Chapter 13
London. Charing Cross Road.
A three-story purple bus erupted into existence on a reasonably busy street with a violent gust of displaced air, missed a lamppost by a margin that should not have been survivable, and somehow stopped.
"Here we are, young man!" the driver announced with great cheer, swinging the door open for a very pale Severus. "Don't worry, it passes quickly the first time!"
"Right. Thank you." Severus stepped down, swallowing carefully as his stomach continued to make its opinion known, and swore on the spot never to use that particular instrument of suffering again. Not until this body was in considerably better shape. Possibly not ever.
He drew a long breath of London air, which was not clean, but was at least stationary, and heard only the old man's wheezing laughter behind him. The bus lurched forward, bore down on the building at the end of the street with absolute conviction, hit it at an angle that made Severus's back teeth ache in sympathy, then somehow twisted, skidded, and disappeared around the corner as though the road had simply made room.
Whoever authorized that vehicle is completely unhinged.
"Don't get any ideas about mixing that with Muggle technology," said a contemptuous voice beside him.
Severus had noticed the young man a moment ago and filed him away, keeping him at the edge of his awareness without giving anything away.
"Who are you?" he turned toward him, studying the face with a slight frown.
"I'm already in my fifth year at Hogwarts, same house as you," the boy said, chin up, the displeasure on his face entirely unconcealed. He wore plain robes, but something in the way he held himself made them look like a uniform: spine straight, chin lifted, the particular stiffness of someone raised being told since birth that slouching was a moral failing. "I'm a Black. Regulus Black."
"Sirius Black's little brother," Severus said, and a half-second later it clicked why the resemblance had nagged at him.
"Don't call him my brother! He's a traitor!"
"Ah. So that's how it stands." Severus looked at him with something that might charitably have been described as a smile. "I have a feeling we're going to get along." He clapped a hand on the startled Slytherin's shoulder and steered him toward the bar with a cheerful firmness that left very little room for argument. "Come on, then. Tell me everything."
"Tell you what, exactly?!" Regulus managed, eyes wide.
"Every single one of Sirius's faults, obviously!" The words were out before Regulus could stop them, and the smile that followed was bright enough to be alarming. He looked immediately as though he regretted both.
The Leaky Cauldron was small, dim, and largely unremarkable. It had the specific atmosphere of a place where people came to eat something cheap, ask no questions, and be asked none in return: hunched figures in worn cloaks, men with the kind of beards that happened rather than were chosen, witches with stained sleeves and lowered eyes, faces half turned away as though everyone inside had either something to fear or something to hide.
It really is exactly like walking into one of the taverns back home. It was dark and battered, the floor sticky with old ale, a faint smell of alcohol, and everyone quietly minding their own business. If a brawl broke out, he'd probably feel right at home, Severus thought with dry amusement.
He steered Regulus through the room, but the moment they were through the next door, Regulus pulled free.
"Sorry," Severus said, entirely without remorse. "I needed to get through there without drawing attention, and you were convenient."
He crossed to the brick wall from memory, tapped the right sequence, and the bricks shifted and separated, opening into an archway. It was practical, just secretive enough to appeal to the wizarding instinct for theater.
"Why are you on your own?" he asked, not looking back. "I'd have thought the old families would have guards everywhere in times like these, not their heirs wandering around by themselves."
"That's none of your business!"
"Did you run away? And you still haven't told me a single thing about your brother. Where are you going?"
"Leave me alone!"
Regulus wrenched free of Severus's orbit, turned the corner, and disappeared into a small crowd gathered outside a shop window.
The best way to get rid of someone who won't leave you alone is to first become more annoying than they are. Severus smiled faintly, recalling the old advice, and turned the other way. But it was quiet out here.
It was unnervingly quiet, compared to what he'd expected. The bright signs and bustling crowds he'd inherited from Severus's memories of Diagon Alley were simply gone. Most of the shutters were down. The few windows still lit sat in the grey street like embers: isolated, watchful. At most a couple of dozen shops were still open, and the people moving between them were few, mostly in pairs or threes, wrapped in dark robes with their hoods drawn. Even the conversations he caught sounded muffled, as though the alley itself was listening and knew it.
War. And of course it had to start now, when I've just arrived and have nothing to show for it yet. Couldn't they have given it another five years?
A few minutes later he reached a small pastry shop. A silver-haired man was already there, waiting outside, a long black coat to his knees, white shirt beneath it, dark trousers, shoes polished to a mirror finish.
Lucius Malfoy looked exactly like what he was: a man who had never once doubted his own right to take up space. He was arrogant, controlled, the sort who could smile at you warmly while filing away every weakness you'd shown, and who could walk all over anyone if it served a purpose and sleep perfectly well afterwards. He was also one of the few people Severus had genuinely considered a friend. He'd respected Lucius, even used him as something of a model: it had been Lucius who'd first drawn him toward the Dark Arts and introduced him to the circles that actually mattered in Slytherin. For a half-blood in that house, allies weren't a luxury. Lucius had been one, for his own reasons, and that had counted.
"Hope I'm not late," Severus said, taking the seat across from him with an easy smile. "I didn't know you had a sweet tooth, Lucius."
"They told me you'd changed." Lucius's eyes narrowed fractionally, his fingers tightening on his cane. "But I have the strong impression that I'm sitting across from an entirely different person."
"You've always been sharp." Severus took out a needle and turned it into his wand. "I swear by my magic that I am Severus Snape and no one else."
Light flared above the wand tip. Something in Lucius's shoulder eased slightly.
"I see. Have you given any more thought to my proposal?"
"Joining you?"
"Yes."
"No. It's too dangerous."
That drew a genuine frown.
"We've talked about this at length, and you were close to yes. Surely..."
Severus shook his head. A small flick of the wand, and a transparent dome settled over their table, cutting off every sound from outside.
"No. And I'm not joining Dumbledore either," he said, keeping his voice quiet. "I have no interest in dying because someone decides a half-blood makes a useful example. You know what he does to people who aren't pure. Don't tell me it hasn't happened."
Lucius didn't answer, but his eyes confirmed it.
"I value my life," Severus went on. "But I also don't want to lose our friendship. So I'm willing to do you a favor."
"A favor."
"Yes. I can relieve you of a problem on your left arm."
"You." Lucius half rose, shock crossing his face before he caught himself and sat back down, gripping the cane hard. "You can remove it? You can actually remove this?"
"Yes. I've studied it, and I know how." Severus kept his voice level. "I won't erase the mark itself, but I can strip out the parts that actually hurt you: the compulsion to obey, the pain. How does that sound?"
"What do you want in return?" Lucius asked immediately.
"Nothing unreasonable. Teach me Legilimency and Occlumency. That shouldn't be difficult for you. And track down someone willing to sell me a dragon's heart and blood, and a phoenix's heart and blood. Can you manage that?"
"What do you need those for?" Lucius asked, clearly thrown.
"A potion. Does it matter?"
"Hmm." He paused. "First I want proof you can do what you're claiming."
Fine. Give me your hand.
Lucius glanced at the room: the table behind them, the cluster of wizards, the young witch in a pink waitress uniform, moving between tables. "Here?"
"It takes seconds," Severus said, brushing the concern aside.
The tables were small enough that catching Lucius's hand was easy. He pointed his wand at the mark and sent an invisible pulse of magic into it.
Removing a binding seal wasn't difficult for him. He'd spent the last five years of his previous life within the darkest organization in his world, the Magistrate, gathering intelligence and preparing for something he'd waited a long time to do.
In that environment, he'd studied genuine Dark Magic, not the pale approximations this world had settled on, and the mechanics of binding seals were well within his capabilities. He could summon demons. He knew necromancy. He carried curses that no one in this world would be able to undo. He rarely used any of it in practice, except for the curses, but it was all there, lodged deep, as reliable as memory. The Dark Mark was different from what he'd encountered before, but the underlying structure was the same, and he could work inside it without the one who'd placed it noticing a thing.
What are you..." Lucius yanked his hand back, already drawing breath to say something cutting, and then stopped. He went very still.
"I've removed the compulsion and the pain," Severus said calmly. "The mark itself remains, and your master can still reach you through it. When he tries to cause pain, you'll feel warmth instead. The stronger the warmth, the more convincingly you'll need to perform." Severus tilted his head. "Why are you looking at me like that?"
"How," Lucius said carefully, "do you know this?"
"Let's say I came across a description of a binding seal in an encrypted text from the restricted archive: written by Salazar himself, as it happens. I tested the principles on a Death Eater first." Severus kept his tone light. "You know how I am with books."
Lucius believed him, though not entirely. But who knew better than Severus which bloodline his master claimed? His own father had been practically at the Dark Lord's right hand, and the Malfoys had the kind of money and connections that turned questions into answers. Tracking down what one specific wizard had managed to find would not be hard.
He won't tell Father. He'll use this himself.
Lucius served Voldemort, but loyalty had never been the point. He was always watching for when the scales would shift, always keeping his options open: ties to the Black family, favors with the Sacred Twenty-Eight, quiet debts with foreign wizards who might matter later. The Malfoys treated influence the way other families treated investments. Lucius attended meetings, smoothed over disputes, arranged deliveries of potions and Dark artifacts, and made absolutely certain nothing ever traced back to his name. What he was waiting for was control of the family, fully and finally, so that he could decide for himself which side deserved his backing and which side deserved to burn.
"Fine," Lucius said. "I'll look into those ingredients, but I can't promise speed. You understand the situation. I'll send the books with a house-elf."
"I'll be waiting."
"One additional condition. You remove the same components from the marks of a few others."
"No difficulty there." Severus smiled. "Then I have one condition of my own: the ingredients come at no cost to me."
Lucius's expression didn't change.
"For a family like yours, even a hundred sets wouldn't make a dent," Severus added.
"Naturally. That isn't a problem."
"And give me a general picture of how things stand between the two sides. Nothing sensitive, just enough that I know when to keep my head down."
They talked for a while longer, then both stood.
"One more thing," Severus said.
"Hm?"
Severus's eyes narrowed slightly.
"There's no point trying to take what I know by force. The source is destroyed, and I've made a vow of silence. Break it and I die. So let's keep using each other quietly and in good faith."
Lucius's face didn't change, but Severus caught the brief shift in his eyes.
"Don't talk nonsense. We're friends."
"Glad to hear it," Severus said, with a small, entirely genuine smile. "Let's stay that way."
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