Casting Shadows

Chapter 2

A Dead Place

Within minutes, Albus Dumbledore had flooed to the Snape family home. Other members of the old Order of the Phoenix soon followed; Hermione and Remus, who had heard Ella's screams through the opened window before her husband had cradled her in his arms and held her fiercely, muffling her cries in the soft wall of his chest; Tonks and Moody, disturbed from an early-morning meeting in Kingsley Shacklebolt's office; Harry Potter and Ron Weasley, who had been at the Burrow playing with Harry and Ginny's first-born, Lily.

Ella stood at the kitchen window, looking out towards the orchard but seeing only her daughter's face. Snape paced the length of the room, wheeling around as the aged Headmaster spoke.

"All we can do for the moment is wait, Severus. You know as well as I their preferred modus operandi."

"Wait? How can I wait? She is my daughter, Albus!" His voice cracked, and he turned away from the anxious faces, clenching his fists, face white with anger. "Why are they still at large, after all these years?"

There was a tapping at the window. A large tawny owl waited patiently to be allowed in. Ella had not even noticed its approach and Snape almost had to push her out of the way in order to reach over and unfasten the latch.

The owl deposited a vellum envelope on the kitchen table, in Persephone's habitual place. It hooted softly, looked at the assembled men and women with head cocked, then flew back out through the window. The letter bore an unmistakeable seal.

"It's her Hogwarts letter!" Hermione said. "She was - she was waiting for it. But - why would the owl bring it here, when Seffie isn't at home..." Her voice dropped to a whisper. Snape ran a hand through his hair, while Ella appeared to have noticed nothing of the owl or its delivery.

Hours passed and there was no word. Hermione had drawn Ella from the window and now she sat in one of the leather wing chairs that faced the fire, unseeing eyes looking into its flames. Snape watched her as he paced, unwilling to force her back from whatever reverie held her in its thrall in case she went to pieces in front of him; for he knew that he would be unable to offer the comfort she needed. He knew only too well the depravities the Death Eaters of old would have enjoyed. He saw no reason to suspect that ten years without their leader would have dampened their enthusiasm for torture and mutilation.

He felt sick to his stomach and, worse, he felt helpless. The Aurors had flooed back to the Ministry once they had gleaned all the information that they could from the Legilimency Snape had performed on Celsus. Potter and Weasley had returned to the Burrow to gather their families around them before awaiting instructions from Shacklebolt. Hermione and Remus were with the boy now, in the next room, leaving the Snapes alone with Albus Dumbledore.

"Severus, we must be of good faith! Persephone will be returned to you both momentarily, of that I am quite certain!"

"Meaningless platitudes, Albus, and unworthy of you! You know as well as I do that death could well be a blessed relief for her, after they have done their worst!"

"My boy, a little circumspection, if you will!" the Headmaster frowned, nodding towards Ella whose eyes were brimming with unshed tears. At once, Snape crossed to her side and dropped to his knees, taking trembling hands in his.

"I am sorry, love!" he murmured earnestly, searching her face for any sign that his words reached her. "I swear to you, I will bring her back to us!"

A single tear escaped the confines of her luminous green eyes and fell from her cheek on to his hand. It was almost his undoing, but instead of letting himself bury his head in her lap to muffle the cry of anguish that threatened to scour his throat, he stood abruptly and seized the pewter pot of Floo powder that sat on the mantelpiece. Throwing a pinch into the dancing flames he said, "Kingsley Shacklebolt!" and waited to learn what intelligence the senior Auror had been able to learn.

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Days later, the only contact they had with Persephone's kidnappers was a small envelope containing a single lock of black hair. No message, no instructions, no information as to her safety, or otherwise.

Ella's reaction to the missive had been extreme and Snape had been forced to summon Madam Pomfrey to administer a Calming Draught; but at least it had galvanised her out of the stupor that had stifled her grief and made her little more than an automaton.

She began to fuss over Celsus, who became of necessity her entire focus, never allowing the boy from her sight and insisting on having him sleep in their bed each night. Snape was concerned at her behaviour but did not object. He had no need of sleep himself, or so he felt; and he dared not challenge her, however kind his intentions, for fear of upsetting the fragile balance of her mind. Furthermore, if he were brutally honest with himself, he needed what little strength she still had, for if there was nothing left with which to supplement his own then he would never make it through the ordeal.

As it was, they became more distant with each passing day. Ella did not turn to her husband because she could focus on nothing except for the daughter that was lost and the son that would only be safe if she supervised his every movement. Her husband was a tenebrous presence always in the periphery of her vision; a distant memory of warmth, of passion, of comfort. Of happiness. None of that was needed or even relevant now. Her perception had shrunk and now encompassed only her children. Other people were just distractions, irritations to be shrugged off as best she could.

As for Snape, the equilibrium that had settled him in to an undreamed-of family life, a decade filled to overflowing with an emotion he had lacked for all of his life until Ella, had been snatched from him with a suddenness that dizzied him and threw him into turmoil. He hardly knew which way to turn. He needed to act, but still had no clue where to start the search. He could not sleep and he could not rest, and Ella offered no solace.

Then one afternoon, five long days after her abduction, an owl delivered Persephone's Weird Sisters nightshirt.

Snape could take no more. Howling with frustration he fled the house for the orchard, striding blindly through the trees until he had reached the farthest end, where he leaned against the trunk of an apple tree and beat his fist against it until the bark was streaked with red.

That night Ella settled Celsus into his own bed. "Sleep tight, my sweet baby," she whispered, brushing her lips across his forehead.

"Not a baby, Mum!" he objected sleepily. "I'm nearly ten!"

"You'll always be my baby, no matter how big you grow," she said, stifling a sob as she felt a stabbing pain in her heart with the knowledge that her first born might never reach adulthood.

She crossed to the casement window and checked all the locks and reset the wards, strengthening them and adding some alarms of her own. Pensive, she cast her eyes over the room and steeled herself to leave her son on his own in the room. The room was as secure as she and Severus could make it, the house was protected by even more wards, and there were aurors stationed throughout Hogsmeade. The only place safer would be Hogwarts itself, and she refused to move there, for she clung to the faint hope that if Persephone was returned she needed to be there for her.

Sighing as she drew the door to, she turned to the staircase and descended, deep in thought. Snape sat in their small library, nursing a large goblet of firewhisky. He lifted his head briefly as he heard her enter and then returned to his silent contemplation of the fire's dying embers. For the first time since her daughter's abduction, Ella's heart went out to him,

"Celsus is sleeping," she began softly, crossing to her husband's side and placing her hand on his shoulder, feeling the tension knotted there. "He wanted his own bed, and I decided there wouldn't be any harm...I mean, the wards we've both set, and the aurors...I'm trying to convince myself, anyway..." she trailed off.

Snape lifted his head once more, looking up at her with eyes filled with black, fathomless anguish. His suffering was as great as hers and she chastised herself for refusing to accept it before. She should not have needed the evidence of his bloodied hands and ragged cries; she should not have needed to be pierced by his gaze, a gaze that held no reproach but filled her with guilt just the same. Persephone was his daughter just as much as hers, a fact that she had selfishly forgotten.

"Severus, I'm sorry...I've been so wrapped up in my - " She broke off as he brushed aside her hand and jerked to his feet, running his hand through lank black hair before composing himself, straightening and then turning to her.

"Think nothing of it," he said stiffly, his face set into impassivity. Ella's brow furrowed. Over the years she had seen that expression on his face only twice before. Once was when informed that his brother had gone missing while hiking in the Himalayas with Tonks (the couple had discovered a hidden village and had decided to commune with its inhabitants for a few weeks in a quest for understanding of Muggle spirituality). The other time had been when Ella had suffered from a recurrence of her depression a few months after Celsus' birth and had slowly begun to shut everybody out, even her husband and daughter. She sensed that he was withdrawing into himself now, shielding his feelings under a protective carapace, and she knew better than to reach out to him and force him to admit his vulnerability. So, she dropped her eyes and turned away, trailing her hand along the mantle as she walked into the shadowed part of the room, missing the flame of despair flash across his face and the clenched fists that half hid in his robes.

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She did not know where she was, but she knew exactly where she wasn't. Persephone Snape had always prided herself on her analytical ability and she had spent the hours, or days, or weeks, since her incarceration wondering about the nature of the strange prison whose endless barren space confined her more effectively than any cell in the notorious Azkaban prison.

She wasn't in her world any more, she was quite certain about that. She was still undecided as to whether or not she was dead and this was the afterlife, but she tended to believe that she was, in fact, as alive as she had ever been, otherwise the horrid, shabby little man with the silver finger would not be able to threaten her dismemberment with such conviction.

How she hated him. She hated the way he scurried about, rat-like, from rock to rock and bush to bush, bringing her gruel in tin bowls and chipped mugs of brackish water. She hated the whine of his voice and the wheedle of his persuasion as he questioned her about her parents. About her father, in particular.

Most of all, she hated the fact that he had ruined her birthday. She should have been opening her long-awaited Hogwarts letter, travelling to Diagon Alley for her very own wand, buying even more books from her favourite shop, Flourish and Blotts. Instead she was sitting somewhere that wasn't even a real place, on a rock that had no hardness, hands pulling compulsively at grass that had no texture and no scent, glaring at a sky that held grey brightness but neither sun nor cloud. A nowhere place, a place with no night and no day. A place out of time whose horizon was frayed and appeared to be decaying.

Entropy. That's what it must be. The whole plateau was disappearing before her eyes. The man felt it too, she could tell by the way he would cast fearful glances over his shoulder whenever he spoke to her, as if he expected the edge to crumble away and race towards him. She wished it would. She willed the nothingness to creep up on him, for the ground to disappear beneath his feet and send him tumbling into the void, his short little legs pedalling on the spot before he fell.

On the other hand, what would happen to her when her prison faded away?

She slept. Perhaps when she awoke she would be dead. Perhaps that was the best -the only- thing she could do.

"Wake up! Wake up, girl! I need something from you, sit up! Sit up!"

Persephone struggled towards wakefulness, ready to lash out at her brother for disturbing her sleep before remembering where she was and to whom the reedy voice belonged.

"What is it?" she muttered angrily.

"What is it, Mr Pettigrew, you mean!" her captor corrected. Persephone glared at him. "Give me your arm," he continued, grabbing her by the wrist, the silver of his little finger cold and smooth on her pulse. It felt greasy and a wave of nausea swept through her as she realised that in his other hand he held his wand. "Exsanguino!" he pronounced excitedly, and blood welled from a thin cut that appeared just below her elbow.

"Ow! Get off me!" she yelled, twisting under his grip but unable to break his hold. "What are you doing?"

"Righting a wrong!" he replied maniacally. "Virgin's blood from a joining blessed by unicorns, almost as good as unicorn's blood itself, when combined with the right spells, and the will to cast them, oh yes, yes!"

"What are you talking about?" she said angrily, shrinking from him as she saw the gleam in his eyes.

"My Master wanted you for his own, and once you and I have brought him back, he shall have you!"

"If you mean who I think you mean, he's dead! Uncle Harry killed him years ago!"

"But what is death, to one as powerful as he? Merely the absence of life, do you see?" he answered earnestly, producing a small beaker from his pocket and pressing it to the underside of her arm so that her blood flowed freely into it. "But here is life!"

Persephone shivered. "Leave me alone! Why are you doing this to me? Why me?"

Pettigrew sat back on his heels and drew a grubby handkerchief from the breast pocket of his jacket, wiping the rim of the beaker and casting a Sealing spell on her arm to staunch the flow of blood. It tingled painfully and she winced.

"Why you, Miss Snape? Why you, indeed! The daughter of a half-blood and a foul traitor? Has your mother never told you of your destiny? Of the time she spent in this place, with my Master? Of their conversation shortly after your birth, when my Lord claimed you for his own?"

Persephone shook her head vehemently. "I don't know what you're talking about!"

"You belong to my Master, girl! He will take you as payment for your father's transgressions! You will take the Dark Mark and you will be his, and Snape will know the ultimate betrayal when you stand at his side and crow at your good fortune!"

"And where will you be?" challenged Persephone, desperation clawing at her heart as she cast about trying to deflect Pettigrew's growing enthusiasm. "Surely he wouldn't need you any more, if he had a - a consort?"

Beady eyes watered a little, and Pettigrew used the hairy back of his hand to wipe them away. "My master appreciates my loyalty. He wouldn't send me away. I live to serve him."

Persephone watched as he circled his wand over the beaker. An opaque seal formed over it and once he was satisfied that its contents were safe and none of the precious blood would spill from it, he scrambled to his feet and scurried away, muttering excitedly to himself. Persephone buried her face in her hands and took deep breaths. She had a sneaking suspicion that things were taking a turn for the worse.