Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter. Nope, not me.

A/N: Well, you all reviewed quickly, so, as promised, here is the next chapter. You'll have to wait a little while longer for more Sirius, but I hope Severus will provide a welcome substitute!

There is a major plot point revealed here…

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Severus stepped over the threshold and into the sanctum of the Temple of Arachne. He bowed low. "High Priestess."

"No." The white-clad woman rose from her chair and came towards him, her long, moon-pale hair whispering gently in some unseen breeze. "My name is Diana."

Severus bowed again. "Lady Diana."

Diana took his hand and Severus straightened. "It is not the place of man to worship the High Priestess," she told him softly, smiling. "Only Arachne is worthy of worship."

She took his other hand. "Come, Severus," she said, pulling him backwards towards an antechamber. "I will show you where you must do what must be done."

Just before Diana closed the door of the antechamber behind him, Severus looked over his shoulder.

Helena was gone.

*

The antechamber that Diana led Severus into it was not so much a chamber, he considered, as a bathroom.

The room was tiled with what looked like white slate or marble, with a huge, sunken pool-sized bath in the middle. It was filled with clear water that looked very cold.

"To make the Elixir of the Stars, a man must be purified, body and soul," Diana said softly from behind him. She reached around his body and undid the clasp on his robes. They fell to the floor around him in a puddle of black, leaving Severus standing, bare-chested, wearing only a pair of grey trousers.

The room was cold and Severus could feel the goosebumps rising on his bare skin, but he forced himself to ignore it. Mind over matter, he reminded himself. I am strong.

"Will you be purified?" Diana asked him.

Severus did not hesitate. "I will," he answered, and, divesting himself of his trousers without a second thought, he dived into the water.

His assumption had been right. The water was very cold, and, surfacing, he gasped for breath.

The water eddied and swirled him, and Severus realised that his first impression had been wrong. The room was not tiled in white slate. It had been carved out of living rock. There is no way humans could have done this, Severus thought. This is the work of wights. The current, not strong but certainly insistent, pushed him along.

Severus ducked under the water. He was a strong swimmer. With a pang, he remembered a time in his youth when he had swum across a lake to escape his abusive father. It had, of course, made the punishment in the end fifty times worse.

The pool was deeper than it seemed but the water was unchangingly clear, and most certainly clean. Severus touched the bottom with his long fingers and then turned upward again, breaking the surface. He could see Diana waiting for him at the other end of the pool, her moon-pale hair almost indistinguishable from the luminous whiteness of her robes.

When, at length, he finally clambered out of the pool, he felt cleaner than he ever had in his whole life. Diana wrapped a robe around him - not black like he uniformly wore, but white, like hers. His long dark hair dripped water onto it, turning it transparent where it clung to his shoulders.

White is for the innocent, the pure, the virginal, he thought.

"You have been purified," Diana said with a smile.

*

The next room Diana led him into was empty, apart from three pedestals at the other end. Carved like the last out of living rock, it was a high-vaulted chamber with a soaring ceiling.

"Magnificent," Severus breathed.

"I am glad you think so," Diana replied, her incandescent eyes glimmering in the soft light.

It was a very long room, and Diana led him through it slowly, allowing him to admire the beautiful architecture.

"How was it built?" he asked her.

She smiled enigmatically. "The lady Arachne has her ways."

Wights, Severus thought, wishing he had taken Wight Lore when it had been offered at NEWT level. It was no longer part of the curriculum.

At length, they came to the next door, and Severus finally saw what was ensconced on the three pedestals. They were bracelets, made of exquisite silver chain. In each, a different stone glittered.

"No man may make the Elixir of the Stars if his soul does not run deep," Diana said, standing in front of the doors as if she had been one of the Guardian priestesses Severus had encountered earlier.

"Is this - a test?" Severus asked.

"Of sorts," she replied.

She took the first bracelet of its pedestal. It was set with an emerald that refracted the brilliant light in the chamber into the radiance of a rainbow.

"Severus," Diana said, "name me someone you respect."

Severus thought. My respect is difficult to gain, he thought, and few have. But there is one…

"Remus Lupin," he replied. "I respect Remus Lupin."

Diana took his left arm and slid the bracelet over his hand. It sat loosely on his wrist, the brilliance of the silver odd against the dark, twisted scarring of the Mark and the bloody line that clove it.

When it touched his skin, the emerald suddenly lit up, filling the hall with a dazzling green light. The refracted rainbows were more lovely than anything Severus had ever seen.

"By the testimony of the emerald, this is true," Diana said.

She took the second bracelet off its pedestal. It was identical to the first, but it was set with a sapphire. Unlike the vivid green of the emerald, the sapphire was darker and more restrained, but the slow solemnity of the blue light seemed to make even the beauty of the green look garish.

"Severus," Diana said, "name me someone you consider a friend."

If only she had said 'do not' it would be so much easier, Severus considered. I am not a well-liked man and I do not encourage friendship. But… there is one… one who has given me a second chance, who has trusted me when I have betrayed his trust so often…

"Albus Dumbledore," he answered. "Albus Dumbledore is my friend."

Like she had before, Diana slid the sapphire bracelet onto his arm. It shone, luminescent, beside the emerald bracelet, before the sapphire brought forth a dazzling blue light, winking off the shining marble of the living rock. It was beautiful.

"By the testimony of the sapphire, this is true," Diana said.

She took down the final bracelet. Like the two that glittered already on Severus's left arm, it was made of delicate silver chain but this time a ruby glittered in the setting.

Red like blood, Severus thought with a lurch.

"Severus," Diana said, "name me someone you love."

The answer was clear this, time, clearer than the water that had purified him in the chamber before. But it had been so long since he had brought herself to say her name that he paused, he hesitated, before speaking at last.

"Regina," he replied croakily. "I love Regina."

And at last, as Diana slid the bracelet onto his wrist, as it winked once and filled the chamber with a light more brilliant and radiant than any he had seen before, Severus wept for the woman he had lost sixteen years ago.

"By the testimony of the ruby, this is true," Diana told him tenderly. "Your soul runs deep indeed, Severus." She smiled. "Regina would have been proud."

*

Third room, and last, Severus thought as Diana led him into another antechamber. Three times is magic.

Like the room of the bracelets, this third chamber seemed virtually empty. A large oaken door stood at the end of the hall, much like the one that closed off the High Priestess's inner sanctum from the rest of the Temple of Arachne. On either side of it were two long boxes, covered in a white shroud.

Diana turned to face him. "There are few men who have seen these two that we hold dear to our hearts," she told him. "Our greatest that are lost to us, they guard the doors to the stars. Would you look on them?"

Last test and greatest, Severus thought. A test I will pass. I am strong. I am strong.

"I would," he replied.

"Be warned, Severus," Diana said. "Such a test is not for the weak, nor the faint-hearted. No man may look on their faces and not be changed. Would you look on them?"

I am strong.

"I would," he replied.

"You knew them both," she told him softly, "and for you this must be hard, to see them lifeless and remember them live." She took both his hands in hers. "Would you look on them?"

Three times is magic.

"I would," he replied, for the third time.

Then, slowly, Diana walked forward and gently, achingly, removed the shroud from the first box.

Severus felt as if a hand of ice was clenched around his heart. There, encased in gold and glass, lay Regina.

She looked not a day older than when he had last seen her. Seventeen long years, Regina, he thought. Sixteen years since you died. Half a lifetime ago.

Her long brown hair lay around her in ringlets, the refracted light from the brilliant marble walls picking out the gold in it and making it shine. She had always been small - Severus remembered, in those glorious sessions he had spent with her in the Potions classrooms, that she had only come up to his chin - but the year she had spent away from Severus before she died had given her a beautiful, lovely, serene elegance that even in death radiated off her. Her eyes were closed, but he knew, that behind the creamy skin and black lashes, they were still as grey as a stormy sky. The priestesses had dressed her body lovingly in a white gown.

"She looks… like she's about to be married," Severus said, tears running down his face and splashing on the glass. Regina, he thought. Oh Regina, Regina, Regina. "But she was never married. She died -" his voice broke off. There was so much pain in his heart, but so much love as well. Oh, Regina.

Diana laid her hand on his arm. "Come, Severus," she told him, and, lovingly, she pulled back the second shroud.

This time, Severus did not feel the melancholy and the deep grief hit him. It was pure shock.

"How can it be…?" he breathed.

Like Regina, the second woman looked scarcely a day older than when she died. Her hair lay in a cloud around her, and she was dressed in a long, white gown. She was beautiful, yes, but her beauty was a terrible beauty, a passionate beauty, the fire to Regina's water.

"These are not the bodies of our two best beloved," Diana told him quietly, "but rather the effigies, the simulacrums we preserve in their name. Where their true bodies lie we know not."

Sleeping Beauty and Snow White, Severus thought.

"What," he breathed, "is Lily Evans doing here?"

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