The Silver Wheel
Mad Morrigan
Author's Note: I don't own anyone in here except Arianrhod and Father MacKenzie (the character... heh, the Beatles own the name)... I don't even own the last name Snape. If I did, I would be making a lot more money than I do now. Anyway, was originally meant to be a sequel to the horrible Angel in the Snow series (the old version is up on ff.net), which is several years old and in the process of being rewritten. If you paid attention to the way I wrote AitS and to the seventh part of the story, you'd recognize the character Arianrhod immediately, as she pops up for a very small cameo appearance. So with that said, enjoy!
For those of you who were wondering, Arianrhod is an aspect of the triple goddess, and also considered tied in with the Moon, the stars, and Virginity in a lot of Celtic Goddess lore; one of her main titles is "The Silver Wheel", hence the title of this story. It's a long myth, which basically states that she (the goddess Arianrhod) was the handmaiden to the virgin Goewin, whose lap was the home of the God's Math's feet, as that was the only way he could sleep. But Goewin got raped and thus Arianrhod was suggested to take her lady's place. To test her virginity she had to step over the wand of Math, and when she did she bore twin sons, the result of her union with her brother, Gwydion.
If you've read the previous draft to this story (which used to be up on ff.net), you also might notice that I've done away with several original characters since the last time this was posted. This is partially because of a command decision made on my part to give Harry, etc. more of a part in this story, and to make it less like "The Saga of Arianrhod", as my roommate and beta-reader liked to put it. I also realized that the old timeline to this story didn't make any sense with the canon timeline (which is about the same now, with a few extra details), so I just opted to get rid of many of the extra characters and give more life to ones that were extant instead of bogging the story down.
I should also mention that any rituals described within were structured and written with the guidelines set forth in the late Scott Cunningham's Living Wicca. It's an excellent resource in the way of knowledge, and a good beginner's book in the way of Wicca. The rituals have been tailored to fit what's going on in the story (to remain within fandom) and thus, many of the invocations and spells are similar, but not completely identical to what you might find in Cunningham's book. One last note: any herb-lore mentioned in the story stems from my own knowledge, as well as a couple of resources I've collected over the past few months doing research. Mentions of mythology are taken from The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology, by Cotterell and Storm.
That just about sums it up. If anyone has any questions, feel free to e- mail me at wrath_of_ghengis@hotmail.com. Bye now!
(Read the fic already!)
Warning: Contains spoilers for all 5 books!
Prologue
Christmas Eve, 1989
"Just what we hoped to hear," a lazy voice drawled. "Crucio!"
There was a sick feeling in the pit of Harry's stomach as he turned over in his bed and opened his eyes with a start late on Christmas Eve, in his cupboard underneath the stairs of 4 Privet Drive. It was still dark outside, from what he could see through the open grate, and the house was very still except for the occasional snore from Uncle Vernon that came through the stairs and reverberated through the house. He had gone to sleep earlier than usual, after his Aunt and Uncle had made it clear that they were entertaining relatives and didn't want him butting in.
"Can't let the in-laws see you," Aunt Petunia had said, as she locked him securely into his cupboard. This was all fine by him; he didn't much like Uncle Vernon's parents, and Aunt Petunia had given him a roll left over from dinner to keep him quiet. Harry had tried to be good; these days, strange things happened with no rhyme and reason, and every unusual thing that occurred seemed to always be attributed to him. So when the buttons on Dudley's nice new dress shirt popped off sometime around seven, just after dinner, Vernon Dursley had made a pilgrimage to scold Harry but found him asleep already. Harry didn't even know it had happened.
His dreams that evening startled him though, and when he woke up at some absurd hour of the morning he was surprised to find that his scar wasn't hurting. Sometimes, when Harry had especially bad nightmares, he would wake up and the lightning-shaped mark on his forehead that he'd had since he was a baby would be throbbing. This time he felt perfectly fine, if a little shaken and very sleepy. "It was just a dream..." the nine-year-old said to himself softly, closing his eyes once more and settling his head back down on his pillow. "Just a dream..." Within a few minutes, he had drifted back to sleep.
In this new dream a young blonde man sat at a desk, writing intermittently on a sheet of parchment and sucking the tip of a quill while he screwed up his face in concentration. From what Harry could make out, the man was a priest; he was clad in all black, save for the spot of white material on his collar. He was the most strangely dressed priest he had ever seen, though, as he was also wearing black robes with a silver cross emblazoned in the side and had stuck a long, slender stick behind one of his ears. The priest tapped the quill against his lower lip a few times, then sighed and yawned.
"Perhaps..." Harry watched as he reached for one of the drawers in the desk, letting go of the quill in the process (it stayed in the air, still poised and ready to write), but shook his head when he saw what was inside, stretched out his arms, then picked up the quill and dipped it in its inkwell, ready to write again.
"Hello?" Harry called out to him. The priest showed no sign of noticing him, though he paused again a few seconds later and took a sip from a glass of some murky purple liquid that was sitting at the edge of his workspace. The priest then yawned once more and laid his head down on the desk. Harry sighed, and went over to him to read what the man was scribbling. It was a mostly finished Christmas sermon, like the ones he was used to hearing every year at Mass. A clock struck two o'clock, and the priest was now breathing deeply and evenly. Harry figured he had fallen asleep.
He wandered around the dream priest's room for a few minutes; there was a simple bed, and sparse furnishings. A wooden crucifix hung on one wall next to a moving painting, which didn't startle Harry as he had seen them in many of his dreams before. There was also a Bible on his nightstand, next to a couple of framed photographs: one of a smiling family that included a blonde boy (The priest at a younger age? Harry wondered), and a moving one of him in yellow and black robes with a school crest emblazoned on the side, standing next to a girl with curly dark hair in navy blue robes.
He had just begun to walk out of the dream room to explore other parts of the house when a loud knock sounded at the door, startling him and waking the priest. "Open the door in the name of the Dark Lord!" A harsh male voice called from the other side.
The priest's eyes shot open, having been startled from their late-night rest and a flustered noise escaped him as he stood up and scraped the wooden legs of the chair against the floor, then walked right through Harry (much to the boy's surprise).
"What—?" Harry began to ask, momentarily forgetting that the priest couldn't hear him. A louder, more insistent knock came from the other side, and the priest frowned to himself.
"Yes, yes, I'm coming, just a minute," the man called back in a distinctive Irish accent as he pressed his face to a crack in the door, gasped, and moved back a few steps. "Death Eaters...?" he wondered aloud, whispering to himself as he retrieved his wand from behind his ear. "Whatever would they—?"
Yet another knock rapped at the door, and Harry froze in place. What are Death Eaters? He thought, as he saw the frightened expression on the dream priest's face, and watched the priest mutter a few things under his breath as his wand tip flared with a sickly yellow light and he approached the door. Harry, in a fit of bravery that surprised himself, jumped in front of the man.
"Don't open it!" He shouted, hoping the man would hear him this time. "They're going to hurt you—"
The man closed his eyes as he walked through Harry, ignoring his protests. "Just a minute!" he called back to the people on the outside of the door, an edge coming to his voice.
Harry felt his heart sink as the man opened the doors and got his first view of the growing crowd outside of the house's doors. An eerie silence prevailed, save for the occasional crack! that occurred when a new member joined their ranks. The priest's wand was beginning to shake violently, Harry noticed.
"Drop the wand," the same man that spoke the first time commanded in a lazy voice. He was standing behind a few others, all of whom were clad in black, masked, and staring at the priest. It was hard for Harry to see who was in charge, but he had an inkling that it was the man with the lazy voice. No one else had spoken yet.
"But—" the priest stammered. The man continued to fix him with the same icy gaze and he slowly let his arm drop; the wand clattered to the ground and gave off a few angry sparks in protest. Harry watched the entire scene from behind the priest; a shorter, fatter figure bent down to retrieve the fallen wand, and another black robed person roughly shoved it out of the way and advanced upon the priest.
"Our father, who art in heaven, blessed be thy name," the priest began to whisper, closing his eyes as the man came nearer. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven..."
"Quiet!" The man commanded, pointing his wand at the priest. The priest's lips stopped moving, but he kept his eyes closed all the same. Harry wished there was something he could do, to comfort or protect the man whose home he was in, though he knew instinctively that it was a bad idea to interfere with the situation in the doorway. His only hope was that the priest could handle himself.
"The doors?" A masked woman with a prim British accent asked. The woman's voice was familiar to him, a resonant alto that tugged at the back of his mind; as she was masked and cloaked, the only thing that could be made out were her eyes, but they were glazed over and the sparse moonlight made it difficult to tell what color they were.
"The doors of the Lord are always open," the priest murmured, his eyebrows arching at the last voice that spoke. He opened his eyes and looked up warily, in the direction the woman's voice had come from. "All you need do is ask, though I daresay, Arian—"
"Just what we hoped to hear," the leader of the group said, raising his wand and cutting the man off before he finished. He flicked the wand up with a turn of his wrist, and almost lazily murmured, "Crucio."
Harry recoiled as a bright jet of light shot out from the man's wand and hit the priest squarely in the stomach. A fraction of a second passed as the masked man looked coldly on and the priest looked shocked; then the screams began. In desperation Harry looked up at the woman who had spoken a few moments before, and—to his surprise and horror—the woman looked back.
* * *
At two-thirty in the morning, a door opened with a deafening bang and a flash of red light, and the normally quiet church town of Belles Ambrose was shaken awake by a troupe of Dark Wizards on parade. Or what the general populace and the British Ministry of Magic assumed to be dark wizards; the matter was cleared up within a couple of days and rarely referred to again. The Catholic Church was torched to the ground, and the snows were stained scarlet with the spilled blood of the Muggle population; many of those that managed to escape the town were felled in the nearby fields or taken by hypothermia in transit.
"Raise the sign, Snape!" The leader's voice bellowed. A prim voice "Mosmordre!" and raised a wand in the midst of the chaos, sending forth a blinding flash of green light and momentarily pausing the slaughter as the stream of light snaked its way through the air and summarily exploded. There was a collective intake of breath, half despaired and the other half jubilant.
The nearby Muggle town of Darwin's Bluff recorded it in their records as a curious anomaly, when the green sky and bloody ground fused together to form a skull in the heavens. Annals described it as a sinister creation, with a snake weaving through its open eyes and mouth; it was also rumoured that it could be seen throughout the English countryside, all the way to Ottery St. Catchpole. The residents of Darwin's Bluff still talked about it, though a number of rumors had spread out, leaving the original incident practically unknown.
It was the beginning of the end for the respite the wizarding world had from Voldemort seven years earlier, though Voldemort himself wouldn't appear for a few more years yet.
And at four-thirty three in the morning, a door closed for Arianrhod Snape as she opened her eyes and saw what had happened at Belle's Ambrose for the first time.
* * *
It was late the next evening when Albus Dumbledore heard the sound of the gargoyles guarding his offices scraping together and footsteps echoing down the nearby corridor. Fawkes, his phoenix, was squealing with excitement in the antechamber and the paintings on the wall were making a low hum, but he decided to wait for the visitor to come to him.
A prerogative at midnight, he thought smilingly as he sipped his late-night tea. The person outside gave a couple of short raps at his door, and Dumbledore rose to meet his nocturnal visitor, setting aside the book he had been perusing and absentmindedly taking his teacup with him. The caller was a bit of a shock, however—on the other side of the door stood what looked very much like one of the school ghosts at first glance, but a further inspection revealed it to be none other than—
"Arianrhod Snape, bless my heart," Dumbledore said gently, despite the half- hysterical look on the woman's face and his shock at her unexpected visit. He held his teacup out to her. "Would you like some tea?"
Arianrhod shook her head slowly. Her hair was caked with grime, her face scratched and blotchy, and under her arm was a large, lumpy paper sack. She seemed devoid of her usual good-humor tonight, but Dumbledore smiled slightly anyway as he held the door open for her and led the way back to his desk.
"Excuse my coarseness," he began, summoning a plate of chocolate biscuits and taking a seat. "But what brings you to Hogwarts after these many years? I thought that you had a career at the Italian University, the Ludus Ar—"
Still standing, she fished around in the paper bag and dropped the broken pieces of a wand on the desk. The wand was, if he remembered correctly, hers... a couple of unicorn hairs poked out of the ends and sent forth small sparks in the air. Another wand joined it on the desk, this one made of a much lighter wood. Dumbledore suddenly lost interest in small talk, and picked up the wands, examining them. "I did...but that isn't why I'm here," Arianrhod murmured as she looked away from the Headmaster's searching eyes. "I'm turning myself in for last night at Belles Ambrose."
At that, Dumbledore raised his snowy eyebrows, and summoned an armchair for her.
"Have a sit," he said, suddenly much more serious than before. Arianrhod fell into the chair, and covered her face with her hands as Dumbledore took the empty paper bag from her and threw it aside. "First and foremost... are you all right?"
"I need to see Severus," she murmured, ignoring his question and drawing her knees up to her chin.
Dumbledore despised being the harbinger of bad news, and so decided to push his luck a little further before disappointing her with the absence of her brother, who was busying himself with his duties to the Ministry. Her brother, who would undoubtedly be both furious and worried sick at her when he came back from London the next evening. "Miss Snape, please," he pressed.
"Professor Snape," she corrected him, muttering into her hands.
"Professor Snape," he began again, gently. "I need to know whether or not you're all right."
The hands covering her face dropped slightly, and she looked up at him through her hair with bloodshot brown eyes. "The Wheel," she said hoarsely. "They know about the Wheel, Albus— Merlyn above, I need to speak to Morgan, or to Severus..." She brought her knees down, and braced herself to stand. Albus, however, was determined to make sure that the Potions Master's sister was in operable condition by the time he returned, despite her protests and desperation at the current situation. When she got to her feet, Dumbledore raised his wand and she fell back into the seat ungracefully.
"Severus is away, Arianrhod, and from what I've heard and the way you look, you ought to see Madame Pomfrey. He'll be here tomorrow evening."
"But—"
"But at the moment you need rest, and a good meal before worrying about the events of last night." He said the words a bit more harshly than he had intended, but she seemed to back down and he sighed into his beard. "Please," he continued, in his characteristic calm tones. Let me take you up to Poppy. It's the least I can do for an old favorite student of mine."
"Albus, I don't think you understand," she said slowly. "Last night—" her voice faltered, and she bit her lower lip hard to force the words out. "Last night, I apparently summoned the Dark Mark, and the Seekers—they know, Albus. This wand belonged to Father MacKenzie..."
Of course, Dumbledore had figured this out by now; the sudden disappearance of a young college professor and the equally sudden death of one of her closest acquaintances all seemed interconnected and made perfect sense with one another. He had already stood up from his desk and offered Arianrhod one of his hands. "Up with you," he said firmly, but gently. "We're heading to Poppy."
"Albus!"
Dumbledore gazed intently into her eyes, and the normal merry spark usually present in them was quite gone, replaced by a line or two of worry on his face. "Miss Snape, you of all people should know that I am not in the business of shunning Hogwarts students, present or former, on account of unfortunate incidents that sometimes happen," he uttered softly, keeping a firm grip on her hand. "Please trust me. The situation will mostly certainly better itself without you playing the martyr."
The young professor's eyes widened and she gaped at him; though she still looked relatively unoffended (which Dumbledore was thankful for) her shock was apparent as she docilely allowed herself to be led up to the Hospital Wing. The matter of Belles Ambrose was summarily taken care of the next day at the Ministry, and the name A.C. Snape was cleared from the lists of guilty under extenuating circumstances.
All this, of course, was written about and skewed in the Daily Prophet for weeks afterward, though young Harry Potter never knew it.
He also never thought he'd have that dream again.
***
Mad Morrigan
Author's Note: I don't own anyone in here except Arianrhod and Father MacKenzie (the character... heh, the Beatles own the name)... I don't even own the last name Snape. If I did, I would be making a lot more money than I do now. Anyway, was originally meant to be a sequel to the horrible Angel in the Snow series (the old version is up on ff.net), which is several years old and in the process of being rewritten. If you paid attention to the way I wrote AitS and to the seventh part of the story, you'd recognize the character Arianrhod immediately, as she pops up for a very small cameo appearance. So with that said, enjoy!
For those of you who were wondering, Arianrhod is an aspect of the triple goddess, and also considered tied in with the Moon, the stars, and Virginity in a lot of Celtic Goddess lore; one of her main titles is "The Silver Wheel", hence the title of this story. It's a long myth, which basically states that she (the goddess Arianrhod) was the handmaiden to the virgin Goewin, whose lap was the home of the God's Math's feet, as that was the only way he could sleep. But Goewin got raped and thus Arianrhod was suggested to take her lady's place. To test her virginity she had to step over the wand of Math, and when she did she bore twin sons, the result of her union with her brother, Gwydion.
If you've read the previous draft to this story (which used to be up on ff.net), you also might notice that I've done away with several original characters since the last time this was posted. This is partially because of a command decision made on my part to give Harry, etc. more of a part in this story, and to make it less like "The Saga of Arianrhod", as my roommate and beta-reader liked to put it. I also realized that the old timeline to this story didn't make any sense with the canon timeline (which is about the same now, with a few extra details), so I just opted to get rid of many of the extra characters and give more life to ones that were extant instead of bogging the story down.
I should also mention that any rituals described within were structured and written with the guidelines set forth in the late Scott Cunningham's Living Wicca. It's an excellent resource in the way of knowledge, and a good beginner's book in the way of Wicca. The rituals have been tailored to fit what's going on in the story (to remain within fandom) and thus, many of the invocations and spells are similar, but not completely identical to what you might find in Cunningham's book. One last note: any herb-lore mentioned in the story stems from my own knowledge, as well as a couple of resources I've collected over the past few months doing research. Mentions of mythology are taken from The Ultimate Encyclopedia of Mythology, by Cotterell and Storm.
That just about sums it up. If anyone has any questions, feel free to e- mail me at wrath_of_ghengis@hotmail.com. Bye now!
(Read the fic already!)
Warning: Contains spoilers for all 5 books!
Prologue
Christmas Eve, 1989
"Just what we hoped to hear," a lazy voice drawled. "Crucio!"
There was a sick feeling in the pit of Harry's stomach as he turned over in his bed and opened his eyes with a start late on Christmas Eve, in his cupboard underneath the stairs of 4 Privet Drive. It was still dark outside, from what he could see through the open grate, and the house was very still except for the occasional snore from Uncle Vernon that came through the stairs and reverberated through the house. He had gone to sleep earlier than usual, after his Aunt and Uncle had made it clear that they were entertaining relatives and didn't want him butting in.
"Can't let the in-laws see you," Aunt Petunia had said, as she locked him securely into his cupboard. This was all fine by him; he didn't much like Uncle Vernon's parents, and Aunt Petunia had given him a roll left over from dinner to keep him quiet. Harry had tried to be good; these days, strange things happened with no rhyme and reason, and every unusual thing that occurred seemed to always be attributed to him. So when the buttons on Dudley's nice new dress shirt popped off sometime around seven, just after dinner, Vernon Dursley had made a pilgrimage to scold Harry but found him asleep already. Harry didn't even know it had happened.
His dreams that evening startled him though, and when he woke up at some absurd hour of the morning he was surprised to find that his scar wasn't hurting. Sometimes, when Harry had especially bad nightmares, he would wake up and the lightning-shaped mark on his forehead that he'd had since he was a baby would be throbbing. This time he felt perfectly fine, if a little shaken and very sleepy. "It was just a dream..." the nine-year-old said to himself softly, closing his eyes once more and settling his head back down on his pillow. "Just a dream..." Within a few minutes, he had drifted back to sleep.
In this new dream a young blonde man sat at a desk, writing intermittently on a sheet of parchment and sucking the tip of a quill while he screwed up his face in concentration. From what Harry could make out, the man was a priest; he was clad in all black, save for the spot of white material on his collar. He was the most strangely dressed priest he had ever seen, though, as he was also wearing black robes with a silver cross emblazoned in the side and had stuck a long, slender stick behind one of his ears. The priest tapped the quill against his lower lip a few times, then sighed and yawned.
"Perhaps..." Harry watched as he reached for one of the drawers in the desk, letting go of the quill in the process (it stayed in the air, still poised and ready to write), but shook his head when he saw what was inside, stretched out his arms, then picked up the quill and dipped it in its inkwell, ready to write again.
"Hello?" Harry called out to him. The priest showed no sign of noticing him, though he paused again a few seconds later and took a sip from a glass of some murky purple liquid that was sitting at the edge of his workspace. The priest then yawned once more and laid his head down on the desk. Harry sighed, and went over to him to read what the man was scribbling. It was a mostly finished Christmas sermon, like the ones he was used to hearing every year at Mass. A clock struck two o'clock, and the priest was now breathing deeply and evenly. Harry figured he had fallen asleep.
He wandered around the dream priest's room for a few minutes; there was a simple bed, and sparse furnishings. A wooden crucifix hung on one wall next to a moving painting, which didn't startle Harry as he had seen them in many of his dreams before. There was also a Bible on his nightstand, next to a couple of framed photographs: one of a smiling family that included a blonde boy (The priest at a younger age? Harry wondered), and a moving one of him in yellow and black robes with a school crest emblazoned on the side, standing next to a girl with curly dark hair in navy blue robes.
He had just begun to walk out of the dream room to explore other parts of the house when a loud knock sounded at the door, startling him and waking the priest. "Open the door in the name of the Dark Lord!" A harsh male voice called from the other side.
The priest's eyes shot open, having been startled from their late-night rest and a flustered noise escaped him as he stood up and scraped the wooden legs of the chair against the floor, then walked right through Harry (much to the boy's surprise).
"What—?" Harry began to ask, momentarily forgetting that the priest couldn't hear him. A louder, more insistent knock came from the other side, and the priest frowned to himself.
"Yes, yes, I'm coming, just a minute," the man called back in a distinctive Irish accent as he pressed his face to a crack in the door, gasped, and moved back a few steps. "Death Eaters...?" he wondered aloud, whispering to himself as he retrieved his wand from behind his ear. "Whatever would they—?"
Yet another knock rapped at the door, and Harry froze in place. What are Death Eaters? He thought, as he saw the frightened expression on the dream priest's face, and watched the priest mutter a few things under his breath as his wand tip flared with a sickly yellow light and he approached the door. Harry, in a fit of bravery that surprised himself, jumped in front of the man.
"Don't open it!" He shouted, hoping the man would hear him this time. "They're going to hurt you—"
The man closed his eyes as he walked through Harry, ignoring his protests. "Just a minute!" he called back to the people on the outside of the door, an edge coming to his voice.
Harry felt his heart sink as the man opened the doors and got his first view of the growing crowd outside of the house's doors. An eerie silence prevailed, save for the occasional crack! that occurred when a new member joined their ranks. The priest's wand was beginning to shake violently, Harry noticed.
"Drop the wand," the same man that spoke the first time commanded in a lazy voice. He was standing behind a few others, all of whom were clad in black, masked, and staring at the priest. It was hard for Harry to see who was in charge, but he had an inkling that it was the man with the lazy voice. No one else had spoken yet.
"But—" the priest stammered. The man continued to fix him with the same icy gaze and he slowly let his arm drop; the wand clattered to the ground and gave off a few angry sparks in protest. Harry watched the entire scene from behind the priest; a shorter, fatter figure bent down to retrieve the fallen wand, and another black robed person roughly shoved it out of the way and advanced upon the priest.
"Our father, who art in heaven, blessed be thy name," the priest began to whisper, closing his eyes as the man came nearer. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven..."
"Quiet!" The man commanded, pointing his wand at the priest. The priest's lips stopped moving, but he kept his eyes closed all the same. Harry wished there was something he could do, to comfort or protect the man whose home he was in, though he knew instinctively that it was a bad idea to interfere with the situation in the doorway. His only hope was that the priest could handle himself.
"The doors?" A masked woman with a prim British accent asked. The woman's voice was familiar to him, a resonant alto that tugged at the back of his mind; as she was masked and cloaked, the only thing that could be made out were her eyes, but they were glazed over and the sparse moonlight made it difficult to tell what color they were.
"The doors of the Lord are always open," the priest murmured, his eyebrows arching at the last voice that spoke. He opened his eyes and looked up warily, in the direction the woman's voice had come from. "All you need do is ask, though I daresay, Arian—"
"Just what we hoped to hear," the leader of the group said, raising his wand and cutting the man off before he finished. He flicked the wand up with a turn of his wrist, and almost lazily murmured, "Crucio."
Harry recoiled as a bright jet of light shot out from the man's wand and hit the priest squarely in the stomach. A fraction of a second passed as the masked man looked coldly on and the priest looked shocked; then the screams began. In desperation Harry looked up at the woman who had spoken a few moments before, and—to his surprise and horror—the woman looked back.
* * *
At two-thirty in the morning, a door opened with a deafening bang and a flash of red light, and the normally quiet church town of Belles Ambrose was shaken awake by a troupe of Dark Wizards on parade. Or what the general populace and the British Ministry of Magic assumed to be dark wizards; the matter was cleared up within a couple of days and rarely referred to again. The Catholic Church was torched to the ground, and the snows were stained scarlet with the spilled blood of the Muggle population; many of those that managed to escape the town were felled in the nearby fields or taken by hypothermia in transit.
"Raise the sign, Snape!" The leader's voice bellowed. A prim voice "Mosmordre!" and raised a wand in the midst of the chaos, sending forth a blinding flash of green light and momentarily pausing the slaughter as the stream of light snaked its way through the air and summarily exploded. There was a collective intake of breath, half despaired and the other half jubilant.
The nearby Muggle town of Darwin's Bluff recorded it in their records as a curious anomaly, when the green sky and bloody ground fused together to form a skull in the heavens. Annals described it as a sinister creation, with a snake weaving through its open eyes and mouth; it was also rumoured that it could be seen throughout the English countryside, all the way to Ottery St. Catchpole. The residents of Darwin's Bluff still talked about it, though a number of rumors had spread out, leaving the original incident practically unknown.
It was the beginning of the end for the respite the wizarding world had from Voldemort seven years earlier, though Voldemort himself wouldn't appear for a few more years yet.
And at four-thirty three in the morning, a door closed for Arianrhod Snape as she opened her eyes and saw what had happened at Belle's Ambrose for the first time.
* * *
It was late the next evening when Albus Dumbledore heard the sound of the gargoyles guarding his offices scraping together and footsteps echoing down the nearby corridor. Fawkes, his phoenix, was squealing with excitement in the antechamber and the paintings on the wall were making a low hum, but he decided to wait for the visitor to come to him.
A prerogative at midnight, he thought smilingly as he sipped his late-night tea. The person outside gave a couple of short raps at his door, and Dumbledore rose to meet his nocturnal visitor, setting aside the book he had been perusing and absentmindedly taking his teacup with him. The caller was a bit of a shock, however—on the other side of the door stood what looked very much like one of the school ghosts at first glance, but a further inspection revealed it to be none other than—
"Arianrhod Snape, bless my heart," Dumbledore said gently, despite the half- hysterical look on the woman's face and his shock at her unexpected visit. He held his teacup out to her. "Would you like some tea?"
Arianrhod shook her head slowly. Her hair was caked with grime, her face scratched and blotchy, and under her arm was a large, lumpy paper sack. She seemed devoid of her usual good-humor tonight, but Dumbledore smiled slightly anyway as he held the door open for her and led the way back to his desk.
"Excuse my coarseness," he began, summoning a plate of chocolate biscuits and taking a seat. "But what brings you to Hogwarts after these many years? I thought that you had a career at the Italian University, the Ludus Ar—"
Still standing, she fished around in the paper bag and dropped the broken pieces of a wand on the desk. The wand was, if he remembered correctly, hers... a couple of unicorn hairs poked out of the ends and sent forth small sparks in the air. Another wand joined it on the desk, this one made of a much lighter wood. Dumbledore suddenly lost interest in small talk, and picked up the wands, examining them. "I did...but that isn't why I'm here," Arianrhod murmured as she looked away from the Headmaster's searching eyes. "I'm turning myself in for last night at Belles Ambrose."
At that, Dumbledore raised his snowy eyebrows, and summoned an armchair for her.
"Have a sit," he said, suddenly much more serious than before. Arianrhod fell into the chair, and covered her face with her hands as Dumbledore took the empty paper bag from her and threw it aside. "First and foremost... are you all right?"
"I need to see Severus," she murmured, ignoring his question and drawing her knees up to her chin.
Dumbledore despised being the harbinger of bad news, and so decided to push his luck a little further before disappointing her with the absence of her brother, who was busying himself with his duties to the Ministry. Her brother, who would undoubtedly be both furious and worried sick at her when he came back from London the next evening. "Miss Snape, please," he pressed.
"Professor Snape," she corrected him, muttering into her hands.
"Professor Snape," he began again, gently. "I need to know whether or not you're all right."
The hands covering her face dropped slightly, and she looked up at him through her hair with bloodshot brown eyes. "The Wheel," she said hoarsely. "They know about the Wheel, Albus— Merlyn above, I need to speak to Morgan, or to Severus..." She brought her knees down, and braced herself to stand. Albus, however, was determined to make sure that the Potions Master's sister was in operable condition by the time he returned, despite her protests and desperation at the current situation. When she got to her feet, Dumbledore raised his wand and she fell back into the seat ungracefully.
"Severus is away, Arianrhod, and from what I've heard and the way you look, you ought to see Madame Pomfrey. He'll be here tomorrow evening."
"But—"
"But at the moment you need rest, and a good meal before worrying about the events of last night." He said the words a bit more harshly than he had intended, but she seemed to back down and he sighed into his beard. "Please," he continued, in his characteristic calm tones. Let me take you up to Poppy. It's the least I can do for an old favorite student of mine."
"Albus, I don't think you understand," she said slowly. "Last night—" her voice faltered, and she bit her lower lip hard to force the words out. "Last night, I apparently summoned the Dark Mark, and the Seekers—they know, Albus. This wand belonged to Father MacKenzie..."
Of course, Dumbledore had figured this out by now; the sudden disappearance of a young college professor and the equally sudden death of one of her closest acquaintances all seemed interconnected and made perfect sense with one another. He had already stood up from his desk and offered Arianrhod one of his hands. "Up with you," he said firmly, but gently. "We're heading to Poppy."
"Albus!"
Dumbledore gazed intently into her eyes, and the normal merry spark usually present in them was quite gone, replaced by a line or two of worry on his face. "Miss Snape, you of all people should know that I am not in the business of shunning Hogwarts students, present or former, on account of unfortunate incidents that sometimes happen," he uttered softly, keeping a firm grip on her hand. "Please trust me. The situation will mostly certainly better itself without you playing the martyr."
The young professor's eyes widened and she gaped at him; though she still looked relatively unoffended (which Dumbledore was thankful for) her shock was apparent as she docilely allowed herself to be led up to the Hospital Wing. The matter of Belles Ambrose was summarily taken care of the next day at the Ministry, and the name A.C. Snape was cleared from the lists of guilty under extenuating circumstances.
All this, of course, was written about and skewed in the Daily Prophet for weeks afterward, though young Harry Potter never knew it.
He also never thought he'd have that dream again.
***