Chapter Two
Severus's thunderous crack of Apparation broke the sounds of a peaceful summer's night in Wiltshire, sending the roaming peacocks of the manor he was descending upon skipping and hopping off into their gliding flight in a bid to escape the disturbance. Ordinarily the sight would bring a devious smile across his face for the way such an act would make Lucius squawk not unlike his precious aerial beasts. However his amusement was in short supply. Not for the events that happened at the Department of Mysteries — after years of playing at being both a Death Eater and an Order member, such occurrences rarely rattled him and robbed him of his dark humor — nor was it because of the scene he would be creating on behalf of Minerva and the Granger girl. No, his overly Occluded countenance came from the damned locket around the girl's neck.
He was thirty-six years old and had lived a life thus far that meant he knew better than to mess with things he did not fully understand. Especially when those things were heirlooms of an unknown family. And yet in a move that turned him into a dunderhead bigger than most of his witless students, he went and gifted tendrils of his magic to the thing, unwittingly and unwantedly tying himself to its current wearer. Minerva's words about it not exactly being binding but delicate to exact were of no help either because while it sounded as if it could be undone, the faint trace of attachment he was beginning to feel to the thief of his magic was overriding his capability to maintain a rational outlook.
Dancing between two warring factions and keeping them both wholly appeased and believing in his loyalty to them was easy. It was something he had done his entire adult life. He even found he often enjoyed his work as the untrusted ally who sat at the right side of both leaders. At times though when he would be asked a simple question about his preferences — something inane and easy enough to answer regardless of the side he was currently in company of, like if he wanted coffee or tea — he would find himself unable to answer. Those rare occurrences would then lead to him lying awake at night with his book forgotten on his chest as he drifted into pondering about how much of himself he had forfeited in playing parts of a person during the years when his peers were discovering themselves as new adults.
Still, none of it was of too much concern to him, because who cared if he preferred tea or coffee; black or with cream and sugar? Caffeine was caffeine and so long as he could mainline it after a night of only three hours of sleep, he didn't much care for what form he received it in. What he did care about was maintaining the choice and freedom in who he would bind his magic to should he choose such an unbreakable course in his life.
Thus, the very idea of being strapped with Minerva's daughter — the Dark Lord's daughter — whom he happily kept locked inside a box labeled, Sexless Student, was causing him more than a bit of mild panic that he couldn't yet unpack because as always, his duty — regardless of the side — came before his own desires. And that was another reason for alarm. He knew that until either side finally won, he was not in a place to give a wife, a family , of his own the proper dedication and devotion they would require and deserve. Let alone when said wife was one he didn't even want and wasn't even sure he could tolerate on a personal level since he could hardly stand her as it was while she existed as a mere afterthought being his student.
Coming through the cathedral doors of the Malfoy's ancestral manor, the ancient wood slammed against the flanking windows, rattling the glass in its panes. On a normal day, the sharp clap of his entrance would have riverbated through the foyer into the nearest receiving rooms, however as he had suspected, Dolohov was already paying dearly, and rather loudly, for the transgression of costing their Lord the chance at swaying the girl to his side, masking the sound of his arrival.
"You're such a dramatic fuck, Snape," a still masked and robed wizard greeted with a deep timbre from his perch on the large, circular entry table, his mud and sand caked boot leaving a messy footprint on the marble that would no doubt earn him a verbal lashing from Narcissa come morning.
"You're one to talk," he retorted, gesturing to how the large wizard was spread out like an offering of the home.
Hopping down with a resounding thump of his boots, splashing about more of the dirt and grime he carried on him, he tossed aside his mask a moment before charging Severus and lifting him up into a back breaking hug.
"Put me down, you simpering fool. You saw me just three weeks ago."
"You missed a hell of a fight, mate," Fabron Mulciber said, ignoring Severus's annoyed words while slapping him between the shoulders as he set him back down. "For a history of Defense Professors worse than our own, these kids have got skill. Especially Potter's little mudblood; you know the one that the Dark Lord is obsessed with. I'll be honest, she's terrifying. Like Bella is unhinged which makes her terrifying, but this chit is calculating and ruthless. How she didn't end up in Slytherin despite her unfortunate birth, is a mystery."
That is the million galleon question, given she's the house's heir.
"Oh and don't even get me started on the little blonde fae that was with them. She's so pure and colorful and feisty; I think I'm in love," he sighed dramatically, his head falling onto his shoulder as he batted his eyelashes. Snapping into a feral rage so quickly it nearly gave him whiplash, he growled, "Then that pussy footed bitch, Avery, had the nerve to attack her. I think I may send her his head as an offering of restitution for such an act. What do you think, too much? Should I start with his hands? Or go more pedestrian with flowers and sweets and save the really large gestures for when she actually knows I exist? By the way, you're a professor, what's her name? I need to know everything.
"You know what? We can discuss that later," he continued with rapid fire speech. "I've got time to decide while our Lord re-educates Dolohov on the meaning of, 'Do not harm the mudblood; any who raise their wands against her shall suffer whatever fate they bestow upon her, thrice over.'"
Noticing for the first time as they followed the growing sounds of the Russian's pleas for clemency before they were warped into glass shattering, Crucio induced screams, Severus's best mate from the time when they shared a dorm at Hogwarts, came around Granger's gurney and cooed, "Oh you've been a naughty boy, Sevvy. Taking the sweet mudblood from her ivory tower and bringing her here. Tell me, is the ruse up? Have you finally decided to throw your lot in with a faction? Regardless of what you pick, remember: we're a package deal mate. But I mean seriously, something had to have happened at the Castle of the Righteous to warrant your delivery of such a large present for our Lord. "
Stopping in front of the partially ajar doors of the drawing room, Severus begrudgingly looked up at the wizard who dwarfed his already imposing height and met his rich umber eyes, saying, "You have no idea," his friend's white teeth positively gleaming as his full lips stretched back into a Cheshire smile.
"I do love surprises," he responded wickedly, holding the door open for him and the girl to pass through first.
Crossing the room with a sharp click of his boots on the marble tiling, Severus sneered as he stepped over Dolohov and the mess he had made from pissing himself on the floor. Inclining his head in a small bow of greeting, he gave Bellatrix, her husband, and Lucius a taunting smirk at their newly pushed back ranking, earning a frothing sneer from the witch. Continuing across the room with familiar ease, he felt the daggers of hatred lodge in his back — not unlike those he had received back at Hogwarts when flaunting his elevated status within the Order — as he approached the Dark Lord, long since having earned the privilege of addressing the wizard without the difference demanded from the others.
Still, keeping himself in the man's good graces was all a part of the game so when he reached the couch where he sat spread out, lazily smoking a cigarette, Severus gracefully lowered himself to one knee but elected to not drop his head as the others would.
Checking once from the corner of his eye that Minerva's daughter was at his side, a shield erected around her prone and defenseless form, he quietly drawled, "My Lord, I bring you someone of great personal interest."
"That she was, Severus, but now she is little more than a sack of dying flesh thanks to Dolohov," he hissed, blowing out a curling tendril of the same smoke he had smelled earlier when with Minerva. "Tell me Antonin, what did you hope to gain but a slow and painful death for attacking the girl? Did I or did I not explicitly express last summer that she was to remain unharmed ? And did I or did I not, continue to remind you worthless fucks of her importance over the last twelve months?"
At the hushed words of concession, he asked again, "So unless you've suddenly become suicidal despite your release from Azkaban, why would you have been so fucking stupid as to strike the girl with a curse meant to kill her?"
"My Lord, it was the heat of battle; I was not thinking," Dolohov whimpered.
"Well that much is obvious; Crucio, " he replied with all the passion of a bored cat playing with an already trapped mouse. "So Severus tell me, why is the girl here when she will be but a memory in a few hours; a day or two if she is unlucky?"
Lowering his voice even more to insure his words were not overheard, he explained, "Her mother and I have cause to believe that with the aid of her father's blood she can live."
"You're trying my patience, son; What does that have to do with me?"
"She is the fruit born from a seed planted in Minerva's womb over the Christmas holiday of 1978," he revealed, meeting the frigid, artic blue eyes of his dark mentor.
Sitting up as he aggressively stubbed his cigarette out on the antique arm rest of the couch, the Dark Lord drew closer to Severus, grasping his face between his palms with more care than he showed others as he demanded, "Show me."
Opening up his mind for the wizard who had unexpectedly taken him in during his sixth year and had later blasted the doors open to receiving his Mastery under Master Shelby when they had been slammed in his face for lack of money and proper breeding, Severus brought forth his earlier conversation with Minerva. The memory unfolded at warp speed and just as quickly as his mind had been occupied by another, was he alone again.
"Leave us," the Dark Lord quietly ordered as he stood up and came around the gurney, pressing a hand against the unseen bubble he had placed the witch in before surrounding her with Death Eaters. When no one made a move to do his current bidding, he roared, "Severus, Fabron, Antonin; you three stay! Everyone else, get out!"
Caressing the bubble with a pinched look of wonder, he harshly stated, "Severus, I want to get closer."
"Of course," he replied, standing up as the rest of the room slinked out, tails between their legs, a vicious and murderous glare cast in Miss Granger's direction from Bellatrix as she closed the doors.
Taking the side opposite Tom, he stripped the layers of protection he had put around the man's daughter as Fabron crossed the room to come stand at her feet with open curiosity.
"I thought she was just a gifted mudblood," Fabron commented as he observed their Lord's behavior. "Who is she really?"
"His daughter," Severus answered, taking charge to pull the collar of her jumper down when the other man's normally steady hand faltered.
"Allegedly," Tom corrected, looking at the locket that rested in the center of her chest. "For all I know this could be some twisted play from Dumbledore. To what end, I don't know, but I was never convinced he wasn't manipulating Minnie away from me.
"Of all the people she could have gone to seek refuge from my, 'unhinged tyranny,' she ran to him. Though it never did stop her from routinely falling back into orbit with me."
Looking at him, he answered a question Severus had long ago curbed the urge to ask, for fear of his arrangement washing away like a sandcastle at high tide.
"She's the reason I took you in. We hadn't spoken for two years, nine months, and twenty-seven days, when she reached out to me in November of 1976. She told me one of her students had suffered a terrible fate in his already wretched home life and that Albus had put up a blockade around her attempts at seeking guardianship of him.
"Even with our tumultuous history, I was unable to deny her anything she asked for and at two in the morning, I marched myself down to the Ministry and rained holy terror upon them until they severed the red tape of muggles and handed over the proper paperwork for my fostering of one teenage, Slytherin urchin, Severus Tobias Snape."
"Minerva was the reason you sought me out?"
"Ah, I see she never told you that. Though I imagine very few in her new life know, or rather knew, of our sordid entanglement. Yes, she was the reason I took you in and in an ironic turn of events, my relationship with you was why I lost her again.
"If you recall, Christmas of 1978, was when you were Marked. She found out, we did what we always did best and fought until we fucked our anger out on each other, and then she was gone, apparently taking something of mine with her, and I haven't seen or heard from her since.
"Tell me, if the witch is mine — which I won't be convinced of until you run the test for me — how did she manage to hide her from me?" Brushing a clump of sweat and blood caked curls back from her face, he murmured, "I never noticed that she has my nose… my lips… my chin… and my curls though she clearly has yet to learn how to properly tame the unruly beast that is our hair," tracing a catalog of each feature as he listed them.
Recalling the details, Minerva had given the staff, he said, "She took what others believed to be a sabbatical in the spring of 1979. She finished out her pregnancy in Saint Andrews and remained there with her infant daughter through the New Year.
"In the spring of 1980, she had decided to resume her post as the Transfiguration Professor in the fall and simply bring her daughter with her despite having kept her pregnancy hidden. Then as you know, events happened that April that led to Potters fearing for their unborn child and she said she realized it would be selfish of her to keep her daughter locked in a castle for fear of Voldemort and made the painful decision to adopt her into a muggle family."
Taking the point of his wand and running it over the line that bisected his palm, Tom offered up his flowing blood for Severus to collect.
"These muggles, were they good to her? They weren't like your father or the dredges that ran Wool's?"
Unable to meet his eye, he focused on collecting a sample of blood from Granger, and carefully began to tread by saying, "When she arrived fresh from the platform, small and dewy eyed, there was no indication of her having any life but one of a happy, ordinary existence."
"That's not an answer, son," Tom said coolly, his gaze turning sharp.
"Minerva has not been forthcoming with the details and I'm not exactly the sort of professor one such as Miss Granger would seek confidence in. All I know is shortly after school had released for the summer, Miss Granger ran away to Potter and through him, made contact with her mother. She spent a few weeks back in Saint Andrews with Minerva and then as was originally scheduled, turned up at the Order safe house, tight-lipped about what had happened but with a new wand in her possession that she now never lets slip from her person.
"However, what transpired was enough for Minerva to express just this evening that upon finding out, her initial thought was to seek your newly resurrected self out to help handle the matter and that she no longer wished for Miss Granger to be associated with her muggle surname."
"Then you'll do well to abide by that," he seethed.
"Of course, My Lord."
"And when I find out every detail of what occured, you and Fabron better be ready for a night unlike any we have ever had.
"Now cast the spell."
"I understand your wish to be sure, My Lord," Fabron interjected. "But it is quite clear the girl is yours. Her aura was withering upon her arrival but since she has entered the room, it strengthens. It's still weak and struggling to fight the curse wishing to smother it, but she calls to you and you to her. There's an opening in the heart between you two that aches to forge."
"Be that as it may, I require more proof than your charlatan mysticisms. Severus."
With the first sample of blood, Severus circled his wand over it, extracting it from the vial he had produced to temporarily hold it. Spiraling his wand over the lip, the darkly colored oxygenated blood floated up and began to bend and twist itself into a double helix, its color changing as it revealed the genetic markers unique to Tom. Repeating the process with the girl's blood, he brought the two codes of DNA to hover side by side. Then with a murmured incantation to bleed the two together, they absorbed each other, spinning as they sought out the points of code where they matched. Once fully connected into one sample, the pattern unraveled showing the spiking points of similarity; their results undeniable as Miss Granger's and Tom's genetics and magic lined up with a related bridge of connection between a parent and their child.
"Told you," Mulciber unwisely hummed, earning a sharp glare from his friend. "What?" He shrugged. "I did. My 'charlatan mysticisms,' never lie."
"Be that as it may, your holistic, one with nature jujus are hardly better than Divination and look where that crackpot branch of magic got me last time and more recently tonight."
"That's fair," Fabron conceded. "So what now? We confirmed she's yours but that doesn't solve the problem of her dying, nor does it fix Dolohov being a fuckwit and creating a curse with no counter measures."
"Now we thank Minerva's foresight in giving the girl my family's locket and unleash a thousand years of collected Slytherin magics upon it."
Watching him reach for the locket, Severus felt like an errant child as he started to confess, "Before you do that, you should know-"
"Severus, do you hold affections for my daughter?" Tom asked, with a puzzling calmness that he couldn't decipher, his fingers already around the amber pendant as he studied his former ward and daughter.
"That's what I was going to say," he slowly replied, his wand growing slick in his palm. "Before I knew of the locket's purpose and what happened when one offered it magic in a bid to aid the wearer, I cast several of my own spells on it to help it better fight off the curse that was shutting her organs down."
"That wasn't an answer."
Swallowing around his dry mouth, he cleared his throat as he said, "No, My Lord."
"Pity," he sighed, surprising both him and Fabron. "If you had a preexisting claim over her, that would make things much easier with the others when they find out about her and start trying to auction off their progeny."
"No, no prior claim or affection of any sort," he assured.
"Eh, yet," Tom shrugged. "I saw Minerva making you swear to remain at her side as long as she's here and since I have plans to keep the girl with me until she has to return to school, there's time for that to change."
Silencing his coming protest, the Dark Lord lifted the locket from Miss Granger's chest and began the sensual hissing of parseltongue. The beaded trim around the locket fused together forming an ouroboros whose mouth and tail connected where the latch had been. Writhing around the octagonal pendant, the snake released its tail and slithered up the chain where it coiled itself in wait. Then with another soft hiss and gentle caress of his fingers along his newly discovered daughter's cheek, the locket fell open with a blinding shock of white and black smoke.
Pulling up the map of her ravaged system, Tom directed the tendrils of countless generations of magic. Much like the serpent of his house, each thread of smoke smothered across her body, breaking off numerous times to match the many veins of purple. Once each malevolent bead of the curse was covered, the magic began to constrict, smothering the life from the dark curse. It worked slowly but steadily, retreating up from where it had wrapped around her kidneys, to her liver, and finally her lungs.
As the ancestry of spells coiled back in on itself, the silence of the room was shattered with Miss Granger jackknifing up from the gurney, a blood curdling scream piercing their eardrums before she fell into a silent, twitching agony.
Without warning, Tom hissed at the magic with such a menacing edge that Severus needn't understand the actual words to know what was about to come. Directing it to where Dolohov was lying forgotten, the coil of magic rose up like a serenaded cobra and lunged for the wizard on the floor.
The already tortured Russian Charms expert didn't even have time to register what was coming for him before he too fell into a fit of screams. Within seconds his blood began to weep from his eyes, run from his nose, drool from his mouth, and leak from his ears. His hands futilely clawed at his chest in a bid to extract his own curse from within himself. Then with a final garbled scream as he began to drown in his own blood, he collapsed, his eyes stuck upon a writhing Miss Granger — the face of his fatal mistake, the last thing he would ever see.
Leaning over the gurney, Tom began a hushed coo of parseltongue as the magic fled back into the locket, snapping shut. Stroking the back of his knuckle over the bridge of her nose, he continued his caressing words in the language of snakes until she settled down into a deep, painless sleep.
Sweeping her up into his arms, Tom began to stride from the room, absently telling Fabron, "Make sure Lucius takes out the trash, by hand," as Severus unconsciously followed the tether that bid him to stay at the young witch's side that was either born from his vow to Minerva or more concerning and frighteningly more probable, from the locket wearer herself.
"Narcissa!" Tom called, as he entered the hall. "I'll be requiring a change of chambers for the summer. I need something that can accommodate myself in one room with an en-suite, as well as Severus and Hermione in another with their own en-suite, connected by a shared sitting room and a space that can accommodate the moving of Severus's lab to the suite. Two beds for them is preferable though not required. I trust Severus knows should he try anything without her consent, he will find himself swiftly and painfully parted from his cock. He can always move a couch into her chambers as well should she object when she wakes."
"My Lord?" Severus urgently questioned. "I think it prudent I get her back to the school where she can finish out her term and I, my lectures."
"Nonsense, she's already partaken in her OWLs and with only a week left in the term I think you've taught your pupils all you can. She'll be staying here with me for the duration of the summer and thus as you are tied to her side — which I shall have to thank Minerva for having done for me — you shall be too."
"But-"
Turning around with an ease that betrayed his carrying of another person unassisted by magic, however slight she was, he spoke to him as the Dark Lord and not as his mentor Tom.
"This is not open for negotiation, Severus. You are already sworn to act as a shadow to the girl while she is here, a job I would have required of you even if Minerva hadn't. Be thankful I am giving you the summer to learn her as a contemporary before making further, more permanent, demands on your sworn devotion to the girl."
"Yes, My Lord," he humbly and bitterly agreed.
"Good, now come along. You'll need to write Narcissa a shopping list of specialized tools and ingredients with which to brew potions for Hermione's recovery. I'll be sending her to the school in the morning as an emissary on behalf of Lucius's position as a Governor where she shall inform Minerva of my plans for Hermione and collect anything her mother deems important for her to have over the holiday."
Bringing up the rear of their small processional, Severus didn't even care about the Priori Incantatem, Albus would cast on his wand as a part of his continued pardon as a spy, mumbling, " Crucio ," towards a snickering Bellatrix. However hearing her drop to the floor as she was momentarily tortured before managing to throw the curse off, did little in the way of soothing him.
Somehow he had thought following his stupidity, Tom would be possessive over his newly found daughter and instantly strip the infant threads of an engagement that connected them, wishing to be the only wizard in her life for the time being. Instead, he received the misfortune of the man being oddly pleased by the turn of events and was now faced with the harrowing prospect of him wishing for the two to cultivate a relationship. Now his only hope of extracting himself from the bed of ignorance he had made, was either Minerva's vehement protesting or his besotted mentor giving in to what would no doubt be an impassioned rage from the lips of his daughter over being forced into matrimony with her dreaded, greasy, dungeon bat of a Potions Professor.
Either way, his fate was out of his control. And if there was one thing he was sure was true about himself and not a made up facet of his double life, it was that he did not like handing the reins of his life and magic over to others.