FIC: Into the Fold, Chapter Eleven
Title: Into the Fold
Author: Pasi
Category: Gen
Rating: 15
Summary for the Fic: Severus Snape is going straight to hell. The people he calls his friends are helping him get there.
Summary for Chapter Eleven: It's a risky business for Lucius Malfoy when Severus Snape meets Lord Voldemort.
A/N: Many, many thanks to my betas, Anne, Lyras and Panamdea, who, if you can believe it, have slogged through 50,000 words of Into the Fold.
****
Chapter Index
Chapter Eleven: Lord Voldemort
Autumn, 1979
****
Severus needn't have worried about leaving his mother at home while he went to Malfoy Manor for the weekend. Narcissa Malfoy had invited Mother for an afternoon of shopping on the Saturday, followed by dinner and a concert.
"The Norn Trio, Severus!" Mother enthused. "I don't know where Narcissa got the tickets, or how much they must have cost!" She hesitated. "Or what I'm going to wear. I haven't been to an affair like that in ages."
"Buy yourself something while you're out with Narcissa," said Severus, pressing a few Galleons into her hand. "There's some extra money this month," he added, seeing the worry in her eyes. "They may have worked me like a house-elf at St Mungo's, but they had to pay me like a wizard."
Mother's hand closed over the gold and her worried look changed to one of guilty yearning. Unable to face her, Severus turned away.
"I'll see you Sunday," he said and slipped out the front door into Linden Lane. From there he walked quickly to the public Floo stop, and, by a circuitous route which included a brief fireplace-view into the boardroom at St Mungo's Hospital, he Flooed to the fireplace in the cavernous hallway of Malfoy Manor.
****
When Severus stepped out of the fireplace, Lucius was there, waiting for him. He seemed tense, bowstring-taut, and his eyes darted about, over Severus's shoulder, into the shadowed corners of the hall, as if he suspected something frightening might have followed Severus into his home.
"We're alone. Except for him. He's here." Lucius jerked his chin toward a door at the end of the hall, behind which, as Severus remembered, lay his study. "In there."
Severus hesitated. The hallway was a very old part of the manor house, with narrow windows that seemed to block more light than they let in. That gleam of sweat on Lucius's face might exist only in his imagination.
"Are you all right?" asked Severus.
"Oh, never better!" Lucius said, but the brightness in his smile did not reach his eyes. They went to the study door and stopped. Lucius did not lift his hand to the doorknob.
"You'll find him--different," said Lucius softly. "I should warn you, so that you won't be too startled when you see him for the first time. In the pursuit of the Dark Arts, he has altered himself."
Severus had read some bizarre accounts in the Prophet, from people who claimed to have seen Voldemort at close quarters. Was Lucius trying to tell him those people weren't as mad as they had seemed?
The idea was fascinating, another throwback to the ancient wizards who had stumbled upon mutating curses in their search for immortality. Severus certainly wasn't going to let it stop him from meeting Voldemort.
He shrugged. "I'm an Apothecary at St Mungo's Hospital. I've seen plenty of people whose bodies have been ruined through magic."
"Very good. Though I do advise you not to tell the Dark Lord he's ruined himself."
Lucius opened the door and they entered the study. Severus had been here before, after Olaus Ruskin's death, yet the air of sophisticated luxury exuded by rubbed leather, gleaming rosewood and tastefully muted wallpaper felt slightly alien to him. Like all the other rooms of Malfoy Manor, the study was so far from anything he had called home that he couldn't quite accept the invitation to comfort it extended to him. His body tightened defensively, almost against his will.
And yet, even though this was his own home, Lucius looked no more relaxed than Severus felt. As he gazed at the back of a wing chair facing the fireplace, his features assumed an expression of wary respect.
The curtains were drawn against the daylight, the fire was low and only a couple of candles burned on the sideboard. And so for one moment it looked to Severus as though a dark cloud billowed from the chair. In the next moment, he realised it was the swirling of black robes as a wizard got to his feet.
He was a tall man, very thin, with sparse black hair that looked as brittle as dry straw. When he turned, Severus saw that Lucius was right: Lord Voldemort did seem--altered. It was as if his face were a wax mask that had come too close to flame and had subtly, disturbingly melted and stretched. His lips were practically nonexistent. His nose was inhumanly flat, with narrow nostrils like knife cuts.
Severus might have thought him the victim of some inherited deformity, if it were not for his eyes. Voldemort's eyes were nothing that nature, no matter how cruel and capricious, could have given him. Like his nostrils, there was something snakelike about Voldemort's slitted pupils. But Severus was not afraid of snakes. What he might find troubling, if he gave himself time to think about it, was the way the red of the irises leaked like blood into the whites of Voldemort's eyes, the way those eyes, instead of looking like a pair of bloodily-gouged wounds, shone with a cold intelligence.
But all Severus thought then, as he stared into them, was that Voldemort's eyes looked right.
"You are Severus Snape?"
Voldemort's voice was as cold as his eyes, and, though Severus persisted in thinking of him as a wizard, his voice was almost too high to be accounted male.
Voldemort raised his thin eyebrows questioningly. How long had Severus been gawping at him? "Yes," he answered hurriedly.
"Good." Voldemort turned to Lucius. "Leave us. If I need you, I will call."
Lucius bowed, which to Severus was another startling sight. "Yes, my lord."
"Sit down, please," Voldemort said after Lucius had left, and Severus took the chair beside him, facing the fire. "Brandy," he said, gesturing with a long, pale hand at the decanter on the side table between them, and Severus poured into a glass a very small amount for himself. There was a second empty glass, but Voldemort did not take anything to drink.
For a few moments, they neither spoke nor looked into each other's faces (though Severus stole entirely uninformative glances at Voldemort's gaunt, pale profile). Then Voldemort suddenly turned to look Severus straight in the eye.
"What would you like to know about us?" he asked.
Severus felt something within him instinctively shrink back. "I beg your pardon?" he said.
"You are not a pure-blood, nor did I permit Lucius to tell you much about me and my Death Eaters. But nevertheless you have decided to come. So what would you like to know?"
Severus thought. In school he had sometimes wanted very much to learn more about this dark Freemasonry, around which had swirled so many hints and allusions, for which many of the sons and daughters of illustrious pure-blood families with roots in Slytherin House were rumoured to be destined once they left school. Then had come the end of school and the beginning of adulthood, with its concerns of qualifying as an Apothecary and getting a job. Severus had forgotten about the Death Eaters until a Ministry dementor had Kissed the Death Eater Olaus Ruskin before his eyes.
But now that Severus thought about it, Lucius had taken specific opportunities even before that to drop hints about his own sympathies with the Death Eaters, as if he believed that Severus was something more than the son of a witch who had disgraced herself with a Muggle mill worker.
Had Lucius been instructed to consider the possibility? Looking into eyes that shone like fresh blood, Severus wondered.
Thus he replied to Voldemort's question with one of his own: "Why are you interested in me?"
Voldemort smiled. The teeth he revealed were few and impossibly narrow, like needles.
"That's easy," he said. "I'm interested in you because you are the very first person Lucius has seen fit to sponsor as a Death Eater."
To sponsor as a Death Eater. Lucius had never said the words. But really, why else was Severus here? Simply to chat with someone whom Lucius Malfoy went so far as to own as his lord, someone whom he so obviously feared?
If it came to that, why shouldn't Lucius sponsor Severus? Hadn't he as much to offer as any of those who were said to have joined the Death Eaters? To how many of them had he taught a Dark spell or two?
Except that, unlike them, he wasn't a pure-blood...
Voldemort had not taken his eyes off Severus. "It has piqued my interest, that Lucius should have finally stirred himself to recommend someone to me. And that, of all people, it should have been you."
Voldemort's tone of mild disbelief settled it. Severus wasn't a suitable candidate for the Death Eaters, probably because he wasn't a pure-blood--
"Why, I wonder, does Lucius believe that someone with so much Light magic in him could be of any use to me?"
Severus stopped in the middle of his mental dither. "And is that how Lucius advertised me to you?" he asked. "On the strength of my Light magic?"
Voldemort chuckled. "No. But I had to admire his gall. No one else has ever suggested to me that I ought to recruit a wizard who can conjure a Patronus."
Taking this in, Severus was silent. "You see that as a drawback," he said.
Shrugging lightly, Voldemort sat back. "You took Magical Theory in your seventh year at Hogwarts, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"Well," said Voldemort. "Dumbledore taught it in my day and Lucius says he's still teaching it now. So he must have told your class the same thing he told mine: that no purely Dark wizard can conjure a Patronus."
Was that it, then--you needed to be purely Dark in order to become a Death Eater? "Lucius has told you about Azkaban," said Severus.
"Yes," Voldemort said. "Azkaban. "Where you not only conjured a Patronus, but linked it with that of another in order to dispel fifty dementors."
"I can see where that may not recommend me to you."
Again Voldemort laughed softly. "Show me your Patronus," he said then.
Instinctively Severus shied away from the request. "I--what?"
"You heard me. I want to see your Patronus." Voldemort rose and stepped away from his chair to the centre of the room.
Severus rose too. Why not do as he was asked? He would conjure the Patronus, Voldemort would dismiss him, and that would be that. He hadn't really thought the wizard who could command Lucius Malfoy and Olaus Ruskin would want him around, had he?
It was just that he had not felt the same allure, in anyone or anything, since the time he had immersed himself in the Dark Arts, since he had stretched his mind and moulded his soul to create spells like Breath-taker, Firewhip and Sectumsempra.
Never mind. Severus cleared his head of the tangle of questions and doubts and let the space fill with happiness.
"Tuney's gone to Aunt Rose's for two weeks...."
Two weeks. Two weeks of summer, of long golden days and blue-tinted evenings. Or two solid weeks of mist and rain, who cares? It'll be two weeks free of the bony limbs, the shrill voice, the bitter envy of Lily's Muggle sister....
"Want to go to the playground, Lily?"
She does. She smiles, her green eyes alight, because she knows what they'll do. And soon they're doing it: soaring side-by-side on the playground swings, higher and higher. Just before touching the sky, they seize each other's hands and jump, flying clear of the swings, far above the asphalt, laughing, landing lightly at last on the little ribbon of rough, weedy grass between the asphalt and the chain-link fence.
Severus didn't need to speak the charm; he hardly needed to think it. He lifted his wand and from its tip sprang the silver doe.
Though it might earn him his dismissal from Voldemort's presence, though that dismissal might lose him all the benefits of Lucius's favour, Severus was proud of what he saw. This was no wispy vapour, but a fully-formed and precisely detailed Patronus: a doe, from the slender, strong limbs and graceful. compact body to the liquid, long-lashed eyes and the nose, tilted and twitching slightly as if scenting the wind.
The doe bounded once, turned and stopped short. She saw Voldemort, and the dew in her eyes turned to flame. She drew up, tense, her legs planted apart as if, Severus fancied, she were standing over a fawn.
Voldemort made no move for his wand. He fixed his cold and bloody eyes on the silver doe.
For a moment the doe stood her ground. Then she began to tremble. Head bowed, body crouching, she backed away, whirled and bolted for the furthest corner of Lucius's library. But before she reached that paltry shelter, Severus's Patronus shredded to misty fragments and disappeared.
His stomach knotting with fear, Severus stared into the shadowy corner that had seemed to swallow his Patronus. That's that, he thought. Lucius had said the only consequence for Severus's refusing Voldemort would be a modified memory. Unfortunately, he hadn't mentioned what would happen if it was Voldemort who rejected Severus.
"Congratulations," said Voldemort.
Severus turned. His lips curved in a half-smile, Voldemort was watching him intently.
"I'm impressed," said Voldemort. "You produce one of the most powerful and integrated Patronuses I have ever seen."
"Er--thank you," said Severus.
Voldemort laughed, a high-pitched, bone-chilling sound that died as quickly as it was born. "Who taught you that?" he asked.
"Pro--pr--" Why was Severus stammering? "Professor Dumbledore," he said firmly.
For the first time, Voldemort showed a spontaneous and unadulterated emotion. It was astonishment. "Professor Dumbledore! Do you mean to tell me you were still at school?"
"Yes."
"How old were you?" Voldemort asked.
"Seventeen."
"Seventeen. And under what circumstances would Professor Dumbledore teach a seventeen-year-old student how to conjure a Patronus?"
Severus hesitated. "Well--call it a detention."
"A detention. Tell me more."
"I can't. I'm sworn to secrecy."
Voldemort's eyes grew colder still and his smile disappeared. "You cannot keep secrets from me. Especially about Albus Dumbledore. Most especially, if you wish to join me."
With difficulty, Severus dragged his eyes away from Voldemort's distorted face. He looked at the corner into which his Patronus had disintegrated and thought that perhaps it was time to back out. "Lucius meant well, don't blame him, but I don't think we'd suit each other after all..."
No.
"But I must keep this secret." He was arguing with himself, as much as he was replying to Voldemort. "I've sworn an oath."
"To Dumbledore?" Voldemort asked.
"Yes," Severus whispered.
Then Severus felt a sudden painful, pounding pressure against his temples. He lifted his hand, but before he could touch his head, he felt it jerked around to face Voldemort, and the red, serpentine eyes stared into his own.
Severus felt his mind ransacked, thoughts, emotions and wisps of memory flung about like old clothes thrown from a drawer. The pressure against his head grew to agony, but he could make neither move nor sound to stop it. Then Voldemort's boring eyes and pale face drifted from his sight, like mist burned off by the morning sun. Now Severus could see nothing but a sword, upright as if held aloft, its hilt inlaid with rubies, its silver blade haloed with flame.
The pain and the vision disappeared, and Voldemort was merely looking at Severus again.
"I don't doubt it was Dumbledore," he said. "The oath has bonds around it which I can't break, at least, not without breaking your mind. Is it an Unbreakable Vow?"
"No," Severus said, rather shakily.
"Good. You know now that I am a Legilimens, so you will, I have no doubt, answer my next question honestly. Is there any possibility that your secret can do me harm?"
"None that I know of," said Severus.
Again Voldemort sifted through Severus's mind, and this time Dumbledore's sword did not come to his aid. Nor did Severus dare try to throw Voldemort off as he had Scrimgeour. Yet Severus was sure Voldemort didn't see all he might have, for he felt parts of his mind closing off, as if behind walls of dark stone.
Voldemort withdrew suddenly, startling Severus.
"You have a remarkable instinct for self-protection," he said thoughtfully. "I wonder that Dumbledore did not teach you Occlumency while he was about it."
"Really, I can't see how it could harm you--"
Voldemort lifted a hand. "I'm certain of that, or I would have probed further." He motioned toward the chairs. "Sit. Have another glass of brandy."
They sat, and this time Voldemort drank with Severus. The wine rose warmly to Severus's head, easing the dull ache Voldemort's Legilimency had left.
"I've told you why I was interested in meeting you," Voldemort said, looking into the fire. "Now you tell me: why are you here?"
Severus hesitated. The most honest answer would have been, "Because Lucius invited me." Before Lucius had invited him, he had never thought he would meet pure-blood wizardry's hero. At least, not on a friendly basis.
"I am sure you think there is something I can give you in return for your allegiance," Voldemort said, with a touch of amusement in his voice. "Most who come to me do."
Were there Legilimentes who knew what you were thinking even when you weren't looking at them?
"I can tell when you are lying," Voldemort said softly. "Even when you are lying to yourself. So why not tell the simple truth?"
Severus looked at the Dark Lord, at the terrifying He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. He saw nothing but a long, thin hand holding a glass and the tips of a nose and chin protruding beyond the wing of the armchair. He looked away again and, like Voldemort, gazed into the fire.
The silence, the comfort of his chair, the warmth of fire and wine all worked on Severus like a soothing enchantment. Whether Voldemort could ferret out his lies or not, why should he not, for once, speak what was truly in his heart? If there might be something Voldemort could give him, why not ask for it? Why else was he here?
"Freedom," said Severus softly. "I want freedom."
"Ah, of course," said Voldemort. "And what does freedom mean to you?"
"Money." Voldemort might have expected a more exalted reply, but that was the first thing that came to Severus's mind. "My father's done nothing but drink and lose money at cards since the mill closed, and my mother, I'm afraid...." He hesitated, not wishing to disparage Mother before a stranger. "She's ill. She can't be expected to deal with it. We've re-mortgaged the house to pay my father's debts, but I still have to scramble to pay the bills at the end of the month." Severus stopped. His babbling must sound so low and grasping. How could money matter to someone like Voldemort?
"Poverty." Voldemort's voice lent a strange weight to the word, as if he might actually understand what it meant. "It can bind like any chain; it can drag at the body, the mind and the spirit."
"I don't need much," said Severus quickly.
"Of course not. Just enough to live without worries. Enough to make your mother comfortable. That's all."
"Yes, that's all!" Severus said. Could it be? Did Voldemort really understand?
Severus gathered his courage. "I'm afraid of the Ministry," he said in a low voice. "Crouch. Reid. I spoiled their plan for using dementors on interrogations in Azkaban."
"You weren't the only one," said Voldemort. "There was Potter."
"What does the Ministry matter to Potter!" said Severus. "They won't take away his job, as if he even needed to work! Oh, I suppose I'm safe for now, Lucius pulled strings for me, but that doesn't mean they don't know!"
"About the Hidden Hellebore."
It was as well that Voldemort knew, since Severus had been about to blurt it out. "Yes," he said.
"I can tell you that you are not in danger of losing your job," Voldemort said. "Lucius has extracted promises from all the concerned parties, and the name of Malfoy, I assure you, wields a great deal of influence in the Ministry of Magic. For now." Voldemort paused. "There are subtler pressures which those you have angered could exert, however. They could block your advancement. You could be stooped over the cauldrons in the Potions and Physics Department of St Mungo's Hospital for many years to come."
He was right, of course. Reflecting on that bleak prospect, Severus said nothing.
"Maybe what you're really looking for is freedom from the blood hierarchy," Voldemort said musingly. "Take the Azkaban fiasco. If you were a pure-blood, it's the Ministry who'd have worried, not you. They'd have reprimanded Crouch for treating the dementors like house-elves, giving them practically every chore that needed doing in Azkaban. They'd have bought your silence by giving you some sinecure that paid a tidy income. As they seem to have done with James Potter."
Potter. The very sound of the name made Severus's blood boil. Heaven forbid that Harold Potter should not make his son's way as smooth in life as it had been in school, now that the aforementioned son, having got over his brief bout of idealism, had abandoned Auror training.
During their trip from the fortress to the mainland, Potter had told Severus he would go to work for his father. Doing what? Nothing, as far as Severus could tell. But that was fine. Potter didn't need work, didn't need money, didn't need anything, Severus supposed, but whatever mysterious charm it was that had got Lily Evans to marry him.
"Yes, Severus," said Voldemort softly. "I've never mentioned it to Lucius and the others. But it happens for them, doesn't it, as it never will for us. Life is given to them. While the likes of you and me must take it."
Severus stared at Voldemort, who looked back at him with a small smile flitting about his lips.
The truth clicked into place. Severus's hand shook, setting the brandy in his glass quivering, like the surface of a lake at the first gust of the storm. He set the glass down. "You are not a pure-blood," he whispered.
"No, I am not." Voldemort's voice was as smooth as Severus's was unsteady. "My father was a Muggle."
Like mine, Severus thought. He looked into the fire and let this new truth sink in.
"The others don't know," he said at last.
"No one knows who doesn't need to know," Voldemort replied. "And I of course intend to keep it that way."
"I understand," said Severus, thinking that Voldemort need not have worried about him betraying the truth. This was a secret he intended to treasure close to his heart, something he could think of every time he looked at Lucius and, if he joined them, the other Death Eaters. The vaunted Lord of the Pure-bloods was a half-blood. Lord Voldemort, their Dark Lord, wasn't like Lucius Malfoy, Olaus Ruskin, Regulus Black, Evan Rosier or any of the other pure-blood Slytherin schoolboys who had worshipped him. Lord Voldemort was like Severus Snape.
"Yes. Freedom from the blood hierarchy. I'll never have that, though, until they respect me." Severus looked at Voldemort, into a pale face, into glistening red eyes. "You're the likes of me. You understand. They'll never give me their respect. I'll have to take it."
"You've done that, haven't you?" said Voldemort. "Ruskin respected you. Lucius wants to sponsor you."
"Because I taught Ruskin Dark magic. Lucius knows. He told you, didn't he?"
Voldemort did not answer.
"That's how you make them respect you. That's how you make them fear you, and they know it. Why else have they made the Dark Arts illegal? You know." Looking into those eyes, Severus was certain of it. "That's what freedom is, to learn and practise the Dark, untrammelled by law, unthreatened by envy. And when I have learnt those arts--well..." His voice fell. "Let them despise my blood, as long as they fear my power. That's respect enough for me."
Though in his heart he had yearned for it, painfully and resentfully, for a very long time, Severus had never spoken his wish to anyone. Now he had announced it to the one wizard to whom such powers were second nature, who saw such respect as no more than his due. Head bowed, Severus waited through the silence for the mocking laughter, the contemptuous dismissal.
They didn't come. "The Dark Arts are that," Voldemort agreed mildly instead. "A way of commanding the respect of your inferiors. But they are also, of course, much more."
Severus looked up. Voldemort, having turned in his seat, was regarding him with intent curiosity.
"The Dark Arts," Voldemort said, "are more than petty vengeance, more than getting one over on the other fellow. The Dark Arts are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal. They are unfixed, mutating, indestructible. And they have their beauty, an intoxicating, even ecstatic beauty." Voldemort cocked his head slightly. "I think even this Light wizard, this wizard who can conjure a Patronus...I think even he may know what I am talking about."
Severus said nothing aloud. But a wordless affirmative bloomed in his mind like a flower. He knew.
"I'd need proof of it, of course, especially if you wish to join my Death Eaters," Voldemort said. "But I think you could give it to me. If you'd like."
"What sort of proof?" Severus asked.
"Lucius tells me you create spells. Sometimes extraordinarily powerful spells. It has come to my attention that not only did you invent Sectumsempra, you know how to counter it."
Severus looked at him in astonishment. Voldemort smiled easily.
"Word gets around, you know," he said. "My ranks are full of your old schoolmates, and St Mungo's is hardly a secretive place."
"I see," said Severus.
"Did you invent the counter-curse as well?" Voldemort asked curiously.
"Yes."
"Amazing. You must show me; I simply must see!" Voldemort sprang to his feet and went to the door. "Lucius!"
Lucius entered at once, as if he had been waiting just outside the door. Severus rose, baffled, and Voldemort beckoned each of them to the centre of the room. "Come, Lucius, Severus!"
As Severus drew closer to him, he saw that Lucius was paler than ever, and his eyes held a look of fey, mad fear. Yet his face was calm, as still as if sculpted from stone.
"A test," said Voldemort. "Yes, Lucius, we have reached that point. Your protégé has thus far impressed me, and so your judgement in recommending him to me has thus far been vindicated. But now it must be tested further. Were you right to put forward a wizard who is such a confusing conflation of Light and Dark? Can he subdue those two factions at war in his soul and place them both at my service?"
Lucius's hands trembled slightly at his sides. But his back was straight, he looked Voldemort in the eye and his voice was steady when he answered. "You will find, my lord, that Severus is exactly what you want."
"Well, I rather hope he's what you want, Lucius, because I don't know how to counter Sectumsempra." Voldemort turned to Severus. "Cast the curse on him. Then heal him. He's still of use to me, you see, so I'd rather not lose him just yet."
Severus tried to obey. He tore his eyes away from Voldemort's face and turned toward Lucius. But after that, he might as well have been Petrified. He couldn't raise his wand. He couldn't move a muscle. He could do no more than stare into Lucius's reckless eyes.
"I want to see what you're made of, you understand," said Voldemort. "You--can do it, can't you?"
"I can do it," said Severus. Invisible bonds seemed to fall away from his body, and he lifted his wand at last. He put Lucius in his sights and he cleared his mind. This was so different, in so many ways, from the last time he had cast Sectumsempra on a human being, and yet some things were the same. He saw Lucius framed in darkness like a night mist. His mind, clean of every distraction, filled with the desire to slice flesh, cut into muscle, sever blood vessels.
Sectumsempra.
Light flashed from Severus's wand. He heard a short, harsh scream and a thud. Then his vision cleared.
Lucius lay flat on the floor, bleeding scarlet into the robin's-egg blue of the Persian rug. He grasped feebly at his chest, where a shining red stream flowed over his hand and arm. His eyes were wide and staring, and his mouth hung open. He was gasping for breath, and when blood pouring from a gash on his cheek trickled into his mouth, he choked.
Severus stared down at Lucius. His heart was pounding in the aftershock of the power that had just surged through him; his fingers still tingled hotly with magic. Lucius, he thought, looked like the hedgehog Ruskin had trained on when he had learned Sectumsempra.
But he mustn't Stun Lucius as he'd Stunned the hedgehog; he mustn't let Lucius die. No. He was supposed to heal Lucius.
Severus approached Lucius and was about to kneel beside him when Voldemort said, "Wait."
Lucius was clearly in pain. His eyes were desperate with it, though he made no sound but the gurgling of his blood-thickened breathing. Nevertheless Severus waited.
"Wait," said Voldemort. "You have not told me everything. I see that now."
Severus did not move. His Dark intent and the power he had called upon to fulfil it were shadows writhing sinuously around his heart.
"You said you wanted freedom, and you gave me examples of what it meant to you. But you did not give me every one. You did not tell me the wish that lies closest to your heart. Tell the truth, Severus: what do you really want?"
"Freedom," Severus said, still looking down at Lucius, whose convulsive shudders had grown weaker. "Freedom from Tobias Snape."
"Your father."
"My father," Severus said. Lucius coughed and spat blood. Finally, as if he could no longer hold it in, he moaned in pain. "Freedom from my father for my mother and me."
For several moments, nothing could be heard but the crackling of the fire and the sound of Lucius's struggles.
"Believe me when I say I understand you," Voldemort said then. "Oh, by the way, you'd better see to Lucius, hadn't you?"
Again it felt to Severus as though some restraint had been released. He fell to his knees beside Lucius, and it seemed the easiest thing in the world to fill his mind with the healing song of Textum.
****
"Go to your room," Voldemort said when Severus was done. "I'll have the house-elf see to him."
"Dittany--" Severus began.
"Lucius got in a supply when I told him my plan." Voldemort did not lift his eyes from Lucius's unconscious body. "Go. The house-elf will take care of the rest."
Severus went. Until he reached his room and saw the neatly made-up four-poster bed, he did not realise how exhausted he was. He took off his shoes, lay down on the bed and fell at once into murky, blood-tinged dreams.
****
Late that evening, Dobby roused Severus from sleep with Voldemort's summons. Severus met Lucius and Voldemort in the study.
The Persian rug was entirely blue again and Narcissa was still quite conveniently out. Lucius and Voldemort sat in the fireside armchairs and both were smiling. Dittany ointment shone on Lucius's face. Beneath the clear ointment, Severus could see that Lucius's scars were already no more than thin white lines.
"There you are, Severus!" said Voldemort. "We were just talking about you. I was telling Lucius that he knows how to choose his friends." He rose and went to the fireplace. He began to reach for the Floo powder on the mantel, then stopped and turned to Severus. "You have not made your mind up and neither have I. We both have much to think about." He took the jar of Floo powder. "Let us both take the time we need."
"You're leaving, my lord?" asked Lucius.
"Yes. I have other business to attend to. Regrettably so, for I've spent a rewarding afternoon in fascinating company."
It seemed an undeserved compliment as far as Severus was concerned, for his brain felt at the moment like a wad of cotton wool. Lacking the courage to press Voldemort further, he said nothing.
Apparently Lucius felt no similar qualm. "Do you think--?"
"Don't worry, Lucius. When a decision is made, you will be among the first to know. In the meantime..." Voldemort let his disconcerting, slit-pupilled red eyes rest on each of them in turn. "In the meantime, I must request that neither of you mention the day's events to anyone. Not even to Narcissa, Lucius," he said, as if in answer to an unspoken question. "Not yet."
"Yes, my lord," said Lucius.
The same answer slipped easily from Severus's lips: "Yes, my lord."
Voldemort's mouth again curved into its version of a smile. "Good. Till we meet again, then." Turning, he flung a handful of Floo powder into the grate and stepped into the fire. The emerald flames coiled around him like serpents for a few moments. Then he disappeared.
Author: Pasi
Category: Gen
Rating: 15
Summary for the Fic: Severus Snape is going straight to hell. The people he calls his friends are helping him get there.
Summary for Chapter Eleven: It's a risky business for Lucius Malfoy when Severus Snape meets Lord Voldemort.
A/N: Many, many thanks to my betas, Anne, Lyras and Panamdea, who, if you can believe it, have slogged through 50,000 words of Into the Fold.
****
Chapter Index
Chapter Eleven: Lord Voldemort
Autumn, 1979
****
Severus needn't have worried about leaving his mother at home while he went to Malfoy Manor for the weekend. Narcissa Malfoy had invited Mother for an afternoon of shopping on the Saturday, followed by dinner and a concert.
"The Norn Trio, Severus!" Mother enthused. "I don't know where Narcissa got the tickets, or how much they must have cost!" She hesitated. "Or what I'm going to wear. I haven't been to an affair like that in ages."
"Buy yourself something while you're out with Narcissa," said Severus, pressing a few Galleons into her hand. "There's some extra money this month," he added, seeing the worry in her eyes. "They may have worked me like a house-elf at St Mungo's, but they had to pay me like a wizard."
Mother's hand closed over the gold and her worried look changed to one of guilty yearning. Unable to face her, Severus turned away.
"I'll see you Sunday," he said and slipped out the front door into Linden Lane. From there he walked quickly to the public Floo stop, and, by a circuitous route which included a brief fireplace-view into the boardroom at St Mungo's Hospital, he Flooed to the fireplace in the cavernous hallway of Malfoy Manor.
****
When Severus stepped out of the fireplace, Lucius was there, waiting for him. He seemed tense, bowstring-taut, and his eyes darted about, over Severus's shoulder, into the shadowed corners of the hall, as if he suspected something frightening might have followed Severus into his home.
"We're alone. Except for him. He's here." Lucius jerked his chin toward a door at the end of the hall, behind which, as Severus remembered, lay his study. "In there."
Severus hesitated. The hallway was a very old part of the manor house, with narrow windows that seemed to block more light than they let in. That gleam of sweat on Lucius's face might exist only in his imagination.
"Are you all right?" asked Severus.
"Oh, never better!" Lucius said, but the brightness in his smile did not reach his eyes. They went to the study door and stopped. Lucius did not lift his hand to the doorknob.
"You'll find him--different," said Lucius softly. "I should warn you, so that you won't be too startled when you see him for the first time. In the pursuit of the Dark Arts, he has altered himself."
Severus had read some bizarre accounts in the Prophet, from people who claimed to have seen Voldemort at close quarters. Was Lucius trying to tell him those people weren't as mad as they had seemed?
The idea was fascinating, another throwback to the ancient wizards who had stumbled upon mutating curses in their search for immortality. Severus certainly wasn't going to let it stop him from meeting Voldemort.
He shrugged. "I'm an Apothecary at St Mungo's Hospital. I've seen plenty of people whose bodies have been ruined through magic."
"Very good. Though I do advise you not to tell the Dark Lord he's ruined himself."
Lucius opened the door and they entered the study. Severus had been here before, after Olaus Ruskin's death, yet the air of sophisticated luxury exuded by rubbed leather, gleaming rosewood and tastefully muted wallpaper felt slightly alien to him. Like all the other rooms of Malfoy Manor, the study was so far from anything he had called home that he couldn't quite accept the invitation to comfort it extended to him. His body tightened defensively, almost against his will.
And yet, even though this was his own home, Lucius looked no more relaxed than Severus felt. As he gazed at the back of a wing chair facing the fireplace, his features assumed an expression of wary respect.
The curtains were drawn against the daylight, the fire was low and only a couple of candles burned on the sideboard. And so for one moment it looked to Severus as though a dark cloud billowed from the chair. In the next moment, he realised it was the swirling of black robes as a wizard got to his feet.
He was a tall man, very thin, with sparse black hair that looked as brittle as dry straw. When he turned, Severus saw that Lucius was right: Lord Voldemort did seem--altered. It was as if his face were a wax mask that had come too close to flame and had subtly, disturbingly melted and stretched. His lips were practically nonexistent. His nose was inhumanly flat, with narrow nostrils like knife cuts.
Severus might have thought him the victim of some inherited deformity, if it were not for his eyes. Voldemort's eyes were nothing that nature, no matter how cruel and capricious, could have given him. Like his nostrils, there was something snakelike about Voldemort's slitted pupils. But Severus was not afraid of snakes. What he might find troubling, if he gave himself time to think about it, was the way the red of the irises leaked like blood into the whites of Voldemort's eyes, the way those eyes, instead of looking like a pair of bloodily-gouged wounds, shone with a cold intelligence.
But all Severus thought then, as he stared into them, was that Voldemort's eyes looked right.
"You are Severus Snape?"
Voldemort's voice was as cold as his eyes, and, though Severus persisted in thinking of him as a wizard, his voice was almost too high to be accounted male.
Voldemort raised his thin eyebrows questioningly. How long had Severus been gawping at him? "Yes," he answered hurriedly.
"Good." Voldemort turned to Lucius. "Leave us. If I need you, I will call."
Lucius bowed, which to Severus was another startling sight. "Yes, my lord."
"Sit down, please," Voldemort said after Lucius had left, and Severus took the chair beside him, facing the fire. "Brandy," he said, gesturing with a long, pale hand at the decanter on the side table between them, and Severus poured into a glass a very small amount for himself. There was a second empty glass, but Voldemort did not take anything to drink.
For a few moments, they neither spoke nor looked into each other's faces (though Severus stole entirely uninformative glances at Voldemort's gaunt, pale profile). Then Voldemort suddenly turned to look Severus straight in the eye.
"What would you like to know about us?" he asked.
Severus felt something within him instinctively shrink back. "I beg your pardon?" he said.
"You are not a pure-blood, nor did I permit Lucius to tell you much about me and my Death Eaters. But nevertheless you have decided to come. So what would you like to know?"
Severus thought. In school he had sometimes wanted very much to learn more about this dark Freemasonry, around which had swirled so many hints and allusions, for which many of the sons and daughters of illustrious pure-blood families with roots in Slytherin House were rumoured to be destined once they left school. Then had come the end of school and the beginning of adulthood, with its concerns of qualifying as an Apothecary and getting a job. Severus had forgotten about the Death Eaters until a Ministry dementor had Kissed the Death Eater Olaus Ruskin before his eyes.
But now that Severus thought about it, Lucius had taken specific opportunities even before that to drop hints about his own sympathies with the Death Eaters, as if he believed that Severus was something more than the son of a witch who had disgraced herself with a Muggle mill worker.
Had Lucius been instructed to consider the possibility? Looking into eyes that shone like fresh blood, Severus wondered.
Thus he replied to Voldemort's question with one of his own: "Why are you interested in me?"
Voldemort smiled. The teeth he revealed were few and impossibly narrow, like needles.
"That's easy," he said. "I'm interested in you because you are the very first person Lucius has seen fit to sponsor as a Death Eater."
To sponsor as a Death Eater. Lucius had never said the words. But really, why else was Severus here? Simply to chat with someone whom Lucius Malfoy went so far as to own as his lord, someone whom he so obviously feared?
If it came to that, why shouldn't Lucius sponsor Severus? Hadn't he as much to offer as any of those who were said to have joined the Death Eaters? To how many of them had he taught a Dark spell or two?
Except that, unlike them, he wasn't a pure-blood...
Voldemort had not taken his eyes off Severus. "It has piqued my interest, that Lucius should have finally stirred himself to recommend someone to me. And that, of all people, it should have been you."
Voldemort's tone of mild disbelief settled it. Severus wasn't a suitable candidate for the Death Eaters, probably because he wasn't a pure-blood--
"Why, I wonder, does Lucius believe that someone with so much Light magic in him could be of any use to me?"
Severus stopped in the middle of his mental dither. "And is that how Lucius advertised me to you?" he asked. "On the strength of my Light magic?"
Voldemort chuckled. "No. But I had to admire his gall. No one else has ever suggested to me that I ought to recruit a wizard who can conjure a Patronus."
Taking this in, Severus was silent. "You see that as a drawback," he said.
Shrugging lightly, Voldemort sat back. "You took Magical Theory in your seventh year at Hogwarts, didn't you?"
"Yes."
"Well," said Voldemort. "Dumbledore taught it in my day and Lucius says he's still teaching it now. So he must have told your class the same thing he told mine: that no purely Dark wizard can conjure a Patronus."
Was that it, then--you needed to be purely Dark in order to become a Death Eater? "Lucius has told you about Azkaban," said Severus.
"Yes," Voldemort said. "Azkaban. "Where you not only conjured a Patronus, but linked it with that of another in order to dispel fifty dementors."
"I can see where that may not recommend me to you."
Again Voldemort laughed softly. "Show me your Patronus," he said then.
Instinctively Severus shied away from the request. "I--what?"
"You heard me. I want to see your Patronus." Voldemort rose and stepped away from his chair to the centre of the room.
Severus rose too. Why not do as he was asked? He would conjure the Patronus, Voldemort would dismiss him, and that would be that. He hadn't really thought the wizard who could command Lucius Malfoy and Olaus Ruskin would want him around, had he?
It was just that he had not felt the same allure, in anyone or anything, since the time he had immersed himself in the Dark Arts, since he had stretched his mind and moulded his soul to create spells like Breath-taker, Firewhip and Sectumsempra.
Never mind. Severus cleared his head of the tangle of questions and doubts and let the space fill with happiness.
"Tuney's gone to Aunt Rose's for two weeks...."
Two weeks. Two weeks of summer, of long golden days and blue-tinted evenings. Or two solid weeks of mist and rain, who cares? It'll be two weeks free of the bony limbs, the shrill voice, the bitter envy of Lily's Muggle sister....
"Want to go to the playground, Lily?"
She does. She smiles, her green eyes alight, because she knows what they'll do. And soon they're doing it: soaring side-by-side on the playground swings, higher and higher. Just before touching the sky, they seize each other's hands and jump, flying clear of the swings, far above the asphalt, laughing, landing lightly at last on the little ribbon of rough, weedy grass between the asphalt and the chain-link fence.
Severus didn't need to speak the charm; he hardly needed to think it. He lifted his wand and from its tip sprang the silver doe.
Though it might earn him his dismissal from Voldemort's presence, though that dismissal might lose him all the benefits of Lucius's favour, Severus was proud of what he saw. This was no wispy vapour, but a fully-formed and precisely detailed Patronus: a doe, from the slender, strong limbs and graceful. compact body to the liquid, long-lashed eyes and the nose, tilted and twitching slightly as if scenting the wind.
The doe bounded once, turned and stopped short. She saw Voldemort, and the dew in her eyes turned to flame. She drew up, tense, her legs planted apart as if, Severus fancied, she were standing over a fawn.
Voldemort made no move for his wand. He fixed his cold and bloody eyes on the silver doe.
For a moment the doe stood her ground. Then she began to tremble. Head bowed, body crouching, she backed away, whirled and bolted for the furthest corner of Lucius's library. But before she reached that paltry shelter, Severus's Patronus shredded to misty fragments and disappeared.
His stomach knotting with fear, Severus stared into the shadowy corner that had seemed to swallow his Patronus. That's that, he thought. Lucius had said the only consequence for Severus's refusing Voldemort would be a modified memory. Unfortunately, he hadn't mentioned what would happen if it was Voldemort who rejected Severus.
"Congratulations," said Voldemort.
Severus turned. His lips curved in a half-smile, Voldemort was watching him intently.
"I'm impressed," said Voldemort. "You produce one of the most powerful and integrated Patronuses I have ever seen."
"Er--thank you," said Severus.
Voldemort laughed, a high-pitched, bone-chilling sound that died as quickly as it was born. "Who taught you that?" he asked.
"Pro--pr--" Why was Severus stammering? "Professor Dumbledore," he said firmly.
For the first time, Voldemort showed a spontaneous and unadulterated emotion. It was astonishment. "Professor Dumbledore! Do you mean to tell me you were still at school?"
"Yes."
"How old were you?" Voldemort asked.
"Seventeen."
"Seventeen. And under what circumstances would Professor Dumbledore teach a seventeen-year-old student how to conjure a Patronus?"
Severus hesitated. "Well--call it a detention."
"A detention. Tell me more."
"I can't. I'm sworn to secrecy."
Voldemort's eyes grew colder still and his smile disappeared. "You cannot keep secrets from me. Especially about Albus Dumbledore. Most especially, if you wish to join me."
With difficulty, Severus dragged his eyes away from Voldemort's distorted face. He looked at the corner into which his Patronus had disintegrated and thought that perhaps it was time to back out. "Lucius meant well, don't blame him, but I don't think we'd suit each other after all..."
No.
"But I must keep this secret." He was arguing with himself, as much as he was replying to Voldemort. "I've sworn an oath."
"To Dumbledore?" Voldemort asked.
"Yes," Severus whispered.
Then Severus felt a sudden painful, pounding pressure against his temples. He lifted his hand, but before he could touch his head, he felt it jerked around to face Voldemort, and the red, serpentine eyes stared into his own.
Severus felt his mind ransacked, thoughts, emotions and wisps of memory flung about like old clothes thrown from a drawer. The pressure against his head grew to agony, but he could make neither move nor sound to stop it. Then Voldemort's boring eyes and pale face drifted from his sight, like mist burned off by the morning sun. Now Severus could see nothing but a sword, upright as if held aloft, its hilt inlaid with rubies, its silver blade haloed with flame.
The pain and the vision disappeared, and Voldemort was merely looking at Severus again.
"I don't doubt it was Dumbledore," he said. "The oath has bonds around it which I can't break, at least, not without breaking your mind. Is it an Unbreakable Vow?"
"No," Severus said, rather shakily.
"Good. You know now that I am a Legilimens, so you will, I have no doubt, answer my next question honestly. Is there any possibility that your secret can do me harm?"
"None that I know of," said Severus.
Again Voldemort sifted through Severus's mind, and this time Dumbledore's sword did not come to his aid. Nor did Severus dare try to throw Voldemort off as he had Scrimgeour. Yet Severus was sure Voldemort didn't see all he might have, for he felt parts of his mind closing off, as if behind walls of dark stone.
Voldemort withdrew suddenly, startling Severus.
"You have a remarkable instinct for self-protection," he said thoughtfully. "I wonder that Dumbledore did not teach you Occlumency while he was about it."
"Really, I can't see how it could harm you--"
Voldemort lifted a hand. "I'm certain of that, or I would have probed further." He motioned toward the chairs. "Sit. Have another glass of brandy."
They sat, and this time Voldemort drank with Severus. The wine rose warmly to Severus's head, easing the dull ache Voldemort's Legilimency had left.
"I've told you why I was interested in meeting you," Voldemort said, looking into the fire. "Now you tell me: why are you here?"
Severus hesitated. The most honest answer would have been, "Because Lucius invited me." Before Lucius had invited him, he had never thought he would meet pure-blood wizardry's hero. At least, not on a friendly basis.
"I am sure you think there is something I can give you in return for your allegiance," Voldemort said, with a touch of amusement in his voice. "Most who come to me do."
Were there Legilimentes who knew what you were thinking even when you weren't looking at them?
"I can tell when you are lying," Voldemort said softly. "Even when you are lying to yourself. So why not tell the simple truth?"
Severus looked at the Dark Lord, at the terrifying He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. He saw nothing but a long, thin hand holding a glass and the tips of a nose and chin protruding beyond the wing of the armchair. He looked away again and, like Voldemort, gazed into the fire.
The silence, the comfort of his chair, the warmth of fire and wine all worked on Severus like a soothing enchantment. Whether Voldemort could ferret out his lies or not, why should he not, for once, speak what was truly in his heart? If there might be something Voldemort could give him, why not ask for it? Why else was he here?
"Freedom," said Severus softly. "I want freedom."
"Ah, of course," said Voldemort. "And what does freedom mean to you?"
"Money." Voldemort might have expected a more exalted reply, but that was the first thing that came to Severus's mind. "My father's done nothing but drink and lose money at cards since the mill closed, and my mother, I'm afraid...." He hesitated, not wishing to disparage Mother before a stranger. "She's ill. She can't be expected to deal with it. We've re-mortgaged the house to pay my father's debts, but I still have to scramble to pay the bills at the end of the month." Severus stopped. His babbling must sound so low and grasping. How could money matter to someone like Voldemort?
"Poverty." Voldemort's voice lent a strange weight to the word, as if he might actually understand what it meant. "It can bind like any chain; it can drag at the body, the mind and the spirit."
"I don't need much," said Severus quickly.
"Of course not. Just enough to live without worries. Enough to make your mother comfortable. That's all."
"Yes, that's all!" Severus said. Could it be? Did Voldemort really understand?
Severus gathered his courage. "I'm afraid of the Ministry," he said in a low voice. "Crouch. Reid. I spoiled their plan for using dementors on interrogations in Azkaban."
"You weren't the only one," said Voldemort. "There was Potter."
"What does the Ministry matter to Potter!" said Severus. "They won't take away his job, as if he even needed to work! Oh, I suppose I'm safe for now, Lucius pulled strings for me, but that doesn't mean they don't know!"
"About the Hidden Hellebore."
It was as well that Voldemort knew, since Severus had been about to blurt it out. "Yes," he said.
"I can tell you that you are not in danger of losing your job," Voldemort said. "Lucius has extracted promises from all the concerned parties, and the name of Malfoy, I assure you, wields a great deal of influence in the Ministry of Magic. For now." Voldemort paused. "There are subtler pressures which those you have angered could exert, however. They could block your advancement. You could be stooped over the cauldrons in the Potions and Physics Department of St Mungo's Hospital for many years to come."
He was right, of course. Reflecting on that bleak prospect, Severus said nothing.
"Maybe what you're really looking for is freedom from the blood hierarchy," Voldemort said musingly. "Take the Azkaban fiasco. If you were a pure-blood, it's the Ministry who'd have worried, not you. They'd have reprimanded Crouch for treating the dementors like house-elves, giving them practically every chore that needed doing in Azkaban. They'd have bought your silence by giving you some sinecure that paid a tidy income. As they seem to have done with James Potter."
Potter. The very sound of the name made Severus's blood boil. Heaven forbid that Harold Potter should not make his son's way as smooth in life as it had been in school, now that the aforementioned son, having got over his brief bout of idealism, had abandoned Auror training.
During their trip from the fortress to the mainland, Potter had told Severus he would go to work for his father. Doing what? Nothing, as far as Severus could tell. But that was fine. Potter didn't need work, didn't need money, didn't need anything, Severus supposed, but whatever mysterious charm it was that had got Lily Evans to marry him.
"Yes, Severus," said Voldemort softly. "I've never mentioned it to Lucius and the others. But it happens for them, doesn't it, as it never will for us. Life is given to them. While the likes of you and me must take it."
Severus stared at Voldemort, who looked back at him with a small smile flitting about his lips.
The truth clicked into place. Severus's hand shook, setting the brandy in his glass quivering, like the surface of a lake at the first gust of the storm. He set the glass down. "You are not a pure-blood," he whispered.
"No, I am not." Voldemort's voice was as smooth as Severus's was unsteady. "My father was a Muggle."
Like mine, Severus thought. He looked into the fire and let this new truth sink in.
"The others don't know," he said at last.
"No one knows who doesn't need to know," Voldemort replied. "And I of course intend to keep it that way."
"I understand," said Severus, thinking that Voldemort need not have worried about him betraying the truth. This was a secret he intended to treasure close to his heart, something he could think of every time he looked at Lucius and, if he joined them, the other Death Eaters. The vaunted Lord of the Pure-bloods was a half-blood. Lord Voldemort, their Dark Lord, wasn't like Lucius Malfoy, Olaus Ruskin, Regulus Black, Evan Rosier or any of the other pure-blood Slytherin schoolboys who had worshipped him. Lord Voldemort was like Severus Snape.
"Yes. Freedom from the blood hierarchy. I'll never have that, though, until they respect me." Severus looked at Voldemort, into a pale face, into glistening red eyes. "You're the likes of me. You understand. They'll never give me their respect. I'll have to take it."
"You've done that, haven't you?" said Voldemort. "Ruskin respected you. Lucius wants to sponsor you."
"Because I taught Ruskin Dark magic. Lucius knows. He told you, didn't he?"
Voldemort did not answer.
"That's how you make them respect you. That's how you make them fear you, and they know it. Why else have they made the Dark Arts illegal? You know." Looking into those eyes, Severus was certain of it. "That's what freedom is, to learn and practise the Dark, untrammelled by law, unthreatened by envy. And when I have learnt those arts--well..." His voice fell. "Let them despise my blood, as long as they fear my power. That's respect enough for me."
Though in his heart he had yearned for it, painfully and resentfully, for a very long time, Severus had never spoken his wish to anyone. Now he had announced it to the one wizard to whom such powers were second nature, who saw such respect as no more than his due. Head bowed, Severus waited through the silence for the mocking laughter, the contemptuous dismissal.
They didn't come. "The Dark Arts are that," Voldemort agreed mildly instead. "A way of commanding the respect of your inferiors. But they are also, of course, much more."
Severus looked up. Voldemort, having turned in his seat, was regarding him with intent curiosity.
"The Dark Arts," Voldemort said, "are more than petty vengeance, more than getting one over on the other fellow. The Dark Arts are many, varied, ever-changing and eternal. They are unfixed, mutating, indestructible. And they have their beauty, an intoxicating, even ecstatic beauty." Voldemort cocked his head slightly. "I think even this Light wizard, this wizard who can conjure a Patronus...I think even he may know what I am talking about."
Severus said nothing aloud. But a wordless affirmative bloomed in his mind like a flower. He knew.
"I'd need proof of it, of course, especially if you wish to join my Death Eaters," Voldemort said. "But I think you could give it to me. If you'd like."
"What sort of proof?" Severus asked.
"Lucius tells me you create spells. Sometimes extraordinarily powerful spells. It has come to my attention that not only did you invent Sectumsempra, you know how to counter it."
Severus looked at him in astonishment. Voldemort smiled easily.
"Word gets around, you know," he said. "My ranks are full of your old schoolmates, and St Mungo's is hardly a secretive place."
"I see," said Severus.
"Did you invent the counter-curse as well?" Voldemort asked curiously.
"Yes."
"Amazing. You must show me; I simply must see!" Voldemort sprang to his feet and went to the door. "Lucius!"
Lucius entered at once, as if he had been waiting just outside the door. Severus rose, baffled, and Voldemort beckoned each of them to the centre of the room. "Come, Lucius, Severus!"
As Severus drew closer to him, he saw that Lucius was paler than ever, and his eyes held a look of fey, mad fear. Yet his face was calm, as still as if sculpted from stone.
"A test," said Voldemort. "Yes, Lucius, we have reached that point. Your protégé has thus far impressed me, and so your judgement in recommending him to me has thus far been vindicated. But now it must be tested further. Were you right to put forward a wizard who is such a confusing conflation of Light and Dark? Can he subdue those two factions at war in his soul and place them both at my service?"
Lucius's hands trembled slightly at his sides. But his back was straight, he looked Voldemort in the eye and his voice was steady when he answered. "You will find, my lord, that Severus is exactly what you want."
"Well, I rather hope he's what you want, Lucius, because I don't know how to counter Sectumsempra." Voldemort turned to Severus. "Cast the curse on him. Then heal him. He's still of use to me, you see, so I'd rather not lose him just yet."
Severus tried to obey. He tore his eyes away from Voldemort's face and turned toward Lucius. But after that, he might as well have been Petrified. He couldn't raise his wand. He couldn't move a muscle. He could do no more than stare into Lucius's reckless eyes.
"I want to see what you're made of, you understand," said Voldemort. "You--can do it, can't you?"
"I can do it," said Severus. Invisible bonds seemed to fall away from his body, and he lifted his wand at last. He put Lucius in his sights and he cleared his mind. This was so different, in so many ways, from the last time he had cast Sectumsempra on a human being, and yet some things were the same. He saw Lucius framed in darkness like a night mist. His mind, clean of every distraction, filled with the desire to slice flesh, cut into muscle, sever blood vessels.
Sectumsempra.
Light flashed from Severus's wand. He heard a short, harsh scream and a thud. Then his vision cleared.
Lucius lay flat on the floor, bleeding scarlet into the robin's-egg blue of the Persian rug. He grasped feebly at his chest, where a shining red stream flowed over his hand and arm. His eyes were wide and staring, and his mouth hung open. He was gasping for breath, and when blood pouring from a gash on his cheek trickled into his mouth, he choked.
Severus stared down at Lucius. His heart was pounding in the aftershock of the power that had just surged through him; his fingers still tingled hotly with magic. Lucius, he thought, looked like the hedgehog Ruskin had trained on when he had learned Sectumsempra.
But he mustn't Stun Lucius as he'd Stunned the hedgehog; he mustn't let Lucius die. No. He was supposed to heal Lucius.
Severus approached Lucius and was about to kneel beside him when Voldemort said, "Wait."
Lucius was clearly in pain. His eyes were desperate with it, though he made no sound but the gurgling of his blood-thickened breathing. Nevertheless Severus waited.
"Wait," said Voldemort. "You have not told me everything. I see that now."
Severus did not move. His Dark intent and the power he had called upon to fulfil it were shadows writhing sinuously around his heart.
"You said you wanted freedom, and you gave me examples of what it meant to you. But you did not give me every one. You did not tell me the wish that lies closest to your heart. Tell the truth, Severus: what do you really want?"
"Freedom," Severus said, still looking down at Lucius, whose convulsive shudders had grown weaker. "Freedom from Tobias Snape."
"Your father."
"My father," Severus said. Lucius coughed and spat blood. Finally, as if he could no longer hold it in, he moaned in pain. "Freedom from my father for my mother and me."
For several moments, nothing could be heard but the crackling of the fire and the sound of Lucius's struggles.
"Believe me when I say I understand you," Voldemort said then. "Oh, by the way, you'd better see to Lucius, hadn't you?"
Again it felt to Severus as though some restraint had been released. He fell to his knees beside Lucius, and it seemed the easiest thing in the world to fill his mind with the healing song of Textum.
****
"Go to your room," Voldemort said when Severus was done. "I'll have the house-elf see to him."
"Dittany--" Severus began.
"Lucius got in a supply when I told him my plan." Voldemort did not lift his eyes from Lucius's unconscious body. "Go. The house-elf will take care of the rest."
Severus went. Until he reached his room and saw the neatly made-up four-poster bed, he did not realise how exhausted he was. He took off his shoes, lay down on the bed and fell at once into murky, blood-tinged dreams.
****
Late that evening, Dobby roused Severus from sleep with Voldemort's summons. Severus met Lucius and Voldemort in the study.
The Persian rug was entirely blue again and Narcissa was still quite conveniently out. Lucius and Voldemort sat in the fireside armchairs and both were smiling. Dittany ointment shone on Lucius's face. Beneath the clear ointment, Severus could see that Lucius's scars were already no more than thin white lines.
"There you are, Severus!" said Voldemort. "We were just talking about you. I was telling Lucius that he knows how to choose his friends." He rose and went to the fireplace. He began to reach for the Floo powder on the mantel, then stopped and turned to Severus. "You have not made your mind up and neither have I. We both have much to think about." He took the jar of Floo powder. "Let us both take the time we need."
"You're leaving, my lord?" asked Lucius.
"Yes. I have other business to attend to. Regrettably so, for I've spent a rewarding afternoon in fascinating company."
It seemed an undeserved compliment as far as Severus was concerned, for his brain felt at the moment like a wad of cotton wool. Lacking the courage to press Voldemort further, he said nothing.
Apparently Lucius felt no similar qualm. "Do you think--?"
"Don't worry, Lucius. When a decision is made, you will be among the first to know. In the meantime..." Voldemort let his disconcerting, slit-pupilled red eyes rest on each of them in turn. "In the meantime, I must request that neither of you mention the day's events to anyone. Not even to Narcissa, Lucius," he said, as if in answer to an unspoken question. "Not yet."
"Yes, my lord," said Lucius.
The same answer slipped easily from Severus's lips: "Yes, my lord."
Voldemort's mouth again curved into its version of a smile. "Good. Till we meet again, then." Turning, he flung a handful of Floo powder into the grate and stepped into the fire. The emerald flames coiled around him like serpents for a few moments. Then he disappeared.