The Sybil's Oracle: Book Three

Chapter 12

By Pigwidgeon37

Not even Voldemort was able to keep his calm in front of the spectacle he was witnessing. All his Death Eaters had returned to the central enclosure with the prisoners they had found. There were not many of them, because the death rate at Azkaban was frightfully high—somehow, everybody knew that, but it was a knowledge rarely talked about, which suited the Ministry just fine. Unlike in the years immediately after Voldemort's downfall, only very few wizards were ever sent to spend the rest of their lives in this gigantic tomb, and those who got life sentences usually had committed such crimes as were unlikely to instil pity of the perpetrators. Besides, nobody—except for a couple of Ministry employees—had ever actually seen the horrors of this place. So it was easy for people to persuade themselves that it was just the climate, or that maybe even the convicts’ own stubbornness that made them let go of the thread of life so quickly. “It’s probably better for them,” they used to say, nodding wisely and feeling that they were being magnanimous indeed, absolving those ‘unwanted elements’ from the crime of having given up on themselves in the face of desperation and madness. The few members of the Ministry staff, who regularly suffered nervous breakdowns when they returned from an inspection of the premises, knew better than to divulge any details; such behaviour would have qualified as high treason, so they would have joined those whose horrible fate had made them doubt their loyalties. This system worked to perfection.

Some prisoners, however, had been sufficiently tough to survive a few years. Ten, all in all, including the Lestranges. They were now lying, crouching or crawling in the space their liberators had taken them to. It looked like a kindergarten from hell. Voldemort, who had evidently hoped for something more glorious, for crowds to be addressed, for new followers who would lick his boots in grateful adoration, was very obviously not pleased at seeing the mindlessly babbling, drooling group of broken creatures.

When his second-in-command and his former three lieutenants had arrived with the Lestrange couple, even the Dark Lord had to turn away for a moment, to mask his shock. He would have to alter his celebration speech a little, Severus thought, not without satisfaction. No rewards beyond their wildest dreams for St. John and Tabitha, no return to former power, no ardent looks of gratitude from blue and black eyes. Pettigrew, who had certainly been fearing removal from his position of confidence once the Lestranges were back, seemed to think along the same lines. The expression on his face, once he had overcome the shock and disgust, told as much.

Voldemort gathered the rich folds of his robes and approached St. John, but neither did he touch him nor step too close to the unrecognisable form of his former right-hand man. “St. John?” He got no response, not even a flicker of understanding, not even an inarticulate grunt. With a shuddering sigh, he turned to Tabitha.

She was nothing more than a living skeleton, with enormous black eyes staring out of a skull that seemed to belong to a mummy. She had lost all her teeth; what little hair remained of that shiny, black mane she had once possessed was now a mass of tangled grey knots. Then, Voldemort emitted a low moan, and Severus knew that he had seen her left arm. Or what was left of it. Her left sleeve was torn to pieces, and out of the remaining rags dangled the hand and forearm of a skeleton. Not the bleached, cleaned item usually presented to students of mediwizardry. There were still some shrivelled pieces of flesh and tendon clinging to the bones, most of it near the elbow and at the fingertips. No wonder that Lucius had thrown up his dinner—and a few moments later Severus had done likewise—because what made the aspect of this arm truly horrible was not so much the bare bone and decaying flesh. It was the thought of what had caused it to be like that, the terrible fights, the screams and pain. St. John had eaten the food she needed to stay alive, and when she had tried to get her share… Severus shuddered. The couple had always reminded him of two jackals, and now they were exactly that. Scavengers, who had lost their last shred of humanity.

Impossible to gloat at Voldemort's defeat, not at this moment. The awareness of what a human being could be reduced to was too shattering. Even for the Dark Lord, who sank to his knees in front of the woman who had once been the epitome of sensuous, oriental beauty. “Tabitha?” he murmured, tentatively touching her head.

Was he reminiscing? Was there a tiny bit of humanity left within the reptilian creature? Had he maybe even loved that girl-woman all those years ago, back when he was at the apex of his power? Did he remember how it had felt to plunge his hands into that luscious hair, to let the pads of his fingertips memorize her soft skin and firm flesh? Severus found it hard to imagine, but also immensely dangerous. He knew that he must not relate to Voldemort, not even by pity or compassion. The tiniest of chinks in his defences would allow the Dark Lord to insinuate himself into his soul once again.

When Voldemort’s hand made contact with her skull, the emaciated being that had once been Tabitha uttered a shrill, guttural cry and lunged forward, her intact right arm outstretched, fingers splayed, a starved cat ready to fight its last battle albeit knowing it was going to die. Voldemort flinched and almost toppled over. When he had regained his balance and slowly rose to his feet, his face had turned into a mask of cold revulsion. “Useless,” was all he said, before turning towards Barty/Black. “Dispose of them. Both of them.”

Lucius and Severus exchanged an alarmed look. This was dangerous ground indeed. Black doubtlessly knew the words of the curse, and probably he was even going to obey the Master—what else could he have done? Voldemort was livid with fury and frustration—but the question was whether he would be able to pull it off. He had to use a wand that was not his own, and to perform Dark Magic. Oh, the absurdity of this situation, Severus thought. One minute, they were afraid that Black might not be as impermeable to the lure of the Dark as they all wanted to believe, and the next, they fervently hoped he could perform the Killing Curse, because their lives depended on it. It seemed that they would have to cancel such words as “certainty” and “safety” from their vocabularies forever.

When, ten seconds after Voldemort had barked his order, Barty/Black was still standing motionless and rooted to the spot, trying to form words that would not come to him, Severus decided that it was time to act. He motioned to Lucius, who was standing next to him, to step a little closer, so as to shield him from Voldemort’s view. Not usually one to follow other people’s commands, Lucius seemed to understand nonetheless that this was urgent, affected an expression of nonchalant interest and took a step forward, seemingly to watch the Lestranges’ execution more closely but in reality putting himself between Severus and Voldemort. His wand well hidden in his sleeve, so that its tip rested between his right middle- and forefinger, Severus pretended to be pointing at St.John, muttering into Lucius’s ear, whereas in reality the wand was directed at Barty/Black and the word he murmured was “Imperio!”

A brief shudder ran through Barty/Black’s form, and he said tonelessly, “Of course, My Lord.” Slowly, his right arm rose; his wand quivered briefly, then became steady, the beginning of an imaginary line of death starting at his hand and ending between St. John Lestrange’s eyes. A flash of green light, and the victim’s head sagged slightly sideward. The expression in his eyes did not change once he had crossed the threshold of death. A second line was established, from hand through wand to head, and Tabitha, who had sunk back into mute torpor after attacking Voldemort, slid to the ground.

With a whisper as silent as the death that had just embraced the couple, Severus ended the Imperius Curse. When his eyes met Barty/Black’s, he thought he saw something like hateful gratitude. Voldemort gave his second-in-command a brief nod and then gestured towards Pettigrew. “Dump them,” he said, and turned back to Barty/Black. “The rest—” he made a careless gesture to indicate the group of surviving prisoners “—is unimportant. Do with them as you please.”

~~~~*~~~~

What am I going to tell her? Severus could not sleep. It had always been like that, after the missions, even back when he was young. He was restless on those nights, unable to stay in the same place for more than five minutes. He had to wander, sit down, get up, search for another spot, sit down again. Feline behaviour, he remembered it well from Esmeralda. She had been that way when she sensed an oncoming thunderstorm. In a fashion, that was exactly what he was feeling. And fearing. He had never had problems with words, they came to him easily, glided smoothly from his tongue. Harsh words for the students, civil words for his colleagues, honest, if sometimes ambiguous words for those few he felt close to.

What am I going to tell her? Which category did Nimue fall into? None he was used to dealing with. And even if he successfully forced her into one of the known categories, what could he have said?

Dawn was arriving, the sky was bloodshot at the edges. Ten minutes ago, he had returned to his rooms, after sitting in the library for half an hour. But he felt he had to move again, as stealthily as possible, so as not to wake her. Back to square one, he thought wryly. Back to avoiding her, when he had only just begun to grow used to her presence. He rose from his chair and passed a hand through his short hair, still marvelling at the unusual feeling. At least, he thought with a sneer, he was beginning to understand the meaning of phantom pain.

Noiselessly on bare feet he prowled to the door, opened it and left his rooms. Where to go now? His workroom, maybe. As if a change of place would bring the solution. What am I going to tell her? Everything else would be easy to describe, all the events framing the central one, the one that would be an emotional blow to her, might even crush her. She was an orphan now, and she would likely become Lucius’s ward. An orphan just like Potter, because she had never known her parents. In a way also less lucky than Potter, for her parents were sad stuff for myths and legends. Potter had received that pathetic photo album, she had told him about that. All he could give her—and not for a single moment did he doubt that all this was his task—were a few pictures taken when they were all still at school. Never a wedding photo, nothing of sentimental value. All those objects had been destroyed after St. John and Tabitha’s lifelong sentence to Azkaban had been pronounced. A cleansing operation. In ancient Rome, they used to have a more suitable name for it: damnatio memoriae. Every trace erased.

The workroom was cool and smelled faintly of anis and crushed fresh herbs. It had a tiled floor, and the coldness seeping into his feet was soothing. Smiling to himself, he thought that the new haircut was not entirely without merit. When the weather was hot, his neck did not feel as damp and warm as under the thick mat of long hair.

He put his whiskey glass on one of the workbenches and strolled idly around the room, his steps deliberately slow, so as to feel the stone floor become warm under his feet. Then, inch by inch, he peeled his soles off the ground and put them down on a new spot, untouched and cool. He ran a careless finger over the vials and alembics, turned the storage jars, just a little, some clockwise and some in the opposite sense, until every label was exactly in line.

What am I going to tell her? Everything else could be turned into some kind of fairy tale, as he had done with the history of Azkaban. Even the aftermath of their horrible discovery. What had been her words? If there’s no picture of the queen’s feet, there will be no nightmare. She had never seen the Killing Curse being cast on a human being, and as far as he knew, she had never seen a dead body. If he told her that all of the prison’s inmates had been deemed worthless and hence killed, it would not really touch her. Yes, she was going to be indignant, she might find it revolting, but she would never see it in her nightmares. She might even laugh, provided he found the right words, the right note of irony, when he described how they had worked to transform the central space of the fortress into quarters for Voldemort, Barty/Black and Pettigrew. Death Eaters Inc., Interior Decorators, he might say to make her giggle.

But her parents… With a sigh, he admitted to himself that his jars and tools and cauldrons were as perfectly aligned as could be. He sat on the workbench where he had put his glass, and pulled up his legs. The Malfoy House Elves really did their work to perfection. His naked feet were as clean as at the moment he had stepped out of the shower. He folded his legs and sat there, almost in a lotus position, slightly hunched, elbows resting on his knees, staring into his glass.

What am I going to tell her?

The door creaked, and he looked up, his heartbeat accelerating with the fear it might be Nimue. But the tuft of hair that appeared was blonde.

“I thought you might be hiding here, Uncle Severus. May I come in, or am I disturbing you?”

He smiled at Draco. “You are disturbing me, but for once I’m grateful. Come in.”

Draco nodded, stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. He was not looking well, Severus noticed and, with a pang of guilt, recognized how little time he had dedicated to the boy during the three weeks he had been staying here. Draco looked around the room, shrugged and sat down next to Severus on the edge of the workbench. Severus could see his face only in half-profile, but had already observed him closely enough to perceive the purple smudges under the boy’s eyes and the fine lines of suppressed emotion parenthesising his mouth.

“Bad night?” Draco inquired, trying to sound as nonchalant as his father.

He failed, of course, and Severus put a light hand on his shoulder. “Very bad, yes. Not to say catastrophic. Were you very worried?”

A deep sigh. “Well…” Draco turned his head to look at his mentor. “I don’t want to sound like a baby, especially since you probably have your own issues to deal with…” Severus merely shook his head. “Yes, I’m worried. And since it’s you I’m talking to: I’m afraid. Just plain bloody afraid.”

“Would it be of any comfort to you if I told you that the walls of Azkaban are now splattered with Salade Mimosa and Canard à l’Orange?”

Draco  managed a wry smile. “One portion or two?”

“Two, to say the truth.”

“Hmm…” For a while, Draco pondered this news, and Severus thought he saw a faint smile play around his lips. “Father screamed in his sleep.” At Severus’s raised eyebrows, he blushed and added, “It’s different from, you know…”

Severus snorted. “You’ll never stop eavesdropping, will you? A very nasty habit, if you ask me.”

“But I don’t.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t. But believe me, he had every reason to scream.”

“That bad?” Draco’s eyes widened.

“Worse,” he replied dryly. “I’ve seen many things in my life, and a good deal of gory ones, but tonight beat it all.”

Draco nodded. “Did you…” he began and fell silent again. “I’ve changed my mind about Nimue,” he said, after a short silence.

“I assumed as much. On the other hand, you didn’t dislike her that much back when you started at Hogwarts, if I remember correctly.”

“No,” Draco admitted. “Rather the contrary. But it’s a bit complicated, you know? I wouldn’t label her ‘quintessential Gryffindor’, but the more annoying Gryffindor traits she has have been emphasized by spending her time with Potty and the Weasel, those fuckwits.”

“Definitely,” Severus agreed, biting back a grin. “However, I am glad to hear that you’ve made your peace. Needless to tell you that you’ll have to return—”

“I know,” Draco interrupted him impatiently. “Playing the part and playing it well. I know. May I say that I’m sick of it all?”

“So are your father and I.”

Draco shot him a guilty look. “I know.” He looked away and bit his lower lip. “I’m not asking out of curiosity for the gory details, but what about her parents?”

Severus closed his eyes and shook his head. “I…” He shrugged. “I don’t know what to tell you. As a matter of fact, I don’t know what to tell her. They are dead now, but she’ll want to know more. But I honestly can’t find words to describe it.”

“So she’s an orphan now?”

“Yes. She’s an orphan. Lucius won’t have any difficulties pulling the right strings, so he can become her guardian once the news of the Lestranges’ death is out. However…”

“It’s not the same. I mean, I know you care for me and would make an excellent guardian, but…” He sighed. “Then again, she never met them. Probably that counts as good luck.”

Severus laughed, a short, dry bark. “Excellent luck indeed. But at least Voldemort allowed Lucius to request guardianship for her. Assuming, of course, that she’ll be trained appropriately. Like yourself.”

“Like myself…” Draco closed his eyes and bent his head. When he looked at Severus again, his eyelids were pink-rimmed and moist with tears, his nostrils white. “How are you going to carry on, Uncle Severus? If—” he cleared his throat and sniffed “—if this… this situation lasts longer than three years… I don’t want Father to die because of me!” he suddenly blurted out. “I don’t want anybody to die! Why—”

“Shush.” Severus put an arm around the boy’s shoulders. “Nobody is going to die. Believe me. And if we have to go and live with the Muggles in order to keep you safe, we’ll do it. Try not to worry too much, Draco. Trust your father and me to do our job. For the time being, all you need to care about are your studies. That, and playing the junior Death Eater.”

This advice earned him a furious stare. Draco shook off the comforting arm and rose to his feet. “Don’t even try to pull the wise uncle with me! If I want that kind of hogwash with strawberry icing, I can get it from good old Albus Dumb-and-Bore! So don’t bullshit me, I—”

“Draco, listen—”

“No, you listen! I’m not a child anymore, and I won’t take that crap anymore, not even from you! Do you think I’m blind? Do you think I don’t see Mother’s red eyes? I know Father, and I know you, and you’re pretty open books, you know? Those sessions in the study with Owen, the missions—can you imagine how we felt when Father brought you home last week? He was looking like a drowned dog, I had to cast two warming spells on his hands to unclench his fingers from around your arms! And you…” His hands, which had been balled into angry fists, opened and fell to his sides. “What I mean to say is… Up till now, everything was a game, and sometimes it was even fun. I mean, Potter did all the heroics, I merely had to sneer a bit and play the bad guy. But now…” He sighed deeply and sat down on the edge of the workbench again. “Every time you and Father come home, you look worse. It’s the transition from fun to dead serious which makes me… it’s a bit much, sometimes.” He gave Severus a watery smile.

“If you had allowed me to get a word in edgewise,” Severus said, lacing his words with just a faint trace of venom, so the boy would not feel pitied, “you might have spared yourself this sermon. I understand perfectly well what you are going through. And what I meant to tell you before was exactly that: stop behaving like a child and try to take your tasks as seriously as you should. From now on, it’s not playing the bad guy anymore. Your attitude at school might decide your father’s fate. Not to mention my own. If you slip once, we all might pay for that error with our lives. If you look at it from that point of view, your burden is heavier than ours. We don't have to share a dormitory with the sons of fanatics. In our own rooms, we can be ourselves. You can’t. If I were you, I’d think twice before demanding more responsibility.”

Arms crossed in front of his chest, Draco stared at his bare toes. “All right,” he said gruffly. “I still think it’s bullshit, but at least you had the decency to wrap it up nicely.”

“An art your father has been trying to teach you since you were born, my dear Draco.”

“Indeed.” Draco shot him a sideways glance. “Wrapping up her parcel is going to be a lot more difficult, isn’t it?”

“I suppose so, yes.”

“She’s got nobody to turn to, come to think of it.” He sighed. “Grandmother Yelena always gives me a cuddle if—” He stopped abruptly. “Forget it! Just forget what I just said, okay?”

“About wrapping?” Severus asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Draco grinned. “Exactly. And… er, don’t tell Father that I use words like bullshit.”

Severus rolled his eyes. “I’m your Head of House. Whom do you think he’d put the blame on?”

~~~~*~~~~

There was a weeping willow on the far side of the pond, an ancient tree, little less than five hundred years old. It had been planted by Lucius’s ancestor, Dioscuride Malefoi, the collector of Herbology texts and mirabilia, among whose treasures Severus had found the information he needed to complete the formula for the Liberatio Potion. It was a graceful tree, carefully tended by the House Elves in charge of the garden and grounds. Part of its branches always swayed gently, as they were immersed into the water, the leaves covered in a film of minuscule bubbles; during the hotter hours of the day, fish sought refuge there in the shade and nudged the light green foliage with their noses and tails. Under the green filigree tent formed by the thread-like branches, the air was slightly stuffy, but the isolation from the outside world it provided made up for that small inconvenience.

Nimue had not shown up at breakfast and been conspicuously absent from lunch. As a member of the Malfoy household, she knew of course where Severus and Lucius had gone the other night, and Severus supposed that not even her considerable courage was sufficient to make her sit with the others, waiting patiently until somebody told her about her parents. He felt guilty about not having done so earlier, and tried to justify this omission by reminding himself that he had not got a single minute of sleep last night.

He had continued his talk with Draco during breakfast; Narcissa had joined them a little later with Selene. She was looking downcast and worried, and merely informed them that she had received an owl from Yelena earlier in the morning, announcing her mother-in-law’s return sometime in the afternoon. Then she had lapsed into silence, apart from a few words exchanged with her daughter. From Draco’s point of view, this behaviour was quite unusual in his mother—another novelty he would have to become used to, Severus thought. For himself, it was merely a reminder of years past, although back then her verbal parsimony had partly been due to shyness, or reservation, because they had not yet known each other so well.

Draco had excused himself rather early, taking Selene with him. Severus assumed that playing with his little sister was the boy’s own way of retiring into another world, where Voldemort was unknown, and where his sole worry was how to elicit laughter from his little sister. Severus wished that he had such a world.

Once they were alone, Narcissa shot him a quizzical look, as if to decipher the lines on his face, the way he held his head, the curve of his mouth and the movements of his eyelids; a complex code, which, if she successfully cracked it, might indicate his state of mind. He gave her a quick smile, so as to encourage her—less because he was in a talkative mood than because he knew how difficult Lucius could be when he felt that his armour of perfection had been chinked. His reaction to seeing St. John and then Tabitha, witnessed by Owen and Severus and, oh horror, by Black, must have caused him severe trouble. Probably he had not admitted this weakness even to his wife, but instead shut her out, as he was wont to do on such occasions.

Evidently encouraged by his reaction, Narcissa put down her cutlery and gazed at him, long and pensively. “I assume,” she said, “that your mission was successful?”

So Lucius had not even told her that? Things had to be worse than he had expected. “If by ‘successful’ you mean that we managed to get into Azkaban and free both Dementors and prisoners, yes, we were.”

“I see.” Her hand hovered briefly between the tea- and the coffeepot, then she opted for coffee. “But something must have happened to…” The cup started trembling in her hands and she put it down. “What on earth happened in that horrible place, Severus? I’ve never seen Lucius so… so…” She bent her head, so as to hide her tears.

Severus sighed. “You have seen Lucius like that, Narcissa. But it’s not a pleasant memory, and it was so many years ago. This is all part of…” He feel silent and toyed with a piece of melon on his plate. “I suppose we are all still in denial,” he continued, more to himself than to her. “Although we knew that Voldemort wasn’t dead, it was so… so easy to believe it, to just turn our eyes away from the evidence pointing to the contrary. We’ve been lying to ourselves and to each other, Narcissa. We have created an illusion, and done it so well that in the end we believed it. And now we don’t want to let go. None of us wants to acknowledge that we’re back right at the point where we started. And on top of everything else—” he brushed back a short strand of hair that was insistently tickling his forehead “—we are now confronted with an immensely complex situation, much more complicated than the first time. Nothing is clear anymore—loyalties, risks, dangers… Back when we were young, we had practically grown into our roles. Now, we have to put them on like clothes that don’t fit anymore. Besides, we all have changed…”

“I know.” She picked up her cup again; the tremor in her hands had subsided. “I’m sorry, Severus. I didn’t want to add to your burden, but—”

“Nonsense,” he interrupted her brusquely. “I’ve known Lucius for more than twenty years, and I know how he reacts when he has to deal with a situation he can’t control. So please don’t apologize.”

“Do you think you might tell me? Unless, of course, you’d rather…”

“No, no. Telling you isn’t the problem,” he said with a forced smile.

“Oh.” Her eyes went wide. “St. John and Tabitha?”

“Yes. All the rest was… well, nothing I couldn’t cope with. In one way or another. To see those two, though… I can’t define it exactly, but I suppose it was… a memento mori, kind of. Not physical death, but the end of everything that is civilized… human…” He pushed away his plate, suddenly nauseated by the memory.

“And that’s exactly what you’re afraid of telling Nimue, isn’t it?”

Surprised by her insight, he nodded. “Now that you say it, yes, it is. I reckon that you might come to terms with many terrible details about your parents, but that loss of the most basic humanity… I’m not sure how she will react to that.”

“You don’t have to tell her. Not everything, I mean.”

“Yes, but…” He studied the dregs in his coffee cup, wondering whether Sybil might be able to read something useful there. “I suppose that, by now, you know her quite well…”

“We’ve had our little talks,” she agreed, “Although I have to say that she’s a tad reserved. Or rather insecure. Not that I blame her, but—”

“That’s beside the point, I think. It would be enough to know her only very superficially, to be aware of her inquisitive nature.”

“Oh, that,” she said, “Yes, she is certainly inquisitive.”

“Exactly. Therefore, you’ll agree with me that she won’t just accept it if I tell her ‘Voldemort deemed your parents useless and therefore had them killed’, you see? There would be many ‘why’s and ‘but’s and ‘if’s—impossible to dodge those questions.”

“You know,” Narcissa said, playing with the end of her plait, “apart from all those horrors and the trouble we’re in, there’s something that makes me almost happy.”

Taken aback, Severus frowned and shook his head. “And what exactly would that be?”

“You care for her, Severus. You have compassion for her, and you are interested in her reactions. You want her well-being. If that’s not reason enough for me to be happy…”

He had grumbled something about ‘sentimental women’, but without much conviction. Now, on his way to the willow—he had used a simple location spell to avoid the complicated procedure of roaming the grounds and calling for her—he admitted to himself that it was true. Her well-being was important to him, and there was no point in trying to persuade himself that this was so only because, as a student, she had to matter to him. She was no longer one of the faces in a more or less anonymous crowd.

Without a sound, he parted the curtain of branches and leaves. She was sitting on a blanket, her back resting against the trunk of the tree, legs pulled up, reading a book. Next to her on the ground stood a jug and a glass half-filled with lemonade.

“Go away!” she said, without looking up or turning around.

“We have to talk, Nimue.”

“Oh, really?” She remained in the same position, eyes stubbornly glued to her book.

“Really. There are some… important things I need to tell you.”

“Important things?” She closed the book with a loud thud and put it on the blanket beside her. Her hands, now free, went around her shins. “And why,” she said, keeping her voice as emotionless as possible, “didn’t you tell me earlier if it is of such importance?”

“Because…” He sighed. “Because I had to sort out a few things for myself before talking to you.” As excuses went, this one was pretty lame. But he was certainly not going to admit that he had been afraid of the confrontation.

“That means absolutely nothing,” she declared.

Gritting his teeth and balling his fists, he tried to keep a rein on his temper. “I returned home after three o’clock in the morning. I was tired and upset. I needed some time.”

Now she turned towards him, but only to shoot him a look of contempt. “What am I supposed to do with that bit of information? Should I pity you? Should I be grateful because the oh-so-high-and-mighty Professor Snape has deigned to tell me about his emotions?”

“No,” he replied, his voice trembling with suppressed rage. “All you should do is listen to me, just as I said before.”

“And what if I don’t want to?” Her tone of voice was aggressive, and now she got to her feet.

“Sooner or later you’ll have to.”

“I always ‘have to’, don’t I? And of course I have to when it’s convenient for you!” She stepped closer to him. “I’ve been waiting for you to return, and I didn’t sleep either, Professor! I was sick with fear and worry, and when I heard you enter your room, I was so relieved…” She angrily wiped a tear off her right eye. “And then I waited and waited. I thought, he has to take a shower first, and maybe he’ll lie down for a moment, but he has to know that I’m waiting. And then your door opened, and I thought, now he’s coming to tell me. But you didn’t! And then you returned and left your rooms again, and still you didn’t come to me! I was so…” Now the tears were running freely, and she had difficulties speaking, as angry sobs were choking her voice. “I thought we had… we had become friends!”

“Yes,” he said, feeling his rage give way to something strange and soft that made him unclench his fists.

“Yes what?” she asked, a little surprised at his reaction.

“Yes,” he repeated, covering the distance that separated them, and putting his hand on her shoulder. “We have become… friends. Had I known that you were waiting…” He sighed and retreated his hand. “No. To tell you the truth, I wasn’t sure whether I could handle your reaction. I tried to avoid an encounter and stall for time.”

“Oh…” She sniffed, wiped her nose—rather unladylike, with the back of her hand—and looked up at him, a little uncertain. “Well, that’s… I suppose that’s understandable. I just thought that…” She bit her lip and looked away.

“What?” he asked.

“It’s stupid, really. But I thought that maybe… maybe my… my parents did something to you last night, and you hated me for it. Didn’t want to speak to me anymore.”

“Oh, Nimue.” He shook his head, and suddenly realized just how close to her he was standing. He almost jumped backwards, but then took two smooth steps away from her. No need to hurt her, he thought, by reacting as if she had the plague. It was, however, a reaction induced by his rational mind and years of being a relatively young Head of House, responsible also for female students. It was a cast-iron rule, albeit not a written one, that one had always to keep a certain distance, both physical and emotional. No getting involved, although he knew that both McGonagall and Sprout transgressed that most important of commandments almost on a daily basis, without so much as a second thought. This was not the first time he had difficulties distancing himself from Nimue, and somehow he secretly enjoyed it. It was a harbinger of changes to come, and he welcomed them, deep down.

He tried to mask his sudden retreat by sitting down on her blanket, but she had identified the movement as what it really was all the same, understood that he had stepped back behind the invisible line. There was a moment of awkwardness, but then she lowered herself to the ground next to him, crouching on a corner of the blanket, as far as possible from him. He saw it with a pang of regret.

“So,” she said, “I suppose it’s fairy-tale time again?”

He appreciated her tact. She was trying to make this easy for him, in spite of knowing that, even if he told her about last night as if it were some remote event belonging to another world, the truth his words contained was not going to be any less difficult for her to accept. He scooted backward on the blanket, until he felt the uneven bark of the willow press into his skin through the thin fabric of his shirt, and motioned for her to do the same. For a moment, she looked incredulous, but then followed his invitation. Their shoulders were now maybe two inches apart, white shirt against white blouse. A team of surgeons ready to dissect the past.

“Once upon a time,” he began, and stopped abruptly, because he felt her hand brush over his. It had to be deliberate, and he tilted his head to look down at her. The tears were flowing again, but she smiled and nodded, before her eyes wandered back to the green cascade surrounding them. The caress had been brief, but his skin still felt a little warmer where her fingers had made contact with his. “Once upon a time,” he continued, “there was a young wizard called St. John Lestrange. He was handsome, rich and powerful, from one of the oldest and most influential families of his country. He would not really have needed to work, but he wanted to. Because he had a great and, or so he thought, noble goal. For there was another wizard, neither as rich nor as handsome as St. John Lestrange, but what he lacked in fortune and beauty, he made up by power. This wizard’s name, as you might already have guessed, was Voldemort. Not his real name, but he had chosen it, because it fitted him. It meant ‘Theft of Death’, and that was exactly what he wanted to do. He intended to steal death from Death himself, so as to control it. And, of course, to keep it away from himself. More than anything, Voldemort wanted immortality and with it, power.

Maybe to achieve immortality was easier back in the old times when mages were so powerful that nowadays we remember them as gods. Maybe. Voldemort, however, had to prepare himself and plan carefully, and he needed money.

Secretly, he wanted all the power he was going to conquer for himself, but he was a very charming and charismatic man, and so some among the rich and the mighty in his country, who were also very dissatisfied with their government, joined him in his endeavours, for he had promised them fabulous rewards in case he succeeded. Did I mention that he never told them about his craving for immortality? Well, he didn’t, because he was a great connoisseur of human nature and knew that they might have been frightened or thought he was crazy. So he made them believe that all he wanted was to introduce a new order, to revive the now-illegal, ancient magic, and to purge the wizarding world from undesirable elements. It was a well-thought-out ideology, not really a lie, but neither was it the entire truth.

St. John Lestrange was an ardent believer, and he wanted to convert others as well. Besides, he was also a very gifted Potions Master, despite his young age; so what more appropriate way of recruiting neophytes was there, than to become a teacher? He had been teaching for only two years, when the Headmaster of his school also made him Head of the house he’d been in while still a student. On the first evening of his first year as Head of House, a girl called Tabitha Al Faruk was sorted into his house. Although only eleven, she was already a beauty, with long, sleek black hair, pale skin, and beautiful, almond-shaped dark eyes. St. John Lestrange saw the girl and knew that he must have her. Never mind the age difference, never mind that he had to wait four years, never mind that he might get fired. She was his. And so he watched her whenever he could, and he sought pretexts for touching her hands and hair. He was completely besotted.

But he never forgot that he was also Voldemort’s friend and servant. Together with Julius Malfoy, the head of another ancient and powerful family, they gradually built a vast and dangerous movement, and its members were called Death Eaters. They bore the sign of their Master, and they feared him, because every failure was punished most terribly.

Lestrange and Malfoy were two of Voldemort’s most trusted four servants. The other two were Bartemius Crouch and Severus Snape; the former had joined the movement because of his ambition, and because he hated his father, who was a high-ranking government official. The latter…”

Severus fell silent. He had spun a cocoon of words around events that concerned him personally. It was a very subtle way of lying, much finer and gentler than omitting or twisting the truth. Maybe she was going to unravel the near-invisible threads; maybe she was simply going to leave the cocoons as they were, weighing them in her hand for a while and then pocketing them or throwing them away. But the process of creating the threads and wrapping them around his memories had taken on a life of its own and begun to entrance him with its ever-identical movement of the filaments circling round and round and round… He had let himself be drawn in by the constant spinning, he had become careless, he had not noticed that on his hand, there was now an object it would be difficult to wrap up. The other bits and pieces, packed in all those layers of words, looked almost identical. This one was going to stand out, because it was his heart. No matter how thick the surrounding cocoon, it would pulse and twitch, and thus she would recognize it.

Silently cursing himself, he searched for a way out of this predicament. He did not want to reveal so much of himself.

“Why did Severus Snape join Voldemort?”

He closed his eyes and tried to fight the sense of rising panic. Sure, he could always stand up and walk away, or tell her brusquely to mind her own business, back to teacher mode, back to layers of clothes, armour, light-years of distance between him and her. He might also try to make himself feel immensely superior, reduce her to little more than another pet, like Elias, to whom he had confessed his deepest wishes and desires more than once. On the other hand, he knew that once he had shrunk her in his own imagination, it would be difficult to get her back to human size—this was no Shrinking Charm one might cast and undo at will.

The back of his skull was resting against the hard wood. He could feel some insect, maybe an ant, crawl over the now-exposed skin of his nape. He tried to concentrate on those inconsequential details, in the hope that they might somehow help him make his decision. At least that was a certainty; he was absolutely sure that this was an important decision, the point where the road forked, without a possibility for him to turn back or simply sit down and wait.

“You don’t have to tell me if—”

“Love,” he said, feeling as if he had taken a plunge into icy water, his whole being stiffening and curling up into a ball and gasping for air. “Love and the need to be accepted. That is why Severus Snape joined Voldemort.”

“And did he? Love you back and accept you?”

He waited until the wild hammering of his heart subsided a little. His face felt hot, and his skin clammy with perspiration. “No. He never did. He made me believe he did, and for a long time he managed to convince me. But I am sure now that he never really did.”

Her hand shifted closer to his, so that their fingertips touched. “It must be horrible to realize such a thing,” she whispered. “How did you become aware—”

“Nimue,” he interrupted her, as gently as he could, because he did not want her to believe that her sympathy was unwelcome. He just had to learn how to deal with it—a little similar to alcohol, he thought, too much on an empty stomach was no good. “Nimue, we are here to talk about your parents, not about myself.”

“I don’t want you to give away things you’d rather keep to yourself, merely to satisfy my curiosity,” she replied stubbornly.

 “I would hardly call that curiosity. This time, you didn’t even ask.”

“Does that mean ten points to Gryffindor for discretion?”

“At least ten points, considering that it’s such a rare virtue to be found in a Gryffindor.” He tilted his head to look down at her. The tears had stopped flowing. “Or maybe you’d prefer me to continue later?”

She considered this for a moment. “No. No, I want to hear about last night. And afterwards—” she looked up and into his eyes “—maybe you could show me some pictures? Of when they were both young?”

“I’m not sure… well, there ought to be something in the library. Yelena used to keep school photos, despite Lucius’s protests—he always thought they didn’t do him justice.” She snorted. “And Sybil might have some. Only to look at those, you’ll have to wait until Hogwarts.”

She nodded. “All right. And now tell me, please. No fairy tales, just the truth.”

~~~~*~~~~

When Severus finished his tale, the sun was already low in the sky, and he was hoarse. Nimue’s head had sunk against his shoulder; there was a warm, wet patch on his shirt, because she had started crying again. Now she seemed to have no more tears. Only a dry hiccough now and then told him that she had not fallen asleep.

Under the oblique rays of the setting sun, dragonflies performed a lazy evening dance, hovering close to the surface of the pond; from time to time, a fish would break smoothly through the mirror, frogs darted out from under the leaves of a patch of water lilies, and the air was vibrating with the snarling and chirping of crickets.

“Such peace,” she said. Severus nodded and smiled, although she could not see it. “It’s incredible, isn’t it, how out of place you feel when you’re so miserable, and all around you it seems as if nothing was wrong?”

He did not know what to say, and so he just sat still, feeling her weight against his shoulder.

“What am I going to do now?” All of a sudden, she started trembling, violently, and doubled over, burying her face between her knees, crushed by another onslaught of helpless pain that made her wail and scream and dig her nails into her shins.

Severus knew this kind of pain only too well. It catapulted you out of the world, to a place where you were utterly alone, without consolation and help. He wondered whether he should even try to comfort her—nobody had ever done that for him, and so he was not sure of the effect such an effort on his part might have. Any words he could think of seemed barren and useless, like a few grains of sand thrown into a raging torrent in a vain attempt at checking the floods. Words were useless, maybe they would hurt her even more. His right hand went out, hovered briefly over her back, and then lowered itself gently on the sweat-drenched fabric of her blouse. Her back stiffened, and for a moment he thought she was going to elbow him in the stomach and bolt. But she stayed, she even leaned into his touch and, like a cat, arched her back and rubbed herself against his hand. It was a childlike and innocent gesture, totally free of any erotic connotation, a mere plea for warmth and comfort. And all the same, the feeling it stirred within him was anything but paternal. It was not arousal, either, he thought, marvelling at his own ignorance of something that was so obviously his. He could only define it as some kind of elemental rush to protect her, a need to curl himself around her so he might shield her—impossible, he thought, given his reluctance to physical contact of any kind. But the urge was too deep, he could not simply shatter it or think it away. As if it had a mind of its own, one that knew instinctively what to do in a situation where the sharp rapier of rational thought clattered uselessly to the ground, a mere futile piece of metal, his hand crept towards her shoulder and curled his fingers around it, and his elbow bent to pull her up and towards him.

She fell against his chest; a dead weight, too sick with pain and exhausted from crying to participate actively. It was an awkward position, for both of them, and awkward in every sense of the word. Her mop of hair tickled Severus's chin, and in her state of boneless passivity she was constantly about to slump head first into his lap. He shifted a little, transferring her head onto his shoulder, holding her upright with his right arm and stroking her hair with his left. They sat like this for a long time, and his arms went numb under the constant strain; however, he felt a kind of guilty pleasure in letting his hand glide over the tangled mass, which was much softer and less wiry than he had expected. He was pretty sure that in her present state she would have accepted anybody’s chest and hands and support in general, and thus he was sorely tempted to let go of her, because this was almost abuse, like being given the keys to somebody’s house, merely to water the plants, and snooping through the drawers in the owner’s absence. She was not going to like that, once she regained a modicum of composure and realized just how close she had let him come.

“Nimue?” he said, and tried to gently push her off him.

In lieu of an answer, her arms, which had until now been hanging heavily and clumsily somewhere between their bodies, came around his ribcage and squeezed, so hard that he felt a slight stab of pain in the ribs Narcissa had recently mended. His left hand stroked the moist hair back from her forehead and tucked it behind her ear. “Ten points from Gryffindor for attempting to suffocate a teacher,” he muttered.

He felt unaccountably proud when he sensed more than heard her watery giggle against his chest. He also felt a little stupid because of this sudden surge of pride—what on earth was there to feel elated about, when he had just offered the proverbial shoulder to cry on? It was only natural that she should feel better, and it had nothing to do with himself as a person. But the small voice in his mind, usually the annoying herald of unpleasant and unsettling thoughts, merely chuckled, quite smugly.