Two Lockets



Chapter 1

Wednesday’s child is full of woe.
Thursday’s child has far to go.

Once, he’d mounted the top of the ladder in the library like a broom, ripped a dozen pages out of the book, folded them into paper planes, and chucked them one by one at the vicious old writing desk in the corner. The desk had devoured the lot with loud snaps of its rolltop lid, and Harry’d thought they were gone for good, and good riddance to them! But the distant sound of a door slamming again and again in the drawing room had pulled Harry’s attention away from tearing out any more pages, and he’d climbed down the ladder. He’d made it into the drawing room just in time to see the curio cabinet open its door and, with a disgusted ‘ptui’, spit out the last of his paper planes before slamming its door shut again. Two summers ago, the cabinet’s shelves had been left bare after they’d cleared out all the Dark artefacts it’d held, but now as Harry peered in he could see a familiar spidery instrument on one shelf, crouched protectively over a silver snuffbox. Huh. It’s as though the things are moving back in: Merlin only knows how they find their way. Oh well, they can stay there for all I care.

Apparently the curio cabinet was more hospitable toward cursed artefacts than paper planes. And it wasn’t just Harry’s planes it objected to, ‘cause when he’d knelt down to pick them all up he’d found two more, buried in the dust under the cabinet: a yellowed swan, and a parchment swallow that Harry didn’t even know how to fold. The swan had turned out to be a sheet of letterhead embossed with the Black coat of arms, addressed to Walburga, Kitchen: Found your ring in the library. Attached. No need to make any additions to your mother’s head collection. The swan’s elaborately hooked beak had held no ring. Bloody typical, Harry’d thought, Even the furniture in this Place is a bunch of crooks and thieves.

From one little king to another the swallow’s wings had said, I’m so sorry, S. I had no choice. Look after yourself. Harry’d thought it was sad that Sirius never got the note, and sadder still that Sirius was gone, and would never be able to tell Harry who the note was from and what it meant. Harry had slipped the parchment swallow in among the pages of Snape’s textbook, after he’d finished Reparoing all his ex-paper planes back into the binding. Then he’d taken the book into Sirius’ old bedroom and had studied each stained, yellowed page from Levicorpus to Sectumsempra until the scrawled notes had blurred before his eyes: all those potions, all those poisons, all those curses. All that inventiveness, Harry’d thought sadly, as he’d tucked the swallow’s delicate wingtip further between the pages, out of harm’s way. Then he’d frowned, remembering a tower, a face twisted by loathing, a flash of green. All that bloody malice.

The next time I cast these curses, or anything else, I won’t fail.

On Bill and Fleur’s wedding day Ron had twirled a grinning Hermione around in the Burrow’s sitting room, to riotous applause from Ginny and the Twins. But even on that golden day of peace, Harry had watched their joy from the sidelines, planning, worrying, waiting. How good it would’ve been to forget – Horcruxes, Voldemort, Snape – and join the celebration just for once. But he knew there’d be no rest for him, not until Voldemort was gone. All the while, as he watched and clapped and smiled, all he could think was Who’ll be next? Ginny? Hermione? Ron? I can’t lose them. I have to end this, once and for all. Alone.

At first he wasn’t alone. Ron and Hermione made it easier: facing the Dursleys and the unknown. They’d found the key to Godric’s Hollow together, and no one got hurt when that Horcrux was broken. But then… He was so drunk on that first victory; he should’ve thought it through! He could’ve done it all differently – waited or called the Aurors – before looking for Ollivander at the Wandwood Glade. He could still see the pale agony on Ron’s and Hermione’s faces as their shaking hands joined on the handle of the Ravenclaw wand, their magic unwittingly drained just to destroy Riddle’s relic.

At least they were alive. Hermione still sent letters and photographs – the unmoving kind – and they looked happy in them. Those last few days when Harry’d said it wasn’t safe to stay, they’d been determined to act as if they were going away on a holiday, but even then the permanence of it all was too much to bear. Ron had joked at first that the burn scar on his palm in the shape of a reverse R – where he’d grasped the Horcrux – really stood for ‘Ron’ and not some old Ravenclaw initial. But as Harry called the Knight Bus for them, out of the corner of his eye he noticed Ron staring at his upraised wand the way he used to stare at Harry’s Firebolt: with the same terrible, longing envy. Then Ron gripped Hermione’s hand, as tight as a drowning man clutching his only lifeline.

See Saw Margery Daw
Johnny shall have a new master

The sound and the waft of musty air brought a particular memory to the forefront of Snape’s mind. Himself, still in uniform, having skived off from his first Hogsmeade weekend with Regulus. Sitting at the foot of a bookshelf, grimoires sidling slyly off their shelves and plopping to the floor left and right, so they could huddle up against his sides, leaning into him like cats angling for a scratch. He was only dimly aware of Regulus sitting across from him and watching with a smile, as he patted Severus’ Monster Book of Monsters (which tended to get jealous). For his own part, Severus was almost completely absorbed in his communion with the large and leathery volume currently filling his lap. Its parchment rustled happily under the scratching of his quillpoint as – drunk on knowledge – he scribbled obsessively in the grimoire’s margins.

As always, any moments of happiness or peace in his life – then as now – were doomed to interruption by the powers that be. “What the devil do you mean by it, boy?” roared Orion Black as he strode down the aisle toward them, “Defacing my volumes!”

Severus remained still and looked up, daringly, but inwardly he cringed: the shouting reminded him of his own Dad when he got into one of his vicious moods. Dad was bad enough, and he was only a Muggle; who knew what an angry wizard could do? He’d laughed when Regulus had told him how furious his parents were when Sirius had sorted into Gryffindor, but right now, he didn’t feel like laughing at all.

Mr. Black snatched the grimoire away from him as if it, not Regulus, was his favoured son, and scowled down at the minutely-annotated pages. The scowl shifted to a blink. Severus held his breath.

“Oh, I say, that’s rather subtle,” Mr. Black muttered under his breath, before glaring at Severus, “Chimera venom? Are you quite sure?”

Severus nodded, not daring to reply aloud. Regulus bragged once that his dad was nothing compared to his mum at doling out punishment when Regulus himself got in trouble, but right now Regulus’ dad was terrifying enough.

Mr. Black harrumphed. “Get up, boy. Up, I say!” Severus (reluctant to disturb the books huddled up to him) hadn’t moved quite quickly enough. Mr. Black seized him with a hand that closed entirely round his scrawny upper arm, and frogmarched him down the aisle to a locked escritoire which loomed only slightly less ominously than a volcano, and whose pigeonholes, Regulus had once assured him, would eat any bird, up to and including ostriches. “Sit down, boy. Sit!” Mr. Black ordered, dumping Severus on the seat in front of the escritoire as he unlocked it. “Here’s some proper quills and ink, so you can write legibly.”

Severus let out a sigh and exchanged relieved glances with Regulus, but after that day he vowed never to write notes in anyone’s books but his own. In the long run, his belated caution hadn’t mattered: it hadn’t stopped Regulus’ father from bragging about ‘his heir’s best friend, the Dark Arts prodigy’ to the Lestranges and the Malfoys, and from there the rumours hadn’t taken long to reach the ears of the Dark Lord.

The Quidditch stands were bloody freezing. In the two hours of the game, the sleet quickly turned to snow. As a final insult, when the Gryffindor Git shoved Narcissa Black out of the way to get to the snitch, stealing sure victory from her, only the green and silver quarter of the stands booed the cheating thug.

“It’ll be all right.” The firstie trailing after Severus back to the castle sniffed into his scarf. “Well we’re better than they are anyway! We’re Slytherins.”

“Slytherins?” Severus turned around and glared down his nose at the unfortunate sprog. “Do I know you?” he drawled. Severus did know, of course: who could forget the spectacle of the Sorting Feast, and the firstie who craned his neck to stare at the Gryffindor table every chance he got. Inexcusable, older brother or not. The chance to bring nosy, Pureblood know-it-alls like this one down a peg or two was too good for Snape to miss.

“Regulus Arcturus Black. Of the Most Noble and Ancient House of Black,” the firstie declared, in just the sort of toffee-nosed accent that got on Snape’s wick something fierce. “Officially that is. But you may call me Reg.”

Resentment seethed in Snape: at silver-spoon-sucking gits like the Blacks and the Potters, at the stands full of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws (they at least should know better) all cheering on those cheating Gryffie bastards; resentment at the whole damn world. His ‘ugly-Muggle’ face twisted into a particularly vicious snarl. “Well, Black,” Snape spat, throwing the implied offer of friendship right back into “Reg”’s face, “Lemme tell you summat ‘bout th’ Houses.” He was surprised to find himself shaking with the sheer force of his pent-up rage: abruptly the simmering resentment boiled over and he roared, “It’s SHITE bein’ in Slytherin! We’re th’ lowest o’ th’ low! Th’ scum o’ th’ fuckin’ Earth! Th’ most wretched miserable pathetic trash ever shat out on th’ Wizardin’ World!”

The firstie gaped at him, flabbergasted, but Severus was too far gone to care or even notice his reaction, or who else might’ve been listening. Borne away on a frothing torrent of fury he ranted, “Y’d reckon ah’d hate Gryffindors, but ‘appen ah don’t. They’re just wankers. We, on th’ other hand,” Severus waved one arm at the pitch, “just let ourselves get thrashed by wankers! Can’t even find a decent team t’ get beat by. Nooo, we gotta get our arses handed t’ us by effete gobshites like Potter an’ your fuckin’ brother, while th’ rest o’ th’ school cheers th’ bastards on!” He kicked the ground and a pebble flew from under his boot, round and bouncy, about the size of a snitch. “Nah,” he sneered, in a low, bitter growl, “Slytherin’s a shite House t’ be in, Black, and all th’ pure blood in th’ world,” he positively spat the word ‘pure’, “don’t make a tinker’s fart worth o’ fuckin’ diff’rence!”

The firstie stared up at him, awkward and blinking, and it was so obvious the kid had missed two words out of three. But what else could be expected of Mr. Pureblood Pride when hit by a rant like that? Especially when – after all Severus’ efforts to lose it – the Tyke accent had crept back into his speech like an oil stain, until it was just as thick as Dad’s in one of his drunken rages.

This little Pureblood prat would never know why Severus had begged the Hat last year to sort him into Slytherin. How could a spoiled little sod like him ever understand the bitter truth: that though Mam could’ve altered her old third-year robes by hand to fit her eleven-year-old son, she didn’t have enough bloody magic left for a single spell to change the green trim to Ravenclaw blue. So, Severus reckoned, it was either Mam’s House at Hogwarts, or back to Muggle school for him.

Of course this rich kid’d never understand. So he’d just dismiss Severus as an ugly Muggle-tainted git, like all the rest.

But instead of the contemptuous look Snape expected, the firstie gave him a wide smile. “Call me Reg,” he repeated, and then he actually had the gall to reach up and pat Snape on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, the Gryffindors will get what’s coming to them, you’ll see.” he confided in contented tones. “Cissy’ll be positively livid, and she’s mean when she’s got a grudge. All my cousins are,” he added proudly. “I say, do you know where the library is in this place?”

Severus boggled down at the cheeky brat. “C’mon.” he muttered. “I was going there myself anyway,” he added, to save face.

Perhaps it was worthwhile cultivating a firstie shadow, if only to stick it to Sirius Black. He and his gang would be belching slugs when they saw Black’s precious ickle brother following Snivellus around. “Didn’t your cousins show you where the library was? Oh, wait, of course, they’ve got house elves to get their books, and probably to read them for them as well.”

He took Regulus the long way, past the Restricted Section. It was against the rules, of course, but Severus wanted to show the brat what he was missing.

Regulus gaped at the chains attached to the thick volumes, reached out to tug at one of them. The book attached to the other end snarled. “It’s not right,” Regulus mumbled. “Keeping them all chained up like that. Books ought to be free.”

Severus blinked at that, but covered it up with a shrug. “I saw one of the books in here gnawing on a human clavicle last week. Probably a firstie about your size.” He stared meaningfully at Regulus, even though he himself wasn’t all that much taller.

“Can’t be human,” Regulus protested. “They only ever eat those who can’t read. I bet it was a house elf. My books ate one once.”

“Your books.”

“Yeah. And Dad’s. We’ve got a library at home. Dad says it’s the best library of Dark Arts around. Enough for a dozen of this Restricted Section, and no chains at all.”

Boastful little bugger, Snape thought. Yeah, the Black’s’ve probably got a library but I bet it’s not all that good. “What kind of books, precisely?” About time I called your bluff.

“All kinds!” Regulus puffed out his chest and started to rattle off titles. “The Necrotelecomnicon. The Liber Paginarum Fulvarum: the deluxe edition, where the fingers on the cover really do the walking. Armageddon Some: Mass Destruction For Fun And Profit. How to Win Fiends and Inferius People. Culmuggles’ Herbal. The Oxblood Dictionary of the English Curse: the long edition, you know, the one with the Appendices. And the tails. And then there’s…”

“The Joy of Hex?” Severus cut him off mid-list, fixing the boy with a cynical smirk.

“The illustrated edition!” Regulus beamed proudly up at him.

Severus gave him the smile of a shark. Perhaps there was another reason to let a firstie follow him about.

He spent hols that winter with Regulus, basking in the shocked and insulted glares of Sirius Black. For that reason among others, his stay there was the best Christmas present he’d ever had: worth every moment of the trouble he’d had explaining to Dad why he had to Floo to London, and what the Floo was. Amid all 666 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Satanica and a multitude of other, even more interesting volumes, Severus felt at peace; at home in a way he never had in the pollution- and conflict-poisoned atmosphere of Spinner’s End. He knew all of the authors better than family, since Mam had told him about them all his life. She spoke of people like Urquhart Rackharrow and Herpo the Foul far more often than she ever mentioned the family that’d disowned her for having him. He stroked the musty pages and thought, I could live here, in this library, with these books.

“Hang on, Reg. Let me copy this at least.”

“It can wait.”

“And that… Hey, give me that back!”

“You’ve got the rest of your life to spend with your nose in a book. Relax. Mum’n’Dad are at the Lestranges’.”

“Reg…” Severus flipped the page. Underneath his most recent theory-scribble, another hand – a very familiar one – had written:

Dearest Severus,
I can’t stop watching your hands as you write.
I had the most exquisite dream last night…

By the next line, Severus blushed and was tempted to cover the single rotating eye on the book’s cover, and all of its ear-marked pages, to prevent it from seeing or hearing what Regulus’ writing and voice were suggesting.

“We’ve got this whole Place to ourselves.” Regulus breathed in his ear. And Severus knew that the library definitely wasn’t the reason he kept coming back.

The only part of the Potters’ house in Godric’s Hollow left standing was the front door. A door to nowhere, it cast an ominous shadow across the ruins, like the sharp arrow of a sundial. It seemed so small and purposeless, without the house around and behind it. Harry picked his way toward it over the rubble: bricks and broken glass. At first, he thought there was a twig or a plant poking through the keyhole, but no – when he came closer, he could see it was a key. That’s weird. Still locked.

It didn’t seem right, after all these years – with all four walls crumbled and gone, like the residents within – that the door should still be locked, as if it was locking someone in, or keeping something out. Harry reached out for the key then, and turned it, or tried to. The key was stuck: and really, what else did he expect, after so many rainy seasons and winters of snow? But Harry hung onto it and twisted it with all his strength, because suddenly he couldn’t bear to see that particular door locked.

With a sharp, brittle sound, the key snapped in the keyhole. Fuck! A deep gash in Harry’s palm welled with blood. It didn’t hurt at first. Just shocked him. In a burst of temper he shoved at the door, trying to push it open with all his strength. No luck. His hand left a gory print on the boards. It must’ve bled more than he thought. He shook his hand. “Hermione, c’mere.”

“What is it?”

Harry held up his wounded hand. “You’re good with healing spells’n’all. See if you can mend this?”

Hermione winced. “You’ve got to be more careful. And learn the basics! I can’t believe with all your trips to the Hospital Wing you haven’t even bothered to learn a simple – Episkey!”

Harry hmphed. His hand felt the same.

“Odd,” she said, giving her wand a tap. “Let’s try again.”

“Ow! Don’t poke it, just stop the bleeding,” Harry hissed.

“Oi, mate, what’s that?”

Harry spun around.

The place where he touched the door was hissing and black. A handprint. As if Harry’s mere touch was like acid, charring and crumbling the wood, like Quirrell at the end of Harry’s first year. A burn mark still spread with a poisonous hiss and smoke, like an oozing bloodstain.

“H-harry, this is as creepy as spiders!”

Ron stepped away from the door. But as Harry looked, it wasn’t the handprint that attracted his attention. It was the keyhole: as the remainder of the key disintegrated leaving the keyhole open. A beam of orange sunlight shone through.

“Ron, back away,” Hermione called out wide-eyed. “Something’s wrong … I think it’s a Horcrux. Think about it! Where better to hide something like that? And in Godric’s Hollow. Something of Gryffindor. Step away from that door!”

“S’OK,” Harry said. “I think the door’s fine. I think – I maybe sort of touched it. And the key broke. See?”

Ron was still pale after Hermione’s shout, but he took one look at the remains of the key in Harry’s hand, and beamed all over his freckled face. “Wicked! Let’s just hope the rest of You-Know-Who’s You-Know-Whats are that easy to break.”

“Ron!” Hermione rolled her eyes at him before turning back to Harry. “All right, let’s take care of your hand now.”

The scratch stopped bleeding after the second time, and scabbed over a few days later. It was rather slow to heal, sore and seeping blood. Harry shrugged it off. It didn’t hurt that much. “Thanks, Hermione,” he smiled. It was nice to have someone to count on.

While the rest of the third-years were savaged silly by their books, Regulus’ Monster Book of Monsters lolled about at Severus’ feet with its pages spread shamelessly wide, angling to have its binding tickled.

“Stop screaming,” Severus ordered Regulus. “You’ll frighten it.”

“I’LL frighten IT?” Regulus squeaked. “Are you mental?” He waved his arms emphatically “It’d take the whole library of my grimoires to scare that one.”

The book snapped at Regulus with a warning growl, but when Severus glanced down at it, it quickly flopped to Severus’ side with a soft, page-rustling purr. Severus patted its cover with a smirk. “As I said…”

Regulus pouted as he glanced between Severus and the book. “Why didn’t you sort into Ravenclaw again?”

Severus thought of a surly firstie acting years older than he looked, worrying about his robes being the wrong colour, too ashamed to confess his desperate poverty or his mam’s near-Squib status to anyone, much less ask the teachers for help. Then he thought of all the good things: Potions, the Library – here and at Grimmauld – Mam’s old textbooks and all those new books. Being able to use a wand – even if it was Mam’s, even if they couldn’t afford a new one of his own – somewhere where Dad wouldn’t find him and go spare.

Severus’ glance inadvertently strayed toward the chair in the common room where Lucius Malfoy used to sit and hold court. The tall Prefect with the shining hair was long gone, but Severus remembered his first-year hero-worship like yesterday. Even now he stayed close to upper-years like the Lestranges or Rosier, hoping to catch any word of Lucius’ doings from them. “Less benefits,” he finally answered, and eyed Regulus in turn, smirking, “Why didn’t you sort with your brother?”

Regulus snorted and pretended to gag. “Same,” he said, and the gaze he turned on Severus was serious and affectionate and wistful. It was the same look Severus thought he might’ve had as a firstie, watching the popular, rich, impeccable Lucius stroll through the common room. Only Regulus was no ordinary firstie; Severus’d known that ever since his reaction – or lack thereof – to Severus’ rant. What he didn’t know was why Regulus – a Pureblood, a rich boy, more popular already in Certain Circles than Severus with his questionable heritage could ever be – would choose to look at him like he was just then.

Yet Regulus kept eyeing him with that soft, wistful smile, even when Severus looked down, hiding his confusion under the curtain of his dark hair. Regulus, he admitted to himself, makes Slytherin House bearable.

“I’m a Slytherin to the core, mate,” Reg said. “And so are you. Admit it.”

Severus looked up at him, and nodded. “Was there ever any doubt?”

Ring a ring o’roses
A pocketful of posies
ah-tishoo, ah-tishoo
We all fall down.

“Disappeared? Rubbish!” the broad-shouldered bloke at the door of Quality Quidditch Supplies declared heartily. In the afternoon light, his sunburned bald head shone like a polished quaffle. “All last summer, he talked about taking a holiday, spending some time with his family. Son, I think.”

“Do you know where he might’ve gone then?” Harry ogled the Cleansweep Thirteen: Dirty Dozen advert in the window.

“Old family property, I reckon. Wandwood Glade. The Spanish oak for the Cleansweep line all comes from there.”

“Thank you. Come on,” Hermione elbowed Ron and dragged them both across the street.

“A pleasure, miss,” the man beamed after her. “Do come back.”

“Oi, wait!” Harry protested. “We didn’t even get to go in!”

“Harry, something’s very wrong – and would you forget Quidditch for one second! – Ollivander hasn’t got any children.”

“Yeah,” said Ron. “I doubt they made many improvements since their last release – mind you, there isn’t much to improve, the Cleansweep Eleven’s perfection! Er, I mean,” he glanced at Hermione, “Dad always said he was the last Ollivander in the long Wizarding line. We oughtta look into it.”

“Wandwood Glade, then,” Harry said. “Shouldn’t be too hard to find.” Who’d’ve thought, with school closed, this is almost like taking a term-long holiday. All that’s missing is a Florean Fortescue’s famous sundae. He stared longingly at the boarded-up windows of the ice-cream parlour.

“Might be even easier to find that place on a new broom!” Ron chimed in. “OW! Hermione, what’d you do that for?”

The wand glistened in the moonlight. Carved with runes, it looked almost as brittle and sharp as the bowtruckle corpses strewn in a wide ring around it. Several still twitched.

“Just look at this! Is it… Rowena’s?” Hermione reached past the twiggy bowtruckles. “A Founder’s wand, here! Imagine that!”

“Maybe we shouldn’t…” Harry intervened. Who knows what happened here. Even the forester’s hut is empty. Only this one wand’s left out on the table. The dead bowtruckles’ limbs stuck out at unnatural angles, like broken twigs. Something was terribly wrong. “Wait! Let me handle this part.”

“No offence, Harry, but I think a Ravenclaw wand needs a more… bookish touch!” Hermione stared, mesmerised by the relic. “How fascinating: all those sigils.”

“Then let’s all try, the three of us together!”

“Harry!” Ron pointed somewhere past him. His face went pale. “Look!”

Harry spun. Ollivander was standing in the doorway: watery, moonlight eyes shone from a face as worn as oaken bark. His arms were outstretched like a bird’s wings protecting its young. When he raised his wand, hundreds more slid out of wand cases lining the walls all around them. Moving as one, they trained themselves on Harry, surrounding him, as menacing as stakes pointed at a vampire.

Instinctively Harry stepped between their attacker and his friends. “Get the Horcrux,” he hissed at them. Ollivander’s eyes went as wide as an owl’s.

Harry didn’t get a chance to see if Hermione took the wand. Branches of every wand wood imaginable – holly and yew, cherry and willow, ash and elm, ebony and birch – reached down from the log-covered ceiling like anacondas. They whisked Harry off his feet and upside down, coiling around him all in an instant as if intent on making him the core of one gigantic wand. They trussed him so tightly that he could barely breathe, much less raise his own wand. He dangled in midair, helpless to do anything but watch the scene unfold below.

“No, please! NO! My lord,” Wormtail cringed. “I bring you a gift. A key, to the house where your enemies hide. In Godric’s Hollow.”

Voldemort’s eyes flickered as he examined the offered object. “Something of Gryffindor. I give you another chance and this is how you repay me?”

Wormtail desperately tried to occupy even less space.

“Get him Marked and get him out of my sight!”

“Don’t touch it!” Ron had yelled at Hermione. “What if…”

“I know what I’m doing,” she’d cried, “Let go…”

Ron had tried to take the wand from Hermione before she could be hurt. “No, you let go! Fuck, it’s burning!”

Harry, suspended at the ceiling in a cocoon of branches, had seen it first: on the moonlit wall, from their joined shadows, another shadow had arisen. In the Glade, the tick-tock rattle of live bowtruckle swarms had faded into a deafening silence. And the shadow had grown taller and more distinct, until it had taken on a familiar, frightening form.

There was Ron’s muffled groan, Hermione’s strained breathing, but they seemed to be in a trance as the shadow broke away from the wall and gained form and flesh. That horrible, handsome face was impossible to forget, though Harry had only seen it once before in person. Tom Riddle stepped forward.

Harry wanted to scream at his friends to do something but there was a branch between his teeth along with a mouthful of oak leaves. Ron and Hermione’s faces were pale and frozen, almost like Ginny’s in the Chamber. They still held onto the Ravenclaw wand.

“Tom,” Ollivander murmured from the corner, his owlish glare absolutely wild.

Riddle turned.

“I know… son, I know how much you want to live again. But not like this, not through them.”

Riddle tilted his head toward Ollivander with all the fascination of a spider watching a fly.

“Through me,” Ollivander continued, “You promised. You were… I’ve never met anyone else with such craving for life, such power, such potential for greatness,” the old man’s voice was soothing, lullaby-soft. “And you deserve it all. Take me.”

There was a spark of interest in Riddle’s eyes, an odd thrill on his face. “Say ‘please’,” he hissed.

Ollivander’s form grew tense and for a moment Harry wasn’t certain if he’d lunge or scream like a lunatic. Then his lips barely moved. “Please, Tom.”

“Ahhh. Right then.” Riddle shook his head, smiling like a child who’d been given a long-desired toy for his birthday. “Anything you ask…” He lifted his hands to grip Ollivander’s shoulders and leaned in, resting his forehead against Ollivander’s chest like a boy nestled against his father. “Fool… you sentimental old fool! Don’t you understand?” Riddle looked up so suddenly, Ollivander’s gnarled hand twitched where it lay, cradling the back of Riddle’s dark head. “I don’t want to harm you, you stubborn old man!” Riddle cried sharply, shaking him. “I never did! But then you beg me so sweetly, I have no choice!” Tom fixed Ollivander with a maddened, wild stare.

Ollivander’s gaze was soft with sorrow. “Hush, son,” he murmured tenderly, drawing Riddle’s head back down to rest on his shoulder. “Nothing to be afraid of,” he sighed. “It’s only death.”

And with that, Ollivander’s pleading gaze settled on Hermione’s shocked one, over the top of Riddle’s bent head. ‘Break him!’ he mouthed silently.

Hermione stared at the Horcrux in her hand as if it was that and not her palm that bled. Ron sprawled lifelessly on the table, yet he still stubbornly held onto the wand with his last strength.

“Break it!” she whispered.

“I’m trying. How?”

But Ollivander only stared blankly past her. In Riddle’s embrace he turned as pale and non-existent as a shadow, as the spectres of Cedric and Harry’s parents that came out of Voldemort’s wand after Priori Incantatem. Tom held him up now, the shine of life in his eyes and the tint of blood in his skin. Blind and deaf to everything else, he stared aghast at the body in his arms: a young viper, faced for the first time with what his venom has done.

“How do we break it?” Hermione breathed, her face pale, resolute.

Ron’s other hand closed on the wand tip and his arms tensed. And then, with the sickening crack of a breaking bone, the wand snapped in two.

Frozen, Harry heard Riddle’s forlorn wail, watched the filaments of raven-black feather falling out of the two broken halves, twirling on the breeze and gone, disintegrating to dust. Wind sprung up in their wake: stronger, wilder, coiling in a whirlwind around Riddle and Ollivander. The gale was so strong it made Harry’s eyes water; he could hardly breathe for its suffocating force. Harry looked on, helpless to do otherwise, as first Riddle, then Ollivander with him became more and more insubstantial, as if they were being swept away by that wind out of reality. It was as if Harry was hanging onto the edge of a cliff, watching the two of them fall forever, dwindling down and away, plummeting to their deaths. Dizzying to watch. There one moment and gone the next.

Harry didn’t know how long he continued to stare in shock, after the whirlwind had finally died.

“That’s it? All we had to do to break it was… break it?” Hermione stared in disbelief at the snapped half of the wand in her hand.

“You tell me, Miss Know-it-all.” Ron examined his burned hand, then his half of the broken wand. “Ow! I’ve got a feeling we really shouldn’t spellotape this one together.”

It’s finally over. Harry thought. It’s all over. Hermione let out an unsure chuckle, then tossed her half of the wand on the table and pursed her lips. “Ron, you really are an idiot.” She took a step closer then simply lunged at him, hugging hard. “Such an idiot.”

Ron froze, pale and shaking, almost looking more scared of her than he’d been of Riddle. Awkwardly he reached out to pat her shoulder. “Y’meant idiot in a good way, right?”

Harry spat out a mouthful of oak bark and sap, and asked in a still-somewhat muffled voice, “I don’t mean to interrupt, but will someone get me down from here?”

Ron and Hermione chuckled in unison, “Finite Incantatem!”

Nothing.

Dread spiked cold through Harry’s chest at that moment.

It hadn’t really stopped since.

Little boy blue, come blow your horn,
The sheep’s in the meadow, the cow’s in the corn.
Where is the boy who looks after the sheep?
Under the haystack, fast asleep.

In his dream Mrs. Malfoy made her way across Knockturn Alley, her long hair breaking out of the bun and streaming down her back. She was quite beautiful, and it was wrong – so wrong – to think that way about Malfoy’s mum, but she was and he couldn’t help it. Maybe cause she wasn’t really a Malfoy. That was just a shell, Polyjuice. She could be anyone underneath. Why of all people would Snape choose her to turn into? Why would Snape go to Knockturn Alley this late, Polyjuiced into a pretty woman? The idea of Snape in a Polyjuice brothel was completely mental, but by the time Harry tried to convince himself why, the idea had spawned ten thousand variations of itself in his head.

Harry followed Snape, taking a leaf out of his own book and chasing him under the cover of Polyjuice. Only the trouble was, he couldn’t quite see who he’d turned into, he just knew that he’d changed, and it drove him spare until he caught a glimpse of himself in a grimy shop window and Snape’s hook-nosed face stared back.

I should run and hide somewhere, the thought struck him, ‘cause it can’t be safe to be seen with Snape’s face, what with wanted posters of him all over the Wizarding world. But it was really quite ironic to be in Snape’s shoes, to try and beat the bastard at his own game as he came face to face with the actual Snape on the street, and so he did, approaching ‘Mrs. Malfoy’.

Pale grey eyes widened as Snape caught Harry’s eye in the crowd. One white eyebrow arched, but she didn’t have time to say anything else.

“Look,” someone in the crowd between them cried out, “It’s the traitor!”

Apparation pops sounded, rapid as gunfire, and Harry was soon held at multiple sharp wandpoints. ‘Wait!’ he tried to say, ‘It’s not me! It’s him! Catch him!’ But it was as if he hadn’t said a word: no one listened, they all just glared at him, getting ready to attack.

Then, slowly, Harry felt himself reverting back as the Polyjuice stopped working, and it was as if an invisibility cloak was lowered over him. The Aurors turned away. The crowds in the streets started walking around him, not paying any attention to Harry standing there.

Only the real Snape still stared straight at Harry, not even blinking, as Polyjuice-pale eyes and hair darkened and delicate features turned gaunt and sharp. He was the only one who saw Harry. The only one who even knew he existed.

But Snape turned his back on Harry and disappeared into the crowd in a billow of black robes. Leaving Harry alone. Forever. Just like he’d always wanted.

“Stop!” Harry sprinted after him, his heart pounding desperately. “Wait for me!” But he was just a second too late.

“Here, boy, take a look at this,” Mr. Black said, leading Severus to a secluded shelf. “The only piece of Muggle filth that will ever find its way into this Library. They sugarcoat it nowadays, feed you stories about Wendelin the Weird and her burning fetish, but this here, this is history. A memory of our ancestors: weakened, proclaimed unnatural, hunted and killed. This is the true story.”

Severus looked at the old book: stored under preservative charms that kept it looking less worn than many of the well-thumbed spellbooks he’d seen. Malleus Maleficarum, the cover read. The Hammer of Witches, Severus translated. Meant to crush us all from the world.

He remembered the verse from his father’s Bible, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. “Everyone’d be better off if the Muggles were gone,” he muttered.

Mr. Black’s beady stare focused on him as if he were a particularly fascinating insect. “Really?” he drawled. “Rather strong sentiments for a half-blood. Your own father’s one of them.”

“My father,” Severus’ voice was low and deadly, “is scum. When he learned my mother was a witch, he feared and hated her so much that her powers withered to nothing. For as long as I can remember, she was little more than a squib. And it wasn’t enough that he hated her magic: he had to drink as well. Had to take out his hatred on us when he was drunk.” Severus’ eyes were slitted and distant, lost in memories. Gradually his voice had lost all intonation until he spoke the next words as flatly as if he were describing a play. “One night, he beat her to death, with his fists, on the kitchen floor. Told the police she must’ve interrupted a burglar, while he was still down at the pub.” He added in a murmur so soft it was completely toneless, “Her face was …unrecognisable.”

Mr. Black stepped back; his eyes and mind showed surprise at hearing the story told so rationally by a surly seventh-year.

Severus snarled, unable to stop himself from throwing all of his anger against this man who’d been willing to judge Severus’ beliefs just by his last name. Suddenly it seemed so important to prove him wrong. “The Ministry refused to step in and punish that murdering Muggle bastard, and it still refuses to prevent more tragedies by banning contact with the Muggle world!” He growled “How could I not want them gone?”

“Indeed.” Mrs. Black stepped out of the shadows, sliding her hand over Mr. Black’s shoulder. “Your poor, poor mother,” she breathed. “Such a tragic lesson in the fact that mingling with Muggles will never lead to anything good. Just think of the wizard Severus could’ve become, if only he had a proper father. Which is not to say that he isn’t a bright boy,” she added. “Orion, perhaps it’s time.”

“Do you think so? Perhaps…” Mr. Black murmured. “Severus, a good friend of mine from school is taking on a group of new apprentices. He is very interested in true Defence Against the Dark Arts, and I don’t mean the kind taught at Hogwarts. He only takes in Purebloods of course, but perhaps in your case, if we put in a good word, he’d overlook your unfortunate heritage. If you’re interested in studying with Regulus after Hogwarts, then…”

Mr. Black was going to say more, but all Severus heard was ‘Regulus’ and ‘after Hogwarts’: the very things that had been the focus of mingled anticipation and dread all year. Returning to his Muggle town, a gulf of miles – and worse, a gulf in class – would separate him from Regulus, instead of living just one dorm away.

Severus would’ve said yes to anything. He was ready to jump up and hug Mr. and Mrs. Black right this instant. “Yes,” he said. “I’m willing to try. Anything.”

“Well,” Mr. Black stroked his moustache. “That’s settled then. Where bloodlines have failed, my associate will make a true wizard out of you, boy.”

Lucy Locket lost her pocket,
Kitty Fisher found it;
Not a penny was there in it,
Only ribbon round it.

“You mean it’s mine? To keep?”

“Yes. It was my mam’s.” Severus added dryly, “The Prince fortune.” Or what’s left of it.

Regulus’ fingers softly caressed the smooth shell of his locket. His thumb pressed against the seam and snapped the halves open. There was no picture, no lock of hair inside.

Severus’ neck felt bare without its comforting weight, but in a way, a great weight had lifted off his shoulders.

“How strange,” Regulus said, tracing the soft sheen of the locket’s worn gold case. “Dad’s got a cursed one from one of the Founders. Every time I touch it, I can feel the magic bristle. But I’ve never seen one without any magic at all.”

“It used to have some charms,” Severus said. “They wore out before I was born.” Just like Mam’s magic. My dad has that effect on things.

Regulus smiled, smoothing out the chain, closing the locket and caressing it gently like a touchstone.

Severus’ hands closed over Regulus’. “I just wanted you to have it,” he said. “A present.” The less Dad sees of it, the less chance he’ll have to pawn it. It’s in good hands now.

Here comes a candle to light you to bed,
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head!

Dumbledore in the doorway of a Muggle house, Dumbledore drinking from a cup, Dumbledore’s blackened hand: that unstoppable cellular death reminding Snape once more that there were injuries that even all of his knowledge couldn’t heal.

There was also an ache, a burning – not an actual pain of his own body, but an induced kind, like the Dark Mark’s summons – forced into his brain, like the visions.

*

“Severus… please!”

Perhaps if I could fake it somehow, Albus would still stand a chance. What spells are least harmful to an Inferius? He’s nearly become one already!

The Killing Curse. I’m prepared.

I can’t! There has to be another way. I can still…

That’s an order!

NO! Don’t force me! Take it back!

DO it! NOW!

“You can’t possibly expect me to do that. Let me try again, there has to be a way. I can do better.”

“You’ve done your best, and I appreciate your efforts. But perhaps, when all the books and cleverness cannot make a difference, it’s time for action of a different kind.”

“Headmaster?”

A calm, even gaze focused on Snape.

Snape felt the chill of the rooms despite the blazing fireplace. “What are you asking of me?”

He reached out with his mind and for once, Dumbledore welcomed him in, without any resistance.

“Now, now. I am not the monster you take me for. To give up one’s life for another’s: such sacrifice only comes from the heart. It takes nobility and courage. Not everyone has that courage, Severus, and not everyone should, on my behalf: Gryffindors are only good in moderation…”

Star light, star bright,
The first star I see tonight.

“Divestimenta!” Severus heard distantly past his absorption in the book in his hands. He hmphed absently as the grimoires on the bed settled into a comfortable pile around him.

“Oh, Se-ve-russs…” Regulus singsonged teasingly as he sprawled across his side of the bed. The sheets barely covered his arse as he fixed the other youth with a wicked, knowing look, just waiting for Severus to glance up and catch sight of him.

“Just one more page, I swear!”

Regulus chuckled. “What’s the matter? I know you want this and you know you want this, so would you kindly stop fondling my books and start fondling me?” The sheets slowly shifted downwards…. One eyebrow arched as Regulus scooped up a grimoire with the same easy tenderness someone else might hold like a stray kitten. When the book sighed happily open, Regulus laid it face down, letting its leaves serve as fig-leaves.

“You must have a danger kink if you picked that one to cover your bits.” Severus nodded at the book, “It hasn’t been fed yet.”

Regulus beamed. “Y’better c’mere and rescue me then.”

Severus snorted but set his book aside, spelling the curtains around the four-poster bed closed as he slid under the covers. “You aren’t the one who needs rescuing, mate. Your dad ought to nag you instead of me for ‘defacing his grimoires’.”

Regulus tilted his head. “What about corrupting his Son-And-Heir, then?”

“Oh, yeah, as if there’s anything left for me to corrupt!”

“Good point.” Regulus lunged and Severus was laughing and wriggling, as fingers slid quick as snakes over ticklish skin.

*

The shadows filled my library, which was as silent as usual. I cast Tergeo upon my sleeves until it cleaned the lace to white.

How could my son have been be so foolish? Caught red-handed in the cave like a traitor. Imagine what would’ve happened if he had crossed the lake.

How could I have been so foolish in return? Oh my boy. Please don’t let Walburga find out. I’ll tell her it was Riddle who carried out the final punishment. She has to believe me. He forced me, it was almost the truth.

A rustle. Too heavy to be a book. “Who’s here?”

A boy was huddled in the corner: Regulus’ friend, the filthy half-blood rat Walburga had taken such a liking to. His dark robes looked like they hadn’t been changed in days, his hair fell in greasy, matted hanks on his forehead, and his black eyes burned in his ugly, sallow face. Eileen Prince’s Muggle-spawned son. Such a common girl; I knew she’d never amount to anything.

“Why?”

Why what? “What are you doing here?”

“Why did you do it, you bastard?”

“Severus,” I used his given name, pretending a friendliness I’d never felt for the guttersnipe, “you’re not yourself.”

“Where did you kill him? Here? He ran home, he could’ve found me but he came home to you, he thought you’d protect him!”

“He was your friend, and it might be hard to understand. He was my son but… treason must not go unpunished.”

“Treason? He just wanted out! He was scared!”

Scared? So, he knows nothing. Regulus didn’t tell him about the Horcruxes. This half-blood didn’t incite rebellion in my son after all. Pity. But nothing can be done now. The boy stared up, and then the entire Library was shaken by a wandless, wordless burst of wild magic.

A prodigy indeed. It’s wrong. Such pure talent shouldn’t run in such polluted blood. Still, mongrel though he is, I have to be careful. I stepped back, hiding my shock at the strength of that instinctive magical flare. In the shadows behind me, my grimoires gathered.

“Didn’t you hear me? He wanted OUT, and you MURDERED him for it!”

I drew a breath, but I never had the chance to speak.

It wasn’t Severus who attacked me; no, the boy stood stock-still. There was no telling which book lunged first: they all did, plummeting from the high shelves all around me. A barrage of massive metal-bound tomes clubbed me to the floor until I was buried beneath an avalanche. Thousands of grimoires tore into my magic and into my body like a flock of leathery crows round a carcass. Piece by piece, each book moved away with something new of me – patches of skin for their covers, strands of hair to bind their fraying spines, blood to renew their faded ink – and as soon as one book took what it needed many more took its place. Until there was nothing cohesive left of me but pieces, scattered amid the volumes: excerpts and quotations and abridged editions of myself. Until I was no longer Orion Black. The parchment of my physicality had been scraped clean and overwritten like a palimpsest, and I had become part of the Place and the books and the Library.

There was still a boy in the corner, who had fallen to his knees. And we hastened to him: his face as pale as our pages, his hands clenched in tight fists. Many of us, all those who had communed most closely with him, rushed to surround him, as kittens will run to their mother, rustling our pages and creaking our covers; earmarked, stained, and nonetheless sympathetic.

Mostly, I kept my distance, but there were pieces of me, in other books, on other pages, that did not.

The boy slumped lower and held out his arms, circling as many of me, of us, as he could, surrounded by the huddle of dozens of warm leather spines: a makeshift embrace of slim chapbooks and heavy tomes alike. Together we mourned the reader who once caressed our pages, admired our illustrations, and loved our wisdom. We – I – mourned my son, as I never had before. Then, finally, Severus broke down, trying to touch every page that Regulus once touched, reaching for each book that once was Regulus’ and his to share: all of Regulus’ scribbles in the margins, and the notes charmed to open only for him tucked between the pages of encyclopaedias and Dark Arts volumes.

Severus sat on the floor, all alone – save for books as shunned and misunderstood as he: banned and bound into brotherhood, works that had collected me, as once I had collected them – and, all alone, he cried.

Oh, come and stir my cauldron,
And if you do it right,
I’ll boil you up some hot, strong love
To keep you warm tonight.