Chapter 15
Severus didn't panic. He cast Protego, the dome catching the knockback jinx cleanly, and fired a disarming spell at the woman in the same motion. She blocked it without effort and stepped aside with a sharpness that meant she'd been in real fights before. She looked ready to follow up, but Regulus moved between them.
"Cousin, stop! He helped me!"
The woman gave Regulus a look of pronounced displeasure, pushed a strand of dark hair back from her face, and shifted her attention to Severus. Up close she was striking in the way the Black family often was: sharp-featured, aristocratic, with something predatory running just beneath the surface, like a blade kept inside a very fine scabbard.
"Grandmother has told you a hundred times not to go out alone, and not to associate with any Muggle-borns."
"I needed to pick something up," Regulus said, with the tone of someone who'd had this conversation before and had no energy left for it. "I wasn't expecting a trap or to be used as a kidnapping target. I wanted to handle it myself. I'm sorry."
"I see." Bellatrix's eyes moved back to Severus, still hostile. "I'm not thanking you. What do you want?"
He'd had an idea moments ago, something to do with the Blacks and finding a Parselmouth. Then he'd seen the marks on her arm, and he'd set it aside. He wasn't going to use that route.
"I'll keep it to myself."
"Tell me," Bellatrix said, voice hardening. "I don't want it known that the Blacks owe anything to a half-blood."
"Very well." Severus walked past Regulus and stopped in front of her. He smiled and let his gaze drift unhurriedly over her face: the aristocratic pallor, the full mouth, the thick dark lashes, and her eyes narrowed as she pressed her wand tip to his chest and held herself back, just barely, because he'd just saved her cousin.
"Then what I want from Miss Black," Severus said quietly, "is one kiss. A fair price for saving Regulus's life, I'd have thought."
"Would you like to die?" she said, completely calm. The sparks in her eyes weren't just for show.
"I was under the impression the Blacks never went back on their word."
Her eye twitched. The wand tip flared brighter.
Regulus had broken out in a cold sweat. The tension in the alley was thick enough to press against his skin. He knew Bellatrix better than most, and he knew her absolute contempt for anyone who wasn't pure-blood, her temper, and the particular pleasure she took in certain spells. The fact that she had not already shouted Crucio was a small miracle, and he was very aware that the miracle had an expiration date.
"You might want to reconsider," Bellatrix said, flat and dangerous.
"Of course not. It's not every day you meet someone as attractive as you."
Pure revulsion crossed her face, and the wand brightened again.
"All right, then I want nothing," Severus said with a dismissive wave. "I shouldn't have expected anything different from pure-blood wizards. All talk and no follow-through. The only thing you're any good at is stabbing people in the back."
He walked past her, toward the alley exit, and didn't look back.
"You!" Bellatrix hissed at his retreating figure. "You dare speak about pure-blood wizards like that, you filthy little Muggle-born. I will kill you where you stand."
She raised her wand at his back and couldn't bring herself to fire.
His words still rang in her ears, and if she struck him from behind now, she would only prove him right.
She ground her teeth, strode forward, grabbed his shirt, and shoved him hard into the wall. The wand tip was pressed to his chest. Her other hand seized his collar, and she bit down on his mouth, sharp and furious.
How straightforward she is, Severus thought, with a private amusement he didn't let show on his face. But she needs to understand this isn't how it works.
He slid one hand to her waist, the other to the back of her head, turned her smoothly, and pressed her back against the brick. Bellatrix went rigid: a heartbeat of pure shock, anger surging behind it, and then a second, different shock as Severus kissed her back with a calm, unhurried confidence that had no right to exist given the circumstances.
It didn't last long. She came back to herself, bit his tongue hard, and he stepped back, letting her pull free.
"Lovely," Severus said, running his tongue across his lips. "Have you ever had strawberry cake before?"
A faint color rose in her pale face, and whatever had been burning in her eyes went several degrees past anger into something more dangerous.
"I AM GOING TO TORTURE YOU, YOU ABSOLUTE BASTARD! CRUCIO!"
Severus stepped aside.
"CRUCIO!"
He stepped aside again. A black needle slipped from his pocket, unfolded in midair, and locked into place as a cube.
"CRUCIO!"
This time he didn't bother to dodge. He simply kept backing away as the curse struck the cube and fizzled out. The cube flared azure, swallowing the beam entirely.
"CRUCIO!"
"Bellatrix, enough!" Regulus caught her wrist as people began gathering at the mouth of the alley. Severus turned once, blew her a kiss, and disappeared around the corner.
"Let go of me! I'll kill him!"
"He's gone," Regulus said, straining to keep his voice down. "And if you keep casting in a public alley, you're going to bring every Auror in the city."
Bellatrix tore her arm free, stared at the corner where Severus had vanished, then turned her cold gaze on Regulus.
"If you tell anyone about this, I will kill you."
"Of course," Regulus agreed, with a smile that cost him considerable effort, and silently cursed Severus from the bottom of his heart for leaving him alone with her.
Severus was fighting down genuine laughter as he walked back into Diagon Alley.
"You're extraordinary, you mad woman. If Regulus hadn't been there, you'd have tried to kill me before I'd finished the first sentence. But all the same."
He ran his tongue over his lip and glanced back at the unremarkable building that was the Leaky Cauldron. That was actually pleasant. It's been a long time since I've been interested in anyone.
He nicked his index finger and traced a small diamond on his palm in blood. After a few seconds it flared, contracted, and settled into a tiny tattoo: two centimeters square. He fed it a thread of magic, and an image of Bellatrix surfaced at once in his mind. She was currently destroying her room.
Getting anywhere with someone like that would be a serious undertaking. Crucio did lasting damage to the mind; she'd had it used on her more than once, and no simple restorative potion could fix that. Something to think about later. For now, at least he had a firsthand view of what was happening in the country.
The mechanics of what he'd done were straightforward: blood magic based on a simple principle. Bellatrix had bitten his lip hard enough to draw blood, and one drop was all the spell needed. If the target consumed even a trace of the caster's blood, the caster could form a seal within them and observe their health, mental state, and whatever was happening in their immediate environment.
Right. Home. The potion wasn't going to brew itself.
He looked toward the road and, with obvious reluctance, pulled out his wand and waved it.
The purple bus appeared. The door opened. The driver leaned out, beaming.
Back already! Hot chocolate? A hot water bottle? Toothbrush? The old man's enthusiasm was frankly inhuman.
No.
As you like!
A few minutes later the bus braked hard, throwing Severus forward with what felt like personal malice.
We hope you enjoyed your journey and that you'll choose the Knight Bus again!
"Thank you," Severus said, stepping down and breathing deeply. He was already handling it better than the first time. He walked home without looking back, and the bus was gone with a light rush of air and the baffled stares of several passing Muggles.
Muggles couldn't see the bus. They had no magic, and the International Statute of Secrecy, signed in 1689, made performing magic in front of them a serious offense. When secrecy was broken, Muggles were obliviated. A Memory Charm rewrote the relevant recollection, and the wizard responsible attracted the Ministry's attention.
Spinner's End settled around him as he turned onto the street: cramped houses, soot-dark bricks, dampness pressing into everything. He frowned. The tracking charm he'd placed on the house before leaving was gone. That meant only one thing.
"Looks like my quiet evening is postponed."
He kept his face neutral. He could feel someone inside, and he didn't want them to bolt.
He opened the door without hurry, looked at the basement door sitting slightly ajar, and raised an eyebrow.
"I'm genuinely impressed. They even found that door. The person who saw through the concealment charm deserves some credit."
"Please, stop this. We need to go." A woman's voice, agitated and low. Severus recognized it immediately, and his expression went flat.
A moment later, a red-haired girl came out of the basement dragging a grown man behind her. The man kept twisting back toward the stairs. The moment she saw Severus standing there, she went pale and reached for her wand. It flew out of her hand before she could grip it and landed in his hand.
"Lily." His voice was flat. "So that's why you've been so restless." He moved her against the wall with a firm telekinetic push, hard enough to rattle the frame, then walked past her into the room and cleared it with an impatient sweep: chairs, junk, everything shoved aside, leaving only the table. The cauldron landed on it with a heavy, solid clunk.
"Why do you keep coming here?" he asked, not turning around. "You have James. Go to him. You have no idea how much effort it takes not to simply kill you and solve the problem at the root."
"Sev, why are you..." Her voice was shaking.
Women are bewildering creatures. Severus shook his head and stepped closer, raising one hand toward her throat.
Lily shut her eyes, braced for something. When she opened them again, a strand of her red hair lay between his fingers. He was looking at it with no expression at all.
"First you say I'm not him," Severus said. "Now you're calling me by his name. Make up your mind."
"Sev would never hurt me."
"You might be right. He wouldn't." His fingers moved to her throat, light but deliberate. Just enough. "I can. And I won't."
He let go, turned to the cauldron, and took out his wand.
"I swear by my magic that I am Severus Snape, and no one else."
Light flared. Lily stared at it and said nothing.
"You've never understood me," Severus said, not unkindly, but without warmth either. "You decided I was heading somewhere dark, and I imagine in your head I ended up on the same shelf as Death Eaters."
"That's not true! I've always thought of you as my friend!"
"Then why did you never support my work?" The irritation in his voice was real. "Why only criticism? Because Dark Magic is evil?"
Lily pressed her lips together.
"You're not thinking about it broadly enough." He shook his head. "Tell me: do you consider Merlin a dark wizard? Evil incarnate?"
"Of course not!"
"But he was. One of the most powerful dark wizards of his time. He used light magic as well, but in battle he relied on dark because it was stronger. By your logic, he was worse than Voldemort."
She flinched at the name.
"And you criticized my friends."
"Because they were dreadful people!"
"I'm not disputing that," Severus said. "But did you want me to be completely alone? Sitting there waiting for whenever you decided to call?"
"No, I didn't mean."
"Help you? Open my eyes?" He cut her off, his gaze steady and cold. "Did you genuinely think I didn't already know what they were? Lily, I was in Slytherin, a house of pure-bloods. Who exactly was I supposed to make friends with? I'm a half-blood, and in times like these, with the Dark Lord actively recruiting, who do you think was going to associate with someone like me?"
He let that settle, watching her face as something new moved across it.
"And when people finally did, you immediately told me to drop them, which meant dropping the only allies I had in my entire house. While you had friends to laugh with, I had no one, and at the first moment you wanted company, I was supposed to drop everything and run to you. Wasn't I?"
"No! I never."
Severus raised his hand. She stopped.
He went back to the table, took out the pouch, and began removing needles from it. They turned back into jars as he withdrew them.
"Sev." Lily's voice had dropped to barely a whisper. "What did you do to your father?"
"It's called revenge."
"Revenge?"
"Yes." He raised his voice. "Get up here."
Tobias came up from the basement with heavy, stumbling steps. He swayed, hands twitching, and his eyes, which Lily had previously only seen burning with drink and cruelty, held something she had never seen in them before: simple, naked terror, fixed entirely on Severus.
"Tell me," Severus said. "Why am I doing this to you?"
"You're a m-monster."
"A monster." He sounded almost disappointed. "You still haven't figured out where you went wrong. And I had intended to keep you alive."
He glanced at a photograph in the corner of the room.
"Tell me what you did to my mother."
"I..." Tobias's face was the color of old ash. "I beat her until she was dead."
Lily went very still. She hadn't known. She hadn't known Eileen Snape was dead at all.
"And what did you feel at the time?" Severus asked.
"I was." Tobias's voice broke on almost every word. "I was happy. The witch should have died years ago. Should have left me in peace."
"And over the ten years before that, what did it feel like, beating her?"
"I felt alive!" The words came out in a rush, half choking. "That damned witch should have gone long ago!"
"Now do you understand?" Severus asked Lily. Her face had gone the same color as Tobias's.
"Sev, please stop." Her voice broke. "You can't sink to his level. I understand what he did was monstrous, but..."
Severus's palm connected with her cheek before she could finish.
"Lily, you're too naive," he said quietly. "The world isn't a story where kindness is always the right answer. If you keep thinking the way you do, it will kill you. Remember that."
He raised his wand.
"Obliviate."
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