Harry Potter: Beyond Good and Evil in the Wizarding World-Chapter 18 - 15.2

"We hope you enjoyed your journey and that you’ll choose the Knight Bus again!"

"Thank you," Severus said, stepping down and breathing deeply. He was already handling it better than the first time. He walked home without looking back, and the bus was gone with a light rush of air and the baffled stares of several passing Muggles.

Muggles couldn’t see the bus. They had no magic, and the International Statute of Secrecy, signed in 1689, made performing magic in front of them a serious offence. When secrecy was broken, Muggles were Obliviated, a Memory Charm rewriting the relevant recollection, and the wizard responsible faced the Ministry’s attention.

Spinner’s End settled around him as he turned onto the street: cramped houses, soot-dark bricks, damp pressing into everything. He frowned. The tracking charm he’d placed on the house before leaving was gone. That meant only one thing.

Looks like my quiet evening is postponed.

He kept his face neutral. He could feel someone inside, and he didn’t want them to bolt.

He opened the door without hurry, looked at the basement door sitting slightly ajar, and raised an eyebrow.

I’m genuinely impressed. They even found that door. The person who saw through the concealment charm is worth a little credit.

"Please, stop this. We need to go." A woman’s voice, agitated and low. Severus recognised it immediately, and his expression flattened.

A moment later a red-haired girl came out of the basement dragging a grown man behind her. The man kept twisting back toward the stairs. The moment she saw Severus standing there, she went white and reached for her wand. It flew out of her hand before she could grip it and landed in his.

"Lily." His voice was flat. "So that’s why you’ve been so restless." He moved her against the wall with a firm telekinetic push, hard enough to rattle the frame, then walked past her into the room and cleared it with an impatient sweep: chairs, junk, everything shoved aside until only the table remained. The cauldron landed on it with a heavy, solid clunk.

"Why do you keep coming here?" he asked, not turning around. "You have James. Go to him. You have no idea how much effort it takes not to simply kill you and solve the problem at the root."

"Sev, why are you —" Her voice was shaking.

Women are bewildering creatures. Severus shook his head and stepped closer, raising one hand toward her throat.

Lily shut her eyes, braced for something. When she opened them again, a strand of her red hair lay between his fingers. He was looking at it with no expression at all.

"First you say I’m not him," Severus said. "Now you’re calling me by his name. Make up your mind."

"Sev would never hurt me."

"You might be right. He wouldn’t." His fingers moved to her throat, light but deliberate. Just enough. "I can. And I won’t."

He let go, turned to the cauldron, and took out his wand.

"I swear by my magic that I am Severus Snape, and no one else."

Light flared. Lily stared at it, said nothing.

"You’ve never understood me," Severus said, not unkindly, but without warmth either. "You decided I was heading somewhere dark, and I imagine in your head I ended up on the same shelf as Death Eaters."

"That’s not true! I’ve always thought of you as my friend!"

"Then why did you never support my work?" The irritation in his voice was real. "Why only criticism? Because Dark Magic is evil?"

Lily pressed her lips together.

"You’re not thinking about it broadly enough." He shook his head. "Tell me: do you consider Merlin a dark wizard? Evil incarnate?"

"Of course not!"

"But he was. One of the most powerful dark wizards of his time. He used light magic as well, but in battle he relied on dark because dark was stronger. By your logic, he was worse than Voldemort."

She flinched at the name.

"And you criticised my friends."

"Because they were dreadful people!"

"I’m not disputing that," Severus said. "But did you want me to be completely alone? Sitting there waiting for whenever you decided to call?"

"No, I didn’t mean —"

"Help you? Open my eyes?" He cut her off, his gaze steady and cold. "Did you genuinely think I didn’t already know what they were? Lily, I was in Slytherin, a house of pure-bloods. Who exactly was I supposed to make friends with? I’m a half-blood, and in times like these, with the Dark Lord actively recruiting, who do you think was going to associate themselves with someone like me?"

He let that settle, watching her face as something new moved across it.

"And when people finally did, you immediately told me to drop them, which meant dropping the only allies I had in my entire house. While you had friends to laugh with, I had no one, and at the first moment you wanted company I was supposed to drop everything and run to you. Wasn’t I?"

"No! I never —"

Severus raised his hand. She stopped.

He went back to the table, took out the pouch, and began removing needles from it. They turned back into jars as they came out.

"Sev." Lily’s voice had dropped to almost nothing. "What did you do to your father?"

"It’s called revenge."

"Revenge?"

"Yes." He raised his voice. "Get up here."

Tobias came up from the basement in heavy, stumbling steps. He swayed, hands twitching, and his eyes, which Lily had previously only seen burning with drink and cruelty, held something she had never seen in them before: simple, naked terror, fixed entirely on Severus.

"Tell me," Severus said. "Why am I doing this to you?"

"You’re a m-monster."

"A monster." He sounded almost disappointed. "You still haven’t worked out where you went wrong. And I had intended to keep you alive."

He glanced at a photograph in the corner of the room.

"Tell me what you did to my mother."

"I." Tobias’s colour was that of old ash. "I beat her. Until she was dead."

Lily went very still. She hadn’t known. She hadn’t known Eileen Snape was dead at all.

"And what did you feel at the time?" Severus asked.

"I was." Tobias’s voice broke on almost every word. "I was happy. The witch should have died years ago. Should have left me in peace."

"And over the ten years before that. What did it feel like, beating her?"

"I felt alive!" The words came out in a rush, half choking. "That damned witch should have gone long ago!"

"Now do you understand?" Severus asked Lily. Her face had gone the same colour as Tobias’s.

"Sev. please stop." Her voice broke. "You can’t sink to his level. I understand what he did was monstrous, but —"

Severus’s palm connected with her cheek before she could finish.

"Lily, you’re too naive," he said quietly. "The world isn’t a story where kindness is always the right answer. If you keep thinking the way you do, it will kill you. Remember that."

He raised his wand.

"Obliviate."

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