The Metamorphosis of Severus Snape

August, 1998

She stood on the east shore of the island of Cyprus, facing the waxing moon and the murky ocean and the endless star-speckled sky before her. A crisp breeze from the west rippled the waves and blew tendrils of auburn hair out of her ponytail and into her eyes, but she made no move to push it away. A basket lay several feet away, containing a small bundle of blankets that mewled and wriggled at various intervals; but she ignored that as well, remaining as still and silent as a statue. . .

Rather like the one rising out of the sand just beyond the basket, a figure of translucent white marble a full head taller than she, draped in black robes in the style of a modern-day wizard.

It was many long minutes before the woman on the beach stirred out of her seeming trance. Still ignoring the moving blankets, she walked over to the statue and stood before it, her feet leaving soft imprints in the sand as she went. Then, slowly, she reached up and caressed its cold cheek as gently as a mother would touch her only child. Her next words passed from her lips and were nearly lost under the noise of the crashing waves on the shore.

"Severus," Galatea breathed. "It's almost time."

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June, 1995

Their first meeting had been less than promising.

Galatea had been vacationing in the Mediterranean, traveling through the Wizarding neighborhoods and taking in the sights and otherwise enjoying herself for one full month--after all, did she not deserve a very long vacation after working as an Auror Medic for four years straight? Certainly, ever since that young Harry Potter had arrived at Hogwarts, her job had been busier than ever with the increasing number of Death Eater-related attacks on wizards and Muggles alike.

In any case, she was strolling through the magical open-air market of Rome at the time, a basket of local fruits and vegetables for her evening meal dangling from her hand. She was in the process of bending over to inspect some amulets being hawked by an old hag--

When someone shoved her roughly from the back, sending her sprawling on top of the display table.

The vendor screeched in dismay as her goods went flying into the street. The basket and its contents soon joined them, pomegranates and olives scattering with scarab pendants and hieroglyphic bracelets in the dusty gutter. Galatea made a quick, British-accented apology in Italian to the distraught hag as she righted herself and the table, then took off running to catch the offender, who was still striding down the main road as if nothing had happened.

She finally caught up with the man a block and a half later, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling him around to face her. He had a sallow face with piercing black eyes, framed by lank and stringy black hair that fell to his shoulders, and contorted into a scowl that would terrify most strangers--but she was too angry with him to care at the moment.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?!" Galatea exploded, causing other shoppers and vendors to turn and stare. "You think you can take up the whole road like no one's business? At the very least, watch where you're going and don't knock off every bystander in your path!"

His voice was silky, low, and with enough venom to make her take one step back. "And why should I care when someone's extremely large arse is sticking out into the middle of the street and must necessarily be cleared for the benefit of the rest of the world?" He sneered at her furious expression, almost leaving her in that state, but changing his mind abruptly. "I suppose you wouldn't be able to tell me where the Temple of Isis might be located?"

Galatea wanted to tell him where he could put his overlarge, hooked nose, but refrained. "Two miles north of here, near the Tomba di Nerone, any tour book could tell you that," she muttered grudgingly, not adding that her lodging was just a few hundred meters away from that same temple. The man nodded and left with a swirling of robes.

"Go get yourself in a human sacrifice, you mannerless bastard!" she shouted at his retreating form before storming off in the opposite direction to re-purchase her ruined groceries, grateful (for the first time) that the majority of the populace did not speak English.

That evening, as she relaxed on the small porch of her cottage, she saw the sky turn red over the Temple of Isis, while shouts and shrieks echoed throughout the valley. Ah, yes, tonight was the summer solstice; they were performing the Mysteries of Isis! Hope that rude stranger found the temple already, she thought viciously as the voices reached a fever pitch, since the members of the Isis cult hated strangers trying to watch their rituals.

Many hours later, long after she had gone to bed, Galatea was woken up by a pounding on her door and a sobbing cry for help. Her Medic instincts overrode her sleep-logged brain as she donned a bathrobe and hurried to her front door, wand in hand. She yanked open the door--and screamed.

Grabbing at the doorpost was the man from the marketplace, his whole body convulsing from pain, one bloody hand clutching the hilt of a sacrificial dagger that jutted out from his ribcage. He drew in a rattling breath and looked at her with glazed eyes. "P-please," he gasped, then collapsed in a dead faint, blood pooling in the dust beneath him.

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January, 1996

"You never did tell me why you were looking for that temple."

The man, now very much alive and scowling at the plate before him, viciously stabbed a fork into his stew. "It's none of your bloody business."

"Oh, come on now, let's be polite--I did save your life that night, after all." This time, he aimed the scowl at Galatea, but let it melt away under the warmth of her smile.

Galatea had helped the man into her cottage that night, laying him out on her own bed; being a Medic meant that she had taken the Unbreakable Vow to help any patient in her care, even if he was a snarky bastard. Her Healer training allowed her to patch up the jagged wound from the dagger and stop any internal bleeding, thereby saving him from a slow and excruciating death--those Isis followers did know their internal anatomy, for all their talk of science being a superfluous modernity.

She had fallen asleep on the couch, exhausted from the night's events, and had woken up the next morning to discover that her patient had disappeared. A single scrap of parchment lay on the blood-stained bed, the only remaining evidence of her midnight visitor.

To the lady who helped me last night:

I owe you for the sheets.

SS

She never forgot the incident, not for the rest of her Mediterranean tour, not even after she returned to London and once more plunged herself into the busy duties of an Auror Medic. That was why she immediately recognized the man who brushed past her in Diagon Alley that September--and followed him, and then persuaded him to have a few drinks with her in the Three Broomsticks.

He was, she found out, a Potions Master at Hogwarts. They were both alumni of the school, but he was five years her senior--thus, they had never truly met before. He had been teaching for fourteen years and was the designated "errand monkey," as he described himself, of Headmaster Dumbledore; as such, it was often his duty to travel through the world for the odd mission or two, one of them being that trip to the Temple of Isis. But he had never said why, which was why Galatea posed the question again as they sat across from each other at one of Diagon Alley's small restaurants on one of their monthly "meetings" (he refused to call them "dates") together.

"Not to mention," she pointed out with a jab of her sauce-covered knife in his direction, "that you still owe me for those sheets."

Severus (for that was what he had instructed her to call him) stopped eating long enough to laugh raucously. "Might I ask," he gasped between chuckles, "might I ask which House you were in? In Hogwarts?"

"Hufflepuff." Galatea tilted her head questioningly. "Why?"

Severus smirked. "Funny, with a temper like yours, I would've expected Gryffindor, at least. Your language was less than modest when we first met." Galatea scowled, and he laughed again, much warmer than before. "But, since I am a Slytherin. . . surely you've learned that we cannot be trusted to keep our promises?"

Galatea stared at him, open-mouthed, before shaking her head in disbelief and turning her attention back to her food. If there was one thing that she had learned to love about Severus Snape over the past few months, it was his snarky and caustic sense of humor, even if it was directed at herself.

When she got back to her flat that evening, exhausted from yet another hectic day at work, she tripped over a bundle of crisp white bedsheets in front of her door.

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June, 1997

Galatea cried out in the back of her throat when the wall of her bedroom made sharp contact with her spine, but Severus was too busy kissing her to take any notice. His hand roamed all over her body before coming to rest just beneath her bra strap. Had he been any other man, Galatea would have hexed him into next year; but he was Severus, and Severus would get the special privileges befitting his status as her lover.

How he had become her lover in the first place, she was not exactly sure. She vaguely remembered several bottles of Firewhiskey being drained, rather drunken banter being exchanged, and then the stormy kiss that they had continued since staggering out of the pub, all the way through Apparition and right into her bedroom.

"By the way, I was very wrong about you," Severus whispered in her ear. His fingers were already at her shirt buttons, just as hers were fumbling around for his.

"Mmm? How so?" Galatea almost moaned aloud as his lips brushed her collarbone, settling instead for a sharp intake of air.

"Your arse is simply exquisite," he breathed into her neck, then gently pushed her down with his body onto her bed, both of them nearly completely naked. The sheets, still as starched as when Severus had left them on her doorstep, crackled slightly beneath their combined weight.

The rest of the evening was lost in sheer ecstasy and colored lights flashing behind eyelids.

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She awoke abruptly when Severus hissed in pain beside her. She rolled over soon enough to see him throw off the covers unceremoniously, his right hand rubbing his left forearm. Her eyes glanced at the clock on the bedside table, the hands at an awkward position befitting the awkward hour: 2:56 AM.

"Severus?" Galatea yawned and rubbed the sticky sleep out of her eyes. "What's wr--" And then her eyes widened when she saw the black tattoo on his bare forearm. It was a skull, the tongue replaced by a wriggling snake that darted in and out of the grinning jaw, a design she recognized well from several of the bodies that she had examined in the Ministry's morgue. . . the Dark Mark.

Galatea was out of bed and had her wand in hand before she even realized it, her quivering aim focused on the man with whom she had shared her bed only moments before. "You--you're a Death Eater!" she gasped.

"Brilliant observation, love," Severus huffed as he pulled on his clothing, some still scattered across the bedroom from their passionate foreplay. He seemed completely nonchalant about the wand that was currently pointed at him. "But not entirely correct. I'm a double agent."

"For Voldemort and--who exactly?" Galatea refused to lower her wand just yet, not even though she was well-nigh stark naked.

Severus gave her a strange glance before pulling his robes over his head. "Dumbledore, of course. Who else?"

Realization dawned in Galatea's mind. "So, that trip to the Temple of Isis--"

"--was a mission to find the secrets both of immortality and mortality, the one for Voldemort, the other for Dumbledore." He was completely dressed now, standing before her with his arms folded in front of him. Then, swifter than her eye could follow, he pushed her down by the shoulders into the softness of her mattress. Her wand clattered to the floor, completely forgotten.

"Listen to me, Galatea." His voice was soft, yet the words carried a razor sharp edge. "If something happens, if I do something for which the whole world condemns me before I see you again--will you ever forgive me?"

"Severus!" She stared back into his eyes, her glance balefully accusatory. "Severus, for Merlin's sake--I obviously love you enough to let you sleep with me. What could I not forgive you for?"

His response was to kiss her as deeply as he had the night before, their hands tangling and pulling in each others' hair. Then, when Galatea finally pulled away, gasping for breath, Severus pressed into her palm a small golden locket, graced by a single silver inlaid fleur-de-lis.

"This was given to me by a very close friend long ago," he whispered in her ear. "You remind me of her very much, and thus, I give it to you--to remind you of me." With those words, he stepped back, a mysterious smile playing about his lips, and Disapparated from her bedroom.

It was the last time Galatea would see him for a very long while.

A week later, after reading the Daily Prophet articles on Albus Dumbledore's murder, she ran to her loo and was violently ill for several minutes. And then she was ill every morning thereafter for the next month, realizing not long after that she had been infected with a fairly common swelling disease that would keep her home-ridden out of embarassment for the next eight months.

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May, 1998

"Nightingale, this is Alpha One. Is Group Three in position?"

Galatea winced as the voice rasped loudly in her ear, courtesy of a Disembodied Auditory Charm that all of the Aurors used to communicate with each other during long-range missions. But the spell took some adjusting to; and since it was her first time using it, Galatea still found herself whirling around to find the voice's owner whenever someone spoke. Nevertheless, when she replied, her low voice was as steady as any veteran Auror's would be in the same situation.

"This is Nightingale, Alpha One. Yes, we've infiltrated the Shrieking Shack. No sign of any survivors just yet."

Galatea was acting as a back-up member for the Auror squadron that was sent in to reconnoiter the mess of the Final Battle at Hogwarts, her first outside job since coming back to work after her long illness and recovery; so many had been lost during the fight that Head Auror Shacklebolt had been recruiting from all departments of the Ministry for this final clean-up.

And Merlin, was it a heart-wrenchingly messy affair to clean up.

Dead bodies everywhere they looked. Groaning wizards and witches strewn across corridors and courtyards, begging for water, begging for their parents, begging for death. It helped that Galatea, a trained Mediwitch, was with the squad; but still, most of the victims they found would be long gone by the time they reached St. Mungo's.

Currently, she was scanning the hallways of the Shrieking Shack, the tip of her wand flickering with a faint light and guiding her path in the dark, dusty, and rickety old house. Moans and shrieks as the wind passed through the gaps in the walls kept her on her toes, but she had not found anything out of the ordinary just yet. Licking her chapped lips, Galatea brushed aside a stray wisp of her hair and wondered if the place really was deserted.

And then she trod on a limp hand before she could stop herself. She knew then that the person was dead, as anyone alive would have at least moved or made a sound in the long seconds after she had frozen in place.

"Alpha One, this is Nightingale again," she whispered, dropping to her hands and knees in case she was not alone. "I think I've found a body."

"Well, go check it out!" came the hissing reply in her ear, and she obeyed it without question. Crawling into the room from which the arm protruded, Galatea held her lit wand out over the victim's face--and nearly fainted.

A completely bloodless Severus Snape lay prostrate before her, his black eyes holding the blank stare of death, with only two puncture wounds over his jugular and a massive pool of blood soaking into the wooden planks of the floor to reveal exactly where all of his blood had gone.

Galatea slowly, shudderingly reached out and touched his face with her free hand, recoiling at the clammy coldness of the body. Almost without realizing it, she grabbed at the chain of the locket Severus had given her so many months ago, pulling it out from beneath her robes and staring at the shining gold in her palm.

"Nightingale? Nightingale, is everything all right?"

No, Alpha One, nothing is all right anymore, she wanted to say, but her tongue seemed to have vanished from her mouth.

Instead, Galatea threw back her head and screamed, a keening sound of mourning meant for all to hear--and remember.

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August, 1998

Her final shriek of desolation echoed through the waning night sky.

Galatea sank to her knees in the soft sands of the beach, her shoulders shaking with dry sobs. Before her lay the marble statue that she had spent over a month creating, giving as much life-like perfection as she could reproduce with the single full-length picture she had found of Severus Snape, as still and frozen as it had been when she had begun the series of incantations hours before.

Had she forgiven Severus for Dumbledore's death? Oh, yes, she had, many times over, long before the scandal had disappeared from the headlines of the Daily Prophet. But she had not--would not--absolutely could not forgive him for dying without her. That was why, after spending several weeks locked in her flat mourning his passing, she set out to research any possible way to reverse it.

Strangely enough, she found her answer in a Muggle book: Bullfinch's Mythology.

A quick re-reading of the story of Pygmalion had jogged her memory--the tale of the lonely bachelor sorcerer of Cyprus who had enchanted his marble statue alive was the only story that kept her awake during Binn's History of Magic classes at Hogwarts. Of course, the Muggle version had some irrelevant religious additions to the true story, but that was no matter. A visit to Flourish and Blotts took care of finding the intricate spellwork necessary to bring a statue to life; and two months and several international Apparitions later, she found herself on the famed island of Cyprus with a marble replica of Severus Snape.

The problem was, after nearly a whole night of chanting spell after spell over the statue, no sign of life was forthcoming. Pygmalion's creation was a new being in its own right, after all, not a rebirth of a dead one. She should not have been so surprised by her failure.

Nevertheless, the pain in her heart and soul from knowing that Severus would never be alive again was enough to make her wish that she was dead already.

Suddenly, as she was kneeling over the statue of her lover, Galatea found herself whispering, murmuring a fervent prayer to whichever of the gods might be listening--something that she, a Wizarding atheist, would never have imagined doing once upon a time. Her words stumbled, sped up, and repeated themselves over and over again to become a strange, rhythmic mantra of sorts.

"Please, I beg in the name of all that is good, let the spirit of Severus Snape, the one man I love, my soul mate, the one without whom I cannot enjoy life--let it return to this Earth and enter this statue to give it life! If that is not possible, then I ask of you, please kill me as well, so that my ghost will be able to join with his for eternity."

As she spoke the words for the last time, she closed her eyes, and a single teardrop rolled down her pale cheek, landing squarely on the collarbone of the statue's neck. Then she collapsed on top of the statue, sobbing aloud for the world to see and hear.

And then, as she wept on the statue of her lover, she felt the marble melt into something much softer. She pulled back, horrified that her work might be dissolving before her very eyes--and saw the marble become warm, living flesh. As she stared in utter disbelief, the chest of what was once the statue began to rise and fall with the regular pulsation natural to all living things.

He's alive. And as she spent the next several minutes watching her creation breathe, Galatea realized that perhaps praying to imaginary gods was not quite as irrelevant as she once believed.

Suddenly, the man before her stirred; his eyes flew open, revealing the dark orbs she had gazed into when they had bade farewell so long ago. If she still harbored any doubts of his identity, they were dispelled in the next moment when he whispered her name, his voice hoarser than she remembered. "Galatea? Are you dead, too?"

"No, Severus, I'm not." Galatea leaned closer, the tears welling in her eyes once more--but tears of joy this time, not of sorrow.

Severus sat up slowly, his hands running over his side, his chest, and finally his uninjured neck. "I--I'm alive?" he gasped.

"Yes." Galatea nodded. "Yes, you are. I've brought you back, my love--I've brought you back to live the life you deserve." She paused as she chose her next words carefully. "If you're willing, I'd like to live it by your side, for the rest of eternity, until death do us part. I'll go anywhere with you, just--I never want to be separated from you again, Severus, never." Choking on the last sentence, she turned her head away.

Severus surprised her by grabbing her shoulders and pulling her into a rough kiss. "Nor do I, Galatea, nor do I," he sighed as they withdrew for breath. Then, he stood--gracefully, she thought, as if a burden he had carried in his previous existence had disappeared for good--and motioned for her to stand as well.

Galatea shook her head, then shuffled forward on her hands and knees to the now-still basket of blankets that lay just a meter away. She unwrapped the blankets proudly, and Severus' eyes grew wide with amazement as she displayed its contents.

"Severus, meet Sebastian Snape, our first-born son."

After some moments of shocked silence, Severus' face broke into a full-fledged smile, the first Galatea had ever seen on him, before he knelt and kissed the forehead of his sleeping son. Then, as the sun broke over the horizon and covered the three of them with light, he stood, pulled his wife to her feet with their son in her arms, and led his new family forward into the sunrise.

FINIS