Chapter Ninety-Four: Triple-Edged Blade: First Cut
Indigena wished she could see, wished she could hear. Her Lord lay motionless in a corner of his throne room, and reached out with his mind to cause havoc and sow destruction in the minds of his enemies. He was moving, at last, and Indigena would have liked to be able to share his vision as his plans began to bear fruit.
But she had her own task, and she was glad of that, too, glad in a different way. She would finally be free of the enforced stillness that had enveloped her. Reading books, crouching in burrows, using parchment as a weapon—it had all taken too long for one part of her soul, despite her understanding that they could have not moved earlier.
She spent one more moment gazing at her dreaming Lord, then closed her eyes and Apparated.
SSSSSSSSSSSS
Severus stood on top of the Astronomy Tower. He had finished enlarging the Dark Mark so that it hung over the school as a malignant, glittering thing. No one in Hogsmeade would miss it, and it might even be visible across the whole of Scotland.
Idly, Severus wondered if Muggles would see it. Then he snorted. Better for them if they do. It will help them prepare for the coming of their new Lord.
The night was full of green fire, outside him and inside him. He had killed one man who had been the target of his wrath and hatred for more than two decades, but there were others. His Lord had promised him the werewolf, had promised him Peter Pettigrew. His Lord was determined to punish the Light for daring to oppose him, and in particular those people who had surrounded and loved Harry Potter and pinned their hopes on him, but hadn't had the sense to give up when he was killed. Lupin and Pettigrew had both loved Harry. They were among the victims whose torture the Dark Lord would draw out, though not as long as Connor Potter's.
Severus stroked his wand, and smiled, while the green light of the Dark Mark traveled over him like the light of shooting stars. That silver potion I invented to poison werewolves would be a good start for Lupin. But I will need something more than that. I wonder if I might find a spell that mimics the full moon, and put myself in control of his transformation? True, none of the ones invented thus far are reliable, but I could create one that was. Or a potion—
"Snape!"
The sound of the hated name made him swing, snarling. The Potter brat was just coming out of the top turn of the staircase, the green light catching red highlights in his dark hair, his eyes wide and staring. He halted with one foot still on the staircase, and gazed at him with a face full of outrage and betrayal.
Severus laughed. "What is it, Potter?" he asked. "Disappointed to know my true allegiance?" He felt the glee in him growing. His Lord would not mind if he taunted the boy, or even maimed him, so long as the maiming did not make the torture Voldemort had planned impossible. "Sad to learn the true identity of the man who killed your Headmaster, who killed your parents, who betrayed and killed your elder brother, after so long?" He cast a lazy curse at the boy, one that would slap him back and cause him only a little less pain than the words could—a weak curse, actually, but one that the boy would have needed trained power, not merely strength, to block.
SSSSSSSSSSSS
Harry was close enough to see Snape's eyes.
Close enough to see the glint of red in them, to see the way they shone with the light of the Dark Mark, to see their darkness tainted by surging malevolence and hatred.
Voldemort has done this to him. Voldemort is in possession of him.
And when Snape turned towards him at his call, Harry could see his left sleeve swing back from the Dark Mark, and he fought the temptation to close his eyes and be sick all over the stones.
The Dark Mark. It hurt him, sometimes, in the Sanctuary. Was Voldemort in his head, trying to control his dreams, even then?
Then Snape began to spout that nonsense about having killed the Headmaster, and his parents, and his elder brother, and Harry could only stare at him in astonishment. He thinks I'm Connor. Whatever delusion Voldemort's put him into, it's deep.
A curse came flying towards him. Harry called up a wandless Protego without even thinking and deflected it off to the side. He was still studying Snape, still thinking. It's as though Voldemort's put him into another reality. I know the Sanctuary dreams allowed him to relive the past, and after a certain point in time he stopped remembering them. Perhaps that was when Voldemort's dreams began. And no wonder we couldn't find anything with the Pensive and Legilimency, if he buried himself that deep. And used the connection through the Dark Mark, too. That's probably how he got around the hole in his magical core. If he sends the magic through pieces of his power lodged in other bodies, he's not pulling it into the center of his body where it can drain out again. He makes the Death Eaters into other bodies for him, hands and feet.
Snape made a low noise. Harry glanced up and met his eyes, and saw confusion peering through the tangled hatred.
And conviction, born perhaps of hope, born perhaps of delusion of his own, came to him as on the wings of a storm.
I can still win him back. Break his delusion, force him to see me, and I may be able to break Voldemort's control.
But it will be delicate. No one can interrupt.
Harry raised wards on the staircase behind him, a wall of solid power that no one would be able to pass or break. He heard Draco's cry, and the impact of a fist on what sounded like wood. Harry didn't glance behind him. He took a step forward, eyes fastened on Snape's face.
"Sir," he said.
SSSSSSSSSSSSS
Severus did not understand. The Potter brat was not that powerful. He knew he was not that powerful. The prophecy said he could not be. Someone stronger was supposed to stand at his shoulder, acting as a guide and a guardian. At one point that would have been Harry, at another Albus, but both of them were dead. Severus could not be facing such power, not here and not now.
Besides, the Potter brat would not have contented himself with deflecting his curse and then speaking to him in a low, soothing voice—calling him by title, even, as if he respected him! Connor Potter would scream and lunge with his wand out, cursing Severus for a filthy traitor all the way.
It was almost as if Harry stood there instead.
But it was not so, because it could not be so. Severus had been awake when he saw Harry die.
He thought.
Memories writhed and twisted in his head. For a moment, his dreaming self, the one called by "Snape" and "sir," fought to awaken. For a moment, he did not know what was falsehood and what was reality.
But then he recalled his hatred. That was real, the one thing he had to cling to, while Harry, when alive, had tried to entice him to his side with false visions of love. Severus knew that no one could ever love him. No one had tried. His Lord cared for him in his own way, and so had his mother, who had taught him the truths of the world, but neither of them loved him.
Cling to the hatred. It is the only reality you know.
"I have no need to listen to you," he told the Potter brat, the dark-haired, hazel-eyed, Potter brat, who stood before him. "I know you are only trying to persuade me back to your side. Albus tried that, too, and it didn't work. I am not of the Light. The Light does not know hate the way I do."
SSSSSSSSS
Hatred. That's it. That's what Voldemort's using to control him, I think. Hatred, and vengeance. He poisoned McGonagall because he thought she was Dumbledore.
And Harry knew how to fight hatred.
"Sir," he repeated softly. "I'm not trying to redeem you. You've done enough to redeem yourself. You chose to accept a child not your own—in fact, the son of one of your worst enemies—into your care. You turned your back on two masters, not just one, to support me, when you really believed in Dumbledore. You gave up, you thought, on any chance of my forgiving you because you believed it was the right thing to do, putting my parents and Dumbledore in prison. How many times have you put yourself in danger, nearly given your life, to save me? And you charged forward on Walpurgis, screaming, for my sake. You are Snape." He licked his lips, because the words that he was to speak next still did not come easily to him, and he might never have said them at all if not for the need to convince Snape by any method possible. "My father."
Snape made a wordless snarling sound. Harry saw him clutching his head.
"You are Potter," were the first clear words that emerged from that silent, rebounding struggle.
"I am not," Harry replied. "I gave up that name. I have not taken another." He thought of a final, possible method he might use to convince Snape, and raised his magic, surging, all around him. As he relaxed the barriers, the jungle came out, the brightness of spring and the heat of summer, the shadows of black jaguars and the coil of snakes. "Sir. Remember. Know me. Did my brother ever have magic like this? And you were one of those who taught me to appreciate it, to acknowledge my own power. Please, sir. Remember. Come home. I love you."
SSSSSSSSSSSSS
The Potter brat—
Who says he is not the Potter brat.
Why would he choose this method of reaching out to Severus? It was strange. The words he spoke were strange. He had never considered Severus a father. Connor Potter was in Gryffindor. That had put a barrier between them if nothing else had. And for the first four years of school he was an annoying shadow of his brother, and for the last two he had been his Lord's enemy. Severus did not know him, could never have known him the way he was speaking of. The appeal was bizarre. It had no chance of convincing him to stay.
Unless—unless—Harry—
No! I saw him die! I helped to kill him myself!
The world spun and rocked and bounded around him, and where he found the strength to say, "You are Potter," in the first place, he could not have said. And then came the even stranger words about Severus teaching him to appreciate his magic, and the infuriating declaration that he loved Severus.
And then came the magic.
Magic like a tidal wave of spring, like the world that might contain love for a person like Severus but called Snape, magic of racing bodies and high pride and sustained courage. Slytherin magic, but magic not like the Dark Lord's, though with twisting threads of familiarity buried in it, as if the Potter brat were a distorted, echoing mirror of the mighty reality.
What is reality?
The world spun, and words were confusing, and memory had abandoned him, but the magic was real. Severus swayed towards the magic as he had not towards even the roaring fire of his Lord's power. It touched some deeper part of him.
No! A lie!
He drew his wand and cast wildly in the direction of the magic, to remind himself that this was an enemy, to make the Potter brat defend himself and drop the strange façade that was working on Severus for no reason he knew. To make him stop the magic.
SSSSSSSSSSS
Harry breathed deeply, his eyes focused on Snape. He could feel his mind streamlining itself, other concerns falling away, from what Draco would say when he dropped the wards to his hope that the green fumes had not hurt his Housemates. What he wanted now, what he wanted before he walked away from the Astronomy Tower, was very simple:
He wanted his father back.
"Remember," he whispered. "You can do it. Remember—"
And then a curse came at him, and Harry, who easily possessed the magic to swallow or deflect it, had a split second to decide what to do.
He dropped his defenses and let it through. A line of blood on his arm. It hurt, but it could have been worse. And when he lifted his head and saw dark eyes staring at him, he knew it had been wise. An enemy would never let someone as dangerous as Snape hurt him. His brother would never have done it. Even if his shield had failed, he would have raised it.
Harry took a deep breath and pulled all his magic back behind him, still retaining its presence so Snape could feel the familiarity, but showing himself unprotected. He held out his hands, palms up.
"You're not him," he said quietly. "You're not the man Voldemort wanted you to be. You're yourself, and I trust you."
Snape's wandless magic came out, surrounding him with a maelstrom of half-glimpsed eyes and snapping crab claws. He took a step forward, and his eyes were crazed. The air around him promised pain, promised death.
Harry held his gaze, and turned his head to bare his throat, but otherwise didn't move. His vision blurred, so hard was his heart pounding, and Draco would have said he was insane. But Draco was not here. It was his choice, to take the risk, to trust.
SSSSSSSSSS
Contradictions ran around inside his head, smashing themselves together, sending shrapnel and bouncing stones down to rain on the unprotected meat of his mind.
Potter did not have magic like that. Harry was the only one who had magic like that.
Potters do not surrender. No son of James Potter would show himself that submissive. But a Slytherin trying to win out over a stronger opponent might. Harry would trust me like this.
This is—I saw him die! I saw him die! I saw him die!
My name is Severus!
His magic rose around him, responsive to his surging temper, ready to rend and rip apart if he could only decide what he wanted to rip apart.
"You're yourself," said the boy whose eyes were hazel, whose eyes were green, whose eyes were pits into endless blackness, "and I trust you." He bowed his head and tilted his throat towards Severus.
His eyes flamed green in the light, green in the light of the Dark Mark, green in and of themselves, green as Lily Potter's eyes.
And he rose and heaved himself forward from the back of his mind, Snape overtaking Severus, fighting madly against the dreams and the sweet pull of the hatred and the blaze in his left arm, the Dark Mark pulling on him to go back to his Lord, tugging him towards the vows he had sworn so long ago.
I am more than a Mark. I am more than a promise.
I am more than the people I hate.
SSSSSSSSSSSS
Harry saw the struggle begin in earnest. He knew it was probably similar to the struggle Sirius had waged in third year to take his body back from Voldemort for a few critical moments, but then he'd had Regulus, with his connection to them both, to tell him what was happening. This time, he would have no connection like that—
Unless he forged one.
He plunged forward and put his hands on either side of Snape's head, holding it still. It didn't seem to matter much. This battle was all internal. His dark eyes stared blankly forward.
Harry plunged forward again, using Legilimency to ride like a wind into the confused, conflicted mass of Snape's mind.
The silver Occlumency pools were bubbling, hung over by a dark miasma. Harry shivered. He recognized the miasma. It was Snape's loathing, his revenge impulse, the hook that Voldemort had used to get his hands on his soul. Harry knew how powerful that was. It had showed up even after Snape had supposedly loved him too much to let it take over, when he had fed James the insanity potion in fourth year. It was not an enemy to be lightly defeated.
But now the moment came when he had to choose between losing that impulse towards revenge and losing Harry. He'd never had to do that before. Even the moment of the insanity potion was not test enough, because Harry had still loved him and still testified at his trial.
Harry could do little but hover and watch in silence as Snape fought. It had to be his doing. If Harry tried to join in, he would be taking over Snape's free will, and he would never know for certain if perhaps Voldemort's hook remained in Snape's mind, only buried, not removed.
SSSSSSSSSSSSS
He was Snape, the Potions Master who hated teaching, the Dark wizard who had given too much of his life to the cause of the Light, the father of an adopted son.
He was Severus, the scorned son of Eileen Prince, the favored servant of the Dark Lord, the father of potions that poisoned and killed.
Names for himself rolled through his head, adding weight to either side.
Hater of werewolves.
Pupil of Albus Dumbledore.
Deputy Headmaster.
Victim of the Marauders.
Death Eater.
Foe of James Potter.
Guardian of Harry James vates, by order of the Ministry.
Friend of Regulus.
Occlumens.
Changer of desires.
Survivor.
Slytherin.
The hatred pulled against the love, the revenge against the impulse to live life as he would, and Snape/Severus knew they were both strong in him, both too strong to simply be defeated. If he turned against either, then he would lose a part of himself. Voldemort would have him, or Harry would.
No. I will have myself.
And that decided him. Snape set his shoulder against Severus and pulled with all his might towards love.
He felt some of the webs in his mind rip and part, and immense pain filled his head as he tore open an Occlumency wound, not nearly as broad as those Harry had sustained in second year, but far deeper. He drained and bailed the foul water, forcing it from him, forbidding himself to care more about hatred of his enemies than he did about protecting Harry.
He turned his Legilimency on himself, as Harry had done once at Godric's Hollow, and he hacked and he burned and he tore and he screamed.
He had sacrificed part of himself, hurt himself so badly there was no telling right now how much he had lost. But the hatred had been Voldemort's hold on him, even more than the Dark Mark. All the dreams of himself as Severus, which he could now remember, had been focused on it, had encouraged it, had told him to seek vengeance. And as he rejected them, so he destroyed Voldemort's hold.
And then he was free, and he could feel Harry's hands gripping either side of his face, and he opened his eyes and stared straight at his son.
SSSSSSSSSSSS
Harry screamed like a hawk when he felt what Snape was doing. Yes, it hurt, yes, he had lost some parts of himself and would never be the same, but he was free. Harry lunged forward when his eyes opened and slid his arms around him, holding him fiercely. For the first time in his life, he thought he might know what it was like to have a father.
"Harry," Snape whispered, and wrapped his arms tentatively around him.
Harry opened his mouth to answer, and then screamed as his scar exploded into pain. Blood drowned his eyes. He could feel Voldemort ripping open the old link between them, sinking claws into his forehead, laughing triumphantly, until all Harry could hear was the high, cold whirlwind of his joy.
Did you think that was the only knife I had prepared for you, my heir? Hardly. It was a distraction, and always meant to fail, though it would have been wonderful had it succeeded. Now see what you have failed to prevent in your concern with your father!
And visions slammed into him, an avalanche of despair.
