A/N; Er...Funny story, I've had this chapter ready for a very long time, but much to my embarrassment, I forgot that I haven't uploaded it yet, so here's a double update as an apology!
Warnings for; explicit language, vague homophobic slur, period typical homophobia, gore and violence, blood.
Chapter Four
/Severus quietly made his way to the stairs, his body slouched with exhaustion and his bleary eyes barely seeing ahead, the living room's lights were out, so the double agent knew he could step on their cat by accident any moment now.
He didn't care, he just wanted to be near his wife and son, he could hear Lily's angelic voice carrying out Harry's lullaby perfectly, it was like a burst of light in his chest. That loving, soothing voice that was putting their son to sleep.
He stood by the doorway, quietly in awe as he watched Lily rocking Harry to sleep by the window. They had their backs to him, but Lily seemed to know of his presence, she only slightly raised her voice, almost teasingly as she sang.
Severus let the words chase his conscious thoughts away and momentarily relished in the contentment beaming in his chest. Lily swayed from side to side, her red flaming her bundled up in a messy bun she must have done one-handedly. Their son snuggled up in the crook of her elbow, his thumb in his mouth.
Lily finally turned to face him, grinning tiredly as she crooned the song down at the baby with a fond expression. She deliberately changed the words but kept the rhythm.
"Why are you so late husband of mine?" she sang, grinning. "I thought you told me you'd be home by nine."
Rolling his eyes at her antics, Severus risked waking Harry's slumber and stepped up to kiss his wife. Lily returned the chaste peck and shook her head. "Honestly, Sev…it's four in the morning." She lightly swatted him on the back of his neck. "Harry keeps awaking up, like he knows you're not here yet. You have completely tarnished Harry's sleeping patterns you know."
"You're lucky he likes you so much," the baby in question wrinkled his nose and sneezed; a small, barely audible sound that made Lily coo down at the child again.
Severus hesitantly reached out and stroked his son's perfectly smooth cheek. "It won't happen again." He promised even though they both knew his working hours were never really in his control. Severus was enslaved by a mad man, and mad men barely cared about the working hours.
"I love you."
The smiling woman leaned up for another kiss. "I love you too."
Time passed like stale blood oozing out of an old wound; it stretched its presence out like a looming shadow over their lives. Each passing day, month and year haunted by the fact that it may be their last. The fact that it was barely moving made it all the more miserable.
They were living in hard times, a time where double identity and betrayal were as common as chocolate scones in a pastry shop, fresh out of an oven, day after day.
At some point through the years, James would not have been too surprised to hear Albus Dumbledore's name amongst the new list of traitors. He promised himself and Sirius that he'd always be on guard to avoid that awful feeling of duplicity knocking the wind out of him again.
Not after Peter. Never again.
The only people they could trust was themselves and the one person they held most dear with their lives. The attacks were infrequent, granted, the death eaters barely ever held any public raids anymore but the death tolls were nowhere near stable.
James got called to the scant battlefields and trashed homes, he got called to accompany the corpses of the victims for hours to no end to identify their killers in hopes to get hold of those responsible, and it was all for naught. Death eaters were like ghosts sipping in and out of the scenes; James even swore that some of them did not even have a trace to begin with.
If the act was abhorring for him in times of war and open fire, it was even worse now that the war resembled a dying amber lying underneath a heap of ashes. It made him feel like he was the only person aware of the chaos still going on around them. It made him sick to the stomach.
It had been at least five months since he had to go on a mission, a breath-holding period that stretched even further for his partner Sirius, invalided for almost ten months now. It didn't change the relief he had felt, but it also felt like Lucius's cronies were getting ready for something bigger, something beyond their usual level of cruelty.
He was in the kitchen, looking over some financial files Sirius kept ignoring, but really, he was just looking over at Harry's strewn drawings. His hands held his chin up, a sloppy smile on his lips as his chest burst with pride and guilt. Harry's crayons were haphazardly out of their box, the child's latest evidence laid right in front of James.
It melted his heart.
"You hold the crayon like this kid, not all mangled up in your fingers." Sirius was teaching the child earlier that day, maneuvering the green crayon in Harry's small hand.
"But I don't like it!" the small child pouted, glaring at his hand.
His partner had chortled. "Yeah well, you could take that up with the crayon."
The drawing turned out spectacularly well, even in despite of Harry's wrong pen holding abilities.
Harry was in the middle, with James and Sirius at either side of him, standing in the middle of a Quidditch field with a picnic basket, much to his amusement, there was no signs of brooms anywhere.
The picture couldn't have been more endearing and painful at the same time. James felt as if he was living someone else's life. It felt too surreal, too blissful to be his. Especially with his choice in partner and social standing. Having Harry was a miracle. It did have his obstacles, but in the end…having Harry was so worth it.
James sighed, picking up his quill, intending to get back to the files when he heard a distinct clacking on the window. He shot up from the chair, his eyes only making out the owl's blurry outline as he snatched his glasses from the table.
They had finally owled him at three in the morning after five months of silence, James was not startled in the slightest when he received the urgent call:
-Your expertise is required. Report for mission alone.
He serenely took his wand from the counter, dropped into the bedroom to kiss a groggy Sirius goodbye and then mildly checked his son's slumbering form from his room's ajar door.
His /son/.
Not his /son/.
/His/ son.
As in Severus Snape's child with Lily Evans. One dead and the other missing.
Not his. Not James Potter's child.
The thought of another reported raid wheeled his thoughts right to the one person he'd rather never think about. Severus Snape. Harry's father and his archenemy.
"James?" Sirius croaked out from their bedroom. Almost rolling his eyes, the man silently went back in their room to check up on his partner.
"Go back to sleep." He told the man quietly, his voice dosed with exasperated affection.
A mop of startling wavy black hair rose from their bed, Sirius's eyes barely open and his hands fumbling with the bed covers. "Whe'ya goin'?"
Striding to the nightstand, he hummed. "It's fine, they need me out there. I'll be back before you know it."
The other man almost leapt off the bed in his hurry, toppling to the floor, and wrapped in their tussled blankets. "What?" he grunted incredulously, his mind still dazzled with sleep.
James quickly went through the drawers, his brows furrowed. "They sent an owl. Take care of Harry, I'll be back." He found the small folded parchment in the last drawer, underneath their penknife and pocketed it with caution.
By then Sirius had dismantled himself from the blankets and was rolling on the bed to face him, his eyes clearer and shining with concern.
"Did something happen? Like an attack or-?"
"I don't know love; they just called for me so whatever it was…it's already over and done with. Don't let Harry get out of schedule, I swear to merlin if I come home to him missing his bath time again…"
"It's fine, merlin James! That was one time." Sirius rubbed his face, his expression turning solemn. "Would you be gone for long?"
James shrugged, picking his work robes from the wardrobe, (half-glad that Sirius had called him over or he would have forgotten it. The night was chilly.)
"I have no idea. Shouldn't take more than a day. I'll owl you if it takes any longer." he settled for a quick peck on the other man's forehead and then hurriedly drew back. "Love you." he whispered and then looked at his wristwatch.
It was getting late. He needed to leave.
"Be careful." Sirius called to him, his hand squeezing James's before letting go.
After checking on Harry again and summoning his boots, James quietly stumbled out of their house, pulling on his dragonhide boots with his wand securely fixed in his wand holster, which was usually fastened to his forearm.
He saw the glimmering aura of their wards and felt the ripples wash over him like gallops of fresh cold water as he passed through, and distanced himself from their porch to approach the second set of wards.
They were not newly set; unlike the ones Frank had placed around the hedges surrendering the cottage two weeks ago; the two set of rune-based wards that surrendered their house like a globe, had been there ever since they truly realized the danger Harry's stay with them could pose to everyone.
The first blood wards were put there a week after they had brought Harry home. Grief stricken and desperate, Alice Longbottom dropped in their cottage with puffy red eyes, clutching a bundle of blankets to her chest. She shakily explained that Dumbledore had sent her while other members were being 'cleared'. Entrusting her son to Sirius, she unsteadily went out to set the wards.
"It's Frank." She said miserably with a cup of tea in her shaking hands, not long after putting the finishing touches on the blood wards.
"His leg James!" she sounded like she was weeping but there was no tears involved. Almost as if, they had dried up from the amount of previous crying. "They said it was cursed beyond repair…Sectumsempra, they said…if we hadn't found him sooner…he would have…he would have…"
"Sectumsempra?" Sirius intoned skeptically, his eyes bulging.
James stilled. Frank was hit in the leg with Sectumsempra (a second-degree dark curse that brought instant brutal death) and he was still alive? How?
Alice's frail body shook with tearless sobs. She was clearly still in shock after two days. "The healer at the scene cut off his leg immediately after it started up-they can't regrow another limb. First Lily and now…"
She was in a bad way long after she finished her tear-jerking tale, long enough that James almost doubted the credibility of their new wards and made her stay the night over, seemingly out of concern.
Of course, Alice was his friend and he did worry for her, but that new, raw, and feral part of his paternal instincts kept her around mainly for her to reapply the wards again the next morning.
That night, and for the many following months, he and Sirius kept Harry's crib in their room, both of them too paranoid to let the child out of their sight.
When Harry turned three, they installed the second set of protective wards.
He was two when he occasionally started to walk on his own, and three years old when he finally stopped crawling around. It was a very concerning fact, and it really bothered both him and Sirius. Thinking that there might be something wrong with the baby, Poppy told them (deadpanned and with a bit of exasperation) that while the situation was quite unusual, there was little to fret over, considering Harry's /situation/.
'It's not that he didn't know how to walk,' she told them after the fifth time they called her over to check on Harry. 'It's just that he doesn't want to do it, for whatever reason.'
They were so used to Harry being carried around and crawling all over them, that the thought of their small baby literally /walking out on them/ in the middle of the night was hard to digest.
Except, Harry did exactly that, on a cold January night. That /one/ time when Sirius and James had forgotten to lock the door after their short and sweet bit of flying, their baby toddled to the door in the middle of the night, opened the unlocked door with a bit of luck and accidental magic and then headed out for a midnight adventure.
The messy haired man had never seen his partner so scared and guilt ridden in his life, as they both frantically searched around the house for a small, walking, ticking bomb of a baby.
He set the new wards himself. The crib went back to their room.
As he finally passed through those exact wards in the middle of the night now, James felt that old fear momentarily grip his guts.
He shook it off and blinked twice before apparating.
A wand was pointed at his face as his body appeared in a darkened room.
"Code name." a name hissed in his face. James held his hands up, his gut twisting with nausea.
"Nuthatch." The messy haired man croaked out with disdain.
A nuthatch, he mentally rolled his eyes. He and Sirius both hated the codename, both preferring James's less confusing and degrading nickname, which was given to him by Moony.
Prongs.
Still, too dangerous for fieldwork since a particular death eater knew of it too.
It would compromise his position.
"You're late." Moody grunted upon his own arrival to the dark gloomy room. James paused to gather his bearing and fixed his glasses, the wand disappeared from his vision as the robe-clad stranger stood back.
"Sorry." He muttered, politely inclining his head to the two other members accompanying Moody. The room they were in was his usual root before taking off to the main location, some sort of a go-between location in case someone tailed him. It was rather smart of the order to think of it, even if it did complicate things.
Moody smacked his cane to the ground once and turned, deftly limping out of the room with the two male members following him. James swiftly followed suit.
"When did it happen?" he asked as they were climbing down the stairs, his eyes raking the abandoned house in darkness.
One of the men looked over his shoulder. He had striking blue eyes and very short hair that faded into ginger strands at the end. An unfamiliar face to James. "Nearly half an hour ago."
The old rusty stairs creaked, their boots left fine prints on the dust, and James made a point of sweeping his robe over the trails as they exited the house while he glared the stoic men accompanying his superior. He did not like discussing his mission with strangers around, and he doubted Moody did too.
Why were the men here then?
They exited the finely furnished-although crumbling-house and strode to the park that was only a few streets over. Their every move shrouded in a deadly silence.
James was still feeling unsettled.
The old abandoned house he just used as a root reminded James a lot of the Shrieking Shack, with its ruined build, peeled off wallpapers and moth eaten curtains, but the one thing that bugged him more was the fact that it was a former victim's house. It was located in the out skirts of London, one of his earlier cases. He shared this one with Moony shortly after getting Harry.
It was the same Muggle house, he, himself had cleared out of two muggle corpses. A very young couple. Newly-weds too, if the rings on their cold fingers was anything to go by.
Bodies that had Severus Snape's trace all over it before he had completely disappeared off the map. No one had heard of Severus after that case, nearly five years ago.
Only a mad man would put the dump to use, so naturally, it was Moody's brilliant idea of camouflage. Hiding in plain sight.
"Singular attack?"
The auror snorted shrewdly. "Thirty bodies. Hardly singular, is it?"
"The causalities are thirty?" his mind was whirling, and his guts were churning unpleasantly. Thirty people? They had lost over thirty people tonight? What happened?! He would have known if a rescue mission or something of the sort was going on tonight. Sirius would have been called if it was a counterattack, or in defense. They would have been informed sooner.
Moody stopped, his fake eyes rolling madly as it scrutinized the messy haired man.
"This one's different Potter. There's a bit of both in the mix this time."
James did a double take. "A bit of both?"
"You'll see when you get there. This one's different." The old man repeated.
"Civilians in the battlefield?" was that what he meant by 'a bit of both in the mix'? James felt his throat bob as they went further down and to the scarce playground in the middle of the park.
No one addressed his question, but James was reeling too much to get upset about it. Civilians would mean more corpses. Women and children involved. Children, his mind reeled with fear.
Harry.
He's safe, James slowly breathed out. Asleep in his room, Sirius is barely a room away, they have wards, and it was too early for an unexpected visit.
Get it together Potter. He thought faintly as he fought off the urge to flee back to their house, bundle up Harry in his arms and cower under the bed until everything was just over.
"Potter." Alastor barked out, taking out his wand. Swallowing hard, James took out his own wand with little hesitation, his mind fogged with the thoughts of Harry and Sirius back home.
Alastor shifted through his pockets for the portkey, the raven-haired man nervously fixed his glasses out of habit, his hair musing with the mild breeze. Moody grunted, fetching out a small juice box. He ran his wand over the portkey and held it out to James.
"The password is your husband's favorite color." The two men balked at Moody, their eyes warily raking James. Nevertheless, the men, presumably, Moody's new assistants, were too peeved to raise any complaints or shoot disgusted glances his way. James felt a warm glow radiate in his chest.
He let a faint smile form on his face as he took it. "A bit overboard, isn't it?"
Moody did not look impressed with his shit eating grin. "Overboard is what keeps you alive boy! CONSTANT VIGILENCE!"
The other men jumped, and if James had not known Alastor as well as he did he would have too. Although, it was probably not fair to the other men. They couldn't see the silencing charm around them.
Moody never conversed with any living being without a silencing charm in place. They could all but cause an explosion and muggles would not bat an eye. The shimmering aura of the charm reassured that.
Moody's eyes glinted as James smirked, remaining nonchalant. "You see this Jenkins?" he spat to one of the men, the blue-eyed one standing by his left.
"Always prepared for the unexpected, this one. Unlike you /buffoons/." The man said as though James was a prize on show, his tone surprisingly proud and gloating as he berated poor Jenkins.
"He does cheat a bit though, don't you lad?" he nodded his chin at his eyes. James fixed his glasses again (he was irrationally worried about Harry), the juice box was weighting him down. It was surprisingly heavy, but as far as he could tell, it wasn't anything dangerous.
Just a portkey.
"You can leave now." He softly informed his boss, his wand hovering above his wrist.
Moody snorted. "Oh I have every intention of leaving boy." The scarred auror turned and started to walk away but his assistants didn't. They didn't even turn to follow their boss.
James cleared his throat with a pointed look and Moody smirked at him over his shoulder.
"What are you waiting for Potter? Invitation?"
"Aren't you taking your uh…associates?" he gestured at the stoic men.
"Oh Jenkins and Millan? No, these two clowns are coming with you."
Oh.
James realized dumbly.
So they were /his/ escorts, not Moody's.
James's hand closed into a loose fist. "No. Alastor, I work alone." He never worked with guards breathing down his neck before and he wasn't about to start now. Something about this mission sounded seriously off, he thought.
Moody's eyes flashed as James hurriedly caught up with him, the guards looked a bit insulted and taken back at his harsh tone.
"It's too dangerous." Alastor Moody grunted gruffly.
James flattened his boots on the ground with a determined frown. "I work alone," he repeated firmly. "There's a reason for it. You know that."
"Their trace could mingle with the scene. I've always worked alone." He waved his hand at the guards, his eyes staring into Alastor's eye.
Moody grounded his jaw. "I'm not offering niceties boy! With Black gone, you'd need them. This is an order!"
James stood his ground, huffing at the older man. "And I'm ordering you," he exclaimed pompously, reminding himself vaguely of his past teenage self. "You don't know the specifics nor the job. I do. Let me do my job Moody."
Moody gritted his teeth, and actually looked mad on James's behalf. "I promised Black that you won't go on suicide missions alone Potter." He finally admitted. "Take it up with him, not me."
James felt annoyance spark at his irrational partner but pushed it down for later, one week on the couch would teach Sirius not to make people promise things like that. Right now, he just needed to convince Alastor.
Come to think of it, he shouldn't have been surprised. With the man, validated home himself, of course he would talk with Moody concerning James's safety measures. Not that he needed it.
"This isn't a suicide mission, nothing has changed! They're only corpses."
"And these corpses have owners! How long do you think it takes for the strays to come clambering off to wipe out the scene? You know those filthy dogs better than I do Potter. I told you this is a different case. The bodies aren't just lying there to your heart's content."
"I don't care even if it's you-know-who's butt naked body that's out there. I am going alone. I'm a valuable asset Moody."
"Exactly why I should-"
"Let me do my job. I can deal with death eaters, be it dead, or alive. If there are any strays out there for cleanup, I will send a Patronus."
"Black specifically asked for two guards to accompany you on missions-."
"But he doesn't get to do that Moody!"
"-and I agree with him! You can hold your ground in a duel Potter, sure, but not when you're too focused in your own mumbo-jumbo." Alastor made wild gestures with his hands to immitate James's said /mumbo-jumbo/.
"I can take care of myself."
Moody rolled his magical eye at him. "No Potter, you zone out. You zone out too often on your own, and this mission is dangerous enough without-."
James crossed his arms. "And I'm alive, despite all odds. Would you take a look at that," sarcasm dripped from every word.
"Alastor, don't make this hard on the both of us, take them with you, please."
The Auror gave him 'the look' but yielded. "Don't come groveling to my feet if you ended up dead Potter. I can't keep undoing your screw-ups." He warned.
"I won't."
"And Black's prison sentence."
"Alright."
"Send a written report to Dumbledore after you finished up. Send my regards to Black and your boy."
"Thanks Moody. I will."
There was a sharp pull behind his navel as he murmured the word 'royal blue' and the world around him whirled away, or rather, he was the one whirling until he almost face planted on a rocky ground.
James shot out his hands against his better judgment and ended up scrapping them against the groveling ground, he stopped to a halt on his knees and cursed. He never got the hang of Portkey traveling.
He flushed in shame as he brushed his hands off on his robes, glad that there wasn't any company to witness the ungraceful landing.
He cringed at the headache inducing sight as he descended the hill and headed to the scene. He could not see the battle, or rather its effects from afar, but he didn't need to; dark, goo like substance clung to every visible surface as far as his eyes could see. Dark magic oozed from the shedding pine trees and the rocks groveling under his feet. He could tell the entanglement had started early on, from the murky auras, singed tree barks and the canopy of dark leaves above.
Thirty bodies happen to be dead in a plain a little further away, he mused grimly as he surveyed the scene. No bodies yet. He followed the black goo, his hand reeling as it traced the invisible trace.
The forest shifted around him, in despite of being completely wounded with the aftershocks of various dark spells colliding at once (all second degrees and higher, if the magical radiation was anything to go by) he thought, almost gagging. Crickets screeched and the twigs beneath his feet crunched but all James could hear was the rushing of his own blood in his ears.
The aura got only thicker the deeper he went.
Not civilian then. He already knew that. From the looks of it quite a bit of them too. James hoped that at least fifteen of those bodies were death eaters.
He caught sight of the first body after another five minutes of swaying after the trail; his eyes downcast as he deftly surveyed the bloodied mess on the pine shed ground, completely engulfed in a blanket of onyx black goo.
This couldn't have been the morbid result of a few duels, James mused, there must have been an explosion involved.
"Sliced into ribbons." He muttered, crouching next to the mangled body. The body was mauled, too deformed and he couldn't clearly identify them, but he knew a death eater had killed them. No death eater killed their own with a spell like this.
He found another one just a few feet over and passed over a few others as he got to the scene of massacre, his mind only filtering needed information and brushing off the gore. He had been living in war for so long that it barely affected him anymore.
The dark magic outranked other dueling spells used by order members, but James could still see wisps of white tightly knitted around the bodies, already flickering. Magical auras tended to remain for some time even after its wielder had died, before eventually flickering out, like a light bulb.
Sixteen of the bodies he found was theirs; suggesting the heavy toll the order had taken tonight, during a mission James and Sirius knew nothing about. Was the attack an ambush from the death eater's side? Alternatively, it could have been a secret sneak attack Dumbledore had ordered in hopes to catch Lucius off guard, and had failed miserably.
Most of them were not recognizable, but the messy haired man found Alec Bones among the few he could recognize, and felt his throat tighten. Alec's four-year-old daughter had been Harry's playdate more than once.
He was nearly done with the first round of his assessing; his expression grim, he looked up at the sky, noticing that it was getting lighter and the weather was even chillier. Turning to the far end of the meadow to take a small break, James took a double take. His eyes almost bulging out, he toppled over a crumpled death eater, his jaw almost dismantling from his face.
A grey murky aura vividly formed a small circle behind an old pine tree that was obscuring James's view. He did not even need his glasses to tell whose it was.
"No way." He breathed out; running to the seated body whose back was leaning against the trunk of the tree.
No way in hell. He thought numbly, his eyes not believing what they were seeing. James fixed his glasses with shaking hands, his mouth suddenly dry and his blood running icy cold in his veins.
Was that…?
A masked body leant against the tree, clad in dark death eater robes. Two large bloodstains on his chest and shoulder turned the robe impossibly blacker, and a small bit of white skin peaked from the rip in the man's good shoulder.
"Oh my god." James croaked out, falling to his knees in front of the unmoving death eater.
He reached out, his hand wavering as it latched on the silver mask on the body's face. James tugged it off.