Snape skirted the perimeter of the battle, one foot in and one foot out, running every which way, scanning every face for Potter. Corlett was around somewhere, he'd seen her walk through the gates, but she was a lost cause; she had no reason to trust him. If he could just break free of his comrades and send the boy his silver doe, then he might understand...but the Dark Lord was everywhere, watching, and he couldn't break free.
He ran to the gates, on his way to the Forbidden Forest where he could cast the Patronus under cover of darkness. He was just inside when heavy footsteps thudded along the dirt path.
"Severus."
Lucius stopped and wiped the sweat off his face with the sleeve of his robes. He looked utterly wretched, with a bloody lower lip and two black eyes.
"The Dark Lord is in the Shrieking Shack. He-there's something he requires of you."
Snape traced a wrought-iron curlicue with his finger. If Lucius would just leave him alone for two seconds, he could send the Patronus first.
"Is Draco still in the school?" said Lucius. Between his bruised and puffy face and the anxiety in his eyes Snape scarcely recognised him. Even his hair was different, lank and dark-blonde with sweat.
"I don't know."
Lucius stared into the grounds as though he might be able to see him, but without a wand it was too risky for him to go in. He glanced back at Snape.
"You know how he hates to be kept waiting, Severus."
He said this grudgingly, as though he resented the part of himself that still cared whether Snape was punished or not. Snape glanced from the Forbidden Forest to Hogsmeade with his mouth shut so he wouldn't snap at him. The road into the village was filled with Death Eaters and villagers running back and forth. Could he not get even two seconds by himself? Was that really too much to ask?
Every footstep was loud, every crunch of the pebbles under his boots, each one bringing him closer to the dark room with no exit. Madam Rosmerta ran by without looking at him, her wand at the ready. A few more villagers followed behind her-Ambrosius Flume and the clerk at Scrivenshaft's. Distant screams echoed off the castle walls but they were far away, from another life, one that went on outside him. He belonged to another world. Lily was hovering in the space between, waiting for him. He heard her voice.
Almost there, Sev. Keep going.
The door squeaked on his hinges, breaking the silence. The Dark Lord stepped forward like a spider scuttling towards the vibrations on its web.
"Why the delay, Severus?" he said, playing his wand between his fingers.
Snape's robes were damp with sweat and they clung to his back but his mind was clear. "I was being briefed on the progress of the siege, my Lord."
"Were you?" said the Dark Lord, with an inflection that was all skepticism. "And what of it?"
"My Lord, their resistance is crumbling."
The Dark Lord said something that he didn't hear. He wouldn't give up, no matter what happened he wouldn't give up. The Dark Lord wanted Potter. He wanted him more than anything else in the world. And Snape could find him.
Snap held up his hands in a gesture of submission. "Let me find the boy. Let me bring you Potter. I know I can find him, my Lord. Please."
The Dark Lord did not seem to hear him. He was staring down at Dumbledore's wand, studying every detail.
"I have a problem, Severus."
What the hell was he on about?
"My Lord?"
He held the wand up to his face. "Why doesn't it work for me, Severus?"
He'd been searching for a wand all year, a powerful wand, and he'd returned empty-handed only to rip the wand right of of Dumbledore's tomb. But what did this mean?
"My lord?" said Snape, playing for time. "I do not understand. You have performed extraordinary magic with that wand."
"No. I have performed my usual magic. I am extraordinary, but this wand...no. It has not revealed the wonders it has promised. I feel no difference between this wand and the one I procured from Ollivander all those years ago."
So there was something unique to Dumbledore's wand...something that was supposed to give him more power, but it hadn't. Why? And what did it matter which wand he used, so long as he had the boy?
"No difference," said the Dark Lord, still studying Dumbledore's wand, intrigued by its mystery. Nagini hissed softly from her cage, a sibilant sound that wrapped itself around him. The Dark Lord was obsessed, preoccupied; he had to distract him, had to get his mind back on the boy.
"I have thought long and hard, Severus...do you know why I have called you back from battle?"
Nagini was watching him from her enchanted cage, nothing between them but a layer of thin blue stars. Snape couldn't stop looking at her.
"No, my Lord, but I beg you will let me return. Let me find Potter."
The Dark Lord dismissed him with a derisive huff. "You sound like Lucius. Neither of you understands Potter as I do. He does not need finding. Potter will come to me..."
And Potter was arrogant enough, to be sure. But the giants didn't care who he was, nor did the Acromantula, and Rowle was reckless enough to shoot a curse at him.
"But my Lord, he might be killed accidentally by someone other than yourself."
"My instructions to the Death Eaters have been perfectly clear. Capture Potter. Kill his friends, the more, the better. But do not kill him. But it is of you that I wished to speak, Severus, not Harry Potter. You have been very valuable to me. Very valuable."
Snape inclined his head to him. All that goodwill he'd built up, surely it must count for something. "My Lord knows I seek only to serve him. But let me go and find the boy, my Lord. Let me bring him to you. I know I can."
"I have told you, no!" The Dark Lord had snapped like an impatient father and Snape flinched as though he might strike him. "My concern at the moment, Severus, is what will happen when I finally meet the boy."
He couldn't panic. He must not panic. If there was a sliver of an opening he'd find it.
"My Lord, there can be no question, surely."
"But there is a question, Severus. There is."
He slid Dumbledore's wand through his fingers. They were on the verge of something, some startling revelation, something kept hidden. His skin prickled and the back of his neck was hot with sweat. That was no ordinary wand. Dumbledore had won it years ago in a duel with another Dark Wizard, one who'd defeated everyone in his path, everyone save the old man.
"Why did both the wands I have used fail when directed at Harry Potter?"
And the answer came to him. The elder wand. The most powerful wand in existence, the one he'd written off as a children's tale.
"I cannot answer that, my Lord."
"Can't you? My wand of yew did everything of which I asked it, Severus, except to kill Harry Potter. Twice it failed. Ollivander told me under torture of the twin cores, told me to take another's wand. I did so, but Lucius's wand shattered upon meeting Potter's."
"I have no explanation, my Lord."
Nagini moved faster in her sphere, nudging at the boundaries of her enchanted cage. She was restless.
"I sought a third wand, Severus. the Elder Wand, the Wand of Destiny, the Deathstick. I took it from its previous master. I took it from the grave of Albus Dumbledore."
And was Snape now its master, or had it died with Dumbledore? Was the boy meant to take it from him? All these thoughts flashed by in a second. He couldn't dwell on them, he must shut himself down.
He felt nothing. He was flying over the asphalt with Lily and he felt nothing but the wind in his face.
"My Lord, let me go to the boy."
The Dark Lord did not seem to have heard him. "All this long night when I am on the brink of victory, I have sat here," he whispered. "Wondering, wondering, why the Elder Wand refuses to be what it ought to be, refuses to perform as legend says it must perform for its rightful owner...and I think I have the answer."
Dumbledore knew.
"Perhaps you already know it? You are a clever man, after all, Severus. You have been a good and faithful servant, and I regret what must happen."
Dumbledore knew. The wand was a trap, and the old man knew. He'd marked him for death just like he'd marked Harry, at the hands of the Dark Lord. He'd spent his whole adult life serving these men and in the end they'd both betrayed him.
"My Lord." Snape was barely aware that he'd spoken. There must be some way out...
"The Elder Wand cannot serve me properly, Severus, because I am not its true master. The Elder Wand belongs to the wizard who killed its last owner. You killed Albus Dumbledore. While you live, Severus, the Elder Wand cannot truly be mine."
Snape raised his wand on instinct. He could save himself, tell him he was mistaken, that the elder wand was never his. The old man had already been disarmed.
But then the plan would fail; the Dark Lord would never destroy the part of himself that lived inside the boy, and that was all that mattered in the end. That they won. That Lily's side won.
Snape words were instinctive. He was barely aware that he'd said anything.
"It cannot be any other way. I must master the wand, Severus..."
His long fingers curled along the wand and he raised it into the air like a conductor's baton, like the conductor in that concert he'd gone to with Dumbledore once, when the hammer had fallen like a bad omen, and it was Dumbledore, trying to tell him what would happen...
Nothing happened, no flash of green light, no incantation. He was just testing, that was all. Or he meant to disarm him, that surely, would be enough.
Nagini's scales were cold as frozen steel and someone hissed, a sinuous sound, like curling ribbons, almost musical. The snake's fangs burned through his skin.
He pressed his hand to his neck without knowing why, his fingers covered in hot wet liquid. He could crawl out of there, get Potter.
He was flying on the swings with Lily and someone was standing at the edge of the playground, a tall woman with windswept hair. There was something he needed to tell her, but Graihagh was too far away. He swung higher.
Someone knelt down beside him and Snape squinted to get him into focus. Messy black hair, bright green eyes.
He would tell him everything. He couldn't bring his mother back, he couldn't keep him alive, but he could do that much for him.
He seized the front of Harry's robes and let go his memories, the pieces of the story that no one had ever told him.
"Take...it..."
The words were caught in his throat.
"Take...it..."
Harry stared at him rather stupidly. Thank Merlin someone with brains was there. Granger handed him a flask Harry caught his thoughts with the tip of his wand and threaded them inside.
Snape's mind was slow and his fingers couldn't hold him any longer. But he could still see him.
"Look...at me."
He had her eyes, those bright green eyes and they were the only thing he saw, the only thing he knew. And Harry was Lily and Lily was with him and she would take him wherever he needed to go.
He was standing at the edge of the playground in Cokeworth and Lily was there, swinging up and down and shouting. He stepped towards her but his way was blocked by Dumbledore, in robes of deep purple embroidered with phoenixes and flames. He held his arms out but Snape pushed past him.
"Out of the way, old man."
Lily opened her mouth to shout but it wasn't her voice, it was Graihagh. Graihagh was singing to him from somewhere.
He turned to Dumbledore. "Can I stay here?"
"Indeed yes, my dear man."
"But then-"
The voice kept singing. Lily flew off the swings and Snape watched as she soared through the air.
"Tell her I'm sorry."
Dumbledore smiled in that insufferable way of his.. "She already knows, Severus."
Snape closed his eyes and followed Graihagh's voice.