Quick AN: Thank you to all who have been reading and to those of you who have reviewed. I was really encouraged by your remarks! Still working away here and there. Hoping to update even more through the Summer, though I'll be doing a bit of travel. I've been enjoying entering this world (which I sadly do not own) and will enter it even more as I'm getting the Hogwarts Legacy game (!). Has anyone else played it?
Anyway...
Chapter 6: Lux Solis
"They…want me to do research?"
Miss Granger, what have I gotten you into?
He wanted to laugh at her naïveté. He wanted to pull out his own memories of surrendering himself to Dumbledore, of making an Unbreakable Vow to protect Potter, because that was the only thing that would suffice to convince Albus. He wanted her to know how a Summons felt, what it felt like to have the nerve endings on his arm light on fire and burn with ever increasing intensity until he'd finally Apparated and thrown himself at the feet of a deranged psychopath. He wanted her to feel the constant turmoil of being tugged in both directions, walking a tightrope until somehow, finally, Dumbledore and the Savior of the wizarding world—a mere boy not yet fifteen—managed to rid the world of said psychopath. If they could.
And then he wanted to ask her exactly what information she thought she could land upon that the Order didn't already possess, what research would put an end to a man who had shown himself capable of coming back from the dead.
He wanted to laugh and weep and relocate to Siberia and tell her to do the same.
Instead, he shook his head.
And then it clicked for her. "Who?"
"Potter."
Who else? he wanted to ask.
She wrestled with the answer, at first bristling like her cat had inside his carrier, and then she paused, thought.
"What kind of information?"
Were he to have allowed it, his face would have displayed impressed shock. As it was, he only scrutinized her closer. Now you're thinking, Miss Granger. Not flying off the handle, not making bold Gryffindor claims about honor and loyalty, but thinking.
And even as she listened, his stomach writhed like snakes inside him. He wasn't having her make a Vow, but what was separating him, really, from Dumbledore? Why had he thought this a good idea? How was luring her into what would undoubtedly prove to be a dangerous position good for her?
It's for the greater good, he could hear Albus saying.
"How does making potions help the Order?" she asked.
Hope that that's all you'll be asked to do, he wanted to snarl at her. Swallowing back bile, he picked up his stirring rod. When the potion was stable once more, he sent her frowning back upstairs. Give her one more day of the freedom she was so eager to throw away. Then she might consider forgiving him once this was all over.
"Severussss," hissed a voice in his ear. "Is there anything you want to tell me?"
He dared not look around, dared not tremble in fear, but his mouth went dry all the same. "My Lord?"
"You have been lying to me…"
Lying, lying, lying… echoed off the stone walls surrounding him.
"My Lord, I—"
"Do not lie to me. Not again. You know the punishment for traitors."
A long pale wand of yew slid toward him from the darkness. Despite himself, Severus flinched away from it.
A cold laugh burst from Voldemort's chest.
"Let the world see what I think of traitorssss…"
There was a stabbing pain, and then Severus was jolting upright in his bed, wand lit and pointing around the room. He experienced the strange dissociation associated with finding oneself in an atypical bed, but finally, his brain caught up.
"Order. Safe," he muttered to himself.
He repeated these words internally as he slipped silently across the hall to the bathroom. Either the mantra or the dust clinging to the wallpaper convinced him by the time he turned the taps. Cold water slid down his face, waking him more and more by each handful. Finally, unable to bear the ice cold water anymore, he turned off the tap, looking up at his reflection. Rivulets of water curved down the side of his nose and over his cheeks, dripping into the basin from his chin. His eyebrows, a little more unruly than usual, curved in alarm back at himself.
"Just a dream. Calm yourself."
Severus closed his eyes. Water dripped into the sink, and then he was sinking into the depths of his mind. A layer of moments from the dream were scattered upon the surface of his mind, along with more recent events: Minerva's hand on his arm, Moody's fierce look, the glare of firelight on marble, a ring left behind by his whiskey glass, a handkerchief with his initials, Miss Granger looking small but standing up to him nonetheless…
Send it down, down, down.
All the memories except for Moody's expression sank. Other images rose. His irritation with Albus's view of the greater good, Black staring at him as Severus pointed his wand at him, returning to Spinner's End alone, working late into the night on paperwork, scribbling on a potions label, stalking the halls of Hogwarts alone in the dead of night…
And now…nothing.
One by one, these memories, too, descended, until all that was left was a calm body of water, blank and reflecting the blankness above it.
Severus opened his eyes.
His reflection stared stoically back at him, eyes twitching as they scanned the corners of his own face. No grimace, no anxiety, no wrinkle that hadn't already been prematurely carved into his flesh. He inhaled. Mildew, dust, something herbal with a metal undercurrent of cleaning solution, rust, and the slightly stuffy, slightly sweet smell of old paper.
He exhaled, allowing his shoulders to fall and his hands to unclench. In an empty-minded haze, by all appearances, he returned to his room, bare feet scuffing across the uneven carpet. Mechanically, he pulled the sheets up to his chest and closed his eyes.
It was dangerous to occlude while asleep. If one weren't careful, the sound of shouting or the scent of smoke could be blocked out. So instead, he let out a single memory, the most innocuous he could find in recent recollection: the whiskey glass in his hand.
He didn't notice before he slipped off that the reflection of someone who wasn't himself danced dimly in its depths.
The next morning found one Severus Snape climbing the stairs by threes from the kitchen to the first floo, grumbling under his breath about shaggy headed mongrels. The library door swung easily and—with a muttered word—silently, revealing exactly what he had hoped for: another early riser who was both bored and alone.
Hermione Granger sat curled up at one end of a sofa, hair piled into a bun on top of her head and head angled down to the book in her lap. One hand fingered the edge of the page, while the fingers of her other hand traced the outline of the shell of her ear absentmindedly. He had enough time to observe this—in addition to the clothing she was wearing (Muggle, blue), the shadows under her eyes (pale lavender), and a subtle bulge against her left arm (wand)—before he pushed the door closed behind him. As it snapped shut, she looked up.
"Oh, hi," she said, mouth hanging open somewhat. She blinked and scrambled to her feet, tucking a slip of parchment inside as a placeholder in her book before setting it on the table. Her fingers knotted together as she clasped them before her. One rather thick curl fell out of her bun and she blew it out of her face. "I mean, good morning, Professor Snape."
"Have you made your decision?" he asked.
"Yes, sir," she said.
He waited.
"Yes, sir," she repeated, smiling a little ruefully at herself.
"Good," he said. Idiot. Run while you can. But where? "Grab your cloak."
"I…"
"Your first task: disguise yourself. Return here, unrecognizable, in five minutes. Now!" he barked when she didn't move.
She gave a little gasp and practically fled from the room. Lips hooked up at one corner, he swept to the couch and picked up her abandoned book from the table. The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts. He flipped open the book to the spot she had been reading and scanned the page.
Lily, 31 October, and Godric's Hollow all popped out at him. He turned the page, only to be met with a photograph of the Potter residence in ruins: half the upstairs had been blasted away and a ginger cat was running out of the frame in the garden below. The picture couldn't communicate sound and scent, but Severus still imagined he heard the wails of an infant and smell the burnt metallic odor that sometimes accompanied dark magic.
He closed his eyes and let the memories leak out in pieces.
Stepping over a splintered window frame and crunching on its shattered glass. The flutterby bush swaying lazily by the open front door. Shattered staircase railing and scorch marks on the wall. James Potter, spread eagle on the top landing, face angled toward the half open bedroom door.
Footsteps pounded along the hall and Severus was out of his seat, wand half raised, as an old woman stepped through the door.
"Sir, it's me!" the voice of Hermione Granger squeaked at him, and the old woman raised her hands, palms forward.
Severus blinked, then lowered his wand. He stowed it into his robes and stepped forward, head tilted as he examined Miss Granger. She stood in a dark gray skirt that fell down to the floor, a baggy striped sweater layered over the top of it. Her hair fell in its characteristic curls, but in pale gray, over her shoulders. She had donned gold wire spectacles and charmed her eyes a blue. Several more freckles dotted her face, and a few wrinkles lined her eyes and brow. As he slowly revolved around her, she lowered her arms and began to pick at a hangnail.
"What made you choose an old woman?" he asked, noting as she shifted under his examination simple white tennis shoes poking out from under the skirt.
"Well," she said, taking a deep breath and straightening her back as if she were being graded on her response. "My hair is the biggest give away, so I thought about tackling that first. Initially, I wanted to transform it completely: make it straight or blonde, that kind of thing. But then I thought of Nana— I mean…" She blushed. "My grandmother. Wouldn't that make a better disguise? The rest just sort of…followed."
She ended with a voice little louder than a mutter as she waved her hand at her ensemble, then peered up at him, anxiety evident in her furrowed brow.
"How…um…did I do alright?"
"Working with your greatest weakness was the correct first step," he said. He smirked to himself, watching as comprehension dawned and she frowned up at him. One hand reached up to tug at her corkscrew hair.
"Don't worry, sir," she mumbled. "I already took care of that last year."
He squinted at her, bewildered. She huffed and crossed her arms across her chest. Color rose in her cheeks. "'I see no difference'?"
"I don't—"
"My teeth," she said, pointing to her mouth. "You told Malfoy…"
A heaviness settled in his stomach, almost as if a magnified gravity were pulling at it. Years of bullying in school and regret surrounding the decisions he made directly after Hogwarts made the feeling clear to him: shame. He watched as the old woman before him wilted, eyes lowering, shoulders haunching and bottom lip disappearing as she bit down on it, revealing perfectly standard, straight teeth. The gestures were such a jarring contrast to the appearance: clearly someone young and vulnerable hiding behind a few glamored wrinkles.
And who was he to talk? His own teeth were nothing to be proud of.
He cleared his throat.
"Your choice of attire works well," he said. "Did you already have everything or is it transfigured?"
He hesitated, barely, as he asked the question, but if she noticed, she didn't react to it. She peered up at him, deemed that this must be the closest to an apology she was going to get, and–to his utter bewilderment–gave him a small smile.
"I had the sweater and the shoes. This is actually one of my school skirts. I just made it longer and tried to flatten out the pleats. You can still see where it gathers." She lifted the hem of the sweater, revealing the waistband of the skirt, where–though the pleats had been cleared away in the rest of the skirt–they were clearly visible. "So I made the sweater a bit bigger, too."
Severus nodded. "For future transfigurations, you'll want to make it complete. If your sweater caught fire, even Messers Crabbe and Goyle would recognize the skirt for what it is."
Her eyebrows shot up. "If my sweater caught–?"
"And while your alterations to your face are suitable for your new age, you neglected similar attention to the rest of your body. If you can't change your whole frame, you can pass for a small, crouching old woman, but you would still need to alter your arms and hands in any case."
She looked down at her arms, smooth and firm and devoid of sunspots, and slumped. "Oh," she said softly.
"Well," he said. She looked up and he nodded toward her arms.
"I…er…don't know what spell to do."
Miss Granger not know a spell? He scoffed. "You changed your face. Just apply the same charms."
"That's the thing," she said, smiling for some bizarre reason. A fizzling frustration stirred in his stomach. "I didn't use charms. I used…well, muggle makeup."
His lips parted, but no sound emerged.
"My aunt," she said quickly. "She used to do makeup for plays. She showed me how to do all sorts of things. Becoming old, creating reptilian skin, looking like a dirty, sunburnt sailor who got stuck on a deserted island…"
He raised a brow. "I would have thought such silly things as cosmetics were beneath you, Miss Granger."
"Oh, it's too much work to be getting on with every day," she said, waving a hand in the air. "But stage makeup is amusing to do. And it would be an advantage, wouldn't it? If I went through some sort of revealing charms, the makeup would stay intact!"
"It would," Severus allowed, acknowledging the unexpected use of muggle disguising methods against wizards. He couldn't imagine the Malfoys, for example, ever considering a Muggle costume. "But the rest of your transformation wouldn't."
"Then how am I supposed to do the transformation properly?" she asked, crossing her arms once more. He could almost see the thought spring, Gryffindor-like, from her mind: it isn't fair.
"Make your transformation so good," he said slowly. "That no one would think to question it."
She took in his words, her scowl slowly melting to a look of intense concentration. A light entered her eyes as she looked at him, and she opened her mouth, but he cut her off.
"We are going into wizarding society, so you'll need to make a few alterations. Continue–" He raised a hand to stop her when she again opened her mouth. "–to be an old woman. But how would you change if we were going to, say, Knockturn Alley?"
"A cloak," she said immediately. "Hooded."
He nodded. "And the shoes."
He jabbed his wand at the simple tennis shoes, which rose into short, heeled boots of black dragonhide.
"And my hands," she added, holding them forward and looking to him inquiringly.
Once more, he held out his wand, passing it over the sun-kissed skin and adding imperfections. He felt a twinge in his left arm as he did so.
When he finished, he said, "Get your cloak and we'll go."