Intermission: Come Home to Your Heart
Severus held himself still. The madness of his rage might have something to do with that. If he moved, if he spoke, he would explode.
He knew he should have suspected this would happen sooner or later. But he had not foreseen it happening so soon. He had thought he'd managed to keep the Headmaster's trust better than that, that Albus would accept his story of being there in the graveyard just out of time to rescue Harry, and that he stood a chance of completing the mission the Dark Lord had set him: to find out a way to get past the wards into the hidden house where Connor Potter was being trained.
And now Albus had told him this.
"I am sorry, Severus," Albus said gently, his face drawn. But there was a light in the back of his eyes, a great light, where there had been none before, and Severus knew that things truly had changed. "But I cannot tell you the truth right now. It's not solely my decision. Lily had to give her permission, too, and she chose not to." He hesitated for a moment. "Harry's loss very nearly broke her. She is not so eager to risk the safety of her sole remaining child."
Severus hid his sneer. Harry's loss broke her because she believed that they had no hope of defeating my Lord without him. I know very well how she treated the boy. It was not a child but a weapon she lost. "And so I, who have done more than any other single person but you for the cause, Headmaster, am exiled from your inner counsels," he snarled.
"That is the matter as it stands right now, Severus." Albus's eyes were mild, but implacable. "If it makes you feel better, neither James nor Minerva know, either. Lily is dead-set against telling anyone but me until she is sure that what we suspect is true, and we have truly found a new way to reassert the prophecy."
Severus inclined his head. "May I be dismissed, Headmaster?"
Albus sighed. "I wish you would not go away angry, my boy. This exclusion is not targeted at you alone."
"May I be dismissed, sir?" Severus fastened his eyes on the wall over Albus's shoulder and spoke the way a schoolboy would.
"You may, Severus."
He turned his back, not wanting to see the condescending kindness in those blue eyes, and walked away.
So. They have someone else who loves Connor Potter, someone who can stand at his back and provide power when he faces my Lord. And due to the nature of prophecy, it may even work. They cannot have found another Harry—
Except that, Severus reminded himself sharply, he knew so little about Connor Potter's training in recent months that anything was possible. He had failed in his mission. He had gained control of Connor's father, but questioning his old enemy would win him nothing when Lily refused to tell the secret even to her husband.
Severus played with the possibility that Lily might not be able to resist the temptation or the stress and would give in, but he knew that the hope was a faint one. She kept Harry's training from him for a decade and more. She isn't going to risk the secret she thinks the safety of the whole world rests on.
He strode into the solitude of his dungeons. His Lord had commanded him to begin work on a new potion. This one was to be a seemingly harmless variant on Veritaserum; it would make the drinker tell lies instead of truths. Severus could easily pass it off as a potion done to keep his hand in if anyone asked.
The effects of the potion when they remained in the drinker's system for a time would be—quite different.
Severus shut the dungeon door behind him and began to brew the potion, which he had already decided should be a deep green, only a few shades short of the color of the Killing Curse. That meant he couldn't use half the ingredients that would ordinarily have gone into a Veritaserum variant. Concentrating deeply on such a challenge would keep him from lashing out with magic, the sole intent of which was to destroy Albus Dumbledore.
SSSSSSSSSSSSS
"Here he is," Albus's voice said, and the members of the Order of the Phoenix turned their heads as he ushered Connor Potter into the room.
They were all there, including Moody, who had finally managed to kill Evan Rosier last night, and Nymphadora Tonks, who was their best spy in an increasingly hostile Ministry since Scrimgeour had been cast out by a vote of no confidence. His Lord had laughed when he heard about that, Severus remembered. It seemed only proper that the Minister Harry had elevated into power should fall with him.
Such thoughts boiled into less than steam in Severus's mind when he saw Connor Potter.
Nine months, from June to March, hiding in isolation and training, had changed the boy. There were deep shadows beneath his eyes that would have been more usual beneath Harry's. He was as thin as Lupin, and walked with as steady a gait as the werewolf after a full moon. But he radiated more controlled power. Severus could sense the irritating traces of a formal Declaration, too, if he pushed himself. The boy had given himself to the Light.
But none of that would have been enough to defeat the Dark Lord. Severus would have been more amused than anything, if not for the look in the boy's eyes, and in Albus's, and in Lily's. She walked behind her son, one hand balanced lightly on his shoulder, the other hovering near his head, as if she wanted to flick back the fringe and show the heart-shaped scar for all to see.
Albus was the confident man he had not been since the First War. Connor Potter might have been carved of marble, both his face and the resolve in that face.
And Lily Evans Potter shone from within as though filled with flame.
They have found a hope they believe in, Severus thought, narrowing his eyes further. And the boy might be deceived, and even his mother, though she would not give her belief to something less than absolutely Light. But Albus would not make a mistake that could lose him the war, not now, not after all the effort he put into the training of Harry and the Potter brat.
"Wizards and witches of the Order of the Phoenix," Albus Dumbledore announced, in a voice that had none of the strain he had shown for the last few meetings, "meet your champion, the Boy-Who-Lived, Connor Potter."
Several people stood up to applaud as Connor bowed. Severus thought he was the only one who watched Albus in that moment, who saw the soft and kindly look he darted towards the boy.
The world froze, and filled with light.
Albus. Albus is the one who loves the boy. Albus is the one who will stand at his right shoulder when the moment comes.
And given the prophecy and Albus's immense power and the strange connection forged between the Potter brats and his Lord on that fateful Halloween night—even now, Severus knew Voldemort had not chosen to trust him with all the secrets of that connection—there was at least a chance the Order of the Phoenix would win the war.
Severus joined the applause, but his mind rang with exultation, like a struck bell, for an entirely different reason. He knew the news he would carry to his Lord. He knew the permission he would ask.
If all went as he expected it would, that permission should be granted, and he could at last have his revenge on Albus Dumbledore for not expelling Sirius Black and the others all those years ago.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Severus opened his eyes with a gasp. A surge of some powerful emotion had awakened him, but he could not grasp what it was. The dream was already breaking up, scurrying madly to the corners of his mind as they always did now.
He vaguely remembered Dumbledore, and the Potter brat, and shuddered. Likely he had had a nightmare of dueling the boy while the Headmaster stood in the corner and encouraged him to be kinder. He was glad that he could not remember it.
He swung out of his bed, and examined his potions. Lately, he awoke as if by Muggle clockwork with enough time in the morning to do some brewing before he went to teach his classes. Perhaps he could even finish his newest potion this morning; it was very nearly done.
He gave it a nod of approval, the thick green potion shimmering in the cauldron next to the purple poison and the silver healing draught. Yes, it was very nearly done. Strange, to think it had started as a commission from the twin Weasleys. Severus had bottled and sent the sample they'd paid for on to them, but had retained most of it for himself, fascinated by the harmless but intricate properties the potion displayed.
He bottled it, a procedure that took most of the time he had remaining, and then hurried to put on his formal robes and go to the Great Hall for breakfast.
On the way there, Snape shook his head. Very strange, how refreshed he felt during these mornings, when his intense dreams—whatever they were about—and early awakenings seemed to argue that he should feel tired. Very strange.
But then, the human body and mind had their vagaries. Few wizards knew that better than he.
And the matter went out of his head, entirely, when McGonagall caught him on his way to the Great Hall, explained briefly that they hadn't been able to get through the wards on his quarters, and then explained what Harry had been doing in the Forbidden Forest last night.
