FIC: The Best of Him [DH Snape gen, Snape/Lily background] PG-13
Title: The Best of Him
Author: purpleygirl
Length: 3700 words
Pairings: Gen, but Snape/Lily in a way
Warnings: Mention of thwarted suicide; minor (original) character torture and death.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Phineas knows where Potter is. Now all Snape has to do is carry out his plan.
Notes: Written for the snape_after_dh fest, prompt the silver doe (believe it or not, despite being a tiny bit late :P), and posted for the omniocular January challenge, prompts Patronus Charm and Lumos. Huge thanks to talloakslady, sigune and klynie1 for their invaluable beta help and for pushing me to rewrite even though I was sick of the damn thing already. Much of the dialogue in the familiar scenes is from DH.
I also want to thank rexluscus for writing and sharing her essay on the doe scene in Chapter 19 of DH (for which the opening quote from DH is included below as a parallel between Snape’s and Harry’s view of the doe). It was about the only thing that cheered me up after the book, and as this story was inspired by it, it owes just about everything to her essay.
Though the darkness had swallowed her whole, her burnished image was still imprinted on his retinas; it obscured his vision . . . . Now fear came; her presence had meant safety . . . .
“Lumos!” he whispered . . . .
- Deathly Hallows, Chapter 19, “The Silver Doe”, p. 318
The Best of Him
Snape had known that his would be a doe.
He’d known as soon as she had proudly shown off hers to him by the school lake, her face bright and her happy laughter ringing in his ears as it gambolled about him, surrounding him in its pure light. Lily white, he remembered thinking at the time. Her Patronus was as radiant as her smile, and he had always wanted her smile.
He’d known that his would take the form of her happiness, because in all of his happy memories, she was at their centre.
He could not remember or envisage a time without her. Even when Potter had bewitched her and wrenched her from him, her true essence had loved him still in spite of her denial, and she had bestowed it to him alone in the form of the silver doe. He treasured it every day, because it was perfectly her. It was something that Potter could never have.
Her Patronus, the best of her, resided deep inside him always, alive, strong and bright, ready to guide him when called upon.
* * *
When Dumbledore’s portrait had informed him that the boy must have the sword, Snape had thought through various ways - discarding them one by one - until the only foolproof means to obtaining Potter’s trust remained to him.
He resigned himself to it - his plan - and informed Phineas to do whatever necessary to determine Potter’s location. Then all that was left to do was wait.
Each time Phineas was asked for news, Snape could hear the veiled curiosity as Dumbledore’s portrait voiced concerns on how to deliver the sword to Potter unseen. But Dumbledore still insisted on his own agenda, even after death, and Snape in turn was not in the business of sharing his own plans with a gilt-framed painting.
Snape continued his duties at the castle and busied himself with restraining the Carrows’ activities as much as he could. And when the Christmas break arrived and he discovered that even more children had been taken, snatched from the train, destined never to return to the school and the small measure of protection it offered them, he almost forgot his plan completely.
Then early one snow-filled morning, Phineas interrupted his anxious thoughts with the whereabouts of the boy. Snape forced himself to prepare mentally for the ordeal he had decided on weeks ago.
As he threw on his travelling cloak, he tried one last time. “And you still aren’t going to tell me why it’s so important to give Potter the sword?”
“No,” said Dumbledore’s portrait. “I don’t think so.”
Snape again dismissed the painting’s concerns. “Don’t worry, Dumbledore,” he said. “I have a plan.”
His plan. His own.
He had already removed the Pensieve to the dungeons in preparation. With the sword safely concealed beneath his travelling cloak, he entered his old office and approached the Pensieve where it sat empty and waiting on the desk.
He placed the sword against a chair and drew his wand. He needed to empty his mind of everything that might interfere with success. If he could not form the Patronus fully, his plan would fail.
She had surprised him a year ago when he had called her in the heat of anger. But he could not afford to take chances today with his position at the school at stake.
He pointed his wand at his forehead and felt his heart quicken. This stage would be over soon. But first he had to make sure that each fragment of memory was extracted precisely and completely.
Snape closed his eyes.
He Apparated without thinking and found himself on a cliff top, weak moonlight touching the sea in the distance. A stinging wind drove the rain into him, soaking through his robes and chilling his skin.
He had left the other Death Eaters as they had panicked, anxious of what had become of their Dark Lord and what would become of them.
But all he could think of was her; of how she was gone.
It had been his worst fears made true; the one thing that he had been certain, despite her simple protests, could never happen.
He threw himself down. “Stay with me,” he moaned, the damp clay sticking to his palms. He lifted his head and gripped his wand. His hand shook. “Don’t leave me!”
And then, there she was in front of him, her silver-white light magnified tenfold. It spread across the darkness beyond and forced him to blink away the water that stung at his eyes. Now he could see her better. But though her light shone as strong as ever, her outline seemed vague - she was slipping away from him - heading toward the sea.
“Don’t leave me!” he cried out again, and his sudden cry released a torrent of emotions and sent his drenched hair clinging to his face as he rested his hands on the ground before her. “Please stay! Please forgive me!”
But his words were snatched away by the wind.
The memory of her happy face mocked him with its illusiveness. It belonged to a world he no longer knew or understood, and he began to doubt its existence; it seemed to show itself for the lie it always had been as the glossy layers blistered and peeled away, leaving him with the smell of decay and death.
Frantically, he raised himself to his knees and looked to her light. Though it had diminished, she was, beyond hope, still here, looking out, standing before him with her elegant poise as the rain streaked through her. She would not leave him! How could he have doubted her?
“Lily.” He held out his dirty hands.
She turned her head gracefully and rested her eyes on him then. He held his breath as he looked into her soft gaze. She seemed to beckon him. Follow me, her eyes implored him.
His fear gave way as if her light had pierced some covering that had bound his eyes.
The change within him wrought a nervous smile to his lips as the rain lashed down. Her radiance seemed to waver against the dark sky, but still she stayed with him. He had to follow her now before her light faded completely.
He pushed himself to his feet through the crushing dark, his gaze fixed on her through strands of hair as he tasted the salty water that trickled down his sodden face.
“Lily.” He gasped her name in desperation. “Wait for me,” he beseeched her. “Please! I’m coming. I’m coming with you.”
He stumbled forward, blind only to her light.
Then with a tremendous tear, a great force ripped the air between them. It sent Snape flying back to the ground.
He lifted his hand to shield his eyes, desperately searching her out... but he could no longer see her.
“Severus!” The voice was filled with anger as it roared through the wind, and Snape cried out to Lily in the dark.
He drew together all his energy and clambered to his feet. She was leaving him forever. “No! Don’t go!”
Snape fought against his presence, but Dumbledore’s fury overpowered him, sending him back down, and as he pushed at the earth, he found Dumbledore barring his way, his face worse than those of the Furies themselves in the light from his wand.
“You will come back with me!”
“She ... Gone.”
Dumbledore seemed to grow more impatient as he stared down at him unpityingly.
“Gone!” Snape implored. He heaved a shuddering breath and shouted, “She’s waiting for me!” And he began to crawl around the towering figure that blocked his view of her.
“Do not think your death now will solve this, Severus!”
Snape felt himself pulled up and back, away from where she had gone. “No!” He stretched out his hand to the ghost of her lingering light. “No! Let me go!” His words were choked from him as the strong hands shook his body.
“If you really wish to see her again, you must earn it! You must prove your worth.”
Snape continued to fight against Dumbledore’s grip, the air icy, burning his lungs. “She can’t leave me...!”
“I will not discuss this here! You will return to the castle.”
Snape, knowing this was his last chance to find her again, mustered all his energy one last time. But the arms wrenched him into a death hold, and he felt his world squeezed from him as Dumbledore Disapparated, and the trees of the Forbidden Forest, sentry-like in the dark, came into view.
Snape collapsed to the ground. The grassy earth tore his nails as he clawed it.
Snape lowered the glistening silver strand into the Pensieve.
He could not recall how Dumbledore had succeeded in getting him inside and to the headmaster’s office unseen by the others in the castle.
Perhaps they had seen - and heard. Perhaps they had dismissed it as impossible.
Or perhaps they had believed him mourning the passing of his Dark Lord.
Which was the more preferable, Snape could not say.
He stared at the memory as it settled into the rune-marked stone basin and took on its shape, spreading out into a shimmering mass. Some aspect of it must have still lingered in him, because as he looked he found himself somewhat loath to replace it on his return.
But that would soon pass.
The worst part of the process - as he remembered from his weekly preparation for Potter’s wasted Occlumency lessons - was having to call to mind the weakest moments with all the frailty and danger of losing control to sentiment.
He favoured Occlumency greatly to this, and he would gladly have used it instead if it had not been so crucial today that he be able to cast the fullest Patronus.
Yes, he preferred being in command of his emotions. The last time he had found himself dwelling on what might have been - just six months ago in Black’s house - he had condemned himself afterwards for such weakness. But he had not been able to bring himself to take out again the section of photograph from where he had concealed it safely - not even to look on it again. He thought of it now, pressed to his chest.
Though he sometimes had an irrational desire to forget how much she haunted him, he found he still could not remove it.
Snape straightened himself and brought his wand back to his head.
With all his desires bent on one thing, he sent her, as strong and true as his need was that night, to carry his message to his old teacher.
The wind tossed leaves towards him. They danced around him on the hill as he waited at its peak, every moment that brought no sign of Dumbledore’s arrival filling him with greater fear. Already he could feel the Dark drawing him to its depthless centre. He did not have the strength to overcome its pull on his own.
When finally the air rent, blinding white, sending his wand flying, he dropped to the earth, overwhelmed with gratitude, though defenceless. Only then the thought panicked him - if he died now, Lily would have no chance of protection. “Don’t kill me!”
“That was not my intention. Well, Severus? What message does Lord Voldemort have for me?”
“No - no message - I’m here on my own account!”
He pushed on with his request. Yet in some ways, he found pleading with Dumbledore for her life worse than asking the same of the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord had merely looked on it as simple recompense for the prophecy. But Dumbledore made him feel unworthy of asking for a life, ashamed of doing so, and he demanded much more of him, as punishment.
Snape set the value of the lives of the husband and child alongside hers. But still Dumbledore wanted more.
The wind seemed to press in on the bubble of quiet that imprisoned Snape with him. Afraid it would break and Dumbledore vanish, Snape, at the feet of his Lord’s enemy, looked into the eyes that judged him.
What will I give for her?
“Anything.”
Snape unthreaded the memory from his mind, bringing it to the present and releasing it to rest with the others.
He glanced at the sword against the chair. His look hardened. There were more pressing matters to deal with than carrying out another one of Dumbledore’s unexplained schemes.
Still, he would go along with it today and take the stupid Gryffindor sword to the boy.
But tomorrow, once this was over and Dumbledore no longer pestered him, he would devote more thought to how he could better allay tensions in the school.
Snape pushed the Carrows’ unrelenting use of the Cruciatus from his mind.
He glared at the sword. Its glittering rubies seemed boastful; he had a sudden urge to snap the thing in two. If the boy knew it was he who brought it and the Dark Lord learned of it, the school and all its children would be utterly at the Carrows’ mercy.
He took a deep breath and returned the tip of his wand to his temple.
Though he had spoken the word many, many times and he had learned to be careful not to talk in her presence about her sister in an equally deprecating way, Snape had never ever used that word to her face.
Until Potter and Black had finally forced it from him one day and taken delight in his torture.
“Listen - I didn’t mean -”
“Lily, you know I’d never -”
“Please, Lily, wait -”
But she refused to listen to his pleas. It was Potter’s fault and she could not see it.
Yet Snape never gave up on her.
When she and Potter began to spend more and more time together, Snape watched her laughter from afar and ached to be the one to share in it. He escaped whenever he could to some solitary spot on the school grounds and cast the Patronus Charm simply to be with something of her that would not judge him or turn from him or smile fondly at the mention of James Potter’s name.
The silver doe listened not only to his talk of Potter but also to his thoughts of what lay ahead for him. She understood his fears as he contemplated his future. And she, the inner self of Lily who had longed for that power from childhood, shared his excitement in the promise of a future built on magic. Some day, her original self would share it with him too.
He realised then that Lily had turned him away simply because she could not be seen with him openly as long as she remained trapped within her circle of fools, but that secretly, and just for him, she had made clear her true feelings and had never really left him. Though the Dark Mark was burned into his teenage arm, it was ugly and superficial compared to the best of her safely deep inside him. She could never fade or be defaced or removed.
A sound echoed in the corridor as Snape let the memory fall into the Pensieve.
He paused and listened, his wand poised by his head. He had not revisited his old office before last week in several months.
A burst of childish laughter rang out, followed by the sound of a door slamming shut in the distance; the bang reverberated down the dungeons.
Snape relaxed. The Pensieve would be safe here today. He had permitted a group of Slytherins to stay over Christmas while their parents were busy ingratiating themselves with the Dark Lord and his newly elevated followers. But Snape’s old students would know to keep away from his dungeon office - old habits were hard to break.
At least he knew that none of his Slytherins were likely to fall victim to the Carrows. None of them had been taken away by the Dark Lord’s Ministry.
Yet that was little comfort compared to the growing numbers elsewhere in the school whom he felt useless to help.
But today.... There was still today, and then he could dwell on more essential matters tomorrow.
Snape turned back to the Pensieve and focused on the last remaining memory that still needed to be removed.
He had been forced to return to the Death Eaters to protect what little was left of Lily, in her son; to pretend nothing had changed.
But though he had always taken her enduring presence for granted, he knew his part in her death would ensure that she would no longer be there afterwards to guide him back. Yet he drove this from his mind and returned to them for her.
Snape watched as the woman fell to the ground under his confident stinging hex.
She crawled to a chair and gripped one of its legs, peering up at him through terrified eyes blinded by tears.
He was distracted by the sound of shouting from the floor above. The din intensified. Aurors would be here soon.
“Please,” the woman begged. “Please don’t kill me.”
She was probably in her late teens or early twenties, he thought. Strands of brown hair clung to her cheeks, caught in the dampness from her tears.
The woman began to tremble, her breath hitching with every sob. She knew the end was close. The noises around the house had begun to die down. Few of her family were now left.
Snape’s eyes remained fixed through his mask on the woman as Lucius entered the room.
“Stop playing with the Mudblood and get on with it, Severus,” he complained. “We’re all done here. The Aurors will arrive any minute.”
As if anticipating his words, the green of the Dark Mark flared outside; it blazed into the room, signalling the end of the Death Eaters’ entertainment and the beginning of the villagers’ terror-filled night ahead.
A sickly green moved across Snape’s wand, which still pointed at the woman. For a second, the light reflected off her face as she looked about, futilely seeking escape. Snape froze as the tear-filled eyes showed green.
Her eyes. She was here.
A terror struck him and broke through the calm he had carefully established inside himself. He nearly cried out to her - but Lucius’s patience in the doorway was starting to wear thin, and Snape caught himself in time. Was Lily mocking him? Was she testing him, waiting to see him fail - to see how easily he surrendered without her?
But it was she who had abandoned him, he reminded himself; she would not offer him the same comfort tonight as she always had in the past after such an event. Her silver light would not be as strong. He feared that, this time, it would not be able to penetrate the dark to reach him. Instead, she seemed to have taken up residence in the green Mark, the mark of death; his memories of her beautiful emerald eyes now haunted him.
His gaze shifted to the green above as a spark suddenly appeared close by; it grew brighter and seemed to race towards the woman.
Blinking as the resulting haze lifted, Snape turned and saw Lucius lower his wand. “Next time, I’ll let you finish off mine,” Lucius said, and made to leave. “Now we really must go.”
The green sky faded, curling into the skull of the Dark Mark. As it settled, its light began to retreat from the room where Snape stood transfixed, leaving him in the shaky pool of white from the Lumos he did not realise he had cast in the commotion.
As he watched the sky, the balance shifted in the room around him as the green died away, his own light taking its place, growing in brilliance. White gradually immersed him. His vacant gaze remained on the green snake that twisted from the skull.
He did not see his light. Its beam spread from the tip of his wand - the same place from where she had sprang and where he would never again take strength from her unfaltering, perfect light. With him at its focus, he was bathed in the now brilliant white glow of his Lumos as he continued to stare at the deathly green above....
He let the fragment of memory fall into place in the Pensieve, its final image lingering in his mind. He frowned as the thread sank and merged silver with silver, now indistinguishable from the others.
He stared into the shimmering bowl. But there was no time to dwell on this now. He’d been here too long already; the boy could leave the forest for another location at any moment.
Snape replaced his wand and took up the sword, sweeping it beneath his cloak.
He took one last glance at the half-filled Pensieve, the mergence of some of his worst thoughts. Its surface glittered as he looked.
He wondered if this time he would have the courage to restore them all on his return.
* * *
He had known that his would be a doe. He had known it would take the form of her happiness, because all his memories with her at their centre were happy. Each moment of joy and contentment linked naturally to the next, until the chain was complete and unbreakable.
Snape reached into his robes and took out the small photograph, her glowing face smiling back at him in the light from his wand, giving him strength.
In spite of the cold tonight, Snape did not feel it. Her Patronus, the best of her, the best of him, resided deep inside him, alive, strong and bright, ready to guide him when called upon.
She was his guiding light, and it was she who directed his every action, decided every one of his accomplishments.
Snape ended his Lumos and let the darkness envelop him and his memories of her fill his mind.
He held his breath as he sent her bright and perfect form into the forest. Tonight she would guide another through the dark as surely as she unerringly continued to guide him.
*
Author note, July 2011: If I had written this story at all well, I wouldn't have to say this. But I had posted it in other places and most comments seemed to get the wrong idea. Snape here is an unreliable narrator. This was my first (and only) try at an unreliable narrator. Snape is wrong: His love for Lily in fact comes from his capacity for goodness, not the other way around. I was intrigued that Snape's Patronus is a carbon copy of Lily's (her symbol of her love for James) and wondered if his emotional thinking is that he sees his Patronus as an actual 'piece' of Lily and therefore something that is not from within him. Therefore he doesn't see his capacity for good (in this story represented by his Lumos) to be from himself either. If that makes any sense? If the doe is beautiful, the beauty comes from inside him. If the doe is guiding him, he is his own guide. Anyway, I tried way too hard with this story, hated it from the off because I wanted to do something worthwhile (read: horribly worthy) for Snape in the face of the publication of DH, and this is the result - be warned! I bugged one of my betas to death with tiny rewrites when it should have been scrapped completely and led her to tear her hair out to her friends. Still feeling the pain of that, but hey.
Author: purpleygirl
Length: 3700 words
Pairings: Gen, but Snape/Lily in a way
Warnings: Mention of thwarted suicide; minor (original) character torture and death.
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Phineas knows where Potter is. Now all Snape has to do is carry out his plan.
Notes: Written for the snape_after_dh fest, prompt the silver doe (believe it or not, despite being a tiny bit late :P), and posted for the omniocular January challenge, prompts Patronus Charm and Lumos. Huge thanks to talloakslady, sigune and klynie1 for their invaluable beta help and for pushing me to rewrite even though I was sick of the damn thing already. Much of the dialogue in the familiar scenes is from DH.
I also want to thank rexluscus for writing and sharing her essay on the doe scene in Chapter 19 of DH (for which the opening quote from DH is included below as a parallel between Snape’s and Harry’s view of the doe). It was about the only thing that cheered me up after the book, and as this story was inspired by it, it owes just about everything to her essay.
Though the darkness had swallowed her whole, her burnished image was still imprinted on his retinas; it obscured his vision . . . . Now fear came; her presence had meant safety . . . .
“Lumos!” he whispered . . . .
- Deathly Hallows, Chapter 19, “The Silver Doe”, p. 318
The Best of Him
Snape had known that his would be a doe.
He’d known as soon as she had proudly shown off hers to him by the school lake, her face bright and her happy laughter ringing in his ears as it gambolled about him, surrounding him in its pure light. Lily white, he remembered thinking at the time. Her Patronus was as radiant as her smile, and he had always wanted her smile.
He’d known that his would take the form of her happiness, because in all of his happy memories, she was at their centre.
He could not remember or envisage a time without her. Even when Potter had bewitched her and wrenched her from him, her true essence had loved him still in spite of her denial, and she had bestowed it to him alone in the form of the silver doe. He treasured it every day, because it was perfectly her. It was something that Potter could never have.
Her Patronus, the best of her, resided deep inside him always, alive, strong and bright, ready to guide him when called upon.
* * *
When Dumbledore’s portrait had informed him that the boy must have the sword, Snape had thought through various ways - discarding them one by one - until the only foolproof means to obtaining Potter’s trust remained to him.
He resigned himself to it - his plan - and informed Phineas to do whatever necessary to determine Potter’s location. Then all that was left to do was wait.
Each time Phineas was asked for news, Snape could hear the veiled curiosity as Dumbledore’s portrait voiced concerns on how to deliver the sword to Potter unseen. But Dumbledore still insisted on his own agenda, even after death, and Snape in turn was not in the business of sharing his own plans with a gilt-framed painting.
Snape continued his duties at the castle and busied himself with restraining the Carrows’ activities as much as he could. And when the Christmas break arrived and he discovered that even more children had been taken, snatched from the train, destined never to return to the school and the small measure of protection it offered them, he almost forgot his plan completely.
Then early one snow-filled morning, Phineas interrupted his anxious thoughts with the whereabouts of the boy. Snape forced himself to prepare mentally for the ordeal he had decided on weeks ago.
As he threw on his travelling cloak, he tried one last time. “And you still aren’t going to tell me why it’s so important to give Potter the sword?”
“No,” said Dumbledore’s portrait. “I don’t think so.”
Snape again dismissed the painting’s concerns. “Don’t worry, Dumbledore,” he said. “I have a plan.”
His plan. His own.
He had already removed the Pensieve to the dungeons in preparation. With the sword safely concealed beneath his travelling cloak, he entered his old office and approached the Pensieve where it sat empty and waiting on the desk.
He placed the sword against a chair and drew his wand. He needed to empty his mind of everything that might interfere with success. If he could not form the Patronus fully, his plan would fail.
She had surprised him a year ago when he had called her in the heat of anger. But he could not afford to take chances today with his position at the school at stake.
He pointed his wand at his forehead and felt his heart quicken. This stage would be over soon. But first he had to make sure that each fragment of memory was extracted precisely and completely.
Snape closed his eyes.
He Apparated without thinking and found himself on a cliff top, weak moonlight touching the sea in the distance. A stinging wind drove the rain into him, soaking through his robes and chilling his skin.
He had left the other Death Eaters as they had panicked, anxious of what had become of their Dark Lord and what would become of them.
But all he could think of was her; of how she was gone.
It had been his worst fears made true; the one thing that he had been certain, despite her simple protests, could never happen.
He threw himself down. “Stay with me,” he moaned, the damp clay sticking to his palms. He lifted his head and gripped his wand. His hand shook. “Don’t leave me!”
And then, there she was in front of him, her silver-white light magnified tenfold. It spread across the darkness beyond and forced him to blink away the water that stung at his eyes. Now he could see her better. But though her light shone as strong as ever, her outline seemed vague - she was slipping away from him - heading toward the sea.
“Don’t leave me!” he cried out again, and his sudden cry released a torrent of emotions and sent his drenched hair clinging to his face as he rested his hands on the ground before her. “Please stay! Please forgive me!”
But his words were snatched away by the wind.
The memory of her happy face mocked him with its illusiveness. It belonged to a world he no longer knew or understood, and he began to doubt its existence; it seemed to show itself for the lie it always had been as the glossy layers blistered and peeled away, leaving him with the smell of decay and death.
Frantically, he raised himself to his knees and looked to her light. Though it had diminished, she was, beyond hope, still here, looking out, standing before him with her elegant poise as the rain streaked through her. She would not leave him! How could he have doubted her?
“Lily.” He held out his dirty hands.
She turned her head gracefully and rested her eyes on him then. He held his breath as he looked into her soft gaze. She seemed to beckon him. Follow me, her eyes implored him.
His fear gave way as if her light had pierced some covering that had bound his eyes.
The change within him wrought a nervous smile to his lips as the rain lashed down. Her radiance seemed to waver against the dark sky, but still she stayed with him. He had to follow her now before her light faded completely.
He pushed himself to his feet through the crushing dark, his gaze fixed on her through strands of hair as he tasted the salty water that trickled down his sodden face.
“Lily.” He gasped her name in desperation. “Wait for me,” he beseeched her. “Please! I’m coming. I’m coming with you.”
He stumbled forward, blind only to her light.
Then with a tremendous tear, a great force ripped the air between them. It sent Snape flying back to the ground.
He lifted his hand to shield his eyes, desperately searching her out... but he could no longer see her.
“Severus!” The voice was filled with anger as it roared through the wind, and Snape cried out to Lily in the dark.
He drew together all his energy and clambered to his feet. She was leaving him forever. “No! Don’t go!”
Snape fought against his presence, but Dumbledore’s fury overpowered him, sending him back down, and as he pushed at the earth, he found Dumbledore barring his way, his face worse than those of the Furies themselves in the light from his wand.
“You will come back with me!”
“She ... Gone.”
Dumbledore seemed to grow more impatient as he stared down at him unpityingly.
“Gone!” Snape implored. He heaved a shuddering breath and shouted, “She’s waiting for me!” And he began to crawl around the towering figure that blocked his view of her.
“Do not think your death now will solve this, Severus!”
Snape felt himself pulled up and back, away from where she had gone. “No!” He stretched out his hand to the ghost of her lingering light. “No! Let me go!” His words were choked from him as the strong hands shook his body.
“If you really wish to see her again, you must earn it! You must prove your worth.”
Snape continued to fight against Dumbledore’s grip, the air icy, burning his lungs. “She can’t leave me...!”
“I will not discuss this here! You will return to the castle.”
Snape, knowing this was his last chance to find her again, mustered all his energy one last time. But the arms wrenched him into a death hold, and he felt his world squeezed from him as Dumbledore Disapparated, and the trees of the Forbidden Forest, sentry-like in the dark, came into view.
Snape collapsed to the ground. The grassy earth tore his nails as he clawed it.
Snape lowered the glistening silver strand into the Pensieve.
He could not recall how Dumbledore had succeeded in getting him inside and to the headmaster’s office unseen by the others in the castle.
Perhaps they had seen - and heard. Perhaps they had dismissed it as impossible.
Or perhaps they had believed him mourning the passing of his Dark Lord.
Which was the more preferable, Snape could not say.
He stared at the memory as it settled into the rune-marked stone basin and took on its shape, spreading out into a shimmering mass. Some aspect of it must have still lingered in him, because as he looked he found himself somewhat loath to replace it on his return.
But that would soon pass.
The worst part of the process - as he remembered from his weekly preparation for Potter’s wasted Occlumency lessons - was having to call to mind the weakest moments with all the frailty and danger of losing control to sentiment.
He favoured Occlumency greatly to this, and he would gladly have used it instead if it had not been so crucial today that he be able to cast the fullest Patronus.
Yes, he preferred being in command of his emotions. The last time he had found himself dwelling on what might have been - just six months ago in Black’s house - he had condemned himself afterwards for such weakness. But he had not been able to bring himself to take out again the section of photograph from where he had concealed it safely - not even to look on it again. He thought of it now, pressed to his chest.
Though he sometimes had an irrational desire to forget how much she haunted him, he found he still could not remove it.
Snape straightened himself and brought his wand back to his head.
With all his desires bent on one thing, he sent her, as strong and true as his need was that night, to carry his message to his old teacher.
The wind tossed leaves towards him. They danced around him on the hill as he waited at its peak, every moment that brought no sign of Dumbledore’s arrival filling him with greater fear. Already he could feel the Dark drawing him to its depthless centre. He did not have the strength to overcome its pull on his own.
When finally the air rent, blinding white, sending his wand flying, he dropped to the earth, overwhelmed with gratitude, though defenceless. Only then the thought panicked him - if he died now, Lily would have no chance of protection. “Don’t kill me!”
“That was not my intention. Well, Severus? What message does Lord Voldemort have for me?”
“No - no message - I’m here on my own account!”
He pushed on with his request. Yet in some ways, he found pleading with Dumbledore for her life worse than asking the same of the Dark Lord. The Dark Lord had merely looked on it as simple recompense for the prophecy. But Dumbledore made him feel unworthy of asking for a life, ashamed of doing so, and he demanded much more of him, as punishment.
Snape set the value of the lives of the husband and child alongside hers. But still Dumbledore wanted more.
The wind seemed to press in on the bubble of quiet that imprisoned Snape with him. Afraid it would break and Dumbledore vanish, Snape, at the feet of his Lord’s enemy, looked into the eyes that judged him.
What will I give for her?
“Anything.”
Snape unthreaded the memory from his mind, bringing it to the present and releasing it to rest with the others.
He glanced at the sword against the chair. His look hardened. There were more pressing matters to deal with than carrying out another one of Dumbledore’s unexplained schemes.
Still, he would go along with it today and take the stupid Gryffindor sword to the boy.
But tomorrow, once this was over and Dumbledore no longer pestered him, he would devote more thought to how he could better allay tensions in the school.
Snape pushed the Carrows’ unrelenting use of the Cruciatus from his mind.
He glared at the sword. Its glittering rubies seemed boastful; he had a sudden urge to snap the thing in two. If the boy knew it was he who brought it and the Dark Lord learned of it, the school and all its children would be utterly at the Carrows’ mercy.
He took a deep breath and returned the tip of his wand to his temple.
Though he had spoken the word many, many times and he had learned to be careful not to talk in her presence about her sister in an equally deprecating way, Snape had never ever used that word to her face.
Until Potter and Black had finally forced it from him one day and taken delight in his torture.
“Listen - I didn’t mean -”
“Lily, you know I’d never -”
“Please, Lily, wait -”
But she refused to listen to his pleas. It was Potter’s fault and she could not see it.
Yet Snape never gave up on her.
When she and Potter began to spend more and more time together, Snape watched her laughter from afar and ached to be the one to share in it. He escaped whenever he could to some solitary spot on the school grounds and cast the Patronus Charm simply to be with something of her that would not judge him or turn from him or smile fondly at the mention of James Potter’s name.
The silver doe listened not only to his talk of Potter but also to his thoughts of what lay ahead for him. She understood his fears as he contemplated his future. And she, the inner self of Lily who had longed for that power from childhood, shared his excitement in the promise of a future built on magic. Some day, her original self would share it with him too.
He realised then that Lily had turned him away simply because she could not be seen with him openly as long as she remained trapped within her circle of fools, but that secretly, and just for him, she had made clear her true feelings and had never really left him. Though the Dark Mark was burned into his teenage arm, it was ugly and superficial compared to the best of her safely deep inside him. She could never fade or be defaced or removed.
A sound echoed in the corridor as Snape let the memory fall into the Pensieve.
He paused and listened, his wand poised by his head. He had not revisited his old office before last week in several months.
A burst of childish laughter rang out, followed by the sound of a door slamming shut in the distance; the bang reverberated down the dungeons.
Snape relaxed. The Pensieve would be safe here today. He had permitted a group of Slytherins to stay over Christmas while their parents were busy ingratiating themselves with the Dark Lord and his newly elevated followers. But Snape’s old students would know to keep away from his dungeon office - old habits were hard to break.
At least he knew that none of his Slytherins were likely to fall victim to the Carrows. None of them had been taken away by the Dark Lord’s Ministry.
Yet that was little comfort compared to the growing numbers elsewhere in the school whom he felt useless to help.
But today.... There was still today, and then he could dwell on more essential matters tomorrow.
Snape turned back to the Pensieve and focused on the last remaining memory that still needed to be removed.
He had been forced to return to the Death Eaters to protect what little was left of Lily, in her son; to pretend nothing had changed.
But though he had always taken her enduring presence for granted, he knew his part in her death would ensure that she would no longer be there afterwards to guide him back. Yet he drove this from his mind and returned to them for her.
Snape watched as the woman fell to the ground under his confident stinging hex.
She crawled to a chair and gripped one of its legs, peering up at him through terrified eyes blinded by tears.
He was distracted by the sound of shouting from the floor above. The din intensified. Aurors would be here soon.
“Please,” the woman begged. “Please don’t kill me.”
She was probably in her late teens or early twenties, he thought. Strands of brown hair clung to her cheeks, caught in the dampness from her tears.
The woman began to tremble, her breath hitching with every sob. She knew the end was close. The noises around the house had begun to die down. Few of her family were now left.
Snape’s eyes remained fixed through his mask on the woman as Lucius entered the room.
“Stop playing with the Mudblood and get on with it, Severus,” he complained. “We’re all done here. The Aurors will arrive any minute.”
As if anticipating his words, the green of the Dark Mark flared outside; it blazed into the room, signalling the end of the Death Eaters’ entertainment and the beginning of the villagers’ terror-filled night ahead.
A sickly green moved across Snape’s wand, which still pointed at the woman. For a second, the light reflected off her face as she looked about, futilely seeking escape. Snape froze as the tear-filled eyes showed green.
Her eyes. She was here.
A terror struck him and broke through the calm he had carefully established inside himself. He nearly cried out to her - but Lucius’s patience in the doorway was starting to wear thin, and Snape caught himself in time. Was Lily mocking him? Was she testing him, waiting to see him fail - to see how easily he surrendered without her?
But it was she who had abandoned him, he reminded himself; she would not offer him the same comfort tonight as she always had in the past after such an event. Her silver light would not be as strong. He feared that, this time, it would not be able to penetrate the dark to reach him. Instead, she seemed to have taken up residence in the green Mark, the mark of death; his memories of her beautiful emerald eyes now haunted him.
His gaze shifted to the green above as a spark suddenly appeared close by; it grew brighter and seemed to race towards the woman.
Blinking as the resulting haze lifted, Snape turned and saw Lucius lower his wand. “Next time, I’ll let you finish off mine,” Lucius said, and made to leave. “Now we really must go.”
The green sky faded, curling into the skull of the Dark Mark. As it settled, its light began to retreat from the room where Snape stood transfixed, leaving him in the shaky pool of white from the Lumos he did not realise he had cast in the commotion.
As he watched the sky, the balance shifted in the room around him as the green died away, his own light taking its place, growing in brilliance. White gradually immersed him. His vacant gaze remained on the green snake that twisted from the skull.
He did not see his light. Its beam spread from the tip of his wand - the same place from where she had sprang and where he would never again take strength from her unfaltering, perfect light. With him at its focus, he was bathed in the now brilliant white glow of his Lumos as he continued to stare at the deathly green above....
He let the fragment of memory fall into place in the Pensieve, its final image lingering in his mind. He frowned as the thread sank and merged silver with silver, now indistinguishable from the others.
He stared into the shimmering bowl. But there was no time to dwell on this now. He’d been here too long already; the boy could leave the forest for another location at any moment.
Snape replaced his wand and took up the sword, sweeping it beneath his cloak.
He took one last glance at the half-filled Pensieve, the mergence of some of his worst thoughts. Its surface glittered as he looked.
He wondered if this time he would have the courage to restore them all on his return.
* * *
He had known that his would be a doe. He had known it would take the form of her happiness, because all his memories with her at their centre were happy. Each moment of joy and contentment linked naturally to the next, until the chain was complete and unbreakable.
Snape reached into his robes and took out the small photograph, her glowing face smiling back at him in the light from his wand, giving him strength.
In spite of the cold tonight, Snape did not feel it. Her Patronus, the best of her, the best of him, resided deep inside him, alive, strong and bright, ready to guide him when called upon.
She was his guiding light, and it was she who directed his every action, decided every one of his accomplishments.
Snape ended his Lumos and let the darkness envelop him and his memories of her fill his mind.
He held his breath as he sent her bright and perfect form into the forest. Tonight she would guide another through the dark as surely as she unerringly continued to guide him.
*
Author note, July 2011: If I had written this story at all well, I wouldn't have to say this. But I had posted it in other places and most comments seemed to get the wrong idea. Snape here is an unreliable narrator. This was my first (and only) try at an unreliable narrator. Snape is wrong: His love for Lily in fact comes from his capacity for goodness, not the other way around. I was intrigued that Snape's Patronus is a carbon copy of Lily's (her symbol of her love for James) and wondered if his emotional thinking is that he sees his Patronus as an actual 'piece' of Lily and therefore something that is not from within him. Therefore he doesn't see his capacity for good (in this story represented by his Lumos) to be from himself either. If that makes any sense? If the doe is beautiful, the beauty comes from inside him. If the doe is guiding him, he is his own guide. Anyway, I tried way too hard with this story, hated it from the off because I wanted to do something worthwhile (read: horribly worthy) for Snape in the face of the publication of DH, and this is the result - be warned! I bugged one of my betas to death with tiny rewrites when it should have been scrapped completely and led her to tear her hair out to her friends. Still feeling the pain of that, but hey.