by Veruka
Disclaimer: The Harry Potter universe and things canonically mentioned herein are property and copyright J.K. Rowling. No profit.
Rating: PG-13 (will rise with future chapters)
Full summary: A child is born, fulfilling an ancient prophecy concerning the fate of all humanity and drawing two people into a web of deadly lies and deceptions neither imagined possible. With only each other to trust, they embark on a journey to unravel the mystery surrounding the newborn, and find that in order to prevent a foretold Armageddon, they must kill an innocent damned centuries before his birth. Snape/Sinistra.
Notes: Former prologue was up for a short bit; wasn't satisfied with it, took it down, completely rewrote it, and now it is this. Inspired by Helena Darjeeling's lovely "Call to the Earth and Sea," namely her idea of Professor Sinistra as a Death Eater spy with Snape, and her stroke-of-genius breakthrough regarding the Astronomy professor's last name and the distinct possibility of her being of Romani descent. This story will delve further into that theory and how a Gypsy upbringing might affect a person's perception of magic, and of life itself. Of course, since I'm not a Roma myself, it's all artistic license and speculation. Many thanks and praise be to her for agreeing to help me with the Romani translations, and for starting up my brain plot-wise.
Diving right into things, the story begins thus...
Chapter 1
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in the sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come at last,
Slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?
-- William Butler Yeats; "The Second Coming"
She'd been tracking the phenomenon for nearly three-quarters of a year, three-quarters of a year of studying it so closely, of being so close to it, and still she didn't realise, still she was as blindsided by it as the rest of them. Months of poring over star charts, of scrutinising the heavens for hours every night until her neck ached and her eyes burned bloodshot, and still it took her by surprise when not a moment after it happened, the fore of her left arm had burned with the come-hither summoning...
Acantha Sinistra looked upon the squirming, shrieking bundle in Lord Voldemort's arms in a state of pure shock. Beneath the bone-white mask obscuring her face, her lips parted as if in a gasp, though she could not breathe, had forgotten how to. Three-quarters of a year. Nine months. Nine months, and she had never once thought to make the correlation, not even in an idle musing. And yet the words pounded in her ears, inside her skull, muffled and rattling, coiling and constricting around her mind like a python: "Behold, the Dark Heir is born!"
And then the world was mute. Vaguely, she could sense the bodies surrounding her, cheering, praising, worshipping this pink, squealing...thing, and then the feel of human fingers curling into her arm -- Snape, yes, next to her, warning her. Her body was numb, she was sure of it, but somehow she managed to will it to applaud.
The images surrounding her blurred together, and she wondered briefly if this was what it felt like to drown.
"The planets are moving into alignment -- look, here. Jupiter will be the closest its been to Earth in nearly two millennia, but look -- Mars is going to partially eclipse it."
"Professor, what will that look like?"
"From here? ...like a star within a star, Baddock. On the seventeenth of November."
The seventeenth of November. The planets in such a flawless alignment, Mars within Jupiter, red within red, blood of war, blood of kings, the seventeenth of November, and the Dark Heir had been born.
Why did you not see this coming? her mind screamed. You were raised to see this coming! You have lived too long among these gadje; they have made you blind, and look at the price you pay! How could you be such a fool? You think you are one of them now, these gadje? This filth? You have brought shame to yourself. More than that, you have shamed your family.
A second squeeze to her arm, firmer than the first, drew her from her ruminations. She glanced over into unknowing black eyes, and could discern from them no emotion. Faint popping sounds resonated throughout the room as the masked witches and wizards Disapparated to god-knows-where -- was the ceremony over already?
"My estate," he said quietly, barely giving her enough time to nod in response before he, too, disappeared. With one last glance toward the opulent throne at the head of the room, where the servant Wormtail was hunched over the bundle, covering its small face with black cloth like a death shroud, she followed Snape with a soft crack of air hitting air where her body had stood.
+++
The Snape Estate in West Yorkshire had, over the last century or so, gradually fallen into a state of disrepair. The Snapes were a very old wizarding family, if not a very respectable one. Generations' worth of scandal had tarnished the halls of the once-grand home; wickedness had claimed many of the lives that once inhabited the house before their time, and as the sole surviving member of the family was not one for keeping up appearances that had long ago ceased to matter, the chances of the home ever blooming again were slim. The house, like the family, had withered, and accepted its inevitable death with dignity.
They Apparated into the conservatory that jutted out from the back of the house and into the unkempt garden. The room adjoining the large glass-and-iron half-dome was the laboratory, and it was there that the two professors withdrew to remove their masks.
Acantha slouched into a dusty, faded armchair nestled in the corner near the ivy-strangled windows, through which only tiny slivers of moonlight were allowed to pass. Snape regarded her for a few moments with something that could have passed for concern or annoyance before going over to a cabinet to retrieve two glasses and a bottle of brandy. It had become almost ritual by now -- they would be summoned, perform their duties, then retire to his estate to nurse a drink and sit morosely for an hour or two before they had to return to the school. "Small moments of sanity," Sinistra had taken to calling them. Snape never did figure out whether or not she was serious.
Truth be told, there was a great deal about the woman he had yet to figure out. They rarely spoke, preferring instead to simply sit in silence and organise their thoughts, a tacit acknowledgment that each was not alone in the risks being taken and the responsibilities assumed. This fact made it even more surprising when she heard his voice from across the room.
"What happened?"
"What?" she asked distractedly.
"At the assembly," he explained. "You froze when the child was presented."
Acantha shrugged. "It...caught me off-guard. You can't tell me you were not shocked by it as well."
"I admit I was not expecting it," he conceded, at her side now and handing over her glass, which she fought the urge to gulp from greedily. "But you were," he continued. "You have borne witness to far more atrocious things than an infant without so much as a flinch. What is it about this child that unnerves you so?"
"...I don't know."
"You are lying."
She took a long drink of her brandy, but found no warmth in the burning trail it blazed down her throat. "Your tongue does not serve you honourably, gadje."
"My tongue serves me fine, Gypsy," he snapped, quickly growing impatient with her avoidance. "Do not lie to me. I have given you no reason not to trust me."
Still, she hesitated, head bowed, gaze to the floor. Snape did not know much of Romani ways, but enough to know what to say to test her sense of pride.
"You would lower your eyes when questioned by a gadje? Your family would be disappointed in you."
The words had the desired effect, but only for a moment. She glared up at him, eyes flashing angrily, then flickering, deadening like a candle being blown out, and lowering once more.
"Any disappointment I bring them now is inconsequential. You do not know how wholly I have failed them."
"Which is why I ask," he persisted. "You perform them no great service by keeping information from me. I am not your enemy, Sinistra. Whatever threat this child poses, we will both have to face it, and I would prefer not to tread blindly into that battle." He paused and turned away from her, lowered his voice to a biting mutter. "I am trusting you to disallow that from happening. Quid pro quo, Acantha. We will not survive if we do not at least trust each other."
It was the first time he'd addressed her by her first name -- that she could remember, in any case -- and when he turned back around, he looked almost angry that he'd said it.
"Quid pro quo..." she echoed, and it was apparent on her face that she was giving his words serious consideration. Then, after a few moments, she exhaled a relenting sigh. "...there is an ancient prophecy among my people that tells of the birth of a fiu de dracului, a devil's son, when the planets stand in a false harmony, and a battle wrought with bloodshed looks upon the earth with cursed eyes. A Dark one who will give the world cause to tear into two, so that the universe might hear the screams of the hell it will become.
"In every generation, one of us is chosen to devote his or her life to the study of the skies, to watch for signs of the devil-child's coming, to accept the responsibility of stopping it before it could draw its first breath. I was different from the other girls of my tribe; I had no interest in marriage, and it was decided that if I could not dedicate my life to a man, then perhaps I could dedicate my life to the stars. The task suited me -- I enjoyed it, and I learned the skies quickly and well. It was not long before I no longer required the guidance of my instructor. I was good at what I did, but I was not satisfied with it. 'Why only one?' I asked my mother. 'If more people learned to read the skies, would they not notice if something were out of place with it? Why place such a burden on only one set of shoulders?' She told me to stifle my queries, that this was the way it had been done for centuries, and it was not my place to question it. And so, after that day, I did not -- at least, never out loud.
"Still partially unsatisfied with my profession, eventually I defied my family's wishes and set off on my own when I was nineteen. It was the most frightening thing I'd ever done -- up until then, of course. I was a young Roma witch travelling without the safety of my family in a foreign land. After awhile, I learned my way around, learned the customs of the gadje witches and warlocks, the language...I felt like a child learning how to survive all over again. Soon I felt prepared enough to make a life for myself, to begin what I had originally set out to do -- to teach others how to read the sky. My beginnings were somewhat humbling -- for some time, I made a living doing astrology charts for both the magical and the Muggle. People were amazed at the accuracy of the charts, and word must have spread, because one day I received an owl from an Albus Dumbledore inviting me to teach Astronomy at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Needless to say, I agreed immediately.
"I was thrilled beyond words. Here I was, at twenty-three, accomplishing on my own all that I had planned to do. But I had forgotten my true purpose. I adored teaching, but I had lost touch with my original reason for doing it, and gradually, little by little, I stopped looking for signs. I think part of me was convinced that nothing would ever happen -- not in my lifetime, at any rate -- and over time, I began to see the superstitions I had been brought up to believe as silly, and in the gadje world, they were. I began to forget who I was, and what I was meant for.
"I turned my back on my people, Snape, on everything I was supposed to be, and look what has come of it. I have failed -- my family, my world. Though, looking back, I had failed them long before this..." she trailed off, swallowing whatever words she might have said in another sip of brandy.
Snape had not moved but to breathe all throughout her impromptu telling of her life's story, and now he continued to remain still, staring at her, unblinking, as he absorbed all that she had told him.
Finally, he took a drink of his brandy and walked past her to the table occupying the middle of the room, on top of which sat a dusty, aged cauldron and a few cobweb-covered crystal phials. He sat down his glass before idly running a finger around the cauldron's rim. At last, he spoke.
"Is the headmaster aware of this prophecy?"
"I don't think so. I am not sure."
"And...are you going to include it when you tell him of the child's existence?"
"Again, I am not sure...it seems rather pointless now."
"Knowledge of past events is only futile if it is ignored," he spat, splaying his hands on the table top.
"...you are angry with me," she murmured, though from her flat tone it was impossible to tell her feelings on the matter.
"No," he replied after a brief silence. "...forgive me. Ignorance does not sit well with me." He finished the last of his brandy and left the glass by the cauldron. "We should be getting back."
She nodded and rose without protest, and he kept his back to her as they Disapparated for the front gates of Hogwarts castle.
+++
"Peppermint toad," Acantha told the gargoyle standing at attention outside the entrance to Dumbledore's office the next morning. It sprang aside obligingly, allowing her to pass through to the hidden spiralling staircase on the other side of the wall.
As she waited for the step she occupied to reach the office, she mentally practiced what she would tell the headmaster of the Death Eater meeting for the thousandth time -- or more specifically, what she would tell him of the prophecy surrounding the infant the Death Eaters had so revered. After contemplating Snape's words to her the night before and giving herself one hell of a talking-to, she had nearly managed to convince herself that telling the old wizard what she knew of the child's destiny was the right thing to do -- nearly.
One thing she had decided on, most definitely, was that things would have been easier had Snape been there to give her a good kick in the rear and tell her to get on with it. But Dumbledore very rarely ever spoke to the two of them together concerning their undercover activities -- he preferred to hear both versions of the goings-on separately, so that one mightn't taint the other's perception of events. Thus, Acantha's indecisiveness held strong, and only heightened when the step halted in front of the door to the headmaster's office. After taking a deep breath, she knocked on it three times, firmly.
"Come in," came the called response.
Before anything else, trust your instincts, she thought to herself, then opened the door and stepped inside.
"Ah, Acantha," Dumbledore greeted her, a soft, warm smile touching his eyes as he gestured to the two leather chairs in front of his desk. "Do have a seat. Liquorice wand?"
The Astronomy professor smiled weakly in return and sat down somewhat stiffly. "No, thank you, Headmaster. Has Professor Snape been to see you yet?"
"He has not. I suppose it's needless for me to guess the purpose of your presence here, if you are enquiring about Severus's activities. What information do you bring me, Acantha?"
She began with the basics -- things any Death Eater might have said regarding the previous night's happenings.
"There is a child," she started, and Dumbledore leaned forward, his interest immediately piqued.
"A child?" he asked.
"Yes -- a newborn, presented by Lord Voldemort himself and referred to as the Dark Heir. A Caucasian baby, I believe. Black hair. It was crying -- I couldn't see its eyes."
Dumbledore's eyes shifted thoughtfully to his desk, frown lines blending together on his wrinkled forehead. "I see..." he murmured. "Your thoughts on the child?"
She looked up, in the headmaster's eyes. They twinkled strangely, and contained none of the gentle humour they usually held. He seemed tense, almost as though he was anticipating an answer he should not have known she could give him.
Stop being so damned paranoid, she told herself. It is only Dumbledore; you have been working for him for ten years now. He is a champion.
But in the light of recent realisations, and the reflection of old memories, another thought heaved its way to the fore as well: He is gadje. She pushed it away in a forced surge of rationality. Do not play the fool twice in one day; you have already wasted more opportunities than you deserved to be given. Tell him.
His wand lay on his desk. He rose, and she jumped, then cursed her nervousness at his searching, bemused look as he moved to go behind her, to the phoenix-cage. Fawkes had combusted recently, she noticed. The normally brilliant red bird was barely the size of Dumbledore's hand that reached inside his cage, and his skin was a puckered, ashy grey.
Acantha inhaled a composing breath and returned her attention to the headmaster's desk, focusing on his wand as she groped for the right words. Why were they being so stubborn now, when they had tumbled from her mouth so easily last night?
"I...I know of a prophecy," she stammered, "about a child born when the planets align."
"...go on," came the shady reply. She swallowed, her throat feeling very suddenly dry.
"This child...this child will mark the extinction of humanity. Hell on Earth, the end of our world. Headmaster -- Albus -- we must stop this from happening, it simply cannot be allowed to---" she twisted around in her chair to face him; he stood calmly, hands now clasped behind his back as she continued, "---to be at all. If this child lives, the consequences will be astronomical -- millions -- billions of people are going to die---"
She had scarcely registered his arm lashing out at her when something heavy, dull and cold cracked against her left temple, sending a sharp surge of foggy pain through her skull and knocking her out of her seat and to the floor. She groaned, hands clutching at her head, too stunned to think and struggling for some form of awareness all at once, straining to find an equilibrium as the world spun and Dumbledore's words hammered senselessly in her ringing ears.
"You are correct, dear Acantha. People are going to die. But never fear -- you won't." He made his way back toward his desk, carefully stepping around her, taking hold of his wand---
Little by little, comprehensive thought began to return to her, fading in and out with the steady pounding of her head; hurt, pain, hit -- hit -- Dumbledore, speaking muffled words -- muffled words and reaching -- his wand, fuck -- no. No, no, no no no...
"No," the headmaster continued, something akin to sorrow touching his voice -- not sorrow; pity. He pitied her. "You will live, Acantha Sinistra, though I'm afraid you may not remember what for."
No...
"Obliviate."
No! Survival instinct kicked in, and she rolled out of the way in the nick of time, dodging the curse only just. Scrambling to her feet, she bolted for the door and wrenched it open just as the old wizard missed his second attempt.
"Acantha!" he roared, giving chase instantaneously.
The throbbing pain in her head became muted as her thoughts grew more rapid, her mind clearer and focused solely on escape.
Down the stairs, down the stairs -- don't stop, don't fall, just run, run, run, go, run -- don't stop, just go, go, faster, run, down the stairs, to the halls -- to the halls, school hours, students, and he wouldn't dare, he wouldn't dare, just run...
Flashes of yellow light ricocheted off the walls -- the spiral of the staircase was too narrow, and she moving down it too fast -- he couldn't get a clear shot. She had a chance, she had a chance if she could just make it---
Yes! The wall in front of her slid open, and she sprinted past in and into the empty corridor -- empty. She needed a classroom, needed to find safety in numbers, and it only took her a fraction of a second to decide where the safest place would be.
With a sharp right turn, she raced down the first of three staircases that would lead her to the ground floor and, from there, into the dungeons.
+++
"Zabini," Snape hissed, rounding on the redheaded Slytherin girl nigh-predatorily, "tell me, what effect would be achieved if I were to add one part bubotubor pus to twelve parts asphodel and wormwood infusion?"
"Well...the acidity of the bubotubor pus would react with the sleep-inducing properties of the Draught of the Living Death, creating what could pass for a nigh-pure virus in a liquid form, and presenting itself like a severe stomach flu coupled with extreme exhaustion. Sir." The girl straightened up in her seat with unabashed pride, and the Potions professor awarded her with an oily smile and
"Five points to Slytherin. Very good. Now, would anyone care to elucidate the outcome of combining a common wound-cleaning potion with a dash of bat's blood? A timid Gryffindor, perhaps?" His eyes roved over the sixth-year class contemplatively. Granger was stretching her hand in the air with such enthusiasm that Snape wouldn't have been shocked if her shoulder became dislocated from its socket. "Longbottom. Do enlighten the rest of the class with a few words of wisdom."
The round-faced boy blanched and squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. "Um...it..."
"Before I reach my centennial, Longbottom, if you please," Snape muttered, resisting the urge to grind his teeth together. A few of the Slytherin students sniggered appreciatively. The boy looked positively panicked, and had just begun to stutter out an incorrect answer when the door to the classroom burst open, banging loudly as it hit the wall.
Twenty-odd heads swivelled in the direction of Longbottom's would-be saviour, exhaling little gobsmacked gasps with wide, inquisitive eyes.
Suddenly the centre of attention in a room full of impressionable youths, a very obviously shaken Sinistra attempted to collect herself. Now that she had reached this makeshift haven, she felt dazed, unable to truly process what had just happened. She stood in the centre of the room, head still thumping with pain like a drum beat, lungs aching, muscles burning, and what felt so hot and sticky on the side of her face?
Tentatively, she reached up, lightly running her fingers along where the...what had he hit her with?
They were stained crimson when she pulled them back.
"Professor Snape...may I...may I have a word with you?" she asked, her voice cracking slightly. She bit down on her tongue, wary of making an even bigger spectacle of herself than she already had -- she could not come across as a hysterical madwoman, not now, no matter how strongly the inclination pressed her.
Snape, who had been staring at her with an alarmed frown, recovered quickly. "My office," he said, and swept over to her, led her with a forceful hand on her shoulder out of the room after informing his perplexed and apprehensive-looking class that if so much as a quill moved in his absence, it would be detention for a month.
Once across the hall, he muttered a few incantations, and the door to his office opened with a soft click. The two professors swiftly entered the room, and Snape shut and locked the door behind them.
"What happened?" he demanded immediately, pushing her down into the chair behind his desk. She was in no frame of mind to argue with him.
"Dumbledore," she explained, still somewhat winded, "I -- I went up to see Dumbledore about last night, and he -- he -- Severus, he's gone mad! He hit me and -- and then he tried to wipe my mind, and I---"
"Stop," he cut her off and knelt down in front of her, his hands braced on the armrests, his face very close to hers. "Calm yourself. Start at the beginning, and explain everything to me -- everything."
Sinistra nodded, forced herself to breathe deeply for a few moments before speaking again. She told him what had happened -- the words exchanged, Dumbledore's responses, her own gut reactions and feelings -- leaving nothing out, no details to chance. Much like the night before, Snape listened silently, stoically, taking in every word she said quite thoroughly until she finished her story with a half-terrified, half-resolute "We have to leave."
He rose abruptly, not responding to her last sentence, instead extracting a white handkerchief from his pocket and dropping it in her lap. "Clean yourself up," he ordered quietly, then turned away from her and ran a hand through his greasy hair contemplatively.
"Snape, please, if I am wrong you can always return---"
"Shut up, woman, I'm thinking," he snapped, and began to pace the length of the room.
His mind was reeling with the newly-surfaced information. Albus Dumbledore -- good, noble Dumbledore -- had attacked one of his employees. Or so aforesaid employee alleged -- aforesaid employee was also bleeding from a head wound and possibly concussed, possibly delusional.
Unless she wasn't.
He glanced over at her; she was dabbing at her temple with the handkerchief, glaring up at him with the frantic edginess of the prey that was unable to flee the predator, silently demanding that he make his choice and make it fast -- who would he believe; a distrustful Gypsy woman capable of being just as two-faced as he was, or the man who had taken him in so many years ago, had offered him a second chance at life, albeit for a price? A mere stargazer who had undertaken the same risks as he, or a powerful wizard who had up until now, to the best of Snape's knowledge, never abused that power? Pawn, or king?
"...come on," he snarled, grabbing her by the arm and jerking her up out of the chair. Sinistra struggled against him.
"No! Snape, I am not going back out there -- he's waiting for me, I know he is," she said, her eyes glittering with fresh panic. His jaw clenched pensively as he stared at her for a moment before releasing her arm and striding briskly back over behind his desk. He pushed the chair over and against the back wall, then stood atop it to unlock and open a narrow window Acantha had never noticed before.
"Come here, hurry," he barked after dropping back down to the floor. She hesitated.
"I...I don't think I can fit through there."
"If I can -- and I have, more times than I've cared to do so -- then you can."
"Yes, but I daresay you're lacking certain aspects of the female anatomy," she maintained, and Snape rolled his eyes with irritation.
"Do you wish to escape or don't you?"
"...you go first."
"Fine," he sneered, stepping back up onto the chair and bracing one foot against its back. She watched as he slipped head, arms and shoulders through the window, then easily pulled himself through and onto the lawn. His face appeared where his feet had just disappeared through in the window, scowling impatiently at her. "Are you coming?"
With a short sigh, she climbed up onto the chair, mimicking the stance he had taken. Snape grasped her wrists tightly, pulling as she lifted herself through, and within seconds, she had joined him on the lawn. Without another word, they started for the front gates of the castle's grounds at a run and, once there, exchanged only a glance before passing out of range of the school's safety wards and Disapparating away.
Here endeth chapter one. In chapter two, Dumbledore's motivations and actions, the students' reactions, and the wayward professors begin to tug at the lethal tapestry's loose threads. Reviews much appreciated. :)
gadje - non-Roma