The Alchemist

Author: Lily Evans-Snape (aka northangel27)

Disclaimer: I do not own the Harry Potter Universe or any of the characters therein, so thank-you Ms. Rowling for letting me play with them on occasion.

Chapter 1

The chill darkness of the Halloween night pressed in oppressively on the darkly cloaked figure as it slipped silently through the graves of the old graveyard toward the black ribbon of the road beyond. The night was a clear one, but unseasonably cold. The occasional wisp of a cloud skittered past the full moon that shimmered above the black line of trees to the north, but they were not enough to obscure the silvery light that illumined the man’s way. In the distance the warm glow of a cottage pierced through the night. To all appearances, an idyllic and inviting scene, but something stirred within him, and he hurried his pace, willing the lights to stay lit, willing the warmth and security that they represented to continue to glow, just until he could be sure, just until he knew it wasn’t true.

The cottage loomed before him. The flicker of the fire inside and the golden glow of a lamp in the upstairs bedroom continued to cast their warmth onto the browned grass in the garden, but…. Something wasn’t right. The night was deathly still. None of the night sounds that had followed him through the graveyard or down the road could be heard here. Here, in this deceptively sweet bubble of comfortable domesticity, there was only an impenetrable silence. He felt a desperation followed by cold panic rise up inside of him, but quickly pushed it down. No. He would have to see for himself.

His black boots crunched against the gravel of the walk as he pushed open the gate and made his way toward the front door. In the unnatural silence the sound was deafening, and he was sure that the residents inside could hear his approach. Reaching into the pocket of his cloak out of habit, he wrapped his long fingers around his wand, and then, suddenly, stopped dead in his tracks. The sick dread that he had felt on the road returned, along with the heightened sense of awareness that came from years of having to be on one’s guard.

The door of the cottage stood slightly ajar, blowing slowly back and forth with a quiet creak in the cold wind. The man cursed silently under his breath as he tore the wand from his pocket and willed himself to remain focused. Slowly he nudged the door open with his foot, keeping his wand trained on the dim interior. As his foot stepped across the threshold his ears were suddenly assaulted with the screams of an infant somewhere on the upper floor. He started a little at the sudden sound after so much silence. Obviously the house had been enchanted so that nothing inside could be heard from without.

All of his senses were heightened now. Other than the shrieking at the top of the stairs the only other sound in the still house was the occasional pop of the fire coming from the hearth in the kitchen. He muttered a few spells of protection over himself and to block the house from further entry, and then willing his eyes to take in everything at once, slowly made his way toward the parlor. The house was in a shambles, shattered furniture everywhere, and deep black scorch marks on the walls, especially near the base of the staircase. He never got to his destination. In the middle of the hallway, sprawled out at unnatural angles on the Persian carpet lay the owner of the house – dead most certainly - his hazel eyes staring blankly at the damaged front door, his wand and a pair of shattered spectacles, lying useless on the floor beside him.

The child upstairs began to choke now on the violence of its sobs, and without a care for anything, even the potential dangers his carelessness might invoke, the man stepped over the dead man and mounted the stairs two at a time kicking open the bedroom door. His eyes were instantly drawn to the crib in the corner. The boy stood there, his face purple from screaming, a jagged, angry scar burned across his pale forehead. His tiny arms were outstretched, the pudgy fingers opening and closing, his eyes cast in terror toward the floor, toward the figure that lay there motionless – his mother.

Lily.

In that instant Severus Snapes’ world narrowed. The child’s screams faded into silence, the ever present danger around him, was forgotten. Nothing mattered but the woman on the floor at his feet. She was utterly still, her long red hair swept across her face, her head turned away from him, so that he had no way of knowing whether she was dead or alive.

“Lily!” He did not recognize the choked voice that echoed inside his head, and spun around violently for a moment before realizing that it was his own. Falling to his knees he rolled her toward him, brushing the hair away from her face, needing to see, needing to know. “Lily!” This time his voice was loud and strong, as he lifted her limp form into his lap and pressed his fingers to her neck, willing there to be a pulse.

She was warm. Still warm. That was good.

His fingers fumbled about her neck, tangling in the waves of her thick hair. Desperately he pulled her hair away so that it streamed out over his thighs and onto the floor. “Lily!!” He was yelling now. The sound of the child’s screams returned, clawing at his panicked brain, making it impossible to think.

His eyes flashed fire at the crimson faced miniature of James Potter. “Shut up, you filthy brat!” Perhaps it was the malice in his voice or the desperate hatred in his eyes, but the child seemed to understand the seriousness of the order. He stumbled back and fell with a soft plop onto his diapered bottom, his green tear filled eyes wide and frightened. He grew instantly silent.

“Lily…. Lily, it wasn’t supposed to be you. It was the Longbottoms, damn it. Lily!” He slapped her against her lifeless cheek, willing the life back into her, commanding her to breathe. He shook her hard and slapped her again, but she remained still. His eyes scanned the room. What must be done? The feeling of helplessness that was starting to numb his mind terrified him.

The child, Harry he believed they had called him, sat as still as a statue, his huge green eyes with tear rimmed lashes sizing up, judging the man who held his mother. ‘Her eyes’, Snape realized for the first time.

Perhaps it was something in seeing those eyes staring out at him from that boy child’s face, so full of fear and judgment that completely undid him. “Lily…..” His voice had lost all its strength. “Lily, it wasn’t supposed to be you. I never said you. The prophecy never said….” Her eyes were closed. She could have been sleeping, so peaceful was her face, but he knew better. Slowly, a stony resignation began to settle upon him. He had not realized until tonight that there was any part of his cold heart still left living, any part of him that could feel anything at all, but now he realized there had been, because he could feel it slowly dying.

He should leave. The cottage was not safe. He had no idea who else knew of what had transpired, and his being discovered there would be considered most suspicious. Every second he remained he ran the risk of being discovered, but something weighted down his legs, something prevented him from getting up, leaving her lifeless body lying there on the floor, leaving her alone in this house of death. He clung to her limp body like a drowning man. ‘Let her go. Leave now!’ his brain screamed. But his arms and legs refused to obey.

It was the first time he had had the opportunity to see her up close in years. Her nose was still smudged with a delicate smattering of freckles; her auburn lashes were still impossibly long against her pale cheeks. Her lips were slightly parted, and even in the first moments of death, still stained a delicate rosebud pink. She was so unchanged. After all those years she was still his Lily. He cringed inwardly at his presumption. ‘His Lily’? She had never been that.

He took liberties now, in death, which he would have never dared in life. His long, pale fingers traced the softness of her cheek, wove through the silky strands of her hair. Even now, he noticed, even now she still smelled sweet, like warm gingerbread – cinnamon and sugar.

“You never knew, did you, Lily? You never guessed….” He heard the voice of a boy, a sad, lost boy of 16, a boy he thought he had killed oh so many autumns ago. “What good would it have done either of us. Would it have changed anything?” The question was directed more to himself than anyone, and when he answered it, his voice was cold with bitterness. “I think not.” The dark mark on his arm began to pulse and burn with a familiar excruciating fire, but he ignored it.

“Still…..” His voice softened again. It seemed almost an insult to let his pain, his disillusionment with life rear its ugly head here. “I…I never stopped…I always loved you Lily…” The sight of her lying there, lifeless in his lap, so much impossible distance between them, suddenly overwhelmed him. Reaching down he gathered her into his arms, pulling her head to his shoulder, burying his face in her sweet smelling hair. “Always.” He heard his voice catch, became aware of the growing dampness of her hair against his wet cheeks, but still his mind could not accept the reality of it, the finality. “I…I love you still…”

The boy began to whimper a little and another excruciating jolt surged across his forearm. If he did not answer the summons soon…. But he could not leave her. His mind raced with excuses he might use when he was finally forced to face Riddle’s displeasure. He refused to inwardly acknowledge the man by his self-adopted monikers – “Voldomort”, “The Dark Lord”, “Master”. He, Severus Snape, was slave to no man, certainly not that petulant and self absorbed boy Riddle. And damn it, tonight that man-child and would-be-dictator could wait.

There was an unexpected movement, and then, to his amazement, with a convulsive gasp the woman in his arms suddenly arched against him in a great spasm of pain and began to shudder violently. Horror and relief collided as they flooded over him. Her eyes snapped open, clouded with a mad terror, and her mouth kept working in a desperate attempt to take in air. “Breathe!” he shouted.

For a moment he knew that she wasn’t even aware of where she was, but in another her eyes fixed on him and she began to push against him in a rabid attempt to get away. He held her fast.

“Lily. For Merlin’s sake, lie still. You must try to control your breathing.” Still she struggled against him. “Damn it Lily, do it now!” His voice was much harsher than he had intended, but he was still reeling from this new development, and though he did not immediately recognize it, he was hurt too, by her innate fear of him. “Lily… Lily, stop.” He grabbed both of her flailing hands and pinned them either side of her head. She stopped struggling then, and a shudder passed through her as her eyes began to roll back in her head. “Lily!” He slapped her and her eyes snapped back into focus, a look of shock and horror passing over them. “You can’t, Lily. Stay with me. Just breathe.”

She was shaking all over and he knew that she was in shock, that he would have to get her some sort of medical care, and quickly, or he would lose her again. Her mouth had opened and he realized she was trying to say something. He tried to read her eyes. Suddenly he thought of the boy. Rising quickly to his feet he snatched the child from the crib and shoved it before her.

“He is quite safe, you see. Just breathe, and let me think.” His mind was racing. Why couldn’t he focus?! If it had been the ‘avada kedavra’ spell, she and the boy would both, most assuredly be dead. But what else could it have been? He knew why those unknown harbingers of death had visited the Potter home this night. He knew their intentions. How could they have made such a blunder? How could “He” have made such a blunder – Yes. The truth slammed into him like a train wreck. Snape knew Riddle well enough to know that he would not have left something this important to one of his underlings. This he would have done himself. But then why….why were they still alive?

The boy had crawled across the carpet the short distance to his mother and was beginning to cry again. Snape channeled all his attention back to the situation at hand. Lily was weakly attempting to reach for the child. “I told you to lie still!” he snapped, but it was as though she had not heard him.

Her delicate fingers reached immediately for the jagged scar on the boy’s head. “Harry….” Her voice was nothing more than a choked whisper and her face seemed paler now than when he had first arrived. She was slipping. If he wished to apperate her from this location he would have to lower the protections he had put on the house and counter those that had been put on it before he arrived. Riddle would know immediately, and she was hardly strong enough to withstand the strain. It was not an option. And then it hit him. Bathilda Bagshot. Her cottage was just down the lane. If he could somehow get Lily and the boy from their cottage to hers unseen, they could use the flew network from there. But how? He hadn’t tried to cast an invisibility spell in years and in Lily’s condition it would be too dangerous.

An old memory began to form in the back of his mind. “The Marauders”. James and those useless friends of his had always managed to sneak about Hogwarts unseen. There had been rumors of an invisibility cloak. Could he possibly still have it?

“Lily.” He knelt down beside her. The boy had finally reached his desired destination and lay snuggled against her side on the carpet, while her fingers weakly ruffled his dark hair. “Lily, listen to me. It’s important.” She seemed oblivious to his voice, and he began to worry for her mental stability. “Lily, when we were in school James had an invisibility cloak. Do you remember? Does he have it still? Where is it Lily? Lily?!”

Her eyes slowly rose to his and he saw tears begin to form. It was then that he realized his blunder. If James had been alive he could have asked him himself, but now he had thoughtlessly revealed what, up to now she had been too weak and terrified to ask. James Potter was dead.

She drew a ragged breath, and opened her mouth as a shudder passed over her slight frame. “No… Albus took it….”

“Fuck.” Severus got to his feet, he eyes raking over the room, trying desperately to land upon anything that might be of assistance. He strode to the window and looked out at the darkening landscape. The clouds were growing thicker with the gathering of a late autumn storm, blotting out the moon. It would be risky, but it was a risk they would have to take. They would go quickly, following the darkness of the tree line, and hope for the best.

Lily was sobbing quietly, when he turned, but he saw what appeared to be a pleading trust in her eyes. “We will go quickly. You carry the boy. I will carry you. The boy must remain absolutely quiet. Do you understand?” She nodded.

He exited through the back kitchen door, and hugged the velvety blackness at the edge of the woods. Bathilda seemed unsurprised to see him, but her brow furrowed at the site of Lily and the child. By now Lily’s grip on consciousness had begun to slip again, and he continually had to shake her to bring her back.

The old woman smoothed a wrinkled hand over her pale cheek. “She has very little time. She is in great danger.”

“That is why we are leaving now. That is why no one must ever know we were here. That is why, as far as you are aware, she and this boy are both still lying dead in that cottage up the lane. Do you understand?”

The old woman nodded and then there was a swirling rush of images, and the sickening jolt as his feet came into contact with the stones of the hearth in Albus Dumbledore’s office safe within the confines of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

All he registered was the shock in the icy blue eyes that stared at him from across the great mahogany desk as he dropped to his knees, the limp body of Lily Potter still clutched tightly in his arms. “You…you promised. You were supposed to help her… Just help her.”