Supper-time

It was surprisingly easy to hang out with Lucius and Narcissa. Granted, they kept exchanging sexually-charged, smouldering glances which made Regulus fervently wish he was somewhere else – and granted, too, Narcissa kept referring darkly to Lily Evans, and stressing how she had let herself go, and piled on the pounds, and perhaps this accounted for her impudence, because ugly people always had difficulty respecting authority, didn't they?

But – and here was the crucial point for Regulus – Lucius and Narcissa served the best champagne. And he was currently overloading on it. A chemist who opened his veins tonight would have found his blood to be twenty-per-cent-proof. A vampire biting his neck would have been drunk before their second gulp. He had eaten something, at around one o'clock, but mainly so that he could stay conscious in order to continue drinking.

Lucius and Narcissa were sitting in the same armchair, coiled round each other like albino snakes, and keeping up an unflinching eye-contact that Regulus found rather worrying. They had done their best to occupy the same square-inch of space all day, but, eventually, Lucius got called away on some matter of business – apparently, there were inept servants to be shouted at, and nobody could do that like Lucius Malfoy.

When Regulus and Narcissa were left alone, she turned to him with what was – for her – a warm expression. It was a slight upturn at the corners of her exquisite mouth, and a slight lowering of the disdainful eyebrows. It suited her, but it was probably not destined to become a regular thing.

"I'm glad you're alright, Regulus."

Regulus didn't know what to say to that. The word 'bollocks' occurred to him, but he bit it back. It was hard to suppress comments when you were drunk, but he instinctively felt – he had felt it all day – that he wasn't drunk enough, and never would be.

He wondered why she had waited until Malfoy was out of the way to say this. Maybe she was worried he wouldn't understand. After all, his three sisters were dead – rumour had it they'd been killed due to a peculiar family custom which held that Malfoy daughters should die in infancy rather than suffer the dishonour of marrying and losing their family name. The idea of simply forbidding them to marry didn't seem to have occurred to anyone. Traditions didn't have to make sense – especially not wizard ones. The muggle culture of movies and T-shirts and trainers was encroaching on their world bit by bit, and so now wizards did things just because other wizards had been doing them for centuries.

When you took all that into account, you couldn't help coming to the conclusion that filial affection probably didn't mean much to a Malfoy. But the Black children… well, it was true there hadn't been much hugging, and they'd been encouraged to compete so relentlessly that they could never hear about each others' achievements with a settled stomach, but they had a kind of Slytherin solidarity – the kind which said: provided you do absolutely nothing to get in my way, I will allow you the privilege of being close to me.

"Of course," she continued, with an elegant sniff, "you were always getting injured when you were a little boy. You used to fall off that broomstick of yours every five minutes. We used to count up how many times a day you said 'ouch'. I think, in the summer holidays, it got as high as thirty-seven."

Regulus wanted to say: 'you should have been there this morning' but he was not, by nature, a confrontational boy, and besides, he wanted to see where she was going with this.

"Bella cheated anyway," said Narcissa, with a languid shrug. "It was supposed to be a purely observational experiment, but she got obsessed with the numbers, and gave you a reason to say 'ouch' as often as she could."

"Yeah," said Regulus, with a spirited attempt at cheerfulness. "I remember."

"Kreacher used to spend so much time bandaging you up that he had to iron his fingers for neglecting his chores," she said dreamily, as though those were happier times.

Regulus felt a pang in his stomach. It settled and spread out, until it reached every extremity of his body as a feeling of wretched nausea. Even being fried alive by the mudblood's magic hadn't been as bad as this.

He realized now that there had only ever been one creature on earth who really cared about him, and he had just told it to bugger off and get him another bottle of Firewhisky.

Revelations like that were painful, and it seemed to him that the people who didn't get them lived happier lives. Take Narcissa, for instance – when had she ever thought about who she owed and how she should treat them?

But, in her own way, of course, she was doing that now. She had offered him a bottle of champagne and a kind word. For a woman as cold and grasping as Narcissa, that was probably equivalent to donating two pints of her own blood. He wondered what her monstrous shadow would look like now – right now – if he could still see it. Its fearsome claws would probably have retracted, but just a little. She was still ready to fight if Regulus took her kindness the wrong way. She was tough as old boots, Narcissa – little as she would have liked that simile.

They'd never had much in common – but it struck him now that they had both been frightened and embarrassed by the psychotic exuberance of their elder siblings. That was something.

"Want some food?" she added, glancing anxiously at his unfocused eyes.

Regulus shook his head. "I'm going out for some air. Is Kreacher in the kitchens?"

"I believe so. He's helping Wiglett make Zabaglione."

"Tell him I need him. I'll be in the garden."



Poppy stood on the sea-front, breathing fitfully, and staring up at the windows of The Shipwreck as though they were the light at the end of a very long tunnel. The breeze blowing off the sea was pushing her in the back, ushering her forwards, but she resisted it. She was absent-mindedly grinding the soles of her shoes into the cobble-stones, as though half of her wanted nothing more than to burrow to the centre of the earth.

She had lived here all her life, apart from the brief, vivid, happy spell at Hogwarts, and the equally brief, equally vivid, but nowhere-near-as-happy spell in France.

And yet nobody had ever wanted her here. Her parents hadn't wanted her – except to hurt each other with. They had tossed her about like a grenade. And the widows had hated the way she never showed her emotions – the way she was always lapsing into thoughtful silences and thinking god-knew-what.

And yet it felt like home because home was what you were used to. To Poppy, home was not being wanted. You didn't have to love a place to belong there. Mapledurham fit her like an old and well-worn strait-jacket. There had never really been anything else.

Morry had been different, and she had sent him to his death for being different. See, if you had only ever known one thing, you started to think you deserved it. You began to crave it – you ran after it, leaving any nice people you encountered to eat your dust.

She could never leave home, she realized, as she looked out over the village. She brought it everywhere with her – carried it around on her back like a tortoise, except that this shell was so heavy that it crippled her spine and crunched her knees and drove her into the dust.

She wanted to burn it to the ground. No plan – no hope – just fireworks.

Except that Morry was still in there somewhere – the single soul in this god-forsaken place who didn't deserve burning. He was worth hesitating for.

And, at the back of her seething mind was the plan Mrs. Snape had roughly sketched out for her. It was actually only the shell of a plan. Mrs. Snape had soon seen that Poppy was in no condition to process details. But she had been clever, even in her simplicity. She had framed the plan to suit Poppy's mood. Keep them busy, and I'll get Morry. Don't let Colonel Riddle have the first shot. Believe me, if the first shot is his, there'll never be a second. And, after that, you run, do you understand me?

Poppy hadn't answered.

She was worried – but only a little worried – that she wouldn't be able to stop at 'keeping them busy' – that the whole world would burn if she gave her anger even an inch of leeway. But most of her mind was given over to the glorious prospect of wholesale destruction.

She stood on the sea-front, blossoming with all kinds of new and vicious ideas. For the first time in years, she wasn't tired. A nineteen-year-old's pulse quickened within her veins. Her mouth watered with the delicious prospect of making people listen. The world was falling apart, and she was itching to help it on its way.


The world was also falling apart for Moribund Prince, though in a gentler fashion. But this had more to do with slowness of comprehension than the kindness of fate. He simply couldn't believe that Poppy was outside. It was beyond his wildest dreams and his very worst nightmares.

That was perhaps the most shameful thing – that, for a second – just a second – he had wanted it to be true. For the barest skin of a moment, he had been happy – insensibly, unthinkingly happy – because she had come back, and that had to mean she cared. But then dread started seeping in through the cotton-wool padding of all that happiness, making it clammy and uncomfortable. Because she was going to get herself killed. This nightmare was going to eat her up, just like it had eaten up every other dreamer he'd encountered, and, this time, there wouldn't be enough left of him to go on wandering. Every dead dreamer had carried off a little bit of him when they'd been incinerated by their own fury, but Poppy was in possession of so much of his soul that he was amazed she could still walk around under its weight.

But could it really be true? Wouldn't Kurt or Mrs. Snape have tried to stop her? Kurt might have been too sweet on her to be of much use, but surely Mrs. Snape knew how to be painfully persuasive?

Besides, it was open to debate. Colonel Riddle had simply sauntered down the stairs and said: "Now we'll see whether your dear friend really has been misled." Then he had turned round sharply, and climbed back up the cellar-steps to the bar. The widows had surged after him like a tidal wave, shutting the trapdoor behind them, and now Morry could only hear a general, outraged prickle of conversation, with no discernable words, except maybe "shocking" and " – dare she?"

It didn't bode well, anyhow.

With a clanking sound that was completely drowned out by the widows' outraged mutterings, he threw all his weight against the chains that were holding him to the cellar wall. Nothing happened, except a certain twanging and burning of the tendons in his shoulders. But, by this point, pain had become something of a background worry.

He was tired. She was the first thing, in all his decades of wandering, that had made him not tired – but how much could one woman do against years of loneliness, dull horror and disillusionment? It would take thousands of these cotton-wool-wrapped moments, and he knew he wouldn't live long enough for that. He shouldn't have lived long enough for even one.

Maybe he would get them after he was dead. Angels of mercy might look and act just like Poppy – in fact, he got the feeling that she'd been trained in France with the phrase 'angel of mercy' in mind – and he had never done anything so spectacularly wrong as to disqualify him from mercy. Of course, nobody had ever cared about that so far, but perhaps the next life was fairer than this one.

Morry stopped, and tried to focus his wandering attention on the coal chute at the end of the cellar. There was a scratching sound coming from it, as though some kind of animal had got trapped in there. Little showers of coal-dust were pattering onto the floor like rain.

And suddenly, there was more than coal-dust – suddenly, a whole figure was slithering out of the chute, with a sooft-blackened dress and a fierce expression.

It was Mrs. Snape, he realized, with a surreal jolt. Her blood-red hair was gleaming dully under the soot. She had a streak of coal-dust smudged almost ceremonially across each cheek. It looked like war paint.

Before the coal, there had been mud. Morry could still make out clumps of it on her skin and clothes. But she didn't seem the least bit abashed at her unkempt appearance. In fact, she was giving Morry a smouldering look which clearly conveyed the idea that he was the one who should be abashed, and it was so intense that he started to fervently wish he still had a shirt on.

Without a word of greeting, she drew a pin out of her collar, and started picking the lock on his chains.

"Um," said Morry, feeling that he should probably say something, if only because she was holding a sharp pin so close to his naked torso. "Why aren't you using magic for that?"

Mrs. Snape flinched slightly, but tried to pretend it was because she was negotiating a particularly tricky part of the lock. "Because Poppy has my wand," she said levelly.  

"Why?"

"She snatched it."

Morry waited to see if any more explanation would be forthcoming. "Why did you let her snatch it?" he prompted.

"You know, she's not actually as gentle and inept as a five-year-old," Mrs. Snape muttered. "Not all of the time, anyway." There was a nasty crunching sound from the padlock and she cursed, threw away a stub of pin, and drew another one out of her collar. "Anyway, I've got a plan." The hand holding the pin shook ever so slightly. "It's not a plan that takes very much account of you," she admitted. "I'm sorry about that now."

"What kind of account does it take of Poppy?"

"I think she'll live."

"But it's mostly about the Snape boy, isn't it?" said Morry mildly, watching her struggle with the lock. "I've met him, you know. If he was your husband for ten years, then you were an unforgivable cradle-snatcher."

"Unforgivable, yes. Cradle-snatcher, no. It wasn't him. At least, I'm hoping it wasn't him."

"What does that mean?"  

Another pin snapped, and this time she didn't handle the setback so gracefully. "Look, it's about him and Poppy, OK?" she hissed. "You can get behind that idea, can't you? Whatever happens to us, those two have to survive."

"I'm not perfectly satisfied with your method of ensuring it," said Morry sniffily.

Mrs. Snape drew out another pin and recommenced the struggle. "Oh, because you have a better idea, do you?"

"I don't even know what your idea is!"

"We run," she said, and there was a satisfying click, which signaled the release of the catch on Morry's chains. He lowered his arms gingerly, but the twanging of strained muscles still seemed a million miles away.

"Run," he repeated.

"Yes. We've got you, and now we run. Poppy's not ready yet. She won't kill anyone, but it's hard to concentrate on not killing anyone when her enemies have got you tied up shirtless in a cellar. Don't ask me to fathom her logic, but she seems to need you around. It was childish of you to run away just because a German airman flirted with her."

She had crossed to the other end of the cellar as she spoke, and was now fumbling with a sack of potatoes nestled under the stairs.

"That wasn't why I did it," said Morry sulkily. "And I never expected her to actually follow."

"I know," said Mrs. Snape, straightening up, now with a revolver in her hand. "Neither did I. Helping you would have been too much like helping herself. But she's off the map of logic now. I can't predict what she's going to do next."

"And yet you seen to be very sure she's not going to kill anyone."

"It's not certainty," said Mrs. Snape, trying to force the barrel open to check that there were bullets inside. "Just mindless optimism. I'd heard a lot about it and thought I'd give it a try. Jesus, what's wrong with this thing?" she added, banging the revolver against the cellar wall.

Morry couldn't help wincing. Guns that weren't treated with respect tended to blow up in your face. They were a lot like people that way.

"Um," he said, to try and stop her banging the thing. "Is that going to be much use against a wand anyway?"

"Lots, if I can use it to shoot the wand out of his hand."

"Uh-huh," said Morry woodenly. "And have you ever used one before?"

Mrs. Snape gave him an impatient shrug. "How hard can it be?"

Morry sighed. "I think you'd better give it to me."


Severus had never seen the Dark Lord happier to see anyone anywhere than he was to see Poppy Pomfrey outside The Shipwreck. He was practically bouncing on his heels with enthusiasm when he strode over to the door. He paused, with his hand on the latch, and turned to Severus, who was standing to attention like a dutiful Death Eater and imperceptibly swaying with exhaustion.

"Go and get the prisoner, Severus," he said. "I think we should kill him in front of her, don't you? That would be a nice, dramatic touch."

And that was when the windows blew in.

Everything that could shatter, did shatter. The wine-glasses on the shelves popped like soap bubbles. And, for a split second, before Severus clamped his eyes shut, it was beautiful – little shards of crystal winging through the air like dragonflies. After that, of course, his instincts took over, and he dived to the floor – but the little shards still found him, stung him, lodged themselves companionably in every inch of exposed flesh. The beautiful dragonflies had turned into a swarm of wasps.

There were a few belated tinkles, and then silence. Severus risked opening his eyes and saw that Voldemort was still standing – bleeding in places, but brushing the glass splinters off his uniform with quiet dignity, as though some high-spirited students had just doused him in glitter, and he found it utterly inappropriate.

He had clearly been expecting pleasantries – another indication that he didn't understand this curse. It drove people to the frayed edges of endurance. Madam Pomfrey was wound up too tight to soliloquize, or taunt her enemies, or reveal dastardly schemes. There were feelings behind her acts of violence, unlike Voldemort's. There had been years of boring, sunless, uneventful silence, and, as long as it got broken, the words it was broken with didn't matter. They could be gibberish, for all Madam Pomfrey cared.

While the widows muttered and groaned and shook glass splinters out of their rigid hairstyles, Voldemort languidly opened what was left of the door. For all the surprises, he still seemed to be enjoying himself. Perhaps he had been longing for this. Perhaps there was too much talking in his life these days.

Severus watched him, his muscles tensed in expectation of an order. But Voldemort was thoughtfully silent as he stared out of the doorway. Outside, there was a faint rushing sound, as of a vast, deep intake of breath, and then a pitter-pattering like rain. Drops of water were tumbling in through the glassless windows, stirring the broken splinters on the floor.

Severus heard the Dark Lord hiss quietly through his teeth. "I knew she would not disappoint us, Severus," he said. "Come and look at this."

With only a fractional hesitation, Severus joined him by the door and looked out. It took him a long time to get to grips with what he was seeing. And, when he had, he wished he hadn't.

The harbour was completely dry. Shining wet sand – littered with stones and rotting timber – stretched away as far as the eye could see. Madam Pomfrey was standing in front of this wet desert with one hand raised in the air, and a look of sublime concentration on her face.

The eye was drawn inexorably upwards. At first, Severus had thought it was some sort of localized thunder-storm, but it was far too wet for that. Besides, it was rushing and roaring like a waterfall.

Above Madam Pomfrey's raised hand, stirring and hissing like a bag of snakes, was a vast ball of water. The entire contents of the harbour must have been swept up into it, and now it hung innocently in the air above them, like an enormous crystal ball, predicting a future of immediate pain.

A few drops were falling from its bulk and splashing onto the cobbles of the sea-front. They must have been showeing Madam Pomfrey, because her curly hair had been made even curlier with moisture, and her cardigan was sopping-wet and clinging to her skinny arms. She was smiling faintly.

Severus didn't know why but, in the sharp, stretched-out silence preceding the deluge, those details really struck him.

And then she dropped her arm.


Regulus slipped out of the side door and headed away from the lighted windows of the house, coming to rest at the very back of the garden, where the neatly-trimmed lawns gave way to a little wilderness, overgrown with ivy and convolvulus. This would have been neatly-trimmed too – in fact, the House Elf cleared away the weeds every day – but they always grew back again within a few hours, because this was the part of the garden which housed Moribund Prince's glass coffin, and weeds sprung up in abundance around that, probably because he had spent most of his waking life hiding from Claudia Black and was now determined to spend most of his sleeping life hiding from her descendents.

Regulus picked his way through knee-high clumps of thistles and peered absent-mindedly down at the moss-covered glass. He had been terrified of this place as a kid. Sirius and Bella used to tell him stories of how the sleeper woke up at nights and roamed the gardens, looking for tender young brains to eat. But he probably didn't have much to fear now, even in the unlikely event that the stories were true. He had killed so many of his brain-cells with alcohol tonight that the most ravenous zombie would turn his nose up at the contents of his head.

He was very angry with himself. Somehow, he'd become a soft-hearted idiot. And you couldn't use drugs and alcohol to escape that. Opiates could only work with what you already had. When he drank, he became a drunk soft-hearted idiot, and a momentary flash of guilt or tenderness could make him more sober than he'd ever been in his life.

He missed the auras. They had changed the way he felt about the world, and then vanished, and now he was awash with ideas that his family would have beaten out of him, and he had no proof that they were the right ideas. Even the dubious proof of a fevered hallucination would have been something at this point.

He missed his little Cathy too, and her promises of redemption. But, right now, he didn't care much about redeeming the Black family or saving his soul. He just wanted to make things right with the only person on earth who'd ever cared about him.

He heard a rustling in the thistles which probably indicated that Kreacher had found him. Regulus turned, bent down, and – as gently as possible – hauled the little elf out of the undergrowth, setting him down in a comparatively shallow drift of ivy.

"Hi Kreacher," he said, trying to make his voice sound light and carefree. The slight alcohol slurring didn't help. "You know your way around the kitchens here?"

"Yes, master," croaked the elf. He was obviously still sulking about being told to bugger off.

"Think you can make me one of your patented bacon butties?" Regulus asked cheerfully. "With floury white bread and brown sauce?"

"Y-yes, master," Kreacher stammered, hardly daring to believe it. "Kreacher knows just where to find the right bread."

"Good. And mix me up some coffee, will you? I've – er – probably had a bit too much to drink tonight."  He tried to put the whole of the apology into that sentence. If he had simply said 'Sorry I told you to bugger off', Kreacher's anxiety for him would have only increased, because masters didn't apologize to their elves.

"Of course, Master," said Kreacher, suddenly all eager, bustling efficiency. "Kreacher knows just the way you like it – cream and two sugars – and Wiglett has very fine Columbian-roasted coffee beans here."

"Thanks, Kreacher," said Regulus, trying to swallow the lump in his throat. "Oh, and good work this morning. Really. I'd have been dead for sure without you."

Kreacher looked down at his feet, his little elf-eyes brimming, and muttered something about 'doing his duty'.

Regulus clapped his hands together, trying to break the mood of sentimentality before they both burst into tears. "Get to it, then, mate," he said briskly. "I'm starving."

And the little elf scuttled off.

Regulus tapped out a jaunty little tune on the glass lid of Moribund Prince's coffin. Baby steps, that was the way to take it. Maybe he didn't have a clue what he believed, or what he was going to do with the rest of his life, but he had a friend now. He would deal with the rest tomorrow.

It was easy, really, to make a House Elf happy. You just had to convince them that they were doing a good job. There was nothing they took pride in like their job. It was family, hobby and magnum opus all rolled into one. And Kreacher had done wonders when you considered what he'd had to work with – the insane Mistress and the family's two self-destructive sons. They were still alive, and even thriving, despite the fact that most of them weren't on speaking terms. It was another little, overlooked triumph – he and Kreacher were good at things like that.

He even thought that maybe this sudden sense of well-being was the sign Cathy had promised he would get when he'd succeeded in redeeming the Black family, but he had to admit that the champagne was the more likely culprit. Besides, she had said: "you'll know it when you see it" and, even though a fuzzy sense of well-being was a rarity in Regulus Black's life, it didn't really seem dramatic enough for this.


Lily was back in her room at the Valance House, lingering wretchedly beside the drawn curtains. She had been on her way to help – to finally do something – and now, for some reason she didn't quite comprehend, she'd been thrown back here, and forced to wait.

No, not just wait. Wait for someone. But she couldn't remember who, or what they looked like, or when they were coming, or what was supposed to happen when they did.

Severus was still lying, bare-chested, on the bed, his eyes closed, but his jaw set with grim determination. As she watched, his entire torso jolted – his shoulders lifted themselves off the bed as though he'd been punched in the stomach – and, when they dropped down again, a little trickle of blood was proceeding from the corner of his mouth.

Lily walked forwards, dimly aware that her heart was pounding and her throat was constricted with misery. With great care – and marveling every second at how steady her hands were – she sat down on the bed beside him, took a handkerchief from her pocket and gently wiped the trickle of blood away from his mouth.

And, for some reason, the tears – which had been so politely distant when her boyfriend had jolted in his sleep and coughed up blood – chose that moment to hit her. It felt like an assault. She felt as though someone had clamped both their hands around her throat and was squeezing the teardrops out of her. She couldn't breathe, despite the fact that she was taking great gasping, shuddering breaths. They never seemed to be enough.

She fought against the tears, that was half the problem. But she couldn't not fight, especially when Elsa Valance appeared behind her and asked, quite aggressively, what she was crying for.

Because Lily wasn't capable of giving an answer just then, the little girl plunged her hands deep in her pockets and let her eyes wander around the room.

"You know, this aint a very imaginative nightmare," she said, probably out of embarrassment as much as insolence.

"It's new," Lily managed, between the shuddering, stifled sobs.

"So what? Severus had new nightmares all the time, and his were, like, whole detailed worlds, not rooms he'd just left ten minutes ago. 'Course, he aint as nice as you, so he can keep all that stupid imagination. Won't do 'im no good when my dad catches up to 'im," she added darkly.

It was strange, thought Lily, but this insensitive attitude was much easier to deal with than concern. Whenever someone tried to stop her crying, they invariably made it worse. Gratitude, guilt and embarrassment would all combine to make her squirm with wretchedness and redouble her sobs. But light little insults distracted her and, above all, gave her a strong desire to prove that she was the grown-up in the room.

She wiped her eyes on her sleeve and stood up. "Are you ready?"

Elsa rolled her eyes. "Been ready for hours!"

"It's not too late to change your mind."

"I'm a Valance," said Elsa, as though she was being woefully stupid. "My mum fought dragons. We don't change our minds – not for anything."

"Good," said Lily, with a watery smile. "Take us to Professor Dumbledore's dream first. We're going to need some help."


Severus dived to one side of the window and pushed his back to the wall, watching with salt-stung eyes as half the bloody North Sea rushed in through the glassless windows beside him. All the lights had gone out. The gas-lamps had been swamped, and the light-bulbs – the ones that weren't immediately swept away – had burst and fizzled as the torrent hit them.

There had been a horrible, unnatural wrenching sound, and half-shattered bricks and lumps of timber had dropped into the waist-high water swirling around the bar of The Shipwreck. It looked as though the top storey of the building had been ripped away by the crashing water – although Severus wasn't certain, because the sky and the ground were both so full of dark water that it was genuinely impossible to tell which way was up anymore.

The water was cold, and stung just as sharply as the shards of glass had done, but at least it brought numbness in its wake. Severus could hardly feel anything below the waist now. He tried to move his toes, somewhere down there in the dark water, but realized that it would be impossible to tell whether or not he had succeeded. It was an act of faith even to assume they were still attached.

Voldemort had reacted quickly but selfishly. He had raised his wand and conjured some kind of shield in front of him. The water had broken on it – scythed around the edges and soared over his head – but he had remained standing – and even quite dry – behind his shield.

And then everything had gone black. Now and again, he heard the widows whimpering, and was surprised to find himself composed enough to be irritated that they were still alive.

He groped with numb fingers and tried to find the window-frame. It was still jagged with shattered glass, of course, but he was too numb to realize it if he cut himself, so it was probably best to just plough on now and gather up body parts later.

There was slightly more light on the sea-front, even though the sky still had no moon or stars. And it looked as though Madam Pomfrey was still standing out there on the cobbles. She was sopping wet, shivering and gasping, although probably with shock more than cold.

Severus knew the feeling. So this was what she was capable of doing to you when you didn't take your medicine? The stern lectures suddenly seemed like mild-mannered restraint.

He was trying to think of a plan when a voice stirred in the dripping darkness of The Shipwreck.

"Is it my turn now?"

And then the darkness splintered into an excruciating kaleidoscope of light. Severus shut his eyes and saw a patchwork of veins on the inside of his eyelids. There was screaming – horribly familiar screaming – coming from the direction of the sea-front. It made him force open his eyes and stare straight into the pain, until his vision finally adjusted to all the new light.

Voldemort was standing in the bar's shattered doorway, pointing his wand out into the night. A bolt of blue light – branching like a vein, but focusing all its tendrils on Madam Pomfrey – was emanating from his wand-tip.

Lightning. If Severus hadn't been shaken to his core and numb to his bones, he would have been impressed. This wasn't just magic; it was physics. Electricity sped through water like a runaway train. Like hundreds of runaway trains, careering off in every direction. But, Jesus, it was dangerously unpredictable! The whole place was wet. The water was still ankle-deep in the bar of The Shipwreck. It was like dropping a match when the whole place had been soaked in gasoline. Voldemort could have fried everyone within a five mile radius, including himself. But, somehow, he didn't. Even the widows – who were huddled together by the bar, bedraggled and terrified, and mewling like drenched kittens – remained untouched by the electricity.

Madam Pomfrey was the only one who couldn't escape it. Her screams hammered on Snape's ear-drums and vibrated in his empty chest. Steam was rising off her in clouds.

"My Lord," he said weakly, feeling the screams build up to unendurable levels in his head. "My Lord, we mustn't kill her, remember?"

Voldemort flicked him a contemptuous glance, but didn't lower his wand.  The air was thick – unbreathable – with screams. They filled The Shipwreck from end to end, and Severus didn't have the strength to wade through them. It was all happening too fast. He had expected Voldemort, at least, to stick to the plan. Where was bloody Potter now? Where were the fucking Gryffindors? Snape's options had been narrowed to saving Madam Pomfrey now and blowing his cover forever, or… oh shit, there wasn't another option, was there? Not if he ever wanted Lily to forgive him.

And she had been so familiar when he'd seen her standing in the middle of her parents' arguments - weathering the storm, trying to turn herself numb. For all her Gryffindor-loving stupidity, Severus recognized the pattern of her misery.  

The trapdoor to the cellar banged open, but Voldemort was enjoying himself far too much to turn around. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, even with his snake-like reflexes. Moribund Prince didn't hesitate. He barely took the time to aim. The Boggart-Lily was scrambling up the cellar steps after him – covered in soot as well as mud now – but whatever she was going to shout got lodged in her throat.

Moribund Prince lifted a revolver and shot Colonel Riddle in the back.


Silence reigned. It wasn't the usual absence of sound, but a prolonged bout of noiselessness that seemed to box you around the ears. And, unfolding within it, like a snake in the undergrowth, was a treacherous, creeping hope.

Maybe he wouldn't get up.

And hope had sense on its side – at any rate, for some of the way. What could magic do against a bullet in the heart? Surely even the most powerful wizard couldn't live through that? He was flesh and blood, wasn't he, underneath all that occult nonsense?

No. He wasn't. It was a beguiling idea – and that was partly why Severus mistrusted it, but it wasn't the only reason. Voldemort had taken measures to prevent death – he was always boasting about that. He was never prepared to be specific, but he didn't need to be – he was emphatic. It didn't matter if he was shot in the heart. He would have back-up hearts – probably one for each day of the week.

If he could be killed as easily as all that, surely someone would have done it already?

Severus was the first person in the room to strangle the hope and come to his senses. He remembered whose side he was supposed to be on, raised his wand, and shouted: "Expelliarmus!" The gun was whipped out of Moribund Prince's hand, and splashed into the shallow water carpeting the floor. Nobody thought to keep an eye on it. To almost everyone in the room, it was an inferior weapon.


It was strange but, at moments of extreme emotional stress, Morry's mind wandered. A few seconds ago, his entire being had been focused on ending those screams before their terrible harmonics rent his heart in pieces. But now, as he watched Colonel Riddle drop to his knees, and certainty ebbed out of him like a retreating tide, he couldn't stop thinking about nightmare 172 – a dream he'd wandered through decades ago – and the way it had ended, in that attic.

Attics were classic nightmare fodder. They were close and stifling, and had a very limited number of escape routes.  And nightmare 172 had hardly been one of the most sophisticated nightmares he'd visited. The dreamer was a twelve-year-old girl, lost in a strange town, and running away from werewolves. The only interesting thing had been the way the werewolves carried themselves. They always looked like real people until the dreamer got close to them. They would stand with their backs to her, usually staring out of a window, and let her tentatively approach, before they spun round, snarling, and went for her throat.

No, it hadn't been sophisticated, but people still got mauled, and had their throats torn out. The horrors might not have been imaginative, but they were graphic.

And the girl had been so desperate for an ally by the time she ended up in that attic, scratched and trembling, approaching a tall man who stood – like all the others – with his back to her, silhouetted against the window.

Morry had made it into a game. He'd had to, or he would have gone crazy. She was only twelve. He'd shouted himself hoarse trying to get her to notice him. And he'd gone on shouting long after he knew it was hopeless, because it helped, when you were watching a twelve-year-old girl slowly scare herself to death, to have something to do.

By the time he'd followed her to the attic, he had lost the hope and the ability to shout. His voice was gravelly with overuse, and yet, for an untold number of years, nobody had heard it.

So he had made up a game. He had started to rate the werewolves on their patience. He would count the number of steps they permitted the dreamer to take towards them before they lashed out at her. So far, nobody had scored higher than fifteen. Werewolves were not renowned for their patience.

It was a game of 'What's the Time, Mister Wolf?' – always played with the unspoken hope that, one day, the wolf wouldn't spin round snarling at all. One day, the little dreamer would have an ally she could see and hear and touch. The curse would never allow that to happen, of course, but the dreamer kept on hoping, and that made Morry incline towards hope, against all sense, reason and experience.

This time, he sat down on the polished wooden floor of the attic, counting the girl's footsteps with half-hearted interest.

"You know," he said, drawing his legs up to his chest. "We've been here about – what – thirty-seven times? Remember how you were expecting the last one to be friendly?" he prompted, receiving no reaction from either the werewolf or the girl. "And the one before that? And the thirty-four before those? Has even one of them been friendly yet? Have you got any reason to expect friendliness? I know you shouldn't let past experiences sour you on meeting new people, but this lack of prejudice on your part seems a little bit extreme."

He stopped speaking. She had just taken her fifteenth step. One more and this werewolf would be a record-breaker. The dreamer paused, as though aware that this was an important moment, and then crept onwards.

Nothing happened. Sixteen – seventeen – eighteen steps, with no fangs, or flying globs of drool, or low, guttural growls. She was almost close enough to reach up and put a hand on the figure's shoulder. Nineteen. Twenty. Morry realized he was holding his breath.

"Please," said the little girl, in a trembling voice. "I'm lost," – twenty-one – "and I'm just trying," – twenty-two, twenty-three – "to find my mum and dad."

She was close enough to count the hairs on the back of his neck now, but still he didn't turn. Maybe this was how it ended, Morry thought wildly – maybe this was how you broke the curse. If you just went on trusting and trusting, no matter how many times you got burnt… Maybe it was a test of faith.

At length, the figure's shoulders moved back, as though he was taking a deep breath. The girl took one more stumbling step forwards, as though getting ready to leap into his arms, and then –

Supper-time.


Colonel Riddle stood up and turned to face them. The Boggart-Lily lurched forwards, as though she wanted to step in front of Morry, but she was knocked across the room with a flick of his wand.


Poppy was dry – bone-dry now. All the water had evaporated in the heat of the electric charge. She felt as though her eyelids had fused together, but she forced them open anyway, because she knew what was coming.  

She couldn't see much. And, later, she would never be sure how much she had seen and how much she had imagined. Colonel Riddle had been kneeling in the doorway, clutching his chest, for what seemed like an eternity. She could just make out Morry behind him, staring out at her. And, as Colonel Riddle began to get to his feet, she could have sworn her Morry smiled at her - a confident, reassuring smile – the kind you'd give to a little girl after she'd just woken up from a nightmare. Then Colonel Riddle straightened up and blocked her view, and the silence spiraled past the realms of endurance.  

She walked her fingers across a few of the cobblestones, but it cost her all the energy she had and, in the end, she lay limp, hand outstretched, hardly daring to breathe in case she missed the words.

The words were 'Avada Kedavra'. They were spoken without emotion, and they were followed by a dull – but curiously light – thump on The Shipwreck's wooden floor. Poppy stared ahead, unseeing, but unable to close her eyes. She would probably never be able to close them again.


And, hundreds of miles – but also just a breath – away, Regulus Black received his sign.


Something smashed through the lid of the glass coffin – but from the inside, not from above. Regulus was screaming his head off before he even realized what he was seeing, but, when his brain was finally able to process all the information, it redoubled his screams.

The figure in the coffin was sitting up – taking a deep breath – looking up at the stars. And it was the smile Regulus remembered most. You didn't often see a gentle smile twisting features that looked so much like Severus Snape's. If you looked like Severus Snape, you either were Severus Snape, or you were a hook-nosed, sallow-skinned bastard – and, either way, you had no reason for smiling.

It would later be explained to him – by a curiously damp-eyed Dumbledore – that the figure in the coffin had probably been smiling because he hadn't seen real stars over his head for nearly seventy years. And Regulus would fervently hope that he hadn't spoiled the moment by screaming his head off.

At any rate, the man was still smiling when he lay back, shut his eyes, and breathed out for the last time.