Greensleeves

"Greensleeves"

Alas, my love you do me wrong

To cast me off discourteously

And I have loved you so long

Delighting in your company

Ensconced in his father's dragon skin wingchair, Severus Snape watched the snow accumulate on the frozen, bare ground with distaste. It was somehow inappropriate - as though such a term could be applied to a thing so wild and changeable as weather. The McKinnons' funeral should have fallen on a dull, rainy day so he could imagine the sky itself wept for Marlene and her family. A pathetic fancy, that, but one that seemed fitting after enough of his father's best Firewhiskey.

He wondered if Marlene had been surprised to learn he was a Death Eater. He certainly had been unaware where her allegiances lay until the Dark Lord summoned him into his presence. Now he would never find out how she felt about anything, because she would never feel again.

The cork on the third bottle refused to budge, but Snape fumbled for his wand and hexed the offending bit of wood. As he put the bottle to his lips, he thought back to where it all went wrong.

It had been an incongruously bright and sunny day when he'd felt his mark burn. Severus was glad of his robes since the sudden appearance of the dark lord's emblem would have drawn suspicion from even the dimmest wizard. He had hurried through his work and offered the usual excuses to Mr. Jigger, who Severus suspected was also a member of 'the club', before responding to the summons.

He found his master awaiting him outside a tiny cottage on the edge of a deserted moor. Voldemort bid him to come inside and be seated. While the Dark Lord's Table was only a battered old thing that came with the cottage, its current owner made it seem a grand board. He offered tea, but Severus had politely declined. He preferred to cut straight to the heart of the matter.

"Your lady friend, Marlene McKinnon," Voldemort began. The Dark Lord knew much of the private lives of his servants and enjoyed reminding them of that fact from time to time. One had no secrets from Lord Voldemort.

"Yes, my lord?" Severus was grateful to be seated, even in a cheap and battered pine chair. There was something in his lord's voice that chilled him to the marrow. Usually being in his master's presence was exhilarating; tonight, for the first time, he wished he were elsewhere. He felt dread bubble up inside him. Other Death Eaters had been given orders to attack those they were close to. Would he be ordered to kill Marlene? Horrible possibilities collected from various nightmares darted through his mind.

The reality was cold comfort.

"She is one of Dumbledore's order," his master informed him. Voldemort then proceeded to outline what he knew of Dumbledore's crowd and ordered Severus to spend more time with Marlene and make careful note of her habits, any odd happenings and most especially... hours for which she could not or would not account.

Severus' mind could not grasp the concept of his Marlene being part of Dumbledore's Order. Within certain circles, it was well known that Dumbledore had gathered a group of wizards and witches into a secret society to oppose the Death Eaters. The names of Ministry employees who worked against Voldemort were a matter of public record and they and their families often paid a heavy price. But his Marlene? It made no sense...and yet it did. Dumbledore would invite only the best and Marlene McKinnon was certainly that.

Greensleeves was all my joy

Greensleeves was my delight

Greensleeves was my heart of gold

And who but my Lady Greensleeves.

At first, Marlene had been pleased to see him more often, but one evening she returned from work with a shuttered expression.

She hung up her travelling cloak with her back turned to him and wandered into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. When he trailed her into the kitchen he found her sobbing into her hands while the tea kettle whistled.

She knew what he was. He needed nothing further to confirm his suspicion. He wondered who told her that he was a Death Eater and how they obtained their information.

For a few days, they danced around the issue. It was oddly akin to the aftermath of a fight. Marlene stayed longer at work and found excuses to be elsewhere.

On the evening of the fifth day, she made an announcement as Severus prepared to Apparate to work.

"Mum's ill and I'm moving back home," she said coldly. She stood there, straight backed and proud and yet, Severus saw questions filling her bright brown eyes. He looked away.

"I see."

"Do you?" The words were crisp and cold as ice.

"Your loyalty is to your family," Severus said distantly. And not to me. And not to the side that will win this war.

"We all have to choose with whom we ally," Marlene said. Unspoken were the words 'and you've chosen badly.'

There was nothing else to say. He went off to work and snapped at every customer daring to darken the door of Slug and Jiggers Apothecary. By the time he returned that evening her clothes no longer took up most of his wardrobe and the little crystal bottle she used to keep lavender water no longer graced the dresser. She had even taken the sheepskin rug by the bed she'd brought in a Muggle shop and was absurdly fond of. It was almost as if she had ever lived there at all.

~ * ~ * ~

I have been ready at your hand

to grant whatever you would crave;

I have both wagered life and land

Your love and good will for to have.

He was not been invited along on the raid on the McKinnons, he had known nothing about it until the next morning. His function amongst the Death Eaters was to brew potions to poison, to gather information and ingredients, and to devise methods of circumventing truth serums. Others dealt with the raids. The night of the attack on the McKinnons, he and Lucius Malfoy were in engaged trying to identify the ingredients of a new truth potion the Aurors were using on suspects.

Malfoy tapped his quill against his notes. His handwriting was atrocious, impossibly tiny. "Common ingredients. The secret must be in the preparation."

Severus nodded. On parchment, there was nothing spectacular about the potion. In use, however, it not only forced the victim to speak only truth, but it forced them to answer questions. Most truth potions could be evaded simply by refusing to speak.

Malfoy had gathered the known ingredients and arrayed them on the worktable.

"Odd to find lavender in a truth potion," Severus remarked as he crushed a sprig between his fingers. It reminded him of Marlene.

"Disguises odours, some of these herbs are pretty pungent. I don't think it's an active ingredient."

"Perhaps," Severus was not willing to concede anything just yet.

"Do you think the Jobberknoll feathers were charred? I've heard of that being done in memory-enhancement potions."

Severus weighed the possibility. "We'll put it to the test."

~ * ~ * ~

I bought the kerchers to thy head

That were wrought fine and gallantly

I kept thee both at board and bed

Which cost my purse well favouredly.

He borrowed an invisibility cloak from Avery to attend the wake. Later he wished he had stayed away. Marlene and her family lay in polished mahogany coffins that had seen who-knew-how-many temporary occupants. Come dusk the McKinnons would be cremated and their ashes interred in the earth.

He bypassed the other mourners, especially Marlene's younger sister Elizabeth who sat in stunned silence surrounded by classmates she was barely aware of. Grief aged the fourteen-year-old, making her resemblance to her sister uncanny and unsettling.

Most described Marlene as plain, but to Severus' eyes, she was the rarest beauty in the world. Death robbed her of that. Stiff and pale in her apple green robes, she might have been a wax image given how rigidly she held her wand. She must have been dead some hours before the Aurors found her.

He thought wildly of Romeo and Juliet. She had loved Shakespeare even if she thought Juliet a silly fool. In the play, Juliet feigned death to be with her beloved.

Her blood is settled, and her joints are stiff;

Life and these lips have long been separated:

Death lies on her like an untimely frost

Upon the sweetest flower of all the field.

But this lady would never rise again. Severus knew well the subtle signs that indicated one had taken the Draught of Living Death and none presented themselves in Marlene. She was really dead. Part of him was surprised that he expected to find otherwise.

Greensleeves, now farewell! adieu!

God I pray to prosper thee;

For I am still thy lover true

Come once again and love me.

He found his way home and sunk into his father's favourite chair. The old man was dead and yet his son still trod lightly in his house. It took Severus half an hour to break into the liquor cabinet and less than a single night to deplete his father's store of fine Firewhiskey.

Several weeks later he laid a bouquet of white lilies on Marlene's grave and Apparated to Hogsmeade. The school gates never seemed so intimidating. He pulled his hood up to further shadow his face and put one foot in front of the other. He had an appointment to keep.

An appointment with Albus Dumbledore.