Severus did not sleep. He did not sleep that night, nor the next, nor the night after that. He would take the Sleeping Potions from the cupboard, place them on the bedside table, lie down on the bed and stare at them for hours.
I'm about to take it, he would say to himself at more or less regular intervals, but something always stopped him.
"It doesn't suit you."
"And yours does?"
Three words. Three simple, stupid words that kept him awake for days. Three words that forced him to lie still for hours on a suddenly uncomfortable mattress, silently summoning the silver doe and waiting for it to pirouette across the room before disappearing.
"And yours does?"
How dare she insinuate such a thing? Sure, he had been the first to make the insinuation, but this was different. It was completely different.
"And yours does?"
And there was another doe. It emerged from the tip of his wand, pranced across the room and stopped in front of him. Majestic. Beautiful, almost as much as the memory it evoked.
Severus smiled. It was the only time he allowed himself to do so. Sometimes it seemed to him that she returned his smile before disappearing in a trail of silver.
"And yours does?"
Soon thoughts became memories and memories became pain. He could almost hear her laugh, almost see her long dark red hair swaying behind her back, almost see her bright green eyes scrutinising him in the dark.
On the fifth day it was too much. His sleep-deprived brain could no longer take it, and the memory of that night returned uncontrollably. The worst day of his life.
"And yours does?"
What did she know? What did she know about what she had caused with those three bloody words? What did she know about the pain he felt? Oh, but she was an expert on pain, wasn't she? She was strong. She was resilient.
Given the choice, Severus would have chosen a Cruciatus Curse from his own father over such agony. Perhaps his father would even have enjoyed it, he thought.
The painful memory of his father's rage at his mother added to Lily's, and it seemed impossible that less than a week before he had thought about not wanting to die. What was he alive for? It was all that bloody woman's fault.
He stormed out of the room and made his way to his armchair. She was sound asleep; apparently she had decided to take her potion again that night. For a moment he thought of waking her up and shoving her out with a cuss, but all he managed to do was sitting down in the armchair opposite her. With a lazy flick of his wand, he filled a glass with a brownish liquid and brought it to his lips.
He drank. He drank until his brain was as numb as the rest of his exhausted body. He drank until his trembling hands dropped the glass, and it shuttered on the floor.
Omegas jolted awake. He heard her mutter a curse under her breath, but he did not look at her. He flicked his wand again; the glass returned to his hand, whole and once again full.
"What the hell— what are you doing?" she snapped.
He did not answer. With his sobriety, all the anger he had felt for her over the past few days had vanished. He had not felt it for her, he realised. He had felt it for himself.
He sensed her eyes searching him in the darkness, then heard her sigh.
"Rough night?" she asked softly.
He, staring elsewhere, nodded.
"I… understand," she murmured.
Severus flicked his wand and a second glass, identical to his, flew into Omegas' hands. She said nothing, but he heard her swallow the contents in one go. It refilled itself.
They remained in the same position for at least an hour, the silence broken only by the sipping and the occasional sound of a glass being refilled.
Then something moved Severus to speak. He was not sure what it was; later he would tell himself it must have been the alcohol.
"I always thought my father was an idiot."
He spoke of his father because talking about the other thing that tormented him was out of the question.
She was quiet, but Severus could feel her eyes moving back to him.
"I know for a fact that he was an idiot," he went on. "But I always thought…"
He hesitated, as if trying to organise his thoughts.
"I thought I was the unluckiest child in the world to have him as a father. I hated him so much…"
"Was he violent?" she asked quietly.
There was no hint of pity or concern in her tone. Just a detached curiosity.
"Verbally, mostly," he rasped. "He hated my mother for being a witch. As if he hadn't chosen to marry her himself."
He took a sip and swallowed the liquid with a bitter grimace.
"He hated me too, from the day I was born. He blamed me for everything. If he had had his way, he would have laid his hands on me every chance he got…" He sucked his teeth. "But she wouldn't let him. So they fought. Sometimes he hit her. He gave her what he thought she deserved and what he thought I deserved. I used to leave the house whenever I could. I didn't want to watch."
There was a long pause. He heard Omegas put her glass down on the table and draw her knees to her chest.
"I see," she said.
"At least he never got to use Unforgivable Curses on me," he remarked scornfully. "I wonder if he would have, if only he could…"
He lingered on the thought for a moment, then shook his head.
"No, I don't believe he would. Who would ever do such a thing?"
Finally, he turned to face her. A crooked smile lay motionless on her face.
"Is that why you're so obsessed with finding out who my father is?" she asked. "So you can put a face and a name to a father worse than yours?"
Severus held her gaze, his head down, as if his shoulders could no longer support it. The aura of powerful, dark solemnity he used to display with such pride was nowhere to be found.
He slowly raised a finger and pointed it at her. "You're odd." His voice was hoarse, dragging. Unsettling.
"I've been told that, yes," she replied calmly.
"Do you think I'm odd?" he asked. By then he had lost control of the words coming out of his mouth.
She smiled softly. "Just a little."
"You're wrong," he retorted. "I am. Very." He paused for a moment and took another sip. "But you don't seem to care."
"I'm used to odd people."
"Like your father?"
"No. Not like my father," she replied quickly. "My father wasn't odd. He was cruel."
He drank again and looked away. "Do you think I'm cruel?"
"No, I don't," she replied.
He laughed joylessly. "I'm a Death Eater."
"I thought you were a spy."
"I was," he nodded.
There was another silence. Severus emptied his glass in one gulp.
"I've done… things," he breathed, his words barely audible. "Terrible… things."
Her eyes darted to his face. "Don't tell me," she said hastily.
He looked at her in surprise. "Why?"
"Because then I'd have to tell you the ones I've done," she explained. "I don't feel like it."
"Ah," he sneered, a bitter grin twisting his face. "Of course, we're still playing, aren't we?" He tilted his head and pointed at her. "You know my surname, though."
He waited in silence for what his now completely drunk brain perceived as hours. She didn't answer.
"So?" he snapped angrily.
Omegas jumped slightly. She paused briefly, then stood up and took her wand from the other end of the table. She slowly approached him and gave him another gentle smile.
"You know… of the many useful spells I invented, there's one I've probably used the most. Would you like to see it?"
He looked at her. From his hunched position, she looked like a giant. He closed his eyes and nodded.
She pointed the wand at him. "Refocilio," she whispered.
From behind his eyelids, he sensed a faint light fall on his face.
Suddenly, everything was clear. He remembered where he was. He remembered what he was doing. He remembered who was in front of him. In horror, he realised the state in which he had just allowed himself to be seen.
His eyes snapped open. He looked at the glass in his hand and threw it on the table between the armchairs. He glanced at Omegas, expecting to see a cunning smirk that would make him want to die.
What he found instead was a pair of violet eyes watching him in the dark. There was no judgement in that face, no pity. Only measured understanding.
"Thank you," he said softly.
"You're welcome," she murmured back.
He stood up slowly. He walked past her and returned to his room.
Upon waking, he would act as if nothing had happened, and he knew she would do the same. He laid his head on the pillow, closed his eyes and finally slept.
The next day, Severus woke up late, but he didn't realise it right away. His quarters were in the dungeons: without the sunlight filtering through the windows, it always seemed like night. He didn't realise it until, after getting out of bed and reaching his small sitting room, he noticed that Omegas wasn't there.
He approached the low table and found breakfast on one of the plates that usually belong to the Great Hall banquets. Next to it, a glass of pumpkin juice, and next to the glass, a note written in such tight cursive that it took him a while to decipher it.
That spell empties the stomach. Eat something or you'll faint.
OSG.
He picked it up and read it at least fifteen times.
OSG. It was undoubtedly the initials of her name. What was it, a clue? OSG. Omegas Sylith G…
He ate quickly. Partly because he was actually starving, partly because he wanted to go and look for her. He didn't even bother to push the thought into a dark corner of his brain; he wanted to know. He needed to know.
As he left his rooms and walked down the dungeon corridor, he realised step by step that he had never felt better, at least physically. It was as if his body had been reset to factory settings. He felt strong, he felt fast, he felt like a boy. No, he felt better. He had never been in shape as a boy.
He reached his office much quicker than on any other day. When he entered, he found it empty. He sat down at his desk and looked at the clock behind him. Three in the afternoon. She must have already eaten; she would be back any moment.
He waited. Half past three. Four. Half past four. Five. By a quarter past five he was growing frustrated.
He walked out of the office and down the corridor to the new hospital wing: she wasn't there. He climbed the stairs and reached the Great Hall. No sign of Omegas there either. He climbed more stairs, then some more. He reached the Astronomy Tower, the only other place he had seen her. It was empty.
Finally, Severus gave up. He started down one staircase after another, determined to wait for her in the Great Hall until she came down for dinner. But as he passed the empty Charms classroom, out of the corner of his eye he saw what looked like a black shadow crouching under the teacher's desk. He retraced his steps and watched from the doorway.
Omegas had her hair pulled back into a long braid, tied tightly at the nape of her neck. She was wearing a blue dress, cinched at the waist, with bell sleeves and a high collar. An odd outfit, considering it was the height of summer. Then he looked at the clothes he was wearing and decided to keep that observation to himself.
She seemed to be searching for something, meticulously examining every dark corner of the room, every tiny space between the desks, under the chairs and between the bookshelves.
"What are you doing?"
She jumped. She was under a desk and had hit her head. Severus suppressed a chuckle.
"Hi," she muttered, massaging the top of her head. "I'm looking for a Boggart."
He approached her cautiously. "Why?"
"Because Mr Potter said at lunch that he saw a Dementor lurking around the Charms classroom," she explained, lifting a desk and dropping it with a thud.
"So?" he asked.
"So, it's not possible for a Dementor to have entered Hogwarts, or it would have tried to kiss us all by now."
"Obviously," he agreed. "I mean, why are you looking for it? The castle is almost deserted. There probably are Boggarts everywhere."
She paused for a moment, the chair she had lifted suspended in mid-air.
"Right," she mumbled. "We should try and catch as many as we can."
He frowned. "Why?"
"To use them, of course," she said as if it were obvious.
She reached a nearby cupboard and began to open its doors to search inside.
"They are incredibly useful in battle. Imagine throwing the enemy's worst fear at them." She chuckled. "Who would ever expect that?"
He remained silent, seeming to ponder the matter for a moment. Then he moved to the other side of the classroom and imitated her, inspecting every tiny crevice where a Boggart might have hidden.
They searched in silence for about fifteen minutes until Omegas, her ear pressed to one of the drawers of the teacher's desk, smirked and murmured, "Got it."
Severus reached her and stood behind her, waiting. She took out her wand, pointed it at the drawer and said, "Alohomora."
The drawer clicked open. Slowly, a tall man with broad shoulders, hard features and ash blonde hair rose from the floor. He watched Omegas with deep eyes of a warm hazel colour. He gave her a cunning, unsettling smile, which was met by an identical one.
She raised an arm and pointed her hand at the man. "Severus, this is my father," she announced.
He made no sound. He stood there, staring at the man, his lips parted as if he had never seen anything so impressive in his life.
Omegas pointed her wand at him. "Riddikulus."
The man swelled up and took on the appearance of a fairground balloon with human features. He floated in front of them for a while, moved by the warm summer breeze coming through the nearby open window.
She giggled. "I've always loved these things. I used to go to funfairs, you know, just to stand and watch them."
She waved her wand again and the Boggart returned to its drawer. She turned and headed for the door.
"Coming? We need to find something to put it in."
But Severus didn't move. His wide eyes remained fixed on the now empty spot in front of him.
"Was that…" he said in a chocked whisper. "Was that… Gellert Grindelwald[1]?"
"Yes," she replied.
He turned to her. "Your… your father is Gellert Grindelwald?"
Omegas smiled and shook her head. "No," she said softly. "My father was Gellert Grindelwald."
They locked eyes in stunned silence for another moment.
"Coming?" she repeated.
Severus turned again, staring at the fading image of the second most terrible Dark Wizard of all time. Only after almost a minute of silent contemplation did he manage to turn again and reach the door. She was already gone.
She never returned to the classroom. It took Severus about twenty minutes to realise that her intention was not to use the Boggarts in battle at all: that had been her way of communicating with him. Simply telling him her father's name would not have sufficed, oh no. It wouldn't have conveyed the idea adequately. He had to see it with his own eyes, and she had to savour his reaction. She had won, he thought, as he strode resolutely towards the Great Hall.
Sitting at the Hufflepuff table were Lupin, with his usual dishevelled look and tired eyes, and Tonks, seemingly anxious. As soon as she saw him, she ran over and began to bombard him with a suffocating amount of words.
"Have you seen Omegas? Where is she? I'm worried. She's been acting strange for days. She's been like this since the night you went into the forest. Has something happened? She's not herself. She's tired more and more. I don't think she's sleeping enough. To be honest, I don't even know where she sleeps, I've never asked her. Did you?"
He kept his quiet, scowling at her. He didn't even bother to attempt an answer in the midst of her incessant barrage of questions. How Omegas could put up with her, he really couldn't understand.
"I don't know," he said curtly when she was finally forced to stop and breathe.
He approached the Slytherin table and waited for the food to appear. He made two meals disappear, only to make them reappear in his quarters. He knew she would be there.
Indeed, when he entered a few minutes later, he found her sitting in an armchair, a glass in her hand and a distant look in her eyes. He flicked his wand and food appeared on the low table. She didn't touch it; she barely looked at it.
"You know, I usually try to think of my father as little as possible," she said.
Her tone was calm, quiet. She didn't seem angry or bitter. She seemed resigned.
"I can imagine," he replied.
He sat in the armchair opposite hers, as he had on many other evenings. But that evening was not like any other. In the metaphorical chess game that was their bizarre relationship, Omegas had let him call checkmate that day.
They sat in silence for a while. Severus tried to wait for her to speak first, but his craving for answers was uncontrollable. Before he could stop himself, the question was asked.
"How is that possible?"
"What?"
"That he is your father."
She gave him an intense stare. "I don't know," she replied. "I never asked too many questions. He was already in Nurmengard when I was born. There was never any trace of my mother."
"Were you born in prison?"
"Yes," she confirmed. "Well, you couldn't really call it a prison. Nurmengard was a castle. Almost bigger than this." She glanced around. "He built it. He knew how to use it. He knew every secret of it. Except how to get out."
"What about you? Could you get out?" he asked.
She shook her head. "For the first few years, no one knew I existed. I didn't even know there were other people besides me and my father."
She leaned forward and toyed absentmindedly with the food in her plate.
"He was bored. I don't think he hurt me out of anger or hatred. I think it was more… I think it was more of a game for him. Just a way to kill time." She smiled sombrely. "At first he pretended to have a good reason. He talked about this… this mission. He said that I would be the one to fulfil his design. He said I had to be prepared. Ready for anything. That I had to learn to endure. Then, in time, he stopped caring."
She took a long drink from her glass and swallowed with a bitter grimace.
"One day, Dumbledore came. That was when I found out that the old bastard and I were not the only two people on the planet. Dumbledore was furious. They had an odd relationship, you know? Much has been made of it. But don't listen to Rita Skeeter." She sneered. "She has no idea."
She paused. Severus suspected her only purpose was to add weight to her words.
"I never knew for sure if Dumbledore was angry because my father had kept me there, hidden, all those years, or if the problem was simply that I existed. Either way, he took me away. He got me into Hogwarts and I started school." She gave a weak smile. "It was wonderful, but also… odd. There were so many people… so many different points of view. It made my head spin."
She sipped again, her eyes fixed elsewhere.
"In the summer, I went back."
Severus' eyes widened in surprise. "You went back there?"
She nodded.
"Why?" he asked. "If there was anyone who had a good reason to stay at school during the holidays, it was definitely you."
"I went back because I wanted to," she explained, meeting his eyes. "He was good. He didn't leave any obvious traces. No one had any evidence that he was violent or dangerous, and I insisted that I wanted to stay with him."
"Why?" he pressed incredulously.
Omegas gave him one of the most painful smiles he had ever seen. "Because he was my dad, and I loved him."
Severus had to look away. How could he possibly respond to such a statement?
"Dumbledore knew," she whispered.
He turned to her again and waited.
"He knew what was going on within those walls," she continued. "He never spoke to me directly. I think the thought hurt him. The one time he tried, I told my father and he sent me to Durmstrang. It was there that I understood. It took me years to realise that I didn't have to love my father… but eventually I did. Professor Zakoten helped." She gave a soft chuckle. "It was very painful, you know?"
She seemed almost proud of that last confession, as though expecting congratulations.
"After I finished my studies, I…" She hesitated. "Well, I went away for a while. I wanted to leave the Wizarding World, to be honest. I wanted to leave everything. I was an idiot."
Severus opened his mouth to say, 'You weren't an idiot,' but realised what he was about to do in time. He kept his quiet instead.
"Terrible idea, of course," she added. "I'll spare you the details."
He wanted to tell her not to, that he wanted to know the details, but her look was eloquent enough for him to realise that it would have been inappropriate.
"I went back to Dumbledore. I asked for his help. I didn't ask him to help me travel, I asked him to help me escape. I think… I think he was relieved."
She paused again, her violet eyes locked with his.
"Do you see why he never considered me one of his own?"
Severus did see. "He hated your father."
She laughed softly and shook her head. "No. He didn't hate him, no," she murmured. "He loved him."
He frowned slightly.
"Every time he looked at me, he saw the man he had loved and who had never loved him back," she said quietly. "Can you imagine how he must have felt?"
Severus froze. Maintaining even a vague semblance of impassivity became an impossible task. He turned his head, determined never to meet her eyes again.
No one spoke for a long time; when she did again, she had lost her sombre air and regained her usual calm tone.
"Anyway, the story's more boring than one might imagine."
He turned. She had reached into her bag and pulled out a small black leather-bound book. She pointed her wand at her temple and pulled out a long silvery thread. She twirled it in the air, then placed it between two pages of the book as if it were a bookmark. She closed it, turned it in her hands and waved it in front of him.
"My whole life. It was Dumbledore who taught me to do it. He said it's easier to deal with the past if you have a place to store it… or some other crap like that."
Severus did not make a sound for quite some time. Now certain that no one would touch the food, he made it disappear.
Eventually, he decided to go to bed. It was far from time for sleep, but he felt he needed time to process the evening. When he was at the door, before he lowered the handle, he hesitated.
"You knew the Boggart would turn into him," he said softly, glancing over his shoulder.
She turned to him. "I did."
"You chose to tell me."
She nodded.
"Why?"
She smiled. "We ought to be even. Now you know my surname."
Severus paused then nodded slowly. He lowered the handle and closed the door behind him.
The next day, Omegas did not show up at his office. Not in the morning, nor at lunchtime, nor in the afternoon. Severus was neither surprised nor particularly disappointed. He had seen her when he left his bedroom that morning, sitting in a corner of the bed, seemingly trying to occupy the smallest amount of space possible. She was not asleep, nor did she pretend to be. She did not seem particularly sad, nor angry or distressed. She seemed empty.
He had stood and watched her for a few moments, making sure she did not notice. It took him a while to understand what was going on in his head, for the vision had awakened something in him that had been dormant for too long.
Pity? he had asked himself. No, it wasn't pity. Feeling pity for others usually disgusted him, and he did not feel disgusted.
Sympathy, perhaps? But that was not possible. There was no reason to feel sympathetic. She had turned out splendidly, all things considered, and seemed to flaunt as a trophy what had resulted from the pain her father had inflicted on her. She basked in the 'peculiar skills', as she herself had called them, that that suffering had given her. She would never have dreamed of wishing she had not lived through that pain.
Then, towards mid-afternoon, thinking back to those empty eyes, he understood. Empathy. That was what he felt. He looked at the clear half of the desk and was glad to find it so. He did not want to feel that emotion.
"Sir?"
His eyes snapped up. At the door was Draco, his hair, which now reached halfway down his back, tied into a low ponytail.
"What?" he said, perhaps a little more brusquely than he had intended.
The boy smirked. "Potter trusted me."
[1] While describing Gellert Grindelwald's appearance, I didn't have in mind Johnny Depp's version, but Mads Mikkelsen's one.