Visitation
"'Love! thy mantle not with passion's glow,
Thou wouldst be afraid,
Didst thou find the maid
Thou hast chosen, cold as ice or snow.'
Round her waist his eager arms he bended,
With the strength that youth and love inspire;
'Wert thou even from the grave ascended,
I could warm thee well with my desire!'" Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (The Bride of Corinth published in Die Horen in 1797.).
AN: I like to do series of one shots that revolve around a central theme, but can be read independently. It allows me to come back to them from time to time without pressure. I left the genre as general because I couldn't decide which fit the fic best. It may lay somewhere between horror and romance though where exactly I don't know. I have Lily visit Snape as a vengeful lilitu over the course of the HP books timeline. That being said, other than a spot of funereal sex in the first chapter and subsequent visits by undead Lily to Severus, the fic may not be graphic enough to warrant an M rating. Is it just me? Don't you find ratings specious? Anything designed to serve the lowest common denominator usually does a disservice to the majority of people. But at the same time I do understand the concerns that give raise to ratings. So I'm using M to be on the safe side.
Chapter I: The Luminous Past
You can never go back home, home won't remain the same and neither will you, time is like the tide that washes even the rock off the cliff, Severus Snape reflected despondently, as he laid sleepless on his four posted bed. He was over the covers and he hadn't bothered changing into his sleeping gown; for if the past couple of months were good predictors of how things were going to go, he wasn't going to get much sleep. Ever since joining the teaching staff he had been staying awake most of the night, until exhaustion claimed him when the dawn was about to break. He hadn't slept more than a couple of hours a day since he had moved back to Hogwarts.
He scoffed inwardly. There was no point in lying to himself. He had always suffered from insomnia and had barely slept since that night. There is no rest for the wicked, his father would have said and, for once, Tobias Snape would have been right. The only reason he had gotten any sleep or food after what had happened last October was because he forced his body to sleep and eat as a matter of discipline. Immediately afterwards he had been in shambles, drinking Lethe serum almost as fast as he could brew it. He had wanted to pass in stupor the hours until the Aurors finally came for him. The nights were the worst, he had drowsed them away in a semi hypnotic state, soaked in the potion, until the light of the sun invaded the house and he had to get up to close the curtains. That is how Albus Dumbledore had found him, the pitiable dregs of a man lying on the floor of the house in Spinner's End.
The Headmaster had doused him in a bucketful of ice cold water and made him stand up with two unforgiving flickers of his wand. And while Severus tried to decide if he'd rather die in a duel with the alleged greatest wizard of the world or waste away with the Dementors in Azkaban, the old wizard had handed him a blanket, a cup of hot tea and had offered him a teaching position as Potions Master in Hogwarts. Then he had helped him clean the house and pack up his things blabbering cheerfully all the time about how keeping a healthy routine could help you overcome pretty much anything, even a broken heart. It is all a matter of discipline, Dumbledore had said and he had pointed out with a wink that he was talking from experience. Severus Snape had been too in shock to do anything else but follow his lead. Turns out that after twenty one harsh years in which he had figured he'd experienced every form of disillusionment possible, he could still be surprised by people.
He wondered if Dumbledore, who now insisted he called him Albus, was even a little bit surprised by his acquiescence. If he wasn't, Severus sure was, he had been certain he had nothing left to live for. And the only reason why he hadn't gone to the old mill, picked up a handful of castor bean seeds, synthesized some ricin in his lab and injected himself with a deathly dose of it, was that after spending most of his young life surviving through hell, he wasn't ready to concede defeat. After years of unfulfilled dreams, this simply couldn't be the breadth of his life. In her dying bed he had promised his mother that he would make someone of himself, he was not ready to break the promise made to the only person who'd ever believed in him.
The other teachers had been unpleasantly surprised by the latest addition to the faculty. They were less than happy to have a former Death Eater replace beloved Professor Slughorn, who had retired rather hurriedly by the end of the war, both as Potions Master and Head of Slitheryn. And most of them were vocal about it, even if few dared say anything outright insulting to his face. The students were not too happy either, but they had to make do with someone they saw, under the best light, as a parvenu. Fortunately Severus Snape had ample experience handling scorn.
He had no trouble teaching his students and colleagues to keep their opinions and, more importantly, their behavior, under the strictest boundaries of politeness required by civilized society. They didn't have to like him, but he'd be damned, young as he was, if he would allow them to disrespect him. Since they were not willing to let him go of the past, he wasn't going to let them forget it either. You don't become the right hand of Voldemort at twenty one by being congenial.
The Ministry was not at all thrilled to have one of Voldermort's Lieutenants roaming free either. Whenever he stepped out of the school's grounds he was followed by an incompetent detail of Aurors. He found their attempts at remaining concealed pathetic, of course the way these poor boys had learned Defense against the Dark Arts was so appalling that what else could be expected of them? These people didn't believe in learning the arts they were trying to fight. It was disheartening to think that these poor saps were the finest of the lot, or at least the finest left after the war purged both the crème of the Aurors and Death Eaters alike. So many bright young people had perished. Thinking about it depressed him so much that he had taken to remain within the school grounds, even during the weekends.
The castle was almost empty due to the winter break, save for those who like Severus didn't have a reason to go back home for celebrating the holidays. There were also those who no longer had a home to go back to. He had offered to look after the students that remained because he really didn't want to go back to the empty house in Spinner's End, the place was too full with memories of his mother and of her to be safe for him, at least for the time being.
He wondered if he'd ever feel at home again. Once upon a time he had felt more comfortable in Hogwarts School of Magic than anywhere else in the world. He remembered keenly the rush of enthusiasm as he rode in the train; how nervous he had been during the sorting ceremony and the sense of triumph at having been sorted into his dream house: Slytherin. He did it! He made it into the same house as Merlin! The icing on the cake? He had been given his own room in the bottom of the Slytherin basement, right beneath a porthole window, overlooking an algae forest that the grindylows used as nursery for their grypts.
Most people were weary of being near the ferocious Black Lake dwellers, even behind magical glass. The little beasts were prone to crash into the porthole mouthing watery screeches and flaying their tentacles furiously, when people were trying to study or sleep. But after eleven years living with his father, Severus had learned the hard way how to blend in with the wallpaper. He only cast the softest light, always in the green spectrum, and moved in the silent way that even his mum called sneaky. So grindylows went about their business without much minding him and there was something so calming in watching the mum grindylows tending to their larvae by the eerie glow of the bottommost denizens of the lake. By the end of his first week he had already seen marvelous creatures that usually only went out when the Slitheryn basement had grown quiet past midnight. It made him feel like he was a denizen of the depths himself. It even helped with his insomnia as looking at the comings and goings of the water creatures was better than any sleeping draught he'd tried.
His first room in Hogwarts was little more than a broom closet. It could barely fit a bed and a desk. But that was fine by him, he had suffered from insomnia even as a toddler and when he did sleep, he did it with an eye open. Daddykins had the ugly tendency of waking up the household in the dead of night to impart what he called "life lessons" when he got pissed blind in the pub. When that happened it was wise not to be around. He had developed a sixth sense and he usually woke up as soon as his father turned the key in the lock. He had learned to recognize the angry storm was coming by the sound the man's feet made in the linoleum as he made his drunken way inside their little home. Severus had also learned to move without making a noise and, when they were lucky, he was able to wake up his mum and they left through the window in the kitchen without the man noticing. He had lost count of the nights they had spent by the murky riverbank with him cowering in his mum's arms until the snores inside the house told them it was safe to go back in.
The house in Spinner's End only had one bedroom that his parents had shared, he had slept in a foldup bed in the parlor. So Severus was used to make do without much space, besides, he used the room at school mostly as a scriptorium. But nothing could dampen the joy of having a room to himself for the first time in his life. He had loved the underwater view, the privacy and the quiet, for the room he was assigned was a fair distance away from the common room.
Eleven year old Severus even enjoyed the irony that he had only been given the luxury of private sleeping quarters because most of his classmates were weary of sleeping in the same room with a half-blood. They treated him as if he were contagious. For most Slytherins it didn't matter his mother, Eileen Prince, was a pure blood witch. For them Severus Snape was the son of his Muggle father. And the children in his house were not going to let him forget, regardless of what the sorting hat thought, that mudbloods weren't real Slytherins.
It didn't help that his uniform was second hand, his trunk and school books were a family heirloom thrice his age and his hair was always greasy. That was the result of an unfortunate accident. He had been trying to brew a universal solvent potion capable of dissolving even non polar molecules. He had found the formula in a loose leaf inside Grandfather Prince's Tibetan Alchemy Manual, it was signed Green Lion Prince, another name of iron sulfate and grandpa's surname. Snape had been so enthralled by having found the secret of brewing what Paracelsus had called Alkahest that he had foolishly forgotten to adapt it considering the effects of atmospheric pressure on the boiling point.
It had been an unforgivable mistake. For Merlin's sake: what self-respecting alchemist doesn't know that liquids change to vapor at the temperature at which the vapor pressure of the liquid is equated to the pressure exerted by the surroundings upon the liquid? Bloody hell, the word pressure is right there in the definition of boiling point. Tibet is known as the roof of the world and all major cities are above 10,000 ft on average. Pressure decreases with altitude and when you are talking about a ten thousand ft difference you must adjust the heating times of your potion. How stupid do you have to be to miss something that obvious?
To this day he felt a surge of anger at himself when he remembered his stupidity. It didn't matter he had only been eleven years old at the time. If you were old enough to play, then you were old enough to pay. You cannot act the adult when it suits you and then go running to your mum when the cauldron blows up in your face. The craft, just like life, is unforgiving. The cauldron didn't care how old little Snape was and it didn't give a damn that he had devoured Clausius and Clapeyron works on heat and thermodynamics written in the 1800s like other children devoured the Sunday's paper cartoons. He had made a mistake and the thing had exploded in a flurry of lard. He should have cast Defervesco, but he didn't know the spell back then. His mind froze and he was barely able to cast Protego and Frigefacio with the wand he'd inherited from his grandma. Learning magic with your own wand is tricky, with another person's wand it is even trickier, but they couldn't afford a new one. The shield barely covered his arms, face and chest and he only managed to cool the lard to the point in which it didn't scalp him. Consequence, consequence: Severus was cursed with ever greasy hair.
Well, not really, there were a number of things he could have done to fix his hair; but he had kept the greasy tresses as a reminder that the path of Hermes Trismegistus should only be followed by the patient and the cautious. Some would have thought that the lashing his dad had given him was punishment enough, but he had wanted to give himself a real lesson: There is no room for error on the road to greatness. And as far as what that meant for his social life or lack thereof, back then Severus had embraced the ostracism he was subjected to by the other kids as a sign of his own genius.
Perhaps Tobias Snape was not all that wrong and indeed there was something befitting with carrying the lessons learned as scars on your body. That is also why he had chosen not to try to erase the Death Eaters' mark from his arm. Even if now he only felt ashamed by it, once he had worn it as a mark of pride. He could see the feeble outline of it whenever he pulled his sleeve to clean himself in the Potions' Lab. He knew it made people weary, but it was a reminder of how his life had turned out to be after joining the Death Eaters and, if Dumbledore was right about Tom Riddle being only hurt but not dead, perhaps it could serve as an early alarm system.
He sighed. Who was he trying to fool? He was convinced Dumbledore was right, something not even all of the old wizard's supporters were. His brief stint with Lethe serum hadn't rendered him such big an idiot that he'd miss on the signs. For once, magical tattoos that connote allegiance were supposed to fade after the death of the person to whom the allegiance was pledged to. And the curse on the DADA position in Hogwarts seemed to still be in effect.
The Dark Lord was a very powerful wizard, but not even he could completely escape thermodynamics, magic needs energy to be sustained and even with a very magical substance to power up a spell, once the wizard channeling said energy died, the spell seldom survived for long. Unless it was sustained by other witches and wizards. Take Hogwarts's castle, for example, its magical existence was sustained by its dwellers' belief in the perpetuation of the ancient spell, and since it existed, the belief was in turn perpetuated, closing the circle. That is why the staircases and layout of the castle changed, for with each year new inhabitants were unconsciously casting the spell, breathing new life into the building.
He doubted there was a cabal of loyal Voldemort's followers keeping his spells alive. Those who had survived were either dead, imprisoned or pretending to have been under the Imperius curse. Hence those at liberty to do something were cowards or traitors, so there was no way they were still actively keeping the spells going. He counted himself among the traitors. Though he kept that thought in the innermost part of his mind, where no one else, not even the most gifted Legilimens, could find it.
Unlike the very obvious reasons to keep Hogwarts, who would have any interest in sustaining the pettiness of the curse on the DADA position? And the curse was still there, as could be surmised by the string of strange accidents the chap currently in the position had suffered. All of it seemed to point at the Dark Lord still being alive though in a somewhat diminished state. And it all came back to the boy who looked so much like his father, save for his mum's doe like eyes and the lightning bolt scar. The scar that marked the boy's forehead as if he were the protagonist of a tale from the age when magic still ruled over the world.
Severus Snape pushed the troubling thought aside and, instead, allowed himself a little snigger thinking about Professor Ballouhey: A haughty man brought all the way from Beauxbatons. For no English wizard in the know would take the position, so the Board of Governors had no choice but engaging buffoons or foreigners. Snape was still trying to decide which qualifier better befitted the man, though the balance was presently leaning clearly towards one side.
Only a dimwit would chuck up what had been happening to him to mere bad luck. The DADA teacher had nearly chocked on some Streeler trail fumes when what was supposed to be an unbreakable vial had broken for no apparent reason during his class. He had been nearly killed while taking a stroll in the woods by a Manticore that Professor Kettleburn was showing to the seventh graders. Granted, no one was really surprised the beast had escaped the Burnt Kettle's control, for the man wasn't all up there. Even when Snape was a student Kettleburn had the reputation of being a scatterbrain. That seemed to be the standard for magizoologist, the guild attracted the weirdest characters.
It was telling that Ballouhey had only started to suspect something was amiss until he had a nasty bout of food poisoning with a plate of bangers and mash. It took one week for Madame Pomfrey to finally be able to control the man's diarrhea, thanks to the woman's perseverance in finding out the sausages had been infected by a rare magical creature that only exists for a few instants every fifty years and that had chosen precisely the man's plate to lay its eggs. It was a protected magical creature, so they had to be careful to let the parasites grow to a point in which they could be extracted without harming them. Poor man, he had administered the pain calming potions during the procedure and wouldn't wish what Ballouhey had to endure on his worst enemy. The rest of the teachers and the students had eaten the dish with no consequences.
And that was only five months into the school year! He had a bet with Professor Flitwick that Professor Ballouhey wasn't going to come back from the winter break. Flitwick thought the man would show more mettle since the Frenchman had a reputation as a fierce duelist. After conversing with the man during the Christmas banquet, Snape was pretty sure that, whatever the man had been before, the experience had broken him. Severus was surely going to have to cover the man's classes come next January. He had already began to review the syllabus. Being able to teach DADA the proper way would be a nice birthday present for himself.
Thinking of his birthday was a grave mistake. His breathing grew ragged, he began sweating profusely and his heart was beating rapidly against his ribcage. Ever since that cursed night he had been having episodes of panic. He was like an open wound that even the merest brush could make bleed anew. The grappling sense of horror could be triggered by anything, even something as innocent as the fact that she had also celebrated her birthday in January could send him spiraling down. It was not unexpected but still startling, like stepping on a landmine in a mine field. You knew it was a possibility but you still were taken back when it happened. In the resulting explosion he always found himself re-living the day he had held her death body in his arms after Voldemort had killed her.
He had held onto her until she started to grow cold and stiff. He held her until her skin turned a purplish gray color and felt sticky to the touch. And even then he had only let her go because he had heard the bloody Aurors apparating in the front door, finally answering the distress call he had sent hours before. Where were the Aurors then? Where was the Order of the Phoenix while she and her family were being slaughtered? Why had it taken so long for Dumbledore to track her whereabouts? Why wasn't he there to aid her? And then came the question that always pushed him over the edge: Where were you? His head spun wildly, his throat closed and he was no longer able to breathe.
He got up from the bed with a jump and paced the length of the bedroom with his eyes and mouth wide open, gaping at the darkness like a fish out of the water. The memory seized his mind, gripping him firmly like a demon, and then the demon whispered in his ear that he didn't have to go through all of it again. No, he could go to the lab and fix it… It wouldn't take him more than fifteen minutes to brew the Lethe serum. He could drink and forget, he'd be a chip from the old block, just like his father, he could seek relief in the bottom of a bottle … Bile rose to his mouth and he swallowed the bitterness back down. He dug his nails in his palms and forced himself to draw air into his lungs in long paused gulps. He kept it up until he brought his heart rate back to normal.
The effort not to lose it was so taxing that his hands were shaking as he grabbed the chair in front of the desk and sat down. Yes, tonight he wasn't going to sleep either. He might as well do something useful with his time. He pulled a drawer open, looking for the parchment where he had taken some notes for his classes and found a Muggle contraption for playing music that Dumbledore had loaned him. The old Headmaster called it a Walkman. He stared at it crossly before taking it out and placing it over the table so he could examine it at his leisure.
Wizards had been dancing to their own tune since time immemorial, even before written records. The first magical painting found in a cave in the dessert was of the legendary Tavi the Weird dancing to a tune created with a spell. The first magical painting included sound, an invisible drum and flute tune could be clearly heard millennia after. Incidentally that is where the phrase dancing to your own drum comes from. It is argued by some scholars that the first spells were in the form of song, sound and magic are waves that affect each other, which is why correct enunciation of spells matters. So music and magic were indissolubly linked and Snape had wondered why Dumbledore would bother having that Muggle toy. He didn't need it to have music while he walked.
The Headmaster had answered that the machine gave him access to a wider musical catalog than the one inside his own head, vast as that was. And that Severus should count himself lucky to receive an item coveted by the discriminating young men in this the year of our lord 1981. Besides, Albus Dumbledore had said: he liked to keep up to speed with the latest technology. Sic itur ad astra that is how one goes to the stars. Snape couldn't figure out if the man was joking or if he was being serious. Blimey! He wasn't even sure Dumbledore could be serious. The man was living proof of the link between genius and insanity. Magic couldn't take you to the stars and if magic couldn't do it: how could Muggles manage? He had blurted out the question and the old Headmaster had said that Muggles had already made it to the moon nine years after Severus was born, which was the most ridiculous thing he had heard in his life. If Muggles indeed claimed they had done it, it was all probably a hoax.
And yet, perhaps the Muggle toy could be of some use to him. He couldn't hope to listen to Muggle radio, even if he had wanted to. Trying to tune it in at Hogwarts was next to impossible, the floating metals, diminutive material components of spells most wizards weren't aware of, created a barrier against electromagnetic waves, a Faraday cage that distorted radio waves carried through electromagnetic means. Students who wanted to listen to their favorite radio soap or Quidditch match could still listen to their programs because those were transmitted as pure sound waves (which are pressure waves) by the WWN. The Wizarding Wireless Network had the word wireless in its name Merlin knows why, as it did not employed electromagnetism like the Muggle radio. Wizarding radio is magically modified to carry sound through the magical medium known as quintessence and thus it can be selectively blocked and selectively received with magic.
Most teachers thought of the blockage of WWN as a blessing. Imagine the noise if every child was allowed to listen to their own radio simultaneously. And in the evenings there was a curfew that applied to all devices. Blocking spells have a radius of action and it was not really possible to spare the faculty's rooms, which were all over the castle. Severus may have tried to override the spell but, understandably, during the recent war most of the teachers in Hogwarts had set up magical devices to detect unexpected spell casting. Some still might have been fine-tuned to detect even the rather harmless spell required for him to listen to the WWN radio at night. Not to mention that the Hogsmead station was probably not working after midnight.
In that the little Muggle toy had an advantage, it allowed to play recorded music and it came with an individual listening device: headphones Dumbledore had called them, they were some sort of Alice band with felt tips for the ears that made him feel utterly ridiculous. But with them Severus didn't need to disturb anyone while listening to music. He had never been too keen on what the WWN had to offer, perhaps the wider Muggle musical selection would be better. Bloody hell, he was at the end of his rope, he was willing to try anything that could help him settle his nerves.
He went back to the bed, laid down and began fiddling with the Muggle toy. When he had loaned him the contraption Dumbledore had penned a guide of how to use it in a sliver of parchment with the sepia ink he favored. It had diagrams, which was droll as the Muggle machine functioned with rather candid pictographs, a right pointing triangle to start playing, two right pointing triangles to fast forward and two left pointing triangles to play backwards, a square for stopping. He could probably have figured it out on his own, but it was nice of the old wizard to make it easy.
The Headmaster had also loaned him several recordings, little plastic boxes called cassettes. He hadn't the faintest clue of what the Muggle music would sound like. He was weary of judging a book by its cover so to speak; but he didn't even have that, for the covers were handwritten. He went through them, reading titles in Dumbledore's neat calligraphy until one caught his eye. It was French, a language he had learned to be able to read the works of the famed alchemists Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel. The piece was by someone called Debussy and the intriguing title read as Les sons et les parfums, the sounds and the scents.
The back of the case explained that it was based on the poem Harmonie du soir, Night's Harmony, by Charles Baudelaire. He'd never heard of the chap, probably another Muggle. He took out the cassette from its encasing and put it inside the machine. And then he noticed the inside of the cardboard lining was covered in Dumbledore's writing too. It was also French, presumably the poem. He started the music and read as he heard the recording. First of all, using the word harmony to describe the piece was obviously ironic. It was beautiful, but it was constructed with superimposing dissonances in a way Severus would have never thought possible for making music. It was otherworldly. And by the end of it, as he read the last verse, he was unabashedly crying.
A tender heart that shrinks away from the vast void gathers up every shred of the luminous past! While the sun drowns in its own congealed blood, in me your memory burns like a monstrance.
His hand went unconsciously to the reliquary pendant hanging from his neck. It was a campy heart shaped metal locket he had found near the river. He had repaired and polished it but he hadn't mustered the nerve of giving it to the person he had wanted to. He had ended up keeping it for himself. What was hidden inside it was one perfect droplet of blood, still liquid and glistening, preserved by magic when he was sixteen. He looked at it through the tears and remembered the day he had gathered it up reverently from the fitted sheet of his foldup bed with a devotee's sense of blissful awe.
The blood was all that he had to remember that day. Well it was all he had outside his head, for each moment was burnt in his brain as if by a branding iron. And yet, if it weren't for the reliquary, he might have thought it had all been a dream. The only thing that dampened the feeling of happiness was that his dream was probably Lily Evans' nightmare. He just couldn't think of her with the last name of that idiot James Potter, he just couldn't. In his mind she would always be Lily Evans, the auburn haired girl he had fallen in love with and loved still, now and forever.
The droplet of blood was a memento of the happiest day of his life, which had started with a funeral. He remember it all, he could conjure up the events and how he felt with the freshness of something that had happened just the day before. On the summer of 1976 Mrs. Evans had lost the battle to the pancreatic cancer she had been fighting for over a year. The people at the Muggle hospital had given up on her one evening and Mr. Evans had decided to take her home with them. She had passed away a few weeks later surrounded by her husband and her daughters. She had been buried in the Cokeworth cemetery the very next day. Her long sickness had given the Evans time to be prepared. The arrangements were pretty much done by the time she had died.
One could say a lot of things about Petunia Evans, not many of them flattering, but she was nothing if not efficient, especially when it came to hosting a social event. It seemed as if one moment they were engaged in preparations and the very next the funeral was over and they were at the wake. It all ran like a clock. Eileen and Severus had been there to help every step of the way.
Tobias Snape was out on a fishing trip. His father was the kind of selfish man who wouldn't change his plans for anyone. In fact he had been angered by his family willingness to help others. He honestly couldn't see why they would serve anyone's needs but his. Neither Severus nor his mum missed the brute. But by the end of a long day of running errands he was falling asleep standing up and his mum had sent him home to get some rest while she stayed serving tea and replenishing trays of food.
He had only just managed to fold out his bed when a sound alerted him that someone was trying to wriggle their way through the backdoor. He had very keen senses of usual, but he had been so tired that he was unaware of anything until the door creaked. That old thing got worse each year, the only reason why they hadn't been robbed was that they were dirt poor and that the door only opened a bit, leaving no room for anyone but a small children to slip in. He was putting on the sheets when he had realized that the creaking sounds weren't coming from the old springs in his bed.
He had grabbed his wand and went out to see who it was. He didn't want to get in trouble for underage use of magic outside of the school. He had already faced a reprimand for one outburst last year. But sometimes trouble comes looking for you. It wouldn't be the first time one of his father's fishing trips turned out to be just a pretext to have a drinking binge and it wouldn't be the first time he returned home unexpectedly, having forgotten what he was doing out there.
The outburst of magic during his fourth year at Hogwarts which had gotten him a reprimand from the Ministry, had also left his old man with a nasty scar on his left cheek. Ministry letter aside, Severus was glad, because Tobias Snape hadn't laid a hand on his mum since that day and because that had been the inspiration to create Sectum Sempra, a curse of his own. But alcohol could make his dad forget even the pain of the five stitches that had taken to patch him up. He might have come back without being blind drunk too, for he raged at his family for "deserting" him, Severus didn't put it past Tobias to harass them for helping the Evans.
He had inhaled exasperated and had gone out, mentally prepared to get his second Ministry letter. He'd risk expulsion to stop his father from making a scene at the neighbors wake. He steeled his resolve and went with his heart beating madly. But he hadn't been prepared to see the person that was trying to squeeze through the backdoor. It was not his father but his redhead neighbor, Lily.
They hadn't really spoken since that day after the DADA exam when the idiot Potter and his cohorts had humiliated him in front of all the school. That day he and Lily had exchanged harsh words and he hadn't found a way to say he was sorry afterwards. They had staid apart all summer and the only words he had spoken to her were his condolences, which he presented rather stiffly in front of his mother and her father. And now there she was, trying to sneak inside his house.
She had never been inside his house. He was thunderstruck, so he was slow to react when she yelled.
"Blimey, Sev! Your backdoor doesn't work!"
She said it as if it were his fault. He put a stiff upper lip: "It hasn't worked for years." As if it weren't supposed to. Then he punctuated: "We use the front door, it works just fine."
"Open the window then, I don't want anyone to see me coming in."
He might have refused, taking the slight offense in her words and using it to raise a wall between them, but he couldn't; not after noticing the redness of her puffy eyes and the way she dragged her feet. He was well acquainted with the tiredness that is only in part of the body and comes mainly from the soul being weighted down.
He had been dragging his feet and slouching like that for a good many years. Only after the grades came in and told everyone the greasy mudblood Slytherin was the only one who had achieved straight Os in his O.W.L.s, eleven of them, even above all Ravenclaws, had he started holding his head high. His grades had always been good but that year they were truly outstanding and that had gotten the attention of Rabastan Lestrange and Barty Crouch Jr. He had his new friends Avery and Mulciber to thank for that introduction. Rabastan was one year older and Barty Jr. two years younger than him but they were the ringleaders of his house. Prompted by them he had begun essaying holding up his head high and straightening his back.
Rabastan had said that the only way people respect you is if you scare them into it. Respect is equal to fear and anyone who said the contrary was a ninny. And he was Head Boy and one of the most feared Hogwarts had known, so he knew what he was talking about. Still, Severus knew how Lily was feeling, and he cared about her so he was already lifting the double hung window in their kitchen to let her sneak in when she protested.
"Come along, Sev, it is cold out here."
It was, in the summer the rain could make the temperature drop fast, particularly on the row of houses that were under the shadow of the colliery's chimney. The murky river behind them added damp making Spinner's End prime real estate in the township of Cokeworth, as Tobias Snape liked to say in the odd sober moments in which he favored a certain brand of dark humor that he called irony.
The night's air smelled of ozone from distant thunder, a storm was coming, and she was only wearing a light sleeveless black dress that flapped around her in the draft. He closed the window with a snap and looked at her from the corner of his eye as he fought to light up the old stove with some matches. She entered the parlor rubbing her arms to try to heat them and passing a hand over her hair to coerce flyaway strands back in the high bun that her sister must have insisted she wore. Petunia was madly jealous of Lily's good looks, particularly her red mane. Severus wasn't surprised that the scrawny mousy girl wouldn't let that go, not even for their mother's funeral.
She looked at the half made bed: "Is this where you sleep? Your house is so small."
Having her in his home made him feel awkward. He sounded snappier than he meant when he replied: "I'm sorry I cannot offer you the hospitality you are used to, Miss Evans. I wasn't expecting company. Least of all yours, we haven't been on friendly terms lately."
She brushed aside the false formality with a shrug and looked at him cocking an eyebrow: "And whose fault is that, Sev?"
No one called him that, no one but her. He frowned: "Potter's and his goons for starters."
She frowned too, she was a smart girl and didn't miss on the subtle reproach. She scowled at him as the sky darkened around them: "I was only trying to defend you."
He took a backwards step, illuminated by lighting that made the small house's windows tremble: "I didn't ask you to. It made things worse!" He finished shouting to make himself heard over the thunder. So much for wanting to apologize.
She crossed her arms over her chest and shouted over the thunders too: "What was I supposed to do, stand aside? Is not like your gloomy new friends were doing anything. And the way these guys treat you is disgusting. I can't imagine why you put up with it!"
He hadn't had a choice. That was how things were at school, at least for people like him. Everyone but oblivious Muggleborn rising stars like Lily understood the strict pecking order. Her good grades and good looks attracted the good will of the teachers and the other students that didn't mind her heritage, something which protected her within the narrow confines of her house. But things were different for him. Though that was going to change. He had been invited to the Lestrange household twice this summer, he had met Rabastan's older brother Rodolphus, his lovely wife Bellatrix and his friends the newlywed Malfoys. It was hard to believe that girls like Bella and Narcissa were related to that hairy idiot Sirius. They couldn't be more different, so well-bred, and they had graciously let him call them by their given names, even though they were several years his seniors.
His new friends were really important people, not braggarts playing inside the baby playpen fence of Hogwarts. He was mingling socially with the heirs of the sacred twenty eight. Her mum had sold her very last Goblin jewelry to buy him clothes that were appropriate for the couple of summer soirees he had attended. She shouldn't have worried, these people knew what really matters in life: power. They were impressed not by his grades, but with his real knowledge of obscure Alchemy. They were impressed enough that Lucius Malfoy had pulled strings and, for the first time in all his years in Hogwarts, he was getting new books, a couple of uniforms and supplies through a grant given by the Malfoy family.
He was moving upwards in life and things were going to be different come next school term. He had one school year to make Potter twist. His friends said that in all likelihood Potter was going to be made Head Boy on the seventh year. The masses loved to elevate stupid Quidditch players to positions they felt were key. In reality the position was worthless if you didn't have other holds on power too. And up to a point the people who were really in control had to let the mass keep their illusions. Cordelia Rosier was going to be Head Girl come next year and she was going to be the one who really ran the show. It was all a game of chess and most people weren't aware of it.
Yes, the next school term wasn't going to be easy for Potter and his friends. Especially for the pale lanky one, Lupin. He was obviously hiding something bad. Severus had his suspicions of what his secret was, but so far he hadn't been able to prove it. Barty was already on the track and his dad was a high ranking officer in the Ministry, if Severus' suspicions were right the scandal was going to bring down Potter and his friends and perhaps even Dumbledore for allowing a bloody werewolf to study alongside innocent students. The chain breaks in the weakest link Barty had said, and, of course, he was right. That chain was going to break, not only to benefit Severus Snape but because weakening Dumbledore was beneficial for his new friends' grand scheme in the long run.
He was now part of a grand scheme. He had to rein in his enthusiasm. For one must not sell the bear's pelt before having killed the furry brute. He had to bite down a derisive laugh at the thought of the word furry. He had to bid his time. He crossed his hands behind his back and said: "The way I'm treated by those idiots is not something I like to dwell in and I'm sure it is not why you are here..."
He stopped cold, instantly losing his bravado. He couldn't think of one single reason why she'd be in his house. He asked with genuine bewilderment: "What exactly are you doing here, shouldn't you be home at a time like this, Lily?"
She sighed and signaled in the direction of her home with a bob of her head: "I needed to get out of there. I was suffocating. My dad is just going through the motions like an Inferi. He keeps muttering everything is going to be alright, but I don't think he really believes it. He is broken, Sev... And I don't know how to put him back… Mum would have, but mum is…" She sniffled and swiftly wiped her tears away: "And Petunia… Merlin, Petunia is even worse. Is as if nothing had happened! She is so chirpy, acting like the perfect hostess. Bossing us around with that snide horse smile of hers: Do this my dear and do that my dear… Bloody hell! She insisted on buying flowery curtains to make the house homelier for the wake. She made devil eggs and pigs in blankets as if we were having a bloody party. And she knows mum hated them, she thought flowery prints were cheap and that hor d'oeuvres were campy. Petunia couldn't even wait for her to be underground to take over the house… It just makes me want to snap her neck… I won't even have to use my wand, I'll gladly do it with my bare hands." Her voice trembled: "And mum, mum is gone. I… she wasn't really there these past few weeks… but now she is really gone… gone forever, Sev." She sobbed and big drops started falling down her cheeks in synchrony with the raindrops crashing on the windowpane, big and loud like stones.
She stood there, trembling and crying, rocking back and forth on the ball of her feet, holding herself until he couldn't stand it anymore and hugged her. He was going to let her go as soon as he felt her stiffening against his embrace, but then she had relaxed and passed her arms around his waist, leaning against his shoulder. He held her tight, supporting her weight and his with a lump in his throat. He held her warm lit body until she stopped crying.
When she stopped, he let her go gently and said in a soft voice: "I'll make some tea..."
She hadn't let him go. She held onto him, grabbed the back of his head and made him lean towards her. She leaned her head slightly back and kissed him.
He was petrified.
She looked at him through narrowed eyes: "I know you like me, Sev. I've known for years. You are always following me around with puppy eyes."
He pulled away: "I like being with you. I thought we were friends. You don't need to add another admirer to the list. I think you have enough of those, Lily Evans."
Her eyes welled up again: "I've never needed a friend more than I need one now, Sev. I really do. I feel so cold inside, like I've been kissed by a Dementor and all the warmth has been sucked out of me. I feel like I'm never going to be able to feel anything good again. All I can manage to feel is pain." She showed him her palm, there was a scar running from her thumb to her wrist. It was angry and red, with all the signs of a magical scar, like the one in his father's cheek.
He gasped: "Did you do this to yourself?"
She looked at him wide-eyed: "I just did it to feel something other than anger." She gritted her teeth: "I was going barmy. I feel so bloody angry. Angry that I know how to turn a tea cup into a mouse to get a perfect score in my Transmutation exam, but I couldn't help her! What the fuck is magic good for if it cannot stop those you love from dying?" She closed her eyes, her face contracting in a mean scowl as she breathed raggedly: "I couldn't even help her with the pain, Sev! And I tried, I really did! In the end nothing they gave her helped. Not the fucking morphine, not any spell I could find. And she fought so hard to pretend she was OK, so we wouldn't worry. But before we put her inside the casket I saw the bed sores, they were bone deep, bone deep. 'Cause in the end even moving a little bit made her flinch, so she stayed there, crucified in the same position until she dropped dead. It must have hurt like hell! And they wouldn't receive her in St. Mungo, even though they were willing to receive the Abbot's pet crup when it broke one of its tails! But my mum didn't deserve the compassion they gave to a dog because she was a Muggle. They might have been able to help her, at least with the pain. And when I think about it all I can feel is anger." She hissed: "Anger filling me, inside out, oozing out of every pore." She stood trembling with her mouth twisted, her hands in fists: "Until I drown."
He could think of at least three potions that might have helped Mrs. Evans, but he kept quiet. He wasn't sure if they would actually work on a Muggle and he would never have thought of offering. The Magic world and the Muggle world were not supposed to be mixed or there would be consequences, terrible consequences. He lived with them.
American wizards had ben right not allowing mixing with Muggles. The Rappaport laws had protected them until 1965, when the muggle lovers had managed to ban it. Under the Rappaport laws befriending or marrying Muggles was prohibited by law and the few squibs or muggleborns that couldn't be effectively schooled were obliviated and syphoned of what little magic they had thanks to the studies on Obscurials product of the last SoS breach in1929. You just had to look at the numbers to clearly see the advantages. They had reduced the Muggleborns to less than 0.05 percent of their population, Ilvermorny could boast of a near perfect record in regards to no hazing of half-blood or muggleborn students because they had virtually none. A homogenous student body guaranteed a well-run school. The Americans had managed to maintain fifty years of no breaches of the Statute of Secrecy. And it didn't take a genius to figure out why. It was so obvious! Why with the greater life span, the resistance to sickness and injury wizards and witches had, mixing with Muggles was a ticking bomb of resentment ready to explode at the first chance. His father couldn't stand to look at his mum who, homely as she was, looked twenty years younger than him. Not to mention the stupid Muggle expectation that magic was supposed to sort out every problem was another source of trouble.
The idiots didn't have a clue. Half the bitterness his father felt came from what little profit he had derived from having a witch wife. In the beginning he had thought he had struck gold, and when he found out it was leprechaun gold that he couldn't use outside fairyland, he had gone berserk. Once he had stolen two galleons from his mum and tried to pay his drinks with them and the coins had disappeared and went back to their owner as they were meant to do. It was the simplest spell, one only a wizard thief could undo. The shopkeeper had beaten the crap out of Tobias and in retaliation he had done the same with his wife. And that is the story of how little Severus Snape had been born one month earlier than expected, a little runt literally beaten out of his mother's womb. He knew anger was no use, he let it sweep pass him. His father would have his day of reckoning soon enough.
His mum had offered to exchange her galleons for Muggle currency but at the rate the Goblins would give her, she could only do it at a loss. Trying to arbitrage would only make the money disappear, even from digital records, everyone knew that, except stupid Tobias Snape. That was by design, because the Ministry had no interest in seeing gold and silver inundate the Muggle world or the other way around. The Statute of Secrecy reigned supreme. So once Tobias had been explained he was going to lose in the bargain, he had preferred to keep that in reserve. However he had agreed to dilapidate his wife's money whenever they had fallen behind on the mortgage and that had nearly depleted what little mum had in her Gringotts vault. Of course he wouldn't recognize the house was really mum's and he didn't give a damn that Severus barely had enough to buy school supplies afterwards.
Merlin be blessed that the Pureblood's notions that mixing bloodlines weakened the blood were lies, he and Lily were living proof that magical blood was stronger by far. Still, the only real chance at happiness they both had was cutting ties with their Muggle family as soon as they could. He was only waiting to be able to secure employment to leave Tobias Snape behind. His mother's illusions in regards to her Muggle husband were long gone, so he was only going to lose half his family, the half he cared less about. He knew it would be harder for his friend. But it was for the better. Even Petunia would be happier once she had forgotten the sister she envied. Of course Lily Evans was not yet in a place where she could listen to those reasonable arguments. She needed to blow off steam, so Severus let her rage like the storm outside while nodding encouragingly.
The anger bubble swelled up until it burst in a rush of hurt. She sobbed: "That is all I can see when I close my eyes and think of my mum now, the bed sores. I don't remember her smile, her voice, the way it felt when she held me, nothing. All I remember are the bloody bed sores... that and the awful smell. Sweet Merlin, the smell! Petunia threw away the linen, she said we had to throw away the whole mattress because the smell is never going to come off. And dad…" She choked on her own tears: "Last night I caught him rolled up in a ball behind the bins holding onto her bed sheets and crying. These images keep going inside my head in an endless reel and I can't make them stop… I just can't…I need to feel something or I'll break just like dad broke or stop caring like Petunia did! I need to feel something other than anger or I'll go insane, Sev. Honestly I feel like I'm already halfway there..."
She laughed and what came out of her mouth was such a horribly crazed cackle that he could do nothing but hold her tight. When she finally grew quiet he took her hand and kissed her palm, tracing the scar. She cupped his cheek with her hand and made him lean towards her. They kissed and this time he didn't pull away, he let her do.
She was the one who let go. He leaned in longingly and she put her hand wide open over his chest. She stepped back and without taking her eyes off him she slowly pulled the skirt of the black dress up her legs, past her waist and when she reached her midriff she passed it over her head and threw it on the floor. She was only wearing a frilly slip.
He stared at her from head to toe and back up. When he reached her eyes again they looked at each other until he felt compelled to say something. She put two fingers over his lips and shushed softly. He went silent, afraid even to breathe too loud and break the spell. She unbuttoned his black shirt, took it off and threw it on the floor too. She snaked her hand down his chest, his belly and reached his belt. She started unbuckling him and he felt an immediate reaction. He took her hand off, picked her up and carried her to his bed. He laid her down and finished undressing under her relentless eyes.
The world went pitch black, the storm was howling outside and the small house was only illuminated by lighting. He saw her only in flashes of red and white as he laid back with her straddling him. He helped support her weight with his hands on her waist or over her round soft breast when she leaned in. He kept his eyes opened until the very last, as if trying to memorize every inch of her, not quite believing she was real. He fixed in his mind the image of Lily, her red mane floating about her like a halo, letting out little moans and gasps, her beautiful mouth a perfect circle while she grabbed at the flat sheet in bunches with her hands. He hold onto the image until he could no longer hold onto the world, he toppled over the edge with his own soft moans, closing his eyes shut.
He didn't quite remember falling sleep, when he woke up she was no longer there and the only proof he had that what had happened was not a dream was a small spot of bright red blood on his white fitted sheet. He was about to touch it when he was seized by an idea. He got up, looked around and carefully lifted a plank of the hardwood floor and took out a tin box. He kept his few savings and some important things there, it wasn't much, so he had found the heart locket right away. Finding the spell in his grandpa's library took more time, but he did. He put on his sleeping gown, which he insisted on using inside the house to his father's chagrin who said wizarding clothes were for pansies. He tidied up the Muggle clothes, which he in turn despised, setting them over a chair and waited for his mother to come laying under the covers, breathing rhythmically to feign sleep.
It took a while before his mother came home. She entered careful not to disturb him and went to her room. It seemed his dad wasn't going to come home but he could hear her move around the house, hesitant, before finally going to sleep. His mum could act fidgety as a hunted beast. Severus knew he could get away with casting some spells if she was home, for the Ministry trace couldn't really distinguish if an adult or a minor had cast the spell. Spells cannot create intelligence. There were wizards and witches monitoring the alerts and if the spell was of a level sufficiently higher than what could be expected from the children nearby, they just assumed it couldn't have possibly been a child who had cast it. The fools. If he hadn't let his temper get the best of him, he wouldn't have gotten the reprimand. What is done is done. This time around he didn't want to risk losing his prize to rashness.
Blood is one of the most especial magical components, it creates a bond between the caster and the donor, whether willingly or involuntarily. That book in his grandfather's library was an old book, old enough to be from before the time magic started to be deemed as light or dark, but currently it would definitely be labeled as Dark Arts. It included a cloaking spell to make it harder to trace, he might have even been able to cast it while his mum was out, but better safe than sorry. Blood magic is often regarded as some of the darkest and only magic that affects the soul is thought of as darker than magic that affects the blood. Of course blood you could see and souls you couldn't.
Severus only knew of two instances of casting magic purposefully to affect souls. Basically because no one had an actual working definition of what a soul is and you have to have some notions about a phenomenon to create spells and charms which affect such phenomenon, even if afterwards about any moron can use them without understanding what they truly entail. Creating original magic requires actual knowledge of how things work. And knowledge on souls is sketchy at best, it took someone very brave, stupid or desperate to cast soul magic, more likely a combination of all three. Dabbling with soul magic had been Voldemort's undoing. If he hadn't been so fearful of death, he would have ruled for years over the world. He had tried to cut corners and failed miserably, for the only real way to conquer death is, quite simply: living; as any organism, from bacteria to each and every human being knows in the most basic instinctual level. And life is bounded by death at both ends.
For someone who, like Severus Snape, wasn't really sure that anything like a soul exists, for ghost are resonances, little more than memories, blood magic was some of the most powerful he could ever hope to cast. And he didn't take the matter lightly, not even when he was sixteen. Lily Evans was his friend, he should have washed the sheets and forgotten all about it. He should have, but he couldn't. By the light of an August moon he cast the spell to preserve her blood and created a bond that would carry even beyond her grave.
After the stroll down the paths of his memory he finally felt sleepy. He was half asleep with the ridiculous Muggle contraption still on his ears, when a thought seeped slowly in his consciousness: He had poured his will and his hopes in that spell and had the locket on him since the day he had cast it, so it may even be the case that the spell was powerful enough to survive, at least for a while, even after his own demise.
AN: Recent developments in another site have led me to believe I don't longer know what may offend people. In an effort to curve that, allow me a small disclaimer. First, let me state my biases: In regards to civil rights I lean towards liberal, culturally I lean towards conservative in that I'm all in for preserving expressions of our past and heritage, within a framework of mutual respect; while in politics I'm center with a slight tendency towards the left. So there: In that light, the views that Severus has on Muggles, especially those that I'm implying led him to become a Death Eater, are not mine. I like making up characters that are outside my comfort zone, for me it is part of the fun.