Chapter 14

A raven landed in the middle of breakfast. That is, in the middle of the Merlins' oblong table during breakfast. In its beak was a tightly wound roll of vellum, wax sealed with Goblin runes.

Luna deftly pulled the document, replacing it with a silver sickle. The bird flew off in a flurry of feathers and noise.

"I'd forgotten that most birds flap their wings with a lot of noise." Harry said, giving his beloved owl a gentle caress.

Hermione nodded, "Yes, owls are so quiet, never making any noise when they fly."

"Makes em' silent, but deadly." Neville said.

Pansy covered her laugh with a faux cough.

Luna studied the wax seal, then handed the unopened document to Harry, "It's addressed to the Huruz, beloved son of the Matriarch."

"You can go ahead and open it, Luna."

She shook her head solemnly, "No, I can't. No one but the addressee can, please trust me on this."

"Okay…" Harry broke the wax seal and began to read.

"Humph, that's interesting, kinda useless, but interesting…"

Luna, Hermione, Neville and Pansy all stared. Finally, Hermione said, "Well, tell us."

"Oh, just that Brother Seneck has located another Pot, um, family heirloom and will be sending it along."

"What is it?" Pansy asked.

"Um, it's an invisibility cloak."

"Those are rare." Neville said, awed, "And very expensive."

"Yeah," Pansy agreed, "Way too expensive when you realize that an invisibility cloak wears our after twenty years or so."

"Really?" Harry asked.

Luna nodded, "Oh yes, our demiguse fur cloaks will be simple everyday cloaks in about two decades."

"Humph, so why would I care that Brother Seneck has a cloak that's 'been in my family for untold generations, and is still as potent as it was when it first saw the light of day'?"

Luna and Pansy exchanged furtive glances. As if to say, "No, it couldn't be. Could it?"

)O(

Severus walked the two miles from the Hogwarts front gate to Hogsmeade. Early June was late spring, but in the Scottish highlands he was glad of his billowing black robes and a warming charm. He'd just passed the Hogs Head when, with a slight stumble, he fell to the cobblestones, arms and legs askance, stunned.

He came to in a chamber he'd seen only once before. On that fateful day when his power to choose had been taken away.

June 21st 1977

"Miss Evans?"

Lily turned, then sighed, "What do you want, Severus?"

"Only to let you know that I have made a choice. I, I know I've made some bad decisions. The worst was in thinking I had to follow the bulk of my House in support of a Dark Lord. But this is going to be our last year, and all I want, all I need, is for you to… to…"

Lily used a single crooked finger to remove the tear from her eye, "I'm not stupid, Sev. I've known all along how you feel - and, please don't take this the wrong way, but I've always thought of you as a brother…"

She stopped, embarrassed for him as he'd winced, well, no man wants to be thought of as a brother who's not a brother.

Gamely, she soldiered on, "But…"

Severus raised his hand, "What I was going to say was, I need for you to approve of me. That's all. I want to be the friend you'll turn to when an insufferable 'toe-rag', who shall remain nameless, hurts you."

"And your Death Eater friends?"

"Are no friends of mine. Never have been and they never will be."

"Oh, Sev. Promise?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die."

Lily had pulled him into a fierce hug.

"I've missed you so."

Severus felt his heart glow as her love washed over him. It was filial love, not romantic, but it would suffice.

"Lils," he said, holding her at arm's length, "I want you to know, that your happiness is all that matters. If you're truly happy with… him. Then I will try to be happy for you."

In his heart of hearts he knew that wasn't true, but he would try to be whatever his first and only friend needed him to be.

He'd left her in the company of her fellow Gryffindors and boarded the train for home when he caught a glimpse of red out of the corner of his eye, then knew no more.

He woke up in a chamber, a cavern. He could see stalactites pointing down from the ceiling at him, and stalagmites all around. Some larger than others.

One of the largest stalagmites moved, "There is an order to the Universe, Mister Snape, and you are upsetting the balance."

"What, who?"

"Here is what is going to happen. The current Dark Lord is in need of a potions expert, you are two years shy of your mastery, but can already brew all the potions he will need."

Severus stood tall.

"You can't make me."

"Oh, is that a challenge?"

"Go ahead, kill me. And I'll know with my dying breath that I never betrayed my friend."

"You mean, this one?"

A light shone on one of the limestone columns created as the limestone formations met in the middle of the cavern. Tied to the column was a naked girl with fiery red hair.

Severus felt an icicle form in the pit of his stomach.

"No. Lily, no!"

Severus Snape couldn't move, that is from the neck down. A localized prettification hex.

Two figures, hooded and cloaked, approached the woman, the man on the right held a whip, a cat o' nine tails in his left hand, the man on the left held an identical scourge in his right.

With practiced ease, each man dipped his cat into a bucket that Severus knew would be filled with brine. As the whips were drawn, dripping from the buckets, flicks of the wrist caused the barbed and weighted ends to flare so that each scourge would cover the maximum area of skin possible.

"No, please!"

"Miss Evans is a distraction, Severus, one that you can ill afford. Begin."

Severus shrieked and cried as the men flailed away at the bare, unprotected back. He begged them to whip him instead, "Please, please… I'll do anything…"

"Yes, Severus Snape, you will."

Barbed, leaded tips made the cats horrifyingly efficient, as each lash removed bits of flesh even as the strands, soaked in salt water, bit into soft, bare skin.

Severus didn't know how long they punished her. He only knew that his own voice was hoarse from begging, pleading, screaming as loud as she.

Then the cavern echoed with profound silence.

The woman had stopped screaming. She didn't cry, she didn't react to the flails as they cut her, flensed her until the backs of her ribs were exposed.

She was dead.

"Kill me." He sobbed, "Please, kill me now."

"Why, Severus?"

"Because you have taken the only thing in the world that matters to me."

"No, we haven't."

One of the torturers cut the woman down, and, as the lifeless husk fell with a wet splat, Severus could see it wasn't his Lily.

He cried.

He cried tears of relief that it hadn't been his love.

He cried tears of remorse for the unknown woman who'd been whipped to death just to impress upon him that this could have been his Lily.

He cried tears of guilt and shame because he knew they owned him.

June 1992

The voice, the exact same voice he'd heard fifteen years before, greeted him.

"Have you so soon forgotten, Professor Snape, the lessons learned on our last meeting?"

Severus chose his most neutral voice and demeanour, "Hardly. But the Dark Lord is dead, and those who supported him are either dead, in hiding, or much, much poorer."

"Don't be so sure of your 'facts', Severus."

"The only salient fact is that you no longer have any hold over me. You can kill me, or not. Torture me, or not. It no longer matters."

"Oh, never you, Severus, but say… your young charges."

The professor felt that familiar icicle, forming in his gut. "You would put children to the lash?"

"We will obliterate any and all who stand in our way, and there are ripples emanating from Hogwarts, disturbing ripples."

"What would you have me do?"

"Only what you have done for years, Professor Snape. Maintain the status quo."

A bright red light, and then blackness.

"'Ere ya go, Professor Snape, nasty tumble you took there."

"Hag, Hagrid?"

"There, that's better now innit?"

They were inside the Hogs Head, and Hagrid was pushing a glass of pepper-up potion toward him. The dubious brew was in a glass of doubtful cleanliness served by a man of questionable hygiene.

Severus sniffed it and said, "If one of my NEWT level students produces a potion of this quality, he or she will find themselves banished from my class forever."

Hagrid gave the brew a cursory sniff as well, "Well, it may have gone past its date… a bit."

With a sigh, Professor Snape downed the effervescent sludge in a single gulp. If it poisons me, he thought, at least my troubles will be over.

)O(

Draco Malfoy was in a quandary.

He'd had a good year, all told. His grades were near the top of his year, he had the grudging respect of his peers and even some of the upper forms. His father had given him an odd instruction.

"Tell the Lovegood girl to hop on one foot."

And then Malfoy senior had laughed.

The end of year exams had come and gone, and yet the Merlins were still up to their arses in books and parchments in the library. Researching. Always researching something.

"Um, Lovegood?"

"Yes, Draco."

"Ah, hop on one foot… please?"

Luna looked quizzically at him for only a moment, then began to bounce on her left foot.

"Um, thank you Lovegood. You can stop now."

"Did you expect that to happen?" She asked.

Draco shrugged, "I really didn't know what would happen, it's just something that, um, someone told me to have you do."

"I see." Luna looked for a moment as though she was studying the Slytherin firstie, then said, "I don't believe you are evil. Well, not any more than any other eleven-year-old boy, you don't go about torturing small animals, do you?"

Draco looked a little ill. "No, that would be Crabbe and Nott." He shuddered at an unpleasant memory.

Luna took a deep breath, then let half of it out. "When your father asks you what I did, tell him that I did nothing. He may get angry, if he gets very angry, send an owl to the Quibbler, office of the assistant editor, okay?"

"I never said my father…"

Luna raised one hand, "Draco, please, don't ever think a Merlin is stupid, or uninformed. Simply assume we know more of what's going on than anyone suspects. There are no secrets in this school as far as we are concerned."

Draco reddened, "You've been spying on me?"

"Not you personally, Draco. But there isn't a single signalling mirror we're not tapped into."

Draco paled, "Then, you knew about…"

"The Hogan siblings? Oh yes."

"But they…"

"Did as they were told, yes they did."

"Then how…"

"How did I avoid being dosed with tainted veritaserum? Did you know one potions vial looks pretty much like any other? I switched bottles on them is all."

"Wait, tainted veritaserum?"

"Oh yes, if they had been successful, I would be, um, rather suggestible now."

Draco felt all the blood run to his feet. His father had arranged for the High Chamberlain of a Royal Family to be poisoned.

"I, I can't, I can't do this…"

Draco broke down and sobbed. "He's my father, I'm a Malfoy. I have to do what he tells me to do. He's the Head of the Family."

Luna looked pensive for a moment, "There's an old muggle saying, 'you can choose your friends, but you can't choose your family', but, what if you could?"

Thoroughly confused, Draco just stared, open mouthed, at Luna.

Looking as though she were studying the ceiling Luna mused aloud, "I think it's time I had a little talk with Stubby Boardman."

)O(

Four-thirty, and the Merlins were standing outside the potions classroom, which was uncharacteristically locked.

Harry knocked four times, "Professor Snape, are you in, sir?"

"Well, he did tell us to be here. Alohamora!"

The door creaked open.

The room was dark, and none of the reagents were out for the day's lab - a fairly complex blood restoration brew.

"Professor Snape?"

The door to the Professor's office was ajar.

The dungeon was dark, and Snape's office was even darker.

Five voices whispered, "Lumos!"

Severus was face-down on his desk, a half-empty bottle of Ogden's Firewhiskey lay on its side.

"Drunk?"

"I didn't think he drank." Neville said, "Always in control, that one."

Luna said, "Maybe he got some bad news."

"One way to find out." Harry said, then began transfiguring desks into simple cots, complete with fluffy pillows, "Let's go visit him in his dreams."

Harry lay down in one cot. Luna pulled hers alongside to the left of his, Hermione to his right. Pansy pulled hers next to Neville's then took his hand in hers. Smiling, they willed themselves to sleep.

Professor Snape was in Hell.

He was shackled to a wall, stripped to the waist, as a daemon flogged him.

Every time the whip came down his back was ripped open, but, as the devil drew back his arm, Snape's back would heal itself, only to be torn again, and then again by the whip.

"Stop!" Harry yelled.

And to his amazement, the daemon stopped.

A reptilian face smiled most unpleasantly and rasped, "You have no power here, boy!"

All around the daemon, ghosts began to appear. However, as this was Dreamscape, the ghosts were all corporeal.

The daemon, aloof, self-assured and powerful in his own right, paled as the entire company of headless horsemen galloped into the cavern. He ran, screaming, into the dark recesses of Hell.

Pansy ran up to Snape, touched her wand to his shackles, then guided him down to the cave floor.

"Don't." the professor begged, "Please don't."

"Shush now, Professor, you'll be okay."

"No, no. No I won't. I'll never be okay. Please. You have to go. Leave me to my fate."

Neville looked around, "No one deserves this, Professor."

"Are you sure, Mister Longbottom?"

Neville nodded.

Severus looked at the five faces, especially into the emerald green eyes of Lily's cousin, Harold Evans.

"If only I had my wand…" and Severus was startled as his wand appeared in his hand.

"And a pensieve?"

The stone basin appeared before him.

He drew memories out of his head, then placed them into the stone bowl.

"Let me show you." He said, "Then maybe you'll leave me to my just reward."

Harry's heart raced as he realized he was seeing his mother, and her sister, Aunt Petunia, whom Lily Evans had called 'Toonie'. And young Severus Snape.

They were good for each other. Surely his mother could see that.

Potter and Black were bullies of the worst kind. If you weren't one of the cool kids, you were a victim. With a sinking, sick feeling, he realized that the leader of this merry band of bullies was his own dad.

Oh god, oh god, oh god, my mum married him?

Little Sevie had a hard life at home, an abusive alcoholic for a dad, and a sad, abused witch for a mum.

How is that possible, didn't she know she was a witch?

The final confrontation with his father, Tobias Snape, happened over his mother's grave.

Abused at home, tormented at school. Frustrated beyond belief, he'd used that awful word.

"Mudblood."

Oh how he'd wished for a time-turner at that moment. Anything to take it back.

The reconciliation.

"I need you to approve of me… Cross my heart, hope to die."

Hooded figures surrounding him, "Is that a challenge?"

The horror that followed.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…"

Severus begging Voldemort to spare her, then begging Dumbledore to protect her.

His world ending on All Hallows Eve.

The only thing keeping him alive, the hope that he could, somehow, protect Lily's son.

The death of Harry Potter.

The emptiness.

The apothecary's shop.

Her eyes, her hair, her skill with potions.

The cavern

"Maintain the status quo."

They all fell out of the pensieve.

Neville was vibrating in anger, "You! You told Voldemort about the Potters!"

Harry put a calming hand on Neville's shoulder. "Don't you see, Neville? He never had a chance, never had a choice."

Pansy was with Neville, "I don't see how you can live with yourself, Snape."

"Professor Snape," Harry chided, gently, "And he can't. That's why he spends his time in Hell, trying to work off the guilt and shame and self-loathing."

"How can you say that?" Neville insisted, "Lily Evans was your family."

"I know that, Neville, better than anyone, believe me. But I also know that this man has been through Hell and back countless times and there's only one way out for him."

"And what's that?" Pansy groused.

Luna kneeled before the broken man and said, "Only through grace."

She looked up at her friend, her soulmate, and begged him with her eyes.

He knelt.

"I, Harry of the Blood of Evans, on behalf of the families Evans and Potter, forgive you."

Severus Snape shook his head, "No, you can't, I don't deserve it."

Harry and Luna were joined by Hermione, who knelt with them, "No, you don't. That's why it's called grace. It can't be earned, it can only be freely given."

"They'll come for you. I was useless to her, I'm afraid that I won't be able to help you, to protect you."

"We guard and defend each other, Professor." Harry said, his voice thick with emotion, "All of us."

Harry, Luna and Hermione pulled Severus Snape into a group hug. Pansy and Neville looked uncertain.

The three committed Merlins looked hopefully to the two who were vacillating, pleading with their eyes.

Pansy grimaced, "Oi, no fair! You're all lookin' at me with those big puppy-dog eyes..."

Neville sighed, "Bollocks, if you're going to forgive him, then I have to too."

"No, Neville," Harry said, still pleading with his eyes, "it's your choice, mate. Something this man has never been given."

Pansy, then Neville, fell into the cluster clinch.

And Severus Snape felt unconditional love, and acceptance, and, for the first time in his life, peace.

"If nothing else," the professor said from within the huddle, "This has been a good dream, the first I've had in many a year."

"One enters Dreamscape through sleep, Professor, but I assure you, what happens here is quite real."

Snape looked up to see the Bloody Baron, tall and corporeal, attended by the Hufflepuff Friar and… "Miss Myrtle?"

Myrtle curtsied, "Myrtle Malone, sir. Ravenclaw, fifth form, Nineteen Forty-two."

What followed was a description of Dreamscape, and the manner in which the Merlins were making use of it.

"Come," Myrtle said, "Let us show you."

She led him to a barber's chair, where she fussed over his hair for a moment.

"Humph, this needs a wash, this does. Lean back, Professor."

He did and discovered his head was in a sink, having warm water sprayed into his hair.

When the ghost girl started massaging shampoo into his scalp he groaned with pleasure.

"I'll give you all night to stop that."

Myrtle chuckled, then rinsed, then repeated.

She sat him upright again, towel-drying his freshly washed hair.

From there it was simple to comb, and trim all the split ends. Then a brush with a drying charm and Severus Snape looked and felt like a new man.

The professor asked, "What is the date today?"

"The Sixth of June, sir. Why do you ask?"

"Because, from now on, this will be the day I celebrate my re-birth."

And he smiled.

)O(

Sirius Black stood in the queue waiting to see a bank official when a smallish goblin rasped, "Chief Warlock, come with me."

Feeling rather pleased that the Goblin Nation had been apprised of his new status, he followed the little fellow into the Gringotts meeting room.

The little goblin bowed low, then left.

Sitting at the table was the Goblin Seneck, whom Sirius mistook for a ranking bank official.

Giving the 'bank manager' a perfunctory nod, Sirius looked around for a chair. Then realized there wasn't one. It began to dawn on him that this wasn't your average goblin.

"Mister Black," the goblin began, "it has come to our attention that certain of your family members have been ill used by other members of your clan."

"How so?"

The demi-troll on guard gripped his halberd so that his knuckles whitened, how dare this human address the Goblin Seneck so casually?

"Walburga Black disowned your cousin, Andromeda Black, upon her marriage to Theodore Tonks."

"Yes…"

"As matriarch to the Family Black, she could only do so for the span of her own lifetime, all titles, dowries and properties should have been returned to Mrs Tonks upon the death of your mother."

"Ah, I see, that's good to know, um, sir. But at the time of my mother's death, I was, shall we say, indisposed?"

"Yes, we know of your illegal imprisonment in Azkaban."

"Then there's the matter of your other cousin, Narcissa Black Malfoy."

"What of her? She chose to marry that ponce."

"Did she now, are you sure?"

"Of course, every woman has the right of refusal. She could have had anyone, she chose Malfoy."

"Chief Warlock, I am going to be patient with you for the sake of your office and the fact that you're still suffering from the effects of your unjust imprisonment…"

"I beg your pardon?"

"…as well you should, Mister Black. Do not interrupt me again, to do so will find all your accounts frozen as Gringotts would have to do a careful inventory and accounting of all the Black properties and monies, down to the last knut.

"Ah, I see by your expression you understand what that would entail, very good. Now that I have your undivided attention, we may proceed."

The Seneck shuffled a few sheaves of parchment, "Neither Narcissa, nor Bellatrix had a 'right of refusal' as you put it. Their father, your uncle, Cygnus Black, pledged them to the Tom Marvolo Riddle to use as he pleased. It pleased Riddle, known to wizard-kind as 'Lord Voldemort' to gift the then fifteen and nineteen year old girls to his chief lieutenants at that time, Lucius Malfoy and Rodolphus Lestrange. Lucius got first pick, he chose the younger.

Their wills and their magic were bound to that of their husbands in 1970, by your calendar. They have been their husbands thralls ever since."

Sirius desperately wished for a chair, lest he fall down.

"I, I never knew. How could I have known?"

Because, The Seneck thought, like most wizards, your life has been about me, me, me. The centre of your own little universe… pathetic.

"Be that as it may, the Malfoy and Lestrange men broke their filial and familial bonds with the Family Black when they pledged themselves, body, soul and magic, to Tom Riddle, then allowed themselves to be branded like cattle. In doing so, they became oath breakers."

The last phrase, the final two works were spat out as if poisonous.

"What can I do?" Sirius asked, in a small voice.

"Goblin advice is not easy to follow for, well, those like yourself, and may be costly."

"I'll pay whatever price you ask."

"A very dangerous thing to say to a Goblin, Chief Warlock."

"Even so, I'll pay it."

"Very well, you want to reform the Wizard-kind judiciary, to right wrongs, to set things to right?"

"Yes, more than anything."

"Then resign from the Wizengamot. Get your own house in order. You can't be a teacher before you have, yourself, learned."

Sirius nodded, humbly.

"Oh, and one more thing, study Goblin customs. If it were not for my forebearance, your head would be on the floor right now for the lack of respect you have shown me."

Sirius' head snapped up, "Sir?"

The Goblin leader shook his head and would have sighed, had he been human, "The correct form of address is Goblin Seneck, it is my name and it is my office. The closest thing to it in your tongue is 'God-King', and you are standing on Hallowed Goblin Ground.

Sirius Black fell to his knees, "I apolo…"

"Stop! Never apologize to Goblin-kind, it is a sign of weakness, and we kill off our weak."

"I, I don't understand, Goblin Seneck, but I promise that I will strive to, from this day forward."

The Seneck nodded approvingly, "Perhaps there is hope for you yet. One last bit of advice."

Sirius looked up expectantly.

"Work closely with the House of Merlin at Hogwarts, learn as much as you can from them, help them whenever you can."

"Thank you, Goblin Seneck, I will. Now, as to the manner of payment?"

"You have already begun to pay, Mister Black."

"Sir, I mean, Seneck?"

"The cost shall be your much vaunted pride."

)O(

I know the 'Snape Haters' will blast me for making Severus a sympathetic character in this story. What can I say? We flipped a coin and the Potions Professor won…

Draco has a chance and a hope of turning out better as well. It's still too early to say.

Bigger than usual thanks to Tommy King, our marvelous Brit-picker, for an amazingly quick turnaround - I'll try not to cut it so close in the future. Cheers, mate!