Doppelgänger

Severus Snape was at his house on Spinner’s End, laying on his sofa, reading a book. The room he was in wasn’t too big. It was an open space connected to the hallway of the main entrance door. The floor was made of dark wood and the walls were white. The sofa made of black fabric, faced the window on the wall, next to the fireplace and opposite the door. On the other side the window you could see a sort of clearing next to the house.

There were two wooden bookshelves that matched the floor, one on each side of the sofa. Both were filled with different types of books. Their subjects ranged from magic to muggle science and fiction. They were placed in no apparent order.

Just when Severus was starting to relax, a burning sensation came to his left forearm. The potion master rolled the sleeve of his grey shirt and examined the pained limb. For a few seconds he stayed there, looking at the faded tattoo with a mixture of horror and disbelief.

When the pain (not as intense as it used to be ten years ago, but just as persistent) diminished a bit, Snape came back to himself. He stood up quickly and rushed to the fireplace. Then he took a handful of floo powder from the recipient over the chimney and threw it to a dying fire to call the headmaster’s office. Not wasting time in waiting for a response, he turned his back to the fireplace and went to the sofa. He pushed it away. Next thing, Severus drew out his wand and started a sequence of intricated movements while muttering a chant under his breath, probably in Latin. Three wood boards directly in front of his feet glowed white. Then the light faded. Crouching down and feeling the floor with his hand, the potion master found the loose board he was looking for. He took it out, revealing a hole under the floor. From there, he fished his black robe and metal mask. The he turned around just in time to find Dumbledore’s face on his fireplace.

“Severus, how are you?”

The professor ignored all etiquette and formalities.

“He is calling me.” The face Albus was making would’ve been hilarious at any other time, but right then, knowing he was going to face one of the worst sadists in history, Severus had no desire to laugh. He addressed the old man once again. “I’ll report to you at Howarts as soon as the meeting is over.” And he left.

For hours, Dumbledore knew nothing more, until Severus showed up in his office just as he had promised.

The potion master’s face was expressionless. The headmaster recurred to Legilimency to see the feelings of his spy. What he found there was a vague worry for Harry, mainly related to his vow to protect him and the risk to break it. Albus didn’t comment on it, he expected nothing better from the man in front of him.

However, there was also an evident feeling of danger.

“What did you find out, Severus?”, asked the old man.

“He will go after him,” he answered. “The Dark Lord wants Potter. He wants to take him to Riddle Manor in order to use his blood on a ritual that will give him his body back.”

Dumbledore was listening to his spy with a hard and pensive expression on his face, elbows resting on his desk and the fingers of his hands laced together in front of his nose. Now they knew Voldemort’s plan…

“Are you the only one tasked to do that?”, inquired the headmaster, contemplating their possibilities.

“No,” said Severus with a monotonous tone. “There were three other Death Eaters on the meeting. However, I ignore their identities.”

Albus looked him in the eyes sternly, subtly using Legilimency once more to confirm the veracity of what was being told.

Severus felt again the intrusion on his mind and again he used all his knowledge an ability on Occlumency to stealthily send his true thoughts to the back of his mind, leaving on the surface what he wanted the headmaster to see. He didn’t care about Barty Crouch Jr. nor the unknown figure that was with them, but he wouldn’t risk Lucius’s identity.

And his feelings about Harry and the possible kidnapping… it would be no good giving the old man a new element to coerce him into whatever he wanted.

Dumbledore, for his part, felt as if he had reached a dead end. Having checked that what Snape had told him was true, the headmaster started looking for alternatives. The blood wards Lily had left would only be effective against Death Eaters trying to get to Harry while he was on the Dursley’s house, but if Voldemort used the boy’s blood, then the protections would be rendered useless.

And even with the shields still up, one foot outside of the Dursley’s property and Harry Potter would be easy prey for Voldemort’s followers.

They could try and take Harry to another place the Death Eaters didn’t know about, but that would only be taking him away from the blood protections and exposing the child more.

Even if they knew the identities of the possible kidnappers (other than Snape), it would be easy for Voldemort to simply replace them.

Also, there was the matter of choosing a plan that wouldn’t make obvious the fact that they had someone infiltrating the small group that had met.

“I’ll send a message to the muggles,” concluded Dumbledore. “I’ll tell them to prevent Harry from leaving the house as much as they can unless it’s unavoidable, and to not let him out of their sight. I will communicate with Arabella, too. I’ll ask her to be especially vigilant of young Potter. Beyond that, I don’t see much we can do.” Severus didn’t say anything, he didn’t allow any emotion to show on his face either. He understood that his position as a spy could be compromise, but couldn’t they bring the boy here, to Howarts? The thing the headmaster was going to do weren’t even precautions, much less solutions… The potion master saw Albus open one of his desk’s drawers, take out a little marble figurine of an owl and give it to him. “If Voldemort puts his plan into motion and you see yourself in the situation of abducting Potter, press on the right ear of this owl. It will teleport itself directly to me, so I will be alerted. Then I’ll gather the Order and will rescue Harry from Riddle Manor.”

Severus didn’t answer, just nodded accepting the figurine and left.

Days later, just as Severus had predicted, Dumbledore measures proved themselves incapables of preventing the kidnapping. And really, he knew that Petunia was despicable and probably held a strong resentment towards the boy, but couldn’t she, at the very least, watch Harry walk until he reached Mrs. Figg’s house? Death Eaters weren’t the only dangerous thing out there and the child was only eleven!

However… Severus had to corral the boy alongside Barty and Lucius while whoever-the-other-man-was (because the genre was all he could recognize) stayed with Quirrel preparing the potion and the ritual.

The professor saw how Barty, the deranged man, stunned the child. Lucius was the one who carried him.

Seriously no one was going to call the police? Maybe there were some spells that made them undetectable for normal sight, but sure ‘someone’ noticed a boy walking down the street and suddenly disappearing!

Moments later, Severus found himself standing on the Riddles’s private mausoleum.

They carried Harry to the center, where a statue of what could only be described as an angel of death guarded an old grave. There were Quirrel and his anonymous helper.

Lucius deposited Harry on the floor next to the cauldron for the ritual. Incarcerous was casted and the child was completely immobilized. Lastly and for Severus’s repulsion, the unknown figure pointed his wand to the boy and reanimated him.

It was extremely difficult for Snape to keep his façade and to not react upon seeing the scared and frenetic movements of the child when he awoke only to find himself tied up in a place he couldn’t recognize. He watched the boy paralyze and pale as he noticed the dark cloaked and masked figures surrounding him, but he also saw him put on a defiant look on his face when he recognized Quirrel among them.

Harry started questioning his former professor, asking where he was and why he had been brought there, while trying to disguise the fear in his voice. It was Voldemort who answered, too happy to inform the child of his role in helping the Dark Lord to recover his body.

Severus could only hope the Order was fast enough to rescue Harry and prevent the return of Voldemort. Times like these were the ones that always made him feel powerless. If it wasn’t for those damned vows, if only he had known better years ago…

The necessary elements were all inside the cauldron. The blood was all that was left. The potion master watched motionless while the anonymous man approached Harry with a knife, putting special effort on leaving a nasty scar on the boy’s left forearm with a large and painful cut. His heart constricted in his chest hearing the child screaming.

Seconds later, the blood was added to the potion and Quirrel entered the cauldron. From it emerged two people. First, there was Quirrel who came up stumbling and joined them They all knelt and lowered their heads in respect while the second figure raised, uglier and nastier than any of them had remembered. The sickly grey skin and the bald head gave the “man” the appearance of a burned corpse. The mouth without lips and the nose, barely a protuberance with two thin holes in the middle of that face, gave the wizard a snake-like appearance. And the eyes… they were a brilliant and uneasy blood-red.

The figure approached the knelling men. The unknown Death Eater searched between his robes with the arm he had left and pulled out the Dark Lord’s wand. Voldemort took it and then walked to the tied child.

Severus had to use all his willpower and the best of his Occlumency abilities in order to keep his face expressionless and his breath even while he watched Lord Voldemort come back with all his power, recover his wand and, even worse, advance toward Lily’s son. His brain was blocking out most of Voldemort’s speech when…

“… but now. I. Can. Touch you,” said Voldemort while putting a claw-like finger on the boy’s forehead. The child howled in pain like a wounded animal.

Suddenly Voldemort jumped backwards, dodging a spell that didn’t get to harm him but successfully putted distance between the Dark Lord and The-Boy-Who-Lived(-Again).

Stray spells were flying in all direction. The Order of the Phoenix had finally arrived and they outnumbered the group of Death Eaters, that were soon called to retreat.

Severus disappareted back to Spinner’s End and basically collapsed on the sofa. He didn’t even bother to remove his Death Eater clothes; he knew he would be called again shortly for a Cruciatus session as punishment for being caught and losing Harry Potter.

As predicted, twenty minutes later he was kneeling at Voldemort’s feet, who was seating on a marble throne in the middle of Nott Manor (apparently, Lord Nott had not been fast enough to apologize for not looking for his master, but after a swift and surely painful punishment the man had been given the “honor” of hosting his lord in his home).

Sooner rather than later, the potion master found himself under the effects of the Torture Curse matched with a long and tedious speech from Voldemort on how much Severus had disappointed him. Snape gritted his teeth, focusing his magic on his Occlumency shields to prevent the annoyance, rage, and pure loathing he was feeling from being seen.

The curse hurt more than everything and anything Severus had ever knew, but even after all those without years the Dark Lord, he still was used to it.

‘Like riding a bike…’

That thought amused and disturbed the potion master in equal measure.

When the punishment ended Severus stood, making himself sure of looking weakened, and proceeded to apologize to his “master” and thank him for the “swiftness” of his consequences, all the while cursing in the back of his mind. That kind of humiliation were always nauseating.

He disappareted back to his house where he got rid of those awful robes and spiteful mask, leaving them on the floor without any care. The he rose an arm, summoning a vial of anti-cruciatus potion to his hand. He drank it in one gulp, waited until his body stopped shaking and went upstairs to hi room where he proceeded to slump on his bed.

Inside the Room of Requirements at Howarts school, enormous piles of different trinkets and artifacts formed a huge labyrinth.

One of the piles lost balance due to a sudden addition of weight and fell causing an avalanche that knocked the next stack and the following one.

To be fair, that mess didn’t make much of a difference to the room, not compared to its previous state.

The sea of objects started to move and suddenly a hand emerged to the surface. A second arm followed the first one and so a black-haired man with brown eyes and pale skin, made his way out of the flood of things. Shifting until he made himself free, the guy stumbled and nearly fell flat on his face (not that anyone would ever find out… Ever).

The man dressed in navy-blue robes with dark brown dress shoes, brushed some dust off his clothes, straightened his posture and left the Room.