Author's notes (important, please read):Okay, here's how it's goes. The ending of this story is spread out over the next five chapters, all of which will be posted today. All the chapters are at least technical cliffhangers, except the last, so even though I'll be posting them just a few hours apart, you may want to wait to read them if you don't deal well with suspense. This ending is also darker than the rest have been, to lead into the seventh story, which is the darkest of all, and more of a cliffhanger itself; immediate issues are resolved, but not their consequences. I'll begin posting the last story on Tuesday or Wednesday, depending where in the world you live. If you have questions, feel free to contact me on my LJ or by e-mail.
Here we go.
Chapter Ninety-Three: Slytherin and Gryffindor
Harry rounded the corner cautiously. He relaxed when he saw Snape striding ahead of him, not yet returned to his office after dinner. He'd wanted to catch him before Snape could bury himself in essays and resent an interruption.
Once, you would have known that he wished to be interrupted. He was the one who wanted to see you, who didn't mind putting aside essays for a while if it meant that you and he would talk.
And it might still be that way, Harry answered the voice back determinedly, but they had a few rugs to shake out between them first.
"Sir?" he asked.
Snape froze ahead of him, and then swung around. Harry took a step back at the look on his face, and then realized it wasn't really angry, just still, as if he had caught Snape in the middle of a deep thought. And, of course, when he didn't have a specific emotion filling his face, Snape tended to look angry.
Harry forced welcome into his voice. "Sir, I was wondering if I could speak to you. I know that we didn't find anything in your memories about what might have caused that lapse last time, but this time I have my own Pensieve." He nodded to the one floating behind him. "It's spelled with that magic Draco invented, which lets someone put a memory into the Pensieve and share a mindset. I might be able to learn why you did what you did if I can wear the emotions and the perspective that you wore at that moment. Will you let me?"
Snape stood as if listening, head cocked to one side. Then he murmured, "I do want to know why that happened, Harry. However, I insist on one condition that I want fulfilled if we look into my memories."
Just one? I can do that easily enough. And I think I even know what it is. "All right," Harry agreed, happiness bursting in the center of his chest. "Is it that I call you Severus? I can do that."
SSSSSSSSSSSS
He awoke.
It was the name that did it, of course, the name Severus being the name of the secret part of him, the part that knew he was half-pureblood and different from the other children around him, the part that was intelligent and showed it and was taken advantage of for it, the part that hated Albus Dumbledore and Minerva and all the rest for daring to use his first name when he hadn't given them permission.
Severus was who he was, the man who served his Lord. Snape, also called sir, also called professor, was the mortal coil he shuffled on over that, the dry skin that would provide his anonymity as he glided through the halls of the school like a snake not yet ready to shed.
His Lord had told him to remember his name, to learn to take pride and pleasure in it again, and rejoice.
His Lord was right.
Severus knew what he had to do. His Lord had told him he would know when the time was right, and he did. He gazed at the Potter brat standing in front of him, messy black hair and James's hazel eyes, and he had the strongest urge to strike the boy down as he had his father. But no, that could not happen, not now. His Lord wanted the boy to torture and maim and harm and kill before the wizarding world's gaze. If Severus slew him here, in a deserted corridor away from prying eyes, there would always be rumors that he had escaped and lived on to provide a hope for the Light. Everyone must see him die.
But there was another whose presence was legend, and necessary to the fulfillment of the prophecy, but whom everyone would believe was dead without that kind of prompting. There was another Severus hated, whose kill the Dark Lord had promised to him in reward for being a faithful servant.
Albus.
The Potter brat had asked for private time alone together to practice Occlumency; so said the Pensieve floating behind him. Severus kept his voice soft and regretful. "Alas. I've just remembered that I must go to the Headmaster's office. An appointment to keep."
The boy looked at him with something like concern written on his face. "Is that another lapse, Severus?" he asked, and the name rolled deep into his head, awakening other memories, echoes, moments of being true to himself that he had not had in the last little while, or only widely-separated and scattered. Albus had cast a spell on him, he thought, to keep the part of himself that severed his Lord asleep. Well, he was awake now, and he would remember that spell, and if he felt the numbness returning with the name "sir" or "Snape" or "professor," he would make every effort to combat it.
"Another memory lapse?" Because of course the Potter brat was nosy, and would have thought that he noticed something wrong when Severus was himself and not the bitter Potions teacher who lived night and day next to the man he hated and could not even claim his revenge. He saw the boy nod. He softened his voice. He could be good with children if he wanted to be. He could act like anything if he wanted to. "It could be. I promise, we'll use the Pensieve when I return. For now, though, I want to hurry on. The appointment promises nothing good."
"McGonagall's going to yell at you, probably," said the boy, and gave him a rueful smile. "She does that."
Severus was quickly growing disgusted with what his sleeping self had done. Acting friendly around the Potter brat to dispel the idea that he was a spy had been wise; actually befriending him was not. But he would have to maintain the façade for a little longer, until he could recover the memories of what he had done when acting as Snape. And he would have to hold to the boy's strange fantasy that anyone other than Albus carried Hogwarts. Minerva! She will never have the chance to ascend to power. When Albus dies, the school will fall apart, and have to be closed.
Which was rather the reason that his Lord had agreed to let him kill Albus in the first place. He understood how much Severus wanted his vengeance, how the hatred swam in his veins and beat in his heart and filled them to fullness, but he would never let such a major kill happen only for vengeance, or to honor a faithful servant. The Dark Lord knew what would follow in the wake of Dumbledore's passing, the despair that would spread like a miasma around the world. The Light would lose its leader, and so would the Order of the Phoenix, even if most of the wizarding world didn't know of the prophecy's existence.
"She does," he agreed with the Potter boy, which cost him nothing, and made a short bow. "In an hour, then."
Connor Potter nodded at him and turned away, the Pensieve floating behind him. Severus was a little surprised at the strength of the Levitation Charm around it, but of course Potter had trained behind wards a long way from the rest of the wizarding world, and was less than two months away from his seventeenth birthday—a birthday he would never see. He had had a chance to grow stronger in his magic.
Severus turned for his office.
A few moments later, he left it. Two vials, one full of purple potion and one silver, rode in his robe pocket. The third vial was open in his hand, and, gently, Severus coated the base of the dungeon corridors' walls with his green potion. Any Slytherins who served the Dark Lord, who had given their allegiance where it belonged, were already safely out of the school.
SSSSSSSSSSSS
Minerva was more than slightly surprised when the gargoyle leaped aside and her wards on the moving staircase informed her that Severus was on his way up. She had planned on spending an hour alone with some tea and the latest series of demands the school governors had sent around, which happened every year when they were feeling ignored. But Severus rarely visited her unless it was urgent. That meant a problem in Slytherin House, a matter for the Deputy Headmaster to discuss with the Headmistress, or, perhaps, a personal question, which might have to do with his memory lapses. It was not a problem with a recalcitrant student; gossip traveled fast in Hogwarts, and Minerva had heard all the latest horror stories of Potions classes already.
She put her teacup gently aside, and nodded to Godric, who had appeared next to the desk. He usually offered suggestions about what to do with the school governors' parchments that Minerva might have adopted if she were also a shade and had no accountability to the living world. "Stay invisible, if you would," she said. "I think Severus may be talking about something important to him, near the center of his ego, and your presence would harm his openness."
Godric rolled his eyes to show what he thought of that, but faded back into the wall. Minerva sat upright as the expected knock sounded. "Come in!"
Severus strode in. After a glance at his face, Minerva revised her estimate. A problem in Slytherin House, with a student he does not particularly like. He would not have worn that expression of dark glee if he were coming to talk to her about the memory lapses. He would be defensive instead, resenting the necessity of the visit even as he made it, taut and prickly and snapping like a hedgehog.
"Please sit down, Severus," she said, and waved her wand to conjure up a second teacup. "Tea?"
"Please," he said, voice a tad deeper than usual, and took the chair in front of her desk. Minerva snorted to herself. Yes, a student he really does not like. He is never polite unless he has something to gain from it or he is so cheerful that he does not care about the effort it costs him.
The teacup appeared, and Minerva carefully conjured tea into it. She was trying to make less use of house elf services herself, in hope of slowly weaning Hogwarts from them altogether. That would take years, but a little practice never hurt. Besides, she was a mistress of Transfiguration. She should be able to make tea out of lint if she wanted to.
She felt a brief, blurring sensation, and thought she heard Severus cast a spell. But when she glanced up from the carefully-poured tea, he still sat on the other side of the desk, with a small smile on his face. She slid his tea across to him and picked up her own, taking a sip.
The tea itself was warm, but ice seemed to reach out from it, spanning her mind with frozen bridges, spilling coldness through her lungs and her limbs. She sagged back against her chair, and felt her mind wander.
SSSSSSSSSSSSSSS
Severus's heart beat as if it pumped excitement instead of blood. It had worked. The slight time-delaying charm, which was not a common spell even among the Death Eaters, had let him lean past Albus and slip the silver potion, the liquid Imperius, into his teacup. Now the Headmaster leaned back in his chair, his blue eyes unfocused, his mouth that had spoken the name "Severus" and driven him further into hatred hanging open.
"Now," said Severus softly, drawing out the second vial of potion from his robe pocket, the purple one, "you will do what I tell you."
"Yes," said Albus's voice, so breathy that it sounded like a woman's, like Minerva's. Severus snorted at the impossible thought. Next he would believe what the Potter brat told him, that Minerva was in charge of Hogwarts.
"What I wish of you," said Severus, holding out the vial, "is to drink this."
The purple potion smelled foul, as it was meant to, and was full of a dozen substances that made it one of the deadliest poisons ever to exist, as it was meant to be. Severus had worked on it for almost a year, from the moment he had begun to dream most intensely. He thought he had a right to be proud of it.
Albus reached out, accepted the vial, and tilted the poison down his throat without a blink.
Severus could not contain his triumphant laughter, and he saw no reason to do so. The wards on the Headmaster's office would prevent anyone else from hearing him, anyway.
"It will not kill you quickly," he told the Headmaster, the man who had caused him so much pain and so much strife. "It will give you such pain as you have never known. As you writhe in the chair, remember that you should have chosen the side of Slytherin for once in your deluded life. It's the fault of your golden Gryffindors that this happened. If you had, just once, ever offered a miserable child some comfort, then I would not have hated you so much."
Merlin, he could feel the hatred. It dripped through his veins like blackest swamp water, curdling and turning his blood brackish. The only comfort for it was watching Albus's body jerk in convulsions as he began to suffer the first wave of the potion's effects. A moment later, he began to scream hoarsely, weakly.
Severus nodded in satisfaction. His dreaming self had tried to give the silver potion to the Potter brat, and indeed, that had been his Lord's plan at one time. But it had gone awry, and it was unlikely now that Connor Potter would accept anything from Severus's hand without asking many inconvenient questions first. This was better. Turn the Headmaster's trust against him, and he would die.
He started to rise to his feet, and something cold went through him. Severus turned in alarm. The one thing he had not planned for was that a ghost would be here, Peeves or the Bloody Baron perhaps. The wards on the Headmaster's office were supposed to keep them out.
It was not a ghost that wheeled past him, but a shade. A Founder's shade, Godric Gryffindor. Severus hissed, his hatred for all Gryffindors running so high at that moment as to prompt him to reach for his wand.
But the shade dived through the floor, aiming, it seemed, in the direction of the dungeons. Severus let go of his wand, slowly. Perhaps the shades had gone senile with the amount of time they spent bound to the school. It was beyond him what help Godric Gryffindor thought to find in Slytherin, especially now that the green potion would be working and most of them would be incapable of helping anyone.
Still. It was not good to linger here, even though he had wanted to watch Albus's death as the convulsions broke his ribs one by one, and other, worse things happened to him. With one final regretful glance towards the Headmaster's desk—Albus had fallen off his chair, and lay on the floor—he turned towards the top of the school and the final point his Lord had wanted him to make before Severus joined him.
SSSSSSSSSSS
"What is that?"
Harry glanced up from his Transfiguration essay. He knew how to conjure chocolate; that did not mean he knew how to explain the theory behind it, and he was grateful for the distraction Argutus seemed intent on giving him. "What is what?"
"That." Argutus's tongue darted out, and he unwound most of his body from Harry's trunk, where he liked to stay. "Something is wrong. Look at my scales." He heaved his coils up towards Harry.
Harry stared. There was a blurry green image moving in the Omen snake's mirrored scales, something strange happening right at that moment. He didn't know what to make of it, though. The image looked like nothing so much as a picture of swamp gas or a cloud of foxfire.
"And there is a strange smell, too," Argutus added, darting his tongue out again and swaying back and forth.
Alarmed, Harry put down his quill. Draco was in the loo, letting him have unimpeded access to reach out with his magic. He found nothing wrong in the Slytherin common room. There were students dozing before the fire or doing homework, their magic at a low ebb this late in the evening. There was the old magic of the common room door, dozing until it felt the tug of the password. There were the castle's wards. There was—
Harry's eyes flared open. Magic moving in the corridors. And when he lifted his head and squinted, he could see tiny tendrils of green floating near the ceiling, so faint that he would have missed them if not for Argutus's warning.
Abruptly, his throat grew tight. He tried to draw in air, and couldn't do it. Argutus asked him something in a worried voice, but Harry, his panic building, couldn't spare the necessary attention to translate the Parseltongue.
And then he heard somebody collapse in the loo.
Perhaps if he had been alone, the panic would have won. But with Draco in danger, his temper burst free, and with it his magic. Harry held his palms apart and shot his power out like a net, aiming straight for the foreign feel of the green magic, which was subtle as smoke and not as powerful as a spell. A potion, probably. Harry grabbed every single bit of it he could find, not trying to swallow it, because he didn't know what the effect would be, but churning the air and using wind to crowd the potion fumes together into one deserted corridor and away from their probable victims.
His own throat released, and he took in air with a trembling gasp. Then he stood and staggered towards the loo, Argutus coming after him and demanding over and over again, in a voice that made him sound very young, to know what was going on.
He found Draco blue in the face, but when he half-collapsed next to his partner, Draco's chest was still moving. Harry leaned down and huffed air into him anyway, making sure it was clean. Draco coughed and sat up. His eyes were glassy, but he was obviously alive, and his magic flared up in him brightly to Harry's extended senses.
"What happened?" Draco whispered.
"Magic from a potion, I think," said Harry grimly, and then turned his attention to containing the green fumes. His power raced probing through the dungeons, taking the form of small whirlwinds and shying from interaction with Hogwarts's wards, but found no more fumes above a certain level of the stairs. Harry clenched his hands in wordless thanks. The potion had been meant as a trap for the Slytherins, then, and though eventually it would have risen to infect the whole castle, Harry had managed to stop it before it got out of the dungeons. He herded the excess green fumes into the side corridor with his whirlwinds, and contained them behind a powerful ward.
"And the others?" Draco had given him a once-over, and was now moving towards their bedroom door.
Harry followed him swiftly. He heard coughing and sleepy exclamations of protest in the Slytherin common room, but everyone he looked at was alive. They would have to check the bedrooms, though.
Harry felt anger building in him. What was this? A prank? Even if it was only meant to send us to sleep, asphyxiation is no laughing matter. If I find out the Weasley twins had a hand in this, or the Gryffindors did and Connor knew about it—
A hand snatched at him, half-solid and half not. Harry staggered, then turned to catch his breath. Perhaps this had been Peeves' work, and he could confront the poltergeist now. Harry was in a foul mood, enough to rend the ghost apart with his magic.
Instead, he saw Godric Gryffindor, the shade of the Founder bound to an anchor-stone in the school's foundations, hovering anxiously next to him. "You must come!" he insisted. "Minerva's been poisoned by your Head of House, and none of us know enough about potions to counteract it."
Harry stared at him for a long moment. He wanted to protest, to say that Snape would never do anything like that, but he remembered the memory lapses, and he remembered the silver potion held in his hand the day before yesterday when Connor intervened, and he remembered his feeling that the green fumes had come from a potion—
His heart squeezed like a fist breaking an egg.
Please. No. Do not say he has served Voldemort all this time. No.
He rejected that notion wildly. But he also didn't disbelieve Godric, that McGonagall had been poisoned, and whether it was Snape or someone Polyjuiced to look like him, she needed help.
"I'm coming," he promised, and began to run. He heard Draco shout, and then, apparently giving up on shouting, pound right behind him. Godric swooped next to him like an anxious owl. People called questions as he ran through the common room, but Harry did not care.
"What did the potion look like?" he demanded of Godric as they came out into the dungeon corridors.
"Purple," said Godric, unhelpfully. "It smelled foul."
I know—Snape had a purple poison, one that he was playing with while we were still in the Sanctuary—
But again Harry cut himself off from the line of thought that would make him scream if Snape was a traitor. What was important was that he save the Headmistress's life. He did not think there was an antidote to Snape's new poison—certainly he'd never seen Snape brew one—and so he would have to fight it with another means, the only one that worked on all poisons. He held out a hand in the direction of the Potions store cupboard and threw all his magic into the spell he performed next.
"Accio bezoar!"
He heard doors bang and wood tear and stone shred as the bezoar soared towards him. He snatched it out of the air and silently promised Snape he would replace the broken cupboards and smashed potions later.
If there is a later. If he has not betrayed us all.
They ran, then, or at least Harry and Draco ran, with Godric floating beside them. Harry's thoughts rose and fell in waves with his feet even as they ascended the stairs out of the dungeon, even as the gargoyle moved aside for them, even as they leaped up the moving staircase to the Headmistress's office two steps at a time. When he lifted his foot, he thought of Snape, and what his memory lapses meant, and whether he had poisoned McGonagall of his own free will or not; when his foot fell he thought of Draco, stubbornly keeping up with him, and how he could convince him to stay behind and out of danger when Harry went to confront Snape.
Did he lay down that green potion along the corridors for me? Did he mean to insure that I wouldn't be in any position to help McGonagall by the time she started to die?
"Here, here, here!" Godric blew through the door to the office, forgetting for a moment that Harry and Draco were solid and would need to open it.
"Go warn the other professors," Harry commanded the Founder's shade, knocking the door open with a blast of his shoulder and his magic, both. "They'll need to know what happened, and that any of them are in danger if they meet Snape. Besides, there's nothing you can do here."
"I'll go," said Rowena Ravenclaw, stepping around the desk. She had been beside McGonagall, Harry deduced, and hurried towards her. "Since Godric is too worried to concentrate, and Helga is already raising her House." She stretched her arms over her head and dived into the floor like a fish into water.
McGonagall looked horrible. Already her robe was soaked with blood, and Harry thought she had broken ribs from the convulsions. Her eyes were glassy, and she gasped and choked, and her face had broken out into enormous, pus-dripping blisters. Harry was glad again for Lily's training in that moment, which had enabled him to see worse sights and survive them.
He fell to his knees beside her, pried open her jaw, and nearly lost a finger to her teeth as it snapped shut again. He growled, and his magic spread into his hand, lending him the strength to hold her mouth still as he plunged the bezoar down her throat.
He felt the moment when the stone's power counteracted the poison as a start and stutter of steps. Suddenly the purple potion had to hesitate, and flow backward, reluctantly leaving McGonagall's limbs and torso and blood as the waves of healing spread outward from the lodged bezoar. Harry kept his eyes fastened to the fluttering of the pulse in the Headmistress's throat, and saw it slow, then begin to beat strongly once more. The bezoar had won the battle. Harry had to close his eyes and let out a deep breath, then. He had not been sure it would. If any Potions Master could brew a poison strong enough to resist the most powerful magical remedy, it would be Snape.
If he brewed it. If that was him. If he's a traitor.
And now there was no healing to be done, nothing that stood between Harry and finding out exactly what the fuck had happened to Snape.
He sat back, and nodded to Godric. "Fetch Madam Pomfrey. She'll live, but she needs care for her ribs, and for her heart." He remembered Madam Pomfrey arguing with McGonagall once about having a weak heart. The poison would probably have attacked that, seeking to exploit any weakness in its victim's body.
Godric nodded once, and vanished. Harry closed his eyes and reached out, seeking the familiar feeling of Snape's magic. He knew him, he could sense him, he knew him among all the other different, existing blazes of the students' and professors' magic—
Yes, he knew him. And he knew where Snape was, he could feel it, and there wasn't any reason for him to be there at this time of night. Harry swallowed, and stood.
Draco was there, catching his shoulders, staring into his eyes. "Wherever you're going, I'm coming with you," he said.
Harry didn't have time to argue about it right now. If worst came to worst, he would shut Draco out of the confrontation with Snape so that he couldn't be used as a hostage, but he didn't even know that this was Snape, yet.
If the world loves me at all, if fate is not entirely cruel, it will not be.
So Harry merely gave a sharp nod, and then turned, speeding towards the feeling of Snape's magic, speeding towards the Astronomy Tower.
