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This chapter, Severus is angsty. Very angsty. And Helena gets a bit annoyed at his angstiness.

And… drum roll… it is revealed who Regina really loves. Will it be Severus? Or will it be Sirius?

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Severus opened his eyes.

He was in the middle of the glade. Did I dream it all? he thought. Am I back to the first night, that night I spent here?

"No, Severus, you are not."

Severus sat up and realised that he was not wearing his robes. "Wh - what happened?"

Helena sat down beside him. "Midsummer happened, Severus."

"Last night?" His grip on reality seemed a little more than shaky.

"More than a week ago now."

Severus shot to his feet. "More than a week? What's the date?"

"August the 8th."

"Sweet mother of Merlin, Helena, we have to get back to the school!"

Helena smiled. "I know, Severus, but you will be in no condition to Apparate for a little while."

Severus located his black robes and threw them on over his shoulders. "Then we'll Floo!"

"There is no fireplace."

"Then we'll walk to the village," Severus told her, "and Floo from there."

He half-expected her to find another excuse, but she merely looked at him for a second before nodding. "All right," she said softly. "Allow me first to set my affairs in order here."

As she walked away, Severus realised she was wearing white. The white of the High Priestess.

And the memory of Midsummer flooded back into his mind.

*

He buried his head in his hands. Oh Regina, he thought desperately, what have I done? What have I done?

He remembered… the singing. Helena's vicious challenge to Diana - "Come then and meet me in the Land Upon the Waves, and we shall harvest the apples that are under the sea."

He should have realised then, what the integral part of Midsummer was. He groaned, feeling wretched and stupid. Regina, Regina, Regina.

"I am Telae Domus of the blood, dark battle host, I am the people of free companions." Free companions… how could he have failed to understand?

Regina was no man's free companion, some part of him thought stoutly. She was pure and virginal.

"I am the torc of gold, brighter than the sun, I am the hero's light, the flame of courage on the brow, I am fír flámethon, lady's truth."

"Regina," he moaned. "Oh Regina, I'm sorry."

"Through me, darkness yields to light, sorrow to joy."

His sorrow and his joy both. The darkness and the light. Severus and Regina, opposite yet the same.

"I am a breaker threatening doom, rhe boar-champion, ruthless and red, I am the tomb of your hope."

Opposite yet the same.

Betrayed.

"I am the daughter of Arachne, lady of weavers, I am Helena, High Priestess!"

He was weeping now. "What have I done? Oh Regina, what have I done?"

All these years he had stayed away from women. It had not been hard - what woman would be interested in Severus Snape, the resident greasy git of Hogwarts? The ones that were willing to see through the façade he pushed away. No woman could compare to Regina.

And now, sixteen years after she had been dead, but only a few hours after he had seen her, preparing the way so she could come home, he had betrayed her.

Oh lady, lady, lady.

*

"Severus."

Regina, he thought numbly, I'm so sorry.

"Severus."

Oh lady, lady, lady.

"Severus."

Three times is magic.

"Why?" he asked. The only question he could ask.

Helena knelt beside him. "Is it such a crime?"

"Sixteen years!" he moaned. "Oh Regina, sixteen years!"

"You waited for her?" Helena asked.

Eyes without sensation, Severus nodded. "Regina," he whispered, his voice cracking. "Oh, my Regina."

Helena put her hand on his knee. "Severus -"

"Don't touch me!" he said sharply, pulling away. "Please - don't."

He heard Helena sigh beside him. "Severus, what do you think she would think of you?"

"I betrayed her." The realisation began to sink, in all its terrifying magnitude, into his soul. "I said I loved her. Only her. I betrayed that."

"Would Regina hold you to standards she herself did not uphold?"

Severus's head snapped up. "What?"

There was a distinct sadness in Helena's grey eyes. "Have you thought, Severus," she whispered, "all these years… that she died -"

"Virginal? Yes," he snapped.

He could see Helena struggling with herself. "She didn't, Severus."

Pain, the agonising torture of despair and disloyalty, washed over his body like a wave. "Who?"

"I am sorry I have to tell you this, Severus."

"Who, damn it?"

Helena bowed her head. "Sirius Black."

*

Severus crushed his head to his knees. You forget who you are, Severus, a little voice in his mind jeered. The good guy always gets the girl, remember?

Why, Regina? his mind screamed. Why - him? What did he have that I did not?

He was the good guy. He was the brave Gryffindor. You - you were the slimy, slippery, treacherous Slytherin. The bad guy.

"There was a child," Helena told him quietly, "a baby, when she -"

An animal howl of anguish escaped him. His crystal prison shattered around him into a million shards, each sharp, each a piercing pain to the soul.

In his mind's eye, he could see Sirius laughing at him, his short, sharp laugh that sounded like a dog's bark. Even in death I have the girl! Playing his violin now, that inexorable force, that inestimable beauty that no girl in the school had seemed able to resist.

Even Regina.

Tears began to fall from his eyes and he sobbed gut-wrenchingly into his knees. "Regina," he moaned. "Regina, why?"

Helena put her hand on his knee again, and this time he did not push her away. "For the same reason as you and I, Severus. Desperate loneliness, and -"

"She needn't have been lonely!" Severus whispered. "She had me!"

"Let me finish, Severus," Helena said gently. "Desperate loneliness was a part of it, yes, but there was more." She took his chin in her fingers and forced him to look at her. Her grey eyes pierced his brown ones like a burning arrow to his heart. "Love, Severus. The most inexorable of all forces."

No, Severus thought, stunned. It is not true.

"It is, Severus," Helena said quietly.

He felt absolutely numb, deadened to all feeling. The bad guy never gets the girl.

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