Disclaimer: See Chapter One!
Uploaded: 8th January 2005
"Black Light"
By Dante Lewis
Chapter Eight: From the Cauldron to the Flame.
Several months later.
"Severus, my dear boy, I'm so sorry it took us this long." The wise old Wizard kept vigil at the bedside of a released Severus Snape, the omnipresent twinkle in his eye disturbingly absent.
Severus stirred; his emaciated form dishevelled and exhausted from months of fractured sleep and mental breakdown. Any who knew of the proud, menacing mask he put on in his former life would not have recognised the broken wreck of the man shivering on the bed. It broke Albus' heart to see the unsung hero of the war effort rewarded in such a way. The man only hoped that the dear boy could forgive him.
"W-water." A once silky voice, now coarse and broken from misuse, croaked almost inaudibly as his clouded onyx eyes flew open.
"Welcome back to us Severus." The old man mused, stroking the younger man's matted black hair out of his face and cradling the his neck effortlessly to bring a conjured glass of water to the man's cracked lips. "Hush now, you're safe."
Severus drank greedily, and then sunk back into the pillows of the infirmary bed, falling back into deep slumber.
A Further week or so later
Severus was now all but completely recovered. Physically speaking at least. The man in question swung his legs over the side of the bed and flexed his muscles experimentally. He had to get out of this place.
When he had finally come to and met the worried, sleep-deprived eyes of his colleague and mentor, the initial anger had overwhelmed him. Four months. Four months he had been left in there, to think he was abandoned and left to die. Another week or so and the unforgiving environment of Azkaban would have driven him insane to the point of no return. Why did it take them so long to extricate him from his captivity?
Severus had half a Slytherin mind not to forgive the Order for its inadequate attempts to save him. He supposed bitterly that it was their way of punishing him for not warning their golden boy Potter in time. The hypocrites. If it had not been for the Griffyndorish do-good mentality of those blasted inept Aurors that arrested him in the first place, he would have damn well had ample time to save their precious golden boy and prove his worth as a spy. His intentions had been good, and yet they let him rot in Azkaban for over FOUR MONTHS. Severus was sure had it been a saintly Gryffindor or Hufflepuff in his place, the Order would have gone to insurmountable lengths to bust him out. Legal channels or no.
He'd had full intentions to direct the full extent of his wrath at the Headmaster, but one look at the old man's face made him decide against it. Never before had Severus fully appreciated just how old and vulnerable Dumbledore truly was. The look on the elder man's face belied his age like no other emotion could. His once twinkling blue eyes were hazed over in concern. Concern for him. He realised with stark clarity that Dumbledore was only human; and it appeared that the old man had in fact done everything in his power to secure a favourable fate for Severus.
"It's all right, Albus. You did everything you could." Severus had forced himself to say, quashing his inner demons to ease the old man's conscience.
That was two days ago. The malevolent twinkle had since returned to the old man's eye, and Severus took to occluding his mind at night to ward off his dreams. Today, as he pulled himself from his crib in the Hospital Wing at Hogwarts, he was leaving no matter what the nurse said. The news of his sister's untimely death was still resonating in his ears from when Albus had broken it to him the night before. The rush of adrenalin that flowed through his body at the news that there was still a Snape in captivity fuelled his protesting body as he set his mind about leaving the confines of the infirmary once and for all.
'She's as much a Black as she is a Snape' A jeering voice – Black's voice – echoed in his mind as he moved in haste to rescue his niece from the clutches of that terrible place. Snape fought off the resentment that bubbled just beneath the surface.
'She's all I have left of Selina' He reminded himself, striding out of the room, his closely guarded love for his family driving him to return to the one place that haunted his dreams.
"I don't care what the blasted piece of paper says you infernal wretch of a woman! I want my niece, and I want her now!" Severus demanded hotly.
"But Mr Snape…"
"Professor!" He corrected, in a soft, threatening tone that would send the bravest of Gryffindors retreating to the sanctuary of their tower.
"Professor Snape…" The woman shakily continued. "The Ministry of Family Services was under the impression that you were not yet fully… recovered. I really must insist that you leave and return with the appropriate paperwork filled out by your Healer stating that you are capable of taking on the special needs of a infant!" She rushed out, brandishing departmental policy papers in his face.
"Seriously woman, if you know what's good for you, you will get the hell out of my way!" Severus warned, taking a step closer to the woman, towering over her prone form, wand drawn and sneer firmly in place. "I may have been excused of all charges, but you are forgetting that I was accused of." He added in harsh undertones, his onyx eyes glinting in anticipation.
The woman took in a startled breath and pressed herself further into the wall Severus had her backed against.
"Don't – tempt – me - woman!" He growled, accentuating each word with a jab of his wand into the woman's breastbone.
The woman, considering her options, folded. Warily, she brushed his wand aside and said briskly. "Come with me."
Severus sheafed his wand back in his sleeve, the familiar weight pressing into his arm like a reassuring shield as he quashed down the returning emotions that being back in Azkaban drove from him. Schooling his face into his usual impassive mask, he followed on the heel of the woman's scurrying footsteps.
"Wait here." She said shortly, indicating to a rickety wooden chair that surely would have seen better days in a place like the shrieking shack. "She won't be ready."
Severus narrowed his eyes at the retreating back of the annoying woman. What did she mean that the child 'wasn't ready'?
'What, precisely, were they rushing to cover up?' He wondered. Severus wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know, as he busied himself transfiguring the inferior piece of furniture into a tolerable alternative.
In what felt like hours in the dank outer walls of the Azkaban penal settlement, but was in actuality a few minutes, a woman emerged, hovering a small unmoving bundle in front of her. Severus' eyes flashed dangerously.
"What do you think you are doing, woman?" Severus snapped, leaping from his chair to steady a shaky hand under the abnormally still form of the hovering child's body.
"I'm sorry sir, but it's Azkaban policy not to physically touch the inmates." The woman rattled, as though stating a well-trodden by-line.
Severus shivered, outraged, as the implications that such deprivation of stimulus on an infant meant. "What?" he intoned, his voice rasing up a notch, as he took in his niece's features. 'Inmate, indeed' He fumed.
While the child looked well nourished and clean (evidently the work of silly incantations and foolish wand waving, he assumed), the rigid posture and deathly silence of the infant was cause for some concern.
"What… is wrong with her?" He asked gruffly.
The woman, seeing the child cradled in the large capable hands of the frighteningly enraged man before her, lowered her wand and took a step back. "W-w-w-we petrify the troubled cases to give them time to adjust." She stammered quickly, faltering when she saw the murderous expression that escaped onto the man's features. "I-I-it's for their own safety!" She cried, increasing the distance between herself and the incredulous man before her.
Drawing his wand swiftly and silently from his sleeve, Severus glared menacingly at the woman, getting brief satisfaction when he saw the wretch visibly flinch. Averting his eyes to the unfortunate child in his arms, he pointed his wand at the infant and muttered a barely audible "Finite Incantatem" before pocketing his wand and giving the woman one last look.
"Don't think for one minute, that you've heard the last of this." He warned, turning on his heel and storming out of the establishment with a now screaming child sobbing exhaustedly in his robes.
Several hours later, in Severus Snape's quarters
Severus had not moved from his position on his couch since his return from the Island. Estella had taken close to an hour to calm down and readjust to the sensation of human contact. Even though her sobs had since resided, her body was still tense with lingering mistrust and wariness, a sign that she was cursed with the combined legacy of both Snape and Black stubbornness.
Severus smirked as he recognised the inherent family trait.
'There's was no questioning this was Selina's child' he sighed, his heart longing. Estella's face mirrored the beautiful features of his sister's grace.
Oh how he had envied his sister's nose as they were growing up. Now it appeared that the unwarranted recessive trait began and ended with him. Tweaking his niece's cute button nose playfully, he allowed himself a rare smile. "Be thankful little miss, that you didn't inherit your Uncle Sev's nose!" he whispered to the dozing infant, in a foreign, caring tone.
Estella reacted to the stimulation, her palegrey eyes fluttering open in shock.
'Black's eyes' His heart froze.
Staring back at him was a contrast of conflicting anarchisms. The beloved face of his sister, mixed with the subtle blend of that blasted Black's unwanted influence to the gene pool: his eyes haunting him on his sister's face, reminding him of all that he took away from him and all that he tried to do to him. Black, who had played that foolish prank that almost got him killed and then got away with it. Black, whose eyes jeered victoriously with smug satisfaction as he bewitched Selina's heart and drove a wedge between the last of the Snape line. Black, who taunted him in his dreams, his actions indirectly killing the one confidante in Severus' life.
With his black eyes hardening into an icy stare, he continued to look into the eyes of his innocent niece.
'Innocent?' a benevolent little voice in his subconscious scoffed, reminding him that his sister would be alive if not for this child's birth. 'She'll be just like her father, just you watch' the taunting voice continued, warning him.
Clearly not of sound mind, Severus Snape glared coldly at his niece and closed his heart to her. He would not take the risk, he resolved. Out of duty for his sister he would see to the child's incidental needs, but he would not become a father to her. There was too much Black in her to convince him that he would ever have anything to gain from it except for pain and weakness.
Let that useless excuse of a Godfather play Daddy. He thought, sneering, moving to place his burden in its crib. Disturbed by the sudden movement, Estella screwed her face up and began to sob.
"Damn it!" Severus muttered under his breath. Regardless of his cold, unaffectionate resolve, he still couldn't stand to see the child distressed. On some obscure level – though he would never admit it to himself - he loved the child no matter who its father was.
"I'm sorry Estella, your father deserves to rot in hell." He stated, mind awash with conflicting disarray as he assured himself more than anything. "One day you will thank me from sparing you from his influence."
After all, at the end of the day, she was still Selina's child; and Severus was not about to permit another Snape to fall victim to a Black's charm.
End Chapter: From the Cauldron to the Flame