The Deatheater in a Taxi
Severus Snape knew he had messed up bad. The dark Lord had not been very happy with him because he kept wiggling out of kill missions, so the young man thought he could appease his master with information about Dumbledore. This turned out to be a horrible idea. The prophecy Severus overheard did please the Dark Lord, but it also made the snake faced man determined to kill Lily. Well, not Lily exactly, but her son. And even if Severus hadn't talked to his former best friend in years, he knew her well enough to be sure that she wouldn't just let the child die.
Something had to be done. At first, Severus had thought about going to Dumbledore. The old wizard was the leader of the Order of the Phoenix, and he probably knew how to help Lily. Then his mind had gone back to the night when Sirius Black had tried to kill him and Dumbledore hadn't done anything about it, and Severus decided to warn Lily himself. The only issue was that he had no idea where she lived.
Fortunately, it didn't take long for Severus to come up with a solution. Lily had a sister, Petunia, who she didn't get along with and who probably didn't know that Severus and Lily were no longer friends. But she did surely know where Lily lived. There was no way that Lily and she didn't send each other passive aggressive Christmas cards. The young wizard had even managed to get Petunia's address with the help of a Muggle telephone book. Sadly, that phone book didn't include a picture of the place, which made apparating there impossible.
And so, it came to be that a very grumpy Severus Snape was sitting in the back of a taxi one rainy night and staring at a slim scar in his left hand. A scar of betrayal.
He's still remembered quite vividly how he had gotten it: Lily and he had been 10. They were reading a muggle book in school at the time, where a group of cool kids went on an exciting adventure together. At some point in the book, the kids had decided to become “Blood-Brothers” so they would always stay friends. Lily had loved the idea and suggested that they should do it too. On a local junk yard where they liked to hang out at the time, she had taken a shard of glass and cut her and his hand open. Then they had pressed their bloody palms together. It had burned like crazy and even got infected a little, but it all was worth it for the smile Lily had flashed him afterwards and the way she said: “See Sev, now we will be siblings forever!”
Back then, Severus had actually believed it. He couldn't have guessed how wrong that statement was now, ten years later. He hadn't seen Lily again after Hogwarts. Now they were friends no longer. They had become strangers. A few photos and the scar on his hand were his only reminders of their friendship. And now he had inadvertently sent the most dangerous wizard in the world out to kill her.
He sighed and pressed his head into the taxi’s back seat. When had everything gone so wrong? When had he lost his always-sister? Was it, when he had made friends with Evan Rosier? Was it, when he had stopped to go to the Quidditch games with her? When his friends had mocked her for her muggle family. Or when she had started to blush every time Potter winked at her. He didn’t know. It was probably a mixture of all these things.
Severus clenched his hand into a fist, hiding his scar of betrayal, and stared out the window, into the rain. Thick drops slid down the glass and vanished behind the metal. It was very fitting to his mood. The Taxi sped along a deserted country road now. Fields and forests flanked the street and potholes made the car bounce. At least it was dry inside the vehicle.
“So boy, where am I taking you? Must be important, if you want to get there in the middle of the night.”, the driver asked suddenly. Severus flinched. He hadn’t expected the Muggle to talk to him. “To my… my sister. My family and I… we lost contact. My other sister, my twin, is dying. The one you are taking me to knows where she lives.”, the wizard replied, still staring into the darkness of the night. On a small hill he could see the windows of a farmhouse glow. His eyes felt glued to the light, till it suddenly disappeared behind a group of trees.
“Wow, I’m sorry to hear that.”, the taxi driver mumbled. “Why are you estranged? I mean, twins tend to be quite close, right?”, the man continued. Severus sighed again. “It is complicated. We… in school… we drifted apart without really noticing it until it was way too late. It… we exploded at each other. Said… horrible hurtful things. Now we don’t talk anymore.”, he answered. It felt weirdly good to talk about it. “But you still love you sister, right?”
“Of course, always.”, Severus replied immediately. The taxi driver nodded sadly. “Yeah, I know what you are going through. My brother died four years ago. Work accident. It still feels like a part of me is missing. Like it died with him, you know.” “My condolences.”, Severus stammered. Why was this weird muggle man he had never met before in his life telling him this? Before he could think too much about it, the man continued. “You know, it's a horrible thing really, but by far not the worst I have ever heard. You should hear the stories my passengers tell me. Horrible things, really! One time I drove a woman to the hospital who had stabbed her husband. Just stabbed him in the abdomen. Could you believe that? And then she had the audacity to visit him. Crazy, those people. Crazy! She gave a good tip though. The ones that feel guilty always do.”
In the back seat, Severus nodded, knowing full well that he would not give a good tip despite feeling guilty. He just, did not have the money for that. But the taxi driver was far from finished. “Oh, and we of course can't forget about the guy who came back from the military after five years only to find out he had a three-year old daughter. That is called epic bad luck in my opinion. Two months later, I drove the same guy back to his family because he decided to take his cheating bitch off a wife back. And one time I drove a bunch of guys who kept talking about how necessary it was to shoot all immigrants. That one got a bit awkward after I mentioned that I'm from Pakistan.”
The taxi driver laughed, and Severus nodded again. Good that the guy didn't know that he had been part of extremist anti Muggle group until a few days ago. That would for sure be a story that that chatterbox would love to tell his next passengers. The muggle in the front seat let out a sigh and looked at Severus through the mirror. “I think what I'm trying to say with all of this is that there are a lot of crazy people out there with a lot of crazy stories, and maybe that means that there is hope for you and your sister. If that military guy can take his wife back after she had an affair while he was gone, risking his life for his country, then maybe your sister and you can forgive each other for whatever you two said back then. Maybe you can rekindle before she dies.” Hesitantly, Severus nodded as the taxi drove past a sign, announcing that they had reached the small town of Little Whinging. “Yes, maybe there is hope.”