Better Confession (A Night's Remembrance)

The sky, he noticed, was aflame and not in the pretentious metaphorical way that his brother was so fond of. He couldn't remember which brother, though he stubbornly tried to gather even one thread of his scattered memory. He knew for sure that his brother was dead, or at least that one of them was, but again, he couldn't remember which.

He rubbed a hand across his forehead, in something like a nervous tic, though his was affected. One of his cousins, a girl, he thought, compulsively bit her - or his maybe that cousin had been a boy - lower lip, sometimes until it was ground and bloodied. Even with it hanging from her face like a festering wound, she still nibbled at it.

And otherwise she seemed so focused.

The scant clouds were thick and black, heavy like smoke from a coal stove and shot through with intermittent flashes of lightening, white and dangerously beautiful and a slow red burn that lit up the countryside underneath. The flickering warm red was not the only source of light, though - spell light flared endlessly as witches and wizards sent out wave after wave of malicious magic.

The green glow of the killing curse, had some time ago become comfortingly familiar, a constant presence and happy reminder that there were still humans left to kill. Somehow knowing that his family and those others, the ones that weren't supposed to be here, were dying was then the greatest affirmation of life that he could find.

He was ten.

Aunt Pele had placed him high on the battlements with the snipers, because he was a good shot with bow or wand and had never been disturbed by death. He'd blooded his first kill at seven - a mother fox and her kits. With his siblings guiding him, he'd tracked the desperate mother back to her hole, following faint prints on the early snow, and later an easier trail of blood from where he'd glanced her flank. She'd thrust her snout out of her den and hissed at him, and snapped at him with her fine teeth.

He wasn't strong or quick enough to kill her with his blade like his father did, so he drew back and stretched his bowstring taut. His beautiful and sleek arrow - silver and oak and decorated with winding snakes, as all the family's possessions were - snapped into her heart, with only the faintest crack. The faint trickle of crimson on sparkling white was beautiful. Then he'd only to silence the kits.

Ally had helped to skin them, her knife was surer and quicker and flashed in the evening light like stars on magnetite. Sarpé had drawn the flat of his blade across his forehead, smearing the blood over the skin and back into the hair. He'd reached up to touch it but his brother smacked his hand away, saying that it was disrespectful not wear the foxes blood. It had itched. Ally had let him taste a little off her finger once she'd bagged the meat and tied the pelts. It had been coppery like his own.

He knew that if he could taste the bodies of the dead, laid out below him, they would taste like the fox, only older and a little sour, having lain under the harsh winter sun. It seemed as though it was always winter. He was sure there were other seasons, for why ever would he know their names. But. But he couldn't remember...

They'd been sitting to tea when the scout came running straight into the tower, his right arm hanging uselessly at his side and his face peppered with blood and bits of his partner's flesh. His mother had risen from her delicate black and cherry seat and hit the boy to the floor. He'd broken the wards and the Aurors would be soon after him, his father said. The scout was taken away then and later he'd seen his body hanging from the high steel west gate.

An Auror had hidden behind his eyes and soon his partners would be coming to the tower. They explained that the concealing wards could no longer hide them from the hit wizards, because one of them had placed himself inside the scout's mind and ridden him through the wards. Alex and his group were away at the winter stables and Jane had taken another to gather winterbloom, so they'd to defend the tower without a full half of their people, his parents explained. So even the children would fight.

He'd stood with the others, unafraid because he knew that even if they were all to die, Alex and Jane were still free. At the first wave of navy robed wizards, his blood had thrilled and he'd rubbed his leather-encased fingers along his bow. It was a fine bow, long and powerful and its core was a single dragon heartstring.

They'd poured into the valley, a stream of navy over the pale flaxen fields, the remainders of a particularly good harvest. By necessity they'd directly followed the route of their spy and so approached the tower at it's base in the hillside, surrounded by the drying houses, smithy and stables and set to taking down the great walls, made of a hundred different stones blended into one smooth surface by spells older than the government they served.

They tried to break the old spells, safely out of his bow's range, but by the same necessity that forced them to follow their spy's path, they couldn't leave the slick, black road that lead to the tower. Eventually they moved forward, needing more wizards' strength born onto breaking in. Then he'd released his first arrow and made his first kill of the day. It was not the first time he'd killed a man.

They were well trained and didn't scatter at the rain of arrows that killed many of their comrades - it was hard to tell how many in the pink dawn light and with the flashes of their wands obscuring their number. They screamed though, like every dying creature does and he refused to tune out the shrieks and curses, let them role over him in both accusation and benediction. He drew another arrow. And another.

It was evening when they broke through the walls, their number augmented by fresh fighters who'd apparated to a nearby valley and run in on the road. A rush of navy cloaks went past him, clashing with green-cloaked family and the fight had spilled to both sides of the wall. Spells had flown wildly then and discipline on both sides had broken. Even among the snipers, normally cold and so precise, were devolved into a savage melee with the Aurors, some of whom had scaled the cracked and hissing walls, while others had taken shelter behind debris, mindful of the continuous hail of superheated stone.

And at some point confundus had mixed with obliviatus and something else. He was ten and he knew he should be scared if he could only remember...

"Mama!" someone called. "Mama, where are you?" It had become quiet, so quiet and there was blood everywhere. "Mama..." The harsh, childish scream trailed off into a slow, keening wail.

A Precious Thing

The Aurors had taken down Aunt Pele's tower, scattering those stones they couldn't destroy, across the land, fired the sparse remains of the harvest and covered the fields with a thick layer of salt and spells. He'd been conscious long enough to hear the high, panicked screams of the horses as they'd killed them. What he remembered most clearly was the laughter, rich, careless and young, so young it almost sounded like Ally and Sarpé playing seek.

The mediwizards said it was better that he didn't fight the charms and potions and let them do their work helping him forget. It was a strange place, St. Mungos - unnaturally white and lit by too many torches and too clean. It smelled like his grandmother's deathbed.

His room, they called it, was but a tiny closet, perfectly white and incredibly soft to the touch. He sometimes couldn't tell which way was which, surrounded by a bed-like uniformity. Alex had told him of spells that could cause the mind to spill all it's secrets to an eager seeker, and spells that could ensnare one in the astral plane but unable to control even one's movements there.

He refused to sleep.

And sometimes he was sure that they were watching him. There were whispers in the blackness another sleeping spell - he always brought himself back to wakefulness in minutes as he'd been taught. But sometimes he thought he caught a faint hint of Sarpé's aura and other times, Ally's.

"Mama!" someone called. "Mama, where are you?" The voice was high and childish, though rough with sleeplessness and constant screaming.

"How does he keep waking? This is impossible!"

"Give him another dose of the potion..."

"Why are we taking care of these brats anyway?"

"They're supposed to be insurance against their parent's good behavior."

"Their parents? Those... things, wouldn't know how to love a child properly."

"Now Doris, it's not our place to judge-"

"Judge? Did you see this one when they brought him in? He was covered in blood and clutching a wand. He'd been killing people. He's only ten."

"Help me move him..."

Later the Aurors came to question him. They'd seemed unsure as to the procedure for interrogating a child and kept shooting glances into the closet's corners, nervous. There was a pattern to their glances though and whatever they'd hidden and enchanted to watch was in the back corner where wall met ceiling and again above the door. They wore their standard navy cloaks and fingered them incessantly through soft, black leather gloves.

Probably they'd worn their field uniforms for the adults, in a sad attempt at intimidation. And there were two so they could divide his attention and confuse him. They were not young men, these ones, they were grizzled and a little soft - he thought it had been some time since they'd participated in raids like the one that had broken Aunt Pele's home.

Though they looked about the same age, about middle years, one was more… pushy; his movements were sudden and forceful. The other, he decided was the senior and he addressed his question to him. "Why are you keeping me here?"

He saw surprise in both their faces, though they hid it well. The leader, a stocky man with reddish brown hair and a browner beard replied. "The mediwizards are concerned about your health, son."

He arched an eyebrow and made his voice as emotionless as he'd ever heard his mother's. "My wounds are healed, what more is there for the wizards to be concerned about."

The other folded his arms and leaned over him, where he sat cross-legged on the padded floor. "It's not only your physical health that concerns them, they-"

"My aura, so far as I can tell is also fine. Is there something they haven't told me," he asked, his entire bearing a study in falsetto innocence. The thin blond pursed his lips, annoyed at being interrupted by a child but his partner seemed amused - a corner of his mouth quirked upward. He gathered his navy robe about him and folded himself onto the soft, white floor.

"And are you a qualified mediwizard as well as an archer and a duelist?" He clucked his tongue. "And all by ten; you have quite the family." He wasn't sure about this one; he seemed to have abandoned his attempt at vague, parental concern when it became obvious that he was not the sort of child one tried that with. He rather thought his kills could have told the man everything he needed to know about how to deal with him.

"What do you want to know?" His voice was cold, he knew and they were unsettled. They looked at each other, reassessing the situation and the leader cocked his head as if listening to something and blinked slowly.

The thin nervous one leaned forward again and spoke; his voice had a mocking edge. "Your parents didn't tell us much - busy screaming, you know - but they said you, all you children are precious."

He simply nodded.

The thin man's eyes narrowed and he leaned closer still. "You killed four Aurors and make no mistake, though you're a child they'll still send you to Azkaban."

He let his head fall slightly to the side and looked up through lowered lids, as he'd seen his cousin do. "I hardly think that is a position much supported by the public."

The leader leaned forward then and pressed his lips close to his ear. His breath was hot and smelled of sweetened lemon. "You killed four men. The public likes child murderers no more than it does grown ones. You'll be given the Kiss." Breath stirred the fine hairs at the base of his skull and he shivered. The thin one smiled in triumph.

"There now, you'll cooperate won't you?" His lips formed a kind smile, though looking at his eyes, they were filled with malice and loathing.

"This whole interrogation is highly irregular. Don't you have a script for this sort of thing?" He never saw the leather-gloved hand that hit him but the patch on his face and blood in his mouth told of its presence. He woke slowly and stiffly. He hurt.

"Are you ready to cooperate little boy?" The voice was close to his ear and it smelled of cinnamon and pepper and it was hot, accompanied but an even warmer presence that hovered just above his bare skin.

"Sod off." He opened his eyes in time to see the hand that hit him this time, though he saw little after that, only felt crushing fists and booted feet and bodies. Bodies pushing against his in the dark.

He cried when they left, though he knew they were still watching. He was beyond caring.

Dawn's Lament

He squinted at the too-bright sunshine and rubbed a hand across his forehead in a nervous gesture. It was spring now and the beds in front of the Ministry of Magic were thick with lush red and yellow impatiens. They'd been released in singles and pairs, instead of all together and he suspected the Ministry was afraid of violent reprisals if they were allowed to congregate in their territory. He, for one, was sure of that reaction, no matter how disciplined the family was.

"Red and gold - Gryffindor colours of course. Darling, you'll hate Hogwarts as the bias is near unbearable." He looked up at Sarah, who walked on his left, a cousin, though years and years older. She'd been the first girl in the family to attend a magical school and was well known for her wild, rebelliousness. Before she'd been tall and thin, as most of them were, with thick auburn hair, deep sparkling brown eyes and a beak of a nose that only seemed charming on her cheerful face.

She seemed withered. Her body had shrunken beyond thin and her gaunt limbs moved with slow care. Her eyes were clouded like grandmother's had been and her witch's streak of white took up a full third of her head. He thought she was forty three at most and she'd never seemed so tired, though never more powerful.

Ally too, his sister, walking at his right and holding his hand in a tight warm grasp seemed both thinner and fuller. It was as if their auras had stretched and their minds, pushed by their keepers to madness had only become more focused, though not on this world.

It was a fine morning, early and still crisp; the sun was only just rising over the tall buildings of London. He'd never been to the city before and was suitably impressed by the Muggles' creations - their designs made the most interesting ward traps where protective energies summoned by even the most magic blind masons, met and clashed. They could use some lessons in practical energy matrices, he thought and perhaps interior design, as they passed a restaurant with an Art Deco theme - not that he could have identified it as such.

He marveled at the paving, so different from the slick black molten rock he was used to and at the brick buildings and even traffic lights. He supposed that not having access to magic, the Muggles would have to devise alternatives and they did seem to be working well, but so differently. Alien down to the very scent of the air.

They stopped before a course way for Muggle vehicles and a crowd gathered around them, waiting to cross as they were. They pressed close together and fidgeted and jostled for position. The scent of sweat flared his nostrils and he drew a quick sharp breath. The strange colours and fabrics all around him confused his vision and it all blurred to a uniform white.

A hand pressed against his shoulder blade and he gasped.

"Shh, my fine kitten, be still now."

"Yes, Ally," he replied to his sister's sweet voice.

"The light's turned, dear one."

"Oh." He looked up at the street light, a blur of white in his watery sight. Her hand tapped his chin.

"Look!" A hawk, soared between the high rises, catches cross breezes and thermals manufactured by the linear arrangement of brick. He tilted his face up into the cool breeze and shut his eyes against the artificial lights. With the unforgiving warmth of the sun suffusing his face, he let himself imagine what it must be like to be a hawk.

"Come on, now, you too. We've to get to the flat by seven and have miles yet to go," said Sarah. She grabbed his other hand, laughing and the three ran across the street, reaching the other side just as the light changed again. A bright red and fast convertible passed close enough to send Ally's skirt whirling. She turned to him in a sudden rush and grabbed his shoulders.

"Imagine driving one of those? Might be more fun than even a broom." He laughed and nodded but let Sarah drag him on, while Ally stopped to blow the driver a kiss.

"Where are we going exactly, Sarah?" He looked up at his cousin with renewed curiosity. He'd felt numb for weeks now but being under a blue sky, walking on solid ground and breathing clear, clean air was letting him think on more than surviving each passing second. It dawned on him suddenly that he was free of that place and he stumbled. Sarah steadied him but stared into his eyes for a moment. He stared back, annoyed.

She nodded. "Your father's a friend in London who keeps a Muggle style flat. Very convenient for such situations as this. I understand they were house mates." His father, like nearly every male and every female of the family that had attended Hogwarts had sorted into Slytherin. He'd read once, in mother's library that a grandmother of his, many times great, had been a friend of Salazar himself.

"Mother made some sort of deal with them didn't she? With..." Contrary to what his keepers had told him repeatedly, his parents and most of the adults had not been captured and had in fact made it safely to mother's tower, without being tracked. His interrogators had wanted something, but it wasn't until he'd spoken with family that he'd known. They'd wanted the locations of the other towers.

"With the idiots who overstepped their authority?" Sarah's brow furrowed almost unconsciously and she smirked. "No, they've been ousted and she made her deal with the new boys."

Ally caught up with them, laughing and short of breath. "They never knew what had hit them Sev, they were still awed by her when they let me out."

"They didn't really speak much around me," he said dryly, smiling up at her.

"I gather they were scared of you," she laughed.

"Good." He smiled darkly and scowled at the Muggle paving. They were sure to have been scared after he'd gotten his revenge on the thin man and the bearded one.

The two women ruffled his hair and laughed praise.

"Sarah," he asked. "Is Portia going to be there?" His voice shook with a quaver he couldn't control.

"Yes kitten."

A Quiet Low

The flat was the top three floors of yet another Muggle building and was capped with a lovely garden, overlooking the city. He and his cousin Portia curled up under the trellises of bougainvillea, gardenia, trumpet vines, ivy and roses, and slept. The evenings were surprisingly hot - Mr. Stuart explained that the Muggle city was always hotter than the countryside and the heat poured up the sides of the buildings. Though the air sometimes got thick and brown with Muggle fumes, the Stuarts had a neat bubble of clean and protected air. They even kept the pigeons from shitting on their Italian marble deck.

The first night he and Portia had wrapped themselves around each other in a childish sort of quiet desperation. She'd nearly burst into tears when they'd come through the door and only their respective training had kept them from embarrassing themselves.

He was glad that her mother'd refused Aunt Pele's invitation to visit as his had not; glad in a fierce and unchildish way that made him clutch her shoulders and tell her he loved her, without any hint of embarrassment and wish he'd not been there either and even tell her so. They were much alike, he and Portia and there had been no need for words beyond that and they sat together sometimes reading, sometimes just touching a hand to a shoulder.

During this time they also lay by the Stuart's pool with Ally and the Stuart's daughter, a loud and overly energetic girl that seemed to have trouble controlling all of her limbs.

"I'm Livia," she'd introduced herself and thrust her hand forward, with an indecorous grin.

"The Stuart heir," Portia had confirmed with the driest look she could muster.

He inspected the girl in a sidelong glance, pretending to study the décor of the sitting room that lead onto the terrace. "I see. Don't you have an older sister?" She was short and muscular, with a messy trail of mid-brown hair and slate gray eyes.

The girl frowned at him, her emotions plain - she was annoyed. "Lolita? Yes but she's mothers from another marriage."

"Ah," he said and moved past her into the garden. It was almost beautiful enough to remind him of home. "Patrilineal inheritance, how novel." He brushed his fingers along the rim of an ancient iron vase - probably still in use during summoning ceremonies and not just decoration.

The girl stalked forward and smacked his hand away from the vase. "You shouldn't touch that. Anyway, your family's the novel one, not that I see anything wrong with the women being in charge." She grinned over her shoulder at Portia, who merely sniffed.

"Quite right, dear and the only way it ever should be. If we trusted males to run things, everything would be a right mess. Oh wait they already are!" The two girls shared a laughed, the only they would for the rest of the family's stay - two powerful women of the same age, still out to prove their status and power were not good company for an enclosed space.

"But you still make the men fight for you?" She asked, settling on a striped settee and folding her hands around a raised knee.

Portia lowered herself into the couch opposite, elegant and poised even at ten. "It isn't so much that we make them fight for us, as... it is in men to fight." She looked at him, her wide black eyes open for once, as they only were when the two were alone. There was a smile and a tight hug for him in those eyes. He sighed and turned to look out at the garden. He watched the two girls from the corner of his eye.

"But women can fight just as well, if not better," Stuart protested, earning a frown Portia.

"Better, dear, much better and also much worse, for there is nothing more dangerous than an enraged mother. We have learned that we women form a stronger family, freed of worries about securing lines of descent - more stable."

He snorted. "Women? Portia you are a woman as I am a man and therefore not yet even close."

"Ah, but did you not hear your parents, Sev? They consider you as having at least moved beyond childhood with recent events." He turned sharply to stare at her. She stared back, confidently willing him to drop his gaze. He didn't.

"What did he do?" Stuart's voice dripped with scorn. "He's just a boy."

"He killed four Aurors and severely wounded several other, dear." The girl's face fell into a near parody of shock. "Do not question that which you do not understand," Portia snapped. "Sev, let's go outside." She rose from her seat with more than a shadow of her future grace and walked over to him, to link their arms and gently drag him outside.

"Are you really only ten?" the girl called after them.

He'd spent some nights curled up with Ally instead, but on his leaving Portia only smiled and kissed his forehead.

Afternoon they spent by the pool and Ally taught all three of them charms they'd learn at Hogwarts in the coming year and some they wouldn't learn but she thought would be useful. Hexes were especially easy for him to learn, as it was only a matter of expanding his existing repertoire. The Stuart's it seemed hadn't yet taught their daughter much of use, which had caused Portia to stalk away in disgust. Stuart was terrible.

Ally also taught them some simple transfiguration, which Stuart didn't bungle too badly and Portia and he naturally excelled at. It wasn't so much that the family was that far advanced as compared to others - though they were - as they never admitted defeat in anything. Even in something as simple as changing a string into a quill.

By far, Ally's best subject and many of their female cousins was Divination. He had no head for it and lay on his stomach, his hands folded under his chin, watching the three girls inspect tealeaves and tarot cards.

And he read.

His mother assigned texts, Muggle and magical alike and she handed him them over breakfast with the instruction to be finished the following morning - he learned to read quickly. He read on war, politics, torture, psychology, sociology, confusion spells and spells to invade the mind.

One morning she drew him away from the others to a small sitting room on the second floor. "Well, boy?" She arched a fine eyebrow and glared down her long nose. Saturnina Snape was old of mind and body and had many other children, besides him.

"I understand mother."

"What do you understand, my son?" she asked, everything in her demeanor a challenge.

"That this... or something like it will happen again."

"Yes," she said grudgingly leading him to say more.

"And I must be prepared to..." he trailed off not unsure, for he was so totally sure that he choked on his words, his mouth full suddenly full of bile.

"You will kill and you will do worse. You will do what is necessary to protect the family from such fools in the future and we will not make such a mistake again as foolish Pele did. The world is changing, Severus." She sighed then and patted her knee. He settled obediently at her feet and rested his head in her lap.

"You will certainly kill - some may deserve death, others not but this does not matter because your duty is above the petty concern of morality, dear boy. I did not bear you to see you falter and you have thus far done me proud. One day I will ask something of you that you will not understand, that you find near unbearable but it is ever your duty to obey unquestioning." She petted his hair slowly with her thin, wrinkled hand.

"But know always that you follow me and that I will never lead you wrong."

"I don't understand mama," he murmured.

"Of course not, idiot boy, you're not meant to. Yet. Always remember that you are mine." Her voice was steel, unadorned by aught else.

"Yes mama," he replied sleepily.

"Now go learn something from your sister," she said and pushed his head up from her lap. He leaned in to hug her but her hands, stronger than they looked held him back. "You are no longer a boy and require a woman's permission for touch."

He dropped his gaze to the elegant marble mosaic of Persephone and Hades, reflecting that had it been in his mother's house, it would have been the young goddess with her mother instead.

"You may embrace me, my son." His head shot up and he hugged her tightly, glad that she allowed him to clutch her so tightly. After a moment she let him go and he left the sitting room for the garden where the girls waited.