Butterfly
Prologue
***
The woman didn't know what was happening at first, when her mother read the letter the owl had brought and fell to her knees, sobbing. Her mother had always been strong, so sure of herself. She had never let the fact that she was called a whore behind her back - and sometimes to her face - bother her. She refused to tell the young woman about her father, though she knew from the look in her mother's eyes that the thought saddened her. All the young woman knew was a name - Sirius - and that she herself shared her father's appearance. The last she knew only because she looked nothing like her fair mother, not because of any description of the man who had sired her.
The woman crept forward and picked the letter up from where her mother had dropped it. The mother, still sobbing, didn't notice as the woman bit her lip and read:
Dearest Chryssa,
Though I dislike being the bearer of bad news, I feel that you must be informed that Sirius Black has been killed.
Severus
The young woman recognized the name of her least favorite - and only, so far as she knew - uncle with a snarl. Really, though, he was more of a step-uncle, and that was the only thing that made being connected to him in any way bearable. He was sour and seemed to suck all the joy out of any family gathering - but the woman had more to worry about now than her uncle. Sirius... Sirius Black... the man her mother was mourning... her father (for she knew without a doubt who he was)... was dead.
In a bit of a daze, she backed away. Chryssa looked up, tears streaming down her face, and gasped like a dying woman when she saw what her daughter held. "Fayette... no... I didn't want you to-"
"Know?" Fayette carefully crumpled the letter up and tossed it on the floor. "And tell me, mother, why should I mourn the death of a man I never even knew? He means nothing to me. Nothing at all." It was true, every word of it. What Fayette left unsaid was that he should mean something to her. The unspoken words hung in the air like glass shards about to fall. Faye had a strange desire to reach out and draw the implications back to herself, to not intrude any longer on her mother's sadness. She opened her mouth to say something, something to repair the situation. No words came, and she simply turned on her heel and walked away.
***
It was later - much later - when Chryssa knocked softly on Fayette's bedroom door. She waited a second or two, then opened the door and slipped in. Faye was lying on her stomach, nose stuck in a book. The young woman carefully closed the book when she saw her mother. Chryssa noted the title with a small smile: Les charmes pour Diminuer l'Ame Ennuyée. She wanted to praise her daughter, this brilliant child of hers, who studied of her own volition books on charms that should be beyond her abilities. On the other hand, she wanted to gather that long black hair up and plait it in pigtails as Faye had begged her to do as a little girl. Caught between pride and longing for her child to never grow up, Chryssa simply sat at the foot of the bed, finger combing her own long hair - silvery blonde to her daughter's black.
Faye finally ran out of patience - so like her father - and asked, "What do you want, Mère? I was reading." Her tone suggested that she would be happy to go back to reading at any moment.
Chryssa sighed. "I thought that maybe you would want to talk... I know I was wrong to keep this from you, and that it's too late now to rectify the mistake, but I thought that perhaps you would still want to hear."
Faye studied her mother's tearstained cheeks and bloodshot eyes. "So... talk."
The blonde woman closed her eyes for a moment. "Well... I suppose it begins - and ends - with your uncle..."
***
"Severus was never very popular at Hogwarts. That, in fact, is putting it mildly. He was always too odd, too smart, too... well... slimy. His mother and father divorced - and I don't know exactly when, but I do know that it was before the end of our sixth year. That was when my father met his mother at a Hogwarts function, and they began dating. I'd really had no idea before that who Severus Snape was. To me, he was just another sneaky, snarky Slytherin, like your father was just another stupidly brave Gryffindor. I, as an oh-so-intelligent Ravenclaw, was above all their rivalry nonsense. I didn't like him when we met, of course. He was the single most unpleasant boy I'd ever seen. We never got on much better terms than a truce.
"We learned to get along after our parents announced that they planned on getting married. We didn't have much of a choice. We didn't actually like each other - from all I've seen Severus Snape has never liked anyone, and they've returned the favor. I started sticking up for him after the wedding, though. Legally, he was my brother, and an Algiers always sticks up for family. I think that - maybe - he was grateful. He never thanked me, but he never told me to stop, either.
"There was a certain group of boys that always tormented him for nothing more than entertainment. Your father was perhaps the worst among them - or perhaps not. It was always a toss-up between him and his best friend. There was one boy in the group that never actively tormented him, one that I thought perhaps might have been able to be friends with Severus, if Severus had allowed it. They had a few things in common... both bookworms, both loved Defense Against the Dark Arts, a few other things I'm sure. Something had happened their fifth year, though, something Severus never told me about.
"Back to your father, however. I suppose I first gained his attention by speaking up for Severus. Heaven knows no one else did anymore, at least not since the only one who had ever interfered in their games was now the girlfriend of their ringleader. Perhaps Sirius thought that since James's perfect girl had tried to stick up for the one person they hated beyond measure, his would as well. Whatever his reasoning, he began to ask me to go out on dates with him. He was very handsome, and I was very susceptible to his charm.
"We dated, and we became intimate. It seemed to me that he had tamed down, that perhaps I had made him into a civilized human being. Then, I happened to mention that Severus was not just someone I defended because I thought picking on him was wrong. The fact that Severus was my stepbrother seemed to change everything. Sirius dropped me in a heartbeat. I had found out I was pregnant two days before. I was too scared to tell him, however. He never even knew he was a father. And that, darling, is the story of two foolish teenagers and an even more foolish mistake. I'm sorry, but it's the only legacy I can give you."
***
Chryssa blinked, as if coming out of a dream. "I was sitting there on the floor earlier, playing the 'what if' game that we always played when you were little. What if I had told Sirius about you? What if I had never defended Severus at all? Even... what if that incident I know nothing of in their fifth year had never occurred?"
Faye's voice didn't rise above a whisper. "If a butterfly flaps her wings in China..."
"Exactly. I know it's foolish... what happened, happened, and there's no way to change it." Chryssa's shoulders shook, as if she were holding back another sob. "Yet, I keep thinking back, and telling that little butterfly to keep going..."
Lost in thought, Fayette rose. "I'm going to my office, Mère. There's something I need to work on."
Chryssa dredged up a smile. "Don't stay up too late, dear. You're awfully grumpy on two hours of sleep."
Faye smiled back through veils of thought. "It's already too late... but don't worry, we can always go back."
***
Fayette had been in her office for three weeks straight by the time she found a possible way to do what she wanted. That way had called for five months worth of work before she had useable supplies, and for once she blessed her uncle's attentions to her potions studies - she would never have been able to create the clarifying potion without his instruction in less important cleansing potions. Finally, though, she thought she might have a way to get rid of her mother's tears... not just from her face at the moment, but how to erase them so that they would have never occurred at all. To Faye's mind, at least, that was worth reading tomes in French so archaic that she could barely understand her own notes.
The machine was built, the potion ready. All that was left for Faye to do was to set the machine to an appropriate date. Perhaps... August 8, 1974, sufficiently into the term for the group of bullies to begin picking on her uncle (she hoped), but not far enough into it that the incident her mother had referred to would have already occurred (she hoped). She wrote HOGWARTS on a small glass panel with the tip of her wand. A view faded in of a castle. She elaborated, COURTYARD. It zoomed in to a dark courtyard, quite empty of student. 1974 gave her a slightly different dark courtyard. 08 and 08 gave her no change at all. 12:00:00 filled the courtyard with students. Fingers shaking, she looked at another glass panel, in which the word VIEW was clearly printed - no, not quite time yet. She turned her attention back to the first and wrote ZOOM IN ON SEVERUS SNAPE. She leaned forward to watch the scene unfold.
A handsome black-haired boy stood nose to nose with a younger version of Severus Snape. Uncle Severus had a book clutched in one hand, his wand in the other. "I'm warning you, Black, if you touch me again..."
"Touch you? Who said anything about wanting to touch you? I'd get grease all over my hands." The boy - her father, Sirius - pushed Uncle Severus away, and smirked as he landed hard on the ground. Uncle Severus winced, as if in extreme pain. He pulled himself back up, though, and looked to be ready for a fight.
Sirius glanced back at a group of boys. "Prongs? Do we have time for some fun before class?"
A boy with messy dark hair grinned. "We'll make time."
Two other boys sat nearby. One was small and chubby, with the look of a rodent about him. He leaned forward eagerly, looking at Sirius and Severus. The other, a brown-haired boy, didn't really seem to care about what was going on. He was frowning at the book in his hands, as if he disagreed with what it was telling him.
This boy must be Faye's target. She tapped on him with her wand, focusing in on him. She listened carefully. She would have to be zoomed in on this one boy, if her plan was to work. However, she would also need to know when to move. She quickly switched the settings from VIEW to one written in red: INFLUENCE. Now, if they would all be good enough to speak at the top of their lungs...
"Ready, Snivellus?" Sirius's voice was easily recognizable. "Imperius!"
The sandy-haired boy's head snapped up. "Paddy... take it off of him, right now! That's an Unforgivable, in case you hadn't noticed!"
"So? It's not like Professor Dumbledore will care, Moony. Isn't that right, Snivellus?" Sirius laughed.
'Moony' continued to watch, eyes full of worry. He looked ready to say something...
Faye seized her chance, dripping a syringe full of clarifying solution into the image of the boy's eyes. If this didn't work, she had wasted nearly half a year that could have been devoted to more productive studies. For more reason than one, she found herself hoping it worked.
Moony dropped his book and stood. He pulled out his wand. "Finite Incantatum." He walked slowly over to Sirius and Uncle Severus. "I can't let you do this, Paddy."
Sirius's voice was faint with shock. "Wh-what?"
Fayette gasped as possibilities began to shift themselves, and she faded away...