Chapter 1
Severus shifts uncomfortably on the hard wooden pew, reaching up a hand to subtly unbutton the top of his white button-down while resisting the ever-growing urge to cast a damned cooling charm. But if his suspected mark hasn’t been alerted by his mere presence already, even a simple charm would surely give him away.
Upon Albus’s request, naturally, Severus has spent the entire summer tracking down the most illusive black market potions’ mistress in the last two hundred years, who has just recently been making quite the splash with the production of more… unsavory brews, to put it politely. Given the Dark Lord’s return, it makes sense— people just want to protect themselves. However, letting anyone that catches the insane snake’s attention roam free, someone of this caliber of talent especially, is far too dangerous.
To his surprise, Severus’s hunt has led him to America. A seemingly forgotten muggle town deep in the South, to be exact. But where Severus expected to find a wrinkled crone at the center of this mystery, he found Josephine Good.
Miss Josephine Good, who by the looks of her can’t be anymore but seventeen, sitting in a dry-rotting Methodist chapel in the middle of nowhere on this hellaciously warm Sunday afternoon.
Most mysterious indeed.
Severus has the perfect view from the back pew. The young woman is currently fanning herself with some flimsy pamphlet in a futile attempt to stave off the sweltering heat, dark brown tendrils that have escaped their pins whisping around her face as her mouth shapes softly around the words of a somehow gloomy and upbeat hymn floating up to the rafters.
Severus began to doubt that she could be the one he sought as he watches her mingle after the service’s end. For how could it possibly be that the Dark Lady, the Phantom Mistress, the infamous Black Belle is this (admittedly enchanting) young woman? Drifting around a plain muggle church with a gentle smile on her lips, the creamy white linen of her dress fluttering just above delicate ankles as she grasps hands with elderly townsfolk… How could he possibly have gotten this so wrong?
Distracted by such nagging thoughts, he slips and catches her eye for a fleeting moment— a split second— but he sees it, then. Just a glimpse, a sharp flash of knowing in her mossy green gaze that slices, however briefly, through that demure facade before it is gone again.
Severus raises a brow.
Perhaps all is not lost, after all.
***
The moon is high when Josephine trudges down the stairs and out the front door to begin her stake-out, the balmy summer air thick with the scent of wild honeysuckle vines that cling to the old wood columns of the deep-set porch. With a deep breath, she attempts to still the running list of orders she should be working on, a constant clutter in her mind, and wills herself to focus.
She knows he’ll come.
Such a strange man… she ponders as she props herself against the screen door.
Unfathomably dark eyes, tall and tastefully muscular, acceptably older with a striking magical power that caressed against her own from across the chapel before she even laid eyes on him— just her type, really. What a shame her type only seemed to spell trouble.
And trouble she cannot afford, even if she were so inclined.
She peers steadily into the tree line as time drags by, a foreboding dread gnawing at the pit of her stomach. Finally, he takes shape from the shadows, following the well-worn pathway with a measured, silent stride and her every muscle tenses as she waits to show herself. It’s a gamble whether she ought to be relieved or daunted by the fact that he hasn’t yet bothered to draw his wand.
“That’s far enough, Mister,” Josephine warns steadily despite her heart thundering in her ears. Stepping from her own shadows, she points her wand directly to the center of his broad chest.
Severus freezes on the last step and meets her determined gaze. The t-shirt hanging loosely from her form might as well be armor the way she is standing, her entire body relaxed but steady and poised for attack.
Gone was the smiling young witch in her white linens.
“Are you not going to invite me in?” He finally asks in a low, silky voice, shattering the charged silence. “Hardly the Southern hospitality I’ve heard so much of.”
In any other scenario, that voice surely would have done her in.
But, as it is—
“Only the devil comes knocking after midnight,” she murmurs, instantly irritated by the slightest smirk tugging at the man’s mouth.
“What is the saying, ‘Judge not lest ye be judged?’”
“Clever. Did you learn that just this morning?” She quips.
“I’ve come an awfully long way to speak with you, Miss Good,” he replies, fully smirking now. “Here, I thought Christians were supposed to be charitable, as a rule.”
“I’m not religious. Now I think it’s time you leave before we have a real problem.”
His expression sobers, then. “Forgive me, Miss. I mean you no harm,” he says sincerely.
“Clearly,” she replies, nodding her head to the sigil etched into the wooden column to his left. “But I can feel what you are. And it’s hardly reassuring, given the times we’re in.”
Severus felt the sigil’s magic when he approached the house— old magic one scarcely sees these days, given its history. His gaze flits from the marking back to her.
Quite the bold little witch, this one, he muses to himself.
“As if you are a stranger to the darker arts.”
Josephine bristles at that. “The old ways aren’t dark. They just are.”
Severus risks a step forward onto the porch. “And what do you know of the old ways, Miss Good?” He asks derisively.
“Leave!” She commands, preparing to strike first.
Neither of them move a muscle as they scrutinize one another, clearly sizing each other up as the silence stretches.
“Albus Dumbledore sent me to find you,” Severus finally says. “Before the Death Eaters do. Though I wasn’t expecting… Well.”
“Albus Dumbledore sent you?” She asks, raising a skeptical brow. Severus merely replies with a matching one.
“Well tell him his concern is appreciated but unwarranted,” She continues stubbornly. “I can handle my own.”
Suddenly, Severus flashes forward in a blur, Josephine’s impressively quick hex merely slicing across his cheek before he has her pinned against the wall behind her. She gasps as one hand restrains her wand hand while the other clutches her slender throat with a firm but gentle grip.
“You cannot handle this, little witch. Though I do not doubt you are otherwise quite capable,” he murmurs lowly, his face drawn close to hers as he meets her narrowed gaze, a brilliant anger now flashing in their depths.
Lovely, he thinks before swiftly dashing the thought.
“They will come,” He continues, attempting to ignore the warm flutter of her pulse beneath his hand, or her panting breaths stoking the sharp sting of his now bloodied cheek. “And they will not ask as nicely as I am now.”
Josephine feels as if her heart might lunge right out of her chest. From fear, yes— but a heady scent, his scent, is swirling in the thick air now, the threat of his words stirring something deep within her as his warm hands restrain her with ease, and she can’t help but mentally kick herself— hard— as the oh-so-fleeting wish that he would squeeze her neck just a little harder flits across her mind.
Dear fuck, what is wrong with me? Focus!!!
He can practically see her processing his words, and he slowly lets her go as a reluctant acceptance settles across her disgruntled expression. With a sudden flare of anger, her small hands press against his chest as soon as he releases her, shoving at him with all her might. While an ineffective yet valiant effort, he nonetheless takes a respectful step back.
“Fucking hell,” she mutters, her chest heaving as she glares at him. Finally, she rolls her eyes with a heavy sigh before whirling around to the front door. “Well, are you coming in or what?”
***