𝐒𝐀𝐂𝐑𝐈𝐅𝐈𝐂𝐄 || Severus Snape x OC ||

15. THE SALVE & THE KNIFE

*.·:·.☽ ✧ ☾.·:·.*

Snape did not need to ask who Crouch Jr. was referring to when the manic man mentioned a crow in the Ravenclaw tower. He knew of solely one person that could ever fit that description. A girl with hair as black as the raven, haunted by something she battled against even without knowing what it was. As if drawn out of the tattered parchments of ancient times, where the crows and ravens foretell and are linked with death. Be they omens or merely nature's scavenger, death follows them. And Severus knew that death followed the raven-haired girl, even if she had neither a beak nor feathers.

The ghastly metaphor Crouch used was obscured, however, by a detail that Dumbledore had neglected to tell him when burdening him with his task; Severus knew there was something wrong with her blood. This much Dumbledore had told him, even if the extent of the issue was still unknown to him. Her blood was cursed, and Snape's task was to keep that at bay until the time comes. And for the entire school year, Snape was doing exactly that; he kept an eye on her, never letting her out of his sight. Making sure she remained as she was; ignorant, secluded.

But keeping her in his orbit, watching over her, after her, made him see the gaslighted yeanling Dumbledore had tasked him to keep caged until...Until. His mind left the bitter thought unfinished. The quill in his hand had dripped all its ink upon his parchment, forming a pond of black. He exhaled and his fingers left the quill to drop against the parchments.

Did she know? Does she even know whose blood she has?

Nonsense. He pushed the papers further into his desk and rose. Had she known, her eyes wouldn't look at him the way they did when she realized what Karkaroff was telling him. When she realized that Severus was, too, one of them. The very people he had lashed out at her for endangering herself by going to Hogsmeade without him knowing.

Whatever trust he'd built with her, perhaps against his better judgment, was now shattered in pieces.

He hoisted his gaze to the grounds outside. His expression was neither harsh nor pained. Instead, it was blank. Absent.

He turned around; his cloak swished behind him.

He sought to push out of his chest the emotions that were trying to infiltrate in the quiet of his solitude. Unlike Alice, he couldn't afford to let his feelings determine his actions. Or, at least, couldn't afford his feelings to determine his every action.

He brushed his hand against his clothed inner forearm. His dark mark burnt when the Dark Lord had returned. And then... then it dawned on him.

Her wrist. His mind raced and worked like a well-calibrated machine. He rushed back to his desk, pushed aside the inked parchments, and searched for his own notes. His hands dipped into drawers, pulling out pages, and notes, as he searched and searched. Like an echo of the past, he felt stung through his chest. Lily's memory made him clench his jaw as he kept searching, leafing through notes. But the memory persisted, it kept stabbing him like a knife in his chest. How he had begged Albus to keep her safe, to shield her, her son, and James from the Dark Lord. Severus cursed a thousand times the moment his lips had parted and he had told the Dark Lord about the Prophecy.

If only I hadn't told The Dark Lord about the Prophecy, then Lily wouldn't be in any danger at all... He remembered himself begging Dumbledore to help him and Dumbledore had scorned him in that irritatingly soft, calm voice of his. "look at what you have done." he had said, despite his facade of nonchalance, and that only made Severus bawl harder.

"Not... not Lily... please Albus... you can save her, p-please..." Severus had cried, and he doubted if the tears would ever stop flowing. Dumbledore just looked down upon him condescendingly. Eventually, he turned, sternly, watching him like a boy once more, and said seriously,

"What will you give me in return Severus?"

Snape furrowed his brows at the memory and pushed it out of his mind. What good did it ever do to dwell on his past? He was haunted by his own demons, his own regrets of how he'd led the woman he loved the most to her own demise.

His hands grazed against the notes. His dark eyes scanning the page before him. He had kept detailed accounts of Alice's fits, of what he had observed from her ever since the first time she'd collapsed in front of him. They were getting more frequent, more severe the closer the date to Voldemort's return.

He turned the page to the description of her inflamed scar on her wrist, the blackened end of her fingers, and the clawing that seemed to be beyond her control.

He had seen how her own body rebelled against her mind, how the curse within her wanted to come out, how the creature hidden within wanted to be released and to unleash its savagery. In Snape's eyes, Alice was no different than a muggle's ticking time bomb. And the stronger the Dark Lord would get, the harder it would become for her to control what was happening to her; for it wasn't just one thing. That unfortunate creature was battling far more than she could ever comprehend.

Her outer appearance was one of an innocent and a lost person, one that prickled his desire to shield her. But Crouch's words were that Alice, and the Dark Lord, shared the same blood. She is his blood. Not merely a cursed blood, not merely an outcast, an Iphigenia to be sacrificed, nor a wolf to be muzzled and sedated.

It dawned on him that Dumbledore wanted her to be kept in a tranquil, ignorant state, suppressing her nature, her curse, for if she didn't, she'd be a weapon. A weapon for the dark side. A weapon the Death Eaters and the Dark Lord himself would soon ask him to deliver. And as ever, the headmaster's brilliant mind had decided to bring the weapon inside the castle's walls, to bound Severus with the burden of being the one to do the worst and see her dragged to the Dark Lord, ignorant and innocent, unarmed.

Snape didn't need to question what would happen to her; he knew. He'd watched enough people suffering the same fate, enough people begging for the mercy of their killing at the Dark Lord's sadistic hands. And only then, only after he felt sated at the last drop of their agony would he finally kill them.

And he would do the same to Alice, if he were to realise that the weapon he expected to receive and turn to his servant, isn't but a lamb, frightened and lost, for Snape would have kept her like that, as per Albus's orders... By Severus's own potions, salves and ointments.

Severus's brows furrowed further, the muscles of his forehead aching by the pressure. He felt the knife of his duty cut open his chest.

Foolish girl, she thought she was in danger because the Death Eaters targeted mudbloods... She is no mudblood, she never was. Her life remained obscured, unknown to him, and to her, too. But now Snape knew enough. He knew the gravity of her condition, and he felt the weight of the wizarding world crushing upon his own shoulders.

Alice's form appeared in his mind. Her doe-like eyes, those oracle eyes that revealed everything and nothing. He was bound to a task he couldn't back away from, couldn't deny nor steer from.

He pulled out his wand from his sleeve. The notes about the raven-haired girl elevated in the air in front of him. His lips remained sealed when he flicked the black wand and the notes burst into flames. Fire consumed the parchment and ink of each page until nothing was left, and little sparks and ash floated in the air before falling slowly back upon his desk. No evidence.

This much was true, if he were to walk Alice, like an Iphigenia, a yeanling, to her own demise, to the altar of her sacrifice, he wouldn't deliver her unarmed. He wouldn't let his betrayal to her reach that deep. If fate wanted it to be this way, he would become both the salve and the knife for her. Even if that knife would pierce through his own heart, too.

The Headmaster needed not to know. Severus had entrusted him with the fate, and the life of someone he cared for, ever deeply, before.

Never again.