Serpentigena

Chapter 6: The Price of Life

Snape was still half-asleep when a timid knock on his classroom door roused him. "Come in," he called, raising his head off his desk with a grimace. He was far too old to be sleeping on his desk like some student. Already the word was being passed around that old Snape was getting senile in his old age. "I'm not old," he grumbled. "I'm not even fifty."

It took him a moment to recognize the skinny girl that walked in the door. She didn't look altogether a stranger, but she was not familiar. Her hair was a frizzled mass of black curls, her face narrow, and the chin was sharp enough to cut. She turned piercing blue eyes in his direction, and he remembered. Josephine. Voldemort's daughter.

"Hello," Josephine muttered. The robes she wore that day were too short in the ankle and too broad at the waist, the black spot in the faded fabric revealing where the House badge had been cut away.

They would have fitted Millicent Bulstrode in her earlier years quite nicely, Snape thought privately, and answered, "Hello. Did Dumbledore send you?"

She nodded, scrutinizing the caldron in front of her. "You use pewter? Isn't that terrible for the more advanced students? It can mess with the intensity of some of the…" she trailed off.

"There are no advanced students," Snape said calmly. "Just you, and I think if they would let you, you could apply for a Master in Potions right now."

"You're a Master, aren't you?" Josephine asked, picking up a vial of unicorn hair. "When did you get yours?"

Snape thought. "When I was twenty-six—I think. Back then I was the youngest member." That was twenty years ago, Snape thought with shock. God. I really am getting old.

Josephine nodded absently while looking at a pile of melted cauldrons in a pile in the corner. She picked one up by the twisted handle and peered at the underside. "Wow," she muttered. "This could be a work of art." She replaced it and looked at the various bundles of dried herbs stacked on the shelves.

"Don't touch anything," Snape said unconsciously.

Josephine glared at him. "I'm not stupid," she snapped. "This is yours." Her hair, defying the band that someone had tied around it, was popping free to wave around her face like bent wire. "I wouldn't touch this stuff."

"Is it not good enough for you?" Snape asked, leaning on his desk. "Is my store too humble for your experiments?"

"What if it is?" she snarled back. "You can't teach me anything."

God, Snape thought, I am not cut out for this kind of work. I hate kids. "What if I told you that I could teach you new things?"

"I can learn anything I want from a book," she replied. "I don't need help."

"Haven't you ever wondered if your potions worked?" he queried, seeking desperately for a hole in her confidence.

Josephine shook her head and looked away.

"Never?"

"Maybe when I was younger," she replied. "But now I work for nothing less than perfection."

"How do you know that it's perfection?" he asked.

"I don't," Josephine admitted. "But you've got to admit, it's pretty damn close." She shrugged one shoulder and the corners of her mouth lifted marginally.

Snape nodded. "I can make it better, if you'll listen to me."

"Just because I'll listen doesn't mean I have to agree," Josephine objected.

He couldn't help himself—he cracked a smile. "I have a sinking feeling that we will not agree on most things, Miss Josephine. We'll start with identification. Bring me some monkshood."

~

Dumbledore and Harry watched, unseen, from the other side of the Potions doorway.

"I can't believe it. Our little monster is taking orders from Snape," Harry breathed. "She really does look like Tom Riddle, doesn't she?"

Dumbledore shook his head. "She's not a monster, she's just vastly misunderstood. You understand, she lived under her own jurisdiction for at least sixteen years. She was understandably unwilling to trust anyone. Snape, due to similar interests, was the ideal person to try and win her trust." He glanced through the barred window at the exposed profile. "And I agree, she's practically his feminine double. Josephine is a lovely girl, even if she takes after her father's terrible temper."

Harry peered at the man and girl as Josephine lit the fire beneath the cauldron. "Do you really think it's true? That Voldemort is really her father?"

"Voldemort certainly seems to think so," Dumbledore replied.

Harry shrugged. "I'm not willing to ask Voldemort if he's sure he was messing around with prostitutes seventeen or so years ago. We can take his word on this one."

They watched for another ten minutes as Josephine and Snape bickered, stewed the various ingredients together, and filled jars with the violet goop that was the result. Josephine smiled as she looked at the jars, but quickly schooled her expression back to being sullen. It felt so good to be doing something that felt natural. She turned to Snape, who was watching her, and said, "I guess that it, isn't it?"

"Until tomorrow," Snape replied. He went back to examining the pot they had made the potion in, his black hair obscuring much of his face.

Josephine nodded and turned to go. She pretended not to notice the footsteps on the other side of the door. Who's watching me? A behaviorist, perhaps? Maybe I should just pretend to go crazy. Then they'll be able to label me quickly and I'll stop getting watched everywhere I go. With annoyance she pushed open the door hard enough to make it swing back and nearly break her nose. "Curses," she muttered, keeping her eyes straight front as she began the lonely hike back to her room.

Josephine had gone nearly half the distance when someone running down the hallway knocked her down.

"Oof," she said, then pushed the person off her chest. "Watch where you're going, idiot," she snapped as she pulled herself into a sitting position.

"Sorry," said the boy as he got up, brushing dust off his own black robes. The yellow badge on his chest winked at Josephine as he scrutinized her.

He was a student. Josephine got to her feet. "It's all right," she replied. "Just watch where you're going next time." She continued walking towards her room, praying that the boy would forget about her. Dumbledore will kill me if this gets out; that I've been seen.

"What's your name?' the boy asked. Josephine pretended not to hear him and quickly rounded the corner and slipped into her room. Her heart was thudding as she sat down on the bed.

Why am I so nervous? she asked herself. That boy had no way of knowing whom he was talking to. Still, she saw the boy's brown eyes, looking at her. She shivered.

"Do I believe what they say?" Josephine whispered to herself. "Is that monster my father?"

She closed her eyes and saw his face, strangely impassive, staring down at Toad. Behind the red, reptilian eyes, there was something that reminded Josephine very much of herself. It was beyond all description, but in that moment a spark had been passed, and Josephine knew that this man was her father.

"That's a thought I shouldn't plan on sharing," she muttered and she pulled her blankets over her head.

~

Voldemort sat alone in his room. He had placed Josephine's rose in front of the fireplace, so that he could focus on the rose and the shifting flames by turn. He unconsciously massaged his temples with his long fingers. These headaches, the throbbing pains that had plagued him since his youth, had increased of late, making any kind of noise intolerable.

The same question had plagued him for days: what to do with the girl? He focused his eyes on the rose.

Obviously she wasn't going to be easy to kill, what with Dumbledore and Hogwarts protecting her. Now that he thought about it, Voldemort wasn't really sure that he wanted her dead. None of the Death Eaters knew their Lord's true age, but he did: seventy-seven, and steadily growing older. It was like Fate was laughing at his boasts that Lord Voldemort could not die, even as his vision and muscles began weakening. Josephine was young. Though she was female, she was intelligent, tough, and a Slytherin after his own heart.

"I could use her," he mused.

"But she'll hate it so," he contradicted himself.

"What do you care?" he replied. "She's just a kid. No worth."

"True. But I don't want another puppet, I want an heir who'll hold true when I die."

"Oh, so now I want to give up the reins?" he snarled, standing so suddenly that his chair overturned. "To some bastard brat."

"My bastard though. Better than someone else's, even if her mother was who she was." He stood still for a moment, and then roared in displeasure, clearing a table of its contents in a single swipe. "Stupid girl. She thinks that she was Emily's, ha!" he rumbled. "She doesn't know that her real mother is a raving lunatic, a psycho. She doesn't know that she's still alive."

He bit his lip. "It can't be found out. I've got enough money poring into St. Mungo's to keep her and her stupid husband immobile for life."

"It won't be," he assured himself. "Nobody knows about Jolene's little act of infidelity." He closed his eyes, seeing the pretty young face, the look of fear, and the sideways glance at the room nearby, where her small son slept. He saw her white teeth bite down on her full lower lip as her natural bravery fought with the primal fear that rose from Voldemort like a stench.

He heard the whisper in his ear: "If I submit quietly, you must promise never to harm my child."

He had promised, and he had never touched the boy. What was his name…Nathan? It didn't matter. Voldemort had not broken his promise: two months later he had tortured her husband. Jolene had gone raving mad at the scene. He cursed himself.

"I should have seen it," he grumbled. "Should have seen it." It was clear to him in retrospect: the unusual roundness of Jolene's slender frame, the heavy breasts, the wider hips. "She hadn't told her husband that the child she carried wasn't his," Voldemort said suddenly. "Not once." He probably didn't even know she carried a child. When I tortured him and he went mad, Jolene went mad. So when was the baby delivered? The mental anguish she went through should have caused a miscarriage. His eyes widened. The nurses at St. Mungo's did it, before Narcissa Malfoy got a job there and started feeding Jolene and her husband enough drugs to keep them in a vegetable state. Voldemort swore and smashed a vase off a table across the room.

That was one up on Dumbledore, who would never believe that one of his own Aurors would be the bearer of such an unspeakable child. Voldemort smiled, then righted his chair and sat back down. "Come in, Snape," he called, hearing the voices of Lucius Malfoy and Severus Snape at the door. Both of his most mistrusted Death Eaters: changeable Lucius and traitor Severus. The door opened with a small click, and Voldemort's plan fell together.

Voldemort watched the black-haired man as he crossed the room to kneel at Voldemort's feet and kiss the hem of his robes. Snape kept his eyes on the ground, something Voldemort relished and suspected. Relished because he knew that all were afraid to meet his eyes, suspected because he knew that Snape knew that Voldemort could read eyes.

"I have decided to let you live, my slippery friend," Voldemort said softly.

He got the pleasure of seeing Snape's hands shake as he picked up the hem of the robe to hiss it once more. "My Lord, you are gracious."

"I am, aren't I?" Voldemort said, getting up and almost-accidentally hitting the prostrate form with his foot. "There is a condition on this grace, however."

Snape didn't move, but his voice was almost inaudible with apprehension. "What is this condition, my Lord?" he asked.

"You resent this?"

"I am thankful for my life, my Lord," Snape replied. Sweat was beading on his forehead and on the back of his neck. "Nothing you ask is too much."

"Do you value your life, Severus Snape?" Voldemort asked. He had turned around with a glass of something that looked like a cola—brown and fizzing. "Drink this, and I will tell you what your condition is." He pointed his wand at the kneeling man, the man whose black eyes had suddenly widened in fear.

Snape felt a cold line of sweat run down his back. His eyes darted like a caged animal, his hands seeking the wand he kept in his robes and knowing simultaneously that the other Death Eaters had taken his wand. Should he refuse? Should he take it and rely on his long years of experience with poisons to identify the thing Voldemort held out to him now?

I will die if I refuse, Snape thought, and I may as well be dead if I take it. Besides, how many times did I test potions on myself as a student? I will recover.

Severus Snape stretched out his hand and took the glass, and he held it up to the light, noting that it wasn't clear, but murky brown. There was no sediment on the bottom of the glass, and when he inhaled there was a bitter scent. Poison then. He shivered, and before his nerve failed him he tipped back his head and drained the glass.