Chapter 9

I have never been one to trust the lulls within the storm.

I have already sent you away to safety. Leave me now to the aftermath.

It's been years since Severus has been alone in a room with Harry Potter, and he far prefers being the one to set the agenda.

"What do you want, Potter?"

The professor tone with its steely edge could be relied upon to snap about half of his former students to attention, but not Harry—bloody—Potter. Not any more.

The younger wizard seems tense, and Severus doesn't like it. It's one thing to agree to social contact with the boy for Hermione's sake. Even to come to a détente and enjoy the occasional pint together over a meal. But he hasn't invited Potter to join him in this new hell, and he's not about to do anything that might encourage him to stay.

It's his hell, and he might as well get on with it.

Alone, preferably.

Not with this wizard standing between him and the staircase poking his nose into issues that don't concern him, interfering when he couldn't possibly understand what Severus has to do.

How history repeats itself.

"Get out of my way, Potter. I'm going to bed."

"Not yet," he says. "Please."

There's a thread of fear just below the surface that Severus doesn't remember ever hearing from the man who had once made his life a living hell.

That would be two hells before the one he's facing now.

One almost needs a map, he thinks. He does have quite the collection.

"If you could find it in your heart to tell me what in Merlin's name you want, I might provide it if only so you would finally Leave. Me. Alone."

Potter looks solemn, and Severus feels his stomach clench.

"I find it odd that your kidnappers would plant a trigger for restoring your memory. Don't you?" Potter asks.

"Your awesome powers of deduction, or rather, the lack thereof, astound me, Potter," Severus snaps. "I've not seen a shred of evidence the kidnappers planted a trigger for memory retrieval. In fact, I had the impression they intended for me to never regain—" He clears his throat. "It's a fluke, that's all."

"A fluke." Ah, there it is. The flinty Auror look Severus hates almost as much as the obnoxious Auror tone.

"Go on back to the Ministry and play your little detective games there. In fact, feel free to do so anywhere I am not. Shouldn't be difficult."

But Potter just pins him with a hard stare.

"I don't think it's a fluke, but I have to agree. Your kidnappers had no idea that there would be a way to restore your memory."

"Now that we have reached this moment of perfect accord, could you possibly leave?"

"No," he says. "Because I think you may have provided us with a break in the Faux Dementor case."

Oh. That.

The case where the victims look for all the world like they've sat with a Dementor outside the door for a decade. He feels a pang, regretful that he and Hermione have failed to create a potion to treat the victims. Someone else will pick up the gauntlet, he thinks. Someone always does. And really, apart from their work, the victims of the Faux Dementor attacker have nothing to do with him.

"That case?" he snaps. "For Merlin's sake, Potter, they have nothing to do with me."

"I disagree. Actually, I suspect you're a victim of the same attackers, Snape. Only, you didn't respond the way they expected."

"Me?"

He's about to argue. To tell Potter to quit chattering and leave him. But he lingers on the memory of the masked figures who grabbed him outside St Mungo's, something about them eerily familiar. Of course they would be, he thinks. This is a crime of passion, not a random hit on a random wizard.

"What else do you remember from that night?"

Severus closes his eyes. "Not much," he murmurs. Only— "There were two of them in masks and robes," he continues. "I wasn't prepared. In the old days, nobody could have taken me by surprise like that."

He's embarrassed. What good is he if he can't even protect himself?

"They immobilised me; taunted me. Divested me of my wand and forcibly Apparated me to an abandoned field." He'd been sure they were going to kill him right there and then. "I was sure that was it."

Seventeen years as a spy. Surviving attack by the Dark Lord's familiar, only to be bested at the hands of enemies who won't even show him their faces. There's cosmic justice there somewhere, he thinks. Mostly, though, had been the imperative to do it differently this time.

"But if it meant Hermione would live—" He can't speak.

"They must have had to scramble when they saw their spell didn't work," Potter says.

Severus is irritated. Clearly, he'd been hexed; what is Potter on about? "What didn't work?"

"You've seen the other victims, Snape. They're blank. Empty. Without access to memory or any emotion other than abject misery. That's not what happened to you."

"Which could just as easily be evidence that the kidnappers and the hex they used is unrelated to the others."

"I don't think so." He's pacing as he speaks, and the air crackles with energy. "It feels the same to me, Snape. Even down to the headache—though none of the others have had any memory restoration. But I'd nearly forgotten something we managed to keep out of the Prophet.

There is a telltale, Snape. A mark left on them that glowed when the Healers did magic on them for the first time. I saw the same mark on you when your memory came back. Right before you lost consciousness."

Severus is speechless. But as much as he'd like to refute it, Potter has a point.

"Say more," he says, and stifles a smirk at Potter's expression of surprise.

"I've been thinking," he says. "As with you, the attackers were successful in removing the victim's memory of being a wizard, even of magic. But they didn't leave you in the same broken state as the others. Why not?"

Why not, indeed?

"My memory was already damaged," he replies without thinking. "Bits of it were lost on the floor of the Shrieking Shack. You didn't get them all that night. Did you know?"

Potter looks surprised. "No. I didn't realise. I'm sorry."

Severus shrugs. "It's immaterial. And as delightful as I find helping you do your job, Potter, none of it has the slightest impact on what I have to do now."

"You don't have to stay hidden. We can put Hermione under guard now that we know she's at risk. We can protect—"

"The way Dumbledore protected your mother?"

The way I protected her, he thinks, bleak.

He wouldn't have been surprised if Potter had shouted. In fact, he fully expects the younger wizard to draw his wand against him.

But Severus would never have predicted that he would stand there, face growing ruddier and his eyes growing cold. Until finally, he turns on his heel and Disapparates without a sound to mark his leaving.

The trees rustle in the wind, faint starlight sending the softest of shadows tumbling to the forest floor.

The wizard stands in the clearing that witnessed his death nine years ago. His arms hang at his sides; his head is bowed. The trees quiver as if in whispered conversation with the man who stands, torn, beyond the reach of their branches.

Finally, he raises his wand, the brief incantation barely a whisper on his lips. From beneath layer upon layer of life and death and life renewed along the forest floor, a small object surfaces. As if weightless, it soars into the man's open hand.

And in an instant, it is as if he had never been there at all.

He's barely had time to sink into the silence when a sharp pop heralds Potter's return.

Severus pushes his fingertips into his eyes and wills his thrice-damned headache to kill him now.

The kitchen is dark, and he prefers it that way. It's better that the light dwell in memory alone. He'll get used to it.

"Here," Potter says, marching up to him and slamming his hand down on the table. "I've had enough of this, Snape. You're so keen to drown yourself in misery because you're too cowardly to face the truth. So, here—" He lifts his hand from the tabletop, uncovering the small, spherical object he'd slammed down there.

It's nearly impossible to see it in the dark. The edges of the object glimmer just a bit before melting into the night. Severus can't stop himself from reaching for it. It calls to him.

"Figures you'd want it." Potter sounds disgusted.

"What is it?"

"Don't play dumb, Snape," Potter snaps. "You've seen it before. On Dumbledore's hand."

Dumbledore's hand? Dumbledore's—

"No." His stomach is churning.

"Yes." Those green eyes are narrowed, focussed on him. "You've been carrying around my mother's death like you own it for as long as I've known you. As if it's yours to use as your own personal armour any time you get scared."

"Now hold on there, boy—"

"No, it's time for you to listen. You want to hide in the past? At least do it right. Go ahead and Summon her—you've done everything else to keep yourself bound to a mistake you made when you were younger than I am now. You want to keep hiding? Do it. But do this first. Ask her, Snape. Call her. See what she has to say about what you're doing to your life. Would she be proud, Snape? Would she appreciate how desperately you keep yourself hidden, even if it means destroying the woman you love?"

Destroying?

But before he can say a word, Potter is gone, and the stone—bottomless and inky black—sits before him on the battered wooden table singing to him like a Siren.

The moon rises and sets before he touches it.

It's colder than he expects, and he snatches his finger away. Ice burns so much more deeply than fire, he thinks.

How many frozen nights after her murder had he spent wishing he could call her back? Begging the Fates to take him—his worthless, cowardly self in place of her brave one.

The image of her crumpled body haunts him even now, conjured in his mind's eye, lying unnaturally still amidst the rubble of her home, destroyed. Her life, extinguished by his arrogance, his need to be seen, to be recognised, to make a tangible mark.

To be chosen.

My fault. It's my fault.

There can be no coming back from a betrayal such as his; he'd been a fool to think it possible. A fool to venture back into the light.

The stone glints in the reflection of the street lamp filtering through the grimy kitchen window. Its enveloping darkness calls to him. Of course it does, he thinks. It must recognise a kindred spirit. His wand lies next to it; Hermione must have put it there before leaving. Two such disparate objects, he thinks. One holds his future; one, his past.

He reaches for the stone again, tipping it into the palm of his hand.

The stone that can call back souls.

It takes only an instant, he knows. Three turns of his hand and she'll be here again. A shade, yes. But still Lily, in essence.

The air around the stone shimmers, catching his eye.

Hermione would say it's the colour of souls. Silver-grey, and shining with its own luminescence.

She would know about such things, he thinks. Overflowing with brilliant energy the way she does. If he could capture her spirit under glass, it would no doubt shine more brightly than any Patronus and have more facets than the most intricate of memories.

His breath catches in his throat.

There is in all the world, he thinks, folding his fingers firmly around the stone, no fool like an old fool.

The sun still sits low in the sky, wisps of burgundy painting the horizon.

I take one last look at the empty streets and ragged buildings before stepping into the burgeoning morning light.