The Amulet

Hagrid’s hut was dark, but that didn’t stop Severus from pounding on the door.

“Hagrid!” He shouted. The hut was small. Where was that blasted man?

“Professor?” He heard the half-giant call out a few feet away from a corral. As he closed in on them, he started to explain why he wasn’t present in the hut. “Them nocturnal animals are awake ‘round this time, yeh see, and I was just takin’ me time feedin' em-”

Severus really didn’t care. “Is the Headmaster available,” he interrupted.

“Don’ know. Dumbledore might still be at the feast, though. I left early to tend the animals.”

The Potion Master nodded towards the wards, “Would you mind?”

Hagrid went back inside and pulled out a familiar umbrella. In the dark, no one else would have known what it was if they didn’t already know. The half-giant aimed to wave it at the ward stones, and they set off.

Lily and the boy were quiet. She was probably cold and exhausted, and he knew the boy was too. They trekked slowly up the hill to the entrance, and students littered the halls but quieted when they saw them. A few ran away, probably to warn a staff member, and Severus grabbed Lily’s elbow to lead her away to the Headmaster’s Tower. He whispered the password he recalled hearing earlier that day and went up the stairs taking two steps at a time, Lily following solemnly behind.

Dumbledore may not have noticed Lily because he warmly called out, “Severus! I see you managed to dislodge the sword.”

Severus mentally backtracked. “Er, yes, Dumbledore. The goblins assisted, but I must insist we speak about this another time.” He stepped aside to show Lily was behind him. “Your plan didn’t work! You were supposed to keep her safe!”

Lily’s green eyes shot between the two men in confusion.

“I see that you have done the job splendidly.”

“I have not!” Severus wasn’t sure why he was angry, probably because The Dark Lord was seconds from killing Lily and the boy as well. “The Dark Lord was already there and killed Potter.”

Dumbledore’s saddened expression didn’t deter Severus. “He almost killed Lily, but I managed to convince him not to.”

There was a hard glint in Dumbledore’s blue eyes before it softened when he looked at the sorting hat in the display case. He sighed. “And how have you done this?”

Severus paled. He knew what his actions looked like to an outsider, it was an invasion of rights. The spy didn’t speak to the family beforehand, before he made Lily and Potter’s son his own. He wished Lily wasn’t present to hear this and feared the hatred she would feel towards him if she did, but she was here, and there was nothing he could do about it. He saved everyone he could, the Dark Lord was defeated. His conscience was clear… somewhat.

“Well, I-,” he began, browsing through his memories, trying to gauge which part was a good place to start. “The Dark Lord summoned me to the Lestrange estate, and it looked like some sort of party with intentions of holding a ritual at the end.”

That piqued Dumbledore’s interest, and Severus fought against pursuing his curiosity to figure out why. “I didn’t attend the ritual, so I was uncertain if there were any lives to save.”

The boy began to fuss behind him, and Lily manoeuvred herself around him and sat herself at the armchair across from Dumbledore’s desk and scooted it until she was facing the spy. She discreetly nursed his son and blurred her chest with a concealment charm to give her a semblance of privacy. She stared him down as if in challenge, and Severus blushed and looked away, trying to remember what he last said. “I stumbled upon the Dark Lord and another follower, I hadn’t seen him around before so I assumed he was new. He told the Dark Lord the Potter address and myself as a bystander.”

There was an odd look in Dumbledore’s eyes, and Severus couldn’t help but explain his suspicions further. “Dumbledore, you must see, this day has been very strange. It was as if I drank liquid luck and happened to be in the right place at the right time.”

“Did you?” asked the aged man.

“What?” Severus stood rigid, confused. “No! If anything, I haven’t drunk anything all day. As lucky as these occurrences are, it’s been an overall trying day.” He let out a long breath to relieve some of his tension and began his tale again. “The follower was an Animagus. He turned into a rat and disapparated with the Dark Lord.”

He heard Lily gasp and turned to face her again but quickly looked away when he was reminded why he decided not to in the first place, “Peter!” Exclaimed Lily.

Peter? What a common name.

Dumbledore spoke next, “Ah, it was Peter Pettigrew who was your secret keeper, not Sirius Black.”

Peter Pettigrew. Pettigrew? The marauder?

“We planned for Sirius to be our Secret Keeper, but he convinced us it was too obvious of a choice, and we were better off with Peter instead.” Lily’s voice sounded angry.

“I see.”

Glad the old man did because he didn’t. Black’s reasoning didn’t make any sense. He thought as he stared at the trinkets that hung on the wall to his left.

“So, you arrived at Potter Cottage?”

He supposed that was his cue from Dumbledore to continue. “Actually, no.”

“No?”

“Even though I had the address, I didn’t actually know where it was, only the general area, and the numbers skipped randomly and weren’t in sequence.” Severus’s ear tinged pink embarrassed to admit that he was a bit lost in the beginning.

“Yes, that is true. I’m familiar with the area.” The older man took no notice.

“Some time passed when I finally arrived at the cottage, and I had to circle the home because I couldn’t find the door. By the time I arrived, Potter was already dead, and I could hear the Dark Lord talking the floor above me.”

Dumbledore summoned a tea set and began serving it once it was prepared. “Then you faced the Dark Lord.”

Severus recoiled. “Not like that. I didn’t brandish the sword and fight against him. I wasn’t a hero.”

Dumbledore’s lips curved into a smile. “No?”

“No!” Severus paced, “I used all of my cunning to convince the Dark Lord that the boy was my son, that there was no way that I defied him any amount of time because I was his loyal servant.”

“And? Did you manage to convince him?”

Severus's steps slowed to a halt. He glanced at Lily’s patient green eyes, and his heart clenched uneasily. “Not at first,” he looked down and slowly took a few steps as if continuing where he left off in his pace before stopping again. “I didn’t have to.”

He was hesitant to say more, and there was a long silence before Dumbledore egged him on.

“What do you mean?”

“I-,” Severus looked back at Lily, hand up as if trying to explain, then he looked at Dumbledore’s blue eyes instead and decided to continue his tale as if Lily didn’t exist. “Dumbledore, I must remind you that today has been a very odd day.”

“It has been as you said,” blue eyes twinkled, and he offered Severus a cup, who gratefully took it, spelled it to cool, and drank it all in one gulp.

He spelled water into it before drinking it again and set the cup back down on its saucer. “Thank you.”

Dumbledore nodded.

“I made the boy into my heir.” He managed to fumble out, but before the silence could settle, he filled it. “I have an amulet that I retrieved from the Prince vault, and it’s been said to protect the heirs from all curses.”

“All curses?” Dumbledore asked.

“Yes, as you can see, even the killing curse.” Severus was nervous about this part. “It wasn’t enough for the boy to be heir in title, the amulet needed the heir to be in blood.”

Lily shifted, and Severus's eyes widened in panic but stayed glued to Dumbledore’s.

“In blood, you say?” The older man grabbed a sweet from a tray on his desk and slowly unwrapped it to pop into his mouth, leaning back in a relaxed manner and crossing his ankles. “Entirely?”

The question threw him off guard. “I have no idea. He could be entirely mine, I don’t know if the spell worked correctly.”

“Well, if it is as you feared, then you would have cast an advanced cloning spell.”

Severus could see Lily from his peripheral manoeuvring the babe, so she could see his face. “He still has my eyes.”

That’s right. He’d forgotten the boy had her eyes, what an odd thing to forget.

Dumbledore smiled, eyes twinkling. “There you have it. He still has her eyes. Not a cloning spell then.”

“But Harry looks different.” Lily's soft voice continued.

Harry. The boy’s name was Harry.

Severus didn’t have time to feel the warmth that he finally knew his son’s name when Lily raised her voice, “What did you do to my son?”

Severus winced at her tone and decided to not look at either of them and instead at the floor. He spoke clearly and audibly. He didn’t want to repeat his words. “I offered the Dark Lord the boy- Harry,” he corrected, “and turned around and hid the blood ritual I started, then I placed the amulet over his head and placed him on the floor.”

Two separate voices spoke at once.

“You did what?!”

“And the ritual was instantaneous?”

Severus settled on responding to Dumbledore’s question. “It took effect immediately. The amulet didn’t even reject him.”

“I’ve never heard of such a ritual.” The aged man stroked his long beard in thought.

“So what does that mean?” Lily demanded, jostling the boy as she stood up.

Severus refused to look at her as she neared, but he mumbled an “I don’t know.”

Dumbledore cleared his throat. “Lily, if I may?” He stood up, walked over to her, and faced the now sleeping toddler. He identified the chain around the babe’s neck and tugged it until it exposed the amulet. Just as he saw it, he dropped the chain immediately and stepped away. “Oh!”

“Oh?” Lily stepped away to look at Harry. She reached for the amulet, which was inactive and cool to her touch. “What is it?”

“It’s alchemy.” Dumbledore stood posed in front of the boy, examining the medallion from afar. “Complicated work. Looks to also be enchanted.”

Severus stepped forward in interest to see as well. Alchemy?

“I never expected to see a Philosopher’s Stone so many times in my life.”

The Philosopher’s Stone? Why did that sound so familiar?

“The enchantment embedded within it is new,” Dumbledore waved his wand and traced the amulet until parchment and quill appeared and scribbled its findings. “Interesting, yes. Did you have the amulet all day?”

“I did, yes.” He gave Dumbledore a side glance before reading the parchment himself and noticing some of the ingredients looked familiar. His recent years finishing his Potion Mastery leapt to his mind. The ingredients listed on the paper looked more familiar as the list went on. “Felix Felicis.”

“I thought so too. Everlasting, it looks like, when imbued with the stone.” Dumbledore cleared his throat and faced the man beside him. “Severus, as descriptive as your tale was, memories-“

“Of course,” he should have remembered. Any encounter he had with the Dark Lord was often recorded in the pensieve. Why would his death be any different? He pulled out his wand and placed the tip to his temple, focusing on the memories of the Lestrange Estate and Potter Cottage before siphoning the memories magically out of his mind, he flicked the wispy blue tendrils into a vial Dumbledore extended towards him and watched as the older man stoppered it before walking away, he moved to follow, but a hand to his arm stopped him. He met Lily’s unrelenting expression.

“Where’s he going?”

It didn’t take much for Severus to become a stuttering mess around Lily. Especially after such a long time of no exposure. He erected his occlumency walls and regulated his breathing. “To view my memories of tonight.”

“Your memories?” She scoffed. “Of course, magic. Well, I’m coming too!.”

Severus waved her ahead of him, and they both followed the Headmaster.

TBC...