A/N: This chapter has a bit of a different style. It takes place in the future, skipping through several sets of scenes and characters as Snape and Hermione discover the world Voldemort creates after their executions. Enjoy!
Future
Even as the hot desperation of their first kiss drowned him, absorbing him, Snape felt himself drifting, his perspective changing. Lungs ceased to breathe. Heart stopped beating. The pliant mouth pressed ardently against his faded into nothingness as his own ability to touch disappeared.
'You have to let yourself go, Severus.' Lily's voice was in his ear as he longingly gazed down at the scene rapidly falling farther away from him. 'This is all history. What is done is done. You have to release it...'
He struggled to re-enter his body, just to feel, one more time, the sweeping ecstasy of her exploring fingers, of her skin next to his. But he kept losing ground, the distinct figures blurring and becoming one with distance.
He would always remember the argument they'd had following their first encounter, when daylight had begun its first appearance on the horizon and he had regained his sense of who he was.
'Miss...Hermione. We can't do this again,' Snape said gently, stroking her hair. She had attended to his leg, he had performed the other minor healing spells he had needed, and then she had settled herself on his lap. They were seated on the bare floor, his back aching as he leaned against a white-washed wall without a single cushion to intervene between the old structure and his bruised body. He couldn't have cared less. A feeling of youth, of having a world laid at his feet such as he had always heard about but never experienced, inundated him. Irrational though it was, with this witch in his arms, anything was within his grasp.
The euphoria was fleeting. He had to push her away.
'Why not?' she asked quietly, her jaw moving on his chest where she had tucked her head.
'I would have thought the gross inappropriateness of our actions tonight was obvious,' he tilted back at her, but without rancour. 'Both on the grounds of my age and position of authority.'
'You're no longer my teacher,' she answered, lifting her curls from over his heart to look him in the eye. 'The damage to the castle means that Hogwarts will be closed – unless the reports coming through were greatly exaggerated. But also...' she swallowed, tears filling her eyelids as she bit on her lower lip to contain an unreleased pain. 'With the Headmaster...'
'Yes,' he whispered. 'Draco...I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it myself.' His hand returned to her hair, working through the snarls as he came to them, their steady breathing completing the spell. The barriers erected tonight had to remain firm. There would be a time and a place to admit to the agony of losing their powerful mentor.
But it was not tonight.
He felt her intake of breath before the words that left her mouth. 'It means that you won't be teaching Potions again. I wanted to be your friend. Now I want to be something else.' The two-toned eyes searched his face for a sign as to whether she should continue. 'More.'
'Nothing can eliminate the differences in our ages. Or change the fact that my past makes me fundamentally unsuitable for a young woman like you.'
A sardonic smile. 'Naturally. I'm well known for my obsession with brooms and my love of Witch Teen. After all, what could be better than an evening of dreaming about dating a Quidditch star like my roommates?'
He had laughed, a full, rich sound, unmindful of the sleeping patients strewn about the floor on their haphazard mattresses. And she had pressed her point...
They had argued as deep purple became twilight blue, as Venus made her short appearance over the eastern horizon and vanished in the advancing rays of sunlight. When the rest of the house stirred, Severus Snape was seated alone, his bandages well tended-to, but he had given way in the face of her tenacious determination.
For the next two and a half years, he had shared her life. Until he had watched it end from Azkaban's tower.
888
He was re-materializing in the same small, book-filled room that he had inhabited...months? a few moments? before.
Once again, he was not alone. But this time he was facing the echo of the young woman he longed to see.
'Severus?' The delighted lilt was more welcome than any melody composed by a master. 'Were you there?' Her gesture indicated only the books, but he understood the question.
'I was,' he admitted, one of his phantom hands reaching up to capture hers.
Instead of meeting the warm flesh he'd just left, their hands passed through one another, tingling only faintly as they mingled halfway.
'Death has been much better than I anticipated,' she told him, and her eyes sparkled.
'Did Potter or Weasley greet you when you arrived?' he asked, focussing as he lifted his shadow arm again, pouring his sense-memory into recalling the nerves he'd had while living.
A strange look flitted across her face, too brief to define, for all that he knew her quite well.
'Yes...a Potter did find me when I...after I died.'
The hesitation in her voice cued him. 'A Potter?' His eyes searched their space, flickering rapidly to the bookshelves surrounding them. His original guide had not re-appeared, her voice once again faded into nothingness. 'Was it Lily?' he asked quietly.
She gave him a sharp look. 'No,' she answered slowly. 'Did Mrs. Potter meet you?'
'Yes. She was the only one before I...before we...returned to the world of the living. But if it wasn't Lily-'
Her drawn breath told him the truth even as she moved to speak.
'James Potter.' The note was just barely above a growl.
'Yes. But I don't know why. I obviously never met him, even if Harry was like my brother.'
'Potter.' It should have been a snarl, but Snape found that most of his vitriol had been used up in the first realization, and now the fact joined others in a line-up of curiosities. It was something to be examined when and if one had the time and the inclination.
As if their shared name summoned them, the air to the left of the settee shimmered, and Lily Potter was once again standing in front of him. Another stood at her side. Messy hair, thin face, glasses...brown eyes, no scar.
'Severus,' James Potter greeted his one-time antagonist, voice almost friendly. 'I owe you a debt of deepest gratitude for your many years of faithful guardianship. I well know that Harry would not have survived as long as he had without you and met his death when he ceased to follow your advice.'
The leftover surge of mouldering resentment and stewing hatred that had bubbled inside the darker wizard for two decades vanished with the soft-spoken words of thanks. In death, James Potter had, finally, grown up. 'You're welcome,' Snape allowed, hardly knowing where the words had come from.
Silence settled, a peace so new – so foreign – no one knew how to test it.
'It is time for you to move on,' James said after an interval that threatened to become awkward. 'To see the other side of the coin, the other half of the bargain.'
'You mentioned changing the future. Re-writing history,' Snape said slowly. Lily nodded once, cautiously. 'This new timeline,' he pressed on, searching her face, 'Would your son survive?'
The traded glances told him all he needed to know, and a slight, ironic smile lifted his thin lips. 'So. It is not only I who stand to gain from this.'
Lily's green eyes glittered briefly with an emotion he could not catch as she tilted her red head. 'You are not.'
'But that is neither here nor there, Severus,' James interjected softly. 'It is your decision to re-cast a world, not one life, or even a handful of those wasted. The future of Britain is yours to choose. Observe.' His command echoed in the space, but the books remained unmoved.
'What?' Hermione asked.
'The future-that-will-be. You must see what will become of the world that you have lost,' Lily told the younger witch.
'I think we can guess-' Hermione said, her voice catching. Even as a shade she bit her lower lip. 'I – I saw enough of death-'
'Unfortunately, this, too, is not something that we have ordained or have the power to spare you. It has been commanded that you go. So you must.'
'How? We lived in the past – our bodies, our souls, had an anchor there. Only a grave exists in our futures.'
'True. You will witness the future-that-will-be through other means. Other eyes. Eyes of those like you.'
'Like us?'
'How do you mean-?'
'You must observe,' James repeated his order firmly. 'You both know that words can only carry us so far.' He scanned the bookshelf and selected a new volume, pulling it down.
'Like the first one Lily gave you, this book is a window to the mortal world.' He extended it to Snape, the ancient text held perfectly flat, meeting the obsidian gaze. 'As with the first, we have no power to open it. We can but show you which book to examine. This one will give you what is yet to come.'
Snape glanced towards the one and only student that had ever become anything more to him to see her eyes fixed firmly on the book, curious excitement and dread plain on her features. Aware of his scrutiny, she lifted her eyes and tilted her chin at the tome.
'If we can change the future as you said, we must see this. Open it.'
He raised both eyebrows at her characteristic impatience, but obeyed the order, once again flipping open the cover. Paper rustled as an unfelt wind brushed through them, tangling Hermione's rich curls. The study was already dissolving, their guides vanishing with it, mist boiling in around them. Snape kept his eyes on Hermione, afraid that it would swallow her as well, but she remained as translucently real as he was.
As with her Muggle neighbourhood, the world before them was being drawn in swift, straight lines, a sketch rapidly expanding in all directions, flushing with colour and shadow to become three-dimensional. A half-deserted street.
Recognition struck him so violently it was painful, and he heard her gasp in shock.
The familiar shape Fortescue's ice cream parlour was boarded up, much as it had been on their last visit in life, but the weathered boards betrayed the passage of the years, scrawled on in violent yellows and reds by at least one generation of graffiti artists.
Beyond Fortescue's was the creaking sign of the Leaky Cauldron, long since out of business, a hunchbacked skeleton – probably the one-time proprietor – hung over the door. A child of five stopped to stare, his mother yanking him away impatiently, the wearing sign of permanent fear haunting her joyless eyes.
Where was the world of their childhood, where magic seemed to tumble from the stones themselves? Snape recalled with tearing clarity the first time he had entered it. He had gaped at this story-world made flesh, owls swooping overhead, clutching hand-me-down books and robes, but a brand-new wand and fresh ingredients in his hands. The soaring, innocent hope that had filled him as his eyes travelled hungrily from treasure to treasure, seeing in the world only a potential to make unimaginable discoveries, poured through him bitterly. The dreams of thousands of children – rotted. How many like him held half-citizen status, their blood tainted by the larger Muggle population? How many Hermione Grangers had 'disappeared' at ages seven or eight, their talents now an abomination?
His gaze shot to the end of the alley, where Gringotts had dominated. A peculiar sense of relief stole through him as he studied the marble facade, floating over the street like the ghost he was. Gleaming and polished, it, at least, seemed unchanged.
The relief faded as he looked to Ollivander's ancient wand shop – now re-christened Peverell's Legacy Wands and the old Flourish and Blotts store. Their dilapidation stood out starkly next to the smooth, shining bank, its beauty corrupted by its flagrant display of wealth and standing amid the ruins. A young woman strode up the broad steps, shimmering robes of mesmerizing turquoise shining beacon-bright amongst her drab fellows, the only person in the entire alley who looked as if she belonged to the world promised by the glittering marble. Two men in robes of crisp black marched closely behind her, a third young man in non-descript brown with red hair tearing along desperately at her heels. He hurried to reach the massive wooden doors ahead of her, pulling them open for her entrance. On his left arm, Snape saw not the Dark Mark, but a simple 'X' slashed into the skin. Drawing level with him, the woman and her guard didn't so much as glance down as he sank into a deep bow and then scurried after them.
He rotated, numb...only to find that the brick wall that had separated the Alley from the Muggle world for centuries had been blown away, the jagged remains of hardened clay stubbornly attached to the buildings on either side of the entrance all that had survived a violent opening.
Through the gap, as the woman and her small entourage disappeared into Gringotts, they could see a girl running towards them, growing clearer all the time, pursued by something they could not see. Her eyes lifted, and, as Snape knew he had seen himself in the corner of the Granger's house, he knew that the little girl was gazing right at them, seeing them where others would not.
'Me...' Hermione whispered, and vanished. Snape's useless hands reached for her, as if his ghost limbs could restrain her flight.
'Hey!' The cry was a boy's, as real and immediate as if the former spy were standing right on top of him-
-he glanced down, met blue eyes staring at him intently-
-his vision faded, self, faded-
-he was gazing out of those blue eyes. Small-ish hands, bruised but muscular legs. Slender, still short. No more than fourteen, no less than twelve.
The first sensation to sting him, flaying his nerves, was the wind. It raged around him. It seared as it whistled, tearing between the once-proud fronts of the shopping district, whipping at the clothes of the people scurrying around him. No one stopped. No one spoke. No one smiled. Certainly no one allowed their gaze to linger on the young woman running flat-out down the rough cobblestones, no more than a few metres away.
She was in danger. The DS were following her. Snape didn't know how he knew, but there was no room for doubt in the certainty of this mind.
'Helena!' He hissed, wildly waving to her. Her name came easily to his lips.
'Sam?' she panted.
'Quick! Inside.' He pulled Hermione-Helena behind him into a shop that looked as though it had been gutted and looted so many times that the iron bars on the windows were as much for show as the exhausted wards.
'You were stealing from Greengrass Books again,' he said flatly, gazing at the heavy volume.
Her eyes glittered, one cheek smeared with dirt that followed her cheekbone, making her look like the native of a far-off land. 'Master Malfoy's latest order.' She settled the tome carefully, almost worshipfully on the ground. 'The Wand-Makers' Companion.'
Sam seized Helena's wrist as she reached for the rich leather cover. 'You can't read this,' he said hoarsely, voice loaded with fear. 'I can't read this. You can't even look at it. Helena...Class Four Untouchables can't have wands.'
She wrenched away from him, terrible bitterness distorting her voice. 'I didn't ask to be born an Untouchable. What am I supposed to do with what I have inside me?'
Her friend shook his head. He didn't know, truly, how Helena had escaped the Squads as a child. Her talent was remarkable. She could even work spells with his Uncle Mel's wand, not that the old man knew they'd snuck it after one of his brandy-induced stupors. But that she had survived to thirteen without being shipped to a camp...
He gazed out the window, and felt his mouth twist into an ugly sneer. Perhaps the camps were better than here, though. The pickings of a once-grand society. The faded sign over the alley marked Di g n Al e . The boarded-over windows, and their worse cousins, the shattered ones whose edges gaped like teeth at the edge of an unhealed wound. The graffiti-scrawled walls. There were not many left now who remembered, and even fewer who would talk about it. About the hustle and bustle of a street hidden from Muggle eyes and packed with wonders. A world in its own right, a slice of wonderfully busy secrecy...the large marble bank at the end had done commerce instead of standing as a permanent, sparkling reminder of slaughter. They said that Goblin ghosts could still be heard running through the well-swept cellars, swearing vengeance on their murderers...
He shook himself and placed a hand firmly on the cover again. 'Helena...'
'I cannot run forever!'
'And if you do not? What will you do? One woman, fight an army? The Death Squads are everywhere. The Circle has their spies in every wall.'
'Better to die fighting than live a slave!' she blazed. 'Muggles don't live in the lap of luxury under our lord, but they live better than I do here.'
'But you do live. And not in a camp!' he hissed fiercely.
'Open up in there!' The order came from outside. Her disappearance had not happened soon enough. The teens glanced at each other, terror claiming their eyes, before their gazes fell on the book lying between them.
Their death sentence. Helena snatched it up. 'Get out!' she hissed, rising with the forbidden text clutched to her chest. 'Back door!'
'No! I'm not leaving you here to face them alone.'
'Sam!' She started with exasperation, but he was surprised to see a smile of unexpected sweetness curving a mouth uncut by laughter lines. She stepped closer to him, making him aware of her in a way he had never acknowledged before, and the fourteen-year-old swallowed hard as he studied her dark eyes. 'I'm an Untouchable, Sam. Class Four. There is nothing in this world for me.'
'I'm here.' He hadn't meant to say it. He wasn't supposed to say it. Wasn't supposed to think it. A Class-Four Untouchable, and he was merely a Class I Impure. Half-blooded. He could own a wand and a business. Marry a pure-blood and his children would be allowed to attend Hogwarts...
No future.
'Last time!' snarled the voice from the other side of the door. 'The Dark Lord will hear of your resistance!'
'Go,' she whispered.
'No.' She was so close that he could feel her rapid breathing in the flutter of air on his neck. He moved closer, blue eyes fixed on the full mouth that deprivation had not thinned.
'Sam...'
He kissed her.
The door burst inward.
888
Snape heard Hermione gasp her last sound as their shades reeled from the beaten bodies. 'Us...' Pearly tears glittered on her translucent cheeks. 'Us...how many years from now?'
'Does it matter?' he asked grimly, wishing more than ever for the solidity of arms that would hold her. The ruined Alley and her decrepit buildings had disappeared, an eraser taken to a pencil drawing, but another landscape was emerging before their eyes, as if they were Apparating in slow-motion, detail becoming visible a heart-beat at a time.
Barbed-wire crackling with magic grounded to each spire made twisted crowns atop soaring brick walls. A chimney smoked in the middle of the square, belching steam in many colours. Even as a phantom, Hermione paled.
'No...'
Snape scanned the interior from where they stood, on what seemed to be battlements right next to the wire. Tents were pitched by the hundreds in orderly rows, and thousands of people milled about beneath them. Their shoulders sagged. Their posture and the rare glimpse of faces told of a hope lost.
But it was the absolute silence that chilled Snape's blood. So many people...there should be noise. Noise generated by people talking, by guards barking orders, by mutters, by whistles, by footfalls.
All muted. He did not want to find his equivalent here...
The gated entrance was a shimmering tapestry of magic, deep blood-reds, richly-textured blacks and sickly yellows wove a poisonous prison so dense that the phantom struggled to distinguish the physical features from their storm. A queue stretched out in front of it, the mass of Muggle-borns waiting for processing, as unnaturally silent as the world inside.
'Figg, Ector.' A man stepped forward, lifted his head-
-dark eyes locked on Snape, the now-familiar feeling of being pulled in-
-and he was staring at the pudgy, bored, dully malicious face of the guard, two small hands tucked into either of his. Sons. Five and eight years old. Both magical, like their father. Both terrified. He could hear their forced-silent breathing.
'From Leytonstone, East London?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Two boys?'
'Yes, sir.'
'Class Four Untouchable? Boys a Class One? Half-blood mother?'
Ector-Snape's jaw locked, and he felt his elder son's hand squeeze so hard his fingers grated together. But mouthing off to a camp guard was as good as turning your own wand on yourself. Through gritted teeth, he answered, 'Yes, sir.'
As the guard's Quick-Quill scrawled, Ector scanned the women's line for his wife. His darling Cassandra had been clever enough to hoodwink the Ministry into accepting their wedding ten years ago, and hide them for that decade. When he found which neighbour had finally turned them in...she had flatly refused to leave him or her children when the Death Squads had come to call. As merely an Impure, she could have saved herself with the divorce contract he had begged her to sign...
'Finished, you deaf Mudblood,' snorted another guard, prodding him in the back. 'Inside.'
He balked, staring at the gates. Once you entered the barbed wire, you didn't come out. Unless it was as part of the ashes that billowed twice a month from the crematorium. No one escaped. The few attempts at rebellion had littered the countryside with corpses as the Death Eaters and their special squads ruthlessly destroyed it.
'If I have to tell you again, mister, you'll be walking through the gate with only one son.' Ector nearly swung on the man, fury surging. The man was a born bully – petty, impatient, the perfect man to commit murder without worrying about going to sleep at night.
'Don't talk back!' had been a last piece of advice at the Portkey station, a hurried whisper passed from one arrested Muggle-born to another. 'They hold everything dearest to you. Never open your mouth.'
He mastered the impulse to strike the thug stalking at his back and started through the gate. He fancied he could hear them locking behind him, even though they remained gaping, ready to receive the full total of today's victims.
'Where's Mum?' Kaye, his youngest son, whimpered.
'I'm sure she'll be along soon,' his father assured him, squatting down to look into his son's grey eyes. They were a gift from his light-eyed mother, Ector was sure. The whole Figg family had been dark, for as many generations as they could count.
'Will we ever get to go home, Daddy?' That was Arthur. Ector took a deep breath.
'I don't know,' he admitted. 'But I do know that we are going to-'
'Ector! Arthur! Kaye!' Cassandra had arrived in a whirl of golden-red hair and hugs, seizing her sons and squeezing them until they couldn't breathe. 'I'm so glad,' she gulped down air, eyes over-bright with tears. 'They're making Selection.' She jerked her chin towards the forbidding chimney. It would be smoking long into the night.
'Selection?' he whispered.
'Yes. Hurry – we can join that queue over there.' There was a twisted line patrolled by another pair of weary guards, where dozens stood clumped together in family groups while waiting for their tent assignment. Cassandra snatched up Kaye's hand and started for the relative safety of the housing queue. Once you were assigned, they wouldn't kill you. Not if you were useful and obedient enough. They always needed competent magic-users...
'Not you.'
Black robes, black belt, black gloves, black wand. It was said you couldn't be a member of the Elite Executors unless your wand was made of blackthorn. Something about the quality of the wielder.
'Sorry?' Ector breathed. His wife was now twenty feet ahead, intent on her goal, not looking back.
'That line. You and the brat,' the EE man said emotionlessly. The tilt of his head was for the Selection queue. Ector's heart skipped several painful beats.
'The only thing come out of that are the bodies.' He could not remember where he had heard the rumour, but it sounded in his head with thousands of voices. 'The bodies...and the colours of the magic we don't have.'
'We're new. We're strong. We can work,' Ector begged, tucking his son halfway behind him, as if to hide him.
The gloved hand shot out, seizing Arthur's chin and dragging him forward, turning his head brutally, giving the boy a light slap. 'Work? This little nothing? Don't waste your breath, Mudblood.' The wand rested against Arthur's forehead, the point twisting like a drill. 'It's a pity to waste anything on you, little one. Even a Killing Curse would require too much effort.' There was no change of expression on the unyielding features as a knife appeared in the EE's other hand.
The silver blade was dimmed with usage, but as the winter sun glinted dully on the vicious edge, Ector felt the world fall away. His head lightened, almost floating. His ears were stoppered by a strange buzzing. His vision narrowed to the strip of steel.
As it began its slow slice towards Arthur's jugular, Ector moved with it, almost dreamlike, his body matching the sweep of the blade-
-it bit through his skin, tore past his ribs and ground to a halt just outside his stomach. For a moment, there was no more than a peculiar wetness, as if water had been poured down his back to soak him-
-and then came the panic. Deep and throbbing. There was no pain, shock buffering his nerves from knowing what he had done. His knees buckled, and he flopped into the snow, red spreading from him in a bloody wave.
Screaming. Crying. Cassandra's red hair fluttering at the edge of his vision...
'Stupid Mudblood. No better than you deserved,' sneered the EE, looming over him. A yank, pain blossoming as the knife pulled free with a sucking sound.
'Ector? Ector! Hold on! I'm sure they have a Healer.' His wife's beautiful face filled his narrowing eyesight, mouth distorted by desperation.
For me? A Class Four Untouchable? No, my love. I have reached the end of my line. It's time...
A thought. He had to say it. Cold snow, under him. Tiny flakes. So small. So incredibly perfect. One, then another, and another...until he had a blanket. But a blanket should go over him, not underneath...
One thought. Had to say. No breath. Very important to let out his last thought. 'Cass...? ...love you...'
888
Silence as the decrepit tents and billowing chimney of the camp compressed together, spiralling inwards and dragging the two un-living with them to materialize in an unrecognized neighbourhood. Like the Grangers' area, it was all neat hedgerows and prim doorsteps. And the sky was an unclouded blue, the ruin of soot, smoke and Dark magic left behind.
'I cannot bear to watch you die again,' Hermione whispered hoarsely beside him. Snape felt her not-solid fingers brush against his, and he could not bring himself to meet her gaze.
'I watched them hang you. In real life. In our lives.' Had he lived long enough, the last few seconds of her jerking body before stillness claimed her would have haunted his nightmares for the rest of his life. 'In full and in blood' he had told Lily. If I can spare you, I must...
Phantom-Hermione opened her mouth to respond, but stopped as two children came skipping into view. In a breath, the shades had vanished into the living humans.
They were young, certainly no more than nine years, and they were racing towards the merry-go-round. It began to whirl before either touched it, and was speeding merrily when the girl-Hermione jumped, her white-blond braid sailing out behind her. She landed, catlike and laughing, on the spinning wheel. The boy-Snape hesitated for several beats, as if gauging the best time and place to join her.
'Come on, Aren! Just jump!'
'I'm coming, Gwyn!'
He waited another moment, then bent his legs to spring. His leap carried him to perch where the six metal bars joined in their starburst centre, and he stood slowly, swaying to keep his balance as it spun faster.
Laughing, Gwyn darted from the brightly-coloured wheel, racing to the monkey bars. 'Watch!' she demanded of her playmate, now doing a flamingo impression atop the twirling carousel. Staring intently at the low-hanging bars, she willed...and they grew. Metal creaked, undulating as it reached skyward.
'You know you're not s'posed to change anything,' Aren said with a trace of a pout as he bounded down.
'I'll change it back,' she answered flippantly, sticking her tongue out at him as she began to climb. 'Not my fault you're scared of heights.'
'I'm not!'
'Are too!'
She giggled as he eyed the now ten-foot-high bars, swallowed and started up after her. She climbed faster, scrambling to reach the top before he could on the opposite side. Swinging her legs through, Gwyn began to race him to the middle. Aren caught the glimmer of competition in her grey eyes and set his teeth. She was so infuriating – had to win at everything... He swung down, whispered a levitation spell he had read about in a book of his father's, and raced towards her.
'Cheater!' she announced when his nose bumped hers. She was only a third of the way across. He laughed. 'You made yourself lighter!'
'You made the bars taller,' he countered.
'Teach me?' she breathed, swinging backwards violently and twisting her torso to bring her legs up and over the side, narrowly missing him as he hastily moved a bar back. Dropping her arms, she squinted at him from upside-down. 'How to do it?'
'Maybe,' he said coyly.
'No fair, not telling.' She crossed her arms huffily, and he grinned. Gwyn could be terrifying to when she was truly aroused to anger, but it was impossible to take her seriously when her deep purple tee-shirt had slid halfway up her abdomen and her long hair draped down like a gold-spun tail.
Serious, measured footsteps. In a hurry. A swift, panicked glance at the still-turning merry-go-round brought it to a halt, and Gwyn's fierce stare shrank the monkey bars back to their normal height, her braid dragging in the dirt.
Aren's father came crashing around the corner. The boy shot a terrified glance at Gwyn, who was warily watching his father in turn, one arm reaching up to grab a bar and pull herself parallel to the ground.
'Aren! There you are!' A firm hand gripped his upper arm, squeezing so tight the boy winced in pain. The empty black eyes of the father grazed over the girl's dirtied braid, her half-upturned face slowly draining from red to pale. 'What have I told you about playing with trash, boy? She is beneath you.' A gesture of contempt. 'Mudblood.'
'Don't-' Aren started hotly. His father shook him violently.
'None of your lip. We're going.' Without a further glance at the child he had pronounced judgment upon, he marched his son away, firmly planting his large hand on Aren's head and twisting it forward when the boy tried to look back. Aren wiggled his free fingers in a miserable motion of leave taking...
...the day shifted. The sun set, the moon in her darkness failed to rise. Stars emerged, to be chased away by the strength of the streetlamps.
In the darkness of his room, preparing for bed, Aren heard the BANG! His young heart froze for an instant, then began to hammer loudly at his ribcage, as if it were pounding to get out. He scrambled to the curtains and threw them aside, staring avidly from his second-story window. The glare from his lamp bounced off the glass, so he pressed his nose against it, cupping his hands around his eyes and ignoring the way his breath sent circular clouds up the pane.
Gwyn lived directly across the way. And the Knight Bus had pulled up in front of her house. 'They bring it for the imposters, the pretenders, stupid Muggles who can't do magic and shouldn't try...' But Gwyn could do magic. She was brilliant at it. It wasn't her fault that her parents were Muggles.
Muffled shouting, the bellowing of a furious man in pain. The flash of spells in the windows opposite, one that deadly green all members of the Empire recognized. The screaming started. Aren moved to plug his ears, stilled his fingers halfway there. No. This was important. He could not be deaf to this.
Nor could he be still. He moved from the window, barrelling down the stairs in his nightshirt, headed for the front door. His mother caught him as he savagely twisted the deadbolt, struggling as it stuck in years-long habit.
'Aren!'
'They're taking her!' he shouted at his mother, ashamed to feel water filling his eyelids as he yanked at the door. 'The...the...them. They're going to take her away!'
'Sweetheart.' His mother captured his hands, stilling them in his frantic attempt to leave. 'They have to.'
'What – why-?'
'I told you not to waste your time on trash.' His father's voice was surprisingly gentle, but Aren was suddenly flooded with terrible comprehension.
'You...' he whispered, jerking his wrists from his mother to stare at his father in horror. 'You called them.' A tilt of the greying head.
'This is your fault!'
'I will not tolerate such blatant disrespect, boy!'
'They killed someone!' Aren shouted.
'Aren!' His mother grabbed his shoulders, wrenched him around to face her again. 'I know it hurts, honey, but it's for the best. Her kind aren't like us. They poison us by their very existence.'
Aren was shaking his head, and he backed away from his mother, eyes flushed with bewilderment, as if staring at a stranger.
'I hate you.' The first was said quietly, almost wonderingly. 'I HATE you!' he screamed at his father, and raced for the living room when his mother's wand re-locked and warded the front door.
Gwyn's pale hair flashed in the streetlight as he pressed both hands against the magic-proofed bay window, horrified that only his eyes could bear witness to the scene outside.
His best friend lay stiff as a board, carried by two men. Aren could see that the one at her head was holding only her braid, as if she were a rag doll to be dragged through the dust. Another woman, an older version of Gwyn, had followed them out. The lamps illumined golden rivers of tears carving their way down her face.
They handled Gwyn into the bus. Her mother rushed one of the Death Squad, wildly striking him across the face. He backhanded her brutally, knocking her to the pavement. Aren saw his square head jerk as he spat on the Muggle woman huddled on the concrete.
'Done!' he heard the shout through the glass. 'Let's get out of here before we have to kill the bitch, too.'
BANG!
As quickly as it had come, the Knight Bus disappeared, taking the centre of his world and leaving Gwyn's mother and a black-eyed boy staring red-eyed in its invisible wake.
888
The spirits exchanged no words. Both had been exposed extensively to the brutality of their enemies in the course of the war, but even as ghosts, they felt slightly sickened at the continuing evidence of a rule-by-terror. Quiet contemplation carried them through the suburban development's morph into a garden of unsurpassed splendour. The question of whose it was died a-borning as a pure white peacock strutted in front of them, fanning his iridescent tale.
'Malfoy Manor,' Snape murmured, breaking their silence.
The night air seemed irrationally cooler to his un-dead skin as he stood under the stars. Twilight's deep, bruised purple had just become full night, lights winking down at them, silhouetting the thick rose bushes bursting with blossoms. Dulled like the rest of his senses, the ex-spy found that he could not smell the breeze of what was probably a summer evening, or the perfume that the rich petals were doubtless wafting over the massive lawns.
The internal pull that had guided them for the whole of their grisly tour nudged them towards the imposing facade. Mutely, they obeyed, Hermione wondering if the internal numbness that had grown so familiar might have finally claimed her. The shades glided inside, slipping through the massive oak double doors like breaths of wind. Like the carefully designed landscape outside, the interior of the Manor was much changed from Snape's memories. When Abraxas had passed the Manor to Lucius, the son had adjusted the main hall to have rows of floor-to-ceiling windows on two walls according to modern fashion, allowing sunlight to flood the space, making it feel expansive. Lucius' parties had never failed to convey a sense of total freedom, a visual question mark as to where the house ended and the gardens began.
But Draco had returned the vast hall to his grandfather's dimensions. Thick stone lined all four walls with only a few large windows – most of them covered with rich, forest-green drapes – punctuating the space. Exquisitely brocaded tapestries sweeping from floor to ceiling could not eliminate the cold that seeped from the rock. Even as a spirit, Snape felt an overwhelming feeling of claustrophobia. This gathering, though well-attended, was perfectly confined, the walls a guard against a world the glittering women and silk-draped men dared not observe.
Snape forced himself to study the faces of the people present. They swished and whirled together, a collage and barrage of finery that seemed starkly offensive after the compulsory dreariness of the people in the ruined Diagon Alley, the dulled terror of the camp and the desperation of little Aren's neighbourhood. The smiles on these faces were often tight, and many of them had predator's eyes.
He caught a glimpse of the host's pale hair under a chandelier, but a flash of hatred kept him from drifting any closer. The boy he had tried to save. The son of an enemy who had far surpassed his father's brutality. The murderer of Albus Dumbledore. No...Draco Malfoy was probably the only person he still despised, even in death.
And now he had a receding hairline and deep, harsh lines around his eyes that indicated a lifetime of cruelty. They must be at least half a century into the future – the student had already outlived his one-time Head of House by at least two decades.
Lost in study, he hadn't noticed Hermione drifting away from him, her outline flickering amongst the guests as she sank into them, no longer hovering above but mingling between, passing through the painted ladies and their brusque companions. She was searching for someone.
He followed the pearly outline towards the glittering, double-diamond doors that lead to the back balcony. Hermione slid through them and, noiselessly, he trailed in her wake.
'They own everything you can see,' he said softly as they paused over the deep-veined marble. 'To the edges of the forest to the south and west, and the lake in the east.'
'So much beauty.' He could hear the marvel in her voice. 'Created by those who sow and reap only hatred.' Suddenly, vividly, Snape recalled Hermione as a child, and how much she had suffered before the sneering bully who had watched her hang, and the father who had encouraged his son's blind prejudice.
Without waiting for a reply, she sank straight downward through the chilly stone, seeking once more. They passed the massive willow, a tree Lucius had once boasted was at least half the age of the manor itself. Snape and Lucius had hidden under it as boys, it had later served as the site of his friend's marriage to Narcissa, and still later the place that six-year-old Draco sequestered himself to play with Lucius' wand.
The blond boy that had looked to him for guidance no longer existed, but as the wind blew thin, whippy branches aside, a flash of silver-white caught the phantom's eye. It seemed that some things had remained constant.
He gently brushed his hand through Hermione's shoulder, gesturing. Unspoken accord brought the two shades closer-
'Lucius?' Snape was surprised by the force of his own dismay. He had given up his boyhood friend in the Forbidden Forest when he had begged Dumbledore for Lily Potter's life. But this pale figure, skin so drawn he appeared ill, the hair he had pampered so going limp as it silvered, grey eyes dulled in silent, endured torture...
For this Lucius, now in his mid-nineties, Severus Snape had died half a lifetime before. But the shade easily recalled the arrogance that had once oozed so effortlessly from Britain's wealthiest wizard, the absolute coolness the younger man had much admired. Both had vanished and with them, some previously undefined spark of personality.
Noise. The snap of a carefully placed foot that had nevertheless hit a twig. A stifled, whispered exclamation. Lucius' head lifted, hand going automatically to the cane set at his side. In spite of his appearance, he was quick as ever, and the grim cast to his eyes made Snape grateful that he was not the unfortunate on the other end of this wand-
-he was turning even as he thought it, and his eyes collided with a pair of bright, inquisitive blue that widened as they connected-
-and he found himself staring directly into the business end of the Malfoy patriarch's polished elm wand.
'Grandfather – don't!'
A dark head of curls darted in front of him, shielding him as pleading fingers reached for the wand-tip. 'He's not – that is – we're...'
The slate grey eyes swept over them and Gareth-Snape held himself very still. There were rumours that floated through the kitchens, winding their way through the footmans' lodgings, whispered on the servant staircases. It was said that the current Lord Malfoy was nothing compared to his father. That Lucius Malfoy had been one of the original Inner Circle, one of the few to believe before the Dark Lord's power and terror had enveloped the whole of Britain.
No matter his age, he still held his wand like a man born on a battlefield, and the stormy eyes studied them with a touch of barely-masked contempt. Possessing innate talent, but denied the use of a wand, Gareth fervently hoped that this was not a challenge. He would not come out of it alive.
He could only pray that Julia-Hermione knew what she was doing. She was the old man's favourite grandchild, illegitimate daughter of the house that she was.
To Gareth's surprise, the wood fell at the barest touch of her fingers, rapidly restored to its place inside the ebony cane that was no longer merely an affectation. Affection erased the contempt Lucius bestowed on the manor's servant as he gazed into the rainy-day eyes of his son's youngest. Affection – tempered by the sorrow that quirked his lips.
'Has it come to this, little bird? You are ready to fly?' Julia stared at her grandfather, completely wrong-footed. The smile grew a little. 'You think I am too old to see what is under my nose?' Bitterness flashed in his features, narrowing his eyes. 'Your father makes that mistake. I do not.'
'No...I...Grandfather, how did you...?'
'I have lived a long time, my child.' Desolate sorrow twisted the once-proud face briefly, and Gareth wondered what the elder wizard was seeing in the privacy of his mind's eye.
'You have had no eyes for the young men who come weekly to court you since your debut this last spring,' he continued, pulling his focus back to her face. 'A woman of nineteen is not blind to the charms they display you. But a woman in love is heedless of all save her beloved. The estate has now over one hundred servants of all ages, and you have always been curious and friendly. It took only a little observation to find the one on whom you've set your heart.'
The grey eyes shifted back, and Gareth tensed as emotion vanished, leaving only quiet calculation. 'You have power, young man. A great deal of it. Power and intelligence. Enough to make it over the channel?'
Gareth nodded, almost a bow. He had never been directly addressed by anyone in the family other than Julia – who only half-counted because her mother had been no more than a servant, a Muggle-born witch, not the lady of the house.
'I can defend myself, Grandfather.'
'It will take both of you and a life's worth of luck to leave Britain,' he answered her sharply. 'You have an ally – make sure you use him.'
Gareth hardly dared credit his ears. They were leaving, planning not only an elopement but a betrayal of their country, and Lucius Malfoy, one of the most savage Death Eaters ever to exist, was all-but-giving them his blessing?
'You look shocked, Gareth, son of Gawan.'
He swallowed, hard. How to answer? It was said that the oldest rank could read minds like their lord... 'Speak honestly. With me, here and now, there is no need to stand on ceremony. None is here to witness it save the moon – and she has been observing the foolishness of men for millennia.'
'I am surprised, sir. I expected-'
'Who goes there? What are you doing out here?' The aggressive call of a guard, striding round a twist in the path, startled them. His wand was raised in warning and threat as he approached, star-and-moon light too dim for him to see their faces.
'Who is it?' he ground out. 'Lumos!'
Gareth could hardly credit his eyes with what happened next. A dazzling brilliance lit the wand-tip, sweeping over their faces and blinding him. Reflexively, he lifted a hand to shield his eyes, jerking Julia to stand behind him-
-the guard called out a rapid stream of names, summoning others-
-there was a quiet, almost casual murmur from his right side where Master Lucius stood-
-a sucking wind that felt as if death had crawled into his skin rushed past him, streaking in green light-
-the guard collapsed, an abandoned marionette, and his wand went out, plunging the night once more into darkness. Gareth blinked ferociously, trying to clear his vision. When he finally succeeded, he wished he hadn't.
The guard lay in an awkward heap, his final, frozen look one of absolute surprise. Slowly, Gareth lifted his gaze from the sightless one of the man on the ground to the quiet resolution of Lucius Malfoy's.
'They will be coming. Now. Your window is narrowing. Get out while you can.'
'You...' Gareth couldn't make himself finish the thought. He knew what the Death Eaters did. Everyone knew. But he had never witnessed it first hand.
'I killed him,' the patriarch said quietly. 'As easily as we swat flies and slaughter meat for our table. I take no pleasure in it, but my ability to feel remorse was buried generations ago. There is only the satisfaction, this time, of knowing that I have bought a chance for someone I love.' He stepped forward, brushed a loose strand from Julia's forehead, and leaned forward to plant a kiss on her brow. 'Go. Find your new world. The one we have created is no more than a ruin.'
'Thank you,' she whispered, and Gareth could hear her throat close with tears.
'Come with us, sir,' he urged suddenly.
'No. It is my fault that Britain has suffered what it has. Mine, and those like me. I have wished for years that I had perished in the last days of the war with my beloved wife, but my punishment and penitence has been to see what I promoted destroy a world that I loved. I cannot leave.' Another touch of that bitter smile. 'It is kind of you to offer.'
'Brian?' Another guard. Running footsteps from at least three of the garden paths.
'Go on!' Lucius hissed, gripping his wand in his hand, grey gaze scanning the darkness around them. The mantle of an old man disappeared, replaced by the fighter he had become so long ago. 'Leave, before they can trap you!'
Julia hesitated, her lower lip in her mouth as she gazed at her grandfather, his feet planted firmly on the ground beneath his willow. 'When they bury me, it will be here. Alongside my dearest Narcissa.' How many years ago had he said that to her? She had been a child, and though he was already old, she could not have imagined her grandfather vanishing into the black, leaf-dusted loam. She had giggled, unable to conceive of childhood world without him.
She was no longer a child. And his words had proven prophetic. He would fall here.
'Brian's dead! We have a traitor!' came the shout just beyond the screen of whippy branches.
Gareth was tugging her away. 'If we do not run, his sacrifice is useless,' he whispered in her ear.
'Grandfather-'
A whistle of red streaked overhead, striking the willow. An ominous crack sounded overhead. The hasty curse had broken one of the branches on the main trunk.
'Fly!' Lucius ordered, a spell of blazing blue searing from his wand to light the lilacs on fire, revealing two attackers. 'Make the last of my life worthy. Take her as far from this accursed country as you can.' A hex in orange rebounded from his shield, and a stinging stream of yellow surged from the aristocrat's wand. An exhilarated smile at his granddaughter. 'I love you, little bird.'
'Let's go!' And they were running, the fight growing increasingly visible behind them. Dodging bushes, vaulting over half-fences, trampling flowers. A sideways glance revealed moon-silver tears carving tracks down Julia's face.
'He'll never survive,' she gasped as they reached the outer wall, guard positions abandoned for the impromptu battle.
'No. But we will. It was what he wanted.' He took her face in his hands, gently wiping away the tears with his thumb, forcing her swimming eyes to focus on him. 'Julia...dearest...he would not want you to be unhappy.'
'No,' she agreed numbly. She took a deep breath, gathering the significant strength she had always cloaked beneath silk robes and soft mannerisms. Determination glittered behind the water standing in her lids. When she spoke again, her voice was inflexible as iron. 'No. He wouldn't.'
Gareth brought her mouth to his and kissed her roughly, raggedly. She returned it with equal ardour, hands buried in his hair, a seal of acceptance stamped on their decision.
Fire blossoming in livid streaks of trailing spells behind them, they wrenched open the gardener's gate, ducking out of the Manor and into the anonymity of the night.