Redeemable

Two: Prophecy

~Five Years Later~

It was shortly after dinner, on the night before her second year of teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts began, and Ginny Weasley tiredly pored over her notes for the final time, yawning ever so quietly.

She wasn’t aware of the owl’s presence until it dropped a letter on her desk. Gently, she petted the mail-carrying bird, offered it a treat, and observed dispassionately that her hands were shaking, from overwork and the faint burning of the Dark Mark on her right arm. It was a warning, she thought.

A short perusal of the note confirmed her suspicions; Ginny quickly got up, breathed deeply in an attempt to dispel the cloud of fatigue that had settled over, and left the room.

The stairs leading to the Hogwarts dungeons were many, if not terribly steep, and she stopped several times to emit a racking cough or two. It was close to fifteen minutes before her trembling white hands pushed open the door to the Potions classroom. She was surprised to find another man in the room, a man about her height with shaggy unkempt black hair. He looked about the same age as Snape – with whom he was bickering.

“Don’t think I don’t know what I’m doing, Black,” her fellow teacher and partner had been saying. “She’ll be better off-”

The man called Black had spun around sharply when he heard the creak of the door.

Timidly, she said, “You owled, Professor?”

“Ah, Miss Weasley,” Snape said with a barely detectable air of relief. “Do come in.” Once Ginny had seated herself atop one of the classroom’s several black marble-topped tables, Snape continued, “This is Sirius Black. He’s here about the guest I currently have in my office.”

She raised her eyebrows, but offered no comment.

“The guest he’s currently harbouring,” Black said softly, “Is here illegally, with neither the consent nor the knowledge of the Ministry of Magic.”

“Would it soothe her parents to know how she came here? Or from whence she came?” Snape said in that smooth tone of his that brought to mind the image of a crouching tiger, ready to pounce.

Black sighed, and Ginny realized that this was a man who had been defeated in his heart before he’d even stepped into the dank Potions dungeon. A man who played to lose. She spoke up then. “Who are you, Sirius Black, that you have the right to question Professor Snape about his visitors?” She said this lightly, but her nails bit into the soft skin of her palms as she clenched her fists.

“An Auror, once,” he replied off-handedly, “A man who has loved – and lost.” With the last two words, he glared at Snape, and Ginny was surprised to see the Potions master flinch.

“Black, you would do best to let dead dogs lie,” Snape muttered.

“Dogs, eh? Interesting choice of words you make. Very interesting indeed. She wasn’t some dog, Snape; you’d do well to remember that. I’m the only canine here, and I’m not dead yet!”

With that, Black stomped out the door, leaving Ginny opened-mouthed and speechless. After a few moments, she hopped up from her seat and spun around to face Snape.

“What the hell is going on?” she demanded.

“We have a situation,” he enigmatically informed her, “Several, in fact.”

“Argh!” Ginny threw her hands up in the air. “This is not the time for enigmas! Tell me.”

“You are no longer a student here, Miss Weasley. You’re not entitled to temper tantrums.”

“Severus…” she said, her voice deadly quiet.

“I told you not to call me that!”

She ignored him. “This is not a temper tantrum. If I were having a temper tantrum, something in your lab would have exploded by now.”

“The problems centre around our guest, and Professor Trelawney,” he said, oblivious to her statement.

“Sibyll? Surely she’s not… part of the Circle?”

He paused a moment before answering. “No… Did you ever hear about her prophecy? The real one?”

Ginny stifled a snicker. “No, but surely that’s a joke. Sibyll couldn’t tell a prophecy from a teacup if her life depended on it!”

“True. But once, in her final year at Hogwarts, Grindelwald was defeated. One day, shortly after, she fell into a trance and predicted the demise of the next great Dark wizard at the hands of two individuals. It was all very hushed up, of course…”

“No one wanted another Dark wizard to rise up,” she finished. “Hmm. So, what was the prophecy?”

With a quick, efficient motion, Snape removed a small roll of parchment from the folds of his robes. He cleared his throat. “ ‘The Dark Lord cometh again, in the guise of Serpentine Death, and his Demise be an Impossibility, lest he be slain by the Gryffindor’s Lion or a Grandmother of Rome.’ The Gospel, according to Sibyll,” he added, rather irreverently, as he rolled up the parchment again and replaced it in his robes. “To the best of my knowledge, we have the Grandmother of Rome in my office.”

“That’s all well and good,” Ginny said, perching on one of the tables again. “But what’s this about Gryffindor’s Lion? And why on earth was that deranged, jilted ex-Auror just in here?”

Snape sighed, looking extremely discomfited – something quite unusual for him. “Sirius Black has a… personal interest in the prophecy. Several other prophecies – most notably, Cassandra’s last and one of Vlatbinsky’s – pointed to a certain boy, one Harry Potter, as being Gryffindor’s Lion. I tried to take steps to protect him… but Albus, who was Headmaster here then, didn’t get word in time. Peter Pettigrew, a friend of the Potters, betrayed their hiding place to Voldemort… they took him to Azkaban. I still remember the site of him crowing over his victory in the ashes of their house. The Potter boy’s parents were also Sirius’s best friends, save Pettigrew and a Remus Lupin.”

“He loved this Potter woman.”

“Her name was Lily,” Snape said, looking up at one of the flicking candles in the sconces around the room. Not for the first time, Ginny wondered just how well she knew him.

“And you loved her as well?” She waited for his reaction, but he just sat there, staring into the candlelight.

When he spoke, his voice was so quiet she barely heard him.

“I thought I did.”

She left him there, still staring at the light fixture, and she went into his office.

Her eyes were greeted with the surprising sight of Rhea Forrest, one of her soon-to-be seventh year students. The girl was wrapped up in a worn wool blanket, and she had curled up in front of the fire on Snape’s hearthrug. Her long, chestnut brown hair, usually sleek and silky, was matted and tangled beyond the limits of most Detangling Charms.

But what frightened Ginny the most were the bruises and cuts that covered the only exposed parts of Rhea’s body visible from where she stood: the girl’s hands. She approached the sleeping girl and gently brushed the brown mess of hair back from her face, which had fared no better. It, too, had its fair share of bruises, and sported a long, vicious-looking welt on its left cheek.

“Oh, Rhea,” she gasped.

“I had not meant for you to find out like this,” said Snape, who had come up behind her.

“What’s wrong with her?” she asked without turning around.

“Dreamless Sleep potion,” he replied, “That, and prolonged exposure to a Malfoy.”

“Surely not – Draco!”

“No. She’s been Lucius’() new toy… and Voldemort’s.”

“How come we didn’t know about this?” Ginny hissed.

“I’m not sure,” he murmured. “Lucius has always been closed to him, after the Lestranges… and Lucius has been known to throw private – parties, shall we say? She’s Mad-Eye Moody’s granddaughter, and she’s been missing two months. He must have been very- fond of her.” She covered her mouth with her hand, and he took her free one in his. “Miss Weasley, you’re shaking.” All she could do was shiver. “Wait a moment.”

Letting go of her hand, he turned away, towards the shelves that lined the wall behind him, and then commenced a total search of them. Finally, he selected a petite green bottle from one of the middle shelves and handed it to her.

“Shall I drink it?” she asked, and he nodded.

“You ought to take better care of yourself, you know,” he rebuked, but Ginny decided to let it slide.

Gingerly, she lifted the tiny vessel to her lips and drank. Almost immediately, she felt a strange cool flood her body; her fatigue seemed bearable, if not completely gone, and her hands ceased their tremors. However, she still walked over to the armchair by the fireplace with caution, sat down, and sank into its cushions. “Thanks…” With the back of her hand, she rubbed her eyes. Then she glanced to the still form at her left. “What did they do to her?”

“I’m not sure. Everything and anything, I suppose.”

“Does she know where she is? What she is?”

Snape sighed wearily. “I’m not sure. She was fairly lucid on the way back from the Malfoys - I got her out with the help of one of the houselves, Dobby, the night I found out she was there – but that’s two days ago, now, and the only time when she’s regained consciousness was when she awoke from her nightmares. It got so bad that I had to give her the Dreamless Sleep, there simply wasn’t any other option… She certainly has no idea that she’s a Grandmother of Rome.”

“How did you find out?” she asked, closing her eyes and feeling the warmth of the fire on her cheeks.

“Albus has… well, he’s asked us to sponsor another agent.”

She opened her eyes wide and sat straight up in the chair. “Another one.”

“Yes,” Snape, who had taken a seat behind his desk, replied, “Another one.”

“Shouldn’t you have asked me first?” she inquired, barely holding back the string of curses and epithets she was ready to unleash on him.

“You were still in the hospital then, and it’s not as if you should be out of bed even now.”

“It was not my fault!” Ginny protested, slumping back into the comforting encirclement of the armchair. “Don’t act like it was, either. I’ll be well soon enough.”

“I’m not blaming you, Miss Weasley; it was merely unfortunate. However, wandering about Hogwarts when you’ve gone at least a night without sleep is not exactly an auspicious start for your convalescence.”

It had been a particularly virulent strain of magical pneumonia that attacked her; she had only just survived the experience, spending two weeks in St. Mungo’s. She was, by this time, more than a little tired of people telling her to stay in bed. Then again, her entire partnership with Sev- no, she reminded herself, Snape – was possible only because of her ability to shut up and ignore whatever he was saying…

“So who is this other agent, and how on earth did she figure out Rhea was a Grandmother of Rome?” Ginny asked.

Snape smiled a very spiteful smile. “She is our new Transfiguration teacher, Professor Granger… does that answer your question?”