Disclaimer: All belongs to J.K. Rowling

The Prophecy

"A prophecy?" Severus arched his eyebrows, asking Ethelinda curiously. He knew she kept most of the things to herself but a prophecy was not something he had in mind. He eyed her with a watching look, waiting for the young woman to reveal more.

Ethelinda seemed to lose her voice after realizing her true role in this messy problem. She nodded and took her journal out together with the box they retrieved earlier. Putting the box down on the ground, she refocused back to the journal as her fingers flipped quickly through the pages, looking for something. After a few minutes, her hand stopped at one of the journal's pages. He could see her eyes bright up a bit before they became dull like before. She took a deep breath and showed him what she had found.

"Here," her small finger pointed to the marked page as she opened the journal in front of him.

Then, he saw it, the prophecy wrote neatly in a piece of a parchment, attached to the page by a clumsy tape. That's odd.

"A birth of no origin conquers the power between the line,

As one falls the other will rise.

Destruction and damnation tie to an unnatural fate,

Without fear, nothing would be late.

Blood unites and love will conquer all,

'Till dawn only one would fall."

Severus read the words carefully. The last time he dealt with one, it did not turn out very pleasant and it had costed him deeply. Meanwhile, Ethelinda was watching him as closely as she could. His eyebrows knitted in multiples as he processed the prophecy. She bit her lower lip as her thought wondered back to their first meeting; she should have told him about this then, but it did not seem necessary at the time. Beside, she did not expect him to stay with her after their mission. Everything from now on would not be in her hands as usual. Also, she had a high belief that he would not join her if he knew there was a prophecy waiting for them.

"When I touched the box, I have a brief vision of my life," she spoke weakly, wincing at the memory from the vision. Severus looked up from the journal and watched her face. "I am not human." Her magic aura suddenly flashed and then dimmed after her announcement. He narrowed his eyes, observing the change of her magic. Is it alive? Her magic?

His eyes dashed back to her face and did not fail to notice the words she chose, "not human." Something in her expression told him, that human aspect in her life was much more than she had let on. Beside, she was not someone like to repeat things, so he waited again.

"I always thought I was born from my mother and a vampire, but the vision let me see a different story," she closed her eyes and leaned back to the cave's wall. Her magic continued to flick back and forth, giving him such an uneasy feeling. "That woman made a deal with an unknown creature from beyond the veil and her result produced a thing that resembling human…"

"You," the word escaped his lips faster than he could stop it. He almost wanted to slap himself for his unthinkable action, but then, her reaction surprised him.

"Funny, is it?" she chuckled darkly and sadly without mentioning about his slipped word. "I have lived my whole life, believing in something that does not belong to me. I'm not a Lefevre, not an angel or even a vampire. She created me purely for her own purpose, somehow, the creature found a way to bind my blood to the Book. If she gets of hold of me, she would have the power to do anything."

Ethelinda turned her face away from Severus, refusing to see the pity in his eyes. "But it explains all of my questions: her cold, distant, and loveless. I'm not her daughter to begin with but rather a tool for her to achieve her goal…" Her voice was shaking with a high emotion. He could hear the change in her breathing, shaking with emotions. If he could say, he could have told her that he understood her feeling of being something that no-one wanted. However, his words died before they could escape his lips. Their situation might be similar but at the same time they were not. At least, he had a mother who desperately protected him with all she had against his abusive father. That small amount of her love was the only thing for him to clutch in a very long time until he met Lily. Suddenly, he frowned deeply as the memory of her. Something should have been there did not reappear as usual. His guilt of her death, his regret of calling her name, his loneliness of never seeing her smile… everything was just a memory. Nothing more. The pain in his heart had replaced by a different one or rather a different person. It was no longer associated with his childhood friend and his one-side love, but… her, Ethel.

"Will you surrender to your mother?" His calm but steady voice made her turn around and looked at him questionably. Her pale face and red eyes almost made the man want to pull her in his arms again. She looked lost and confused as much as

His question was strange, but in that moment, it clicked something in her mind. Would she? Surrender herself to her mother? To a plan that would end the Magical world? Would she?

Severus saw the change in Ethelinda's expression while she processed his question. It was a normal approach in her situation. Now that she knew about her origin and her destiny, it was a decision she would make it sooner or later. However, he had a feeling that she would continue her role as someone went against her mother than joined the woman. Also, he did not fail to notice that her magic aura was beginning to flick again. Gladly, her aura did not transform quickly as before but rather than changed slowly from one color to another. She was adjusting to her decision and so was her magic.

Ethelinda closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She had made her decision. It did not matter of where she was from or whose her parents were. She had chose her side the moment she knew about her mother's intention and it was the right decision. She did, almost, abandon her goal when the truth of her origin revealed. She believed that her mother's rejection was due to her father, who she refused to disclose. Unfortunately, she never looked at her at a daughter but simply a tool. If she had raise her as her own and loved her as a mother would, the outcome would have been very different. Human or not, she had chose her destiny and she would continue with it.

"I will not," Ethelinda finally spoke. The weariness in her voice disappeared and replaced by a much more confident one. "I choose this role and I will follow it until the end."

Severus almost smiled at Ethelinda's answer. In the small amount of time he knew her, he expected that answer more than her giving up. She could be strong head when she needed and even loyalty. He wondered if the Sorting Hat sorted her again, would she be in Gryffindor?

"Then take your rest, Ethel," Severus waved his wand at a nearby spot and a small blanket appeared. "We will decide everything else tomorrow."

However, when he looked back at her, he realized his mistake. He had accidentally called her Ethel. Her big eyes stared at him with a disbelief as if he was someone else rather than her partner for the past months. Yet, he did not fail to notice a soften expression on her face, and soon she smiled shyly at him.

"You call me, Ethel," A faint pink slowly crept on her cheeks while the young woman's eyes suddenly shied away from him. "Thank you."

Severus was taken back a bit and curiously at why she thanked him, but before he could utter his question, Ethelinda grabbed the blanket and laid her head on his laps.

"Please," she squeezed her eyes close and asked him softly. She needed some human-contacts right now. Nothing extreme, only a bit of his warm would have ease her little pain.

Severus held his breath and words seemed to disappear from his lips. Then, by the time he regained his conscious, the young woman fell asleep peacefully on his laps. He looked down to the young woman and his eyes were eventually softer. Sighing tiredly, he stroked her hair as his eyes slowly dropped. They will deal with everything… tomorrow.

oOo

Severus turned his attention to the outside. The rain did not seem to stop. The forest looked like it was hiding inside a thick cloth of fog. He barely made out of anything. He cast a detecting charm to see if anything within 5 kilometers' range of the place had magical being. However, nothing came back. He moved Ethelinda's head to lay on his jacket while he walked close to the cave's entrance. He wave his wand and put up more wards, making sure that no-one would find out their location.

He leaned to the wall's cave and watched the rain. When he accepted her proposal, he did not expect to get himself into a different war. He thought it was a way out for him, and it did, but his sense of loyalty kept him from agreeing with her option. If he had agreed to take on her offer back then, what would happen to her? The young woman might inherit a strong power, but without a guide, he had a high doubt she would able to go very far. Beside, her mother already laid the traps for her to fall in. The woman had planned this for entire time, she differently knew her daughter's weaknesses and how to lure her to the trap. She's experienceless.

While deep in his thought, Severus did not notice and Ethelinda began to awake. The first thing greeted her was a terrible headache. It was almost like a handover, but she never drunk to the point to experience such thing. Her eyes slowly opened and soon landed on the man that stood close the cave's entrance. Last night or yesterday cost more of her mentally capacity than usual. She did not expect to have another run from her mother who only revealed more of her ugliness. And William, she hoped with his skills and experiences, he would escape safely. However, she had a feeling the old man did not make it. He did have a strange allure of attracting danger.

Ethelinda got up and leaned tiredly to the wall's cave. Her movement caught Severus's attention and the man walked back to where she was sitting. "How are you feeling?"

"Headache, again," Ethelinda smiled weakly. "Now I am not sure if the headache is from my mother or it's a result from stress."

"It can be both," Severus chuckled while taking a small vial of potion from his jacket. "Drink this. It can ease your headache and give you some strengths back. We need to figure out where to go next."

Ethelinda tilted the vial to her lips and drank the liquid slowly. The potion was tasteless but it began to burn as it reached her throat. However, the sensation did not last for long, it transformed to a different feeling and as Severus mentioned, her headache gradually dropped. A happy sigh escaped her lips. Nothing is better than having her headache disappeared. Leaning back to the cave's wall, she spoke up, "We need to get back to the mansion. This box is the key to open the Book which currently residents inside my mother's room. However, I am not sure if she's able to gain the power to access to the mansion or not…"

"Do these rings support to determine which one is the owner of the mansion?" Severus cut Ethelinda's words, remembering the ownership transition they did couple weeks ago.

Ethelinda actually stared back at Severus as if she just heard something extraordinary, then she laughed. "Merlin! I honestly forgot them this whole time. Beside we could not apparate back then, I just assume that we lost the mansion to her." She punched lightly to Severus's arm, making the man stiff nervously. Her eyes opened wide as she realized what she was doing, "Sorry."

"It… It's ok," Severus coughed to regain his voice. "I have that thought since last night but we don't know where the portkey took us too, we can't try to apparate to the mansion. We might be in a different country."

"That's also true," she agreed. "I think we should wait until the sky is clear and head out to see where the forest leads us to. If we are lucky, we are somewhere in European territories."

Two hours later when the rain began to subside, Ethelinda followed Severus out of the cave and headed to the South. Apparently, Severus had been traveling for a while during his time as an apprentice. He learned a rather well information to not get lost in a forest. Therefore, when the man walked out of the cave, he felt the wind, touched the tree, observed the activities around him, before announcing where they would go.

Unfortunately, the moment he noticed the little Camellia Hongkongensis behind those large trees, he knew they were not in Europe. Damn it! He swore annoyingly. He did have a feeling that those two men would send them somewhere unreachable, but this place, they did think a bit too far.

Ethelinda looked at the tense face of Severu Snape and sense something was wrong. "What happens?"

"Good news, we're definitely out of your mother's claw," Severus said blankly. "Bad news, we are not in Europe."

"Wait? What?" Severus's answered did not meet Ethelinda's expectation. "Where are we exactly?"

"Hong Kong!"

A/N: Yah! I'm back lol Did you think I abandoned the story? No! I just had a very long writer's block (and lazy, it played a big part in my writing lol). Anyway, let's us continue with the adventure of Ethelinda and Severus. Apparently they are in Hong Kong now. How will the get back to England? Will they meet new people there? Everything will be answer in the next chapter :)