Author's Note: Sorry it took so long. Please read and review.

"Alex, you know them best. Tell me do I have anything to accuse them of?" Jude's voice was low but determined and Severus didn't like the tone.

"I don't believe this." Severus said, laughing at the lunacy. He took a step away to fully get his bearings. "You're just like those Mudbloods in the Ministry, aren't you? Jude, we're Ascendancy. We're supposed to watch out for blood."
"I am watching out for us." He said fiercely. "I'm making sure no one besmears our legacies."

He made another laughing sound. "Sure, Jude. I believe you." Severus had never felt so disgusted with Jude before, with the entire Auror tradition. He had disagreed with it before but never had he felt so shamed to be called one. He couldn't believe the Aurors suspected the families. Families, that like his, had shed the blood protecting their filth. His parents and his brother had died because the Snape chosen to protect the Magical community. A community that now shunned his people. He turned and walked away from Jude, unwilling to look him in the face.

"You betray yourself following them." Jacqueline said to him that night as she cradled his head in her lap.

He chuckled, took her arm in his hand and began to kiss it. "Do I now?"

"Yes." She said passionately. "You are a great man, Severus but you could be greater." Then, she added as an aside. "And by far more powerful."

He was laughing and reluctantly agreeing. "I suppose all men could be greater but power must be tempered."

"By what?"

"By wisdom." He said slowly, considering. "Or by heart, by will…by a cause greater then yourself."

"A cause you'd die for?"

"If needed."

"Why would you die for an ideal, Severus?"

"Because you have to be willing to die for something. There has to be something on earth more important then yourself…or at least that's what you have to believe. You have to be willing to die for that or else why live for it?"

"Is this an Auror's life? To live a life not your own, to be forever bound to a life without love, without family and even without friends? The Aurors who died today, you had worked with them for two years but did you ever know them?" He didn't answer. She leaned down and continued to stroke his hair. "It's like your living a life that isn't yours."

Severus inclined his slightly and gave her a long, searching look. He wondered silently if that fear and uncertainty was written on his face. She had suddenly named his phobia as easily as she had teased him about his rigid mannerism. Jacqueline kissed him again. "But then again, what do I know?"

He sat up and took her into his arms and kissed her harshly and with more passionately then she had ever known him to be. He guided her head down and laid him over the bed. He spread out her hair over the pillows so that it framed her face and accented her wine colored eyes. He stared into her eyes for a long time, memorizing each and every facet of her uncovered body. His hands worked they way over her body as his mouth assaulted hers. Let nothing matter but her, he thought to himself. He kissed her.

"I love…"

"Shhh…" She cut him off, putting a finger to his lips. "You never have to love me, you just have to be you. Strong, steady and completely and utterly free. Free to live and free to die for what you want, for what you choose…" She let him kiss her again. "Or free to kill…"

Seasons changed and time passed slowly in the little corner of the world that housed Hecate Academy. Spring turned to summer and summer turned to fall and fall to winter Pandora turned two years old. Dahlia dyed her hair a darker shade of blond. Meanwhile, Billy, Sydney, Jude and Severus discovered the wonders of Muggle cinema: including something called "Star Wars."

"That's not a moon…that's a space station!" Billy yelled as he pointed towards the full moon.

Jude looked up and smiled. "No, that's a moon, the station is the one to the right."

Sydney laughed and turned towards Severus but he was as always a world away. The man had changed months ago and became cold and private, even moody. Jude attributed it to the War and the others believed it. Of all the Aurors of the time, Severus was taking the deaths of his brethren the hardest. But certainty that was understandable. Severus had lived his entire life living under the shadow of death. It was something he had grown accustomed too seeing but he never seemed fully able to grasp the finality of it. Death, he seemed to believe, was something he could control and if needed, could even stop it.

"Here they come." Jude whispered.

Severus rubbed his neck paying special attention to two small scars below his ear. He called his uncle's kiss and some said it was his good luck charm. Indeed, Severus had incredible luck when it came to dealing with what the so-called Death Eaters. He had fast been dubbed the Miracle Maker again but this time it was by far darker reasons. He always got his man to put it cliquey. And now, as he and his fellow Aurors squatted in the darkened building watching the adjacent building.

The building, where according to the reports, was the meetinghouse for Death Eaters. Severus leaned forward and narrowed his eyes to watch them. The Aurors were supposed to be only on reconnaissance so they couldn't interfere with Severus who had made it his business to know their names.

Three people walked outside the brownstone apartment and pulled their winter cloaks closer their necks. One was easily defined as a woman in the evening light. The other two were men. One had pale blond that fell unto his shoulders and pulled back. Severus recognized him immediately. "Silas."

The other man who was standing opposite the Malfoy brother was something he also knew. This man was young in the face, and incredibly pale. Short white hair and stubble from a barely there beard, covered a small face that still, despite all his years looked fifteen. The man who had been there that night when Severus forever lost his youth and innocence, who had forever taken it, that night at Akel Dama.

Daniel.

And the woman, the woman Severus didn't want to recognize even though he knew her. He knew every part of her, every facet and whisper of her movements. He knew and loved it. It was Jacqueline but Severus made sure he did nothing to show he knew. She did something very odd; she looked straight in his direction and almost smiled. He watched them until they all disappeared.

"Did you recognize any of them?" Sydney asked.

Severus was silent as he watched them. His mind was swimming, torn between his past and present. If he told Sydney the names he would betray his name and history but if he didn't. He watched Jacqueline's shadow, he thought about it.

"No, I saw nobody I knew."