A/N: Woohoo! Two chapters in one day! I'm on a roll. I've nearly worn
myself out, so I don't expect to churn out another one until the weekend.
You get to meet Sianna this chapter...she'll be dominating much of the plot
line soon, so I hope you enjoy your first taste of her!
Chapter Three: Undoing What Was Done
"Severus Snape, Department of Investigation and Law Enforcement," he introduced himself, mimicking the earlier conversation with Helena.
The man set down his briefcase and walked confidently to Snape, who stood up to grip his enormous, weathered hand.
"John Castell. I'm assuming you've met my wife already. Where did she run off to?" he asked, moving into the hallway to peek up the stairs.
"She went upstairs to find Sianna. There is an issue I need to sort out concerning all of you, and I felt it would be best to speak with the entire family at once," Snape assured him, remaining deliberately vague.
"Well it's too bad that Elise is off at summer camp," John lamented. "She's our other daughter," he volunteered, although Snape had given no indication that he did not already know that. "Sianna is fifteen, Elise is seventeen. They get along well."
Just then, Helena came back down the stairs with Sianna in tow. The girl looked over her mother's shoulder at Snape, clearly sizing him up. Snape only granted her a swift glance, but even in that short look he noticed the considerable beauty that had not been visible from a distance. Only a slightly over-sized nose marred her features.
"Let's sit down," Helena suggested, once again becoming nervous at the thought of a "government official" visiting her home.
Awkward silence reigned as the two parents arranged themselves on the couch and faced Snape, looking at him expectantly. Sianna plopped into a separate chair and glared her parents, remaining silent and uncaring. Then she shifted her stare to Snape.
He took this as his cue to begin explaining. "I am here because of an incident concerning your daughter," he said to Helena and John, but looked directly at Sianna. She seemed very slightly intimidated, but she did not break eye contact. Good for her.
"What have you done this time, Si?" John inquired in a vexed and resigned tone, turning to face his daughter.
"He never said I did anything...it just concerns me," she shot back at her father, then raised her perfectly arched eyebrows at Snape.
"That is correct. The incident in question was most certainly not...caused by you," Snape confirmed.
"So what the hell is this 'incident,' then?" John asked, easily getting impatient with Snape's evasion.
Snape took a deep breath, steeling himself for the answers, then asked, "Do you believe in magic?"
Two skeptical "of-course-nots" came from the parents. I suppose they're Muggles then, Snape thought sarcastically to himself. This won't be fun. He turned to gaze directly into Sianna's eyes, waiting for an answer. A moment of tension passed before she spat out a defiant "yes." This both pleased and annoyed Snape, since he couldn't be sure whether or not she had said that just to disagree with her parents.
"Well...you will be surprised to know that Miss Castell is the only one here with the right idea," he said seriously.
Sianna could clearly be heard to mutter, "Here we go," before John found his voice.
"That's—that's ridiculous! Preposterous! This is outrageous, what are you really here for?" he sputtered, nearly falling off the edge of his seat in disbelief and anger.
Snape sighed. "What do you want me to do to prove it? Magic is real, and it has everything to do with your daughter," he interrupted quickly, trying to get it all out before John began yelling again.
He was just barely fast enough; the shouting began as soon as the last word left his mouth. Helena began speaking quite forcefully about laws of nature, and John had stood up and begun pacing, yelling obscenities about "wackos and their radical beliefs." Then, Sianna took her turn.
"If you two would just can it for a whole two seconds and let the poor guy speak, he would clear this thing up! He's obviously not going to leave just because you yell some curse words and physics theories at him."
The yelling paused to make room for the daggers that the two adults were now shooting at their daughter. Snape broke the angry silence.
"Let me reiterate myself: I can prove it. Anything you want me to do, I can make happen. Go ahead, give me a test, anything you can think of," he said, purposely making it a challenge in order to get John's attention. He seemed like a territorial kind of man.
It worked. John immediately shoved a beautiful glass vase off the stand behind him. "Fix it," he demanded.
"Reparo," Snape said almost lazily, aiming his wand at the shattered glass. The vase, as expected, pulled seamlessly back together as if the pieces were magnetically attracted to each other. Helena dashed over and inspected it, of course finding no fault.
"What did you do?" she asked, obviously quite amazed.
"Magic," Snape replied smugly, glad that he was making some sort of progress. He then proceeded to levitate the vase back to its original location on the stand. The three other occupants of the room stared in awe. Sianna was the first to recover, asking him if he could disappear.
He stood compliantly and apparated into the kitchen, annoyed but determined to do whatever it took to get these people to listen. He sauntered back into the living room and sat back down.
"Cool," was the only thing that came out of Sianna's mouth.
However, she did not suffer from speechlessness for long, and she soon began harassing Snape for more details about the mysterious "incident."
Snape bid the two parents to sit back down, and they followed his directions automatically, having not yet recovered from the shock of seeing a person apparate. He began to patiently explain the secret wizarding world to them, or really to Sianna, as she was the only one who seemed to be taking in any of it. He did not go in depth, but briefly described the forms of magic, along with the government and culture of wizards. Sianna looked amazed and excited by the entire concept, but her parents remained dumb with shock.
When he mentioned that Muggle-born witches and wizards were usually invited to a school of magic at ten or eleven years old, Sianna's face fell, and she said rhetorically, "I suppose there's no chance of that being me, then."
Snape pitied her for a moment, but hurried on with the explanation. He finally got to the point, several minutes later.
"Miss Castell, there has been a spell placed on you. It prevents anyone from finding or contacting you by magical means. I have to ask you, is there anyone you know that you would suspect of using magic?" asked Snape, hoping that the girl could lead him to the castor of the spell. He still could not fathom how a secret spell created in England more than fifteen years ago would end up in Southern California.
Sianna thought for a minute, but eventually shook her head in the negative.
"I was afraid of that. Well, I suppose there is nothing we can do but take the spell out of you," Snape said. "I am going to have to explore your mind with my magic, and I need you to relax as much as possible, and not fight me."
"Now wait just a second there, buddy. If you think I'm gonna let you pull this stunt on my little girl, you've got another thing comin'," warned John, seemingly out of his trance. "For all we know, you could be some kind of assassin or something—"
"Sir, you trusted me once today with that vase. You are going to have to trust me again. Believe me, if I had any intention whatsoever of killing any of you, I would have done it by now." That quieted him.
He turned to Sianna once again. "Are you ready?" he asked. She nodded nervously. "Good. You may feel a tingle, but it won't hurt. It will help if you close your eyes."
Sianna's eyelids fell. Snape placed the tip of his wand at her temple, shut his own eyes, and dove into Sianna with his magic. He traced the endless veins of magic already present to a circular center point that glowed like a beacon in this altered perspective. To him, the system looked like a plant bulb that, over the years, had sent out little exploratory roots in order to become more stable in its surroundings. This spell has been here for years, maybe since she was born, Snape thought, amazed. He wielded his own magic, carefully weeding out the little strands of light that had become a natural part of Sianna. Only when he was certain that he had eradicated all traces of the brilliant magic did he withdraw. The concealment spell, gathered by his own power, followed him out, but something made him pause.
There was more magic here, but this was a completely separate spell. Somebody really doesn't want this girl found...Snape mused, opting to pull out the first spell and then go back to examine the other.
He blinked rapidly as he his consciousness re-entered his own body. He looked down at Sianna, who was doing the same.
"Wow," she said slowly. "That was...weird. Like you were kneading my brain."
"I was, essentially."
"Is that it?"
"I thought it would be, but I've discovered something new. I'm going to have to do that again. Are you ready?" he asked, eager to find the source of the other spell.
"Yeah, just...gimme a second. I'm kinda dizzy."
He waited a minute as Sianna regained her balance. "I'm ready," she told him, and the process began again.
Snape delved deeper into Sianna's mind, easily locating the second spell. It looked very different from the concealment charm, yet was somehow exactly the same thing. The substance appeared, just as the other spell had, as brilliant, blinding light that seemed to mold itself to its environment. Yet this spell did not at all resemble the root-and-bulb structure of the first; in fact, it seemed to surround and cling to something else. Snape thought later that it was a bit like the skin on an orange.
He used his own power to peel away the multiple layers of liquefied light, and he was shocked at what he found at the center.
A vast, untapped reservoir of magic filled his enhanced vision, and he realized that what he has just peeled away had been a powerfully blocking spell—one that would have trapped this girl's magic forever had he not stumbled across it. He unwrapped the remainder of the block and pulled it out of Sianna, staggering a bit when he slammed back into his body. The huge amount of power that he had rooted out had quite literally shoved him into his physical form before it dispersed.
Well, this news will make Miss Castell happy, if not her parents, Snape thought when he tried to find a way to tell them of the girl's magic.
"Well?" prompted Sianna, who was curious as to the cause of the expression on Snape's face. "What did you find?"
"What did I find..." Snape mumbled quietly at no one, still a bit shocked at the implications of the second spell. "I found an extraordinarily powerful blocking spell."
A pregnant silence filled the room. "A blocking spell," Sianna repeated, as if it would help her understand. "Blocking what?"
Snape turned and caught Sianna's eye. "You're a witch, Sianna. You have magic," he said in that piercing almost-whisper that could carry to every corner of the dungeons if he wished.
She stood there a moment, dumbfounded. Then the statement appeared to get through to her, and she broke out into a huge grin. Her parents would later claim that it was the widest smile they had ever seen on her face.
"What? That's not possible, we would have known—"Helena said, still as shocked as Sianna had been at first.
"Yes, mom, it is possible," Sianna cut her off, tired of listening to her parents' closed-minded reasoning.
"Once again, Helena, your daughter is right. You couldn't have known, Sianna didn't even know, because of this blocking spell. It is quite possibly the most powerful one I have ever seen, and I must tell you, that is saying a lot," Snape told them quietly. "It completely blotted out all of her magic. There were no leaks, holes, or weak spots."
He then noticed that John had been quiet for quite some time. Helena, following the direction of Snape's look, and she prodded gently, "Don't you have anything to say about this, John?" He had been staring into the nothingness before him, but when his wife addressed him, he looked up.
His eyes darted to first to Helena, then to his daughter, and finally landed on Snape. "Are you going to take her away from us?"
Snape looked down at the strong man, who had suddenly turned weak and pitiful at the thought of losing his child. 'Is this what having children does to people?' he asked himself. 'Thank Merlin I never stayed in a relationship long enough for that.'
"Sianna will have to go to school. There is no other option, her powers will wreak havoc if she does not learn to control them. But am I going to take her away? Not without permission from all parties involved," he told John, trying to reassure him without hiding the truth. "Your daughter is a rare and extremely intriguing case. I am quite sure that Hogwarts would love to have her, but if you prefer that she attend an American school, we will understand. It's your choice, really."
Seeing that the family needed some discussion time, he told them that he would be back in two hours. At that, he apparated to the bush where he had left his broom, then disappeared again and reappeared back at the worksite.
Upon his arrival, the entire investigation team, who had been lounging under the only shade available, got up and rushed over to him. They all started talking at once, but Christopher's question overrode the voices of the others.
"What happened?" he asked plaintively. "We were working until about half an hour ago, then all the spells just started working again. Did you find the source?"
Snape explained that he had found the source about six miles into the center of the circle, but he left out exactly whom it had been. Instead, he told the team that some witch living in the area had used the charm on her friend as a joke. Snape didn't really know why he lied about his discovery, but he decided later that it was probably best if the American Ministry didn't think he was stealing a student from them.
When asked how he knew what the spell was, Snape explained it away as a very old charm that had been invented thousands of years ago but had never been considered useful because it allowed the object in question to be found by non-magical means. (This was partially true—it had been the reason that no one who knew the spell had ever used it, and the reason it had fallen into obscurity.)
So, mission completed, Christopher, Judy, Snape and the rest of team apparated back to the Ministry building, where they dispersed. Christopher and his team went home, and Judy walked Snape back to his rooms in the guest wing.
"You'll leave tonight, then?" she enquired.
"Yes. I will pack now and leave as soon as possible."
"What, you don't like America?" she asked sarcastically.
"As a matter of fact, I really don't." Snape answered the sarcastic question bitingly, letting his exhaustion and stress catch up with him.
"Oh. Well, it was...it was nice meeting you," she said awkwardly.
"The pleasure is all mine," Snape replied, although it couldn't have been further from the truth. He nodded to her and entered his rooms before she could say anything else.
Snape took very little time to pack because he had hardly brought anything in the first place. He spent the remainder of his two-hour wait drafting a letter to Dumbledore explaining the situation. He told of the spell that he had forgotten about, the girl upon whom it had been cast, and what he had discovered when he broke the spell. The letter took a surprisingly long time to compose, and by the time Snape had finished it, the two hours were almost up. He was about to send it off when he realized that not only did he have no owl to send it with, but also that he would be back at Hogwarts days before the owl would have completed its trans-Atlantic journey.
So, Snape was very irritated by the time he had apparated back into the Castells' kitchen. He entered the living room precisely on time, and found the three Castells in the midst of a heated discussion. It was a moment before any of them noticed Snape's presence, but when Sianna looked up and fell quiet, the others followed her gaze and did the same.
"Have you come to a decision?" he asked, trying to keep the impatience to a minimum.
Sianna's face turned thoughtful for a split second, and then she invited, "Perhaps you could help me make my point here. These two seem to have closed their ears temporarily and are not listening to a thing I've been telling them."
Severus, foreseeing an argument, sat down with a sigh. "Alright...what do you want and what do they want?" he asked bluntly.
It seemed that the parents were fulfilling their roles as the protectors, and the adventurous daughter wanted them to let go of her leash. Helena and John, as expected, wanted Sianna as close to home as possible. Sianna, on the other hand, was all for going to England for her magical education. Snape also wanted Sianna to come to Hogwarts, if only because she struck his curiosity, and although he tried to present both sides of the argument equally, he could not help but play down the disadvantages of going to Hogwarts.
"The truth is, almost every wizarding school is a boarding school, and all those that are not are even farther away than Great Britain, so they will do you no good. Regardless of whether Sianna lives ten miles away or ten thousand, you will not be seeing her during the academic year," Snape explained to them. It was quite true. The only wizard day schools that he knew of were in India and Australia.
"See, there's no reason why I shouldn't go to England, I won't be around either way," Sianna summed up smugly.
"I'm not finished," Snape told them. "There is one very important thing I have yet to mention."
He took a deep breath and begged his memories to leave him alone for the time being. Then, he began, "There was a war in the wizarding community from the seventies until the mid-eighties, and England was a very dangerous place during that time. That war was very often equated with your Second World War, although on a far smaller scale. A man named Voldemort assimilated a group of followers that he called Death Eaters. His goal was to rid the wizarding world of "impure" wizards, those who had Muggle blood. He used any means to achieve this, and he very nearly won. The war only ended when he suddenly disappeared.
The room was dead silent.
A moment later, Sianna spoke up. "What does this have to do with my decision, if that all ended fifteen-odd years ago?"
"It matters now because Lord Voldemort never died, he just vanished. We know now that a failed curse had robbed him of his body and powers, but that he was still alive during the fourteen short years of peace. It matters because he was reborn last month, and he is alive once again."
When again, no one spoke, Snape took the opportunity to deliver the better news. "I say he is alive only because we have a semi-reliable witness of his rebirthing ceremony. He has actually been extremely quiet these past few weeks. So quiet that the British Ministry of Magic refuses to believe that he has returned."
"I don't care how goddamn quiet the bastard is, I don't want my baby in that kind of danger," John asserted, finally finding the words for his thoughts.
Severus sighed, tired of explaining, but pressed on to tell the whole story. "Miss Castell would be in no grave danger at Hogwarts. Much of England is considered dangerous for a Muggle-born, but Hogwarts is by far the safest place in the whole of the magical community, worldwide."
"What makes you think this Hogwarts is so safe, hm?" John demanded skeptically.
"Albus Dumbledore, who is possibly the wisest and most powerful wizard alive, is headmaster there. As he is the only man Lord Voldemort has ever feared, I think that Miss Castell would be in better hands there than anywhere else," Snape replied confidently.
The room was quiet for another minute.
Snape again took advantage of the silence. "The education she would get there, I can tell you now, would be far superior to any she would find here," he began. "I myself am a professor at Hogwarts, and my colleagues are some of the best and most experienced of their fields. Your daughter has missed more than half of her school years already, and she will need the best instructors if she wants to learn seven years of magic in three years."
Sianna looked hopeful as she let her parents consider the information in silence.
"Honey?" Helena finally spoke up, addressing John. "I think Sianna should go to England," she said quietly.
"Are you insane? She could be killed there!" yelled John.
"Haven't you been listening to anything he's said, Dad?" Sianna burst out incredulously, unable to stay silent any longer. "There is almost no chance of me coming to harm at school, and since I'm obviously way behind with my magical training I'll need the best teachers I can get. The pros outweigh the cons here," Sianna said, fairly persuasively.
"What she really means," Helena interpreted laughingly, "is 'two against one: I win, you lose!'"
"Mom..." Sianna scolded, knowing full well that it was true. "So I can go?" she asked hopefully.
John took a deep breath and sighed into his hands. "Alright, I give up. You can go."
This earned him enormous bear hug from his daughter and wife. Having finally resolved the situation and finding himself not a little tired from the day's events, Snape interrupted the group hug.
"Today is Monday. I will back here at ten on Saturday morning to take you to Hogwarts," he informed Sianna.
"What? I'm leaving so soon?"
"Once again, you have missed four years of schooling, Miss Castell. The sooner you begin your tutoring, the sooner you will be caught up with your class," and with that, Snape gathered his things and apparated home.
Chapter Three: Undoing What Was Done
"Severus Snape, Department of Investigation and Law Enforcement," he introduced himself, mimicking the earlier conversation with Helena.
The man set down his briefcase and walked confidently to Snape, who stood up to grip his enormous, weathered hand.
"John Castell. I'm assuming you've met my wife already. Where did she run off to?" he asked, moving into the hallway to peek up the stairs.
"She went upstairs to find Sianna. There is an issue I need to sort out concerning all of you, and I felt it would be best to speak with the entire family at once," Snape assured him, remaining deliberately vague.
"Well it's too bad that Elise is off at summer camp," John lamented. "She's our other daughter," he volunteered, although Snape had given no indication that he did not already know that. "Sianna is fifteen, Elise is seventeen. They get along well."
Just then, Helena came back down the stairs with Sianna in tow. The girl looked over her mother's shoulder at Snape, clearly sizing him up. Snape only granted her a swift glance, but even in that short look he noticed the considerable beauty that had not been visible from a distance. Only a slightly over-sized nose marred her features.
"Let's sit down," Helena suggested, once again becoming nervous at the thought of a "government official" visiting her home.
Awkward silence reigned as the two parents arranged themselves on the couch and faced Snape, looking at him expectantly. Sianna plopped into a separate chair and glared her parents, remaining silent and uncaring. Then she shifted her stare to Snape.
He took this as his cue to begin explaining. "I am here because of an incident concerning your daughter," he said to Helena and John, but looked directly at Sianna. She seemed very slightly intimidated, but she did not break eye contact. Good for her.
"What have you done this time, Si?" John inquired in a vexed and resigned tone, turning to face his daughter.
"He never said I did anything...it just concerns me," she shot back at her father, then raised her perfectly arched eyebrows at Snape.
"That is correct. The incident in question was most certainly not...caused by you," Snape confirmed.
"So what the hell is this 'incident,' then?" John asked, easily getting impatient with Snape's evasion.
Snape took a deep breath, steeling himself for the answers, then asked, "Do you believe in magic?"
Two skeptical "of-course-nots" came from the parents. I suppose they're Muggles then, Snape thought sarcastically to himself. This won't be fun. He turned to gaze directly into Sianna's eyes, waiting for an answer. A moment of tension passed before she spat out a defiant "yes." This both pleased and annoyed Snape, since he couldn't be sure whether or not she had said that just to disagree with her parents.
"Well...you will be surprised to know that Miss Castell is the only one here with the right idea," he said seriously.
Sianna could clearly be heard to mutter, "Here we go," before John found his voice.
"That's—that's ridiculous! Preposterous! This is outrageous, what are you really here for?" he sputtered, nearly falling off the edge of his seat in disbelief and anger.
Snape sighed. "What do you want me to do to prove it? Magic is real, and it has everything to do with your daughter," he interrupted quickly, trying to get it all out before John began yelling again.
He was just barely fast enough; the shouting began as soon as the last word left his mouth. Helena began speaking quite forcefully about laws of nature, and John had stood up and begun pacing, yelling obscenities about "wackos and their radical beliefs." Then, Sianna took her turn.
"If you two would just can it for a whole two seconds and let the poor guy speak, he would clear this thing up! He's obviously not going to leave just because you yell some curse words and physics theories at him."
The yelling paused to make room for the daggers that the two adults were now shooting at their daughter. Snape broke the angry silence.
"Let me reiterate myself: I can prove it. Anything you want me to do, I can make happen. Go ahead, give me a test, anything you can think of," he said, purposely making it a challenge in order to get John's attention. He seemed like a territorial kind of man.
It worked. John immediately shoved a beautiful glass vase off the stand behind him. "Fix it," he demanded.
"Reparo," Snape said almost lazily, aiming his wand at the shattered glass. The vase, as expected, pulled seamlessly back together as if the pieces were magnetically attracted to each other. Helena dashed over and inspected it, of course finding no fault.
"What did you do?" she asked, obviously quite amazed.
"Magic," Snape replied smugly, glad that he was making some sort of progress. He then proceeded to levitate the vase back to its original location on the stand. The three other occupants of the room stared in awe. Sianna was the first to recover, asking him if he could disappear.
He stood compliantly and apparated into the kitchen, annoyed but determined to do whatever it took to get these people to listen. He sauntered back into the living room and sat back down.
"Cool," was the only thing that came out of Sianna's mouth.
However, she did not suffer from speechlessness for long, and she soon began harassing Snape for more details about the mysterious "incident."
Snape bid the two parents to sit back down, and they followed his directions automatically, having not yet recovered from the shock of seeing a person apparate. He began to patiently explain the secret wizarding world to them, or really to Sianna, as she was the only one who seemed to be taking in any of it. He did not go in depth, but briefly described the forms of magic, along with the government and culture of wizards. Sianna looked amazed and excited by the entire concept, but her parents remained dumb with shock.
When he mentioned that Muggle-born witches and wizards were usually invited to a school of magic at ten or eleven years old, Sianna's face fell, and she said rhetorically, "I suppose there's no chance of that being me, then."
Snape pitied her for a moment, but hurried on with the explanation. He finally got to the point, several minutes later.
"Miss Castell, there has been a spell placed on you. It prevents anyone from finding or contacting you by magical means. I have to ask you, is there anyone you know that you would suspect of using magic?" asked Snape, hoping that the girl could lead him to the castor of the spell. He still could not fathom how a secret spell created in England more than fifteen years ago would end up in Southern California.
Sianna thought for a minute, but eventually shook her head in the negative.
"I was afraid of that. Well, I suppose there is nothing we can do but take the spell out of you," Snape said. "I am going to have to explore your mind with my magic, and I need you to relax as much as possible, and not fight me."
"Now wait just a second there, buddy. If you think I'm gonna let you pull this stunt on my little girl, you've got another thing comin'," warned John, seemingly out of his trance. "For all we know, you could be some kind of assassin or something—"
"Sir, you trusted me once today with that vase. You are going to have to trust me again. Believe me, if I had any intention whatsoever of killing any of you, I would have done it by now." That quieted him.
He turned to Sianna once again. "Are you ready?" he asked. She nodded nervously. "Good. You may feel a tingle, but it won't hurt. It will help if you close your eyes."
Sianna's eyelids fell. Snape placed the tip of his wand at her temple, shut his own eyes, and dove into Sianna with his magic. He traced the endless veins of magic already present to a circular center point that glowed like a beacon in this altered perspective. To him, the system looked like a plant bulb that, over the years, had sent out little exploratory roots in order to become more stable in its surroundings. This spell has been here for years, maybe since she was born, Snape thought, amazed. He wielded his own magic, carefully weeding out the little strands of light that had become a natural part of Sianna. Only when he was certain that he had eradicated all traces of the brilliant magic did he withdraw. The concealment spell, gathered by his own power, followed him out, but something made him pause.
There was more magic here, but this was a completely separate spell. Somebody really doesn't want this girl found...Snape mused, opting to pull out the first spell and then go back to examine the other.
He blinked rapidly as he his consciousness re-entered his own body. He looked down at Sianna, who was doing the same.
"Wow," she said slowly. "That was...weird. Like you were kneading my brain."
"I was, essentially."
"Is that it?"
"I thought it would be, but I've discovered something new. I'm going to have to do that again. Are you ready?" he asked, eager to find the source of the other spell.
"Yeah, just...gimme a second. I'm kinda dizzy."
He waited a minute as Sianna regained her balance. "I'm ready," she told him, and the process began again.
Snape delved deeper into Sianna's mind, easily locating the second spell. It looked very different from the concealment charm, yet was somehow exactly the same thing. The substance appeared, just as the other spell had, as brilliant, blinding light that seemed to mold itself to its environment. Yet this spell did not at all resemble the root-and-bulb structure of the first; in fact, it seemed to surround and cling to something else. Snape thought later that it was a bit like the skin on an orange.
He used his own power to peel away the multiple layers of liquefied light, and he was shocked at what he found at the center.
A vast, untapped reservoir of magic filled his enhanced vision, and he realized that what he has just peeled away had been a powerfully blocking spell—one that would have trapped this girl's magic forever had he not stumbled across it. He unwrapped the remainder of the block and pulled it out of Sianna, staggering a bit when he slammed back into his body. The huge amount of power that he had rooted out had quite literally shoved him into his physical form before it dispersed.
Well, this news will make Miss Castell happy, if not her parents, Snape thought when he tried to find a way to tell them of the girl's magic.
"Well?" prompted Sianna, who was curious as to the cause of the expression on Snape's face. "What did you find?"
"What did I find..." Snape mumbled quietly at no one, still a bit shocked at the implications of the second spell. "I found an extraordinarily powerful blocking spell."
A pregnant silence filled the room. "A blocking spell," Sianna repeated, as if it would help her understand. "Blocking what?"
Snape turned and caught Sianna's eye. "You're a witch, Sianna. You have magic," he said in that piercing almost-whisper that could carry to every corner of the dungeons if he wished.
She stood there a moment, dumbfounded. Then the statement appeared to get through to her, and she broke out into a huge grin. Her parents would later claim that it was the widest smile they had ever seen on her face.
"What? That's not possible, we would have known—"Helena said, still as shocked as Sianna had been at first.
"Yes, mom, it is possible," Sianna cut her off, tired of listening to her parents' closed-minded reasoning.
"Once again, Helena, your daughter is right. You couldn't have known, Sianna didn't even know, because of this blocking spell. It is quite possibly the most powerful one I have ever seen, and I must tell you, that is saying a lot," Snape told them quietly. "It completely blotted out all of her magic. There were no leaks, holes, or weak spots."
He then noticed that John had been quiet for quite some time. Helena, following the direction of Snape's look, and she prodded gently, "Don't you have anything to say about this, John?" He had been staring into the nothingness before him, but when his wife addressed him, he looked up.
His eyes darted to first to Helena, then to his daughter, and finally landed on Snape. "Are you going to take her away from us?"
Snape looked down at the strong man, who had suddenly turned weak and pitiful at the thought of losing his child. 'Is this what having children does to people?' he asked himself. 'Thank Merlin I never stayed in a relationship long enough for that.'
"Sianna will have to go to school. There is no other option, her powers will wreak havoc if she does not learn to control them. But am I going to take her away? Not without permission from all parties involved," he told John, trying to reassure him without hiding the truth. "Your daughter is a rare and extremely intriguing case. I am quite sure that Hogwarts would love to have her, but if you prefer that she attend an American school, we will understand. It's your choice, really."
Seeing that the family needed some discussion time, he told them that he would be back in two hours. At that, he apparated to the bush where he had left his broom, then disappeared again and reappeared back at the worksite.
Upon his arrival, the entire investigation team, who had been lounging under the only shade available, got up and rushed over to him. They all started talking at once, but Christopher's question overrode the voices of the others.
"What happened?" he asked plaintively. "We were working until about half an hour ago, then all the spells just started working again. Did you find the source?"
Snape explained that he had found the source about six miles into the center of the circle, but he left out exactly whom it had been. Instead, he told the team that some witch living in the area had used the charm on her friend as a joke. Snape didn't really know why he lied about his discovery, but he decided later that it was probably best if the American Ministry didn't think he was stealing a student from them.
When asked how he knew what the spell was, Snape explained it away as a very old charm that had been invented thousands of years ago but had never been considered useful because it allowed the object in question to be found by non-magical means. (This was partially true—it had been the reason that no one who knew the spell had ever used it, and the reason it had fallen into obscurity.)
So, mission completed, Christopher, Judy, Snape and the rest of team apparated back to the Ministry building, where they dispersed. Christopher and his team went home, and Judy walked Snape back to his rooms in the guest wing.
"You'll leave tonight, then?" she enquired.
"Yes. I will pack now and leave as soon as possible."
"What, you don't like America?" she asked sarcastically.
"As a matter of fact, I really don't." Snape answered the sarcastic question bitingly, letting his exhaustion and stress catch up with him.
"Oh. Well, it was...it was nice meeting you," she said awkwardly.
"The pleasure is all mine," Snape replied, although it couldn't have been further from the truth. He nodded to her and entered his rooms before she could say anything else.
Snape took very little time to pack because he had hardly brought anything in the first place. He spent the remainder of his two-hour wait drafting a letter to Dumbledore explaining the situation. He told of the spell that he had forgotten about, the girl upon whom it had been cast, and what he had discovered when he broke the spell. The letter took a surprisingly long time to compose, and by the time Snape had finished it, the two hours were almost up. He was about to send it off when he realized that not only did he have no owl to send it with, but also that he would be back at Hogwarts days before the owl would have completed its trans-Atlantic journey.
So, Snape was very irritated by the time he had apparated back into the Castells' kitchen. He entered the living room precisely on time, and found the three Castells in the midst of a heated discussion. It was a moment before any of them noticed Snape's presence, but when Sianna looked up and fell quiet, the others followed her gaze and did the same.
"Have you come to a decision?" he asked, trying to keep the impatience to a minimum.
Sianna's face turned thoughtful for a split second, and then she invited, "Perhaps you could help me make my point here. These two seem to have closed their ears temporarily and are not listening to a thing I've been telling them."
Severus, foreseeing an argument, sat down with a sigh. "Alright...what do you want and what do they want?" he asked bluntly.
It seemed that the parents were fulfilling their roles as the protectors, and the adventurous daughter wanted them to let go of her leash. Helena and John, as expected, wanted Sianna as close to home as possible. Sianna, on the other hand, was all for going to England for her magical education. Snape also wanted Sianna to come to Hogwarts, if only because she struck his curiosity, and although he tried to present both sides of the argument equally, he could not help but play down the disadvantages of going to Hogwarts.
"The truth is, almost every wizarding school is a boarding school, and all those that are not are even farther away than Great Britain, so they will do you no good. Regardless of whether Sianna lives ten miles away or ten thousand, you will not be seeing her during the academic year," Snape explained to them. It was quite true. The only wizard day schools that he knew of were in India and Australia.
"See, there's no reason why I shouldn't go to England, I won't be around either way," Sianna summed up smugly.
"I'm not finished," Snape told them. "There is one very important thing I have yet to mention."
He took a deep breath and begged his memories to leave him alone for the time being. Then, he began, "There was a war in the wizarding community from the seventies until the mid-eighties, and England was a very dangerous place during that time. That war was very often equated with your Second World War, although on a far smaller scale. A man named Voldemort assimilated a group of followers that he called Death Eaters. His goal was to rid the wizarding world of "impure" wizards, those who had Muggle blood. He used any means to achieve this, and he very nearly won. The war only ended when he suddenly disappeared.
The room was dead silent.
A moment later, Sianna spoke up. "What does this have to do with my decision, if that all ended fifteen-odd years ago?"
"It matters now because Lord Voldemort never died, he just vanished. We know now that a failed curse had robbed him of his body and powers, but that he was still alive during the fourteen short years of peace. It matters because he was reborn last month, and he is alive once again."
When again, no one spoke, Snape took the opportunity to deliver the better news. "I say he is alive only because we have a semi-reliable witness of his rebirthing ceremony. He has actually been extremely quiet these past few weeks. So quiet that the British Ministry of Magic refuses to believe that he has returned."
"I don't care how goddamn quiet the bastard is, I don't want my baby in that kind of danger," John asserted, finally finding the words for his thoughts.
Severus sighed, tired of explaining, but pressed on to tell the whole story. "Miss Castell would be in no grave danger at Hogwarts. Much of England is considered dangerous for a Muggle-born, but Hogwarts is by far the safest place in the whole of the magical community, worldwide."
"What makes you think this Hogwarts is so safe, hm?" John demanded skeptically.
"Albus Dumbledore, who is possibly the wisest and most powerful wizard alive, is headmaster there. As he is the only man Lord Voldemort has ever feared, I think that Miss Castell would be in better hands there than anywhere else," Snape replied confidently.
The room was quiet for another minute.
Snape again took advantage of the silence. "The education she would get there, I can tell you now, would be far superior to any she would find here," he began. "I myself am a professor at Hogwarts, and my colleagues are some of the best and most experienced of their fields. Your daughter has missed more than half of her school years already, and she will need the best instructors if she wants to learn seven years of magic in three years."
Sianna looked hopeful as she let her parents consider the information in silence.
"Honey?" Helena finally spoke up, addressing John. "I think Sianna should go to England," she said quietly.
"Are you insane? She could be killed there!" yelled John.
"Haven't you been listening to anything he's said, Dad?" Sianna burst out incredulously, unable to stay silent any longer. "There is almost no chance of me coming to harm at school, and since I'm obviously way behind with my magical training I'll need the best teachers I can get. The pros outweigh the cons here," Sianna said, fairly persuasively.
"What she really means," Helena interpreted laughingly, "is 'two against one: I win, you lose!'"
"Mom..." Sianna scolded, knowing full well that it was true. "So I can go?" she asked hopefully.
John took a deep breath and sighed into his hands. "Alright, I give up. You can go."
This earned him enormous bear hug from his daughter and wife. Having finally resolved the situation and finding himself not a little tired from the day's events, Snape interrupted the group hug.
"Today is Monday. I will back here at ten on Saturday morning to take you to Hogwarts," he informed Sianna.
"What? I'm leaving so soon?"
"Once again, you have missed four years of schooling, Miss Castell. The sooner you begin your tutoring, the sooner you will be caught up with your class," and with that, Snape gathered his things and apparated home.