Angel Burn

SEVERUS GLANCED AROUND HIM nervously as he entered the café in Denver’s Lower Downtown district.

He didn’t go into Denver much, spending most of his time at the cathedral, and had never been to LoDo, with its Victorian houses and art galleries, at all.

It had taken him several wrong turns to even find the café, much less somewhere to park.

More than once he had been tempted, strongly, to just forget the whole thing and go back to his apartment at the cathedral.

But somehow he hadn’t.

Now, as he ordered a cappuccino at the counter, he heard someone say his name. “Severus Snape?”

He turned and saw a tall man with broad shoulders and brown hair standing there.

He had the same intense eyes as Tom.

Severus licked his lips. “Yes, that’s me.”

The angel held out his hand. “Frank Longbottom. Thanks for coming.”

Severus nodded, still unsure whether he should have done so.

When he’d gotten his coffee, he followed the angel to a table at the rear of the café, half hidden by a large ficus tree.

A woman of about thirty with shoulder-length brown hair was already sitting there, wearing a tailored suit.

She half rose as Snape approached.

“Hi. Alice Fortescue,” she said, offering her hand.

Her brown eyes weren’t angel intense, but they were still pretty intense.

Snape shook her hand, then sat down hesitantly, suddenly feeling as awkward as he’d felt back at college.

“Well, first of all, thanks for the tip-off,” said the angel.

There was a half-drunk coffee in front of him; he took a sip. “I thought Alice and I had gotten out in time; I didn’t realize that they were on to me.”

“That’s OK,” said Snape, his voice faint.

It hadn’t really been his intention to tip the angel off that the others were aware of his traitorous activities; he had just needed to talk to him.

But of course in doing so, the effect had been the same.

Already, just by doubting the angels, he may have caused irreparable harm to them.

His stomach clenched at the thought.

Gazing down, he stirred his cappuccino. “Look, I’m not sure I should be here. I mean, I just wonder if all of this is a mistake. The angels helped me; they really did.”

“You’ve seen one?” asked Frank. “In its divine form, I mean?”

“Yes, it changed my life.” Snape described the encounter.

As he finished, Frank sat back in his seat, a look of surprised pleasure crossing his handsome face.

“One of the marshalers,” he said to Alice. “How about that for luck, with the Second Wave about to come — that Severus ended up as Voldemort's right-hand man?”

“Um . . . what?” said Snape.

Alice leaned toward him. “Listen, it’s not a mistake, I’m afraid,” she said crisply. “Angels are here because their own world is dying; they’re feeding off humans. They cause death, disease, mental illness. We’ve been trying to fight them covertly, but now that the department’s been taken over —”

She sighed.

“What about the angel I saw, though?” said Severus. “She was . . . ” He trailed off.

The angel who had come to him was one of his most cherished memories; he didn’t want anything to change that.

“She was on our side,” said Frank. “Not all of us believe that angels have the right to destroy humanity; a few of us are trying to stop it. She didn’t feed from you; she was doing something called marshaling — placing a small amount of psychic resistance in your aura to make you unpalatable to other angels. It can sometimes be passed from human to human, too, in the right conditions, through auric contact — it’s our hope that if we do enough of this, it might start to make a difference.”

Unpalatable to other angels.

Severus froze in his seat.

His words stumbling over themselves, he said, “I — I’ve seen other angels in their divine form since then, at the cathedral, but — they never touch me for more than a second. I just sort of get glimpses of them, and then they’re gone.”

Dizzily, he remembered the woman in the corridor, the long moments she’d spent smiling upward.

The angel touching her had clearly been taking its time doing it.

Frank nodded. “It worked, then — good. It doesn’t always.”

“Which means you don’t have angel burn,” added Alice.

“Angel burn?”

Severus raised his coffee cup, holding it in front of him almost like a shield.

As Alice explained, he felt himself go pale. “You’re saying that it’s true, then; the angels really are feeding off people. Literally feeding off them, hurting them. And that — that the people just see them as good and kind.”

“That’s about right,” said Alice. “Apart from the physical damage, it pretty much fries the human brain. You get sort of obsessed with them — everything is praise be to angels.”

Severus winced at the familiar phrase.

Frank rested his muscular forearms on the table.

Though the angel had an easy grace to him, he was built like a football player.

“Look, the thing is, it’s about to get a lot worse,” he said. “And you’re in a unique position to help us, if you’ll do it.”

The bustling café noise seemed to dim around him.

Snape's heartbeat quickened with apprehension. “What do you want me to do?”

The pair told him.

By the time they had finished, Snape's coffee had long grown cold and the funky LoDo café with its worn tables and posters of movies on the walls had taken on the feel of a nightmare.

“I — I don’t know if I can do that,” he stammered. “I mean, it’s true that I’m in charge of the celebration, but . . . ”

“It all depends on finding the half angel,” said Alice. “He's the only one who might be able to succeed.”

She let out a short breath. “We were close, but we lost them; now they could be anywhere.”

“But even if we find him, we’d need your help to actually pull it off,” said Frank. “We couldn’t do it without you, in fact.”

Severus stared down at his cup and saucer.

His previous unshakable faith in the angels felt like a pain inside of him — something beautiful and precious that had been sullied forever.

He didn’t want to believe this; he wished that he could just get up and walk away and pretend that none of it had ever happened.

But even if he did believe it, how could he possibly do what they were asking?

I can’t, he thought. I just can’t do it.

They were both watching him, waiting for him to speak.

Finally Snape cleared his throat. “I’ll have to think about it,” he said.

Alice's mouth pursed with frustration; she started to say something, and Frank put a hand on her arm.

“Do that,” he said. “Severus, I think you know that we’re telling you the truth. The situation is grave, and it will just get worse. Humanity as you know it isn’t likely to survive this.”

“You, more than anyone, know the sheer scale of this thing,” said Alice tightly. “So, yes, think about it — but don’t take too long; we’re running out of time.”

She took out a business card and a pen, scratched out the phone number on the card, and wrote a new one.

“Here,” she said, handing it to him. “Call me the second you decide.”

Severus nodded, gazing down at the card.

ALICE FORTESCUE, CIA.

He’d throw it away when he got back to his apartment, he thought.

Even if every word they had said was true, there was simply no way he could do this.

“Thanks for coming,” said Frank.

His chair scraped against the floorboards as he stood up. “We’ll leave you in peace now. And, Severus. . . ”

Snape looked up, and the angel smiled at him — a sad, understanding smile, his eyes burning into Snape's.

“Alice's right,” he said. “Don’t take too long.”

~~~~~~~

The days turned into a week, then slid past two, so that it started to feel as if Sirius and Remus had all the time in the world.

Except that sometimes, under the lazy rhythm of their days together, Remus flinched with sudden terror — a cold foreboding, as if something was on the horizon waiting for them.

He couldn’t tell whether it was something he was actually sensing or just his own fears.

He didn’t mention it; there was no point unless he got something more definite.

Sirius and him both knew that they were in danger and that their days up at the cabin couldn’t last forever.

For one thing, the weather was turning.

The air bit at them with the threat of winter now; often Remus had to wear two sweaters when they went outside.

Before long, they'd have to decide their next move and face whatever was coming next, but Remus didn’t want to bring it out into the open, not yet.

It was as if they could put off the inevitable by not talking about it.

Even with these worries, Sirius and him kept growing closer, until it seemed like they were two sides of the same coin.

“He was just . . . incredible, actually,” Sirius told me one night after they'd finished eating dinner.

They were sitting talking, with the camp lantern casting a gentle glow on the table between them.

“I mean, no one else even knew about angels, much less how to kill them. Dad learned it all on his own, testing different ways to destroy them — Christ, he should have gotten himself killed a hundred times over, but he didn’t somehow.”

Remus was listening with his chin propped on his hand. “Where were you and Regulus while he was doing this?”

“At home, at first. In Chicago. He hired someone to look after us.”

After their mother had just died? It sounded awful for such young children.

“OK, go on,” Remus said after a pause.

“Then about six months later, when he had his funding and was ready to start training other people, we moved to the camp with him. He was still traveling a lot then, though — he had to recruit new AKs, follow leads, that kind of thing. It was a few years before the camp really got off the ground.” Sirius smiled wryly, playing with a camping fork. “And then another few years after that before he started to lose it.”

“Lose it?” Remus stared at him in surprise. “I didn’t know that.”

Sirius tapped the fork lightly against the table. “Yeah. For — I don’t know — five years, maybe, Dad was the best of the best. I mean, nobody was a better AK than him. And it wasn’t just hunting; it was strategy, too, and training and organizing the hunts. But then he just . . . got obsessed.”

“Obsessed how?” Remus asked.

Shadow bathed Sirius's face as he gazed down, accenting his lips and cheekbones.

He shrugged.

“Killing angels was all he could think about. After a while he wouldn’t let any of the AKs take time off, ever. Everyone at the camp was going stir-crazy, ready to kill each other. That’s when people started sneaking time after a hunt, just a day or two to take a break.”

Remus shifted on his chair, watching Sirius. “Like you and Regulus, when you fixed up this place?”

Sirius nodded as he glanced at the walls around him. “Yeah, that was good,” he said quietly. “That was a really good time. People used to sneak down to Mexico a lot, too. Or up to Albuquerque. Anywhere where they could just have some fun.” He made a face. “Fun had gotten to be a concept that Dad didn’t really get anymore.”

Remus watched the fork as Sirius tapped it against the table, not sure whether he should ask.

“How did your father die?” He asked at last.

The fork kept the same rhythm as before. “An angel ripped his life force away. He died of a massive heart attack.”

“You were there,” Remus said, feeling it suddenly.

Remus reached for his hand. “Oh, Sirius, I’m sorry.”

He nodded, his jaw tensing. “Yeah, it was . . . bad. But I don’t know; he died fighting, I guess. He would have wanted that.”

“You must be really proud of him,” Remus said softly. “And he must have been proud of you, too.”

Sirius gave a short laugh. “He used to say I was too damn cocky for my own good. . . . Yeah, he was, though. He was proud of me.”

He glanced up at Remus and smiled, squeezing his fingers. “OK, enough about me for now,” he said, leaning back. “Your turn. What’s something I don’t know about you?”

All at once Remus really wanted to tell Sirius about his mother.

Remus pulled one of his knees up to his chest.

“Well — you don’t know how Mom and I first came to live with Aunt Jo.”

Sirius shook his head. “No, how did you?”

“We lived in Syracuse,” Remus said, tracing his hand across the worn wood of the table. “And Mom was on welfare. Everyone knew that she had mental problems — I mean, she’d been diagnosed, and all that — but no one knew how bad it was, except for me. She was able to — to put on a facade for a long time, when other people were around.”

Remus told Sirius how his Mom had gradually gotten worse and worse, so that by the time Remus was six or so, he had to cook for them both and do all the cleaning and laundry.

“I always made sure that I kept the house really nice,” he said. “So in case anyone came in, they wouldn’t know anything was wrong. I got myself off to school every day and every- thing.”

Remus fell silent, remembering sitting in the back of the school bus gazing back at their dinky little house, so worried about leaving his Mom there on her own all day.

“What finally happened?” asked Sirius in a low voice.

“I got home from school one day when I was nine, and Mom wasn’t there.” Remus looked at him, tried to smile. “I waited for hours; I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want anyone to know, but I was really scared. So finally I called the police, and they came over. It turned out that they’d picked her up that afternoon. She’d been walking around in a daze, wandering in traffic. She didn’t know who she was.”

Sirius reached over and took his hand, gripping it wordlessly.

Remus let out a breath. “So, they put her in the hospital, and they put me in a foster home, and it was horrible. I was there for almost a month.”

“What about your aunt?” said Sirius. His fingers were warm against Remus's.

Remus shrugged. “I don’t know. I didn’t know where she lived. They must have found her before too long, but it took a while for everyone to figure out what they were going to do, I guess.”

Sirius's voice hardened. “So . . . what? You’re saying that she just let you sit in a foster home for a month?”

Slowly, Remus nodded, remembering the tiny bedroom that he'd shared with a girl named Tina — how she always wanted Remus to talk to her, and he wouldn’t talk to anybody. He used to lie on his bed for hours staring at the wall, hating everyone there.

“Yeah,” he said finally. “I mean, I don’t know what was going on in her life or anything, and I guess it was a pretty big disruption to suddenly have this nine-year-old foisted on her.”

Sirius didn’t say anything, and he went on.

“Anyway, after a while she came and got me, and I went back to Pawtucket with her. And then a few weeks later, Mom came to live there, too. The doctors thought she should be hospitalized full-time, but insurance wouldn’t cover it all. That sort of thing is really expensive.” Remus looked down. “You know, I always hated my father, anyway, for doing that to her. But now that I know he was an actual predator, that he never cared about her, it just makes it ten times worse somehow.”

Not to mention that Remus comes from him; is a part of him.

Remus didn’t say the words.

“I know,” said Sirius.

And Remus could tell from his voice that he did.

He understood exactly how Remus felt about all of it, even the parts he'd left unsaid.

Sirius rubbed his palm. “You’re not your father, though. You’re nothing like him. You were there for her; you cared about her more than anything.”

Remus swallowed hard, confronted by so many memories. “She’s my mom. I love her. I just . . . wish I hadn’t let her down back then.”

“Remus.”

With his other hand, Sirius touched Remus's cheek. “You know that’s not true, right? You did better than some adults would have done, and you were only nine years old. You did everything you could.”

Letting out a breath, Remus closed his hand over Sirius's, leaning his head against it.

“Thanks.” He managed a smile. “I’ve never told anyone that before. Thanks for listening.”

Sirius smiled slightly, too, and stroked back a strand of Remus's hair. “I’ve never told anyone about my dad before, either.”

For a minute neither of them spoke, and then Remus got up and slid onto his lap, wrapping his arms around Sirius.

They sat holding each other for a long time, with the lantern light burning golden beside them.

~~~~~~~

“Oh! That is so cold!” Remus shrieked, half-laughing as Sirius poured a canful of icy water over his head, and then another.

Sirius started laughing, too. “You’re the one who wanted to wash it. Hold still.”

Finally — just when Remus was about to tell him to forget it, that he didn’t care anymore whether he still had shampoo in his hair or not — Sirius said, “OK, I think that’s all of it.”

Remus felt him wrap the T-shirt around his hair, squeezing the water out.

“Oh, thank God!”

Remus straightened up from the stream, drops of icy water darting down his neck.

“I’m never washing it again; I don’t care how disgusting it gets.”

Sirius rubbed Remus's arms briskly, grinning. “You say that every single time.”

“It’s true this time. I swear that water’s twenty degrees colder than it used to be.”

Back in the cabin, Remus sat on the bed to comb out his hair, trying not to get the sleeping bags wet.

It was such a relief to have clean hair again, even if it felt all tangled.

Sirius sat next to him, leaning back against the wall.

“Your nose is all red,” he observed.

“Yes, that’s how it gets when I’m dying of hypothermia.”

Bending forward, Sirius kissed the tip of his nose.

Then he got up and went over to his bag; crouching down beside it on the floor, he unzipped an inner pocket.

He came back and sat beside Remus again. “Here.” He handed Remus a small white box. “Happy birthday.”

Remus took the box, feeling stunned.

He had lost all track of time up here. “Is it my birthday? But — how did you know?”

Sirius gave a sheepish grin. “I sort of looked at your driver’s license when you were taking a shower that first night in the motel.”

Remus held the box in both hands. “You didn’t! That’s not even fair — you don’t even have a driver’s license with your real details on it.”

Remus looked down at the box, touched its slightly dimpled top. “What is it?”

“Open it and see.”

He eased the lid off, and then just sat gazing downward.

There was a necklace inside — a slim, shimmering silver chain with a crystal teardrop hanging from it.

“It’s beautiful,” he breathed, drawing it out.

The faceted pendant winked in the sunlight, turning on its chain. “Sirius, this is so . . . ” Remus trailed off, at a loss for words.

Sirius smiled at his expression.

“It reminded me of you,” he said. “Of your angel’s wings.”

Remus's heart seemed to stop.

They hardly mentioned his angel; he didn’t like thinking about it.

Up here, away from everything but the wind and the trees, he could almost forget that he wasn’t wholly human.

“My angel’s wings?” Remus repeated.

Sirius nodded. “The way they shone in the sun.”

“But . . . ” Remus stared back at the pendant, his thoughts spinning. “But you must have bought this before we even got together.”

“Yeah, when I was buying your clothes.” He ducked his head to peer into Remus's face. “Hey. What is it?”

Remus could hardly put it into words.

The pendant with the light hitting it was so clear, so shining.

“You don’t just not mind, do you?” Remus said slowly. “About me being a half angel. You really . . . accept it.”

Sirius gave a gentle laugh and tapped Remus's forehead with his fist. “Hello. Have you just figured that out?”

Remus didn’t know what to say.

There was a long pause. Sirius cleared his throat. “You know . . . back in the motel room in Tennessee, I woke up from a nightmare once. A really bad one that I used to have a lot. And I looked at your angel.” He scanned Remus's face. “He's beautiful, Remus— he looks just like you, only more radiant. And just seeing your face, I was able to go to sleep again.”

Remus's throat went tight.

All the way back in Tennessee, he’d felt that way?

“But all angels are beautiful,” Remus said finally. “And they’re still deadly.”

“You’re really not getting this,” said Sirius.

He touched Remus's face. “Yes, all angels are beautiful, but that’s just how they look. Your angel is you; he's a part of you. And that means he's. . . everything I love.”

Remus stared down at the necklace again, almost too moved to speak.

“Thank you,” he whispered. Remus stroked his hand under the pendant, watching it catch the light.

Carefully, he undid the clasp and put it on; he could hardly even feel the chain around his neck.

Looking down, he saw the pendant sparkling against his skin as if it belonged there.

Remus felt almost shy as he looked at Sirius.

He cleared his throat. “So . . . when’s your birthday?”

Sirius grinned suddenly. “Yesterday.”

Remus stared at him. “What — seriously?”

“Yeah, March 9th. I turned eighteen.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What for? I already have everything I want.” He reached across and fingered the pendant; Remus felt it move against his skin.

“Remus, look,” he said. “We haven’t talked much about what might happen, but . . . you know that I always want to be with you, right? I mean — no matter what.”

And Remus had known it; he felt it every time Sirius held him — but even so, actually hearing the words made his heart catch.

“I want that, too,” he said. “Always, Sirius.”

Sirius put his hand on the side of Remus's face; Remus nestled his cheek into it. “OK, then,” Sirius said softly, rubbing the corner of Remus's mouth with his thumb.

“OK,” Remus echoed.

They just sat there for a moment, smiling at each other.

Then Sirius picked up the hairbrush. “Here, let me finish this for you.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, turn around.”

Remus turned his back to Sirius and felt him gently combing through Remus's damp hair, working through the tangles.

The sleeping bags whispered with the brush’s motion; Remus could hear the occasional drop of water patting onto them.

Outside, he could hear the rustle of the wind through the pine trees.

As Sirius worked, he reached up and touched the pendant again, stroking its smooth facets as it glinted in the light.

He knew he'd never take it off.

~~~~~~~~~

That night Remus lay awake for a long time, curled up on Sirius's chest as he slept, his arms wrapped loosely around Remus.

The cabin was dark and still around them, with only a faint rectangle of moonlight shining in through the outline of the doorway.

Remus touched his pendant, thinking for the first time about his angel — really thinking about him, instead of just slamming a door on the idea the second it came to mind.

He remembered the feeling of flying, of seeing the desert turn and dip around him as he swooped through the air.

Sirius had told him that full-blooded angels couldn’t take on both a human and angel form at the same time, but it seemed like Remus could.

His human form had remained while his angel one flew above, taking his consciousness with it.

So far, he had emerged while Remus slept and while other angels were around, if Remus needed him.

Apart from that, where was he? Somewhere inside him?

Remus felt a stirring of curiosity.

Sirius had once suggested that Remus try to contact him.

Could he? Did he even want to?

Maybe, he thought tentatively.

The cabin was very still around him.

Sirius's breathing was slow, steady, his chest warm under the circle of Remus's arm.

Remus closed his eyes.

Hardly knowing where to begin, he took a breath to relax himself and then started drifting, searching.

Hello? He thought. Are you there?

Faintly, he became aware of a flicker of energy deep within: a small, crystalline fire that pulsed with a heartbeat of its own.

In his mind, he drew forward.

The light sparked like a diamond on black velvet.

He felt a swirl of energy, one that explored him even as he explored it.

A jolt of recognition; Remus smiled in wonder.

The energy was so like his own, but different, more charged: a shining rush of power that knew and welcomed him.

Suddenly all Remus wanted was to be in the light.

He moved forward, and it grew stronger; it dazzled his eyes but didn’t hurt them.

He let it envelop him, and there was an explosion of brightness, like sunshine in a crystal cave.

Its energy swept through him, almost making him laugh with joy.

He felt its pulse become his own.

And then Remus saw him, so clearly in his mind’s eye: the angel with his face.

He stood gazing at him, his shining robes falling from his shoulders, and Remus thought dazedly, Sirius is right.

He is beautiful — because this serene face held such a pure, deep beauty that Remus felt his throat catch.

He had no halo, and his bright wings were spread out behind him, moving gently, flashing like sunshine on water.

His hair fell loosely on his forehead, like Remus's often did.

His eyes shone; Remus could feel his love cradling him as they regarded each other.

Remus never knew.

All his life, there had been this whole other part of who he was, and he had never even realized it was there.

Suddenly Remus knew that he could simply shift his consciousness into his angels if he wanted to.

Remus would still be himself, but he would be the angel as well.

They were two; they were one.

He was the twin Remus had never known, there for Remus whenever he might need him.

The knowledge glowed like a small ember inside of Remus.

But not yet. For now, this felt like enough — just to know that he was there and that he wasn’t something to be afraid of.

Gently, Remus withdrew.

His angel smiled after him, understanding.

As Remus moved away, he faded and there was only the small, bright light — and then that, too, vanished as Remus brought his consciousness back to the cabin.

He opened his eyes.

The darkness of the small room, with its faint tinge of moonlight.

Remus was still lying in the sleeping bag in Sirius's arms, with his head nestled between Sirius's shoulder and chest.

Sirius felt so familiar, so safe.

Remus softly kissed his chest, hugging his waist.

He had known.

Somehow Sirius had known long before Remus had — the angel side of him wasn’t anything like the angel who had hurt his mother or the ones who had hurt Sirius's family.

He was a part of Remus; he could trust him just as much as he trusted himself.

For the first time since Remus found out what he really was, he felt the hard knot inside of him ease.

It was such a relief, like sinking into a warm bath on a chilly day.

He didn’t have to hate himself anymore.

He could just . . . be himself again, even though “himself” was so much more than what he'd once thought.

Sirius stirred, his embrace tightening around Remus.

They lay in each others’ arms, their breathing rising and falling at almost the same time.

Around them, the night was so still, so utterly peaceful.

Remus was a half angel — and for the first time, that seemed like something that might, just possibly, be OK.

~~~~~~~~

“We’re expecting at least sixty thousand people on the day,” said Severus. “I’ve arranged for security to help with crowd control, and we have permission to use the fields to the south of the cathedral for extra parking. I’ve gotten a team of devotees to help guide people in.”

He put a plan for the extended parking areas onto Voldemort's desk, pointing out the location.

“All the other details are coming together, too. We’re having a full dress rehearsal on Friday night, and then the flowers are being delivered early Saturday morning, and —”

Voldemort sat listening with his head propped onto his hand.

He was wearing dark pants and a crisp blue shirt open at the neck.

Idly, he picked up the plans and glanced at them, then tossed them back onto his desk.

“Fine, it all sounds like it’s in hand,” he said. “And what about the half angel? Is there any news?”

Severus had been dreading this question. “He. . . hasn’t been found yet.”

Irritation flickered across the angel’s face.

He tapped his silver letter opener against his desk.

“Yes, thank you, I’m aware of that. Almost a month now with nothing at all. Are you saying you have no updates?”

Stalling, Severus drew the parking plans back across the desk and put them with his other papers.

For a panicked moment, he wasn’t sure what to do — and then, his heart thudding, he told the truth.

“No, there was something this morning. One of the remote viewers thinks he’s close to finding them; he’s picked up the half angel’s energy in the Sierra Nevada. He just needs to pinpoint the exact location. A day or two at the most.”

Voldemort stared at him.

As always, Severus felt slightly dizzy looking into the angel’s eyes, though it had never really bothered him before.

Now his muscles tightened, and he glanced away.

“We finally have news, and you sat there prattling on about parking plans?” demanded Voldemort scathingly.

“I . . . ” Severus stopped, his cheeks hot.

“A day or two,” muttered the angel, running a finger along the letter opener’s blade. “Finally, we’re getting somewhere. All right, the instant their location is found, get someone out there to dispose of them, do you understand? The Second Wave will be here soon, and I want them both destroyed by then. Is that clear?”

Severus nodded, his fingers icy. “Yes, sir. I’ll make it happen.”

Voldemort dismissed him, and Severus went back to his own office, shutting the paneled wooden door behind him.

He sank down into his chair and buried his head in his hands.

It was true; the half angel was close to being found.

And when he was . . . Severus felt his stomach swing with dread.

He still didn’t know whether he had made the right decision