Chapter Nine

After a quick walk down through the little town, Remus turned the corner of Ratchet Row and saw the end of his quest come into sight. The apothecary shop was a narrow building made of rosy brick, it had green shutters at the window and a shiny black door, and over the door, just as the postmaster said, hung a freshly painted sign that read: Prince's Apothecary; Marcus Prince, proprietor.

Remus' smile broadened as he began to walk down the short alley toward the shop. It would be a monumental coincidence for the name on the back of Severus' photograph and the name of the proprietor of this shop to be one and the same without sharing a connection. Surely, this had to be the right place.

He paused in front of the door and wiped his sweaty palms on the sides of his robe. Abruptly his heart was beating so loudly it drowned out the birdsong from the trees that surrounded him. Now that he was here, about to finally speak to Severus again after all this time, he suddenly couldn't think of a single thing to say.

What if, despite all evidence to the contrary, he was wrong and Severus wasn't here? What if Severus was here but he didn't want to see him after all? What if Severus not only didn't want to see him, but laughed in his face at the very idea that Remus still cared about him? He took a deep breath. What if he stopped dithering like an idiot and simply opened the door and found out for himself?

With a mildly disgusted shake of his head, Remus marched up to the door, grabbed the doorknob, turned it and pushed, only to be brought up short when the door didn't budge. He tried again with the same result. The door was locked tight. With a puzzled frown, he stepped back away from the shop and stared at it. For the first time, he noticed that a large thick shade covered the shop's picture window, preventing him from seeing inside. Could he be too early for business hours? Maybe Severus was still at home after all.

Rubbing a thoughtful hand across his face, Remus stepped closer to the door once more. According to the schedule that was printed on the wood in bright silver letters, the shop should have opened an hour ago. Maybe it was some local holiday he knew nothing about. Although that didn't seem very likely since the post office and all the other shops he'd passed on his way through town had been open for business. He'd certainly received his share of curious glances from their doorways. So why was Severus' shop closed?

Just as he was about to see if he could peek in around the corner of the shade, a voice spoke up from behind him.

"The shop should be open, Mister. You can go on in. You won't find any finer potions or powders anywhere on the island if you're worried. Mr. Prince makes the best around. You'll see."

Remus turned and found himself facing a fresh faced, young boy with big brown eyes and a bright smile. He returned the smile. "Hello. I'm glad to hear that Mr. Prince knows his work, but I just tried the door. The shop's locked up tight."

The boy's eyebrows rose in surprise and his eyes slid from Remus to the shop door. "That's odd. Mr. Prince is always here by now. He's expecting me to come and make some deliveries for him." The boy's voice held a note of pride in it. "Maybe the door's jammed or something. Let me try it."

Without waiting for a response from Remus, the boy stepped up to the door and began to rattle the knob. When it wouldn't open for him, he thumped on the wood and began to yell. "Mr. Prince! Mr. Prince, it's Thaddeus; open up, won't ya? I'm here to make your deliveries. Mr. Prince?"

Thaddeus stepped back and scratched his head. "Huh? I wonder where he is?"

"Is there another entrance?" asked Remus.

Thaddeus nodded. "Yeah, there's a door at the back, but I don't understand why this one's locked. The shop should be open. It always is by now."

"Maybe Mr. Prince had an emergency or perhaps he's taken ill." Remus looked at the shop with concern now. Could Severus be lying inside, too sick or injured to answer the door? They had to see. "Come on, let's check the back."

Remus headed around the side of the shop toward the small open space at its rear and Thaddeus followed him. When they reached the rear of the building nothing seemed obviously amiss at first glance. However, when Remus looked closer, he noticed an irregular trail of small dark spatters accompanied by several smudged marks that probably were footprints. The suspicious tracks led down the back steps and disappeared into the surrounding grass. Kneeling, he touched one of the spots with a finger and brought it up to his face to examine. One sniff told him all he needed to know. The spots were blood.

Now thoroughly alarmed, he got to his feet and scanned the immediate area carefully. The bloody marks came to an abrupt end in a well-trod section of the small yard. Whoever left the marks had probably Apparated away from that point. Since the blood hadn't started to congeal, most likely it hadn't been too long since they left, but without knowing where his mysterious quarry had gone there was no way to follow them directly. That left Severus' shop as the only place to look for answers.

Remus drew his wand, turned away from the yard and approached the shop door cautiously. Though it appeared that whoever left the marks had gone, it was just possible that these were the marks of someone's arrival instead of leave taking, and if so, that someone could still be inside.

Stepping carefully, to avoid marring the bloody trail, Remus climbed the short flight of steps and tried the door. It opened easily to his touch.

"That's not right," Thaddeus muttered from behind Remus. "Mr. Prince always keeps the back door locked."

With his hand still on the doorknob, Remus turned and looked down at the boy. "Thaddeus, right?"

The boy nodded and Remus smiled reassuringly. "Well, Thaddeus, you wait here while I take a look inside. It could be dangerous if anyone is still in there."

Thaddeus' eyes widened, but he shook his head and looked determined. "If anything's happened to Mr. Prince, I should know about it. He's my boss. I don't even know who you are. How do I know I can trust you?"

Remus conceded the point. "I'm a friend of Mr. Prince. My name is Remus Lupin, and I just arrived for a visit."

"So you say, but anyone can say they know someone if that person isn't around to say they don't," said Thaddeus logically. "If you go in, I'm coming, too."

Not wanting to waste any more time quarreling with the stubborn boy, Remus nodded abruptly. "All right. You can come in, but hang back a bit. If there is an intruder still inside the shop, he could be dangerous. I don't want you getting hurt. Mr. Prince wouldn't either."

At first, Thaddeus looked as if he was going to argue, but he didn't, instead giving a somewhat reluctant nod.

Satisfied, Remus pushed the door open and stepped inside. He found himself in a tidy storeroom. A small fire crackled in the grate and above it, a cauldron of potion bubbled away pleasantly on a hook. Severus would never go off and leave a potion unattended over an open fire, so if he wasn't in the front room of the shop, something was most definitely wrong.

Glancing down at the floor, Remus noticed that the trail of dark, smudged marks and droplets ran straight across the storeroom to a curtained doorway that likely led into the front of the shop. Crossing the room quietly, he listened at the curtain but heard nothing, so he reached up, pushed the fabric aside and peered into shop's the front room.

The place was an astounding mess and Remus heard Thaddeus gasp from behind him. Broken shelving, smashed glassware, and the contents of many potion bottles and vials were strewn across what once must have been a clean, polished wood floor.

Thaddeus crept closer to Remus and stared at the mess in horror. "What happened? It looks like there was a fight or something," he whispered.

Remus placed a hand on the boy's shoulder. "Stay here. We don't want too many people tracking this mess around. Let me take a closer look. I have some experience with this sort of thing."

Thaddeus just nodded, and Remus released his shoulder, took a few careful steps into the room, and crouched down to examine the scene.

One whole section of display shelving was broken and had crashed to the floor along with its contents as if something, or someone, had been thrown against it. There were clear marks of a scuffle in the detritus on the floor, along with a chilling amount of blood.

Remus could see at least two sets of footprints in the mess. One set tracked bits of glass and the remains of potions over to the front door and back, then two sets of prints, along with a spattering of blood droplets, left the muddled mess on the floor and headed toward the back door of the shop. The mess itself held the impression of a body, and not one that seemed to correspond to either set of bloody footprints.

If he had to guess, he'd say that two people had entered the shop through the front door, attacked someone already in the shop, throwing them against the wall and bringing down the shelves and their contents on top of them. After a brief altercation, one of the intruders went back to the front door, to lock it perhaps, and then the two of them picked up the third man and left through the back of the shop. Considering that Severus was probably the injured man, it wasn't a scenario Remus particularly liked thinking about, but it seemed a likely explanation for what he was seeing.

It seemed even more likely when Remus extracted a crumpled, yellowing piece of newspaper from the mess and realized that the article displayed on it was an interview with Harry telling the whole world that Severus Snape wasn't a traitor at all but was actually a hero who'd risked his life for years spying on Voldemort and his Death Eaters.

Remus doubted that Severus would carry the paper around with him or have it on display in his shop when he was in hiding, but as a motive for attack by disgruntled former Death Eaters who felt betrayed by one they had once called their own, it was first rate. Perhaps others far less friendly than he had also found clues to Severus' current whereabouts and had come to enact vengeance, bringing this with them to face Severus with evidence of what they saw as his crime.

As he let the newspaper drop back onto the floor, Remus' eye lit on something familiar lying half buried in the chaos. He reached out and picked it up. It was a wand…Severus' wand. He'd know it anywhere. Any small doubts that might have lingered in the deep recesses of his mind were swept away forever as he held up the small pliant rod, smeared with potions and blood.

Remus' fingers tightened around Severus' wand as cold fear clutched at his heart. All the signs pointed to an attack by a couple of escaped Death Eaters, and it was up to Remus to find him before they could do him any more harm. But how? He was a stranger here. He didn't have the vaguest idea where to even begin looking.

It was Thaddeus who gave him the clue. The boy had remained beside the curtained entrance to the room as he'd been told, but though he hadn't moved, he hadn't been idle. He'd been examining the scene as carefully as he could without actually going into the room, and he noticed the partially packed box on the counter that stood just to one side of the doorway and the quill that was poised on end beside it. As Remus examined the floor and picked up Severus' wand, Thaddeus took a couple of steps over to the counter and looked down at the half written delivery list that lay there on top of Severus' green notebook.

"Hey! Look at this," he exclaimed.

At the boy's shout, Remus got to his feet and came to join him. Thaddeus pointed to the list and the quill that was still busily recording every word spoken in the room. "Mr. Prince must have been making out the delivery list when whoever attacked him came in. The quill's still going. Look, it wrote down what they said."

Reaching out to still the quill and set it aside so he could examine the parchment beneath more closely, Remus smiled at the boy. "You're right, Thaddeus. Good thinking."

The two of them crowded together and read through the transcript of the attack quickly. It revealed a grim scenario that confirmed Remus' deepest fears, but it also gave a ray of hope. Remus turned to Thaddeus. "Do you know where Clyto's Cave is?"

"Sure. I can take you there. It's not too far from here. All the kids like to play there, though our parents don't want us to because at high tide it's all underwater. Pirates used to use it to hide treasure and kill people they didn't like. It's a really cool place."

It didn't sound so inviting to Remus, not when the one slated to meet his end there might be Severus, but he didn't waste time expressing his reservations.

Thaddeus' voice took on an edge of excitement as he asked, "Is it true what they said? Is Mr. Prince really Severus Snape the famous spy?"

Remus nodded. "Yes, he is, but we shouldn't waste time discussing that now. We need to get moving. Mr. Snape may not have much time left, so lead the way to this cave, Thaddeus, and take the shortest route you can."

Thaddeus blanched, nodded and headed toward the back door as fast as he could with Remus right behind him.

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Severus blinked and tried to focus on his surroundings but found that took more effort than he could manage. So he gave up and let himself drift along on a tide of semi-consciousness. His surroundings blurred together and reality seemed very far away. Water lapped around his chest and spray randomly flicked at his face, jerking him back to momentary awareness whenever it hit. He couldn't feel his extremities any longer, which seemed like a good thing under the circumstances. Numbness was keeping the pain at bay, and considering the intensity of the pain he'd been in, setting it aside was very welcome indeed.

Suddenly a hand reached out of nowhere and slapped him viciously across the face. His head slammed back into the pillar of rock at his back and sharper focus was ruthlessly forced on him once again. Looking up, he found Ackland hip deep in water, staring down at him with a nasty grin on his face.

"No time for a nap, Snape. We wouldn't want you to miss the main event."

"Oh, no, that would be a tragedy, wouldn't it?" murmured Severus as fresh blood dripped down his face.

"Think you're funny, do you?"

"On the contrary, I see no point in wasting humor on those who haven't the wit to appreciate it," snarled Severus, recovering some of his anger as he recovered his faculties. "What do you want from me anyway, Ackland? Do you want me to admit to betraying you and your Master? Fine. I admit that I did my best to bring all of you down, and I succeeded. If that distresses you, I really couldn't care less.

"If you're waiting for me to cry and scream and plead for mercy, you'll have a very long wait. I'm well aware that mercy is beyond your capacity to feel, and I wouldn't waste my tears on the likes of you. Helping to bring about the fall of Voldemort is one of the best things I've ever done with my life. If losing that life is the price I have to pay for succeeding…well, I've always known that was likely to be the cost, and I accepted it long ago. I'm certainly not going to protest it now.

"Do your worst. In the end I'll be at peace, satisfied with the knowledge that I won and nothing you did could change that, while you'll be exactly where you are now, running from a world that hates you and that will no doubt catch up to you sooner or later."