Chapter 19: Chapter 19: "If my wishes came true, it would have been you."
Severus sat contemplatively on a bench inside The National Scottish Gallery. Muggles moved about him chattering to one another as they inspected maps of the Gallery or ruffled the rain off their anoraks. It was busy today. It was the summer holidays and the muggle schools were still out, after all. Severus stared up at the painting he sat opposite. He always made a point of sitting here, by this painting in particular. Antonio Allegri da Correggio's 'An Allegory of Virtue' was unique not for it's demonstration of skill, but rather for the lack of it. The painter was, of course, brilliant in that way Renaissance painters were: with their swooping dramatic poses, waxy-looking figures and rich diaphanous clothes swaying in an invisible breeze. But right at the center of it, there was an incomplete figure. The Goddess of Virtue herself was nothing more than a sketch. There had been much debate over whether the painting was deliberately left "unfinished" or not. Severus rather liked that. How do you represent goodness and virtue, after all? Does it even exist? Is anybody, even those considered to be Gods and monsters, ever truly that black and white?
"This spot again, Severus?" Came a voice at his side.
He did not need to look away from the painting as she sat down beside him, the familiar flourish of a tartan coat in the corner of his eye confirming it. Circe tucked her brolly into her handbag and settled into the bench at Snape's side. The walk from the Prince's Street gardens had been short but she'd apparated in the middle of a traditional Scottish downpour. It had taken her a while to spot Severus, clad in his more muggle-friendly black leather jacket as he was. But the long, dark hair and hunched shoulders had given him away.
"There are other paintings in this Gallery, by the way." She said with a roll of her eyes, delving into her handbag once more to save her copy of today's Prophet from the rain of her umbrella.
"Aren't we all creatures of habit, at the end of the day?" Severus asked, drawing his eyes away from the painting and finally looking at her.
Circe snorted and looked back at him wordlessly.
Will this be the fourth… or fifth time we've met? She thought to herself as the general noise of the many tourists in the Gallery seemed to fade away as she lost herself in his obsidian eyes.
Her and Severus's meetings had become something of a regularity as the summer had progressed. Edinburgh had been the natural place for a meeting between them. Severus had found himself becoming slowly enchanted with the city once again and a small routine had established between him and Circe. They always started off by meeting in the Gallery, ambling slowly from canvas to canvas as they did their required catch-up small talk, and then on into the Old Town they would go walking, for a teacake and a small peruse of the record stores.
Circe smiled warmly at him and he returned her greeting with a slight upturn to the corner of his mouth.
"How are you?" He asked, feeling his nerves quieten now she was here beside him.
He had been something of an emotional wreck the first time he had arranged a meeting: sweating, heart thumping, irritable, stomach in cramps. He still slightly got those surge of nerves in the moments before she was due to arrive, but he always made a habit of getting to the Gallery before she did so he had time to compose himself.
"I'm… I'm doing good. Thanks. Lots of new stuff happening." She responded simply. "Can't wait to be back at work next week though."
As Severus's summer had been long and lonely, Circe's had been busy and bustling. Never a moment to herself at her Dad's with Tom and Alec running about too, Myron trying to make up for the lost gigging time they'd had at the end of last year, and of course, her meetings with Severus.
"I saw your review in the Prophet." Severus said, eyeing up the newspaper she held.
"Oh, you did?" She said, blushing slightly.
'The Weird Sisters' had reformed under a new lineup: Her, Myron, and a few other musicians he knew on the circuit. And just like that, Circe had been catapulted from bar and pub gigs to proper venues, with a paying crowd, a bigger, louder sound system, and an actual growing fan base. Lots of people now saying 'yes' instead of 'no'. The Daily Prophet had dubbed them that year's "band to watch" and had written quite the glowing review of their last gig down in Camden. The article had paired the review with a rather unflattering picture of Myron on stage, slamming a shot and cramming the empty glass down some poor groupie's cleavage as Circe laughed in the background, guitar in hand. She had been a few sambuca shots worse for wear by the time that picture had been taken too…
Severus had been keeping a close eye on Circe that summer. Tracking her movements, keeping stock of who she socialised with, hence his awareness of the gig review. His conversation with Dumbledore before the holiday's commencement had put him on edge for her. He'd seen nothing to confirm the Headmaster's first allegation that she was a Dark Lord sympathiser and he was proud that he'd put his trust in her. The second concern, however, was harder to confirm...
Perhaps I should ask about the diary…Perhaps I should tell her that she needs to be careful.
His meetings with her had been partly to check on her well-being and partly for his own benefit, and he didn't want to taint the short time he had with her with suspicions and fear mongering.
Let her enjoy this time. It may all get very bad very quickly for her.
"Well, you might be the only person who has read the review." Circe sighed. "Have you seen this?" She fluttered the paper at him and opened it up to reveal the front page.
"Circe…!" He chided her in a hushed tone, moving in close to her to try and hide the newspaper from the eyes of onlooking muggles.
He knew that muggles didn't see the images moving like wizarding kind did, but nevertheless he remembered it had made his father feel odd looking at them, "like a magic-eye trick poster" he'd said before ripping them up. He cast a nervous eye around the Gallery, and finally looked back at her with a reproachfully raised brow before glancing at the paper she'd placed in his lap. The screaming mugshot of Sirius Black stared back at him, with the headline "BLACK STILL AT LARGE!".
"A daring prison escape, a killer on the loose, the biggest manhunt in the wizarding world in recent memory… It's a wonder anyone made it past that story to our measly little review." Circe said wistfully.
"And it seems each time he is sighted, he's heading further and further north." Severus mumbled, pulling the article closer to him. "Grasmere, Cumbria. He's almost at the border now."
"You don't think… he's heading to-"
"Hogwarts." Severus finished for her.
"But why?" She asked, puzzling away. Severus looked Circe in the eye and arched his brow at her once more, inviting her to take a guess. She paused for a moment and it dawned on her. "For Harry... Jesus, you'd have thought him killing that bloke he blew up and betraying The Potters to Voldemort would have been enough for him, wouldn't you."
She remembered well enough Black's arrest soon after the War had ended, back in '81. It had been the only thing the school had talked about. The first high-profile arrest in the time after Voldemort's disappearance, and Black's sentencing had begun the trend of life imprisonment rotting away in Azkaban for any ex Death Eaters found guilty.
"Well, Sirius was never someone to let sleeping dog's lie…" Severus muttered coldly.
They rose from the bench in unison and ambled along the Gallery at leisure. Circe had questions about Sirius, and Severus tried to answer them as best he could. He felt himself growing impatient with her; asking more questions about Black than about him, their conversation wheeling back to Sirius at each opportunity.
"So he was in the same year as you and the Potters?"
"He was."
"And he was friends with James?"
"Yes."
"Godfather to Harry too?"
"Indeed."
"So why did he betray them both?"
"I have no idea!" He spat, breaking from her side to look at a painting on the other wall of the gallery.
He was hurt. This was his time with her, and it seemed that Black was stealing her from him despite not even being there.
Must I always contend with one Marauder or another for a woman's attention?!
Severus stopped dead and stared into space. Had he really just thought that? Made Circe directly comparable to Lily?
Circe watched Severus's back heaving with heavy breaths. He folded his arms around himself and clung on to his elbows, as if he were trying to shrink into himself, wanting to become invisible. She bit her lip and realized that Severus may be annoyed at her apparent obsessive level of interest in Black. She also sensed that she was skirting around another tetchy issue in Snape's past. Anything that came close to James or Lily Potter was difficult for him, she realized. As much as she wanted to ask Severus for information, she swallowed her curiosity and decided to shelf it for another day, or another person… Circe sighed to herself, bemoaning the lightning-fast speed in which Severus could shift moods. Anybody else in her life who behaved like this, she would have made pains to avoid. But when it came to Severus, she never seemed to follow the rules. He defied logic and sensibility. When he pushed back, she stepped closer. She approached him slowly and hovered at his left shoulder.
"Come on, it's your turn to buy the teacakes this time."
Severus looked to her as she smiled kindly back at him. He envied her really; she'd had all that had been stolen from him in his twenties. He remembered that picture of her he'd seen in the Prophet: having the time of her life, laughing, uncrippled by regret and grief like he was. He resisted the temptation to go meandering down the thought path of wondering how different his life today may have been if Lily hadn't died. If he'd never joined the Dark Lord. If his mother had left his father when he was young. If just one small thing had been different, could he have been like Circe?
Could she have ever fallen for me... in the way Lily didn't?
He nodded to her and they exited the Gallery.
Circe directed him up to the Old Town, both huddled under her small umbrella as the rain beat down around them. She pushed past the tourists on the Royal Mile, dodging and weaving around the soaked actors handing out flyers to passers by. The streets quietened down as they moved away from the Mile and towards Circe's favorite little cafe. She spied an empty table in the window of The Elephant Cafe and barged past an American couple hovering by the door, looking at the menu. Severus offered a small apology to them and sheepishly followed her inside.
"To think, Severus, it's almost two years to the day that I was sitting in here debating whether to take up the job at Hogwarts." Circe mused, sipping at her coffee.
"Having regrets, Professor?" He asked with a sarcastic twinge.
"Oh every day. Especially after having to work in such close proximity to you." She responded, similarly sarcastically. A flash of hurt passed over Severus's face and she stuttered "I… I was joking…"
No you're not. I know what a miserable, foul-tempered sod I am. He thought bitterly.
"You will have to be… cautious this year. More cautious than you have been at Hogwarts so far."
"What? What do you mean? Why?"
Severus shifted in his seat and clenched his jaw, as if rolling something bitter around in his mouth.
"There are some long term consequences to the events of last year." he said cautiously.
"Like what?" She asked, peering over the top of her coffee cup.
What do I even ask? He thought. How would the Dark Lord seep his way into her life? How would he start poisoning her?
"Have there been any… troublesome experiences for you recently?"
"What, you mean apart from having my head bitten off by you earlier?" She replied with a small laugh.
Severus went quiet and introspective again. Circe watched him staring out of the cafe's window into the rain. His cryptic conversation unsettled her. There was something again that he was not sharing with her. She wondered how ancient hieroglyphics or Nordic runes could be easier for her to read than this man. Severus didn't come with a translation. He was baffling. A riddle wrapped in a mystery wrapped in an enigma. She could not deny to herself that there was something between them. An as yet nameless connection. But she felt powerless to influence it or change it, in fear that if she disturbed the waters too much then Severus would be lost to her forever.
Why does nothing ever come easy to me? She thought.
"I suppose I better be leaving." He said suddenly.
Circe flinched at the brusqueness of it.
"I wish you a pleasant remainder of your holidays." He bowed to her stiffly. It was sweetly awkward.
"Yes, you too Severus. I'll be seeing you soon. At Hogwarts."
"I… I apologize if I seemed short-tempered with you in the Gallery earlier." He said shyly, pausing behind his chair as he put his leather jacket on. "Black and I were on rather bad terms in school and well… we loathed each other. That's the long and the short of a rather complicated state of affairs-"
"It's fine. Thank you. For telling me." Circe added quickly.
Silence settled between them.
"You will tell me if there are any… troublesome experiences for you in the future?"
"I- yes. Sure." She replied, confusion etched on her voice.
Severus nodded. "Goodbye." He said finalistically as he strode out the door.
Circe watched him turn his collar against the wind and walk away from The Elephant Cafe, into the rain. She was shocked that Severus had offered her this information. There had been a time when she'd never dreamt that Snape would divulge anything about his personal affairs to her. But then again there had been a time, when she'd sat in this cafe before, that she'd never even would have entertained the possibility that she'd be returning to it with a dark, enigmatic, magical man beside her. She wished that she had her time again. She wished she'd gone back to Hogwarts sooner, to know her place in the world sooner, be happy in the world where she belonged. To have known Severus for longer.
Well, if my wishes were ever in the habit of coming true… I wish it could always have been you.
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It was raining heavily against the windscreen of Circe's car. Her wipers moved at high speed as they tried in vain to keep the view clear. She had left the journey to Hogwarts late that year, and it was now dark. She cursed herself for this poor decision and squinted into the rain-soaked gloom. Her VW Beetle had been old the first time she'd driven up to Hogwarts, but now she'd left it idling in the Hogsmeade station car park for two years on the trot now, it had rather fallen apart from misuse. Her Dad had fussed over it, worrying over Circe having to drive it all the way from the Midlands to rural Scotland, and had double checked the tires for her, but at the end of the day, Circe knew that the car was on its last legs. The wipers screeched over the glass, the rubber on them long gone. One of her headlights had given out somewhere near Carlisle. Circe knew she was driving dangerously, but rationalised that if she just pressed on and got to Hogsmeade as quickly as she could, then the car could be sold for scrap. It just needed to survive one last trip.
I must be almost there now… she thought, her nose almost pressed up against the glass as she struggled to see the way clearly.
Her radio, mercifully, still worked and she'd been tuned in to the Wizarding Wireless Network for quite a considerable chunk of the drive up. The updates on the manhunt for Black had entertained her for a time, detailing the various sightings that had been reported, all of them hedging closer and closer to Hogwarts as Severus had predicted. The news broadcast had ended some time ago and Celestina Warbeck was now on the airwaves giving her best warbling rendition of "Accio Love". Circe grimaced and removed her eyes from the road to change the station. She fumbled with the radio tuner as static blared over her speakers and she eventually decided that silence was preferable to this… She twisted the volume button down with a heavy sigh and glanced back to the road.
She gasped as she saw, in the center of the dark country road, a huge black dog.
The creature looked up towards her, caught squarely in her singular headlight, frozen in place.
Circe swerved.
Her car wheels went skidding along the rain-drenched tarmac and the old VW Beetle went careening to the side. The whole vehicle spun as Circe lost control. A sickening metallic crunch filled her ears as she came to a lurching halt. Her airbags deployed, cushioning her fall, and for a few seconds she sat in her seat, dumbstruck and shocked but unharmed.
She had landed in the nearby ditch, the boot of the car in the dirt, leaving Circe able to see the clouds above from over the airbags. She groaned and fumbled with her seatbelt. Ziggy was going mental in his cage on the passenger seat, and she reached over to him first when she had recovered her wits.
"Ziggy… Ziggy my love, are you alright?"
The bird screeched at her in response and she clasped a hand to the cage, checking him for any damage. He too was fine. She groaned once more as the emotional weight of her crash finally hit her. She grasped at the door handle and tried pushing it open. When it didn't budge she slammed her shoulder into it forcefully, again to no avail. She roared in exasperation.
Then, the huge black dog that she had swerved to avoid jumped onto her shattered windscreen, peering through the glass at her. Circe screamed out in shock, pressing herself back into her seat. The great beast stared at her with deep black eyes, regarding her with an unknowable, arcane look. Circe felt frozen in place by the curious gaze of the dog. It cocked its head to the side and gave her car a sniff. She held her breath, staring with intensity back at the animal. Perhaps she was imagining it, but it felt like the dog was checking on her… making sure she was alright. He looked a little mangy and malnourished, and Circe wandered for a second whether it might be a stray. And just as quickly as it had turned up, it jumped off the car's bonnet and fled into the night. Circe breathed a sigh of relief, wondering why the animal would have approached her. Why it hadn't run away from the car in fright as most animals would.
And why was the bloody thing in the middle of the road anyway?! Fucking irresponsible dog owners...
She turned to her door again, and kicked it with force. It sprung open under her boot and she climbed out into the soaking wet rain. She glanced around looking for the huge dog, but even if he was still nearby it was impossible to see him in the dank and dismal weather. She was sodden by the time she'd crawled her way out of the ditch and lugged Ziggy's cave from the passenger side. Circe opened the cage's door and let the owl fly free, sensing his annoyance with her for getting them both into the crash. He flew off into the black, wet sky towards the owlery without a backwards glance at her. Circe tried to pull her coat over her head, but the rain beat mercilessly down upon her and she was freezing cold in seconds. She decided to abandon her car for the time being and walk the remainder of the way to Hogwarts.
The ground was treacherous as she slipped about in the mud. The climb up to the castle had her breathing heavily, but she was no warmer for the exercise. In fact, the rain around her seemed to have turned bitterly cold and icy, a few hailstones thunking against her head, stinging at her skin like needles.
My God, it's cold. It shouldn't be this cold for early September, should it?
Her glasses were coated in raindrops and she struggled to see where she was placing her feet. A few surprise slips almost had her tumbling down the hill as she approached the walls of the castle, but she stopped dead as she realised that instead of the bitter stinging hailstones, it was now snowing. Her feet crunched against the grass and she realised that the ground too was coated in frost. A coldness gripped her whole being. It seeped through her clothes and into her very bones, draining her of all warmth and love. A crushing feeling of sorrow gripped at her heart and she found herself thinking of every terrible moment she'd ever had in her life: her mother's death, her father's refusal to see her after she died, crying in the alley behind the Three Broomsticks after Charlotte Ambrose's party, reading of her friends' deaths in the Prophet obituaries during the wizarding war, getting dragged from the Order's meeting house kicking and screaming, her most awful heartbreaks, feeling desperately lonely in her tiny flat in Edinburgh… from small to large, every moment of negativity she could remember began playing in her head until she felt overwhelmed by sadness. Stuck in a rising tide of awful, horrible memories that threatened to drown her. She raised her head just enough, in between gut-wrenching sobs, to see the black, ghostly figure of a skeletal nightmare descending on her. She sunk to her knees, her tears freezing on her face, as the Dementor reached out a decrepit hand to her. She searched the sky above her and saw a number of them hovering over her, their sable robes billowing out delicately from their haggard frames. She wanted to let the sadness consume her. Just to give up and lie down on the frozen grass. Wait for everything to end.
"Expecto Patronum!"
A brilliant white light filled her vision, surrounding her and basking her in warmth once again. She felt a great weight lift from her shoulders as the Dementors fled in alarm. From out of the white light walked a man that Circe did not recognize, but deep gratitude for him filled her nonetheless. He held his wand aloft, the stark whiteness of his spell still spilling forth from it like a great umbrella. He picked her up by the arm and she leaned heavily upon him.
"Can you cast the patronus? There's quite a few of them." He asked her, not taking his eyes from the Dementors as they threw themselves against the barrier he'd created.
"I don't think I could…" Circe replied weakly. She still felt like she could cry into next year.
"Alright. Stay close to me."
Circe nodded and clung on to his waist. The Dementors did not let up their attack, swooping down from the sky in turns to have a go at attacking Circe and the man. But he held firm, both on his spell and on to Circe. He pulled her into Hogwarts' gate and the great portcullis slammed shut behind them.
He placed Circe down on the floor and she leaned her back against the castle's inner wall. How had she managed to have the worst start to the year yet, and not even be on the first day of teaching? She wiped her face clean of the tears that still lingered there and closed her eyes, feeling completely drained. The rustle of a package in her face made her open them cautiously again. The man held a row of a bar of chocolate out to her that he'd snapped off a Cadbury's Dairy Milk.
"Eat this, you'll feel better." He said gently, waving it at her. "Good lord, that's the second time today I've had to save someone from a Dementor attack. I really must tell Dumbledore that they're far overstepping their realms of jurisdiction."
Circe took it and munched on it suspiciously as she eyed up the man closely. He was modestly dressed in a remarkably un-wizardly long beige cardigan and looked every bit as soaked to the skin as she was. She clocked the long, deep scars that ran across his face instantly, but it was a kind face. A caring face.
"Dementors… from Azkaban? I'd only ever read about them before. What are they doing here?"
"I imagine they thought you were Sirius Black, skulking about in the shadows near the castle, as you were." He said with a well-meaning chuckle.
"I-I crashed my car down near Hogsmeade…" she began, "I work here."
"Oh, me too!" He said jokingly, placing a hand in his corduroys and offering the other to Circe. "Remus Lupin."
"Circe Smith. Ancient Studies."
"Ahh, I thought I couldn't see Professor Babbling's name on the Staff list."
He tugged her to her feet as Circe took another munch of chocolate.
"Defense Against the Dark Arts?" She asked him.
"For my sins, yes." He said with a flick of his wand.
"Thank you, Professor Lupin." She said, trying to muster a smile. "God, what horrible things." She muttered, gazing out past the portcullis into the gloom where the Dementors no doubt lurked.
"Well, what can you expect from the guardians of the highest-priority wizard prison there is..." Lupin said, gazing too out into the darkness.
"Yeah but I wouldn't wish that on anyone. No one deserves to feel like that… not even the worst wizards out there."
"Hmm." He nodded sagely. "Well, let's get you inside. Crashed your car, you say? You look drenched."
Lupin placed a comforting arm around her shoulder and ushered her inside. "Cheers for the help, Severus…" he said with the slightest hint of contempt, calling back into the shadows near the portcullis.
Circe wheeled around at the mention of Snape's name. There he stood, concealed by the black shadows cast in the moonlight, a look of horror on his face. He locked eyes with Circe and she saw a palpable fear etched deep into his features. He held his wand limply in his hand, his mouth hanging open.
He'd been there all along.
"You… you didn't come to help me, Severus?" She asked, sharp, cold disappointment rising up in her chest.
"I…"
"You just watched from the shadows as the Dementors attacked me?"
"Circe…" he breathed, the terror leaving his legs just enough for him to step towards her.
He had been on patrol with Lupin, looking for any loitering students and guaranteeing the gate was locked for the final time that night. A new precaution that had to be taken now Black was on the loose. Remus had not even tried to engage his former school mate in conversation. He could tell Snape was less than ecstatic to see him, quietly seething away with muttered curses and grinding his jaw as they walked their perimeter of the school. Perhaps it was deservedly so, considering how Remus had watched idly as Sirius and James often tormented him. But Lupin had seen the Dememntors coalescing around something from beyond the portcullis and had swiftly raised the bars to come to Circe's aid. Severus had not moved to Lupin's cries for assistance as he'd rushed to help her.
I wanted to. My God, I did. But I couldn't… Lupin can't see my patronus! Severus's thoughts shouted what his mouth could not say. A doe… a doe…
Angry tears sprang up in Circe's eyes and she turned from him sharply, her delicate state threatening to send her over the edge into ugly sobs again. Lupin shuffled to her side and lay a gentle hand on her shoulder, ready to explain that fear affects each person differently… But Circe shrugged him off forcefully and went marching into the halls of Hogwarts before she said something cruel.
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