A/N: well, here's the angst after the murder. Things are getting complicated for Svetlana as she loses her cool, and neither Severus nor Harry are going to sit idly and watch things go…..
Disclaimer: I don't own, don't sue.
FAMILY MATTERS
PART XXV: IF I SHOULD DIE, THINK ONLY THIS OF ME
There was quite a big group of people assembled in Dumbledore's office, waiting for the search parties to return. Harry and Hermione were there, as well as Mr and Mrs Weasley, Ginny, and, of course, the Headmaster. They weren't speaking, but rather listening for any noise that would give them a clue as to what had been Ron's destiny.
Hermione had silent tears streaming down her cheeks, and she accepted distractedly Mrs Weasley's barely comforting hug; Mr Weasley had a sobbing Ginny sitting on his lap, and Harry sat awkwardly to one side, feeling out of place. Then, a knock, and Professors Snape and McGonagall, who were directing the search, came into the office, the later wiping her eyes with a lace handkerchief. Snape was the one to break the silence.
"I'm afraid that we've found what seems to be Mr Weasley's body at the feet of the North Tower" he announced with his voice deeper than usual.
"NO!" exclaimed Mrs Weasley, dropping Hermione and flinging herself at Snape "No, please tell me it's not true!"
"Molly, darling….." Whatever words Mr Weasley was going to say got lost in his sudden burst of tears.
"No, no, no, no….." repeated Molly, tearless, with a pale and shocked expression, standing in the middle of the room. McGonagall blew her nose noisily.
Harry turned to Hermione, who was sitting on an armchair, seeming small and lost; he reached out for her, as much to give as to receive some comfort, but the Head Girl drew away from his sharply.
"Don't touch me!" she hissed "This is all your fault! Don't pretend to be sorry! You made his last days miserable, fighting with him, ignoring him, humiliating him at every chance you got! It's your fault he decided to….. to….. Oh, God, please don't!!!" And she broke down crying, leaving a silent room and a very shocked Harry.
"But, Hermione….." he started to say, feeling everyone's eyes trained on him, accusing him, condemning him.
"Don't talk to her now" recommended Dumbledore, appearing all of a sudden from behind Harry "Give her some time….. Molly, please calm down. Have a seat, have some tea….. Minerva, please take care of young Virginia, and call Poppy to come up here….. Severus, can I have a word with you?"
The Headmaster and the Potions Professor drew to the least crowded corner of the room, exactly where Harry was sitting.
"What happened exactly, Severus?" asked Albus in a low voice, but not low enough so that Harry couldn't hear.
"One of the Slytherin search parties found Mr Weasley a few feet away from the North Tower; from the state of the body and the lack of footprints around him, I deduced he had thrown himself off the top of the Tower, where we found his book-bag and footprints, and nothing else"
"Nothing else whatsoever?" asked Dumbledore hopefully; Severus nodded his negative. "Suicide then?"
"So it seems" agreed Severus "But may I add, like I did with Black, that I don't like the look of this….. it smells foul, and I'm sure these deaths can't be coincidental"
"Severus, even if Les Fleurs du Mal are behind this, there is nothing we can do to prove it….. like we blamed Remus for Sirius' death, we must blame Mr Weasley for his suicide, the Ministry will not accept proof-less theories"
"Isn't there anything we can do to prove this was murder?!" asked Snape in disbelief.
"Unless you can find whoever pushed Ronald Weasley off the Tower, and make him confess, I'm afraid not" Albus turned back to the mourning reunion and a certain sadness shone in his blue eyes looking at Hermione; as he moved to comfort the Head Girl, he didn't see Harry slipping unnoticed from the room. Only Severus saw this, and had a fleeting impulse to follow him, but the memory of his wife crying shut his worries for the Boy Who Lived, and allowed him to focus again on finding the infiltrated agent between them.
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"Svetlana, can I talk to you?" asked Severus as he entered the Slytherin common room, torn between panic and glee at the news of Ron's death, brought to them by Draco; the presence of their Head of House was enough to shut up those of the students who were celebrating, and to calm those who thought another attack had just occurred. In the silence, Severus' request for his wife was heard by over fifty pairs of ears.
"Of course" Svetlana left a still-hiccupping Siena on an armchair and went towards the door Snape was holding open for her. As soon as they were out in the corridor, Svetlana reached out with a hesitant hand for her husband. "Is it true, then? Another death?"
"I'm afraid so" assented Severus, not refusing his wife's hand on his shoulder "It seems like suicide, but the Headmaster has his doubts"
//Oh, Merlin and Morgana, did I leave something out? Why does he have his doubts?// thought Svetlana panickedly, raising her beautiful blue eyes in question.
"There is nothing off, except for the obvious motif adorning these deaths: always people close to Harry Potter, as if they were determined to manipulate or blackmail him….. you know some people better than I do, who do you think could be trying to hurt Harry?"
"Severus….. I'm hardly the right person to find clues! I only spend my time with Willow Vector, in the Library or here, in the Slytherin common room. Besides, I think that if someone did have the intent to harm the boy, he, or she, would take good care not to show it, preferring to blend with the background than to stand out….. and didn't they think it was someone from the outside that killed Mandy?" Svetlana put the right amount of fear, uncertainty and concern in her voice to appear worried and yet completely clueless.
"I hardly think someone could have get past the wards this time, or in time for Black's death" Severus shook his head "What do you think of the Malfoys?"
"You can't be suggesting that!" exclaimed Svetlana "Circe, I know Lucius and Draco as well as you know them….. Lucius could have done it, but he hasn't had the chance, he was here the last time…. Well, you know *when* that was….. and as for Draco! You cannot seriously expect me to think Draco could be responsible for all these deaths"
"He has had the chance, and Lucius could be manipulating him….." insisted Snape.
"I would have noticed!" she cried in return "I have seen him depressed about his marriage, worried about his exams, anxious about Quidditch….. I would have noticed"
"The Malfoys are better actors than you give them credit for" said Severus, at the same time not wanting to believe his own theory "But are you telling me you have not seen one clue, one abnormal behaviour around you?"
"Well, I….." Svetlana hesitated "It doesn't really matter, but Willow seems off and worried these days….. I'm sure it's just personal problems with Professor Vector, and maybe worry about all that's happening here, but….."
"Her quarters are in the North Tower, aren't they?"
"Yes, but….."
"Were you with her this afternoon?"
"I was. When I went to pick up Siena, I talked a while with her, but she seemed distracted and with her mind in something else, so I left….." Svetlana looked for the door, as if wanting to get Siena to corroborate her words.
"I'll look into it" promised Severus.
"I hardly think that's a good idea….." said Svetlana as her husband left without paying her any mind. "Or maybe it is" she added once she was on her own, with a strange smile upon her face.
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Harry climbed the last steps until the top of the Astronomy Tower in tears. Finally he could drop the act, stop being the hero everyone expected him to be and cry for the friend he had lost. He was stopped on the doorway to the balcony by an invisible barrier, probably put there by Snape to keep the crime-scene clear, but he could see Ron's battered book-bag on the floor, his footsteps all over the snow, and nothing more. There were no clues to tell him someone else had been there with the red-head, the wards to detect the use of Unforgivables had not gone off, no-one from outside the school had come in that day…..
Could it really be suicide? Could Ron have given up everything he believed in because of his deteriorating friendship with Harry? Was he, Harry James Potter, responsible for the death of his best friend? For obvious reasons, he didn't want to think so. He was reluctant to accept that Ron (lively, optimistic, hot-tempered Ron) would have jumped off a Tower just because of him. Ron would have never killed himself, he wasn't that kind of person. He was a Gryffindor through and through, and he believed in taking things as life threw them at him, instead of taking the easy way out that so many Ravenclaws would have chosen in his place.
But if it wasn't suicide, and practical considerations aside, could it really be another in the series of murders attributed to les Fleurs du Mal? Cold the mysterious assassins have broken into the school unnoticed, only to find Ron in that position and improvise his suicide? And if they had, why had they done it? To hurt Harry, of course, to prolong his suffering, to inflict him yet another wound….. and to what purpose? Did they want to hurt him, to blackmail him, to weaken him, to enrage him, to offer a deal, to show off their malign power, to distract him from something more important?
But what could be more important than the cold body laying on a coffin in the Great Hall, and the pale faces who were standing by it? The Weasley family, all come from different parts of the world to mourn their first death in this war, Hermione, shocked and lost like a broken doll, Professor McGonagall, with her questionable responsibility weighing heavily on her shoulders….. and all of them looking at Harry with eyes that burned in pain and rage, with eyes that accused him even more clearly than Hermione's furious words.
And to think it would have taken so little to make things better. If Harry hadn't been so damn stubborn, if he had opened his eyes to Ron's suffering, if he had heard his complaints, they would have remained friends, and the red-head wouldn't have needed to vent his anger in a cold high tower from which it was so easy to find his death….. they would have been in the common room instead, planning their Christmas and discussing Quiddicth tactics, being lightly scolded by Hermione for mislaying their homework and worrying about their Potions essay. But Harry had been blind, and deaf, and uncaring, and now he, and the rest of the world, had to face the consequences.
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Severus went into his quarters immediately after leaving Svetlana standing in front of the Slytherin common room. A vague impulse, a gut-feeling, drew him into his wife's room, where he hadn't dared to go before. He looked carefully at the well made bed, the trunk with her slippers on top of it, the open door to the bathroom, the pictures on the wall….. there was a photo of a young Svetlana, probably taken weeks before her marriage. The girl from the picture smiled hesitantly to him, and then hid her face between her hands; the frame had a small golden plaque, which said 'Svetlana Igorovna Karakoff. A good-will present to the Snape family'. It must have been sent to Severus with the marriage notice, and he must have thrown it away somewhere where Svetlana later found it….. trying to shake off the guilt, he turned to another picture. The background of this one he had seen before, but burnt to the ground in a newspaper article Dumbledore had sent him: it was Ilia Karakoff's summer house, and in front of it, Serguei, Siena and Svetlana. Someone had written under the picture 'Svetlana Igorovna Snape, Serguei Severich Snape, and Sonia Severovna Snape. Novgorod, Russia'.
"My Aunt Advotia has never gotten over the fact that Siena does not have a Russian name, and she insists on calling her 'Sonia'" explained Svetlana from the doorway, startling Severus and interrupting his search for Merlin-knows what "and having quite a discussion about the children's' patronymics: they'd never had to invent brand new ones in the family….. we had always married Russian wizards"
"I see" Why did Snape feel guilty of being found inside his wife's room? And why did he feel exultantly happy of calling her 'his wife' without a bitter smile?
"I had a present for you" said Svetlana, drawing something out of the wardrobe; instinctively, Severus tensed, but she pretended not to notice and gave him a roll of parchment "I had made it before, but I didn't dare give it to you….. I have noticed you don't have our picture"
It was a portrait of the *whole* Snape family: Severus was standing behind an armchair where Svetlana was sitting, with Siena on her lap and Serguei standing by her side. It was very well done, and even their expressions as they looked up to Snape were fitting.
"Thank you" he said, and then he noticed she had written their names in both the Latin and Cyrillic alphabets "Severus Gregorovich Snape?"
"Your father *was* called Gregorious, was he not?" she asked.
"He was….. it just feels strange hearing my name written like that" he said, and rolled the parchment up again "Thank you"
But she was expecting more than that, and he told himself it was only to please her that he gave her a warm kiss, not noticing Serguei was watching them from across the living-room. Siena, who had been left in her room, began crying again, and Svetlana gave a sigh of annoyance.
"I don't know what's wrong with her, she's been crying all afternoon….." Svetlana moved towards the door to her daughter's bedroom, but was stopped by Severus' hand on her left shoulder, and she felt cold panic for that sole reason; her nerves were on edge.
"I'll go, you've had to take care of her for too long now" said Severus, opening the door and taking the crying girl in his arms. "What is it, Siena, why are you crying?"
"The dark!" cried the baby, hugging her father tightly "Dark and cold, I don't like!"
"Shh, Siena, it's not dark, it's not cold, and you have nothing to be afraid of" insisted Severus, wondering why the normally quiet child was in hysterics now: he concluded that the tense atmosphere must be affecting everyone. He raised his eyes to see Svetlana standing in the doorway, and he unconsciously shivered at the coldness of her blue eyes.
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A/N: well, this Svetlana character has more faces than one of Picasso's cubist works. And her conscience, or whatever she has in its place, it's beginning to bug her….. who will be winning from all this?