Chapter Thirty-Three

"Let not the Light dazzle thee with its purity, let it show thee thy way instead, for the Darkness can only blind, and in the Dark, so shall ye stumble and fall. And when ye seek Eternal Life, know ye that it can only be done through the Light, for the Dark is naught but absence of the Light, and serves only to hide thine enemies and confuse thy friends. Heed ye that for the Ultimate Truth it is."

I laid the book aside and rubbed my eyes: "Die Letztendliche Wahrheit?", "The Ultimate Truth?". I wondered, not for the first time why there was a question mark in the book's title. I picked it up yet again, drawn once more to the pages I had read and reread so many times by then that I almost knew them off by heart. I wondered if my translation were wrong, or even if I had read it too many times in that way that makes us read what we think we see and skim past the rest, assuming we already know what is written. I closed it again in frustration and laid it face down on my desk.

'Why don't you give it a rest for today, Severus? Go and get changed for dinner,' Lucius said from the doorway. 'Look at it again tomorrow... under a different light.'

I looked up, almost startled by his presence; I had an uncomfortable feeling that he had been standing there for longer than just a few moments, and that I had been so deeply in thought that I had not even noticed him. I sighed and doused the candles, leaving the room lit by just the flickering glow of the wall sconce and the dying embers of the fire. I was about to stand when I noticed the book was once again open at the pages I had been studying.

Lucius had noticed too; he straightened up, keeping his eyes on the book, except for just a brief glance at me as I took my wand and relit the candles... and the book closed, and turned itself over to lie in the same way as it had done.

'Under a different light,' I repeated Lucius's words in a whisper, dousing the candles yet again. 'Lucius, get Black and Ethel,' I said, but he had already turned to go for them. 'I think, Merlin help us all, that you might have shown me the way. Who would have guessed that you would ever prove yourself to be...?' I trailed off; he had already gone, and there was no real point in talking to myself.

By the time Lucius arrived back with Black and Ethel, and the unwelcome addition of James Potter, the initial excitement had already turned to disappointment; the text was just the same as I had been reading beforehand.

It seemed that Potter had arrived just a couple of minutes earlier, and I was about to snap the book shut again in frustration at what I thought was another intrusion into my thoughts, and another blind alley, when Ethel slipped into my mind. "Perhaps it is fitting, dear, that he has arrived at this particular time," she said reprovingly.

I gave her an unforgiving look and turned to Potter, but he wasn't looking at me, he was staring at Ethel.

'You look remarkably like a picture of one of my father's old aunts,' he said. 'It was funny,' he went on. 'He has a black and white picture of her, and I always seemed to know what colours everything in the picture was.'

I only realised my mouth was hanging open when I felt it snap shut. I had never noticed that before, never noticed that I had known Ethel's eyes were blue in the faded old picture I had brought from the solicitor's office, never noticed that I couldn't know the colours of her clothes, or that the roses were yellow. I understood something else too, with a pang of what I refused to recognise as jealousy, something Dumbledore had hinted at; Ethel wasn't only my aunt, she was Sirius's too, and Dumbledore's, and even James Potter's. I wondered what part of the murky depths of Grimmauld Place her picture had been consigned to, just as I knew with blinding certainty that it would be there somewhere.

"They are all of the line, Severus." Ethel had slipped into my mind again. "All except Lucius," she said, and even her thought held a quiet regret; it was one that frightened me, and made me fear for him in a way I didn't understand.

"I can't sacrifice him," I said, as some kind of awareness welled up inside me.

"He is equal to his task, Severus," she said, her words pouring into me, as though they were trying to gloss over facts I was not yet ready to deal with. "Already he has joined his line with mine with his marriage. Remember this too, dear," she said. "Not all the choices are yours to make, some have already been made for you."

I wished we were alone, that Black and Lucius and Potter weren't standing there, frozen in the way she could make time stand still for her own ends. "I shall not sacrifice lives," I repeated. "You can't make me."

"You may not have to, Severus," she argued, and I noticed that she had become firm, as though trying to turn me aside to what she wanted me to do. "Now, let us move on; you alone can show the way." And with that she was gone from my mind, wrenching my doubts from me in her wake, to leave an odd feeling of calm acceptance.

I found I was back to Potter's remarks about Ethel's picture, and decided to appear to know as much as I would have liked to. 'Oh, she's everyone's aunt, Potter,' I said offhandedly. 'What are you doing here anyway?'

'I didn't come to see you anyway,' he snapped back, for some reason making me feel foolish.

'Did you call us through for a spat, Severus, or was there a reason?' Black asked as he made himself comfortable and poured three rather large shots of my whisky, which he handed round to Potter and Lucius, keeping kept the third for himself. I noticed he hadn't even asked me if I wanted my glass topped up, giving me a challenging look instead.

I felt Ethel nudge at my mind, as though to tell me to get a move on. "Speak openly, Severus, or we shall be here forever."

Potter had sat beside Sirius, nursing his whisky; he seemed content to observe, and equally content that he would be permitted to do so. I knew I would only look childish if I asked him to leave, and I was mindful of the veiled orders I had been given in the catacombs. I told them about how the book had reopened itself in front of Lucius and me when I had doused the candles, and how it had closed itself again when I relit them, and finished with the scald of disappointment that the text seemed the same as it had been, in whatever light it was viewed, and it was just when I had finished, that something occurred to me.

'Of course,' I murmured, half to myself, as the rest leant forward from my settees, all except Ethel, who sat at my side in a slightly higher version of her own odd little chair, 'legend has it that this text was written by wizards.'

'So?' Lucius asked. 'You're not trying to read it by Muggle light.'

'No,' I concurred, 'but I wasn't trying to read it by wand light either, was I?'

The other three men had stood up, as sure as I had become that wand light was the very key it proved itself to be. Where there had been but the single paragraph about the Light and the Darkness and Eternal Life, and the Ultimate Truth, there now unfolded a lengthy text written in what I suspected was not Coptic, but the earlier Demotic script. That said, it looked like a long list of instructions, and I felt my pulse rate increase in the belief that I may indeed have found the recipe for Aqua Vitae, which just went to prove how wrong one person can be.

'Can you translate that?' Potter asked.

'Yes, but it will take some time,' I murmured, explaining that the Demotic script was more obscure than the Coptic, at the same time quite forgetting just whom I was addressing.

'Don't you know what any of it says?' Lucius asked.

'No,' I replied. 'But if you do, please share it with the rest of us.'

'We can be sure of one thing anyway,' Potter remarked. 'Tom Riddle doesn't have a copy of that,' he said, nodding to the book which had closed itself when I relit the candles.

'How long will it take you, Severus?' Black asked.

'That rather depends on how many more stupid questions I have to answer whilst I am doing it,' I replied.

'Be nice, Severus,' Ethel chimed in. 'Now, dear, you're not going to be able to translate it tonight, so why don't we join the ladies and have dinner. I'm quite sure they have had long enough to compare notes, and if we wait much longer none of you will have any secrets left worth knowing.'

*****

It was only when I opened the drawing room door and saw the startling redhead between the blonde heads of Narcissa and Lucretia that I realised I still didn't know why Potter had called.

'Well, well, Severus, you have been busy,' Lily said, as she stood from where she sat in the middle armchair of three at the fireside. 'It seems to be silly season,' she said. 'Are you not going to congratulate me too?'

Lucretia turned to me too, and I noticed with something like alarmed guilt that my wife of only a few weeks, whilst being certainly the most beautiful of the women, had slipped rather easily down to third slot in my affections. 'On what?' I asked Lily, pushing the uneasy feelings away.

'On my own forthcoming marriage to James, of course.'

I stifled the obvious retort, and made some attempt at felicitations, wondering a little unkindly if she were pregnant once more, and if that was why the wedding was to be two weeks thence. I conveniently forgot that both Lucius and I had married in what might have been considered as undue haste. It did seem though, as Lucius hadn't lost interest in Narcissa yet, that I was to be the only one at that point in time to repent at my leisure, whatever that might have been.

It seemed that Lily and James were, rather surprisingly to my mind, to have a traditional Muggle marriage ceremony, in a church, and that they had called to ask Sirius if he would be their best man. It was a concept I couldn't quite grasp, as one would assume that the groom would be the best man or he wouldn't be the groom, but I didn't bother to ask what it meant. I found that very fact of a Muggle wedding made me revaluate my thoughts on James Potter's opinion of all things Muggle though, and grudgingly conceded to myself that I might have misjudged him in that respect, and then shifted the blame for my misconceptions on to Sirius Black's more deserving shoulders.

*****

James and Lily ended up staying for dinner, and I spent most of the meal watching and listening, trying mainly to read the two people about whom I had so many reservations: Potter, of course, and Narcissa. She troubled me, and I knew that I had not paid her enough attention, probably because she was right under my nose at the manor. I could find little about her to really cause me concern though, and, if anything, she just seemed like a young girl who had had too close a shave with Darkness, and had found she had had to lie her way to what she so desperately sought. I even pretended to myself that Andromeda's good opinion of her hadn't swayed me in any way.

Potter was somewhat guarded at first, but the fruits of Lucius's cellar loosened his tongue more thoroughly than it had his father's, and it was not long until I was able to see him for what he was: the quintessential Gryffindor, complete with a flaming sword, shining armour, and ruddy white charger, dreaming of deeds victorious and battles glorious, Merlin help us all.

'When do you start at the Ministry?' he asked Lucius as he attacked his pudding, and it was only then that I really noticed how quiet Lucius had been on the matter, one which, under normal circumstances, he would have bored everyone to death with by then. I suppose that was a measure of his own misgivings about the post.

'I'm not sure,' he replied. 'There will be some sort of formal investiture.'

'I'm thinking of applying for a post myself,' Potter said, laying his spoon down. 'My father's post, in fact. Would I apply to you to have Barty Crouch removed?' he asked.

It was Sirius who replied, before Lucius got the chance to frame whatever answer he was making up. 'It wouldn't be a bad idea, Lucius,' he said. 'The more safe men we have there the better.'

'There are some rather ugly rumours flying about too, and I'd like the chance to see what they're all about. I have a bad feeling about them, and the people involved,' James added, and I didn't miss the quick glance he gave to where Narcissa was watching him. 'My dad says that there were some very secret plans about some sort of operation involving not only those of mixed blood, but anyone not of Riddle's bent.'

'What kind of rumours?' I asked, not much liking the sound of that at all.

'It was all very secret,' Potter repeated. 'But Arthur Weasley told Dad that he caught sight of a document he wasn't supposed to see. It referred to something called the "Midlands Cull".'

'Cull?' I echoed. 'As in removing a section of people for the supposed good of the remainder?'

'Yeah,' Potter agreed, and I could see that, like his father, he wasn't really drunk at all. 'The supposed good.'

'What did the document say?'

'Arthur wasn't able to see,' Potter replied. 'Someone came in and moved it before he got the chance.'

'Who?' I asked.

'I'm not sure,' Potter lied, in a way that led me to believe he meant Cygnus Black, but hadn't wanted to say so in front of Narcissa. 'But Arthur playing the bumbling fool he has always played is a very handy man to have around. He's one of those men no one really notices.'

'I wouldn't be so sure of that, James,' Narcissa put in, surprising me as much as she seemed to surprise Potter. 'My father notices everything.'

'Don't worry about being frank in front of Narcissa, James dear,' Ethel said. 'She has proven herself more than a match for her father.'

Potter had the grace to give Narcissa an apologetic smile. 'Yes, quite,' he said, and then turned to Lucius. 'Watch out for your father-in-law, Malfoy. He has sworn to bring you down.'

'Has he indeed?' Lucius replied, swirling his brandy in his glass before tossing it over his throat, and I thought he looked less than comfortable about Cygnus Black's enmity.

'And just how do you know all this, Potter?' I asked. 'How do you know so much about Cygnus Black?'

'I was here that night, Snape. Don't you remember?' he replied, as though speaking to an idiot who had forgotten he had impersonated Sirius. 'And don't forget, Barty Crouch thinks he is my friend, and he is a self-important little loudmouth, and as such, a mine of useful information.'

I stifled the urge to hate Potter with even more ferocity than I had always hated him, and his sanctimonious attitude, and his "Fuck you lot, I'm all right, Jack" insolence, and for having Lily Evans when I had her first, and all the other things I was about to add to the list, before Ethel rapped smartly on my mind in a wordless reprimand that left me feeling rather silly.

I turned my mind to what Potter had said for a moment, mulling over new possibilities in my mind. I had been concerned about Lucius being thrust into a position of power, mainly for the fact that Ministry doctrines would, of course, be laid eventually at the Minister's door, and that Tom Riddle would always seek to distance himself from the less than tasteful. Potter's assertion about some mysterious plan in the Midlands only served to strengthen the uneasy feeling I had that Lucius would eventually become not only Riddle's puppet, but his scapegoat too, and I could see too that Cygnus Black and his cronies would help that along wherever they could. Perhaps it would be no bad thing to have another powerful secret ally. I could see one huge stumbling block to Riddle's acceptance of Potter into his fold though.

'Tell me, Potter,' I said, 'just how you intend to inveigle your way into Riddle's favour? You must know that it is he who staffs the Ministry now, or thinks he does.'

'Why don't you spit it out, Snape?' he replied, glancing to Lily. 'You mean, how do I pass myself off as sympathetic to his more ridiculous ideals, when I take a Muggle woman as a wife?'

There was no point in beating around the proverbial bush. 'I mean, how do you pass yourself off as sympathetic to his more ridiculous ideals, when you take a Muggle woman as a wife?' I concurred.

He sat back in his seat, cocky and assured as he always. 'I have already made some inroads actually,' he said, 'using the very Barty Crouch I expect to oust from his position... and it seems that Riddle will be pleased to meet me, the fact that I am marrying Lily notwithstanding. In fact,' he said, his own self-importance brimming over, 'if what Barty says is anything to go by, Riddle says that he feels that I could be just the man he is looking for for his long term plans.'

My vision actually starred as I felt the implication of what Potter had said slam home. "I have to speak to him alone," I said to Ethel's mind. "He will have to know about Aqua Vitae."

"She is not with child, Severus." Ethel sent her thought back. "You must speak to him soon, but it need not be tonight."

They didn't stay much longer, and it was only when we were standing in the entrance hall of the manor as they took their leave, the ladies in a glittering cluster of shared confidences, Black and Lucius standing talking to Ethel as I stood at the bottom of the grand staircase, that my chance arrived.

'Watch out for the greater enemy, Snape,' Potter said as he appeared at my side, and I could see that he wanted to speak to me alone too. 'Riddle's measure is one thing, he is but one though.'

'What do you mean?' I asked. 'Riddle is the enemy, and to lose sight of that would be madness.'

'Perhaps,' he agreed. 'But I'm sure you have noticed that it was when Riddle was not present that you had a noose tied rather tightly around your neck.'

He was right, although I would never admit that, but it did remind me of a night when I had come to Malfoy Manor and had felt the hostility of everyone there, with the exception of Tom Riddle.

'That just demonstrates how clever Riddle is,' I replied, perhaps only understanding that for the first time.

'That doesn't make the Blacks and their close circle any less dangerous,' he countered, looking across to where Lucius had begun to cross to us, 'particularly to Malfoy.'

I knew it was time, perhaps not to back down, but to move sideways to allow another to stand beside us, and it didn't sting as much as I had expected it would that that other was my nemesis from my boyhood. I understood something else too, that no one of us was what we seemed to be, and I hoped that as we had managed to fool one another for so long, that we might just have a whisper of a chance of fooling Tom Riddle too.

*****