Author's Note: A feeble attempt to return to my roots and if nothing else, finish what I started. I hope to one day work on Brothers Grim as well, but no promises to how quickly these two will be updated and completed. Hope you enjoy. R/R

Chapter Seven: Payments to the Dead

In the nighttime, Hecate Compound was all polished bone and transient. Severus walked through the gates silently, moving like the shadows on the white walls and not paying much attention to the Compound around him. He caught himself in this and despite the pressing matters that weighed on his mind; Snape paused and looked around. The white walls looked back at him contently, waiting. He thought idly for a moment about all the generations of Aurors that had passed through these halls under this name and under this same cause and wondered for a moment, if there had ever been others that felt this way too. Hecate had no memory, Snape knew, but it had a legacy. It had others who remembered for it: families and friends that painted the names of fallen Aurors and dead family upon their hearts for their children to carry the names on their brow.

Severus wondered how many times someone had stood there with the white moon overhead, and Hecate before them, plotting and wondering what would become of them. He felt so small suddenly, behind the cool alabaster walls and the great big world. The sky was spread out before him like a cloak, and he could hear the voices inside, dulling because of the late hour and the sleepy inky haze Hecate summers brought in.

It was all so damn normal, he thought distantly, so damn familiar.

Despite the years, the toils and trials, he found himself half-expecting to see Billy Moore come tumbling out of the Compound, sleeping weighing on his eyes and weak smile before telling him not to work too hard, tell Ari he loved her, and that he'd have Dahlia put something in the oven for him.

Ari…

Saint Michael.

Snape felt a shiver of cold travel down his spine and unbidden his hand found the wand at his side. The past peeled away then, causing him to remember. He had found Erised in the burned out remains of Malone home. She had been there, expecting to see his son.

His son. That's right. His son was dying.

She was going to kill him.

Snape's hand found the necklace around his throat and idly, thoughtfully, he let his callous fingers dance over the Angel. He had enjoyed three years of peace and quiet. Of ignorance to everything he had once claimed intimate knowledge. Now, with the appearance of one boy and with one fell swoop everything that went bump in the night was now firmly back at his doorstep. He only wished he had some idea what he was doing.

He was no longer the Dark Prince. There was no Jack the Ripper, or Throne of Souls to come to his aid. There was no Dark Lord to command his path, no Headmaster to appease. The war was over. This was the wake of it; a residue like ash and shadow that the survivors had to muddle through to find whatever came next.

"How comes us?"

Severus turned suddenly to find the figure of Sherman Hesper and his dog Jimmy approaching him. Hesper was all Navy and capes, with the dog at his side, gave off the strong impression of power and authority. There was a stirring in Severus as he watched the Auror approach, an awaking of deep seated paranoia that had kept him alive so long in England. He set his jaw, and smiled thinly. "You look like a gangster." He told Sherman easily, eyeing the thick overcoat the Auror wore.

"You look like a ghost." Sherman returned; he stopped beside Severus and produced a cigarette from somewhere inside his coat. There was the cold, unfamiliar silence between them as they both tried to measure up each other: torn between keeping old prejudices alive, or trying to remember that the war was over, and they were now friends. "Want one?"

Severus arched a brow and shook his head. "Those will kill you."

"A lot of things will." Sherman laughed. "Maybe that's what makes them comforting."

"There's no comfort in death, Sherman."

"Could you be so sure?"

"I've done once."

"Only once?" The old Auror laughed. "Amateur."

Silence. Both men stood together in the darkness, between smoke and all the words they couldn't seem to say. Severus turned and stared at the graveyard in the darkness. He thought of Mordred and Ari, of Voldemort and Harry. He thought of Jackie, and Melanie, and Eoin and everyone else that had died.

"Do you think its over?" He asked Hesper. The dog gave a low guttural growl at the question. The old man looked up, "What?"

"The wars. The Dark Lord, his princes…the battle we fought was suppose to end all wars. Do you think it did?"

"Of course not. That was one fight, Severus. One war."

"Nothing's the same anymore."

"It never is." Sherman arched a brow, and watched him. "What are you thinking about?"

"The dead."

"You put too much stock into the dead…your family always has."

Severus turned to face Sherman then, as if for a moment, he wanted to rebut that comment but upon admitting the truth to himself, Snape decided against it and returned to his reverie.

"I meant no offense."

"None taken."

"Liar. Tell me, Severus, why do you follow them beyond the grave? What power do they hold for you? What is it you wish to learn from the dead?"

"Something they're not telling us." Snape whispered. His hand found St. Michael at his neck; there was something going on. He knew that. He could feel it. It was in everything that Mordred hadn't said to him, everything that Erised's return from the grave had brought back.

The Auror at his side seemed undisturbed by this. "I wouldn't be surprised. The dead have souls…"

"Funny, I thought the dead were souls."

"And if they're hiding that." Sherman drawled, slow and measured on his cigarette. "What else do they keep secret?"

Severus turned fully then and stared into the darkness to the shadow that was kept alight only by Hesper's cigarette. The old Auror's eyes were staring into his, telling him something that had no words, only warnings. He wondered idly if he knew. "I'm going away for a few days." He told Hesper without meaning to. "Tell Sind, I'll keep in touch. There's something I have to do."

"You don't have to do this," Hesper whispered. "You don't have to jump this time."

"I owe it to them."

"You owe the dead nothing, Severus."

"Yeah, I do." Severus swallowed, glancing at the graveyard and then back to Sherman. "That none perish, remember?"

"Is that what you're doing? Saving a life?"

"I hope so."

Severus swung on his heels then, and walked away. He was doing something he never thought he would have had to do again, something that he had thought he left behind in Voldemort's grave, sealed with the blood of countless friends and enemies. He had given Death many gifts in the name of never having to return. He thought he had killed enough, allowed enough people to die to appease the Dark Prince and be free of him. But, as he walked passed the orphanage where Kaiya had grown up, pass the gardens where Memory had stood, and the Gray Wing, pass even the Hecate graveyard to push towards the perimeter. He should have known, he thought to himself sadly. He should have known. You can never go back.

Ever.

He was the Dark Prince.

Then, without ever looking back, Severus left Hecate Compound once again. He walked until the night swallowed him from view, and then he was gone.