Chapter 14
It had been chaos when he had entered the Common Room just ahead of curfew and ordered the entire house back up to the Great Hall. Rounding up stragglers from the Feast and redirecting everyone back upstairs had fallen to his House's Prefects, being too drained to carry himself with his usual steel.
“Sir. All Slytherins are present and accounted for.” Flint reported once everyone as up in the Great Hall.
With a curt nod, Snape dismissed the seventh-year prefect and joined the Headmaster at the door.
“The teaches and I need to conduct a thorough search of the castle. I'm afraid that, for your own safety, you will have to spend the night here. I want the prefects to stand guard over the entrances to the hall and I’m leaving the Head Boy and Girl in charge,” Announced Dumbledore to the crowded hall before turning to the red-head standing self-importantly beside him. “Send word with one of the ghosts if there are any issues.”
“Yes, sir.”
***
Hours later and the search of the castle yielded nothing. After yet another agonizingly vague conversation with the Headmaster that did nothing to make him feel any better about Sirius Black being this close to the castle, if not actually in it, Severus felt like little more than a walking corpse.
It was nearing midnight when Snape stepped into his quarters while searching the dungeons. Trini, his Hogwarts assigned house elf had left a tray near his chair and his fire stoked. Merlin bless the little creature, he thought as he sank into the depths of his favored chair and picked at the plate. Time slipped from his as the flames danced in the hearth and the clock ticked ever closer to the witching hour. In his crashing exhaustion, he found himself kneeling from the comfort of the chair to the hard floor of his rooms. His mind detached and body going through the motions of a half-forgotten Samhain ritual his mother had performed every year after his father had drunk himself to oblivion.
His mother's thin frame curled in on itself, scratching strange shapes into the cellar floor with a hunk of coal, holding so tight her fingers bled and mixed with the salt and dust on the floor.
Salt blindly summoned from the kitchenette that lined the wall behind him.
Lily. Her vibrant red hair spread around her as she drifted gently down from the apex of the swing near their homes.
Stained fingers etched symbols into his floor with a still glowing stub of kindling.
Hunched together with Lily in a dark corner of the library, heads bowed over books smuggled from his mother's own battered trunk. Books from her own family.
Blood dripping from the athame blade he didn't remember pulling from its case on the mantle as the hour began to chime.
The sting of bloody palms clasped tight as children pledged sibling devotion without thought to the pain or vagaries of the future, finally realizing that the flush of heat and light had been more than just the clouds finally moving out of the way over where they were kneeling in the black earth of the Evans back garden.
A cool presence at his side pulls his tear-blurred eyes from the flames. In the back of his mind, Severus barely registered the deep quiet of the time between minutes.
Lily.
A white washed specter of his best friend.
Of his sister.
“Severus. Tobias. Snape. You utter, bloody, arse of a cock-sucker! Took you long enough!”
Ah, there she was. Severus jolted back to awareness at the mounting rage in Lily's translucent face.
“What the hell happened, Sev? And I'm not talking about that bullshit back in school. What the fuck is wrong with you?”
Severus just sat in the middle of his floor. It was perverse, how familiar Lily just throwing her temper at him was. He'd missed everything, selfishly, even her temper.
“Lily! I didn't fucking know! I – I - I'm so sorry.” Deep, gut-wrenching sobs broke him then. “I didn't know. I didn't remember and Dumbledore assured me he was safe. I know it's not an excuse, but …”
“He was supposed to go to you, you know.”
“What?”
“Harry. Even with everything going on, if something happened to James and I, and Sirius,” Snape sneered at the mention of the man he just spent the last several hours hunting.
“Severus, grow up, please,” Lily sighed. “I know he was shit to you – .”
“Shit? Lily, he – they – assaulted me. Repeatedly! And you married one of them!” Severus found his voice, volume rising.
“I know!” Lily's rage broke on an agonizing sob. “I know. We were shit to each other and made shit decisions. But, Sev, my baby… he… he left him with HER.”
Severus' entire existence ground to a screeching halt. Her? No. If Dumbledore had actually placed Lily's child, any magical child really, with the disdainful walking hypocrisy that was Tuney Evans, Severus would kill him, slowly, with great pleasure. And then Severus thought about it some more. All of his revelations about how Harry had looked and acted the two school years before this one. Of Dumbledore's assurances and evasions about the boy's care and welfare, even as the Vow circling his wrist and core had insisted otherwise.
“I don't know why you didn't take him when Sirius was arrested, Sev. But he was supposed to go to you, as his closest living magical blood relative. Even if you were Marked, I didn't care at that point, other than my BROTHER would have my son safe from my SISTER!”
“Lils! Lily! I didn't bloody know! None of that – Everything about what we did, the adoption ritual, it was all gone. So many memories, Lils. Just gone! Even the way that I thought about Potter – Harry. I finally realized something was wrong. I made that purging potion that you railed at me about and took it. That's why I look like shit.” Lily huffed at him. “Shut up.” They shared a grimace.
Silence fell, each digesting.
“Do,” Lily started quietly after a long moment. “Do you think I fought you so hard on that potion because something was already wrong?”
“I've thought about that,” Severus sighed before admitting. “And I'm not sure I want to know the answer anymore. Because either you weren't already altered and had decided to fall in love with that arse of your own free will or you were and I couldn't save you from whatever was going on. And, at this point, it doesn't even matter. You're gone, and I will have to live with the results of that the best we can now.”
“You both do,” Lily nudged him, a chill passing through his shoulder at the contact. “You and Harry.”
“Lily,” he exhaled sharply through is nose. “I can't just change overnight. It could jeopardize my ability to keep him safe.”
Lily nodded sadly.
“I know, but there is another way…” her gaze lands on the letter from Anathema, still sitting innocently on his side table.
“Lils, she's –“
“I know who she is, Sev.”
“But – “
“But nothing, Sev. She … she has already claimed him. Help her to make it real, Sev. He needs what she has already given him. What she can keep giving him. And he needs you to keep doing what you have been, he needs his silent guardian and protector. Be that Sev. With every fiber of your being, just keep doing what you have been. But do it for the right reasons this time.”
Somewhere high in the castle, the last bell-toll of the hour rang out and Lily faded, a lingering whisp of her hand chilling the tears still rolling down his pale cheeks. She always did get the last word in their arguments.
***
The day had flown by.
Like normal, Anathema and the children had prepared the Dumb Supper, with a place set for Harry in what had become His Spot and another empty chair set at the head of the table. She felt lucky that the Muggles didn’t really do much for the holiday in this neighborhood, so the doorbell hadn’t been ringing with children begging for sweets.
At 8:30 the children were successfully tucked into their beds and snoring softly. A bit later than normal but it had taken some cajoling.
The twins had started primary that fall, leading to many questions about why they didn’t do Muggle Halloween with the sweets and fancy dress and parties. She wasn’t sure how much longer she could get away with using the fact that she partially grew up a different country, a different culture as the excuse, the reason that they do Samhain instead. They stood out in their primary class enough without becoming the odd children that don’t celebrate holidays correctly. But that was probably coming with Yule less than two months away.
***
Anathema stepped from her bathroom, face washed and robe cinched tight around her nightgown, and headed downstairs. Twisting her long hair at the top of her head with an ebony snake pin, she set about cleaning up from the day. A flick of her wand had the living room floor cleared and the spilled toys tucked into their cubbies and baskets. Another flick had the dishes stacked in the sink soaping and scrubbing on their own as she prepped the kettle.
Only two plates remained on the table. The one for Harry and the one at the head of the table. Harry’s plate was easy, she had only served him the fruit, candied pumpkin, and soul cake. All were lovingly wrapped in beeswax cloth with a stasis charm. She’d send them off in the morning.
The other plate. Old, scarred pewter. More of a trencher than a plate and a simple cup to match. Set on a wooden try with runes carved along the borders. A family heirloom and portkey.
Taking a deep breath, she set her wand tip to the edge of the tray. “Portus,” she whispered and watched as the full plate and cup, an offering of a shared meal with family, flashed out of sight to appear at the forest borders of a decrepit ancestral home.
Tasks complete and cup of tea softly steaming in her shaking hands, Anathema slowly moved into the living room.
Many houses in this area had been built without a true fireplace. She had been lucky when she moved into this house the previous spring. It was one of the older homes in the area, the village winding around it. Giving it a bit more character and a true fireplace with a stone hearth that warmed the wood floors that some idiot had hidden under a layer of awful beige carpeting.
Setting her mug and wand to the side of the hearth, Anathema quietly pulled back the sofa and overstuffed green chair to the edges of the room. The table, littered with books and children’s art was pushed to the corner of the room and the braided rug rolled up to expose the boards underneath.
With a piece of black charcoal plucked from the art bin, Anathema covers her floor in concentric circles of wriggling lines until she is closed in and the black lines glow green with seven drops of her blood on the innermost circle.
She doesn't bother to call her mother. Not anymore, that wish for acceptance was snuffed out the first time she had performed this ritual as a child in her father’s home. The hatred after the first time was enough to never connect to her again. No one on her mother's side of the family wanted her, they named her Anathema after all, Cursed.
The half-formed absent-minded caress of her father, the same on whichever side of the veil he existed, too busy to acknowledge a daughter with any real attention. Gone before it was even real enough to acknowledge as the time changed from 12:00 to 12:01.
Raba.
“Blessed Samhain, Raba.”
She’s not sure if his lack of answer is worse than if he had. So long as he doesn't answer, there is still a bitter hope, however faint and selfish.
“Another year without you, Dashur. How much you have missed. Our children are beautiful and so like you, sharper than an obsidian athame blade. The boys look more like you every day, more than just their coloring. Astrit crinkles like you do, around the eyes, when you're trying to convince me that something is a good idea. Yulli reminds me of your father some days, a watcher, but never truly a follower. Lule, your little princess, she has Harry, her Ree, wrapped around her little fingers. You may find you have some competition from Hadar for your daughter's favor when you get to meet her. ” Anathema let out a heavy sigh.
“Hadar. Well, Harry. He didn't even know his name, Dashur. Who doesn't tell a child their name?
“I know, I know. Breathe before cursing, I know.” Anathema fell silent, thinking how to word what she wanted to ask to the empty night.
“Raba, could you see him like the others, do you think? He's so smart but has been broken so many times that I don't think he even knows it anymore. He's nothing like the world was told. He needs a home, a family. The Muggles that he lives with, they are horrible. I've checked for anything to explain, anything making them that horrible. there's nothing. They just hate an innocent child. I just…I want your blessing if I do something drastic next summer. I still have some of your blood … in the amulet you gave me at our bonding. I could make him yours, even if you never meet him. Please, Raba. Please tell me I have your blessing…”
Nothing but still silence answered back. He wasn't there. His soul hadn't ever answered her call. And even after all this time, she wasn't sure which absence was worse.