37 – Once Lovers, Now Friends

As his Slytherin door shut, Snape couldn't help but think of the children's story, "The Warlock's Hairy Heart"; for once, it would have been nice to have been impervious to the pain wrought from love lost, but he quickly dismissed this notion, even gave himself a light slap in the face (to which Harry chuckled), and then swung open his Slytherin door—Lily was nearly at the end of the hallway.

Both he and Harry heard crying. "She still cares," said Snape. He began to chase after her, except a loud crash in his room made him stop. Snape looked in and saw Voldemort's white owl ferociously charging his window, a leather sack connected to its talons. Snape looked in the hallway—Lily was gone.

"You stupid, stupid owl," said Snape, walking quickly to his window before the bird flew through it. He took its leather sack and tried to throw the bird back out into the afternoon air, but it adeptly maneuvered away from him, leaving the room on its own power. Before flying away, it hovered in front of the window, almost mocking Snape that he couldn't catch it, and then it flew off not even waiting for his usual treat of a singing worm.

Snape sighed. He opened the leather sack on his desk. Its contents were as follows:

Three blue wafers for the Dark Tourist.

One red wafer that said "Crumble Me" on it.

A small piece of yellowed parchment with the words, "The dust won't activate until you cast the spell. "

He crumbled the red wafer, and there was a bright flash with a popping noise that reminded him of a Muggle car backfiring. Magically, Snape's Christmas ornament was now sitting on the desk before him. He'd had his own plans of creatively using the doppelganger root to make a fairy that Lily would love, but Voldemort's was much more impressive—there was an entire winter scene before him, the surface area taking up the space of about four wizard cards strewn together. Juniper trees framed the border of the scene. In the middle, there was a frozen lake where ten ice skaters twirled and pirouetted, shooting blue dust into the air that Snape knew would bring the Dark Tourist spell to all of his classmates. That was, of course, if he could cast the spell successfully.

Both he and Harry sighed at the same time.

"I can't do this," said Snape.

On the yellow parchment, the words disappeared and, "Yes you can," appeared.

"What the….?"

The last sentence disappeared, and a new one took form. "This is an early prototype of something much better that I developed. I'll show you how to do this sometime, amongst other spells that you can only dream of."

"I can't do this to Lily. Maybe Sirius and James… Oh, witches brew. Not even Sirius and James."

The parchment wiped clean again and almost seemed to be waiting for Snape to say more.

"This will only pique their interest?" he asked. "Once they meet you, and you explain the master plan, you shouldn't need the Dark Tourist anymore." Snape sat down in his chair, anxiously waiting for words to appear on the parchment. In Voldemort's winter scene, one of the boy skaters accidentally ploughed into a girl and then appeared to profusely apologize to her, offering his hand to help her up. "This is amazing," said Snape. He could picture Slughorn titling his head back, letting one of his hearty laughs echo through the classroom.

Words started to appear again on the parchment. "Of course. Dumbledore does not share the same views of wizards governing the Muggle word. Nor would he ever let me speak to the students, allowing them to decide for themselves. That is all this is, an opportunity to let the fine Hogwarts students decide for themselves."

"I need to warn you about something," said Snape. "The new judge…"

"She is one of the better kept secrets to come out of Hogwarts," wrote the parchment. "This is a calculated risk, but we must assume that she doesn't know about the Dark Tourist. Only a small number of wizards do."

Snape pulled his hands through his black hair. "Okay. How should I let you know if I succeed?"

"When you cast the spell, you need to will people to believe in our cause, to come with you to the Forbidden Forest. We will apparate from there to Willow Grove. Others will be waiting to help transport us all by broom to the Lost City, to our headquarters."

"This is really happening," said Snape, somewhat dumbstruck.

"Ideas only work if you have a master plan," wrote Voldemort. "And a master plan only works if you have steps that can be followed."

"Thank you, my Lord. I won't fail."

"I'll see you tomorrow night. If something should go wrong with the ornament, I left three wafers for you as a backup for the three most important. You need to use them on Lily, James, and Sirius."

Snape didn't respond. He opened his journal and looked at one of the drawings of Lily in coal. Was she still his? Had she ever been? Maybe this was what they needed, so she could understand why he was doing these things for Lord Voldemort. If she could understand the plan, maybe the difficulties the last several days could be forgotten.

"Okay, my Lord."

"Now, please burn this parchment."

Snape obeyed and the yellow parchment crumbled into ash. The afternoon sun was sinking lower and lower in the sky, and he sat at his desk staring at the winter scene. Voldemort's words seemed to make sense, but the feeling in his gut disagreed, or maybe it was overpowered by Lily leaving.

As the sun fell below the earth, his feeling of loss had intensified. He tried drawing a picture of Lily in coal, showing her almond eyes staring back at him, but this only made him feel worse. What did he expect this to do? Was he supposed to hand this to her, like he was going to hand her the stuffed silver doe from the Spinner's End Carnival all of those years ago, and expect it to make things good?

He crumpled the paper into a ball, and whispered, "Incendio," lighting it on fire.

Harry shook his head. It had been one of Snape's best works.

Snape then tried listening to the new record that Lily gave him, "Claire de Lune," to take his mind away for awhile, but it was so beautiful that he could only think of love, and in his case, love probably lost.

"Oh no," said Harry aloud.

Snape was shaking his head as well as he pulled the book from its shelf—Once Lovers, Now Friends: Dousing the Embers of Friendship with the Hose of Passionate Love by Henrietta Harrison. He opened to the first page, the words reading, "Have you recently gone from being someone's special somebody to their special buddy?"

Snape groaned and said, "Incendio," louder this time, incinerating the book quickly while throwing it out his window.

He sat on his bed and held the three blue wafers in his hand. "Lily," said Snape. "Oh, Lily."