What Magic Binds

PAIRINGS: SS/HP (ish) SS/Lily

RATING: PG

SUMMARY: Why he watches.

NOTES: Part of the Severus Snape Fuh-Q Fest. Response to Second Wave Original Scenario Number 15: Snape watches someone, eyes hidden by that greasy curtain of hair.

Once she was certain that he was asleep, she carefully got up from the bed that she had transfigured from a desk, one hand cupped carefully to contain her prize. She cast one soft smile back at him, and returned briefly to drop a kiss on the almost-constant crease between his eyebrows.  

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, and then extracted her wand. A whispered word and practiced gesture sent her handful to the prepared container, leaving her hand clean behind it.

Another whispered word, and she knew that he would not wake until she was ready. A quick prick of needle against skin gained her the drop of his blood she needed. That too went into the appropriate container, to mingle with hers.

Finally prepared, she moved to the table in the corner, and lifted the Obscurus Charm she had laid on it before they met this time. One last deep breath, then she began the incantation. It had to be perfect. She would not have another chance.

“Spirits of life I call to you. I call by the right of blood.” She added the liquid from the container that held the mixture of her blood and Sev’s to the gently bubbling contents of the cauldron.

“I summon by the right of passion.” In went Sev’s semen, gathered from her body.

“I bind by the right of love forsaken.” The tears she had allowed herself when she realised that she could not have them both, and that even the choice could not be hers.

“Answer me.”

The answer came only in her heart, but it was an answer nonetheless. They would do what she asked. It was old magic that she called upon, magic that could not be compelled, only petitioned, and even then only with a true sacrifice.

“I call upon thee to bind the blood I have offered. Evans blood to Snape blood. My children and his children, until their blood is joined.” He needed her, and she could not stay with him, but perhaps her children might.

It was done. She returned to the bed, and the warm space he, still asleep, made for her in his arms. She would allow herself this comfort for a bare hour, then she would return to the dorms. From the morning, she could belong only to one of them.

Severus woke first. Before, he would have smiled to find her in his arms, but now he was already beginning to place himself in the role he would have to play for the foreseeable future. It would not be hard to act bitter, not after what she had told him the night before.

“Sev, you know that James is going to ask me tomorrow.” Tomorrow was their graduation day. Their school life was over, they were adults now. Although telling his parents that would get you precisely nowhere.

“I know.”

“I’m going to say yes, and you know why.”

“Yes.” He did know. James was Gryffindor. Handsome, charming, athletic. He understood why she loved James. What he didn’t understand was why she loved him too. Even if he had dared ask her to spend her life with him, his family would have made it impossible. He would not even consider dragging her into their midst. A nest of Death Eaters, the lot of them, and he would have to become one soon. Lily and Dumbledore had given him a small ray of light however, which he would cling to as long as he could.

“I love you,” she said, after the silence had stretched too long.

He summoned up a smile for her, albeit a not completely wholehearted one, but he could not make himself say the words again. “Yes,” he settled for instead. It was not his right to tell her that he loved her anymore.

Lily woke soon after, and smiled to see him watching her. The smile he gave in reply was a real one, if weak, but it fled his face quickly. “I’m going to miss you,” he said. I love you, can’t you stay with me?

They dressed. Just before they left, Lily finally spoke. “I’ll miss you too.” I’m so sorry.

After Harry was born, she sent him a picture through Dumbledore, two identical gazes staring up at him. He barely ever even thought her name anymore. But he kept the picture, and wondered what she meant by the scrawled ‘Yours’ on the back.

He was there when she died. Waiting outside the house, cursing himself virulently for not discovering Voldemort’s plan soon enough, for not knowing about Black. He heard her scream. Then he Disapparated, and so missed the fact that Voldemort never emerged from the ruined house.

Severus saw Harry in the flesh for the first time when the boy walked into the Great Hall for his Sorting. The child still had Lily’s eyes, but for the most part he was James’ son. Snape thanked all the gods he had forsaken that the boy was sorted into Gryffindor. Harry – Potter - would be Minerva’s charge, and he wouldn’t have to be responsible for those eyes. He could see the accusation in them every time they found him. He was glad that he had to make Potter hate him. It was, after all, what he deserved. He had let Lily die. He couldn’t hate the boy for living though, not even for being James’ son. But it provided a good excuse for him, and he almost managed to convince himself of it.

He watched the boy though. He couldn’t help it. Something drew him to those eyes, that hair, even that scar, even the things that were no part of Lily’s. He watched, his eyes hidden by his hair and by his professed dislike, stepping in when he could bear simply watching no longer, when the urge to protect overrode his need for secrecy, to be despised.

He told himself daily that he wasn’t obsessing over a child, over Lily’s son. He saw the boy watching him, suspicious, hating, and he smiled secretly. It didn’t help. Only the boy’s hatred could do that, for a while. He could feel something inside him calling out for something else, something more, but he would not answer it. He had more pride than that. He had made his choices, and so had she. Neither could take them back.