Intermission: Discovery Is Your Death
"Severus."
Snape continued to brew, because he knew who it was. Only three people called him Severus. One was the Dark Lord, and Snape would have sensed his magic coming and knelt long since. One was Regulus, and his voice was well-known and seemed to reach into the forsaken, neglected corners of Snape's soul—not that he would allow it to remain there.
The third was Lucius, who used his first name without invitation. And this was him now, sounding intolerably self-satisfied as he lounged against the doorway of Snape's Potions lab in the Riddle house.
"What does our Lord wish, Malfoy?" Snape said at last, when he thought enough time had passed to allow Lucius to seethe, but not enough to show disrespect. He did not want to become entangled in the twisted games that the man played with the other Death Eaters, not now that he had to keep his mind clear for his three most important tasks. He had to spy for Dumbledore, and he had to convince Voldemort he was still loyal, and he had to take care of Regulus, who had very nearly broken from the intense torture that the Dark Lord put him through for his reactions to the fifteen-minute Crucio Snape had endured. Politics had never been less of a concern to him than they were now.
"Why must it be our Lord's request, Severus?" Lucius's voice was delicate and shallow, and two years ago, Snape might even have believed that he was truly hurt. But he had become a Death Eater since then. The friendly man who had coaxed him into the Dark Lord's fold, and taught him how to sense magic as pain, might as well have gone into exile. "Why can it not be mine?"
"You wish little that I can provide, Malfoy," Snape said calmly, watching as the potion came to a boil. He cast the last handful of comfrey he held into it, and the liquid hissed like Nagini. Then it calmed, the ripples spreading out with unnatural speed from the center of it. Snape lifted his wand and cast a stabilizing spell on the potion, then nodded. Ten minutes of cooling, and he could take it to Regulus. It would soothe the jerking motions in his limbs, very nearly bordering on convulsions.
A light step was all the warning he had before Lucius's wand was pressed against the back of his neck. Snape stared straight ahead and cursed himself. Yes, when brewing, he had the tendency to fall into a trance state and only consider the potion in front of him, not the man behind him, but it was a weakness he usually remembered and compensated for. And he should have done so now. Snape was far more angry at himself than he was at Lucius. Lucius was simply being himself. He would be obsessed with power plays and precedence until the day he died.
"You will not ignore me when I am speaking to you," Lucius whispered.
"No," Snape agreed, not letting his cold mask slip from either face or voice. If this potion cooled for more than ten minutes, then he would have to make it again, and Regulus would suffer more hours of pain—only minutes to those who did not hurt as he did, but endless while one endured them. Snape knew that well, even if it had usually been mental knives that laid him flat and not physical ones. Sometimes he thought he could feel the blades stuck through his head if he turned his neck just right. Some James Potter and his friends had put there, some Eileen Prince, and some Tobias.
What Lucius had never done was put one there. And he would have the chance if this took more than ten minutes, and Snape had to brew again. So he would make sure that it did not take that length of time.
"What do you wish, Lucius?" he asked, and took care to make his voice appropriately humble.
On the verge of getting what he apparently wanted, Lucius grew coy. Of course, he was probably able to sense that time was important to Snape, and therefore he didn't want to hurry. He twirled the wand against the back of his neck. Snape counted heartbeats and translated them into minutes. Three had already gone by.
"I know where you go," Lucius said at last, in a murmur so soft that Greyback could have been lurking outside the room and he would not have heard, "when you go off by yourself."
Those solitary journeys were Snape's trips to report to Dumbledore. He did not dare use an owl, nor slip off on his own too often. He was necessary to the Dark Lord's success as his Potions brewer, and now he had to care for Regulus as well. He had to go under the cover of his missions.
And if Lucius knew what they meant—
But he did not, Snape was certain. He would have gone to Voldemort if he had. Lucius had tied his life to Voldemort with that Dark Mark on his pale, pretty arm. He could not afford the loss of this war.
Unless he really does want something out of me more than he wants to see our Lord win against the old fool.
But no, Snape would not think that. He would think that Lucius was running a very long bluff. And if he was, then Snape would bring his own greatest weapon into play. It was not one he had thought to use so soon, just a few months after he created it, but if it was required, then it was required.
"You do not know, Lucius," he said calmly.
"And why not?" Lucius's voice surged with eagerness, no doubt hoping that Snape would tell him what he hadn't been able to find out himself through sheer carelessness.
Unless he knows already.
Snape told himself sternly that Lucius did not know, and that he was to stop thinking of that, now. The emotions and the thoughts dropped back beneath the Occlumency pools, and he could breathe more freely, now. He even managed a smile, and a slight chuckle, just this side of what would probably push Lucius to curse him.
"Tell me." The wand poked him hard enough to rock his head forward.
Seven minutes. He had three left. And really, Snape hated being pressured to act like this, and he disliked revealing his greatest weapon so early, and he was only confirming to Lucius that there was indeed something important about the way he slipped off by himself, which wasn't what he had wanted to do. But sometimes, one made a sacrifice one hadn't wanted to keep playing.
He thought a nonverbal spell, using wandless magic; he was certainly angry enough to do so. And a tiny charmed vial floated out of his robe pocket. Lucius shifted his head to stare at it.
To his credit, he recognized the liquid inside the vial at once. Why not? It was a potion that Voldemort had ordered him to make and use on a prisoner a month before, insisting that Lucius brew it again and again until he got it right.
For a long moment, there was nothing behind Snape, not even breath. And then Lucius took the wand away from his neck. Snape turned to see him bowing. His face was full of hatred, but mingled with the hatred was respect, and a calculation that Snape recognized and even trusted. Lucius would not stop hunting him, trying to repay him for this humiliation, but he did understand, now, what lengths Snape might go to to defend himself, and so he would not try something this stupidly obvious again, either.
"My apologies, Severus," he said. "I had no idea you were so busy." He gave him a shallow nod, and then turned and walked away.
Snape floated the charmed vial back into his robe pocket, scooped up a cup, dipped up the cooling potion on the ten-minute mark, and then bore it to Regulus.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Regulus was half-delirious from the pain, even after Snape had made him sip the potion and then eased him back onto his pallet. That was the only reason he was saying such ridiculous things, or had such a ridiculously tight grip on his hand now.
"You're a good friend, Severus," he murmured, his eyes sliding relentlessly shut. The potion induced sleep after it soothed the pain. "Such a good friend."
"I am not." Snape sat still, the cup in one hand, and monitored the flutter of Regulus's pulse in his throat, making no attempt to return the grip. Though it was rare, ingestion of this potion sometimes caused the drinker's heartbeat to speed up beyond what was comfortable. And what would he do if someone came by and saw him clutching Regulus's hand and mistook it for weakness? He could not afford it, not now that he was a spy. Discovery of any kind was his death. "Your brother insured that I would never feel any friendship for a Black."
Regulus laughed, and forced his eyes open. Snape tossed him a cool look. "What have I told you about fighting the potion's effects?" he demanded.
"You—you're so much better than the rest of them," Regulus muttered, and his glance was fond. "And sometimes you act as though you thought you were exactly the same. You can't see it, can you, Severus? I thought you knew, and were guarding the treasure inside you from contamination against the darkness. And now I realize that you don't even see it. You do think you're the same as the rest of them."
"You are babbling," Snape told him flatly.
"No, I'm only speaking the truth, something I can't do now," said Regulus, and his grin was half-crazed. "You have the strength to survive where none of them do. You have the courage that's going to bear you out of here. The rest of us might die, but you'll flutter free like—like some moth. No, like some phoenix."
"And now you're raving," Snape said, frowning. The potion's effects sometimes relaxed the boundaries of the brain, but not by this much. He peered again at Regulus's pulse.
"I'm not," Regulus insisted. "You're more than just a Death Eater, more than just Voldemort's servant."
Snape didn't look at him warily, because someone was watching. Someone was always watching. The Dark Lord depended on all his Death Eaters to watch one another. "Of course I am," he murmured. "I am his most trusted servant." He eased Regulus's faltering hand from his and back down onto the pallet.
"A phoenix," Regulus muttered, closing his eyes, finally. "Strong enough not just to survive, but to live."
Snape shook his head and kept on watching as his restlessness smoothed into sleep. While he did, he thought of the vial in his robe pocket, the glittering, transparent green liquid with a lock of fragile blond hair floating in it.
Lucius had come to them exulting a short time ago, delighted by the birth of his son. It had been the first honest emotion Snape thought he had ever seen on his face. And as he celebrated and conjured wine for those Death Eaters in the Riddle House, Snape had seen a strand of hair clinging to his robe, and had charmed it free with a simple motion of his hand.
This potion, graced with a strand of the victim's hair, would make them die choking on their own blood. And it worked from a distance, and the younger the victim, the better.
Snape doubted that Lucius would try anything against him while Snape essentially had a knife laid against the throat of the vulnerable Draco sleeping on Narcissa's breast. But it would have been pleasant to keep the weapon safe and secret for a while. As it was, Snape knew he would have to watch his back. Lucius would kill him if he could.
Perhaps it would be best, after all, Snape thought, as he gazed at Regulus's sleeping face, if I let him know about the second strand of hair, the one I do not carry on me at all times.
You are wrong, Regulus. I am no phoenix. Or I am, at best, one that burns with a black flame.
