Chapter Text
When Tim met Cassiopeia Black, his hands were still trembling from the implications of what Harry had told him.
He was glad he had not been able to go with his friends after the gala. Instead he had been told the whole story the day after, quietly, after being asked to swear a vow of silence.
He didn't think Harry would have been fully honest with him if they'd been there. He might have told the truth about Regulus' involvement, but only because it was relevant to the Horcrux Hunt, Barty — no, Tim, he was Tim — was sure of it. There would have been no need to shed light on others' mistakes when they were already so different from the people they could have been.
Unlike Regulus, his other self hadn't redeemed himself by changing his mind. He'd stayed a loyal, near fanatical follower. And he hadn't had the excuse of being raised a blood supremacist.
He could see how it had come about. He was the same person at his core. He didn't care about morality as much as he cared about being seen. Acknowledged. His presence appreciated, his achievements praised. He had first sought it from his father, and this other him must have taken longer to realise it was futile. Lucius Malfoy must have swept in then, as he did so expertly to snare in new graduates for his lord. Lord Voldemort must have appeared like salvation to someone as desperate as Barty Crouch Jr.
But Tim had no need for the recognition of a madman. He had remade himself, let go of his father and found companionship with kindred spirits.
He had Harry, whose every exhale dripped with magic and who had turned back the clock to save their small unworthy world from a tyrant.
His friend had not told them what kind of ritual he used to accomplish the impossible, but considering his proximity with Arcturus Black, Tim could guess from which family it originated.
All the older Blacks must know some measure of the truth, if not the full shape of it, he thought as he faced Cassiopeia Black in her private office, a cluttered space littered with books, magical artefacts and alchemical ingredients.
He could already spot a few tomes he was aching to open in her collection, but now was not the time. When the war is over, perhaps, he mused longingly.
"You're my new research assistant then," she observed, looking him up and down. She raised her wand and cast the time-keeping charm. It was early in the afternoon.
He straightened.
"I am. Tim Crouch, ma'am. It's a pleasure to meet you."
He licked his lips and inwardly grimaced. Much too formal. That was his gala voice, for when he had to stand next to his father and respond to the name Junior.
She looked amused.
"Harry said you're a smart one. Considering I'm trying to attempt the impossible, I'll have need of that. Your friend is concerned with defeating Voldemort. I, on the other hand, am trying to have a go at his followers. Tell me, what do you know about the Dark Mark?"
The exchange of spellfire was brief, but it made it obvious that Harry was the better duellist. Medea didn't seem to be trying; three times she had missed him by now, and Harry suspected she was somehow doing it on purpose.
Aurors apparated and the next second, the Mulciber siblings vanished, though not before Hector was clipped by Harry's last spell.
He was left alone at the scene of the crime, caught red-handed performing underage magic in a muggle street.
He tried to explain he was attacked by Death Eaters, but the Aurors only believed him when the Dark Mark appeared in the sky above his neighborhood. Medea's spell took its time to take effect.
Harry instantly recognised whose house had been targeted. Without a second look at the Aurors, he ran.
Lily had gotten there before him. She was trembling. They watched the wreckage of the Snape family home together with a bleak sense of hopelessness. Above Spinner's End, two corpses floated just under the Dark Mark.
"He must have refused him," murmured Lily. "Oh, Sev… what is he doing to you?"
Her eyes shone and her lip trembled.
Harry looked at her, uncertain, before steeling himself and taking a step forward. He embraced his older sister as gently as he was capable of. Lily shuddered, then curled into herself. Soon, Harry's shoulder was wet.
The two Aurors that interrogated him arrived soon after. They began examining the house. Harry listened to their observations quietly as he rubbed a hand up and down her sister's back.
Tobias Snape had been tortured.
Eileen Snape killed in an instant.
Severus Snape was missing.
Harry did not know what to think.
He had a hunch as to what might have happened between these walls, but he hoped he might be wrong.
Alastor Moody apparated next to them before he could think on it further. He spared them a glance then started barking orders. The investigation wrapped up more efficiently now that the more experienced (and actually competent) Auror was there.
Then came time for the interrogation. Harry and Lily separated, though they sat next to each other with their pinky linked to present a united front.
First, Moody asked where their parents were.
"Out of the country," said Harry flatly. "Where they will remain until the war ends. Our parents are muggles, sir."
The man only nodded. With his leg and eye intact and fewer scars marring his face, he was an entirely different man.
"Who is staying with you during the summer?"
"Our older sister, Petunia. She's studying in London, so we only see her on the weekends. We can handle ourselves."
He made no mention of House Black, though Moody surely knew about their ward status. The Auror had probably already drawn conclusions about Mulciber's presence to his neighbourhood so soon after House Black's declaration of war.
"Very well. Do you want her to be there for the interrogation? We can schedule for you and any other guardian to come at the Ministry."
A junior Auror protested. Surely a muggle shouldn't have to see this, they were fragile creatures. Lily sent him a venomous look. Harry ignored him, still focused on Moody.
"No, I am not bringing my Muggle sister to a warzone."
The two junior Aurors sputtered.
Moody grinned. "Well said, lad. Now then, you said a Death Eater attacked you?"
Harry nodded. "Hector Mulciber."
He explained his encounter with the man and his sister. Moody's dictaquill took notes for him while the Auror held out a hand to examine his wand. Harry handed it over with no hesitation. The spells he used were benign, he had nothing to hide.
"Hector Mulciber has already been unmasked. He's been wanted since," said Moody thoughtfully, "and there is nothing we can do about his sister without catching her in the act, especially since she hasn't hurt you at all," he added with an impressed once over at his wand before returning it. "I'll try to get authorisation for a raid, but that's been done before and we've found nothing. She'll be summoned for questioning at the Ministry regarding your classmate's disappearance since you claim she was in the area, but I don't think anything will come of it."
His frown betrayed his annoyance at the bureaucracy. They weren't quite yet at the stage of the war where due procedure was being waived by the Bagnold government, though Crouch Sr was definitely advocating for it.
"So you won't try to find Sev at all?" demanded Lily, angrily wiping her eyes before crossing her arms.
"We'll do all we can, but You-Know-Who is elusive. None of our units have managed to catch the man when he didn't want to be caught, and few of them survived the encounter when he did want it. Besides, all his agents operate secretly, and some have infiltrated the Ministry. We'll do all we can for Severus Snape, but I don't want to make promises I can't keep."
Lily looked frustrated but did not argue. Judging from the mulish glint in her eyes, she would be looking for him herself.
The Aurors left after a few more questions, taking the bodies of the Snape couple with them. Before they did, Harry leaned towards Moody and murmured that he had a prospective Death Eater recruit willing to spy for them, but they would only accept him as an intermediary.
(He found profound irony in the fact that Evan Rosier, the man who once took Moody's leg and eye would be his spy this time.)
The Auror nodded sharply and told him to pass the information around through the headmaster. Harry inwardly smirked. Dumbledore had told Moody about him then. The information would benefit both the Ministry and the Order.
Harry turned to Lily, who by then had taken to staring despondently at her childhood friend's home.
When he spoke, his voice was quiet. Hesitant. "If Severus refused -"
"If?" she repeated, eyes blazing. "If? Just because you gave up on him does not mean I did, Harry. How dare you assume he joined the man who killed his mother!"
He knew Voldemort, he wanted to say. He knew the man better than he knew himself, and retaliation was not Voldemort's game this time. The man was cruel, but in his cruelty he always sought to make a point. Fear me, bow to me, worship me.
Obey me.
Prove your loyalty to me is stronger than any other bond.
"I don't want it anymore than you do Lily, but you have to realise it's a possibility."
"No," she said forcefully. "I am sick of this. You make friends with blood supremacists to bring them to your cause, force us both to become wards of House Black when you very well knew that was not my wish, but Sev' was never extended that courtesy. You treated him with suspicion from the start and you've never given him the benefit of the doubt, never given him the opportunity to prove he can change. You've practically pushed him into the arms of You-Know-Who and all that got him is the death of his parents, and even now you write him off? What is your problem, Harry?"
Harry opened his mouth, then closed it.
She was right, he realised. Not about what must have happened in the Snape household, but about everything else.
He had brought the younger years in Slytherin to his side, made speeches and gave lessons to prepare them for the war, extended his sphere of influence to counteract that of Voldemort. He was not comfortable doing those things, but he had done them anyway, for the sake of the people he lost before he was reborn.
And yet he had not thought to try harder for Severus.
He was doing to him the same thing Arcturus accused him of doing to Sirius, though it was even more graceless because it was not motivated by love.
He at least interacted with Sirius cordially. He had used Severus' first misstep and turned it into an excuse to let him go.
He had justified it by saying he had given Eugène the right to choose Severus' punishment, and a permanent curse for his permanent disability seemed like a fair trade, but his friend would have undone the curse if Harry had really wanted to, and he hadn't.
He had wanted to push Severus away from himself. Throw him into the arms of Voldemort.
Not because , like Sirius, it hurt to have a different relationship with the man, but because if he failed, he hoped to at least preserve the prophecy.
If Harry Evans could not eliminate Voldemort, this world would need Harry Potter to do so and Severus Snape needed to be a Death Eater for it.
He had known this unconsciously, though he hadn't articulated it to himself.
Like Dumbledore, he was relying on fate should things fall apart.
(As if that worked out well the first time.)
And he couldn't tell Lily, because he loved his sister, but he didn't trust her like that.
Not like he trusted Regulus, Eugène and Tim, who he knew would follow his lead, always.
Maybe one day he would tell her the truth, but he couldn't bring himself to do it now.
Lily seemed to read something in his eyes, though he didn't know what. Her jaw clenched, her shoulders set. She turned, and walked away.
He was left alone, contemplating the wreckage he had brought about.
"It aches, doesn't it?"
Lucius gestured at his own arm, looking down at Severus. He sat slumped against a wall, his eyes fixed on the fresh Dark Mark he was branded with.
"It does. Being asked to kill my own mother to prove my loyalty only aches a little more."
Lucius kept his face impassive, though he dearly wanted to wince.
A part of him was wistful, though. He would have jumped at the chance to kill his father had the Dark Lord asked it of him. Which had nothing to do with Voldemort and everything to do with the kind of man Abraxas Malfoy was. Lucius suspected Severus did not mourn Tobias Snape.
"You must have understood now that the new Heir Prince is you."
The Dark Lord had made it so before he even visited the Snape household, so assured he was of the outcome of that evening.
The poor girl was at her brother's bedside. Hector Mulciber was not long for this world. How ruthless of Harry Evans.
Day after day, he liked their chances less and less. This would have been laughable a few years ago, but the whispers from Hogwarts spoke of a cult of personality the likes of which the school had never seen since the days of Mortimer Gaunt. Not even Voldemort inspired that kind of fervour. Evans has clearly recognised a peculiar disinclination for thinking for themselves in his fellow students and sought to exploit it.
(It made him wonder what the boy's ultimate goal was. He had all the makings of a Dark Lord as it was, the penchant for slaughter was the only thing missing.)
His arm tingled at the reminder of his last punishment for failure. The Dark Lord might be satisfied by the Malfoy coffers, he was less impressed by Lucius' growing failure to bring more Hogwarts students onside.
Harry Evans proved to be an unexpected thorn in his side.
Severus inclined his head.
He had always been a smart boy.
"It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? Severus Prince."
His mentee did not respond. Lucius searched his face and leaned back in satisfaction as he spotted what he was searching for.
There was a very nice glimmer of hatred in Severus's eyes.
Lucius excused himself and left the Lestranges' manor, where the headquarters of their organisation had been established. He came home to his wife and kissed her on the cheek with a satisfied hum.
At least, if Evans won, unlikely as it was considering the decades of experience separating him and the Dark Lord, Regulus would surely intercede in Narcissa's behalf.
But the Light side only had a fourteen-year-old boy and a decrepit old man to aid them. Lord Voldemort's might exceeded theirs greatly. It wasn't even a contest.
There was no need for Lucius to defy his father or the man he shackled him to.
Either way, his family would come out on top. He would make sure of it.
"Explain the wardship thing to me again," Sirius demanded.
His father raised an eyebrow. He smiled sheepishly. and leaned back against his chair. They were in his father's office, and had just finished looking over the latest proposition of law brought to the Wizengamot. It was a particularly heinous piece of legalese proposing to restrict the right of werewolves to have children. His father had already crossed out several sentences and drafted a counter-proposal that was, while still unacceptable to Sirius, at least a little bit better. Orion Black's approach to lawmaking was very Slytherin: he always planned for his favoured outcome, then made counter-measures should he have to cede ground. That way, he never let himself get caught unaware. Politics was a battlefield of its own, he told Sirius, and he never allowed a truce without first getting a few hits in.
Sirius worried he was too brash and inflexible for that kind of work. Sometimes he wondered if Regulus wouldn't be more suited to being heir. But this was not how the die had been cast.
"Please."
"Very well. It used to be fashionable to take muggle-borns under a family's wing to facilitate their integration into magical society in the sixteenth century. At the time, the likelihood of them being rejected by their muggle parents was higher, which made them effectively orphans. If they showed promise, it reflected well on the family and created an in-built alliance later down the line should they marry into another House or found their own. This was Pre-Statute of Secrecy, mind you, success was defined in a very different way then. The practise ended when a muggle-born student killed the heir of the House who had his guardianship. Some say it was jealousy, others that more sinistre things were happening in that house. The truth has been lost to time. All we know is that it resulted in the resurgence of a pronounced anti-muggleborn sentiment. Some Houses have tried to resurrect the practise on and off, but none of them were ever House Black. We are taking a gamble here, though it is not a particularly dangerous one. Harry and Lily Evans are by all reports extremely talented individuals." He paused. "And I do believe Father is angling to have Mr Evans married in."
Sirius wrinkled his nose. "Does Harry know that?"
Orion gave him a look and put down his quill. "Of course he does. That boy is shrewd."
"Who would he marry then? I know Regulus is the obvious option, but there are others, right?"
"Marius Black's daughters, perhaps. He might prefer women, after all. Or you, Sirius."
Part of Sirius instantly wanted to balk at that. He had no desire to date or marry his little brother's best friend, let alone the intense youth leader he had come to know over the past three years.
Harry Evans was scary, Sirius was man enough to admit it.
Come to think of it, he didn't know him that well actually. They barely had any one on one interactions. Harry was friendly enough, but when he was not making heartfelt speeches or teaching, he often retreated behind his friends.
One would think being made the ward of House Black would change that, but he spent most of his time with Sirius' grandfather or with Regulus. That was… strange. Harry was surprisingly closed-off for someone who seemed so open.
"Should we have a family gathering?" he wondered out loud before he could think better of it.
Orion tilted his head.
"What brought this on?"
Sirius shrugged. "If you're trying to matchmake him, better let him know what his options are."
"That's… not a bad idea," Orion mused. "It will allow us to check in on the rest of the family regarding our recent declaration. We wouldn't want a repeat of Cygnus'… outburst."