Hello everyone.
It's been a while hasn't it? I'm terribly sorry. Life is crazy for us all, but I hope you enjoy the chapter. I made it long to make up for all the lost time All the parts that are in italics and not Author's Notes are from the Unites States Edition of Harry Potter and the Death Hallows.
Enjoy :)
Hogwarts was beautiful even when it was crumbling. Great chunks of stone fell as they were hit by spell after spell. Fires leaped, dancing around wizards and witches as they twirled, fighting, dodging and spinning. The air was thick with ages old tension finally broken. Bleak excitement mixed with fear as silvers of blood streamed down stone steps and corridors.
Severus had for many years known this day would arrive. Yet, now that it was playing out before him, he found it surreal.
"The Dark Lord wishes to see you," a subordinate Death Eater said, bowing to Severus.
"Where is he?"
"In the Shrieking Shack. Would you like me to escort you there, sir?"
"No, I know my way. Leave me." Severus walked away from the tree he was leaning against. He could hear the screaming and crashing noise traveling down from the crumbling castle. It was hard to recognize this place as the same place where he had had his happiest memories. Days spent learning, talking to the few friends he had, or just sitting, staring up at a gorgeously infinite sky and dreaming about everything he would hope to achieve one day…
He found it laughable all these pathetic childhood memories were the last things he would think about. He knew there was a slim chance he would be able to survive this encounter with the Dark Lord. Part of him wanted to turn and accomplish everything he had ever wanted, no matter how impossible it was.
He stood outside the Shrieking Shack. The surreal bubble he had been encased in a few moments earlier popped. This building did not have the flashing lights or gory screams of the old castle. It was still, dark, so old and worn. Snape felt as if he had found a sort of brother in the building.
Through a few of the foggy windows he could make out a thin pacing figure. Taking a deep breathe, he stepped inside.
"…my Lord, their resistance is crumbling—"
"—and it is doing so without your help," said Voldemort in his high, clear voice. "Skilled wizard though you are, Severus, I do not think you will make much difference now. We are almost there…almost."
"Let me find the boy. Let me bring you Potter. I know I can find him, my Lord. Please."
Voldemort stood up.
"I have a problem, Severus," said Voldemort softly.
"My Lord?" said Snape.
Voldemort raised the Elder Wand, holding it as delicately and precisely as a conductor's baton.
"Why doesn't it work for me, Severus?"
"My—my Lord?" said Severus blankly. "I do not understand. You—you have performed extraordinary magic with that wand."
"No," said Voldemort. "I have performed my usual magic. I am extraordinary, but this wand…no. It has not revealed the wonders it has promised. I feel no difference between this wand and the one I procured from Ollivander all those years ago."
"No difference," said Voldemort again.
Snape did not speak.
Voldemort started to move around the room. "I have thought long and hard, Severus…Do you know why I have called you back from battle?"
Snape's eyes were fixed upon the coiling snake in its enchanted cage.
"No, my Lord, but I beg you will let me return. Let me find Potter."
"You sound like Lucius. Neither of you understands Potter as I do. He does not need finding. Potter will come to me. I know his weakness, you see, his one great flaw. He will hate watching the others struck down around him, knowing that it is for him that it happens. He will want to stop it at any cost. He will come."
"But my Lord, he might be killed accidently by one other than yourself—"
"My instructions to my Death Eaters have been perfectly clear. Capture Potter. Kill his friends—the more, the better—but do not kill him.
"But it is of you that I wished to speak, Severus, not Harry Potter. You have been very valuable to me. Very valuable."
"My Lord knows I seek only to serve him. But—let me do and find the boy, my Lord. Let me bring him to you. I know I can—"
"I have told you, no!" said Voldemort. "My concern at the moment, Severus, is what will happen when I finally meet the boy."
"My Lord, there can be no question, surely—?"
"—but there is a question, Severus. There is."
Voldemort halted as he slid the Elder Want through his white fingers, staring at Snape.
"Why did both the wands I have used fail when directed at Harry Potter.
"I—I cannot answer that, my Lord."
"Can't you?"
Voldmort looked into Snape's pale face.
"My wand of yew did everything of which I asked it, Severus, except to kill Harry Potter. Twice it failed. Ollivander told me under torture of the twin cores, told me to take another's wand. I did so, but Lucius's wand shattered upon meeting Potter's."
"I—I have no explanation, my Lord."
Snape was not looking at Voldemort now. His dark eyes were still fixed upon the coiling serpent in its protective sphere.
"I sought a third wand, Severus. The Elder Want, the Wand of Destiny, the Deathstick. I took it from its previous master. I took it from the grave of Albus Dumbledore."
And now Snape looked at Voldemort, and Snape's face was like a death mask. It was marble white and so still that when he spoke, it was a shock to see that anyone lived behind the blank eyes.
"My Lord—let me go to the boy—"
"All this long night, when I am on the brink of victory, I have sat here," said Voldemort, his voice barely louder than a whisper, "wondering, wondering, why the Elder Wand refuses to be what it ought to be, refuses to perform as legend says it must perform for its rightful owner…and I think I have the answer."
Snape did not speak.
"Perhaps you already know it? You are a clever man, after all, Severus. You had been a good and faithful servant, and I regret what must happen."
"My Lord—"
"The Elder Want cannot serve me properly, Severus, because I am not its true master. The Elder Want belongs to the wizard who killed its last owner. You killed Albus Dumbledore. While you live, Severus, the Elder Want cannot be truly mine."
"My Lord!" Snape protested, raising his wand.
"It cannot be any other way," said Voldemort. "I must master the wand, Severus. Master the wand, and I master Potter at last."
And Voldemort swiped the air with the Elder Wand. It did nothing to Snape, who for a split secondseemed to think he had been reprieved: But then Voldemort's intention became clear. The snake's cage was rolling through the air, and before Snape could do anything more than yell, it had encased him, head and shoulders, and Voldemort spoke in Parseltongue.
"Kill"
There was a terrible scream. Snape's face was losing the little color it had left; it whitened as his black eyes widened, as the snake's fangs pierced his neck, as he failed to push the enchanted cage off himself, as his knees gave way and he fell to the floor.
"I regret it," said Voldemort coldly.
He turned away; there was no sadness in him, no remorse. It was time to leave this shack and take charge, and a wand that would now do his full bidding. He pointed at the starry cage holding the snake, which drifted upwards, off Snape, who fell sideways onto the floor, blood gushing from the wounds in his neck. Voldemort swept from the room without a backward glance, and the great serpent floated after him in its huge protective sphere.
Harry did not know why he was doing it, why he was approaching the dying man: He did not know what he felt as he saw Snape's white face, and the fingers trying to staunch the bloody wound at his neck. Harry took off the Invisibility Cloak and looked down upon the man he hated, whose widening black eyes found Harry as he tried to speak. Harry bent over him, and Snape seized the front of his robes and pulled him close.
A terrible rasping, gurgling noise issued from Snape's throat.
"Take…it…Take…it…"
Something more than blood was leaking from Snape. Silvery blue, neither gas nor liquid, it gushed from his mouth and his ears and his eyes, and Harry knew what it was, but did not know what to do—
A flask, conjured from thin air, was thrust into his shaking hands by Hermione. When the flask was filled to the brim, and Snape looked as though there was no blood left in him, his grip on Harry's robes slacked.
"Look…at…me…"he whispered.
His eyes closed and he felt himself drifting away in a cool, watery darkness. He no longer tried to hold on to life.
The peace started shaking him painfully. More than anything else he wanted it to stop.
Please just stop. I have done my time.
"Severus, please awaken. Please." The peace around him had tears in its voice.
His lids, thick with drying blood, cracked open slowly. Before him kneeled a dirty, disheveled Lucius Malfoy. There were tears running from his red eyes and leaving tracks over his sweat and filth covered face.
Severus groaned.
"Why, Severus, why?" His voice was quiet and loving, like a mother speaking to her child. Lucius held Severus's face gently. He used his sleeve and began to wipe some blood from his face. "You should not have done this. Why must you sacrifice yourself like an animal for slaughter? You are worth more than this…" Lucius smiled weakly. "You always were the self-sacrificing type. Certainly one of your most attractive qualities." He chuckled feebly.
He drew out a wand, obviously not his due to its modest design. "I shall heal you of your wounds, Severus. Hold—"
"No." The word was strongly disturbing coming from a man who looked Death itself.
"You do not wish to live on? You have every chance and opportunity to create a new life." Lucius's eyes had hysterical gleam to them now. "We could hide you away from the Dark Lord, send you to America or something. I could go with you. Please, please…"
Lucius's head fell as tears began to stream from his face faster. His words were so idiotic he could not even pretend it was possible. He looked at Severus, whose face at that moment was the sharpest, most visible thing to him. Severus had an aura of calm. He was content to die and Lucius realized the only true way to honor his friend was to give him what he wished.
He cradled Severus's upper body in his lap.
"Would you like to hear of the day I realized I loved you?"
There is a flick of an eyelid on Severus's face.
"It was our fourth year. I had always through you were appealing before then but nothing to run after. It was a gorgeous day and our usual group was lounging by the Lake. Crabbe was doing something stupid as usual with the giant squid and thus fell down and soaked himself thoroughly. I heard a laugh behind me. I turned, and there you were. You were laughing and walking towards us, the sun hitting you in such a way that made me think an angel was walking towards me. That was the moment." The steady stream of tears had stopped, replaced with a glow of hope.
"We have made plans, Severus, to leave in case…in case the Dark Lord does not succeed. Although I'm sure he will…I just have to protect my boy. I have not been a proper father lately and I must not repeat any mistakes my father made."
Severus was closing his eyes slowly. A minuscule smile was on his face.
"One day, this will all end, Severus. The destruction, the hate, everything. And it will all be because of you, Severus. You helped end all of it."
The man in his arms had stopped breathing. Lucius stared at him. That body use to contain the soul of Severus Snape.
"Rest in peace, my love."
While Severus Snape was making his final departure from this world, there was a boy, not yet eighteen, who looked in need of a shower very badly. He was bloody and dirty but determination marked his face. Determination and a lightening shaped scar, which was surrounded by angry red skin.
He stood in the office, which had once belonged to two men he knew very well. One he admired and one he had hated. Both of which he saw murdered.
He took a flask filled with silvery liquid and poured it into a larger container. Slowly, he bent over the container and placed his head into it.
Two girls were swinging backwards and forward, and a skinny boy was watching them from behind a clump of bushes. His black hair was overlong and his clothes were so mismatched that it looked deliberate: too short jeans, a shabby, overlarge coat that might have belonged to a grown man, an odd smocklike shirt.
Snape looked no more than nine or ten years old, sallow, small, stringy. There was undisguised greed in his thin face as he watched the younger of the two girls swinging higher and higher than her sister.
"Lily, don't do it!" shrieked the elder of the two.
But the girl let go of the swing at the very height of its arc and flown into the air, quiet literally flown, launched herself skyward with a great shout of laughter, and instead of crumpling on the playground asphalt, she soared like a trapeze artist through the air, staying up far too long, landing far too lightly.
"Mummy told you not to!"
Petunia stopped her swing by dragging the heels of her sandals on the ground, making a crunching, grinding sound, then leapt up, hands on hips.
"Mummy said you weren't allowed, Lily!"
"But I'm fine," said Lily, still giggling. "Tuney, look at this. Watch what I can do."
Petunia glanced around. The playground was deserted apart from themselves and, though the girls did not know it, Snape. Lily had picked up a fallen flower from the bush behind which Snape lurked. Petunia advanced, evidently torn between curiosity and disapproval. Lily waited until Petunia was near enough to have a clear view, then held out her palm. The flower sat there, opening and closing its petals, like some bizarre, many lipped oyster.
"Stop it!" shrieked Petunia.
"It's not hurting you," said Lily, but she closed her hand on the blossom and threw it back on the ground.
"It's not right," said Petunia, but her eyes had followed the flower's flight to the ground and lingered upon it. "How did you do it?" she added, and there was definite longing in her voice.
"It's obvious, isn't it?" Snape could no longer contain himself, but had jumped out from behind the bushes. Petunia shrieked and ran backward toward the swings, but Lily, though clearly startled, remained where she was. Snape seemed to regret his appearance. A dull flush of color mounted the sallow cheeks as he looked Lily.
"What's obvious?" asked Lily.
Snape had an air of nervous excitement. With a glance at the distant Petunia, now hovering besides the swings, he lowered his voice and said, "I know what you are."
"What do you mean?"
"You're…you're a witch," whispered Snape.
She looked affronted.
"That's not a very nice thing to say to somebody!"
She turned, nose in the air, and marched off toward her sister.
"No!" said Snape. He was highly colored now. He flapped after the girls, looking ludicrously batlike, like his older self.
The sisters considered him, united in disapproval, both holding on to one of the swing poles as through it was the safe place in tag.
"You are,"said Snape to Lily. "You are a witch. I've been watching you for a while. But there's nothing wrong with that. My mum's one, and I'm a wizard.
Petunia's laugh was like cold water.
"Wizard!" she shrieked, her courage returned now that she had recovered from the shock of his unexpected appearance. "I know who you are. You're that Snape boy! They live down Spinner's End by the river," she told Lily, and it was evident from her tone that she considered the address a poor recommendation. "Why have you been spying on us?"
"Haven't been spying," said Snape, hot and uncomfortable and dirty haired in the bright sunlight. "Wouldn't spy on you, anyway," he added spitefully, "you're a Muggle."
Though Petunia evidently did not understand the word, he could hardly mistake the tone.
"Lily, come on, we're leaving!" she said shrilly.
"…and the Ministry can punish you if you do magic outside of school, you get letters."
"But I have done magic outside school!"
"We're all right. We haven't got wands yet. They let you off when you're a kid and you can't help it. But once you're eleven," he nodded importantly, "and they start training you, then you've got to go careful."
"It is real, isn't it? It's not a joke? Petunia says you're lying to me. Petunia says there isn't a Hogwarts. It is real, isn't it?"
"It's real for us," said Snape. "Not for her. But we'll get the letter, you and me."
"Really?" whispered Lily.
"Definitely," said Snape.
This is the final part before the epilogue. Any comments/reviews are really appreciated.
