it. Somebody you recognise?"

"It was my family." Severus answered honestly. "The photo album was my mother's. It was one of the only things I noticed had been taken from the house when I came home to Cokeworth after… after I left home."

"I see. So the bloke Jane's looking after at the Hospice… he's your-"

"My father." Severus spat viciously.

"Oh dear, that doesn't sound good." Matthew said flippantly, as if he had heard a gurgle in his car's engine. "Not a top bloke then?"

"No. He was not the father to me that you are to Circe and the boys. Not even close."

"But you want to see him, don't you son." Matthew stated plainly.

Severus flinched, snapping his head up sharply and staring at Matthew with surprise.

Good God, is there something about the Smiths that just gives them a sixth sense of intuition?! He thought as his heart threatened to burst from his body.

"Why..?" Severus asked hoarsely. "Why do I want to see him, despite everything he did? I should let him die feeling alone, let him feel extreme regret for what he did, even if it has come too late..."

"I don't know you, Severus. I don't know all that this man was and what happened between you. But I can see he hurt you." Matthew began, his voice soothing and slow. "And now, I see a man who is strong. Strong enough to love my daughter and openly state to her father that you'd give your life for her.

So perhaps, you want to see him because you need to show him that he can't hurt you anymore…"

Severus was silent. Something about Matthew's words touched a place within him and stilled his beating heart.

"I've never really been one for metaphors and sayings like Circe's mother was… But I did quite like this thing I heard once. And it was about cars, so it was something I could understand. Cars are straightforward. Fix that or change this up and it runs smoothly. Cars are easy. Witches aren't." Matthew chuckled.

"Yes?"

"Things that are behind us often look closer to us than they really are….?" Matthew said a little unsurely..

"Objects in the rearview mirror may appear closer than they are…" Severus said monotonously. He rolled his eyes as a small smile tugged at his mouth.

The "soaring emotional symphonies" of Jim Steinman strikes again. He thought. How long had it been since he and Circe had listened to that music together? Those intimate and heated afternoons in the potions storage room together sharing in their music and arguing over taste. It was something else that had become lost in the rising tide of war: The simple pleasure of listening to music with one another. Severus recalled that he had been rather dismissive of Meatloaf back then but he did, nevertheless, remember the song Matthew was referring to and he would have to have truly been dead inside to not be slightly touched by that song…

"Thank you, Matthew." He whispered.

"Severus," Matthew sighed, putting his spanner down and walking around the car. "Circe probably told you what happened between me and her when her mother died…"

"Yes, she did."

Matthew walked out into the night, placing his hands in his pockets and staring up at the sky.

"I failed her… and perhaps because of that betrayal she doesn't really trust me now."

"She does trust you." Severus said quickly, joining him at his side.

"She's still not telling me something though, is she. She didn't say who's been skulking about here, looking for her. And why she's come now…"

"Matthew…" Severus sighed. But Snape's words were cut short by a brilliant flash of blue light from the window above them. Snape and Matthew both turned to the bedroom above their heads and for a moment Severus felt a sting of anxiety, thinking Matthew would panic or ask what the light was. Severus knew what it was. Circe was performing her obliviates…

"It's alright, Severus. You don't need to tell me." Matthew said with a kind smile. Severus let go of the grip he'd placed around his wand, just in case he needed to stop Matthew from interrupting Circe's work. The middle-aged man's face was calm as he spoke. "But if you are going to promise me something, promise me this: don't fail her. She's been failed a lot. Especially by those who should have kept her strong. Just… don't fail her, son. You understand me?"

"I do, sir." Severus replied somberely.

"So, Severus… I'm going to go back to my Jag and carry on with my tinkering in the bonnet and whatever needs to be done can be done… Alright?"

Oh God… does he expect me to obliviate him now?! Severus thought in alarm. He knew that Circe had been dreading obliviating her father more than any other person in her family, so as a precaution, he too had swatted up on how best to perform the spell, but Circe didn't know that he'd done this. He'd not wished to have her believe that he held no confidence in her and he expected her to falter, so he had kept his practises and reading to himself. How would she react if he performed the obliviate on Matthew?

Perhaps it would be a small kindness… to not have to take the memories of her own father. He thought with a sigh. Matthew smiled kindly at him one last time and bent low into the bonnet. Severus walked around until he was at his back, drawing his wand out and pointing it square in the back of his head. He closed his eyes and centered himself, picturing Circe'a face in all of those photographs on the wall, and then imagining her erased from them all.

"Obliviate." He whispered.

A soft burst of blue light emanated from his wand and enveloped Matthew's head like a veil. Slowly, Severus began to pull… pulling at all of his memories to do with magic, wizardry, and his only daughter. Into his wand they fell, one after the other, until Matthew stood up straight, dropping his spanner to the floor with a clatter, in something of a stupor.

"Somnolentia." He muttered, casting the sleeping spell on the middle-aged man, watching as his head flopped to his chest. "Come on, come with me Matthew." He cooed softly, gently leading the man in a sleepwalk back into the house.

Circe was standing at the top of the stairs, watching with tear-soaked cheeks as Severus put Matthew to bed in his bedroom.

"Is it done?" She asked, her voice tight with emotion.

"It is."

"Good. Perhaps it was better this way." She sobbed. Severus embraced her deeply, allowing her to weep into his shoulder as he rocked her wrenching sobs away in his arms.

"Of course, this means that you cannot reverse the spell on your father at the end of all this…." Severus said gently.

"Then we both need to survive this war, Sev." She said sternly.

All Severus could do was nod.

"Have you packed away your room?" He asked.

"I don't need to. The book I read said their minds will just filter out images of me."

"But what about Myron and Tonks and everyone else? Might be a bit unsettling if they see a load of Polaroids full of random teenagers in their spare room…"

"Oh God, you're right." Circe walked back into her old bedroom and waved her wand. In a split second, all of her photos went flying into the air and arranged themselves in a neat pile in her open hand. "At least I get to keep the memories." She said sadly.

"Come. We better go before any of them wake up." Severus stated morosely.

"Alright. I need to find Jane and obliviate her… But then back to Spinner's End?"

"I thought I might stop by the Hospice myself…" he muttered.

Circe's eyes widened. "You're going to see him?"

"I'm going to say goodbye."

"That's him, Sev. The nurse on call confirmed it." Circe said gently, taking his shaking hand as he stared at the sleeping old man in the hospital bed.

Tobias Snape was not what he had once been. A rather long battle with pancreatic cancer had wasted his once bulky frame away to a skeletal nothing. Severus had almost not recognised him, with all of his wires and machines, lying back in the harsh fluorescent light of the ward, but the Snape hair, pitch black even in old age, was the clear sign. For a while, all Severus could do was stare at him as he slept: following the curves of his hollow cheeks, the peppering of grey on his chin, the thin, veiny neck protruding from beneath the loose-fitting hospital gown.

"Do you want me to be with you?" Circe asked gently.

"No. He doesn't get to meet you. He doesn't deserve that." Severus grumbled through his gritted teeth.

"Alright. When you want to go, come find me in the nurse's staff room. They told me Jane's having her break in there…"

"Trust me, I won't be long."

Severus let go of Circe's hand, trying to find the courage within himself to enter the Hospice room, without her warming touch. He approached the door on tiptoes, holding his breath in anticipation, and lay a shaking hand on the door handle.

"If you need me… Just let me know." Circe said, backing away from him and down the corridor.

Severus turned to her and nodded, an uneasy smile on his lips, and with that Circe gave one last look to the old man sleeping on his bed and turned to find her stepmother. Severus closed his eyes for a second, trying to mentally plan what he wanted to say, but his mind could barely string a sentence together. To look at, he remained as rigid as a stone gargoyle, but within, his heart was thrashing about in his chest. He pushed open the door and stepped inside.

The room smelt of strong detergent and heavy-duty bleach and as he approached the bedside, his chest grew tighter with each beep of his father's heart monitor.

"I don't need any more morphine." Tobias said dreamily, his eyes still closed. His voice was coarse and ugly, and for a moment Severus experienced a hundred memories of that very same voice roaring at him from behind a flurry of fists. Up close, he looked even thinner, more sickly and green than he had done from outside of the room. His long, hook nose seemed almost too big for his thin face. His dark hair was slicked back from his round, clammy forehead and Severus once again marvelled that there was not a single grey hair on his head. Yet his eyebrows were a tangle of iron-coloured hairs, almost like two strips of wool wire on his face. But most of all, Severus noticed how sickeningly thin he was. In his prime, Tobias had been a heavy-set, broad shouldered working man with a sizeable beer gut and forearms the size of gammon joints. Now he had wasted away to perhaps a third of the size of what he once was. Severus was shocked beyond words that the nightmarish man, who was forever a demon in his distant dreams, was reduced to the bag of bones before him now.

"Hello father." He said flatly.

Tobias opened his eyes with a start, two deep black wells just like his son's, and found Severus standing at his bedside like an angel of death.

"Severus…" he breathed. "They found you."

"They found me." He said monotonously.

His mouth felt numb. All these words that lay ready and poised upon his lips seemed to wither and die there, in front of this shadow of a man he once knew. The script that he had held in his mind for many years seemed to burn away to ash and there was nothing. Nothing he could think of to say. Nothing he wanted to say. Part of him had always assumed that if he and Tobias ever did meet again, he would be unchanged. Still the beer-gutted, ham-handed man who had poisoned him at his root. The person before him, green and withered in the Hospice bed, was an almost laughable imitation of the man he'd known. It was like Severus was seeing a film that had once scared him in childhood again now he was an adult. Something that remained terrifying and paralysing in his memory, but now he was confronted with it again, it was baffling to figure out whatever had made it frightening to begin with. Tobias was a Wicked Witch of the West. And Severus was finally seeing him now without the naive fear of youth.

"I… I didn't know if you were still at Spinner's End." Tobias mumbled, trying to sit up in his bed. The veins in his neck strained as he tried to pull himself upright and for a moment, Severus considered trying to help him, but he remained stock still.

"I'm not here for small talk, father." Severus said brusquely. "Why did you want to see me?"

"Because I'm dying, son."

"Don't you dare call me "son"." He growled. "I am not your son."

"So why are you here then?" Tobias asked simply.

Severus was silent, his throat closing with emotion. His father looked into his face, waiting for him to respond, and for a second Severus thought he recognised the slightly vacant and empty stare that Tobias used to wear during his beatings. Almost like he would go somewhere else when he'd be striking Eileen over the cheek or dragging Severus by his hair into the cupboard under the kitchen sink. Like he was the one that needed to escape the hurt and violence in Spinner's End. Severus realised that the old man was probably on enough pain medication to make him a bit spaced but nevertheless a shiver passed through him.

No, you're still there. Severus thought with a deep scowl. Still buried deep in that dried out husk. There is no disease in the world that could take that look away from you.

"Why did you not tell me that my mother was ill?" He asked when he'd found his voice. "Is this your idea of a last vicious beating? Have me present for your death, but not hers?"

"I've done a lot of things in my life that I'm not proud of…" Tobias muttered.

"Ha!" Severus scoffed. "Well that's a gross understatement, don't you think? I wonder if the nurses here would be doting on you so diligently if they knew you beat your wife nightly. Did you know every evening before you came home, she'd be sick with worry? Practising her excuses and her apologies for you until she sounded half-mad with her mutterings? I wonder if the nurses would be so kind to you if they knew how you forced yourself on her when you were pissed out of your head."

"You can't know that…" Tobias uttered, fiddling with his bedsheets nervously.

"I heard her crying! I heard it!" Severus shouted. "After you were done beating me with your belt buckle, she'd let you do anything to get you off me."

"You little fuckin' pervert." Tobias growled, bearing a row of yellowing teeth.

"And there's the real you... None of this "deathbed" contriteness. Were you hoping for a reconciliation, father? That I'd accept your meager excuse for an apology and all would be forgiven just in time for your exit from this world?"

"So is this why you came to see me off?" Tobias chuckled harshly. "So you could have a go at a dying man and lay all my sins out bare?"

"That is what you deserve… but no." Severus said quietly, finding his calm and looking deeply into his father's eyes." I came here… to tell you that despite your best efforts to make it not so, I am happy."

"Oh right, what's her name then?" Tobias asked derisively. "Did y'get married to that red-headed thing you were always simpering over?"

"No." Severus lowered his eyes to the floor, desperate to not let his father see even an ounce of his sadness. "Lily died quite a few years ago now."

"The fellas down the pub used to say how pathetic it was… you following her around like some lovesick puppy. "There goes that ginger nut, so Tobias's boy won't be far behind"." Tobias raised a bony finger as he mimed out a shaky point. And in his mind's eye, Severus could almost see Lily making her way down to the canals of Cokeworth with him in tow three steps behind her. He thought of telling his father how Lily had been his saving grace back then. His light and his hope in those long and seemingly endless summers when there was nowhere to hide from him. How it was Lily who had taught him of love and compassion in his youth. But yet again he felt a covetous urge to keep it all from Tobias. Like Circe, he didn't deserve to know Lily either. They were too good for Tobias..

Severus noticed how his hands were still stained brown from his years packing the dry-roasted coffee at the factory in Cokeworth. To anyone unfamiliar with Tobias's old place of work, it may have appeared like the old man's fingers were covered in brown henna. Now, it seemed to add to the feeling of decay and decline that clung to Tobias. Like he was rotting from the inside, fingers and extremities first and then eventually the sickly brown would consume all of him. Tobias flopped his arm back down onto the bed with a thump, his strength rapidly failing him.

"So am I a grandfather or not?" Tobias asked in his raspy voice.

"No. You would never, ever see them if you were."

"Hmmm so, no children and no Lily. So who is it?"

"Her name is Circe." Severus stated proudly.

"And she's one of your lot?"

"A witch. Yes. And that's all you'll ever know about her. That she is a witch and her name. Nothing more. To have anything more than that of Circe pass your lips would be a discredit to her…"

Tobias scowled and made a gurgling noise in the back of his throat. "Good. Keep her away from me. You and your mum used to do all of that… satanic stuff behind my back and now you've fallen straight into a trap with another devil."

"Magic is not "satanic", you moron." Severus snapped. "You only had to ask either of us to know that, instead of letting your jealousy come out through your fists."

"I remember what you did to me." Tobias growled. "How you almost gutted me like a codfish from neck to groin. Your mother tried to make me forget with her spells. Caught her trying to point that stick at my head when I was half asleep. Snapped it in two, I did."

"You broke her wand…?"

"Crying like a child, she was! Over a fuckin' stick! I told her to be packed and gone by the next day and we left you in that house to practise your satanic magic on your own."

"You cannot ever know how awful it is for a wizard to lose their wand… it's like losing a part of yourself. And that's why I never heard from her again… you took her magic away. You made it so she couldn't apparate or send a message of help or… or…"

"Eileen came round eventually, once we were away from you and she was away from the magic."

"Because you forced her into compliance! You took away a part of her!"

"Nah, son…" Tobias growled, his hollow, black eyes finding Severus's in an instant. "Your mother came with me because she loved me."

"No. She didn't love you…" Severus muttered hoarsely. "She may have believed that she couldn't have found a better man than you. Perhaps she even thought she was being strong by staying at your side. By keeping her marriage vows, sparing herself the hassle and pain of a separation, feeding you, caring for you... Because that's what she thought a strong woman does: keeps her promises, spares people pain... and maybe she just needed to be needed, even if it was by you. But maybe that's all my fabrication. Maybe she was just too scared and too weak to leave. And I will have to live with that possibility... knowing I could have helped her had I only known where she was. But I hope… at least when she went to sleep, she was able to dream in colour and remember joy before she had to wake up into a grey, miserable existence at your side."

Tobias sniffed and looked at the ceiling.

"Well… you've said your piece. You've had your pound of flesh from me." He grumbled, the deep lines on his face knotting into a frown. "At least now I have my peace."

"Your peace." Severus scoffed. He almost wanted to laugh at him. But as Severus looked to the door of the Hospice room, he thought of what Matthew had said to him and a calmness settled over his soul. Perhaps now I can walk out of here with my life now being my own. Not his to poison and torment.

"I'll bet your satanic woman told you to come here too." Tobias mumbled with a small laugh. "Still at the heels of whatever witchy woman you fancy, doing whatever she tells you."

"Circe actually told me not to come… and perhaps she was right. Lord knows, she seems to know me better than I know myself" Severus sighed, meeting his father's gaze again. "And she is good and kind and loving and beautiful. And even she told me to stay away from you... But I needed to see you. I wanted to look you in the eye and tell you something, Tobias Snape."

"Which is?" He asked in his gargled croak.

"You can't hurt me anymore." Severus stated in an icy whisper. "In fact, you won't hurt anyone ever again... very soon. I want to say "I forgive you", but you wouldn't accept that and I don't think I can either. You will always be my father. And I'm sorry I was not the son you wanted. But there have also been times when I have not been the son my mother would have wanted me to be either. And she was like Circe. She was good and kind and loving. And if you see her again before I do… you may tell her from me that I will always be first and foremost a Half-blood Prince. Not a Snape."

Severus turned and left, leaving his father in a stony silence. There was no goodbye, there were no tears in his eyes, no furious palpitations in his chest, just a sense of serenity and calm in his core. He walked a little taller as he made his way down to the nurse's Staff Room, his shoulders less hunched, his face less lined with pain. He knocked politely on the door and waited. Circe's face appeared before him as the door swung open, a little pale and flushed but her bright, shining, emerald eyes searched his face silently. He smiled sadly at her and nodded. Circe threw her arms around him as a small sob escaped from her mouth. She held him tight, wishing she could squeeze out every last ounce of sadness from him and take it upon herself but Severus was content enough to just hold her. He buried his face in her hair and breathed in deeply, letting her smell, her warmth, her love heal him.

"Are you finished with Jane?" Severus asked in his hushed tone.

Circe moved to the side, allowing him to peer into the nurse's room. He saw Jane sitting rather placidly in a pink armchair, watching a little TV, mounted on the wall with a vacant stare to her face.

"I was sick in the Staff toilets twice before I built up the courage to do it. And the last thing she asked me is "do you want a Rennie?"" Circe scoffed with a poignant laugh. "And now… In about five minutes, she'll stand up at the end of her break and carry on as if life were normal." She muttered sadly. "But nothing of me and nothing of magic." She looked back at her stepmother, staring dead-eyed at a rerun of an 'Only Fools and Horses' episode and she felt her eyes begin to prick with tears again.

"Are you finished too?" She asked, looking to Severus with shining eyes.

"Yes."

"Then take me home, Sev."

With a pop, the two of them arrived back outside Spinner's End. The beautiful pinky, orangey hues of dawn were beginning to creep over the pale sky and Severus and Circe both were aching to fall into an emotionally exhausted sleep. It was a gorgeous morning for a night that had heralded such pain. Severus opened the door for her with a flick of his wand, gesturing out for her to enter their home first with a gallant wave. Circe smiled, despite her depressive mood, and strode into the terraced house with a polite nod back at him. But Circe came to a sudden stop as she entered the living room, seeing the figure of a hooded man inspecting Severus's bookshelves.

"Sev…" she uttered nervously, raising her wand. In a heartbeat Snape was at her side, his wand raised too, and the cloaked figure turned to face them.

"Ah! Hope you don't mind, Severus, but I let myself in." Said Dumbledore in a chipper voice.

Circe and Severus both lowered their wands with a relieved sigh, rolling their eyes.

"Headmaster." Severus said in a tired voice. "May I ask what you are doing in my home at this hour?"

"Ahh, well you see, you both left rather quickly after the meeting at Grimmauld Place just before Christmas." Dumbledore explained. Circe blushed, remembering their rather quick exit had been due to the fallout after the "Sirius" incident. "And I'm afraid I need to speak to you both rather urgently."

"Dumbledore?" Severus asked, raising an inky brow at the old man.

"Circe… where did you find this?" Albus asked seriously, raising her copy of "Icelandic Rune Magic" in the air.