The Truth About Truth

The television was on, but the living room was in darkness. Screen-light splashed into the shadows around the walls and furnishings from an old, black and white Christmas film, flickering across the faces of Snape and Servius who were staring blankly from their seats at opposite ends of the sofa. Servius held a near-empty can of Coke in one hand, and the remote control in the other. He had muted the movie for now, but wanted the TV left on, an electronic third-party, and a life-line to Muggledom, his evidence of a life that he recognised, and the last place his life had been normal.

But he'd never been normal. It was the witch in her.

And the wizard in him.

Behind him, propped against the wall, was his Cerberus Realm, returned to its normal size after Snape had shrunk it for carrying. After offering Servius the photo, this was the next conciliatory gesture Snape had made, also rejected. Servius had insisted on mind-numbing television, and raiding the pantry for crisps and pop, which Snape had permitted.

It was now two o'clock in the morning, and while Servius' eyelids felt like lead, the adrenaline in his system kept his nerves on edge and every plummet into sleep there on the sofa lasted only seconds. It was worse than staying awake. He forced himself upright, put the can of Coke on the side-table and glanced at Snape.

"Are you watching this?" his father asked quietly.

"No."

"Then turn it off. It hurts my eyes."

"I'll change the channel," said Servius, raising the remote.

"Turn it off I said."

"This is my house!"

A diffusing moment of silence, then Snape replied, "We're not staying here."

"You're not."

"They're not expecting you back, Servius. Your life is at Hogwarts now. You're a wizard."

Servius stared at the screen and shook his head slightly. "I don't want to be a wizard."

"After two days of being a Muggle again you'll want your wand and your broom and your owl and your Warlock cloak," said Snape, in a sterner voice. He then added meaningfully, "And your friends, no doubt."

Servius flashed his eyes at him, then retorted: "But I don't want you. And I hate you more than I like any of those things. I hate you so much I – I don't even know why Mum liked you! You make me think that Mum must've been dumb! She was smart and pretty, she could have had any man – why did she pick you? No wonder Ma and Pa don't want me anymore."

Snape looked genuinely stung and narrowed his eyes, then too swiftly for Servius to react, he'd flicked his wand and the TV blinked off. When Servius deliberately turned it back on again, Snape confiscated the remote. Servius launched after it, and there was a scuffle on the sofa during which Servius repeatedly attempted to beat Snape about the head and Snape fended him off, finally zapping him with the mouse-obliterating spell and Servius collapsed back on the sofa with a yell of pain.

"And there you have it," snapped Snape, sitting upright. "Back to day one! We've made no progress at all. In fact worse, because now we're stranded together!"

"It is worse than day one!" shouted Servius. "I didn't know then that you'd killed my mother!"

"I didn't kill her!"

"That man said you all killed her! Up in the ceiling!"

"She wasn't in the ceiling. Servius, I promise, when you're older I'll tell you, but you're too young, you can't understand -,"

"I can! You were only a few years older than me when you became a DE. Did you kill people then as well?"

A lamp was suddenly switched on, and in the soft light Snape stared at him. "This. And Lily. Who have you been talking to?"

"Lily? So that was her name," Servius curled up with his arms wrapped around his knees. "I didn't like her at first, but now I can see why she did what she did. She was a Mudblood too, and she made the right choice. I wish Mum had."

Dark, dangerous thunderclouds crossed Snape's face. "How do you know these things, Servius? Tell me."

Servius hesitated, but Snape's expression made him a little nervous. "Your diaries. Your stupid diaries. I read them."

Utterly confused, then outraged, then confused again, Snape at last shouted: "My diaries? Where? How?"

"I didn't know they were yours."

"Where are they?"

"In my trunk. I've been reading them all year."

"Where did you find them? I thought they were lost -,"

"They were behind a brick in the wall of the boy's dorm when it was in the archive. There was a moth and it -,"

"A moth?"

"Yeah, a moth. I was trying to catch it and I bumped the brick and behind it were your diaries."

Snape rose slowly, stunned, and ran a hand over his face. "A moth – surely not." Then he faced Servius again, his eyes incandescent. "Are you in the habit of reading a stranger's private diaries?"

"No! God, people's diaries are boring! But they were from the seventies, so I figured the kid had long gone and…anyway…I liked all the hexing and fighting with those Ms. When I found out they'd been written by you…I wish like anything I hadn't. Why's the moth so important?"

Snape glared at him, but then a grunt of cynical laugher rocked its way up. "Merlin, if I'd known then where those diaries would end up. Your mother's Patronus was a moth. It will be a coincidence only."

"Her Patronus?" Servius had heard about them, Draco's scorpion the first he'd seen.

Snape nodded. "I sometimes feel…like your mother is not far away."

Servius regarded him, like something out of the Addams Family, odd and out of place here in his grandmother's faux leather and chintz living room. But he was all too real. "Me too," he murmured. "Did her moth want me to find your diaries?"

Snape was faraway in thought, absently to-ing and fro-ing the length of the room as he said, "I had them with me the day we had our first conversation. I put them away, in a lockbox, in the archive. If it was her…she wanted you to find them."

"Well you can have them back now."

Snape looked forbidding. "And I'll thank you not to reveal their existence to anybody. I mean…anybody. If I had thought they had fallen into your hands any other way, I would be furious with you."

"I didn't even know they were yours. Why did you call yourself the Half-Blood Prince anyway?"

Snape halted and clasped his hands behind his back. "No doubt you formed something of an impression of my adolescent self. Nothing more than posturing and self-delusion. I am a half-blood as you know since your grandfather was a Muggle. My mother's maiden-name was Prince. I thought I was terribly clever."

Servius snorted laughter and Snape suppressed a smile. "It rather fell short as a pseudonym when half of Slytherin discovered it. Who told you? Draco? Mr Malfoy?"

"Draco." In this brief interlude of civility, Servius asked, "Are you going to show me your Dark Mark?"

Snape's frown was so quick it resembled more a wince. He seemed about to refuse, but then brought his left arm up and undid the buttons on his coat sleeve. Servius watched with a frown of his own as Snape then drew up the shirt sleeve and extended his wrist towards him.

Servius stared, feeling almost fearful. The skull and the snake were there, faded but still identifiable. He was rather glad it didn't have that sinister blackness of Rabastan's. "Did it hurt?" Servius asked, imagining Snape in a chair at a tattoo parlour.

"Yes."

"What does it mean?"

"It meant I belonged to the Dark Lord. It also signified rank. And it was a means of…communicating."

Snape hastened to pull down his sleeve and re-button it, clearly uncomfortable. "It can't be removed. Not even now."

"But I thought…when you said you fought in the war, where you got your scar on your neck, you said you wanted to be with Mum and me – I thought you were with the good guys -,"

"I was," said Snape, but wearily, and resumed his seat on the sofa. He rested his elbows on his knees and spoke to the floor. "It is difficult to explain, Servius. But there were – there are - reasons for everything. Involved, often complicated reasons, which, I very much hope, will one day make sense. For now, I just need you to know this much: your mother died for us. For you. To save you, to spare me." He took a shuddery breath. "When it happened, I was being subjected to a test by the Dark Lord, he was testing my loyalty to him and he was right to be suspicious – my allegiance was not to him, but I presumed if I passed his test then your mother would be returned to the cell where he was holding the prisoners. But I was wrong. Before I could save her, she was killed. She was killed for telling the truth."

Servius listened and watched, trying to understand. "You were pretending to this Dark Lord guy?"

Snape nodded. "Yes. Pretending."

"So he knew you loved Mum and killed her in front of you?"

"He didn't know, he was seeking a reaction because he suspected it. So I didn't react."

"Why weren't you just honest?"

"I wasn't allowed to love a Muggleborn and be a Death Eater. It didn't matter to me that she was a Muggleborn, when you fall in love, those things aren't important anymore. Your mother was every bit a witch. But if the Dark Lord had known about us, he would have killed her. I thought hiding that truth might save her life. I took great steps to keep the truth from him."

When Snape looked up at him, Servius glanced away, but said: "The truth she told: was it in the newspaper? In her files? Professor Oosthuizen explained it to me, what the article meant, what Mum was trying to warn them about."

Snape nodded. "She was that most unlikely, and brilliant, of combinations: a witch who loved science. Magic and science are just opposite sides of the same coin. She tried to understand the whole coin. She believed that if science proved a truth, then the world must know about it, that progress came when humans removed the blinkers of deception or ignorance. What she failed to grasp is the power religion and politics play in determining whether people want to hear the truth." Snape frowned hard and blinked twice. "Hers was the moth that flew into the flame."

The words, his father's deep, resonating voice, washed over Servius like a wave and he found himself sinking into an overwhelming fatigue, unable to swim to the surface. He closed his eyes to visions of moths, and his whole body tremored a little, desperate for the oblivion of sleep.

Snape, now silent, saw him lie down on the cushions of the sofa and observed that in less than a minute the boy was gone. He glanced about and found a throw on the arm of the sofa which he unfolded and placed over Servius, then sat at the boy's feet and carefully removed one boot then the other. He was wearing odd socks: one was plain, the other patterned with footballs, both had holes in them. And Snape's heart was gripped in a constriction of love so intense it almost hurt; it vibrated throughout him. He placed Servius's feet in his lap, wrapped his hands around them, and then lay his head back against the sofa to sleep as well.

It didn't help Servius' jaded perception of Hogwarts that their evening return to the near-empty, cold and dark castle was prefaced by a walk up the hill from the Gates in freezing rain. As so often happened this time of year, the path became slippery and his boots were wet and covered in mud by the time they reached the oak front doors.

He was in a dark, grim mood. The dialogue with his father had not improved matters. The truth about truth was that it wasn't always an answer, it had robbed him of any delusions, any blissful ignorance. The stark reality he was left with was as wretched as being omitted. The truth hadn't brought his mother back, it hadn't sent him home and it made him feel more bleakly alone than ever in his life.

The man who would be his father was now more dimensional, but not in ways that bridged the gap. He was a frequenter of the unprincipled path, sinewy like a snake, his eyes detected more shades of grey than the average person. His father, he realised, had never even opened the rule book, let alone read it. He was a strict adherent to his own moral compass, and that was as ambiguous as circumstances required it. His only true north was the objective at hand at the time, even if the objective superseded his own self-interest, and his father was prepared to consider any and all means of reaching it.

But that he loved his mother, Servius no longer doubted, and that singular fact was like a distant star in a black sky. But it only brought into relief the perplexing matter of his absence while Servius was still young. And a hundred times the question rose to his lips, and a hundred more times he swallowed it back down, too weary now to pull at more threads, too circumspect about what further revelations may do to this fragile state of play. He and his lone parent were civil enough that business could be got done, and that was better than nothing.

In the Entrance Hall, Snape turned to a soaked Servius lagging behind, his passage marked by mud and rain. It was Boxing Day, even the elves were gone, and Servius looked about the cavernous room and wondered what on earth he was supposed to do with himself.

"You should have a hot bath," Snape said, reading Servius with ease. He then tapped his foot in a slightly agitated fashion and added, "You are welcome to stop by my quarters. If it suits."

Servius looked at him and shrugged, and Snape immediately turned heel and stalked away in the direction of the dungeons. He didn't look back. Servius waited until he was out of sight, and then he too headed for the dungeons, resigning himself to the Slytherin Common Room.

When he entered, dragging his trunk behind him with one hand and his broom in the other, he was pleasantly surprised to find the room fully lit and warm, with a huge fire burning in the grate. Two sixth-years were on the sofa playing cards and they afforded him a cursory welcome when he entered, but it was the third person seated in the armchair who gave him a shocked reason to feel glad he was back.

Amelie.

She had her legs crossed on the chair, and slowly lowered the large book she was reading into her lap when she realised who had appeared. She held his gaze and smiled covertly, and then raised her book again.

With a new lightness of step, Servius bolted up the stairs to his dorm and shower, his perceptions of an echoey castle and empty hours suddenly switching from a curse to a blessing.

For a few days, Servius became the master of living entirely in the present. He blocked his mind to past or future; avoided Snape – who had become rather secluded himself – and pretended he was a boy on a strange holiday in a foreign land, with only an odd, German girl for company, and that since he had idle hands, he was more than willing to do the devil's bidding.

He and Amelie explored the castle from top to bottom, deliberately testing their geographic boundaries and mentally mapping all the secret and forbidden places. They played one-a-side Quidditch and released several snitches, losing all of them. They pulled tail hair from two heavily-pregnant Unicorn mare's in confinement in Hagrid's enclosures and tried to make their own wands. They raced their owls, and they hid outside the Gryffindor common room and eves-dropped on the students coming and going, attempting to hear the password for the Fat Lady.

Then one cold afternoon, eating pumpkin pasties and shortbread as they walked the edge of the Forbidden Forest, they spied, in the distance, Longbottom leaving his quarters. Unlike the other teachers, the Herbology Professor had rooms that were in close proximity to the glasshouses and so opened directly to the grounds. They saw him draw his door shut, lift the hood of his cloak over his head and steal away slightly down a slope and then into the Forest.

"I bet I know where he's going," mumbled Amelie around her mouthful. "Off to annoy the Centaurs."

"Hopefully they'll get him properly this time. What's in that building, do you think? The one with all the…moths?"

Amelie squinted at him. "Why did you say it like that? Moths?"

He shook his head rapidly. "Nothing. But it was weird, don't you think? All those moths like that?"

"Definitely strange. But it is the Forbidden Forest. In Germany, there is one night every ten years when thousands of salamanders are coming together in a mountain pool. It is certainly strange. My mother took me to see it. She made me get in the pool."

Servius stared at her, horrified, and she shrugged. "It's a witch thing."

"Do you think we should follow Lamebottom?"

"No. I have a better idea…" she wiped the crumbs away from her face and then held his eyes. "Let's search his room for clues."

"What? No! Clues about what?"

"What he's looking for! Why he keeps going into the Forest!"

"And get caught? Caught by Lamebottom, who told me my 'time is coming'? Are you crackers? We'll cop a flower pot!"

She flipped her plait and regarded him sidelong. "Fine. Then we get expelled. But if you want, you wait outside and keep…you know…watch."

"Keep a look out?"

"Ja. Quick!"

Before he could stop her, she'd raced across the frost-burned grass to the door to Longbottom's quarters and it was all he could do to keep up. But, as he'd hopefully predicted, the door was tightly locked and her standard unlocking charms were having no effect.

"There, you see -," he began, but she held up her hand to make him stand back, then lifting her wand at the ready, she appeared to search the ground at her feet.

"What are you doing?"

She waved her wand and said clearly: "Umbra Vivit!" and Servius watched, amazed, as the shadow at her feet elongated and began moving independently. She tucked her wand away, then covered her eyes with her hands. "Under the door, go inside," she commanded, and her shadow immediately slipped away through the crack into Longbottom's rooms.

"I can see in his room," she murmured to Servius, and moved her head slightly as though looking around. "I can't hold anything but I can see. My shadow is seeing for me."

Astonished, Servius almost forgot it was his job to keep a lookout. He glanced over his shoulder but they still seemed to be alone. "What's in there?"

"Ugh. It is messy. There is an ugly mask, but it has things on it I can't move. Papus, he doesn't throw anything – Ah! Super! A map! But it's dark – wait…"

There was a sudden eruption of ravens from the Forbidden Forest, cawing and black, spilling into the sky and Servius' heart lurched.

"Wh-what's on the map?"

"The Forest, the whole forest. In sections, what is it called? With the squares..?"

"A grid?"

"Ja! A grid. And there he has put a circle, I think that is where the Centaurs are…he has put words…they are 'tomb'. And there is a calendar of the moon, a Mondkalender."

"So it's a tomb?"

"What…else…there is another room…Mist! I can't get in it unless…I think there are boots in there…"

"You should probably call out your…your shadow," murmured Servius, scanning the Forest edge again.

"Oh! What's this!" she cocked her head to and fro, palms still covering her eyes. "Professor Snape – your father – in the newspapers. Missing…Death Eaters captured, it says. My father said your father was hiding after the war. He says Durmstrang knew where he was. Why does Longbottom have all these newspapers?"

Servius looked up and saw clouds scudding towards the pale, remote sun. "Amelie – what happens to your shadow if the sun is blocked?"

"That is bad. It is lost."

"Then get it out now!"

"Umbra Venire!" she uttered hastily after grappling for her wand. Servius saw her shadow reconnect to her feet before moments later disappearing as the clouds covered over. She grinned. "Phew, ja? Exciting!"

Servius had already started walking briskly away from Longbottom's rooms. He didn't want to be anywhere in the vicinity, and the knowledge that he kept newspaper reports about his father just added to his misgivings. It had all the hallmarks of a vendetta. Draco had told him Longbottom had been a student of his father, and seemed flabbergasted by Servius' descriptions of him. "Well he's certainly changed," had been Draco's somewhat dismissive observation. "Maybe that's what being an Auror does to you. He was always a bumbling idiot when I knew him."

But Longbottom had a Dark Mark – didn't that make him a Death Eater? Didn't Draco know he was a Death Eater? Wasn't he supposed to be on the same side as his father? How had he become an Auror? Why wasn't he in Azkaban?

And why had his father been in hiding? Was that why he hadn't come to visit?

"Are you okay?" Amelie panted, jogging to keep up. "Was gibt?"

Servius slowed but didn't answer immediately, wanting, briefly, to be alone, to sort through his whirling thoughts in private. "I don't understand…," he muttered, "who Longbottom is. He seems to be different people. When he was a student here, he was supposed to have been a bit of a numpty. But Professor McGonagall said he was a hero in the war. And now he's Head of House for Gryffindor, but he's threatening me and keeping creepy newspaper articles about my father and sneaking around in the Forbidden Forest! Who is that guy?"

"That's what I'm trying to find out!" declared Amelie, smiling. "I can tell you that he isn't very tidy. Why is he threatening you?"

"I don't know. I just get the feeling that whatever he's looking for, once he gets it, then it will all come out."

"Whatever he's looking for is in that tomb, is what I am thinking. The tomb of the moths. You should get it first."

Servius drew to a standstill and turned to face Amelie, he looked closely into her pale blue eyes but his thoughts were back at Briggside. "The tomb of the moths," he murmured. Your mother's Patronus was a moth. I sometimes feel…like your mother is not far away. "We need to go there," he said, zeroing in. "We need to go to the tomb."

Amelie frowned and nodded. "Yes. I think so. But there is something we must do first."

The next day was raining again and by mid-morning the scattering of students at Hogwarts ventured away from their Common Rooms to find distraction and amusement. Two lonely Gryffindors circled around and around the Quidditch pitch like bluebottles in a jar, a group of Hufflepuffs took turns to transfigure a candlestick and some Ravenclaws teamed up with some Slytherins to find the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets.

But Servius and Amelie had plans of an altogether different magnitude. They were rugged up in boots and coats, had packed their rucksacks with food, and had their wands securely pocketed. They left the Common Room together and as they were about to ascend the dungeon steps, they heard a door close behind them. "Where are you two sneaking off to?"

It was Snape, leaving his office. He deftly slipped away his wand as he strode towards them. "This looks decidedly…clandestine. What are your intentions? Or rather, schemes, if I'm not mistaken?"

"No. Nothing," said Servius, glancing at Amelie. "No schemes."

"You are going…out?"

"We've been in all day. Thought, maybe, a walk. Some fresh air."

"It's pouring."

"I like the rain," said Amelie.

Snape's eyes darted between the pair. Then he said, "Servius, I remind you, your last disappearing act cost you at least eight of your nine lives. I can't save you. If you attempt something similar, you will be at the mercy of the Headmistress."

Amelie then looked at Servius with something of a hopeful expression and Snape narrowed his eyes at her. "Does your father know of your whereabouts?"

"Yes, sir."

"I shall inform him nevertheless. Be back in time for dinner."

The pair nodded and quickly ran up the stairs, making their exit via the front door, out into the rain without looking behind them and before Snape wisely thought better of it. They raised their raincoat hoods, then Servius said, "This way!" and led Amelie down the bank towards the Whomping Willow.

The tree twitched noticeably at their arrival and Servius grabbed Amelie's arm before she got too close and they paused a few metres away to observe. When there were no further movements, and taking a much stealthier approach, Servius held Amelie's hand and guided her to the re-sealed and hidden entrance of the tunnel.

Swiftly he rolled the two largest aside, and when a decent sized gap was opened, he looked at Amelie and nodded. She looked uncharacteristically daunted but nudged her rain-marked glasses up her nose and gamely climbed the slippery rocks and lowered herself through the gap.

Servius followed quickly, noticing her eyes were wide from where she stood waiting inside, then they lit their wands, exchanged a dogged smile, and Servius began the long trek along the tunnel.

The rain, fortunately, kept the Shrieking Shack free of visitors – only halfway along the tunnel did it occur to Servius that they might arrive to find it already occupied. But when they crept out of the trapdoor, they discovered it gloomy and deserted, the only noise was the wind in the chimney and rain spattering against the broken windowpanes. Large water stains made the ceiling sag in places, but the lower floor was dry if not exactly warm, and Servius went immediately to the collection of candle stubs on the table and searched for matches, until Amelie lit them all in one short incantation of incendio.

"What is this place?" she enquired, pushing back her hood and lifting her palms to the meagre flames as she glanced about her.

He shrugged. "An abandoned house, but I don't know why there's a tunnel from Hogwarts to here. Maybe a teacher used to live here. I think someone bad used to be in it because I read…somewhere…that it was really dangerous to go through the tunnel. Seems okay now though."

"So this was your hideaway?"

He nodded and grinned at her. "But it's a secret, right? We don't tell anybody."

She went to a window and looked out. "There are no neighbours? Nobody can see?"

"It might have been a farm once," said Servius, by way of explanation, sharing her view of puddle-strewn vacant land outside, a faraway suggestion of a road and fence line.

"And what is this big stain on the floor?" she then asked, returning to the candles but stepping around the darkened section of floorboards with a slight grimace. "It looks like blood."

"I don't know," Servius admitted, not disagreeing with her. "Maybe we can put some of this straw over it…?"

Two pea-straw bales had been brought in at some point by other callers, left in a corner as seating, and Servius made to shift one but Amelie shook her head. "No. Leave them. I think the stain may enhance the magic."

He raised curious brows at her, wondering if at last she was going to explain herself. There was some important ritual she wanted to perform, one she'd read about and that she believed would give them protection if they went into the Forest. She'd been stubbornly reticent about what the ritual involved, only insisting that they find a place they could be alone and undisturbed. While there would have been a dozen places at Hogwarts, Servius had immediately thought of the shack, at some level thinking it might impress her. She outperformed him in just about everything – this was one small triumph of his alone.

In answer, she lowered her rucksack, removed her damp coat and then withdrew from her bag the arrow that had struck Longbottom, her wand and a small, leather bound book, small enough to hold in one hand. Servius stood quietly and watched as she went to the bloodstain and placed the arrow in its centre. Then standing beside it, she beckoned Servius to her.

"Take off your coat," she murmured, unzipping it, and he shrugged it off and kicked it away. "Now we stand back to back."

Servius obliged, feeling his skin tingle as her fingers slipped into his own and gave them a quick squeeze. He sensed her standing close behind him, but not quite touching. Moments later she began reading from her book: a low and steady murmuring, none of which was comprehensible to him, not only because it was in German but because it flowed incessantly, and he could hear her carefully drawing breath even though she never paused. As she incanted, she held her wand before her, and glimpsing over his shoulder, he saw the wand-tip begin to glow.

The murmuring stopped and she lowered the wand. "I'm going to draw a circle around us," she whispered. "Turn with me."

And on the spot, back to back, they rotated three-sixty degrees, moving around the arrow, and in the floorboards about half a metre from their toes, Amelie inscribed a glowing, ochre-coloured circle with her wand until they were fully enclosed. The mark of the circle remained mysteriously shining, enough that small shafts of its light cast shadows into the corner of the room, and Servius noticed the arrow seemed imbued as well.

"Face me," he heard Amelie say, and he did so, to find her gazing intently at him. "Now we do a blood bond."

"What?" he muttered.

"Neither of us can be fatally harmed so long as we are bound by blood. It ensures we always protect each other. If the bond is broken, then we become vulnerable again."

"That's impossible," said Servius. "Nobody can live forever."

"Perhaps nobody kept the bond long enough to find out," replied Amelie. Then she delved into the pocket of her jeans and withdrew a club pin, one bearing crossed swords. The glow from the circle sparked off its silver. "Warlocks forever, Servius."

His heart started to thump hard and a thrill of excitement coursed up his spine. He nodded, somehow knowing that his father would not approve of this, but that HBP would have done it with relish.

Promptly, perhaps because she didn't want to overthink it or perhaps she didn't want Servius to change his mind, Amelie pierced the ball of her thumb of her right hand with the pin and her warm, red blood sprung to the surface. She winced slightly, and then handed to pin to Servius. He raised his left hand, the same, he thought, as his father would have done for his Dark Mark, and with the pin pierced the ball of his own thumb. He hardly felt it. Blood oozed from the prick, and he looked at Amelie.

She raised her hand and the blood trickled down to her wrist, then drops fell to the floor. He copied, his breathing becoming shallow as he watched, mesmerised, as his own blood dripped, thinking he could feel his heart pumping the blood free. And then she took his left hand in her right and pressed them together, and he felt a sharp pain as she applied pressure to his cut, but then it felt warm - warm and pleasant, and he looked into her eyes and his head swam a little. She smiled and said in faint tones, "Can you feel that? It feels nice."

He nodded, and light sparking from the floor caught his attention. The drops of blood that had fallen now glowed as well, as did the blood on the tip of the arrow, and the stain on the floorboards itself seemed to become oddly luminous. "What does that mean?" he asked Amelie, who followed his gaze. She shook her head and looked up.

"I don't know," she said. "I asked for protection from the arrows and from Longbottom."

"And from whoever's blood that is on the floor?"

She didn't reply but turned her focus back to their clasped hands. "That's long enough," she said, and gently broke free. She placed the heel of her hand in her mouth and sucked at it, and after a moment, he did the same.

"There," she said. "Now I will be your Warlock protector for life. And you are mine."

And for some reason, deep in the Snape heart of him, in his genes, in his essence, Servius felt fulfilled, as if at last he was able to actualise a purpose and that his reason for being became real. In that moment, he fell headlong into an obsession with Amelie.

The rain began to ease as they finished the rations they'd brought with them, sitting on the straw-bales and huddled together for warmth. The circle's glow had also subsided, and Amelie had already put away the arrow, and now Servius had half his attention on what being a blood-bonded Warlock might entail, whether he would feel any different. But so far, he just felt content, happy to be sitting with Amelie, happy watching her foot as she swung her leg back and forward.

"What shall we do now?" she asked. "The rain is stopping. We could go into Hogsmeade?"

"Too risky," replied Servius. "Let's sit under that window where the sun's coming in. It'll be warmer. I've got something to show you."

They shoved the pea-straw bale into a watery gleam of sun shining through the glass and then Servius retrieved his rucksack. "I got this from Draco Malfoy when we were there for Christmas."

"Who's he?" she asked as he brought forth his palm-sized version of Advanced Potions.

"Used to be a student in Slytherin. He's grown up now. But he found this years ago and kept it, and then gave it to me. Can you make it the right size?"

She showed him the Engorgio spell and then handed the book back to him with a distinctly unimpressed expression. "Why did he give you that?"

He resumed his seat on the bale and moved up close to her so their thighs were touching. She didn't move away. "It was my father's. Look."

Together they perused the pages, and her eyebrows arched at some of the annotations, the scribbles and corrections. "My father says your father is very accomplished at Potions," she remarked at last. "Not Durmstrang standard, but the best educator in Britain."

"I know," he said without any affectation. "I don't know much about Potions, but he obviously knew heaps. He did all this when he was a student himself."

"That's not a potion," she commented, pointing to some words accompanied by arrow marks. "That's a spell. Muffliato. Wonder why they were learning that in Potions."

"What does that spell do?"

"You can stop people overhearing you. Their ears buzz so they can't hear you talking."

"Oh. Sorta handy I suppose," he flicked more pages. Another word accompanied by arrow strokes.

"Is that a spell?"

"Levicorpus. Ja. Those are the wand movements. Let's try it. You stand there and I'll see if I can get it to work."

"What if it turns me into a newt or something?" retorted Servius, alarmed.

"Nein! Silly, look at the words. It's some kind of lifting or levitating spell. Go on, stand there. It won't hurt."

And within a minute, Amelie had mastered the spell and Servius was hanging upside down, waving his arms about. "Okay, great, it hangs you upside down. I remember this spell now – I've read about this one," said Servius – they used my own spell against me – "Snape made this one up himself."

Amelie giggled a little and then attempted Finite Incantatum, but Servius remained hanging. "Amelie, hurry up, my blood is rushing to my head."

"Hm. It didn't work," and she consulted the text again, working through the notes, the early drafts of counter-spells that evidently hadn't succeeded based on angry crosses struck through them.

"Aargh, I have spots in front of my eyes!" complained Servius, and Amelie pointed her wand at him and made a quick flip and stroke.

"Liberacorpus!"

Servius crashed to the floor and, hearing Amelie laughing again, scrambled to his feet. "Not funny," he said. "Good one to use in duelling though."

"A defensive charm I think," she said. "He invented it for himself, that's why the counter-spell is specific. Only he could undo it."

"He did a lot of forbidden duelling."

"He beat my father in a true duel. That is very difficult to do."

Servius gave a disdainful shrug. "Anything else?"

She searched through some more and said, "Here's another spell. Sectumsempra. Do you want to try it?"

"What does it do?"

"Don't know…" she murmured, cocking her head. "Sectum is to cut…It says here 'for enemies'. I think it is dark magic."

She raised her wand with a concentrated frown and aimed it at the table of candles. Her first attempt did nothing, and then she tried it again with a different emphasis and moved her wand more sharply, but again nothing. She snorted impatiently. "Maybe it doesn't work -,"

"Try saying it all as one word," suggested Servius, and with a sigh she tried it out.

This time three candles were severed in half.

"Woah!" said Servius, jumping back as the candle ends jumped on the spot before thudding to the floor. "Bollocks to that! Look at the candles!"

Amelie lifted her gaze to his, wide-eyed. "Your father invented that as a student?!"

"I guess the hexing was getting out of hand…" but Servius was remembering Draco: I had some cuts…bleeding….Had his father sectumsempra'd Draco and then saved him afterwards? He shuddered and shook his head slightly in disbelief, thinking his father remained as enigmatic as the man he'd never met, and in reality, far worse than he'd ever imagined.

It was New Year's Eve, and in two days, school would resume. Inside the castle there was a hum of activity as preparations for Hogmanay were underway. Servius and Amelie had used the bustle to sneak up the Astronomy Tower stairs unnoticed, and now stood on the observation deck.

"The upper-limb has just dipped below the horizon by about three-degrees," said Amelie, drawing her eye away from the telescope. She glanced at Servius who was standing beside her, trying to catch a few rays himself, but the sun always seemed like little more than a dot these days. "We have official sunset. The Centaurs will begin Praising."

"Then it's time to go," he said to her and she nodded.

"They'll start looking for us when we don't arrive for dinner."

"So we have an hour at least. Let's get a move on."

Both wearing their darkest, most concealing clothes, the pair hurried down the stairs to the very bottom, checked the way was clear, then made a dash for the front door. Servius pulled up short on the patio when he noticed Hagrid making his way up the hill, presumably intent on an early start for his evening meal as he carried his special carry-bag used for leftovers and takeaways. Servius motioned the opposite direction, and he and Amelie rushed down the rough-stone steps away from Hagrid and were soon slipping down the grassy slope and on their way to the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest.

Servius followed the running track until they'd reached a large oak behind which he dragged Amelie, out of sight of the castle.

"Okay," he said. "Don't tell me what's in there, I don't want to know. We're here now and we're going in. If anything attacks, we use Levicorpus or Steleus or…what was the other one?"

"I'll use Stupefy. You are not experienced enough yet. However, our main strategy must be to stay protected and out of sight. I don't want to try Stupefying a -,"

"No! Don't say. I don't want to know."

She nodded. "Then listen. I will show you how to cast a protective charm that will ward off any magical attacks, but I'm not sure if it will stop a -,"

"Stop! Don't want to know."

She sighed heavily then showed him how to cast a Protego Duo. "We could have just taken the brooms."

"No. Too easily seen and I can't land in a forest. Let's go."

With his wand before him, his rucksack slung over both shoulders containing items he thought might be randomly useful he waited while Amelie said, "Go to pinpoint" and her wand, lying level on her opened palm, swivelled a little and then fixed in a direction. She nodded at him and they set off into the Forbidden Forest.

It was almost impossible to remain stealthy. There was no path to follow as the wand only pointed in the most direct route to the destination, and so they made torturous progress through sections of deep undergrowth and uneven, tree-root infested ground. All around them, startled and barely-glimpsed wildlife fled into the dense brushwood, sometimes large enough that their retreat made a crashing noise, other times smaller things seemed to just melt away. The further they progressed, the more these interactions made Servius' nerves jangle and once or twice he simply stopped and swore under his breath.

Their clothes snagged constantly, often on nothing more than an innocent blackberry thicket, but occasionally more deliberate attempts were made by unrecognisable plants, their ultimate intentions Servius never discovered as he slashed off every frond, every creeper with a pocket-knife, sometimes off Amelie as well.

Their shoes soon became covered in mud and their gloves were sodden and ineffective. It was far colder in the Forest, and many puddles remained shielded with ice which made walking slippery and perilous. They had only travelled about an hour when Servius turned and said, "Are you sure we're going the right way?"

"I trust my wand, Servius. That's all we have. But I have summoned Will o' the wisps to light the way back for us."

"I thought they were supposed to lead you astray."

"Muggles. Not us."

"This is much further than I thought it was going to be."

She didn't speak, only nodded with a regretful expression.

Sunset became twilight and visibility in the gloom of the forest dwindled away. Servius lit his wand and then said to Amelie: "Do you still want to go on?"

"I'm not going back now!"

"It'll be dinner in about half an hour."

"They're still Praising. We have time."

Suddenly there was a distant crashing noise, and the ground vibrated. Servius' eyes widened and his breath caught in his throat. He looked at Amelie for an explanation.

She shrugged and shook her head, eyes equally wide.

The crashing continued, coming towards them, and quietly as possible the pair scrambled around for a hiding place. They selected the trunk of a stout tree with wide, protruding roots and bearing peculiar bracket fungi which trembled at little like a timid animal as they crouched down. They were in a small hollow, and the smell of rotting leaves and damp earth filled Servius' nostrils, and while they waited perfectly still, he watched a slug make calm progress up the trunk of the tree, oblivious to whatever enormous creature continued on its path towards them.

The creature pushed trees and bushes out of its path with ease and made a terrible racket doing so. Servius could distinguish heavy thumps that marked its transit, which he determined to be footfalls, and that the beast walked on two legs. It seemed to be in something of a hurry and within mere moments, he glimpsed the thrashing of leaves and bushes as it came very near to them and he crouched even further down, terrified of being seen but still unable to tear his gaze away.

"It is alright, you're safe, we are protected," he heard Amelie murmur beside him, and he turned to look at her, and she offered a small smile, but then her attention was seized by the creature which at that point came into view.

It definitely was of the magical variety – a twelve-foot, bearded, green-hued being with broad, three-toed feet, which stopped only metres from their hiding spot. Its arms, hanging as low as its knees, were colossal, muscular, with a layer of coarse, dark hair, and fingers that ended in filthy, horny nails obviously used for coarse digging and shredding. It wore the barest likeness to clothing, a kind of rough, belted loincloth and fur sleeveless vest, and in its right hand it carried a club, a solid piece of wood that had evidently once been an entire tree branch.

Servius forced himself to stop trembling, but the enormous creature had obviously stopped right beside them for a reason. They could hear its rasping breaths and loud sniffs as it scented the air. While there was a superficial resemblance to humans, this had more in common with animals including a heightened sense of smell, and he began to think there would be mere moments before that club came smashing down on them both. "Troll," whispered Amelie, equally fixated, and her hand slipped into his.

His mind began to race, thinking what he could do to save them both if the troll discovered them. In the gloom and uneven ground it would be impossible to outrun it; neither could they go upwards or downwards. Concealment was the next option, but not of the visual variety – this thing hunted by smell, like other dark forested animals. They needed to hide their smell.

The troll grunted and took a step closer and Servius felt Amelie beside him shrink back. Carefully he slipped off one of his prized trainers, so worn now that he didn't even need to undo the laces and cringed as his socked foot touched the cold, muddy ground. Then he held his breath and squeezed Amelie's hand. The troll started sniffing louder, closer, and a great, gnarly hand grasped the top of the bush they were hiding behind and started to pull. At that moment, Servius hurled his trainer as hard and far as he could, right towards the troll.

There was a muffled sound which Servius hoped was his shoe hitting the pelt of the creature's vest and a snort of surprise from the troll. The hand on the bush disappeared and Servius turned to Amelie, who gazed at him fearfully.

"Give me your hat," he whispered. "Then run!"

She obeyed, handing him her woollen bobble hat which Servius dropped on the ground before grabbing her hand and pulling her after him in a blind bolt into the dense thicket.

There was small roar behind them, part realisation and part threat, and then thunderous footsteps again. Amelie's hat landed in the ground before them as they ran, hurled after them in frustration by the troll, and then the club came crashing down hard in their wake making the ground shudder and birds screech away into the sky.

Through the gloom, Servius searched frantically for cover and, like the deer he'd watched from his broom, veered dramatically in and out of the trees, trying to confuse the troll whose club could only work effectively on one straight angle. A sharp twist to the right saw the club crash down only feet away from them, but also caused Amelie to cry out in pain as he wrenched her arm.

"In here!" he cried, spying a dense group of holly bushes, and dived to the ground, pulling her down next to him. "Get underneath! Roll! Hurry! Cover your eyes!"

Pure adrenaline allowed them to scrape their way beneath the holly, faces turned to the mud and dirt, clothes ripping as they were snared on the spiky leaves. Closer to the centre of the bushes it was less prickly but there was barely room to move and Servius grabbed Amelie's body and dragged her up close to him, shielding her from the worst of it. "Stay still," he muttered, as the troll's feet lumbered up to the holly, almost close enough to touch. The troll produced another guttural holler and began thrashing at the branches above them. Amelie, without speaking, extended the hand holding her wand at full stretch towards the massive green feet. "Incendio!" she cried, and a burst of fire flared from the tip of her wand, scorching the ground below it as it reached the toes of the troll.

There was a tremendous roar and the toes disappeared, but the angry bashing of the ground nearby with the club testified to the troll's opinion on her idea. Servius and Amelie looked at each other, briefly aghast, and then searched for a way out. But before anything materialised, the troll returned and began its destruction of the bushes with renewed vigour. A final idea presented itself to Servius but to implement it he would need to get a clear view of the troll, and even though adrenaline powered through him, he couldn't remember a time in his life where he'd needed to summon that much courage. He thought about his Warlock oath, his blood-bond to Amelie, who was cowering next to him, about his mother before the Death Eaters and then he thought, in spite of himself, about his old exemplar and hero, HBP.

It was like a reflex. He had thought the knowledge of HBP being his father would change his perception of him, but it was as if the opposite had occurred. He thought slightly better of Snape knowing that once he'd been the boy in the diary, a boy rather like himself.

To persuade his teenage father to enter the tunnel to the shack, one of the Ms had goaded him, provoked him, implied he was a coward for failing to act on his own suspicions. His father had raged into his diary at the insinuation, and further documented that he had eventually accepted the dare more out of provocation than any real challenge to his bravery, and that to overcome his own better judgement, formulated a plan for how he would deal with the threat the tunnel allegedly contained. I wasn't afraid, his father had written. I was prepared. I was in control. There was nothing in that tunnel I couldn't defeat.

I am no coward.

"I am no coward," muttered Servius. "I'm in control." And then he began to drag himself towards the edge of the bushes. He felt Amelie grab at him, but he looked back and shook his head at her, hoping she could see in the dim light, and when she released her grip he pulled himself out from under the prickly branches, finding himself standing slightly to the side of the troll, who had a frenzied look about it and was raising its club once again.

"Hey!" Servius shouted, his wand lit and waving, and the troll turned towards him. Servius had one glimpse at the beast's close-set eyes, registering indignation as much as vexation, and as the club swung, Servius pointed his wand at its lumpen head and cried: "Steleus!"

No doubt his father had planned on much loftier forms of attack when he entered the tunnel, but a sneezing hex was the best Servius had. His wand huzzed and the green flash of light told Servius the magic had worked. The troll shut its eyes, the club hit the ground harmlessly and then the sneezing began.

Great globs of mucous and saliva rained down at every expulsion, and Servius once more dived beneath the cover of the holly's branches. "Go, go!" he said to Amelie, pushing her slightly towards the opposite side of the bush and she immediately scrambled forwards and out into the clearing on the lee side of the holly. From where they stood, they could see the troll overcome with sneezing and attempting to roar angrily between them, but it could do little else but stagger about and bump into trees.

The noise of it seemed deafening until Servius realised that it wasn't just the sneezing and roaring he could hear. There was a steady thundering sound from behind them, and just as he turned to look, Amelie dragged him down and out of sight behind a tree. Across the expanse of the down-sloping clearing came a herd of about six horses, or rather - it quickly became apparent – centaurs, who carried bows, and who were raising them before them as they galloped up the hill, firing arrows at the troll.

The troll's roars changed note and its sneezing was interspersed with odd yelps as arrows buried into its arms and shoulders. It swiped its club wildly at the centaurs, but touched nothing as they nimbly dodged aside.

Servius could hardly drag his eyes away, but Amelie was pulling at him. "Look!" she said, and pointed back across the glade, now lit with the last rays of the dying sun. On the other side of it, shielded by a few trees, was the temple building, the tomb. On Amelie's open palm, her wand pointed directly at it, and fluttering on the tip of her wand, was a moth.