The Silver Cauldron

Chapter 28 - Silver Roses

I was walking around the garden. Frost - bitten thorns grew haphazardly across the rose beds - beds that had not borne roses for decades. Brambles choked all life, surrounding the other plants with impenetrable cages until they blocked out the sun. I shivered, but it was not from the cold.

He hated his garden. It was, I suppose, an insulting ridicule to his immaculately tidy and precise house. An open rebellion to order. But he never deemed it worth wasting time on something that was so purely aesthetic. Gardens, for him, were simply the necessary interim between the house and the outside world.

On impulse, I bent down and uprooted one of the bramble creepers. Beneath its roots the earth was a rich brown, fertile. I pulled up another. Soon half an hour had passed and I had cleared a large part of the bed. My hands were scratched and bloody, no longer used to manual labour. The sun found a gap in the wintry clouds and for the first time in months I smiled.

The soft crackle of a twig breaking made me look up. He was standing there, looking at what I had done. Since he had left my room that night we had avoided each other as much as was possible, only addressing each other with the plainest of civilities. It suddenly occurred to me that he had been watching me for a long time.

"Professor" I murmured, forgetting that he disapproved of this.

"You have been busy I see" he commented.

"Yes. Yes, I suppose I have" I said. There was an awkward silence.

"I used to love coming out here once" he said thoughtfully.

"Did you?"

"Yes. It holds some fond memories...and some bitter ones". I couldn't think of anything to say.

"It was her garden...my mother's". I looked up.

"She...she left your father didn't she?" He nodded.

"For another man. A filthy mudblood of a wizard."

"Is that...is that why you wanted to...you know..."

"Own you? Yes. I suppose it is." I looked down at the band on my wrist. The words 'Severus' and 'Philoma' were entwined with a creeper of Ivy.

"Hold only onto the fond memories - they are the important ones" I said.

He looked at me oddly, then we both looked away at the same moment. I pulled up another thistle. He moved behind me.

"Philoma...I want to ask you something...I should have done this before..."

"Ask what?" I said, tugging at a bramble.

"Do you...do you ever wish you could have had my child?" I froze.

"Do you?" he sighed.

"I don't know. I never wanted children but I wish...No. This is silly." He put his hand lightly on my shoulder. "I just realised, Philoma, that I never asked you how you felt at the time. That's all. Don't cry now..." he withdrew his hands quickly. "I can't stand your tears. I gazed at him through a watery mist.

"No. Now I know how wrong it would have been. You were right, I am in no fit state to have a child." He moved towards me emphatically, but then abruptly drew back.

"But you are! You are!"

"Stop it!" I said sharply. "Stop playing your dark, sinister games with my life!"

"This is not a game Philoma."

"Yes it is! How could I raise a child here? In prison? You know that."

"You...regard this as your jail?"

"Well I'm not free am I?"

"Free. None of us are free." He looked out through the iron barred fence at the dying winter sun. "I never tried, did I Philoma?"

"You did. But for all the wrong things" he glanced up at me again. This time I did not look away.

"Yes. Yes I did." His features set into a look of bitterness.

"I came to Hogwarts with the sole purpose of betraying you. Even though I'd never met you. Our relationship was always going to be a power struggle". He nodded.

"It was. I thought my advances would merely force you into submission. Instead I ensnared myself. You always seemed to utterly dependent on me then...I only had to breathe your name and you would let me do whatever I wanted with you. I abused that trust. Even though -"

"Even though the only reason I let you was that I wanted to trap you" I said quietly. He flinched.

"Yes". His face darkened.

"I'm sorry Severus."

My lip trembled, unable to stand the look on his face. Then all the emotions were suddenly released from their tortured prison, I abandoned all pretence and turned away sobbing. It was as though he was twisting my guts. He hurried over to me and cradled me in his arms.

"Don't cry. Please don't cry. I shouldn't have asked you...I just...never until now considered your feelings about this. Please...be quiet." After a while I calmed down and stood still in his arms. The gradual realisation of our positions came upon us and he loosened his grip slightly.

"I will go if you wish"

At that moment my life seemed to have come to a forked turning, my future hanging on the path I took. Submission and love or independence and loneliness. I gazed up into his face, simultaneously pale and shadowed, those black eyes, once full of cruelty and desire, now refecting only sadness and a shining replica of my own worried form. He made no movement or change of expression at all, merely watched. I plucked up a strand of reckless courage from somewhere and said in a trembling voice;

"No. I love you".

When Voldemort had touched my arm to give me the Dark Mark I had know instinctively that it was wrong. When Snape gently pressed his lips to mine - not painfully this time but in a genuine, loving kiss - I know it was right. He drew me softly towards him and I responded to his command. His hands slid lightly through my hair in a way he had never touched me before - not brutal desire but the pure, acute pleasure of committing the act of touch. We broke apart at last and stood in the gathering darkness.

"I was thinking, my darling, that if you ever wanted to...if you ever feel the need to try for another child I would do it properly this time. With your consent, I mean". The miniature crow upon my arm glimmered palely as I touched his cheek and smiled. His expression bacame more serious and he glanced up at the bats beginning to flicker overhead.

"Come inside then my dear. It is getting cold".

That evening we stood at the bedroom window looking out upon the night. Through the velvet black I could just make out the faint shape of something silver glimmering in the flower bed. A winter rose.