Snape In Love

DEDICATION; This is for everyone at the Café. You know who you are, and you know why!

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Chapter 52

There's Someone In My Head, But It's Not Me

Conversation at dinner the previous night had been somewhat stilted, and privately I despaired of Severus' intransigence with regard to the forgiveness of his younger brother's supposed past misdeeds. However, we had agreed that the following day Severus would remain at Hogwarts with Persephone while Caius accompanied me, by Portkey, to Diagon Alley in order that I could see Madam Malkin for a final dress fitting. He was in the market for a new broom, he said, and would relish the opportunity to further his acquaintance with me.

Severus came with us to the front lawn, to see us off. He and I had said our goodbyes in the privacy of our room, had taken some considerable time doing so, in fact, but as we stood together I could not resist the compulsion to fling my arms around his neck once more and ardently kiss his still-swollen lips.

"Oh, I wish I didn't have to leave you!"

"I'll hardly notice you're gone, I have much to do! Babysitting, for one! Quite apart from that little alchemy project we discussed yesterday!" he answered casually, extricating himself from my embrace and turning to Caius.

"No foolhardiness, Caius," he warned sternly. "Look after her."

"Oh, come on Sev!" Caius protested. "When have I ever..." He trailed off as Severus gave him a knowing look, and I noticed his lips tighten as he bit back any further comment.

"I can look after myself, you know!" I reminded him amusedly.

"Oh yes, I'm well aware of that," he replied. "Nevertheless, I am entrusting him with your care. You're...very precious to me."

I smiled warmly, basking in the glow of his regard.

"Is there anything you want from Diagon Alley, while I'm there?"

He looked at me consideringly and shook his head, saying quietly,

"Only you."

I shivered, and reached out to touch the full, sensual curve of his lower lip, wishing he was wearing his long sweeping teaching robes over his frock coat, so that I could be enveloped in them.

"I love you, Severus. Every breath of you."

He pulled me to him once more, close, so that my face was buried in the soft, clean-smelling skin of his neck with my chin brushing against his high starched collar and my nose feeling the strong, steady throb of his pulse.

At last, he put both hands on my shoulders and pushed me from him, saying,

"Go on, before you lose your nerve!"

"I hate Portkeys..."

"Yes, I know," he said dryly, "but then you hate all the alternatives too, don't you? Now get on with it!"

I sighed with reluctance and he watched me walk backwards to where Caius was waiting. I put my hand on the flowerpot he was holding, and turned to look at Severus. He stood at the foot of the steps beside the main entrance, with the huge splendour of the school enhancing rather than diminishing his stature. His stance was studiously indifferent, with his weight mostly shifted on to one leg and his left wrist clasped in his right hand, but he was watching me intently. I could already feel his absence from my side, and I felt the sickening lurch in my stomach even more keenly because of it.

The Portkey had taken us to the quiet courtyard in the middle of St Mungo's.

"You alright?" Caius asked as I brushed my hand across my forehead and tried to compose myself.

"Yes, fine," I muttered. "I just don't like this much, that's all,"

"What, travel by Portkey, or being away from my brother?"

"Both!" I replied, laughing ruefully at his perceptiveness.

"Hmm. Come on, let's go to Madam Malkin's and on the way you can tell me how he managed to ensnare you!"

"And you can tell me what you were both like when you were growing up!"

"Ah, you mean I get a chance to tell my side of the story?"

Two hours later, my wedding gown was a perfect fit, and Caius was the proud owner of a Firebolt Seven series broom, which, he assured me, was 'almost as good as custom made!' We had soon settled into an easy, affectionately teasing friendship, and I delighted in everything about him; his familiar good looks, his deep, rich laughter, and his anecdotes about Severus which barraged me with insights into his personality. While he was gently disparaging about his elder brother, I could tell that he looked up to him and, Severus' time spent as a Death Eater notwithstanding, admired him greatly.

We were sitting at a table outside Florian Fortescue's when the conversation turned to Severus' lost years. Caius had been at Hogwarts, and had known little of his brother's life then until much later. When I told him a little of my own history and how it intersected with Severus', Caius was at a loss for words.

"And you can still love him, knowing what he was responsible for?" he asked, uncomprehending.

"What he did back then, what he was like, is a very small part of him. He was misguided. There's so much more to him..." I smiled, on my favourite subject now.

"He hasn't drugged you, has he? Given you a Love potion?"

"Caius, really!" I admonished. "He's your brother, you must see what a powerful presence he has!"

"I should think that it's precisely because he's my brother that I can't!" he laughed. "He's just - just Sev, always into books and brewing, always snapping at me, always miserable!"

"Maybe it's time you got to know him a little better," I replied, all the talk about Severus making me draw my arms around myself, missing him.

Caius sat back in his seat and shot me an appraising look, so like Severus that it made me shiver.

"It cuts both ways, you know. But, I think you're right. It's time I did. Starting in - oh, say, half an hour? I just want to go to Borgin and Bangs, then we'll head back, okay?"

"Borgin and Bangs? What for?"

"To see if I can get a nice little grimoire for my dear brother, as a peace offering," he shrugged. "Or something from that rather scary old apothecary next door..."

"Caius, I really don't think he'd want us to go down Knockturn Alley..."

My protestations fell on determinedly deaf ears, since Caius was already scraping back his chair.

"You don't have to come. Wait here, finish your drink. I won't be long!" He flashed me a smile, and called, "Ten minutes!" as he was swallowed up by throngs of shoppers.

I scowled at the place in the crowd where he had been, and rolled my eyes. Severus was so right about him. Impulsive and generous, but stupidly foolhardy and with a flagrant disregard for other people's better judgement and the dictates of common sense. A typical Gryffindor male indeed, and goodness only knew how long he would be when all I wanted to do was go home.

I sighed crossly, sitting back with what remained of my glass of pumpkin juice and resigning myself to a long wait. I cast my eyes along the length of Diagon Alley and allowed my mind to wander to Severus, my irritation ebbing away as I thought of our encounter at Florian Fortescue's almost a year before. I remembered the way his eyes had burned into me with a passion that I could not understand, and the way his fingers had splayed out on the table between us as he had leaned over it to berate me for my indiscretion. I felt a delicious tingle in the small of my back as I sank further into my reverie, reliving his words later that same day in my room at the Leaky Cauldron, and the unexpected fervour of his kiss.

It was barely credible that so much could have happened between us in the preceding twelve months; now, here we were, with a baby and about to be married, and more in love than I had ever believed possible. I cast my mind back still further. Two years before, and I had not even started my tenure at Hogwarts. Two years ago, I had never set eyes on Severus Snape. The realisation chilled me as I tried to imagine what my life would have been like without him in it. Never to have felt his strong arms fastened around me, never to have tasted the intoxicating sweetness of his lips on mine, never to have surrendered to the overwhelming bliss of his virility, never to have been paralysed by his sheer presence. I shuddered at the thought. I would not want to exist in a world where our love would never be.

Something was dancing and bobbing in my peripheral vision, and I turned my attention back to the present. Glancing down to my right, I noticed a long, slender quill at my feet, being blown gently by the breeze from the small alley on whose junction with Diagon Alley Florian Fortescue's stood. The quill was acid green.

I gripped the arms of my chair in horrified fascination, and the quill rose slowly until it was hovering before my eyes as if challenging me to grasp it.

"What are you?" I frowned, feeling that somehow my interest would not be best served by rising to the bait. With a flourish it began to write in the air before me, large curlicued letters which glowed scarlet before fading into a quickly dissipating smoke once read. It began,

"Soon to be married Ella Redemte has been seen..."

I looked around frantically, but none of the passers-by seemed to notice that anything was amiss at my table, so I turned my attention back to the quill.

"...enjoying an intimate meal with yet another tall, dark man..."

A flash of anger overcame me and I swept the quill away with the back of my hand.

"You bitch!" I muttered through gritted teeth.

The quill flew off, darting unnoticed between in between several passers-by and back in to the alley from whence it came. I got to my feet, incensed beyond all reason. A typical Ravenclaw cool head and common sense would have dictated that I seethe in my seat until Caius deigned to return, but Rita Skeeter had been the cause of too much irritation for me to bow to my better judgement, even though I suspected her to have some involvement with Voldemort. I strode after the quill, after at least having the good sense to put a guarding charm on the packages I left at my table, and followed it as it bobbed and weaved down the alley, past shuttered shops fronts, dark doorways piled high with baskets, a tattoo parlour, a barber's shop, a small café. At length, the quill paused at the entrance to a shadowy passageway, and as I caught up, darted inside.

"Damn it!" I cursed, looking up and down the alley. It was busy, and a steady stream of customers meant that the reassuringly welcoming café's doorbell jangled incessantly. Despite a growing sense of unease, I was heartened by its bustling, brightly lit proximity and so I took a step towards the passage - and then everything shimmered, and lurched, and changed.

I was alone in the alley now, and shadows from the passageway lengthened and reached out into it, cloaking me, enfolding me in their icy fingers, caressing me, and drawing me in. I struggled against their inexorable pull, trying to step backwards, looking back at the café, now deserted and with darkened windows, huge unseeing eyes, and I tried to call out for someone to come to my aid, but my words died in my throat and were stillborn, silent gasps, inaudible even to my own ears.

My arms were frozen to my sides and I was unable to withdraw my wand. My unwilling legs pulled me along, coaxed mercilessly by the icy shadows that pushed and jostled around me. Only when darkness surrounded me did they stop.

At length I heard the distinctive clattering and scraping of too-high heels on cobblestones, accompanied by a heavier, more deliberate step punctuated by the regular metallic tapping of a cane, and I steeled myself. My eyes had grown accustomed to the darkness by degrees and as the pair approached I was able to make them out. I glared at them in impotent rage, and Malfoy commented casually,

"Do you see? I told you it would be irresistible. A red rag to a bull! Or, should I say, a green quill to a librarian!"

Rita Skeeter came forward and peered at me curiously through horn-rimmed spectacles. Her eye shadow was too blue, even in the tenebrous gloom of the passageway, framing reptilian eyes, cold and calculating. She smiled unpleasantly and called over her shoulder,

"Where's the boy, Lucius?"

"Oh, Draco?" Malfoy drawled, a cruel smile twisting his elegantly disdainful features. "Bring Ms Skeeter's bag now, there's a good chap!"

A third figure now presented itself to my horrified gaze, shuffling forward out of the shadows. Draco Malfoy looked terrible, his etiolated flesh darkened in places by multi-hued bruises and ugly weals. His eyes were glassy and sunken, underlined with deep, black shadows.

"What have you done to him?" I asked, appalled. "He's your son!"

Malfoy laughed and then stopped abruptly, approaching me and lifting my chin up with his snake-headed cane.

"And I will do with him as I wish! And my wish is for him to serve our Master. Isn't that right, Draco?"

"Yes father," came the dull reply of someone obviously acting under Imperius.

"Silly boy's taken a bit of persuading, I have to admit...that school and its bleeding-heart Headmaster, not to mention your traitorous lover, have been mollycoddling him. But no matter...now that he bears the Dark Mark we'll soon lick him into shape."

"The bag, Lucius?" Rita Skeeter reminded him acidly.

"All in good time, Rita, all in good time!" he retorted smoothly.

I began to shiver with fear at the menace in his tone. I knew only too well the lengths to which he would go to serve his master, and the personal enmity he bore me was evident.

"What are you going to do to me?" I asked, trying to keep the tremors that had invaded my body from manifesting themselves in my voice.

"Such impatience!" Malfoy smiled. "Such keenness to learn! Draco, the bag!"

I noticed it then. A large, bamboo handled, tapestry carpetbag with a snap clasp, of the sort favoured by holidaying women thirty or more years ago. I remembered my mother having one when I was a small child. I would spend many a happy hour opening and closing it, fascinated both by its heavy gold hinged mechanism and by the mysterious dark depths said mechanism would reveal. I seemed to remember that my mother would throw everything into her bag, where it would be swallowed up in seemingly bottomless depths, only to re-emerge after much frantic rummaging. Often, my mother would let me search the bag for her, and my small arm would steal in up to the shoulder while I felt around blindly, identifying objects by touch alone, setting myself secret time limits for the completion of my task. I would imagine that failure of my mission would result in the loss of my arm as the bag's grinning crocodile jaw would surely snap shut. I shook myself mentally as these unbidden memories raced through my brain, painfully aware that it was neither the time nor the place to indulge in such fancies. This bag was not - could not be - my mothers...and yet it looked so familiar.

Lucius Malfoy smiled at the fleeting frown I allowed myself.

"I wonder what you would find if you looked inside..." he lilted mockingly. I shot him a quick glance and was perturbed to see knowing malevolence in his eyes. He knew. Fear gnawed at me and I bunched my fists in dread.

Rita Skeeter took the bag from Draco's slack grip and set it down on the cold stone cobbles, opening it with an audible snap that sent a hollow echo rebounding off the claustrophobically high passage walls. I could not take my eyes off the yawning jaw of the bag and the blackness therein. Grunting with exertion, she put both hands in the bag and lifted something that had been lying on its side, concealed within. My skin crawled unbearably as if millions of foul maggots infested my clothing, and my horror grew as a fetid stench curled from the gaping maw of the bag and assaulted my senses.

Inside the bag was an amphora. It was of terracotta, unglazed and unadorned save for the snakes' heads adding detail to the handles either side of the narrow neck. It was terrifying in its ordinariness.

"What is that?" I asked in a low voice.

"Questions, questions! My dear girl, I would have expected you, of all people, to recognise a classical Greek amphora!"

Malfoy circled me as he spoke, trailing the head of his cane down my shoulders and across my back. "Ah, but perhaps your real meaning is, 'What lies within'? Hmm? And I believe the best way to answer your question is for you to discover for yourself!"

With a sharp prod of his cane against the small of my back, Malfoy pushed me forward and my centre of balance was lost. I pitched forwards, holding out my arms to save myself, but instead of the jarring impact of hard stone cobbles I felt instead a lengthening, stretching, dissolving sensation and I watched wide eyed in terror as I saw my arms elongate and twist as they were sucked inexorably in to the neck of the amphora. The sickening dissolution spread to my shoulders, neck and head and I plunged into the foetid black pit that was, I now knew beyond any shadow of doubt, Voldemort's new refuge.

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I was standing outside Hogwarts, on the front lawn. I almost wept with relief to find myself back at home, but then a movement glimpsed from the corner of my eye made me wheel round and cry out in horror. A shimmering, insubstantial form was gliding towards me and its high, keening, gleeful laughter filled my heart with despair.

"A very convincing facsimile, isn't it?" spoke the voice from my nightmares as Voldemort approached. In appearance he was unchanged from the last time I had encountered him, on the plateau. His skin was still crumbling parchment with open sores, his face pustulated and fitting so ill to his skull that it seemed to hang from it as if it had been added as a hurried afterthought. I dared not look at his hands, the memory of the agony of those yellowed talons and what they could do to me suddenly fresh and clear in my mind.

"Why have you brought me here? Where is everyone?" I clutched the emerald at my breast convulsively and screamed, "Severus!"

Voldemort threw back his misshapen head and crowed,

"No-one can hear you, Halfblood! You aren't really here, not yet! But oh, you will be! And you will give me such sport!"

I balled my fists as I replied,

"What do you mean?"

"What I mean, is to have my revenge on Severus Snape. Petty, I know, for one who will soon have the world at his feet, but he must be made aware of the measure of my wrath. And my..." his slitted lips turned down at the corners in a pouting parody of grief, "...disappointment."

I shuddered involuntarily at the foul meaning behind his words, and Voldemort's rank body glided close.

"Do you know where we are? We are in a pensieve, although I suppose you had guessed that much? But this is no ordinary pensieve. No, this pensieve does not hold memories of things which have been, but memories of things which will be!"

"And you're the Ghost of Christmas Still To Come?" I retorted acidly.

"Charles Dickens! My, my, what an erudite little librarian you are, to take such an interest in the Muggle world! But then, your dear, departed mother was a Mudblood, wasn't she?"

I made no answer. Bile crept up my throat and lodged in my craw, awaiting its release, but I refused to rise to his bait. Instead I lifted my chin and looked him squarely in his red slitted eyes.

"So what are you going to show me?"

"This!"

With a wide sweep of his arm the scene around us changed and I had the strangest sensation that I was now two people inside one body. I was in a darkened room, bouncing up and down with a desperate enthusiasm over a prone figure stretched out underneath me. I could feel his member inside me as I drove myself towards completion, and while half of me was becoming lost in the throes of my orgasm, half of me, my true self, was filled with horror for I knew that the man underneath me and invading me was not Severus. A high, shrill laugh behind me told me that Voldemort had witnessed my horrified reaction and at once candelabra burst into flame, one at either side of the bed, illuminating the transported features of the man groaning beneath me. Sirius.

"No! No!" I screamed, scrabbling backwards, almost falling off the bed in my haste to break our intimate connection, but then the scene changed again and I was in Persephone's nursery. She was in my arms, and she was crying inconsolably. I wanted to comfort her, kiss her, rock her, but at the same time my 'other me', whose command over my body was for the moment far stronger, was disgusted and repelled by the mewling, ugly creature in my arms. I held her out at arms length and dropped her carelessly back in to her cot, ignoring her increasingly heart-rending screams, and I walked away even as my instincts were begging me to pick her up once more. I tried to stop myself, tried to regain control of my own will, but then everything shifted yet again and I was standing in the empty potions classroom.

No, not quite empty. He was there.

"Oh, Severus!" I sobbed, and made as if to run to him, but then found myself stopping myself, the other person inside my head making me watch him carefully instead, from an unwanted distance that locked me into silently screaming for his strength. His head was bent, and his long, dark locks obscured his face. I wanted to go to him, push those locks back from his face - No, I wanted to get a large pair of scissors and chop them off, and laugh, the silly man. Did he do it for effect? Because it didn't work on me. His hands were splayed out on the desk before him as he leant forward, with slumped shoulders. I wanted to ease his evident distress - No, I wanted to slap him.

"Leave me alone, I don't want you! I never wanted you!"

I tried to stop myself saying the words I knew would destroy him, but I couldn't, because I was enjoying them too much. I felt my mouth form the words I desperately wanted to say, 'I love you, my love, I don't mean it, help me, save me, it isn't me, save me!' but the cruel words kept on coming out in their stead just the same. The other me was Voldemort's puppet, and together, he and I were too strong for me to fight.

"Keep that brat away from me, too. I'm with Sirius now. He's all I ever wanted, you always knew that. You make me sick. You're worthless. You revolt me."

Severus raised his obsidian eyes to mine. Oh, such eyes. I wanted to wrap myself around him, sooth away his pain by pouring myself over him. I couldn't bear to look into those eyes and see the anguish I was causing, yet Voldemort would not let me look away. And as I berated Severus, on and on, he simply drew himself up to his full height, shuttered his emotions from me, and turned away.

"Severus!" I screamed, but I was outside Hogwarts again, on the side lawn this time, looking up to Godric's Seat where Severus was sitting with a small child, aged about two. At once my perspective shifted and I was there in front of them, Persephone the image in miniature of her father, and a sob wrenched from my throat as I saw her little face set in stone, frowning, sombre. Ineffably sad. My heart wept and I tried to reach out my arms to them, but they merely raised sorrowful eyes to mine and Persephone said,

"Mummy gone away."

Anguished, I cried out once more,

"No!" but Voldemort was relentless, showing me Sirius once more, making me desert my family so that I could run to him and let him pull me to him. Part of me tried to consume him with a ferocious kiss, wrapping my legs around his waist wantonly. The greater yet less powerful part of me wept as I watched Severus grieve, too broken even to fight for me, for what was the point, if I did not love him?

On and on it went, tableaux upon tableaux, each set worse than the ones before, until at last I no longer knew nor cared where I was or how I felt. I simply blotted out as much as I could and decided to endure it. Any resistance was futile and would only postpone the end game. At length Voldemort must have tired of his sport. My quiescence evidently spoiled his enjoyment of it. Shaking uncontrollably as I stood once more outside the school, or what passed for it, I turned to him bleakly and asked,

"Why?"

"Because I can!"

"No," I shook my head vehemently. "Never. You'll never make me stop loving Severus. Or our daughter. Never."

"Do you doubt my power?"

"You doubt mine!"

"Oh, foolish, naïve girl!"

"Why are you showing me this?" I persisted.

"Because I want to see your despair! It will make witnessing your lover's destruction all the sweeter! Now I will Obliviate your memory of him, Impel you to chase after Sirius Black like a bitch in heat, and cast a Repelling charm on your offspring so that you will break Snape's heart once and for all by rejecting every tie you ever had with him, even the flesh of your flesh! And then, when the child and the man give up all hope at last, I shall claim her even as I break her father finally...his Dark Mark shall become hers, and she will be my bride...when she is grown enough for my purposes...seven or eight..."

I had thought my horror at its peak. I had been wrong. Speechless, my mind was reeling, and I retched and turned away, heaving and clutching my stomach as its contents spilled on to the representation of Hogwarts' lawn, which looked just as it had when I had said goodbye to Severus just scant hours before. In an instant Voldemort had flashed to my other side, drawing close to me, his rank stench making me convulse once more. He lifted a long, yellowed talon and stroked my chin, wiping the residue of my disgust from my chin and rubbing it between parched, cracking fingers. I did not flinch. The horror of his physical proximity now was as nothing compared to the nightmarish vision of what he intended for my daughter. I would not let him win. The thought of Persephone alone and defenceless, used in ways so appalling my mind shrank from their contemplation lest I be driven beyond reason, galvanised my resolve.

"You should know by now not to underestimate the power of a mother's love, Voldemort. Don't you learn from past mistakes?" I mocked. I did not doubt Voldemort's power, or the extent of his cruelty and venom. But nor did I doubt my devotion to Severus and Persephone and I clutched my emerald once more, as I was so accustomed to doing in times of stress. It was my talisman, my link to Severus, and I prayed to the Fates for them to come to my aid and release me from Voldemort's poisonous grip.

Images of the Dark Mark and our attempts to remove it flooded my mind and I struggled to subdue them, lest Voldemort be made aware of what had been my intention.

"What are you hiding from me?" he asked in a thin, high voice, now pressing a talon to my temple, its sharp point pressing into my skin. As he twisted it I felt a small trickle of blood fall like a tear down my forehead until it reached the outer corner of my eye, and I blinked, coating everything I saw in livid red.

I wanted nothing more than for Severus to rescue me, but the life blood in my eye, reminding me of my own vitality and all I had to live for, and fight for, gave me a clarity of vision that I had not expected, showing me that passivity was a luxury I could not afford. I screwed my eyes tight to shut out the dreadfulness of Voldemort's evil rictus, and gripped the emerald, pouring into it all the love that I had; my mother, my father, my sister, my daughter, my husband. My heart filled with an unshakeable determination, and I marshalled all my strength as I called out across unknown dimensions,

"Severus! Oh, Severus, let me come back to you! Please, let him not win!"