Chapter 2

No one seemed to know how Lily and Harry Potter had survived that night. They were both being kept at Hogwarts for the time being, under the strictest secrecy. No one but Dumbledore, Pomfrey and Snape himself even knew she was there. Rumors abounded that the Dark Lord had gone. The dark mark on Snape’s forearm had not pained him since that night, however, Dumbledore philosophized, one could not be too careful. They had even gone so far as to arrange false news reports of the murder to be circulated. It was imperative that it appear they were dead. Dumbledore had stressed this again and again, and for once Snape tended to agree fully with the old man.

Other than the strange lightning bolt shaped scar across his forehead, the boy seemed fine – physically and psychologically unscathed. Lily, on the other hand, was quite another story. She continued to slip in and out of consciousness, baffling all three of her protectors with her strange assortment of seemingly disconnected symptoms. None of them could seem to light upon what spell had been used against her. Snape still held firmly to the belief that it was “avada kedavra”, but was at a loss when asked to explain what had allowed her to survive it.

Pomfrey fretted constantly. If it were ‘avada kedavra’, she worried; no one had ever survived it before. There was no way of knowing what had protected her from the full effects of the spell, and therefore no way of knowing how to reverse the strange after effects they were seeing now.

And what of the boy? How had he survived so completely unharmed? Dumbledore theorized that it had to be a blood charm, that by his mother sacrificing herself out of her love for him she had rendered the spell’s power void, but for that to have worked, she would have had to die protecting him, and yet she lived. Snape had kept silent on that point up to now, but privately wondered at it. Perhaps Albus was more right than he knew. Perhaps she had died protecting the boy. He had certainly been at a loss to find a pulse when he had first come upon her. But if she had been dead, how on earth….

“Ah Severus, I had hoped that you would still be awake.” Albus Dumbledore stood in the doorway to the young Potions Master’s office, a weary look etched across his aging face.

Snape sighed and reluctantly put away the book on counter-curses that he had been studying. “Yes, I rarely sleep, especially now that it seems I am to be constantly at your beck and call.” He did not attempt to hide the deep sarcasm and anger in his voice, but the old wizard seemed to choose to ignore it.

“I must ask you a question, my boy, and I most heartily hope that you won’t take offense to it.” He paused, but Snape said nothing so he continued, “When you came across Lily and the boy, was there….was there anything, even the smallest detail that you may have failed to communicate with me?”

Snape stared the old man directly in the eyes for several minutes, probing their icy blue depths, attempting to read the motives behind his question. Finally he gave up with a shrug of indifference. With a sigh he picked up one of the exams on his desk and began to mark it in his cold and efficient manner. “No. There was nothing.”

“Are you quite sure, my boy?” There was a strange softness to the head master’s voice and Snape had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being pitied for some reason.

He replied without even bothering to look up, his voice just as curt and disinterested as before. “What possible motivation could I have in withholding vital information?”

“That I don’t know.”

Yes, there was definitely a note of sympathy in the old wizard’s voice, and it sickened him. But in the end, he mused, perhaps it was best to share his blossoming theory. Two heads were better than one, he supposed. He put down the paper and quill and finally looked back at the figure filling his doorway. “I believe that she was dead – when I found her. There was no pulse. This would confirm my theory of ‘avada kedavra’ and your theory of how the boy survived, but still fails to explain…”

“Why she now lives,” the old man finished.

“Yes.”

Both men stared at one another in silence for some time, each probing their brilliant, but wildly different minds for an explanation to this seeming impossibility. It was Dumbledore who finally broke the silence. “You must tell me everything, go over every detail of all that transpired from the moment you stepped foot in that room, until the moment she revived. Even the smallest, most seemingly insignificant detail may be of great importance. If we can determine what it was that ‘turned the tide’, as it were, we may be able to determine what it is that can help her now.”

“But there is nothing, nothing to tell. Do you think that I have not gone over every detail myself, a thousand times in my mind over the last few weeks? There was nothing, nothing of consequence. She was dead, and then suddenly she seemed to find her breath again. I uttered no counter-spells of any kind, I barely uttered a word, she just seemed to…”

Albus raised his hand to stop him, “Barely uttered…. Barely, then you did say something?”

Snape pounded his fist again the oak of his desk as he growled in frustration at the old man’s probing. “Nothing. Trifles. They were mere trifles.”

The head master’s eye’s widened and then seemed to grow suddenly sad. He turned to leave. “Severus, sometimes it is the mere trifles of life that turn out to be more important than we could ever have imagined. Think on it will you. We must do something for her quickly, or I fear she may soon be beyond our grasp.”

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The students of Hogwarts had quickly learned that something was bothering Professor Snape. A seemingly innocent first year had been given 3 nights of detention in a row for something as incongruous as forgetting to use dried nettles in their boil-cure potion, and one of the most mild of Hufflepuff third years had taken a such tongue lashing for accidentally blocking his passage in the corridor between classes that she still hadn’t recovered.

Albus Dumbledore observed all of this with growing concern. From the look of him, Albus guessed that Snape had hardly slept a wink in the four weeks since the incident with the Potters. There was a conspicuous sliver of lamplight beneath his office door, no matter what time one passed by, and he had not been present at the great hall for meals in as many weeks. The man was killing himself, all in an attempt to fix something that was beyond any known magical intervention, and the more he poured himself into his quest, the less he seemed to remember the object of it. He had not even so much as stepped foot in the hospital wing to see Lily in all the time she had been there. The worse she got, the more he seemed to pour himself into his research, excluding everything but his desperate and perhaps futile attempt to save her life.

If he had taken to heart, or considered anything said in their conversation earlier in the month, he had not made any indication of it. Albus sighed as he pushed open the heavy oak door of the private room off the hospital wing, and observed Poppy Pomfrey hovering over their secret patient. “Any change, Poppy?”

She glanced over her shoulder while continuing to wipe down the young woman’s face with a damp cloth, “only for the worse, I’m afraid.” She shook her head. “I fear for her, Albus. We are losing her, and I am not sure that there is anything else that can be done. She really needs to be sent to St. Mungo’s.”

Choosing to ignore the suggestion, Albus Dumbledore joined the medical witch at the bedside and shook his head as he looked down at the pale, sweat drenched waif of a woman shuddering beneath the thin cotton sheet. “Has Severus been to see her at all?”

Pomfrey shook her head. “Do you really expect him to?”

“No. No Poppy, I had only hoped. He was the one with her when she revived, only he knows what transpired, but either there are details that he is forgetting, or….”

“That is highly unlikely. You know how detail oriented that young man is. There is nothing that slips past him.”

Albus nodded. “I know. That is why I rather suspect that it is something that he is ‘choosing’ not to tell us.”

A pained look came over Pomfrey’s eyes, as she lowered her voice to a hoarse whisper, “Surely not. Why would he keep anything from us? Her life hangs in the balance, Albus; his delay in sharing vital information could be killing her. Surely you don’t think… He couldn’t possibly have…. Are you saying what I think you are saying?”

“That depends, Poppy, on what you think I am saying.” He smiled weakly.

“You can’t possibly suspect that Severus has betrayed our trust, that he has returned his allegiance to…to….? Was she supposed to die, Albus? Is he insuring that she does now?”

Albus shook his head. “No, I do not think we need have any fear of that. Rather, I think that he is afraid to accept the fact that the very thing he believes he has extinguished in himself may be what brought her back to him, what may save her now.”

Pomfrey shook her head, “I don’t….”

“It’s alright, Poppy. Just let me know if he does come, will you. I have to go the ministry tomorrow on important business, and may be gone over night. If she has any sudden turn, or is in desperate need in any way, then you must call on Severus in my absence.”

“Yes, of course.” The little witch smoothed the cloth one more time over the girl’s forehead before picking up the bowl of water on the nightstand and moving to the sink nearby. “The ministry? For the start of the Death Eater Trials?”

“Yes. Severus’ fate still hangs in the balance. Many in the ministry know of his involvement, and if I am not able to persuade the right people he may still find himself in Azkaban”