Chapter 3 -- Remembrance
Title: The Devil's Due
Rating: NC17 (eventually)
Fandom: Harry Potter/Crow Crossover
Summary: Six months after Voldemort's victory and the Fall of Harry Potter, an angry spirit rises from the grave to wreak bloody vengeance.
Spoilers: HBP and the Crow mythology
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the mythology. Just my sick imagination.
Archive: At Twisting the Hellmouth. If you want it, check with me first.
A/N: Many thanks to my betas, Selenya and Bneuensc. Thanks also to Selenya, who helped me conceive this bunny. On the night before her wedding, no less. Let’s hear it for dedicated Goff Grrls!
October 30, 6:00am
A moment passed, perhaps two, while Snape stood dumbly staring into the eyes of a dead woman, yet it seemed to stretch on forever. It was only when she shivered particularly hard - as if a goose is walking her grave, he thought - that he was shaken from his stunned immobility. He snatched the pile of black wool that he had discarded moments before and, ignoring the utter wrongness of the fabric ever touching her, wrapped the pale woman in its folds. She clutched the edges around her, and he was momentarily distracted by her fingers, mud-streaked, with dirt caked under and around her short fingernails. She caught his distraction and gave a low, rasping chuckle.
“They lied. They don’t grow,” he looked up then, and haunted green eyes met his, “After death. Fingernails,” she clarified, “they lied. They don’t grow.”
“I-,” he cleared his throat and backed away a pace. The intensity, the anguish of those eyes was too much to bear that close, “Lily, how…how did you get here?” It was so inane, so much less a question than all the ones he wanted to ask, but it was all that he could squeeze out of his closed throat.
“There was a broom. I flew” she gestured vaguely towards the door. She, too, seemed to have backed up a space, deeper into herself, “from Godric’s Hollow. As the crow flies,” she chuckled roughly again.
“Lily-” he began again, but she interrupted him with a shake of her head.
“Please, Severus. I can’t. Not yet. The…memories. Thinking is too hard. I just need…,” her face, her entire body clenched, then she straightened and he saw in that moment the immovable determination that Voldemort must have seen when she faced him down, “I need to know what happened to my son.”
So he told her. Standing in the front hall, staring into those green eyes that had haunted him for so long, he told her of Voldemort’s attack on the Potter’s hiding place, of Pettigrew’s betrayal and Black’s imprisonment, of James’ and her own death, of The Boy Who Lived and Voldemort’s failed killing curse. He told her what little he know of her son’s life with her sister, and of his years at Hogwarts. He told her of Voldemort’s rise and his own role as double, triple, quadruple agent. He told her of Dumbledore’s death, of the failed search for the final horcrux, of her son’s impetuous attack, and of his inevitable death.
She stood quietly through his recitation. As his final, toneless words died out, she moved listlessly into the parlour and sank onto a settee.
“And now?”
Taking her cue, he sat across from her, “and now Voldemort controls all of Wizarding Britain. Muggleborn and sympathizers have been hunted down or have fled. There’s some resistance on the Continent, but Britain is an island in more ways than one. Nobody can penetrate well enough to do anything, and it wouldn’t matter if they could. He holds his courts and his revels, and as long as the final horcrux remains secret and whole, Voldemort is unstoppable.”
“And you stand at his right hand and do nothing…just as you did nothing when he killed Harry”.
Snape’s stomach dropped at the deadened accusation in her tone, but years of disguising his reactions as a spy served him well, and not the ghost of a flinch crossed his features. They sat in charged silence, Snape doing all he could not to stare as she sunk deeper into thought. She was alive, however accusatory she might be - moving, thinking, alive! How? No magic that he knew of could accomplish it. Even the Inferi were little more than reanimated drones. He was afraid to know the means, and found he didn’t much care. Teenage feelings that he thought were long quashed and dead were reanimated alongside her. Stupid, ridiculous, and yet he couldn’t entirely suppress that sputter of longing as he watched her hair dry from dripping blood into a familiar auburn fire. A dark shape flapping past the window drew her from her reverie.
“Who else?”
“What?” Her sudden question startled him as much as her renewed intensity.
“Who else is to blame? Who else stands at his right hand. Who else is responsible for his return and all the pain it brought. Who else is responsible for my son’s death?”
He struggled to find his voice amidst the pain and guilt that her implied accusation stirred. Who else, she had demanded, “Nott and Avery. Crabbe and Goyle Senior. The LeStranges, but particularly Bellatrix. Lucius Malfoy. Pettigrew, of course,” he fell silent.
“And you.” She rose, black robes swirling around her pale legs, her burning eyes focused on something beyond him. He stared at his knotted hands and choked down an agreement as she moved past him to the front hall.
“What are you going to do? What do you want me to do?” he whispered, wanting this condemnation over with.
“Do?” He turned and saw that she had picked up his discarded Death Eater’s mask and was running her fingers over it. She grinned at him then, and for the first time in a long time he felt more than despair. He felt fear, “What are we going to do? Tonight, we’re going to a party.”
----------------------
She had finally unnerved him, finally flapped the unflappable crow with that last statement (or maybe it was the grin, or perhaps both). Severus had shown her to a room and flapped off somewhere else, muttering about finding her some proper clothes. But he took his staring dark eyes and his beak of a nose and his fluttering black robes with him, and that was what she needed. She closed the door, closed the drapes, closed her mind against the persistence of crows - wanting her, needing her, calling her from her peace, revealing things too painful to encompass.
The room he’d put her in was one of the master suites, complete with a bathroom that had obviously been a modern amenity some time before the turn of the century - claw-foot tub and shower, free-standing washbasin, and toilet with ceiling tank. The suite was musty from long disuse, though it seemed at some point a Hippogryff had made its nest here. Opening the huge wardrobe that dominated one wall of the room, she realized why no human had bedded down in this place since its former occupant's death. These must have been Walburga Black’s rooms. The overwhelming smell of mothballs assaulted her from the folds of black wool, gabardine, satin and velvet that inhabited the wardrobe. Clothes from the days before mass manufacture, when Wizards didn’t dress much differently than Muggles. She pulled out one of the gowns, a walking ensemble with bustle and underskirt, all in black velvet. The memory of hatred, unhappiness, deep prejudice assaulted her. She could hear a woman’s cutting voice, dripping with disdain, and a wild young boy’s rebellious response. Dropping the gown, she backed away to the center of the room. The foreign memories receded, and she found herself wondering if there were any happy memories embedded in the House of Black.
She tried to explore the room more, but every object was a potential bomb, a flashpoint of painful memories and associations. Things she didn’t want to think about, things she wanted to banish like the crows. She ended up lying in the middle of the floor and staring up at the ceiling, dirt-encrusted fingers absently running over the Death Eater's mask. Waiting. Waiting for night to fall.
She began to feel uncomfortable in her skin. The wool scratched against it, the dirt dried to it. Mechanically, she moved to the bathroom. The cloak became a pool of blackness on the floor, the mask a mocking grin at its center. Hot water, cold water, soap and scrub. Her body remembered the motions of how to do this - could do it without thought. Towel and dry and clean the mirror off to fix your-
Oh god.
She stared at her reflection, falling endlessly into the moment of realization of me/not me. The moment of recognizing that self means not self, where incompleteness is comprehended. The first terrible moment of loss. James. Harry. Lily. They were all gone. The woman in the mirror was dead. She was a shade, a shadow. She was the reflection. Other. Tentatively, she reached towards the dead woman in the reflection, and was surprised when the woman similarly reached out to her. Their fingers touched and the cool glass was like water between them. She flattened her palm but when she pushed the woman pushed back with equal force, denying her the rejoining she so desperately desired. Things to do, things left incomplete. In the back of her mind she heard the cawing of crows…no, No. NO!
Her fists smashed the mirror again and again, the reflected woman splintered into blood-smeared refractions, shards of reflected memories. Sobbing, Lily rested her forehead against the shattered mirror, a gut-deep roar of rage and sorrow tearing from her. Her hands dropped to rest in the basin, blood oozing from a dozen cuts, light winking at her from a dusting of shards. Her breathing slowed and her sobs subsided as she watched the cuts shrink away into smooth, unblemished skin. She realized then that there hadn’t been any pain, only the memory of the pain that should have been. She was deadened to the pain. Deadened. Dead.
Gliding back into the bedroom, she lifted the discarded gown from the floor, wrapping herself in the black velvet embrace of a dark hatred that wasn’t hers. The memory of those emotions ebbed and lay quiescent, tamed for the moment. She discarded the underskirt, instead pulling on thick black stockings she found deeper in the wardrobe, and sturdy high-buttoned boots. Then she returned to the bathroom, lifting the heavy wool robes from the floor and settling them around her shoulder. Having felt the press of emotions and memories from all sides, she now realized that Severus’ robes were different. They carried despair with them, but also a deep, almost desperate conviction that let her ignore the memories. She wrapped herself in his Death Eater robes to shield against the alien emotions that clamored at the edge of her reason. Fingering the mask, she looked back up into the shattered mirror.
She couldn’t feel her own pain, but she could make sure that those who gave her the memories of pain suffered as she had. She couldn’t go back to her own grave, but she could bury those who had killed her and everything she loved. She heard the crow fluttering against the window. She couldn’t wait for Severus. It was time.
She smiled, and dozens of broken, bloody, refracted images smiled back.
Rating: NC17 (eventually)
Fandom: Harry Potter/Crow Crossover
Summary: Six months after Voldemort's victory and the Fall of Harry Potter, an angry spirit rises from the grave to wreak bloody vengeance.
Spoilers: HBP and the Crow mythology
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or the mythology. Just my sick imagination.
Archive: At Twisting the Hellmouth. If you want it, check with me first.
A/N: Many thanks to my betas, Selenya and Bneuensc. Thanks also to Selenya, who helped me conceive this bunny. On the night before her wedding, no less. Let’s hear it for dedicated Goff Grrls!
October 30, 6:00am
A moment passed, perhaps two, while Snape stood dumbly staring into the eyes of a dead woman, yet it seemed to stretch on forever. It was only when she shivered particularly hard - as if a goose is walking her grave, he thought - that he was shaken from his stunned immobility. He snatched the pile of black wool that he had discarded moments before and, ignoring the utter wrongness of the fabric ever touching her, wrapped the pale woman in its folds. She clutched the edges around her, and he was momentarily distracted by her fingers, mud-streaked, with dirt caked under and around her short fingernails. She caught his distraction and gave a low, rasping chuckle.
“They lied. They don’t grow,” he looked up then, and haunted green eyes met his, “After death. Fingernails,” she clarified, “they lied. They don’t grow.”
“I-,” he cleared his throat and backed away a pace. The intensity, the anguish of those eyes was too much to bear that close, “Lily, how…how did you get here?” It was so inane, so much less a question than all the ones he wanted to ask, but it was all that he could squeeze out of his closed throat.
“There was a broom. I flew” she gestured vaguely towards the door. She, too, seemed to have backed up a space, deeper into herself, “from Godric’s Hollow. As the crow flies,” she chuckled roughly again.
“Lily-” he began again, but she interrupted him with a shake of her head.
“Please, Severus. I can’t. Not yet. The…memories. Thinking is too hard. I just need…,” her face, her entire body clenched, then she straightened and he saw in that moment the immovable determination that Voldemort must have seen when she faced him down, “I need to know what happened to my son.”
So he told her. Standing in the front hall, staring into those green eyes that had haunted him for so long, he told her of Voldemort’s attack on the Potter’s hiding place, of Pettigrew’s betrayal and Black’s imprisonment, of James’ and her own death, of The Boy Who Lived and Voldemort’s failed killing curse. He told her what little he know of her son’s life with her sister, and of his years at Hogwarts. He told her of Voldemort’s rise and his own role as double, triple, quadruple agent. He told her of Dumbledore’s death, of the failed search for the final horcrux, of her son’s impetuous attack, and of his inevitable death.
She stood quietly through his recitation. As his final, toneless words died out, she moved listlessly into the parlour and sank onto a settee.
“And now?”
Taking her cue, he sat across from her, “and now Voldemort controls all of Wizarding Britain. Muggleborn and sympathizers have been hunted down or have fled. There’s some resistance on the Continent, but Britain is an island in more ways than one. Nobody can penetrate well enough to do anything, and it wouldn’t matter if they could. He holds his courts and his revels, and as long as the final horcrux remains secret and whole, Voldemort is unstoppable.”
“And you stand at his right hand and do nothing…just as you did nothing when he killed Harry”.
Snape’s stomach dropped at the deadened accusation in her tone, but years of disguising his reactions as a spy served him well, and not the ghost of a flinch crossed his features. They sat in charged silence, Snape doing all he could not to stare as she sunk deeper into thought. She was alive, however accusatory she might be - moving, thinking, alive! How? No magic that he knew of could accomplish it. Even the Inferi were little more than reanimated drones. He was afraid to know the means, and found he didn’t much care. Teenage feelings that he thought were long quashed and dead were reanimated alongside her. Stupid, ridiculous, and yet he couldn’t entirely suppress that sputter of longing as he watched her hair dry from dripping blood into a familiar auburn fire. A dark shape flapping past the window drew her from her reverie.
“Who else?”
“What?” Her sudden question startled him as much as her renewed intensity.
“Who else is to blame? Who else stands at his right hand. Who else is responsible for his return and all the pain it brought. Who else is responsible for my son’s death?”
He struggled to find his voice amidst the pain and guilt that her implied accusation stirred. Who else, she had demanded, “Nott and Avery. Crabbe and Goyle Senior. The LeStranges, but particularly Bellatrix. Lucius Malfoy. Pettigrew, of course,” he fell silent.
“And you.” She rose, black robes swirling around her pale legs, her burning eyes focused on something beyond him. He stared at his knotted hands and choked down an agreement as she moved past him to the front hall.
“What are you going to do? What do you want me to do?” he whispered, wanting this condemnation over with.
“Do?” He turned and saw that she had picked up his discarded Death Eater’s mask and was running her fingers over it. She grinned at him then, and for the first time in a long time he felt more than despair. He felt fear, “What are we going to do? Tonight, we’re going to a party.”
----------------------
She had finally unnerved him, finally flapped the unflappable crow with that last statement (or maybe it was the grin, or perhaps both). Severus had shown her to a room and flapped off somewhere else, muttering about finding her some proper clothes. But he took his staring dark eyes and his beak of a nose and his fluttering black robes with him, and that was what she needed. She closed the door, closed the drapes, closed her mind against the persistence of crows - wanting her, needing her, calling her from her peace, revealing things too painful to encompass.
The room he’d put her in was one of the master suites, complete with a bathroom that had obviously been a modern amenity some time before the turn of the century - claw-foot tub and shower, free-standing washbasin, and toilet with ceiling tank. The suite was musty from long disuse, though it seemed at some point a Hippogryff had made its nest here. Opening the huge wardrobe that dominated one wall of the room, she realized why no human had bedded down in this place since its former occupant's death. These must have been Walburga Black’s rooms. The overwhelming smell of mothballs assaulted her from the folds of black wool, gabardine, satin and velvet that inhabited the wardrobe. Clothes from the days before mass manufacture, when Wizards didn’t dress much differently than Muggles. She pulled out one of the gowns, a walking ensemble with bustle and underskirt, all in black velvet. The memory of hatred, unhappiness, deep prejudice assaulted her. She could hear a woman’s cutting voice, dripping with disdain, and a wild young boy’s rebellious response. Dropping the gown, she backed away to the center of the room. The foreign memories receded, and she found herself wondering if there were any happy memories embedded in the House of Black.
She tried to explore the room more, but every object was a potential bomb, a flashpoint of painful memories and associations. Things she didn’t want to think about, things she wanted to banish like the crows. She ended up lying in the middle of the floor and staring up at the ceiling, dirt-encrusted fingers absently running over the Death Eater's mask. Waiting. Waiting for night to fall.
She began to feel uncomfortable in her skin. The wool scratched against it, the dirt dried to it. Mechanically, she moved to the bathroom. The cloak became a pool of blackness on the floor, the mask a mocking grin at its center. Hot water, cold water, soap and scrub. Her body remembered the motions of how to do this - could do it without thought. Towel and dry and clean the mirror off to fix your-
Oh god.
She stared at her reflection, falling endlessly into the moment of realization of me/not me. The moment of recognizing that self means not self, where incompleteness is comprehended. The first terrible moment of loss. James. Harry. Lily. They were all gone. The woman in the mirror was dead. She was a shade, a shadow. She was the reflection. Other. Tentatively, she reached towards the dead woman in the reflection, and was surprised when the woman similarly reached out to her. Their fingers touched and the cool glass was like water between them. She flattened her palm but when she pushed the woman pushed back with equal force, denying her the rejoining she so desperately desired. Things to do, things left incomplete. In the back of her mind she heard the cawing of crows…no, No. NO!
Her fists smashed the mirror again and again, the reflected woman splintered into blood-smeared refractions, shards of reflected memories. Sobbing, Lily rested her forehead against the shattered mirror, a gut-deep roar of rage and sorrow tearing from her. Her hands dropped to rest in the basin, blood oozing from a dozen cuts, light winking at her from a dusting of shards. Her breathing slowed and her sobs subsided as she watched the cuts shrink away into smooth, unblemished skin. She realized then that there hadn’t been any pain, only the memory of the pain that should have been. She was deadened to the pain. Deadened. Dead.
Gliding back into the bedroom, she lifted the discarded gown from the floor, wrapping herself in the black velvet embrace of a dark hatred that wasn’t hers. The memory of those emotions ebbed and lay quiescent, tamed for the moment. She discarded the underskirt, instead pulling on thick black stockings she found deeper in the wardrobe, and sturdy high-buttoned boots. Then she returned to the bathroom, lifting the heavy wool robes from the floor and settling them around her shoulder. Having felt the press of emotions and memories from all sides, she now realized that Severus’ robes were different. They carried despair with them, but also a deep, almost desperate conviction that let her ignore the memories. She wrapped herself in his Death Eater robes to shield against the alien emotions that clamored at the edge of her reason. Fingering the mask, she looked back up into the shattered mirror.
She couldn’t feel her own pain, but she could make sure that those who gave her the memories of pain suffered as she had. She couldn’t go back to her own grave, but she could bury those who had killed her and everything she loved. She heard the crow fluttering against the window. She couldn’t wait for Severus. It was time.
She smiled, and dozens of broken, bloody, refracted images smiled back.