Chapter 55: Disclosures

Disclosures

The feeling that he might just pass out hit him when she kissed him back, putting her arms around him tightly.

Then a minute after it had begun, she pulled back abruptly, glared at him, and slapped him with amazing strength clear across his shocked and deprived face.

He blinked a few times, and he almost began wondering what had happened, when she smiled at him slightly with her cheeks still flushed, and jumped back against him into the most furious hug he was sure he had ever received.

"I'm so sorry! It's not pathetic, it's not pathetic at all," came her muffled voice from against his chest.

"Don't be, you have no idea how content I am right now. We aren't even yet anyway. You can still yell at me and slap me a few times to make up for how horrible I was to you."

She was trembling against him, and he was sure that she was trying to come to terms with the prophecy. She did not even know all of it, and she was overwhelmed.

On the other hand, he felt a strange sort of release of negative emotion and an influx of overwhelming positive emotion. Ever since he had spoken to Merlin the last time, he had felt his emotions acutely and they were coming on stronger. Just like Merlin had said they would.

"No wonder you did not want to talk about it.I feel so badly for giving up! For saying all those horrible things to you."

"It's nothing. I deserved everything. I was not myself, and I treated everyone badly. I did a lot of things that I should not have done. Now I have to make up for them. I have to make up for an entire six months lost."

She shook her head, "How could he have given that case to you? How could they just expect you to be fine afterwards?" Her indignation showed on her face.

"It was not anyone's fault about the case. Because I have seen it, I can begin making plans for the future, so that I am prepared. As to expecting me to be fine - I don't think anyone feeling expected me to be fine, they just expected me to continue moving forward. Everyone tried to help in their own way, but I am a certain way and I will readily admit that I need to work things out on own and in my own time. I suppose I should also admit that I am very stubborn too, that doesn't help either."

"You are very stubborn, and you can sometime say and do a lot of hurtful things that probably made it difficult for people to understand you and help you." Her academic tone was coming out again.

"I have my faults," he paused for a second before saying, "and I inherited a lot of them. So, you can rightfully pass some blame on there."

She smiled lightly, she had forgotten how he had always used to make her smile. Underneath his reserved, proper exterior, he really was warm and sarcastically funny. It made her feel special to know that this was the person inside of him that he did not often let others see. She could almost feel how unguarded he was being with her.

"I will gladly pass the blame onto Professor Snape for some of those faults. Not only did he model them, but it is also in your genetic make- up," she giggled.

"Despite his temper, Hermione, he is not a bad person," he replied more seriously.

"I'm sorry," she said hastily, "I shouldn't say that about your family."

"After how he must act, I do not blame your opinions on you. If that makes any sense. Just know that he does act that way for a reason and it is a very good one. If you knew him away from all of this, I think that you would like him."

She blinked her eyes a few times, "How d'you figure?"

Sage's eyebrow arched, "We are very much alike, temper and all. If you like me, you would like him as well."

Her blank stare told him that there was something she was thinking about deeply, and she certainly was not sharing it.

"What is it," he asked gently.

She exhaled and looked into his blue eyes, "When Professor Moody asked you if your Uncle had ever used the Unforgiveables on you-." She stopped, looking very uncomfortable.

He frowned, "Do you want to know if he has ever hurt me? Is that what is bothering you?"

Biting her lip, she nodded, not sure if she wanted to know the answer.

"Because of what you have seen, there is not a simple answer, because if I gave you the simple answer, you would not believe me." He stopped and looked at her before continuing, "He's hit me, you know that, but he has never done so in a way that I would think is inappropriate. I have done a lot of things, a lot, nothing he tried to do worked. He grounded me, he gave me detention, he made me do horrible amounts of book work, and he made me do lots of menial work too. When you run out of option, you tend to get desperate, and that's what you saw, both times. He does not want me to make any mistakes that will cost me or anyone that I care about their lives."

"But you were bleeding," she said anxiously. Clearly, she did not believe him.

"Hermione, every time I have a vision I go under the worst amount of pain you could ever imagine. It's like the Cruciatus, and it can last for long periods of time. It takes a lot to hurt me because I am very used to pain. None of it is even comparable. It plays more on your mind that anything else. Believe me."

"I don't know, Sage. I cannot help what I feel and what I have seen and what I know of other families. It is not a common thing."

Sage's brow arched, his tone was slightly harsher but not without grace, "You make assumptions then, broad assumptions. There are many things that you do know, Hermione, and that is what feeds my interest in you. But, you do not know about what you speak about because you are muggle-born. It is much, much more common that you think it is in the wizarding world, especially among more traditional families."

"I'm not convinced," she answered stubbornly.

"Hermione, my mind never even dreamed up exactly how being here with you would feel. Not even the mirror. I feel like this horrible weight is gone. It is due to both my Uncle and you." He closed his arms around her more. "He may not show it in any way that you can see, but he would place my life above his."

"What do you mean, the mirror? You saw me in a mirror?"

"The Mirror of Desire, have you heard of it?"

"Yes, of course. Harry saw his parents in it."

Sage smiled slightly, having mixed feelings about the mirror.

"I do not see my desires in the mirror, I am drawn into them. I experience them. The strangest thing happened when the headmaster made me look into it. I was playing Quidditch with my Father and Uncle. I had children in another, five boys. But it was not any of those that frightened me, it was the last one. We were laying on the floor in front of a fire reading, and you were propped up against my stomach. We kissed, and I heard all of these things inside of my head, felt all strange like I never had before, and all sorts of emotions were coursing through me. When I jolted out of the mirror, they didn't go away. They were still there with me, and that was when I knew that I had been hiding them from myself all along. Hiding them for so many reasons."

She frowned at him, "Why?"

"I did not want you to get hurt. I knew that in the future Voldemort could try to get to me through you, and I did not want you involved. On top of that, I knew that I would very likely die before I was of any significant age, and I could not do that to you either. So I rationalized everything. In my mind's eye, I am not a pretty prize as an interest, you see. I am sarcastic, secretive, average looking, and I have a horrid temper. So, I figured you would be much better off without me, and I could do without you regardless of whether I liked you or not. I tried to make all those decisions for you, to protect you, when I should have let you make those decisions about your well being for yourself."

She goggled at him a bit, "Erm, you have not noticed as you are a boy and all, and boys are pretty much stupid when it comes to are very attractive, very. In fact, if Parvati and Lavender were to rank cute boys, you would be in the top five, I am convinced."

It was Sage's turn to goggle slightly, "Really now?"

"Actually, I am quite sure that Lavender has had the most awful crush on you, but she is absolutely mortified of you and the Professor!"

Sage snorted, and replied sarcastically, "I shall have to inform my Uncle that he is cramping my style."

"Not so sure you want me now?" She asked, playfully, stepping back away from him.

"Nope, I'm sure. The mirror doesn't lie. Am I really that good-looking?" He questioned again, still looking unconvinced. "I don't see it. I have this abominably long nose, I'm rather thin, and I have girly eyelashes."

"Well, you do have rather long eyelashes but they bring out your stunning blue eyes. and you voice is anything but girly. You most assuredly have the best male voice. And you are not thin, you are lean. And your nose is aristocratic, not long," she answered, appraising him as she went.

"Aristocratic? That's loads better. That's just a fancy way of saying large," he said, feeling his nose with his thumb and forefinger.

"You have very angular features, you nose would look ridiculous if it were smaller!"

"I suppose."

"Are you through being vain now?"

"Yes, why?"

"Because I wanted to get back to some other more important things, such as all those decisions you tried to make for me. I think I'd like to make them for myself."

"I figured that you would," he answered, giving her a mocking half-smile.

"Are you always this much of a handful?" she asked him, raising an eyebrow.

"Funny," he replied, sitting down on the bed, "Uncle Severus made a similar statement not more than a week ago. Everybody misses how quiet the other Sage was, apparently."

She sat down next to him, "I was only joking. I have some questions for you, would you mind if I asked them. If there are some you do not want to answer, you do not have to. I'll understand, as you have already told me a lot today."

He shrugged and laid back on the bed, hooking his hands behind his head, his legs still hanging over the side as if he were sitting.

"I don't mind, but I don't know what you are going to ask, so I don't know if I can answer everything."

She nodded, "So, this Prophecy is definitely about you? And you are related to those two people and Merlin?"

His brow furrowed in thought, "We have not made the linkage back to Merlin's line, but the headmaster is working on it, I believe, so it is almost a certainty that it is about me. I am the Magi, and there has not been more than one Magi at a time so long as history can recall. I am also the last Snape, which is the pureblood line descended down from the man called Nag."

"Well, what about deviations from the last name. As in a daughter who is a Snape marries and has children, could they not be descendants as well?"

"They could, but for one very large problem. Never has there been a female child born to a Snape, they have been all male."

"All male, but that seems rather impossible. How could that be?" She asked, more to herself than to Sage.

"Perhaps this is too much at once," he said, flatly, unsure of how she would respond to the truth about that.

She looked at him curiously, "You can tell me as much or as little as you want, Sage. I'd like to understand what you are going through, though."

"You are familiar with Egyptian Gods, are you not?"

"Yes, somewhat."

He sighed loudly and stared up at her from his position laying on the bed.

"Amun Ra, was later said to be an Egyptian God, but in the time before times, he was a man, a Pharoah. When Ra was very young, a shrewd boy of immense magical knowledge and power discovered that Ra, then only the heir, was a Magi. The shrewd boy's name is no longer known, only that he came to be known as Nag. Since he was four years old, Nag was trained as a Magi, because they thought that he was one, but he was not. To make a long story very short, he was jealous of Ra's powers, and he believed that the secret to being a Magi was in the blood of strong, pureblooded wizards. Nag began drinking blood."

"He was a Vampyre!" Hermione nearly screeched.

Sage cringed, now he certainly did not want to finish, but he was well beyond a point where he could stop.

"No, he became a Vampyre. He was the first of a certain breed of Vampyre. Some members of his cult also turned into drinkers of blood, spawning other types of Vampyres, some that are more common today."

"Wait." She said, her face turning slightly pale, "You are the last of his line," her voice dropped in pitch, "You are a Vampyre."

"I am not 'a' Vampyre. I am 'part' Vampyre, thousands of years removed. However, some of what Nag wished to accomplish, he did accomplish. He did gain certain powers that he passed on genetically to his family members. In fact, his gene structure completely changed and is distinct from normal gene structure. From what can be ascertained, our DNA does not undergo mitosis the same way that yours would during reproducation. There is not a 50/50 share, but instead the male's genes completely overwhelm the female's genes-."

"Perpetuating genetic similarity and the transmission of certain rare magical traits! It is the ultimate ploy to keep the bloodline all happened from drinking blood?" She paused for a brief second and looked at him, "You don't drink blood, do you?"

"Gods no!"

"But that is why the children are all male, because males are preferrable to females? Is that why you and the Professor have the same voice and the same build?"

"The same voice? Are you now telling me that my Uncle has an attractive voice too!"

Hermione blushed.

Severus glared at Sage with his intense black eyes, wondering what had inspired this rather annoying change in his nephew. Finally having had enough, he slammed the book he was reading down on the table and stood up.

"Sage, what is the meaning of this asinine behavior?! You have been humming, HUMMING, for the last hour and everytime I say anything to you, you bite the inside of your mouth to keep yourself from laughing. Pray tell me, what the bloody hell is going on with you that you are acting so strangely."

Succombing to his Uncle's statement, Sage bit down on the corner of his lip to hold his chuckle, before answering.

"I'm sorry, sir. I didn't mean to be rude. I'm just in a good mood is all."

"That absolutely foolish grin on your face tells me otherwise. Good mood indeed, since when have you started having good moods?"

"Since yesterday perhaps," he answered.

"Yesterday? And what happened yesterday?"

Severus was going to find out what he wanted to know even if he had to take miles worth of back roads to get there.