Chapter Eight: End and New Beginning

Six weeks later, at 11 o'clock in the morning, Severus Snape was a free man. The Ministry had waited with the trial until his state of health had improved sufficiently for him to attend and then it had taken the Wizengamot barely two hours to go through the evidence and restore his status as an honourable member of the wizarding society.

Alexandra was waiting in courtroom five. When her editor had decided on who should write about the trial and about Dumbledore's letters and the amazing circumstances of their appearance, she had been the obvious choice and had cleverly managed to compose her articles in such a way as to provide all the information the readers would be interested in without revealing her own role in the matter. The professional involvement gained her access to St Mungo's and she had visited Snape several times. At first he had been unconscious most of the time, then he had been awake, but too weak to talk much, and later his attitude had made it clear that he did not want to speak about their moment of intimacy in the infirmary and consequently Alexandra had also been too embarrassed to mention it. So their conversation had been purely professional and non-committing, discussing only neutral matters like the upcoming trial.

The spectators were filing out of the courtroom now, laughing and talking. Snape, still in prison garb, still pale and thin, was standing next to his seat, talking to a Ministry official. Slowly Alexandra went up to them, carrying a small suitcase and a black cloak folded over her arm.

The official looked up.

"Yes?"

"I'm Alexandra Moody from the Daily Prophet. Can I have a word with Mr Snape, please?"

The official sighed with irritation and looked at Snape enquiringly. The former potions master hesitated, but then inclined his head.

Alexandra handed him the cloak.

"I thought you'd prefer to wear this. I've also got your other clothes in here."

She lifted the suitcase a bit.

"Professor McGonnagal sent them from Hogwarts."

"Thank you."

Two simple words, spoken without emphasis of any kind and yet in his eyes she could discern a brief expression of genuine gratitude. Quickly he donned the cloak, hiding the humiliation of the prison uniform.

"Is there a place where we can talk in private?" Alexandra asked the official.

The man rolled his eyes, but then showed them to a door in the far wall, which opened into a small and dark room furnished with a table and four chairs.

"You can use this," the official said, "when you have finished, see me in my office, Sn… eh, Mr Snape. There's still some paperwork to see to. Room 534, fifth floor. Don't be too long."

With that he left. Alexandra put the suitcase on one of the chairs. They remained standing on opposite sides of the small table.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

Snape wrapped his cloak around his body as if for protection and stared at the dusty tabletop in front of him. Finally he spoke, in a voice barely audible.

"I don't know. I'm glad it's over, so there is some kind of relief, I suppose, but apart from that – nothing, there's just a tired void."

Alexandra swallowed, nervously biting her knuckles, not really knowing how to continue. The situation was so awkward. They were acting like strangers, both of them careful not to cross any boundaries, not to take one single step into each other's privacy and personal emotions. No, this wasn't true, they were worse than strangers, because beneath the polite surface both of them were acutely and painfully aware of those shared moments of intimacy at Azkaban.

"Have you got any plans for the future?" This was the obvious question for a reporter to ask.

He raised his head and looked at her with a sneer of contempt.

"No. And if I had any, I wouldn't announce them to you and the rest of wizarding Britain," he spat. "You should be intelligent enough to refrain from asking such a silly question."

"Oh yes, absolutely, right," Alexandra stammered and felt her face get hot. He was right and she felt close to tears. After another lapse of uncomfortable silence she reached into her bag and put a small parcel, carefully wrapped in brown paper, on the table.

"This is yours. I still have some respect for other people's property," she said in a voice forced to sound light and neutral.

He stared at the parcel, scowling.

"I don't want it."

Alexandra shrugged. "I don't want it, either. And it's yours, you can smash it if you like."

He extended a hand and traced the edge of the parcel with his forefinger, deeply lost in thought, as if no longer aware of Alexandra's presence.

She cleared her throat.

"Is there anything you'd like me to write? Anything you'd like to tell the public?"

A barking sound of contempt was the only answer she received. And when she kept looking at him expectantly he added an exasperated "NO!" and turned round in a swirl of black fabric, so that he was facing the wall, his back to her.

Silence. She could hear his breathing.

"Right then, I'll bother you no longer. Good bye, Mr Snape," she managed to say calmly, congratulating herself inwardly on her self-control.

No reaction. She waited, slowly counting the seconds. Nothing.

With a sigh she turned towards the door.

"Good bye, Ms Moody." And after another pause, as if it was an immense effort to pronounce, "I - thank you."

She looked over her shoulder. He had not turned, there was only his back for her to look at, black, stiff and hostile.

Quickly she left the room.

That had been two years ago. Alexandra had heard about his going through the formalities with the Ministry and then apparating to Hogwarts. The greetings he had exchanged with his former colleagues had been short and formal and then he had retrieved his belongings. And vanished. Nobody knew where he had gone to. There were speculations and rumours, but none of them proved true. So at last Severus Snape was forgotten, life went on without him, except that there remained a raw and sensitive spot deep inside Alexandra Moody's soul, a spot the existence of which she would admit to nobody and least of all to herself.

Alexandra was sitting at her desk, staring at the screen of her computer. The Prophet had finally given in and fitted out her workplace with the latest state-of-the-art model, a reward for her excellent insight in and coverage of the Snape-story. With the new technology had come a new task: She was to check international Muggle newspapers for information that might concern the wizarding world because she was the only member of staff who, due to her Muggle schooling, was familiar with foreign languages. Most of the time her search was fruitless, therefore she was not very attentive when she scrolled through the online edition of Le Soir. Suddenly her eye caught the word "magique" and her finger on the mouse slowed down. She scrolled back to the beginning of the article and started reading more carefully. It was from the health section and described the miraculous healing of a small girl from Normandy who had been suffering from a very painful and incurable skin disease for years. Her parents had bought a salve at a market stall in Southern France while on holidays and it had worked wonders on their daughter's skin. The doctors had no explanation for the success of the salve, could only call it magic. Chemical analysis had failed to reveal the exact nature of the ingredients. The newspaper had tried in vain to identify the source of the mysterious medicine. The stall owner had described the producer as a kind of hermit living in solitude somewhere in the Pyrrhenees, but had declined to give any further information. As the salve promised to be a great medical and financial success, both the French Ministry of Health and several pharmaceutical firms were looking for the manufacturer, so far without any success.

Alexandra frowned and drummed her fingers on the edge of her desk thoughtfully. A hermit who was able to produce a potent medicine and didn't want to be found – she couldn't help it, to her it sounded so much like Severus Snape. A small excited flicker of hope rose in Alexandra's heart. Could it really be him? She had tried so hard to forget him, had told herself over and over again that he was not worth the heartache and longing she felt whenever she thought of him. At their last meeting in the Ministry he had shown how hard, cold and emotionally cruel a man he was. He was not worth it. And yet…

She decided to give up on other European newspapers and intensify her investigation into the matter of the salve and its source in other French papers. By the end of the day she had found some useful information about the area the hermit was believed to live in. For a long time she stared at the stack of print-outs she had made, then went back on the internet to book a cheap flight to the South of France for the following week, the beginning of her holidays.

Thanks to J.K.Rowling for the invention of these wonderful characters