I am now going to go and hide while you read and review this next chapter. All I can say is,
I'm so sorry.
Forgive me.
Chapter Twenty-five
TELL ME IT'S NOT TRUE
Tell me it's not true
Say it's just a story
Something on the news.
Tell me it's not true
Though it's here before me
Say it's just a dream
Say it's just a scene
From an old movie of years ago.
Willie Russell - 'Blood Brothers')
She and Draco stood up.
"Mr. Malfoy, would you excuse us?" Albus spoke gently but firmly.
Draco gave an uncertain, worried glance at Andi. "Yes, Professor."
Andi wanted to forbid him from leaving; wanted to make him stay. Draco was her shield. While he was here, Albus couldn't deliver the message.
Don't go. Don't go.
He left.
Andi wrung her hands as she stared past them both and babbled, "We've just had a wonderful rehearsal/Draco has agreed to play the part of Sky/I can't tell you how relieved I am-"
"Andrea-"
"I thought I might have to cancel the whole thing you know/not being able to find anyone for the male lead/but now Draco's on board-"
"Andrea-"
She gave a dry sob that shook her whole body. "Please..." she whispered, barely able to get the words out, "Please don't say it..."
Poppy came over and took her arm, encouraging Andi to sit. She then sat next to her, continuing to hold her. Albus came and sat in front of them.
Andi shook uncontrollably.
"There is no easy way to tell you," he said gently, taking her hands, his eyes full of pain. "Hagrid found him just outside the gates a little over half an hour ago."
"Where... where is he? Is he in the Hospital Wing?" she said, hopefully.
"No, my dear." His voice wavered. "He was taken directly to the Chapel."
She couldn't breathe.
The Chapel?
The full implication of what she was being told hit her like a bucket load of ice.
"Then... then I've lost everything," she whispered, feeling such grief she thought she would go mad.
How could anyone do that to someone she loved? Her heart felt shattered. To do that to him, and then just dump him as though he were rubbish.
Poppy was saying something and offering her a phial of pale blue liquid; she waved it away.
"I want to see him."
"Perhaps in a while-"
"I want to see him now."
It was a tiny chapel she hadn't even known existed.
In the centre was a rectangular plinth with three shallow steps running all the way round. At each corner of the plinth, at the bottom of the steps was a House-elf; they stood quite still in attendance, their heads bowed, their hands behind their backs. Directly behind each elf was a large ornate torch-holder, six feet tall. The torches they held licked and flickered their flames in the air, casting dancing shadows around the room.
It was the only movement.
On the plinth stood a high table, rectangular again, draped in a purple and green cloth of rich velvet on which was embroidered a viper wrapped around the Staff of Sucellus - the Snape family crest.
Her eyes did not want to rise any further. The muscles seemed to scream in protest as she willed herself to look.
A small noise escaped her at the vision of him, still and silent, laid out on the velvet cloth, his hands folded across his stomach. He was robed in black, his skin so stark white in contrast.
Her knees weakened, and she wavered.
Albus, who had been holding her arm, moved to support her shoulders. "Perhaps I should stay?"
"No," she said, her voice sounding small and thin. "I want to be alone with him one last time."
He nodded gently. "I shall be just outside the door." he said, and left, closing the door quietly behind him.
She didn't move. She couldn't move. She didn't have the courage to go closer; to see the reality for herself.
The silence of the room was cloying, suffocating; the only noise came from the blood pumping in her ears and the occasional hiss from the torches.
Her injuries weighing her down as never before, she forced herself to place one foot in front of the other and move towards the table, her whole body making involuntary shudders, tensing her insides to the point of pain. Leaning heavily on her cane, she raised a foot to the first step and took two attempts to push herself up. The second step was easier. The third brought her to him.
Skin so waxy - almost yellow. Black hair hanging away from his face, giving prominence to his sharp features, starker now in death. Cheeks sunken with no blood to fill them; eyelids not completely lowered, leaving a sliver of blackness in evidence of eyes that had once turned to velvet as he looked at her. Lips just a pale, thin line when once they had done such exciting things to her.
The stillness of his body was incredible to her. His chest did not rise with breath; there was no tell-tale flutter of clothing caused by a heartbeat.
Tell me it's not true
Though it's here before me...
She put a trembling hand out to his and let out a sharp breath as her fingers fell to flesh cold as marble, and she knew then that all life had ceased.
"Severus," she choked, her throat hurting as the muscles closed in, forcing her to rack air noisily to her lungs.
She lowered her head to his hand, her fingers playing over it, her mouth breathing heavily over his skin as though to push some life-force through the pores.
She kissed the hand and then left it, bringing her face close to his, stroking his hair, running her hand over his face, his eyes that would never look at her again, his lips that would never recognise the last kisses she would ever bestow.
"Now you've come home I can tell you," she whispered, stroking his cheek. "We had a baby girl. I called her Josephine, after my Gran - you don't mind, do you? Will you... will you look after her... until I get there?"
She lay her head down beside him so that her nose was to his cheek, her cheek to his ear.
"Remember when you first found me, outside on the lawn, my dress up around my waist and my bottom on show in my little thong; and it took you a week to admit you fancied me? Then you threw a wobbly when Albus offered me the job here, but you apologized by letting me play Rachmaninov with an orchestra? Do you remember that day? It was the day I fell in love with you. I know I irritated you to distraction sometimes, and you were not always a joy, but... we had a great time, didn't we? Except, remember that time I hurt you, when I impaled you on my heel? God, I've never drawn blood with a shoe before. Just a bit higher and I would have hit the jugular. That would have been hard to explain. Why has Sir got a scar on his neck? Luckily it was out of sight under those high collars you wear."
She put her hand to the top of his shroud.
"Not like this stupid thing. Why have they put you in a black shroud? You should be dressed in one of your frock coats like you always preferred. I'll sort one out for you later."
She picked up the gathered edge of the shroud to pull it further up his neck, and stopped.
Her eyes fell to the place near his collar bone where her shoe had pierced his skin, scarring him for 'years, if not for life', according to Madam Pomfrey.
The skin was completely white, completely bare, completely without any mark whatsoever.
She blinked, thinking perhaps her grief was affecting her senses. It took a second or two to realise what she was seeing.
Clarity kicked in.
She opened her mouth but, as in a nightmare, no sound came out.
She tried again, gasping air into her lungs before, "ALBUS! "
She heard the door to the Chapel open instantly and footsteps hurrying into the room. She turned to see Albus striding towards her, closely followed by Poppy.
"This isn't Severus!"
Albus and Poppy glanced at each other. She knew at once what they were thinking.
"I'm not in denial," she said frantically, then realised it wasn't helping. She took a deep breath and continued as calmly as she could, shaking all the time. "He had an injury - at Christmas - remember, Poppy? You said it would scar. Well there's no scar."
She stepped to the side as they approached, eager for Poppy to see and agree.
"Look - here Poppy, remember? He had a hole in his shoulder, a deep one. You dressed it..."
Poppy put her hand to the spot where a scar should have been. "Yes, I do remember. An extraordinary injury - you never quite explained how it happened-"
"But you said it would scar."
"Yes. Even if it faded over the years, it would certainly still be there now, unless..." She looked at Albus.
"Scar removal is a rather delicate magic," he said, obviously thinking.
"And Severus isn't vain enough to have bothered," said Andi, her eyes flicking between him and Poppy, desperate for them to agree with her. "Albus, I'm not mad with grief - I'm certain this isn't Severus. I don't know how it could be someone else, but it is, I know it is."
"There is a way," he said, slowly. "Although I admit I had not realised its affect could continue in death." He turned to Poppy. "We shall need to cleanse the body again with ritual oils, only this time we need to add Veritaserum."
The House-elves brought a silver tray on which was a silver bowl, five bottles of oil in various shades of oranges and yellows, and a tiny phial. On a second silver tray was a neatly folded cloth.
Albus supervised as one of the House-elves poured a different measure of oil from each bottle, muttering something under his breath at the same time. When he had finished, Albus took up the phial and poured two drops of liquid into the oil.
He looked at Andi over the top of his half-moon glasses. "Andrea - you understand there is the greatest possibility we are wrong and this is indeed Severus. You must prepare yourself."
She wanted to insist that they were not wrong. Instead she nodded silently and watched as Poppy soaked the cloth in the oil and then squeezed the excess from it.
Holding her breath, her heart beating fast, she studied the face under the cloth as Poppy began to stroke it over the forehead, cheeks, nose...
Andi felt the terror rising as the face remained as Severus'. This couldn't be - it just couldn't. She knew. She knew.
Then, as though Poppy were wiping a chalkboard clean of writing, Severus' features began to disappear under the cloth to be replaced by those totally unknown to Andi.
She spluttered her relief.
"Bless my soul!" said Poppy in amazement.
Albus closed his eyes as though in silent prayer.
Andi could feel a rising tide of hysteria threatening to take over. Her poor body, still recovering from the attack, couldn't cope. She thought her brain might burst with the turnaround from absolute grief to absolute relief.
Letting out a heart-rendering sob, she folded to the ground in a faint.
"Polyjuice Potion is a complicated recipe which gives the drinker the features of the person whose essence is added."
Andi was now back in Albus' office having insisted she was recovered from her fainting fit.
"You mean, something of Severus' was put into the Potion?"
"Yes. Hair, a fingernail. This unfortunate man was obviously forced to drink the potion and murdered once it had taken affect. I had not appreciated this would freeze the effect of the Potion - I must store that away for future reference."
"But why would someone want to do that?" she asked.
"Taking into consideration that the body was then dumped outside Hogwarts' gates, I would assume we were to believe that Severus was dead."
"But why?"
"So that the search for him would be called off. So that Cornelius would recall the Aurors. To delay us, for some reason."
"So whoever was responsible must have been in contact with Severus. I mean, to get something of his to put in the potion."
"Not necessarily."
"What do you mean? Severus rarely leaves the school. Whatever it was would have been taken at some time during his absence, surely."
"You are forgetting the scar. If the essence had been taken since Christmas when the injury occurred, the scar would have been present on the body. The essence must have been acquired before the injury occurred."
Andi sat back and digested this.
Before?
Then one of the staff...? No. Andi had been down that route before. She had learned her lesson about jumping to conclusions.
Her mother?
Don't be absurd.
She looked at Albus. "Theodore Nott."
Albus raised his eyebrows, and he sat up, quite alert to what she was saying.
"He broke into Severus' quarters during the end-of-term feast, remember?" She knew she didn't need to ask. "He said he was there to steal... my underwear. I thought it strange at the time that he would break into Severus' quarters instead of mine. There was nothing in his pockets except school boy junk-"
"And a toffee wrapper with hair stuck to it." finished Albus.
Andi felt her mouth open in shock as the full implication of this hit her. A pupil was responsible for this? Not all, of course, but used as an accomplice? And sly enough to cover his tracks with toffee papers and lies about stealing her underwear? It was just incredible.
"I shall need to interview Mr. Nott," said Albus.
"And then what? What if he's guilty?"
"He will be handed over to the Ministry and in all probability, expelled." Albus looked away, sadness glistening in his eyes.
My thanks to JessiokaFroka for betareading and her comments.
A/n - I decided to post this chapter now, because I know you are all impatient to see Sev again and I admit I made a mistake keeping him out of the story for so long. I couldn't really make it work any other way - I needed to get certain timings (esp. with the pregnancy) right. I shall hopefully be posting the next chapter on Thursday or Friday (as long as Jess doesn't mind me harassing her to betaread), when there is every possibility our favourite bad boy will return.
Here are a few notes about this chapter:
1) Snape's body being guarded by the elves was inspired by the four royal males guarding the coffin at the Queen Mother's Lying-In-State.
2) 'we had a great time, didn't we?' is the message Oliver Reed's widow wrote on her wreath at his funeral. It moved me very much at the time, and I thought I would use it here.
3) Before you all flame me, I'd just like to defend myself by reminding you that it wasn't Severus after all, and...and...at least this is only a little fanfic...(points finger at Ms Rowling) She killed Sirius!
Kerichi - Yes, there is something endearing about Draco, in spite of him being an evil little oik. I am interested to know your thoughts on this chapter, Ms.Kerichi (looks over top of glasses, with eyebrows raised).
Emma Barrows - Thanx. And I did.
Thouandl - You see, I take notice of my reviewers. You'll never know how much influence you all have. lol.
Mark Darcy - Another whose review influenced the early arrival of this chapter. And all those multiple Snapes you sent me. Ooh, yes! Yes! YES!
Helena Oe - Hehehe. You know, I considered 'Grease' (coz I used it in MwtB), and 'West Side Story' (you know, sharks/jets - pureblood/muggleborn), but then I watched 'Guys and Dolls' and knew I wanted Draco as Sky. Your reviews make me feel good. Thanks.
May-Luna - No, no. Even though you were correct, you haven't had to wait a whole week. I hope it isn't Kreacher at my ear, too - yuk!
Queen of the Faeries1 - And now I've gone and mucked up the routine just as you realised I had one! Sorry. I think I'm right in saying there are only two more cliffhangers to go.
Hysterically Insane Author - Oh, you make me feel so guilty. You know, chapters like this one seem a great idea at the time - then it comes to posting, and...
Wytchkat - Yes, but you don't have to wait. Thanks for reviewing.
KristiM - I love the thought of Draco as Sky. I feel sorry for Parvati though.
littledarkone - Bowled over by your review. Thank you so much. Yes, you did make me feel special. Lol. Vincent may be a bit limp-wristed, but he's a powerful wizard. I'm glad you like him.