A/N: This chapter overran again, but somehow I doubt you'll be complaining. :) Anyway, here it is, the last chapter before the Deathly Hallows comes out and this is officially made entirely AU and we find out the truth about Snape. This last point is the main reason for the talk at the end of the chapter as it clarifies exactly where Snape's loyalties lie in this story. Happy reading!
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Chapter 48 – Change
Avery gazed at his captor, watching as her expression turned from puzzlement to disbelief. Then, very slowly, she turned her head, looking up at the figure behind her.
Katherine smiled, blue eyes dark, and held up a wand.
Muriel's hand flew to her pocket, a look of horror crossing her face, and then her gaze fell on bodies of Aubern and Reynolds, lying slumped on the floor; she hadn't even heard them fall.
"Give that back," Muriel said very softly, eyes fixed on her wand. Katherine's smile grew a little.
"Or what?"
Muriel was silent, lips pursed, as Katherine twirled the wand deftly between her fingers.
"How did you get in here?" she asked after a long pause. Katherine's eyes glimmered and she tucked the stolen wand in the back of her jeans.
"Magic."
"There were wards," said Muriel darkly. Katherine shrugged, looking over her head at Avery, who was sitting with his arms resting on his knees, watching her.
"They weren't very good."
"Aurors would have had trouble breaking them," growled Muriel, not caring that she was unarmed and vulnerable; this woman was just standing there, making a mockery of everything she'd worked so hard for and it was getting on her nerves.
Katherine's blue gaze flickered back to her and one eyebrow raised very slightly.
"I'm not an Auror." She gave Muriel a quick smile and then dropped to a crouch, so that she was level with her. "What have you done to Robert?"
Muriel stared at her, waiting for her emotions to settle so she could work out how she was feeling. She should be angry or scared, but right now she was just confused; there was something very disconcerting about those benign blue eyes.
"I don't know what you mean," she said, holding her head a little higher and trying to stare her down.
"Oh I think you do," said Katherine softly, in the same calm voice. "Because if he was the normal Robert Avery we all know and love, he'd be trying to strangle you right about now, and, as you have probably noticed, he's not, so tell me what you did." The vehemence of the last few words made Muriel shrink back a little, and the fire that suddenly erupted in the other woman's eyes acutely raised her awareness of just how bad her position was, and then...images were flooding to front of her mind, the night she first saw Avery, the night he killed her sister, Rebecca, lying there on the floor, with dark figures standing over her, white masks hiding everything but their eyes...their eyes.
She pulled back, stumbling over and breaking eye contact. Katherine frowned, but she'd already learnt everything she wanted to know; Legilimency really could be very useful. She glanced over at Avery, who was now staring desolately at the floor.
"You were there too," whispered Muriel, fumbling for her wand before she remembered Katherine had it. "You just stood there, you're as bad as him," she shrieked, pointing a wild finger at Avery, who didn't move.
"Worse, actually," said Katherine musingly, gazing pensively at Avery. She looked sideways at Muriel and gave her a crooked smile. "Don't you read the papers?"
"I'll kill you both," hissed Muriel, positively seething now. Katherine just looked at her, a faintly amused expression on her face and murmured something that Muriel didn't catch. Before her, Avery raised his head a little and threw Katherine an odd look, but she only grinned and waved a careless hand at Muriel, who fell to the floor, unconscious.
"What did you mean by not yet?" asked Robert, his face screwed up in bewilderment.
"What?"
"You said 'not yet'," prompted Robert, leaning his head back against the wall and looking at her with puzzled brown eyes.
"Did I?" asked Katherine mildly, and Robert knew she wasn't going to tell him anything else. He sighed and looked at Muriel's prone form.
"Not going to kill her?" he asked, raising his eyebrows slightly.
"You didn't," said Katherine evenly, holding out his wand which she'd retrieved from one of the men currently out cold on the floor. Robert took it, gazing at it as though it wasn't quite there.
"Didn't seem right," he muttered. There was silence for a moment, then he looked up, shaking his head. "How's Katy?"
"Fine. She's safe. I'm more worried about you, to be honest," said Katherine, sitting down next to him and regarding fallen Muriel with a critical eye. "You do know she's mental, don't you? She's got a wall covered with pictures of you out there," she added, jerking her thumb towards an apparently solid wall.
"Out there?"
"This is a house," said Katherine looking round the room. "Her house, I guess. Tracked your signature here, but couldn't find you, so I looked for any concealment charms and hey presto, there you are, yelling at me to grab your kid and run."
"And you did," said Robert, giving her a curious look. "You didn't try and get me out."
"I would have if you'd asked," said Katherine, returning his look. "But you were rather emphatic."
"You still didn't question me, though," said Robert, studying her carefully.
"Is that a bad thing?" asked Katherine, not quite getting his point. He didn't seem upset, just...curious - like he'd completed a routine experiment and found a result that he hadn't expected.
"No, just...interesting." He frowned, looking back down at his wand. "You really would do anything for us, wouldn't you? I mean, you genuinely would; even if it wasn't what you'd choose to do."
Katherine was giving him a very strange look now, bewildered and... Was he imagining it or was there a flicker of fear in those blue eyes?
"You're not supposed to be talking to me," he suddenly remembered, frowning. "Let alone acting the hero, or is that heroine? Why did you come?"
"Because you asked," said Katherine simply, twirling her own dark wand between her fingers now. "Yelled, really. Positively demanded, in fact. Loudly." She gave him a small grin, catching the wand in her hand. "And I promised to come if you needed me."
"Even though you're mad at us?" he asked, smiling slightly himself. Katherine's lips twitched, as though she'd been about to smile, but she looked away.
"Even though I'm mad at you," she repeated, gazing idly at the ceiling; Robert frowned, studying her profile.
"Katherine?"
"Yes?" She looked sideways at him, eyebrows raised questioningly.
"You are mad at us, aren't you?"
"Furious."
"Except you're not, are you?" said Robert carefully, as she gazed at him with innocent blue eyes.
"No." She grinned, as Robert shook his head despairingly.
"Were you ever?"
"Oh yeah," said Katherine fervently, turning her head to look at him properly. "For about half an hour. It's not my fault if you all fall for the same trick twice."
"That trick being splitting up our friendships so we don't get each other hurt?" asked Robert with a sigh. "Except that's not really working, is it?" He gestured round the room at the bodies lying in small heaps on the floor. Katherine shrugged, looking shrewdly at him.
"Oh I don't know. I'm not hurt, and you appear to have all your vital organs in tact. Neither of us are any worse off than the aftermath of the average meeting. Not physically, anyway." She left the unspoken words hanging in the air and Robert looked over at Muriel again, her mousy brown hair falling over her face.
"I'm fine," he said quietly and Katherine gave a soft, humourless, laugh.
"No you're not. I'm practically an expert on not being fine, Rob, and you are most definitely not fine."
Robert shrugged, frowning dismally into middle distance.
"It wasn't your fault," said Katherine gently. "I remember that mission, Rob. The kid ran in front of your hex, you didn't mean to hit her."
"She was eight."
"She was an idiot."
"How do you know?" asked Robert harshly, turning angrily on her. "She never got to grow up because of me."
"She ran in front of a Death Eater's wand," said Katherine sharply, matching his furious gaze. "Somehow that doesn't scream 'genius', to me."
"She was trying to protect her mother," retorted Robert, irritation rising in his voice. How could she be so cool about this?
"If she was smart, she would have worked out that there was nothing she could do."
"If we were smart, we wouldn't be trying to bring down the Dark Lord. Sometimes people do stupid things because they have to," responded Robert, almost shouting now.
"Right, and does torturing a five year old come under the heading of things people need to do?" asked Katherine, arching an eyebrow. Robert stared at her, almost completely lost, before he realised she was talking about Katy.
"What's that got to do with anything?" he asked quietly, confused.
"That woman is insane," said Katherine softly, gesturing to Muriel. "She saw her older sister die when she was, what, about four? That kind of thing doesn't beget normal, well balanced adults. You're only feeling guilty because she'd made you think it was your fault, that you purposefully intended to kill her sister, because that's what she believes, but that's not what happened."
"What difference does it make whether I intended to or not?" shouted Robert, breathing hard. "I still did it." He looked at her, eyes overly bright. "We put it behind us and pretend it never happened because we need to function, but we never think there are going to be consequences, that people actually get hurt. She's right, Katherine, we're not nice people."
Katherine threw him a contemptuous look and shook her head wearily.
"Of course we're not nice, Rob, we've killed people, we're Death Eaters."
"And that doesn't bother you?"
"No," said Katherine sharply, glaring at the floor. "Not right now. Like you said, we can't afford to let it."
"But we should-" started Robert, but Katherine cut across him, blue eyes blazing.
"No we shouldn't. You want to end up wasting away your life in Azkaban, wallowing in your own guilt?"
"Better to end up like you, is it?" asked Robert, looking coldly at her. "Suppressing everything until you go mental?" Katherine was silent for a long moment, and Robert rather got the impression that she was trying to calm down before she said anything she'd regret.
"Go home, Robert," she said at last. "Talk to your wife. Do whatever you need to do to get rid of the guilt and move on, because we've got a job to do and we can't do that if you're moping."
"I'm not moping," growled Robert, glaring at her. "I can't just stop feeling guilty – it's not that simple."
"It wasn't your fault-"
"Maybe not that time," said Robert quickly, shaking his head. "What about all the other times?"
Katherine frowned, looking a little irritated.
"You're a nasty person, Rob, deal with it. The rest of us have."
"I can change," said Robert softly, pushing light blond hair out of his eyes. Katherine sighed heavily, running a weary hand over her face.
"Go home, Robert."
He looked sideways at her, frowning slightly. "You don't think I can?"
She turned her head and looked at him, giving a half shrug. "Maybe you can, but it's not easy to start over, take it from me."
"Yeah, but you went from good to bad – you had all that guilt to deal with," argued Robert.
"And you think it'll be easier to go the other way?" asked Katherine, eyebrows raised. "You've got a whole load of guilt over stuff you've done. On top of that, no one will trust you and you won't get any thanks."
She shook her head and leant against the wall, eyes closed. Robert watched her for a moment, wondering if she was thinking about Sirius and his friends. It was incredible she'd stayed with him as long as she had, actually, because there'd been opposition from just about every side, but then...what choice had she had? In the end, she'd had no where else to go.
"I will change," he said, and there was determination in his voice.
"You want to change, you go and show your wife you're still alive," said Katherine, eyes still closed. "She's probably going frantic."
A stab of guilt hit him at the mention of Cassandra. He was going to have to explain about Muriel and what had happened to Katy...
He felt Katherine's eyes on him and looked up.
"Nowhere to run," she said softly, and he wondered if she'd been reading his mind. "Facing the unknown's got to be better than speculating about it. Go home - I'll clear things up here."
Slowly he nodded, and she gave him a half smile and indicated a blank patch of wall.
"There's a concealed door there; stairs are on your left. I think we're somewhere in Norfolk, but you can apparate outside the house, anyway."
"Right," he mumbled, getting to his feet and making for the door, looking back when she called him.
"Forgot this," she said, holding up a tattered brown bear. "Don't seem to be any charms still on it," she added, tossing it at him. He caught it, the fur disconcertingly soft beneath his fingers; some time in the past couple of hours, he'd forgotten that small fluffy things existed.
He cast another glance at Katherine, who was gazing thoughtfully at the fallen bodies on the floor, and frowned slightly. He'd been so sure he'd got her worked out, but now...there was a whole five years of her life that he'd had no part of and another fifteen that she'd spent in Azkaban, not mention a good couple of years traipsing around the country hunting horcruxes. That was a lot of time to be out of touch and yet she hadn't seemed any different when she'd come back - same old Katherine, flirting with death, winding up Lestrange...
Yet now, looking at her properly, he didn't see the Katherine that he'd known at Hogwarts. There was something different, something he couldn't quite place-
"Robert Avery, if you don't go home this minute, I shall personally see to it that your entire office knows about that night out in Edinburgh in sixth year."
Robert held up his hands defensively, smiling faintly. "I'm going, I'm going. You sure you're all right here?"
Katherine looked up at him, a sly grin on her face. "Don't you trust me?"
"'Course I do-"
"Then go."
Robert hesitated for a second later, then shrugged his shoulders and left, resolutely ignoring the whispers at the back of his head that were reminding him it was Katherine who had once told him never to trust anyone.
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It was dark in the kitchen when Severus heard the door open softly. He looked up at the figure, black eyes glimmering in the dim moonlight seeping in through the window, and said nothing. She stared back, then shut the door quietly and came to sit opposite him at the table.
"Wondered if you were going to show up," he said at last in a low voice, turning the lukewarm cup of tea round in his hands.
"Did Robert get back all right?" she asked, conjuring up a candle out of nowhere and setting it on the table. He blinked in the sudden glow of light and nodded.
"Had an almighty row with Cassandra. He's on the sofa, and she's with Katy. Nicola wouldn't let them go home tonight, just in case."
"How is Katy?"
"Fine, I think. She's still at Hogwarts," said Severus slowly, watching at her. "With your cousin." Blue eyes held his gaze and he gave her a thoughtful look. "You already knew, didn't you."
"That you know about Faye? Yeah." Katherine smiled slightly, a spark of mischief in her eyes. "Your cousin told me."
"Julian? How does he know?"
"He worked it out when Trix kidnapped her," shrugged Katherine, gaze shifting to the candle, which was starting to drip wax on the glossy surface of Nicola's kitchen table. "Also worked out you helped her." She looked back at him, eyes studying him critically. "Which is giving me no end of headache."
"What?" He wasn't quite sure what he'd expected her to say, but it wasn't that.
"You helped her," said Katherine softly, resting her arm on the table and propping up her chin, blue eyes gazing soulfully at him. "All the things you could have done, and you helped her. You're a complicated man, Severus Snape."
Severus just stared at her, wondering fleetingly if she'd been drinking.
"I am?" was all he could manage in the end. She smiled, leaning back again and stretching.
"Yes you are. Think I've got you sussed and you go and act completely out of character and I have to revise all my opinions of you. Still, not a complete revision, hmm? Still acting like a child, aren't you?" Her eyes had lost their playful air now, and her expression was far from happy.
"Lupin?"
"That would be what I was referring to, yes," said Katherine, though her voice wasn't as cold as he'd expected. "Petty school boy grudges should be left in the past where they belong, Severus."
"He would have lost the job anyway," said Severus, setting his mug down the table and holding her gaze. "Haven't you heard? The position's cursed; no one lasts more than a year."
"Don't be ridiculous," said Katherine, sighing. "You're just avoiding the point."
"I'm not being ridiculous," said Severus, scowling. "Your father cursed it when Dumbledore refused him the job."
"Dad applied for the Defence Against the Dark Arts post?" asked Katherine, both eyebrows raised. "Are you kidding?"
"Dumbledore told me," said Severus softly. "I wanted to take it, but he wouldn't let me."
"Wanted you where he could see you?" questioned Katherine, a slight smile on her face.
"Perhaps," replied Severus, shrugging as though this was of no importance, but Katherine's sudden frown made him hesitate. "What?"
"But he did."
"What?" Severus was confused now.
"He let you take it – I heard Draco talking about how you'd been teaching DADA last year-" She stopped, something like realisation crossing her face. "Oh."
"Oh?" Severus studied her in the light from the candle, mind racing. She couldn't possibly know- He stopped, almost chastising himself.
Once. She'd only ever brought up the subject of Dumbledore once. Well twice, actually, but the second time had only been to make a point about something else, not to make him feel guilty.
"How long have you known?" he asked, surprised to find his voice so quiet.
"A while," said Katherine, giving him a small smile. "I mean, even you're not that ungrateful, and there was the Unbreakable Vow and that stuff you said about-" She stopped, eyeing him dubiously. "You know about the horcruxes, don't you?"
"Of course."
"Right, well if Dumbledore told you about them you must have been close, and I know you, maybe not as well as I thought, but I do, and you couldn't betray someone who had that much faith in you." She poked the candle with her finger, letting a dribble of wax collect in a droplet on her nail. "You don't let a lot of people near you, so those you do, you're loyal to. Same as me." She looked up at him, flicking the wax off her finger and smiling gently. "And Dumbledore wouldn't have given you a job he knew was cursed if he'd expected you to hang around past the end of the year."
"You're not angry?" he asked, not sure whether he was curious or just shocked.
"You did what you had to," said Katherine quietly, and though her eyes were focused on him, he got the impression she was thinking about something else. "I can understand that. In a perfect world it wouldn't have come to that, but it did, and there's nothing else you could have done."
Out in the hall, the clock chimed twelve, and the stillness that had encompassed the room was shattered.
"So that was Christmas," said Katherine, a crooked smile on her face. "Started out normal, winds up back here, with the world all out of shape. Some holiday."
"Sorry. You were meant to be spending it with Faye, weren't you," said Severus, looking solemnly at her. Katherine waved a hand carelessly.
"It's fine. I wanted to spend it with family." She grinned and he saw some of the old spark come back. "Reckon I did that. Raving psychopaths excepted, of course. Funny, I don't even know her name."
"Muriel," supplied Severus, thinking back to what Robert had said when he'd stumbled in. "Muriel Schaft. Robert said you dealt with her."
"Yeah, I did," said Katherine quietly, smiling faintly. "She's not going to bothering anyone any time soon."
Severus smiled, feeling that the world was settling back into it's usual tract once more.
"D'you think Cassandra's going to forgive him?" he asked, referring to Robert. Katherine leant back in her chair, stifling a yawn.
"'Course she will – she loves him. That's what you do. Might take a while, that's all." She smiled and shook out her long hair, running a hand through it to loosen it, so that it fell about her shoulders, gleaming ebony in the candle light. "Happy Christmas, Severus."
Severus smiled, raising his now cold cup of tea in a mock toast. "Happy Christmas, Katherine."
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I'm on holiday next week, so the next chapter will be a while. Have fun reading Deathly Hallows, I know I will, and rest assured, I have the ending of this story planned out in my head, so I will finish it, no matter what happens in Book Seven...
Dactyl (Nana) x