When Lydia Johnson awoke, the first thing that sprang into her mind was that something was wrong. Something was out of place, missing, unfocused. Something dreadful had happened last night, or something wonderful. Her head swam with the threads of sleep as she tried to wrest control of her thoughts away from the clutches of dreams. She rolled over and stared at the ceiling, trying to remember.
Oh yes. That was it.
A huge, crushing weight came down on her, leaving her breathless for a heartbeat or more. Snape-
No. She didn't want to think about it. Not then, maybe not ever. Lydia stretched and reached for her watch atop the bedside table. Her hand met nothing but smooth wood, and as she groped about blindly for the metal chain she felt her hand closed on something soft and leatherbound. Snape's book.
Frowning, Lydia sat up. It was his book, all right. Slender, black and bound in leather so smooth it felt like fur, it was his book down to the very knots that held it shut. But what was it doing in her room? She distinctly remembered Snape taking it from her and tucking it into his robes right before-
So where had it come from, then? She had half a mind to simply throw the damn thing into the fire and let it burn with the rest of her memories, but she found herself beset by curiosity. She picked at the straps that bound the book shut, but was met with no more success than she had when she first tried to open it. Obviously, Snape had guarded it with something more than a simple locking charm. Her curiosity grew; what could be in the book that forced Snape to take such precautions?
Lydia tried to tell herself that she didn't care, that she didn't want to know. It was probably a list of the ten steps to becoming a successful Death Eater, or an itinerary of Muggle Hunting activities. She tossed it back on the table with an air of indifference, telling herself that she would give it to Dumbledore to return to Snape when she had the chance. As she turned her back, though, the book fell to the floor with a muffled crash.
Bemused, Lydia turned back to the table and bent to pick up the fallen book. It had landed on something smooth and round which had rolled, causing the whole affair to slide off the table. Placing the book back on the table, Lydia picked up the something that had caused the book to fall. Something long, smooth, something bendy, something birch, something eleven inches long...
Startled, Lydia almost dropped it. Snape's wand! But-- how? Why? Wizards never let their wands out of their sight-- it was unheard of! And to willingly give it to another wizard? Then she remembered--
"As for the lock, I have it attuned to my wand, and only my wand. If you know anyone else who has an eleven inch birch with dragon heartstring, kindly let me know so that I may change my wards."
His wards...not just the cabinet, but the book as well, perhaps? Nervously, Lydia looked around, but Taylor was still fast asleep in her bed. Silently, so as not to wake her, Lydia crept back into her own bed and drew the curtains closed, holding her breath against the whisper of fabric against fabric.
She hesitated, her hand looming anxiously over the black straps, the wand mere inches from the soft leather. Why was she doing this? There was no reason to open it, no reason to care. She should just give it to Dumbledore and let him deal with it. It was no longer her concern.
Yet Snape had left it on her table for a reason. She had flown off in a rage, not giving him a chance to explain-- not that any explanation would have been good enough to make her stay a single extra second in that room with him, not after seeing that. Still, perhaps she owed him at least this much--
Curiosity, as always, got the better of her. Her lower lip clenched firmly between her teeth, she gently touched the tip of the wand to the soft leather and jerked back as the black straps unraveled smoothly and silently, leaving the book open for her to read.
Eyes traveling swiftly, Lydia flipped through the pages and was startled to find nearly all of it was written in Snape's familiar hand. At first, she was unsure as to what exactly the book contained. A schedule, a journal? There were no dates, but it was possible that Snape remembered his entries without notation. Or it could be simply that he had no need of such records. She flipped through the pages some more, pausing every now and then to read a passage.
So much has changed, the spidery script read, Perhaps this is what it is like to feel alive again. I never thought-- no matter what Albus may have told me, I realize now I never believed him. I had myself convinced there was no saving me, that I would serve my purpose for the greater good and die quietly, alone. Now I see the possiblity that this may not be so. Yet the question remains: is this a blessing, or a curse taking yet again the form of innocence?
Lydia swallowed and read on. Some passages were just sentances scrawled on paper, with no more meaning to them than a cauldron full of water. Others had snips of poetry included.
How ironic. Spies become spies, wheels turn within wheels and fires burn inside fires. There is so much double dealing ocurring all around me it is impossible to try and ferret it all out. It is all I can do to keep myself headed straight, if ever this twisted path of mine could be called straight. How many plots and thrice turnings must I blunder through until I can achieve what it is that Albus has set me to? How long before this mask, the one that resides deep below the mask of the Death Eaters-- how long before it shatters, baring my true self to the world? What face will that be?
We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries,
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile;
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask.
"Sev," Lydia whispered, tracing her fingers along the slanted script. "Sev..."
As she continued to flip, it was the last passage that caught her attention. The painfully neat, slightly tilted hand was blurry, as if the hand that had held the quill could not-- would not-- stop shaking. There were no dates-- the words could have been written days, hours, weeks ago. Even still, each word hit home, the impact as fresh as if it had been just moments ago that the quill touched parchment.
Even as I hold you
I think of you as someone gone
far, far away. Your eyes the color
of pennies in a bowl of dark honey
bringing sweet light to someone else
your black hair slipping through my fingers
is the flash of your head going
around a corner
your smile, breaking before me,
the flippant last turn
of a revolving door,
emptying you out, changed, away from me.
Even as I hold you
I am letting go.
Why did she ask it? Is it that obvious? Merlin be dammed, why? I admit on paper the words I will not say. Why? Because I am a coward. I cannot bear to look into her eyes and tell her what I know will hurt her. I am pining for her mother. I cannot go a day without thinking of her, how she looked, how she felt, the tender kiss of her smooth skin-- every time I look at her, all I can see is her mother. Not constantly, brief flashes, sometimes longer. But never the whole time, no, not always. Just enough to remind him sharply of what I once had. Remind me that I lost once and it would be all too easy to lose again.
I feel as if the poem speaks to me directly, that the author herself could have felt my plight as keenly as I. In another time, another place, perhaps it could have been my hand that penned the words. To hold someone close and know that already, no matter how hard you may grasp their hand in yours, or hold them in your embrace, they are as good as gone...I see her brown eyes, feel her hair fall through my fingers, and I know that I hold nothing but an image, and idea, a fantasy. Bah, but now I speak in cliches and drivel. Pathetic, how I pour out my heart onto a uncaring paper like some moronic Third Year struck dumb by unrequited love. I always thought myself better than that, stronger. At the very least, more proud. Perhaps I am just blinding myself ot the obvious again, playing myself as the fool.
That passage was the last of the book. The following pages were blank and unmarked. Lydia sat in silence, the book on her lap, staring numbly at the empty pages in front of her. She felt a dry burning behind her eyes as she stared at the empty pages on her lap. She could feel her shields begin to crack and fall apart under the weight of so much pain, and none of it her own. That a man- any man- could suffer so much and so completely was beyond her Lydia's comprehension. In spite of all her efforts to stop it, her heart began to bleed in pity.
Stop it, she told herself fiercely. The man's evil, and even if he isn't now, he was then. What's to stop him from beings so again?
But Dumbledore trusts him, she thought in some small corner of her mind. That should be enough. And even if it wasn't, she'd seen him, dammit, been with him, loved him, known him. Never once in all those months had he ever once given her reason to fear him. Never.
"Oh, hell," she muttered as she slammed the book shut. This wasn't the way things were supposed to work. She was suppose to be so revolted by the revelation of Severus' past that she never wanted anything to do with him ever again. She was supposed to keep going and never look back, regretting only that her time spent by his side was a waste.
Instead, she was sitting on her bed, holding a book of broken admissions in her lap, missing every touch of those slender hands on hers, every breath that caressed her skin. She was sitting there, hating the man not for what he was, but for what it meant. She regretted that the days passed in anger and hatred could never be taken back.
But there were more days, more futures that could cancel out the past.
Her eyes flicked back and forth between the journal and the wand on her bed. Her mind wavered with uncertainty as she felt the smooth birch wood beneath her fingers. Somewhere-- from the desk, from her robes, somewhere-- she found a quill and a tiny ink bottle. Before she could stop and think about her actions, for thought could very well be the end of any plan she had in mind, she flipped the journal open to the first blank page.
Sev, she scratched out on the parchment, cursing her ineptitude with words and wishing she could weave them together like the other entries on the pages. Sev, I'm sorry. I made a mistake. I shouldn't have run out on you like that. Please, forgive me. I don't know what to say that can make this better, I don't even know if there is anything. But if there is-- Sev, please. I need you. I love you.
Lydia stared at the words scratched boldly out on the parchment, stared until her eyes stung with tears and motes. She blinked and slammed the book shut before the ink was even dry, not caring if the words smeared and blurred on the page. As she did, a small scrap of paper fluttered down from between the pages to land on her bed. Lydia blinked back her tears and picked it up, unfolding it to reveal another parchment filled with Severus' cramped, slanted script.
I've made many, many mistakes over the course of my years. Many of those mistakes resulted in death, the death of others, of innocents, of women, children and the helpless. But this is the first that will end in my own.
Lydia, I cannot change what I am, but I can tell you that I regret it from the deepest part of my soul. I didn't know it then, but the moment that brand touched my skin was the day I severed all future hopes with you. I thought I was taking this Mark in place of your mother, now I see it was in place of you.
I hope that since you could not forgive me in life, you will find it in yourself to rejoice in my death. It would be good to know that there is someone who will feel something when I'm gone. Though I wish I could have had more time with you, at least now I can rest in a place where I can be alone, but without the pain of lonliness. I loved you, Lydia, and I love you still. Even if you cannot warm yourself to me and what I am, I thank you for what you did give to me. You are so like your mother, Lydia. Be well.
As soon as she finished the last word, Lydia threw the parchment to the floor and was out the door before it even hit the ground.
I am spending far too much time in this room, Lydia thought to herself as she paced in the waiting room of the Hospital Wing. She wrapped her arms around herself as she walked, shivering at the sound of the wind that played an eerie chorus against the window.
After she left the Ravenclaw tower, she had pushed herself to her limits in getting to Dumbledore's office only to run into a very white faced Professor McGonagall, who told her Dumbledore was in the Hospital Wing. Lungs still burning from her mad dash to the office, Lydia set out once again, this time towards Madam Pomfrey. McGonagall had followed her there, and bade her wait in the foyer while she went inside.
Lydia jumped at the sound of the Hospital doors opening and spun around, the words half formed on her lips. Dumbledore held up his hand for silence, however, and motioned for her to take a seat and took the chair beside her.
"Letum algidus," he said, his voice strangely hollow. "The potion that brings death by ice. It ultimately freezes the heart, killing whoever ingested it in a matter of minutes. Severus must have taken it several hours ago."
"He's--" Lydia couldn't bring herself to say it. She simply stared at Dumbledore as if though somehow the Headmaster could provide the words that lodged in her throat before they choked her.
Dumbledore shook his head. "This is where it gets complicated," he said. "Severus...is not dead." He must have either not seen Lydia's look of shock, or ignored it. "We thought he was when we found him, but somehow he still lives. We think," he continued in that same toneless voice, "we think that it has something to do with his time as a Death Eater." For the first time, Dumbledore looked up and stared Lyida straight in the eye. "Do you recall the time when Madam Pomfrey administered the Draught of Living Death?"
Lydia shuddered and nodded. Even the spoken name of that potion sent chills through her skin.
"Severus threw the effects of the Draught off in less time than is humanly possible," Dumbledore went on. "He...made reference to the fact that this extraordinary feat had something to with the Mark on his arm."
Lydia remembered.
Dumbledore turned to where Snape lay on the bed, startled but alert. "Awake so soon, Severus?"
Snape grunted and made a barely discernible motion with his left arm. Dumbledore looked hard at the sleeve of his robe as his eyes narrowed, then widened. "I see," was all he said.
"Apparently, when Severus was a Death Eater, he...created something. A potion that gave the taker immunity to the effects of any other potion for a limited amount of time. But it wasn't finished, when he took it, it wasn't perfect. Not yet. Instead of full immunity as he had hoped, Severus found that the potion only partially blocked the effects. Whoever took the new potion would still succumb to the effects of poisons and potions like the Draught, but the results would not be nearly so severe. Also unexpected was its longevity. With the experimental brew, the effects don't wear away after time, so there's never any need to take more.
"This all occured towards the end of Severus' time under Voldemort's command. After he ran, he destroyed all his notes on the potion and swore that no one else would ever know how to create it." Dumbledore's eyes were dark. "With a potion like this, Voldemort could have gone farther than he did, destroyed even more lives than he had. I thank God that Severus never gave him the information."
Lydia interrupted, knowing she was being rude but she felt that she could wait no longer without knowing. "So if he's not dead, then how is he? You said that he got partial immunity. How partial? How can someone be partially dead?"
Dumbledore turned his eyes back to her, eyes heavy with a weariness Lydia had never seen in a human being. "He's comotose. His heart still beats, but barely. His body temperature has dropped so low it's amazing his blood can still flow. We can revive him, but I fear that if he were to regain consciousness now, the pain would surely kill him."
Lydia, who had been about to suggest just that, closed her eyes and lay back in the chair. Merlin, but she was tired. Too tired to think. "So there's nothing that can be done?"
She felt the sickening lurch of her stomach as Dumbledore shook his head.
"We can only wair and pray," he told her, hollowly. "Pray we can find a cure in time. Time," he repeated, shaking his head. "Only then did Lydia notice the dark circles around his eyes and the unnatural pallor of his skin. "Time will be the deciding factor in this. We may be able to help in some way, but for the most part, well, that rests on Severus himself."