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The Cavalry

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Lily knelt down and touched the ice at her feet. It started to hiss. Vapour rose from it like a departing soul. The rainbow-patterns on the ice began to swirl and surge, and finally to crack. With a deep, agonized creaking, the ice at her feet formed itself into a staircase, leading down into the depths of the Viceberg.  

The icy steps must have been bewitched with a Gripping Charm, because she didn’t slip or stumble. She carried herself, with that graceful pure-blood strut, down two steps, and then stopped. Snape, who was sliding in and out of consciousness now, began to imagine all the horrible things that could have stopped her. Perhaps there was a Dementor hand around her ankle, clinging on with that clammy, rotting-grey touch.    

Lily paused, sniffed the air, and then made a slashing motion with her wand. Bella, who’d been standing behind with her wand raised, ready to hurl any number of painful jinxes at her, toppled over, her wand sliding harmlessly away across the ice.

“Wait your turn, honey,” Lily drawled, without looking at her.

And then Snape watched her disappear into the Viceberg. Voldemort tutted and, with a lazy flick of his wand, lifted Bella to her feet. “Impetuous, Bella,” he chided softly – and hearing softness in his voice was as bizarre as seeing beads of sweat on his brow. Snape felt as though he’d slipped into another world.  

“She was impertinent, my Lord!” Bella protested, rubbing her elbow resentfully.  

“Let her be impertinent, so long as she is useful.”

Snape pressed his forehead to the ice. His vision was clouding around the edges, and he desperately needed to stay conscious. He wasn’t going to let Lily kill someone. She would never forgive herself. She would turn into the Boggart with the smudged eye make-up that he’d seen in the store cupboard. And, while that wasn’t an entirely unappealing prospect - because she'd been the hottest house-hold pest he'd ever seen - he remembered the bitterness etched deeply around the Boggart’s mouth. He remembered the hardness in her voice, and understood how turning into her could be Lily’s worst nightmare.

“We can go after her, right?” he asked, turning to Bruiser. “Or, I can, anyway. I’ve never killed anyone.”

Bruiser was staring dreamily at the spot where Lily had disappeared from view. “She’s so… forceful, aint she? Talkin’ to the Dark Lord as though ‘e was some naughty child… That’s my Maggie…”

“Actually, it’s not,” Snape interrupted, in a voice of deadly calm. “Not Maggie, and certainly not yours. You lose sight of that fact, muggle, and I’ll leave you here for the Death Eaters to peck over your bones. Now how do we get in?”   

“I’ve read about Vicebergs,” said Bruiser, shaking himself, and then wincing at the pain that this sudden motion must have awakened in his curse-addled body. “They’re tricky.”

“What do you mean, tricky?” Snape demanded, squeezing the ledge of ice until his knuckles were white to try and keep himself from hexing this man into oblivion.

“They only melt at the touch of an innocent – and, at the time the spell was invented, the ‘innocent’ comprised about one per cent of the world’s adult population.”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Snape, massaging his temples.

“It means you ‘ave to be at least a virgin… and possibly a virgin who’s never kicked anyone in the nuts.”

Snape stared at him. “Are you saying that this spell makes no distinction between people who’ve had sex and murderers?”

“I’m sayin’ it’s an old spell. The definition of an innocent was stricter in them days.”

Severus sighed. Well, at least it explained why Regulus hadn’t volunteered.

“Did you know Lily was a virgin?” Bruiser prompted.

“Yes.”

Snape was suddenly annoyed with himself for answering that as though it was a normal question. That was the trouble with talking to Bruiser. After a few hours, rudeness didn’t register anymore.

“Look,” he added irritably, “is that really relevant?”

“I just wondered whether the two of you - ,”

“You’re a bastard for wondering,” Snape interrupted firmly.

“Because,” Bruiser went on bravely, “if you haven’t done it with her, you probably haven’t - ,”

“Just stay there and shut up,” said Severus icily, emphasizing every word.

So, he could get into the Viceberg – always assuming that the stipulation about never having kicked someone in the nuts wasn’t real. But how could he get down there without being spotted by Voldemort or the Death Eaters? He needed a distraction. A Disillusionment Charm wouldn’t be good enough. Everyone knew that Voldemort could smell invisible people. It was something to do with having spent so many hours inhabiting the mind of his pet snake.

Severus squinted over the ice-ledge, vainly searching for inspiration.    

Someone else was making their way into the Archives through the main door. Through the steam, all he could be sure of was that they had curly shoes on. And then, above the shoes, the tip of an extremely long white beard swung into view.

Severus’ jaw dropped. It was him – it was Dumbledore – it was all going to be alright. For the briefest of moments, a flame of hope ignited in Snape’s chest – flickering nervously, as though surprised to find itself in such a strange and inhospitable location. But it was instantly blown out again, because Dumbledore was not alone.

It wasn’t easy to surprise Severus Snape, especially with misfortune, but this was too much. This couldn’t be real. After everything he’d been through…  

There were two or three seconds in which he was the only one who’d seen the newcomers, and he briefly entertained the hope that it was all a hallucination, brought on by lack of food and sleep. But then Bellatrix squealed, Voldemort hissed, and curses started to rain down from the air around them.   

Standing next to Dumbledore – dodging hexes and ducking Foe Fire creatures – somehow managing to swagger, even in a fight to the death – was James Potter. Those hated spectacles were reflecting the light from the Foe Fire, making him look like a demonic owl.

Behind him, Sirius Black was coming down the stairs, holding a wand in each hand and shooting curses in every direction, like some kind of crazed gunslinger. And beside him was Lupin – pale and sweaty, his face covered in scratches, but his jaw set with grim determination. Meg Valance followed behind them. Her eyes were red with tears, and she was screaming a wizard battle-cry, mixed with a few choice muggle swear-words.

Severus stared at them, letting his jaw drop. The futile rage, the burning sense of injustice that he knew so well, bubbled up within him – scalded his insides as though the Foe Fire had crept down his throat. He’d been here all the time – he’d saved Lily from the Dark Lord, and Foe Fire, and Malfoy, and bitter Boggarts with smudged eye make-up – and now Potter was here – the bastard – turning up just at the last moment, as always, and making a spectacular show. And he was going to get all the credit for everything!

Well, he was not going to get to her first. Leaving Bruiser clinging onto the ice-ledge, and threatening him with every jinx he’d ever read about if he moved, Severus vaulted off the ledge and into the steamy chaos of the Archives. He conjured a Shield Charm around himself and dodged past Avery and Lestrange, who were trying to repel Potter and Sirius Black. Snape was pleased to see that the two old Death Eaters were not missing the opportunity to kick them while they were down.  

He reached the rainbow-patterned lake of ice that marked the entrance to the Viceberg. The stairs had closed over, leaving nothing but an oddly-gleaming white surface, and it struck Severus for the first time that he might be denied admittance. He would certainly never have described himself as an innocent, however old-fashioned the definition of innocence might be. And the idea that Potter might be able to get in – but that was impossible. Potter, turn down all the girls that were clamouring for his attention? He probably had orgies in the Gryffindor changing rooms after every match.

Clenching his fist again, Severus touched the ice, and felt it hissing beneath his finger-tips. He didn’t know whether to be reassured or insulted by the Vice-berg’s decision that he was an innocent.

With a creaking that was entirely lost in the tumult of the battle, the ice formed itself into a glittering white stair-case at his feet. Severus edged down the steps, casting one last hateful look at Potter, who was now levitating Avery upside-down. The bastard didn’t seem to know any other tricks.

There were Dementors at the bottom of the stairs. Severus could feel his breath steaming and his vision clouding. There was scornful laughter, just on the edge of hearing, as his worst memories rose in his mind, and drew closer.

Keep going, he told himself. After all, Potter was a Dementor, of sorts. Potter brought all Snape’s worst memories back to him, mainly because he was responsible for arranging the majority of them. Potter woke his demons up – the same way that gazing on Lily put them to sleep. And if Potter hadn’t caused him to abandon Lily, then no amount of Dementors would.

Staying conscious was the problem, though. Severus hadn’t eaten in hours. And, since that time, he’d been punched, burnt, frozen, emotionally blackmailed, and thrown across the room. The Dementors might not be able to turn him back, but they were making his eye-sight grow fuzzy, and Snape knew only too well what would happen next. The journey into unconsciousness was as familiar to him as his regular walk home from school. Admittedly, it was generally a more sudden journey, with only two stops – dad’s fist, and the floor – but he recognized the feelings that were making his head swim. And, if he blacked out now, then when he woke up, Lily would be a murderer.

Concentrate, he thought, clenching his fists so that the burn in the centre of his palm throbbed again, momentarily clearing his vision. Pain was good. Pain was real. Mistrust everything else, but pain doesn’t lie to you.   

The Ideoscope was still around his wrist, but there was nothing on the face of the compass now, except a blue-grey haze, like murky water. The strap was loosening, too. It wasn’t cutting into his wrist any more, with that reassuring, vein-constricting squeeze he’d grown to recognize. Lily was dying. And all he could hear was scornful laughter.

Severus tried to cast around for a happy memory. For some reason, the only thing he could think of were those chocolate frogs he’d shared with Lily on the cliff-top.

Snape had wrapped his cloak around the two of them, and they had split the chocolate frogs under the star-light, bickering – for the hundredth time – about whether Lupin was a werewolf.    

It wasn’t a happy memory, exactly, so the Dementors wouldn’t be able to take it away from him. He could keep his happiness wrapped up in the dark, as he always had – thickly coated in bitter memories, painted with resentment – and then nobody could take it away from him – then nobody would ever suspect.

In years to come, this would be his strategy whenever he was performing Occlumency: hide Lily some place she didn’t belong – keep her wrapped up in jealousy and hatred and resentment – let her stand behind James Potter, and Dumbledore, and all the other people who’d refused to give him a chance. That way she couldn’t be taken away from him. It had the unfortunate side-effect of making him angry all the time. Sometimes, when he was feeling unappreciated or frustrated, as he so often was, he lost her down there – and his whole life would seem like one endless struggle against cruelty and arrogance and pig-headed stupidity – until she floated to the surface again, and reminded him that there were things worth fighting for.

He focused on the cliff-top memory – eating chocolate frogs, wrapped up in his cloak, feeling that sense of happy understanding. It was far from agreement; they still couldn’t see eye to eye with each other. He still found her exhaustingly trusting and impetuous; she still found him worryingly morbid and angry. But they accepted it. They were happy with their differences; if they always agreed on everything, they wouldn’t have found each other so exciting. And they regretted that they hadn’t always accepted one another other – because they could have been spared so much suffering.

She had said: “If I had remembered, I would have told you I was glad it happened. I would have told you that I liked you. But I didn’t remember. And you took Professor Caladrius to Voldemort. There’s nothing we can do about that now. So let’s forget it.”

The Silver Doe appeared, hanging her beautiful head in sadness, but glowing brightly just the same. The Dementors flanking the bottom of the staircase scattered.

The doe came back to him almost instantly, unwilling to chase them further, in case she gave his presence away. Either that, or she sensed that he needed comforting, because she nuzzled her insubstantial little head against his leg mournfully.

Snape reached out to touch her, and felt his fingers tingle as they sank through her back. She would always be there, and she would always be sad and beautiful at the same time. Beauty made him sad anyway, on the rare occasions that he ever perceived it – sad that it had to exist in this dark, twisted world – and sad that it was so remote from him.

That was the cruelest part, he decided. If nature was going to make him ugly, why had it been so cruel as to make him able to see beauty? Why hadn’t it made him arrogant and deluded like James Potter? Potter wasn’t much to look at, but nobody seemed to notice, because of that Snitch he was always catching, and that impudent grin on his despicable, smug face.    

Snape tried to pull himself together. His surroundings came back to him, piece by piece: the eye-aching blue-whiteness of the ice, the penetrating cold, the smell… Merlin’s beard, what was that smell? It smelled like Death’s toilet.

And there were voices, almost out of hearing-range, coming from deeper in the Viceberg. He followed them, with the Silver Doe trotting along at his heels.

Eventually, the passage opened out into a broad, low-ceilinged room, carved entirely out of ice. The ceiling was supported here and there by pillars, like icicles that had grown down so far that they’d met the floor. And the walls were lined with bird-cages, stacked higgledy-piggledy on top of one another, some with doors hanging half-open, all with beautiful, pastel-coloured birds inside, twittering musically, with a sound like the dry, rustling chink of ice.

There wasn’t much else in the room: no book-cases, beds, pots, or pans: it had more of the feel of a temple than a dwelling. There was a font in the centre. It must have been a gigantic Pensieve, because there were runes carved into the stone around the rim, but its contents were black and turbulent. Snape wrinkled his nose. It was that tar-like substance that Mulligan had called Dementor memory – right before she’d plunged his head into it.

For one bewitching moment, he considered hanging back – just allowing Guillotine Valance to have her revenge on this mad old woman. But, whatever Idris Mulligan deserved, Lily didn’t deserve to be a murderer.

And Potter was up there, hell-bent on saving the day, the way he always did. If Severus didn’t save Lily, then that arrogant little creep would. The right thing would get done anyway, but by a bespectacled nitwit with a shelf-full of trophies and a fan-club of screaming girls. And the right thing, done that way, was almost worse than the wrong thing.  

It was strange but, for all the sparseness – for all the clean, tidy, surgical whiteness – of the Viceberg, it had an odour of decay. There was moss, and some kind of mould, on the icicles, as though they were rotting away at the root, like decaying teeth. Evidently, Mulligan’s disdain for the physical world was so intense that she wouldn’t even stretch to cleaning it. There were Fwooper-droppings over everything. Even the sure-footed Lily was stumbling on them. But her wand was quite steady, and she was pointing it straight at Mulligan’s chest.

Idris Mulligan was looking much more like a confused old woman than when Severus had seen her last. She had wrapped a scarf around her neck – with another surreal jolt in his stomach, Severus realized that it was a Slytherin scarf. He supposed Mulligan must have been in Slytherin House as a girl. It softened his feelings towards her slightly. At least she hadn’t been a show-boating Grffindor.   

“ – irst thing’s first,” Lily was saying, steadying herself against one of the moss-covered ice-pillars, and then making a great show of wiping her hand on her robes. “Just so’s I can get the Prince of Darkness off my back. How do you communicate with the Dementors?”  

“The Fwoopers taught me how to talk to them,” Idris Mulligan replied, with a look of maddening sincerity, as though this was the most obvious answer in the world.

Lily sighed. “Oh, great,” she said sarcastically. “That’s just great, Idris. So now I have to go back and tell the world’s most powerful Dark Wizard, that if he wants to command the Dementors of Azkaban, he has to go insane.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Idris Mulligan, genuinely horrified. “These birds are prophets – they’re messengers from God. Wizards only say they induce insanity because they’re frightened of the truth. What the Fwoopers actually induce is a state of grace – a state of clear sightedness.”

Lily’s shoulders sagged. “Boy, your heart is really going to give me indigestion,” she complained.

“It was the Fwoopers who first made me see that the world was a terrible place,” said Idris Mulligan. “They revealed to me that men and women spend their lives in pursuit of their own destruction, because everything they think they want – love, companionship, pleasure – kills their soul.”

The incessant twittering was obviously starting to get on Lily’s nerves. “Silencio!” she shouted, and it was instantly muffled.

Idris Mulligan looked highly affronted. “That was very rude, you know!” she squawked. “They were trying to communicate with you. They have so much to teach us, Margaret – ,”

“Shut up,” said Lily.

Idris Mulligan, like her birds, fell silent.  

“I’m going to kill you,” Lily resumed calmly. “But first I want you to tell me why you did it. I know the enchantments surrounding the house of my ancestors: Septimus Valance built the house on a goblin mine, but no goblin could have got into the place unless he was invited, either by a family member, or somebody whom we’d effectively adopted as a family member. You were my god-mother - ,”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Mulligan fervently. “And did you ever think about what that means? Your mother made me responsible for your well-being. I took that responsibility seriously, Margaret. I was not just placed in charge of your health, but your salvation.”

My salvation?” Lily breathed furiously. “Do you know what the goblins made me do to get my children back? I had to turn hunter – killer – thief! I had to fight dragons, butcher unicorns, steal from the Ministry of magic!”  

“I wanted you to learn that love makes us do terrible things,” said Mrs. Mulligan soothingly. “I wanted you to learn that love was your enemy. It’s a false idol, Margaret – a degradation of the spirit. I saw you with those brats of yours, and with your - ,” her mouth twisted bitterly, “ – husband. You were too happy with them. Your soul was creeping into your skin. You were living only for this world, and when people live only for this world, their soul turns to matter. You become a beast – your spirit hardens, clots, scabs over – until, by the time of your death, it’s unable to leave your body. You become a kind of solid ghost, lingering around the places where you’d felt your earthly happiness, trying to get it back. I’ve seen it, Margaret. It’s disgusting.”

Lily snorted. “And carving up children? That’s not disgusting?”

Idris Mulligan shrugged. “The goblins only took an eye. They felt you were getting… slack… in the performance of your duties. I tried to dissuade them.”

There was a chilly, penetrating silence.

“Are my children alive?” Lily murmured. It was barely more than a whisper.

“You’re not asking the right questions!” Mrs Mulligan chided, throwing her hands up in exasperation. “What you should be asking is: are my children at peace?”

That was the last straw. Snape was an expert at recognizing when people were about to lose their tempers. As a child, he had always known when to duck, when to tug at his mother’s hand and try to pull her away – for all the good it ever did.  

As a Slytherin too, you got to learn how far you could push people; you learned their tells – the subtle indicators that their self-restraint was cracking; the clenching of fists or the grinding of teeth. And he was not just an expert at watching these symptoms from the outside, either.

The basic rule was, if the person looked, in any way, like Bellatrix, then they were going to hit you. Severus had never thought his Lily would remind him of Bellatrix, but she was so different tonight. Guillotine Valance’s spirit had transfigured her. He had never seen her face twisted with so much hatred – even the Boggart-Lily had looked gentler than this.

She was starting to turn into Guillotine Valance. And it wasn’t just the walk, or the pure-blood drawl, or the curly hair. Her long eyelashes were interlocking, like the teeth on a zip. Her lips were getting thinner, and those bright, electric green eyes were darkening – almost clouding over. He supposed the possession was starting to become permanent. He’d lost track of time, what with the Dementors, and Potter.

With a hiss, Lily raised her wand, and spat out an incantation that Severus didn’t recognize. Instantly, Mulligan’s scarf came alive. One end raised itself upwards, like the head of a snake, and the rest tightened its coils around Mulligan’s neck. The old woman choked. That wrinkled face – even the painted, clumpy red lips – were being drained of all colour as she was throttled.

Severus stared, strangely mesmerized. The scarf lifted Mulligan off the ground like a noose, and he watched her feet swinging, as though he were a hundred miles away.  

The Boggart said not to help her, he suddenly thought. The Boggart-Lily had warned him of horrible consequences if he ever helped Lily to do the right thing.

“Even if it seems hopeless. Don’t help her. Or she’ll think she needs you.”

But nobody’s coming. She’s going to die.

Snape hesitated, frozen with a kind of horrified curiosity. He had never seen a death before. He thought about how this woman had tied him up, plunged his head into a Pensieve full of those treacle-like Dementor memories, led him through horrific visions where he lost Lily and nearly went mad with grief. It was tempting to let her dangle there.

She was crazy, after all. She wanted the Dementors to suck out everyone’s soul. She thought worldly happiness was a plague. And, if Voldemort got hold of her, there would be no more muggle-borns at Hogwarts.

But Lily would hate herself for the rest of her life.    

The Boggart said not to help her, though, said the voice – and it was more urgent this time. He felt as though all the futures he’d been dragged through tonight – the one where Lily ended up dead on the lawn in Godric’s Hollow – and the one described by the Boggart-Lily, in which he married her and then turned her into a bitter, cynical, but oh-so-sexy monster – they were all stretched out in front of him – they were lined up at his feet, clamouring for his attention, and what he did in the next couple of seconds would determine which one of them came to pass. And, all the time, Mulligan’s face was getting bluer. The mad flailing of her limbs was dying down.  

Slowly, as though he was being Imperiused, Severus raised his wand.
Following on from The Viceberg [link]
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WeAreSevenStudios's avatar
Behind him, Sirius Black was coming down the stairs, holding a wand in each hand and shooting curses in every direction, like some kind of crazed gunslinger.
I needed that laugh. Especially since the next moment I was feeling just the same as poor Severus.

He’d been here all the time – he’d saved Lily from the Dark Lord, and Foe Fire, and Malfoy, and bitter Boggarts with smudged eye make-up – and now Potter was here – the bastard – turning up just at the last moment, as always, and making a spectacular show. And he was going to get all the credit for everything!
My sense of justice was just so wronged by that. So wronged. :shakefist:
Poor. Severus.

until she floated to the surface again, and reminded him that there were things worth fighting for.
Beautiful

The basic rule was, if the person looked, in any way, like Bellatrix, then they were going to hit you.
I also needed that laugh.