[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Chapter Twenty of 'Adagio'- Ice

[lomonaaeren]

A letter came sliding out of the fireplace on a night in February when Severus had spent hours upset over the stupidity of second-year essays. That was the only reason he picked the letter up near-immediately. He would have let it lie there otherwise. An owl who couldn’t be bothered to fly to his door was not worth his time.

The handwriting on the envelope was familiar. Severus squinted at it until the memory abruptly unfolded in his mind.

His hands shook as he opened it.

My dear Severus,

I have heard interesting things about you from a friend who currently works at the fine institution you reside at. I invite you to pay a visit to me tonight at nine-o’clock, using the following Apparition coordinates.

It wasn’t signed, but it needed no signature.

Severus closed his eyes and sank into the pool of his mind, spinning coolness through the water. Many people envisioned Occlumency or other shields on the mind as stone walls, or metal. Severus had even heard of people who conceptualized them as forests, in which an invader like a Legilimens would become lost.

Severus had never thought of his as anything other than ice. When he Occluded, nothing was there but the cold that intruders would mistake for normal emotions—except ones that they could not touch, any more than one could touch fish that swam beneath the surface of a frozen lake.

When he was ready, he stood and tossed the Floo powder into the fire. He must let Albus know he had been summoned.

*

“Kneel, Ssseverusss.”

Severus dropped to one knee the minute he entered the large, strangely Muggle room where the Dark Lord was sitting in a chair with its back to him. The chair was in front of the fireplace, and the largest non-basilisk snake Severus had ever seen was coiled up along its back, raising its head to stare at him.

Thoughts like “oddly Muggle” and “largest non-basilisk snake” swished through his mind and froze. Severus knelt with his head bowed, noticing and dismissing the ache in his knee, and the chill around his ears, and the whimpering that came from a corner of the room.

“Rissse, Ssseverusss.”

Severus rose and waited, his hands clasped behind his back.

The Dark Lord continued to sit in the chair that faced the fireplace, with his back turned to Severus. “I have had doubtsss about your loyalty, in the ssschool around Dumbledore.”

“I have remained loyal to you, my lord.”

It was a bare, flat statement. It must be, to answer a Legilimens who could detect lies. Severus’s mind hovered in the middle of his Occlumency, shading his answer so that no matter what he said, it would come across as true.

“Would you show your mind to me? Would you be that daring, I wonder?”

“I will do whatever you command, my lord.”

“Then come here.”

Severus walked around the chair and dropped to one knee in front of it.

The Dark Lord’s body was a twisted thing, small and warped. Severus breathed lightly and let the emotions drain away, along with the knowledge of how the Dark Lord had acquired such a body, the ritual he would have had to perform to draw the fetus to form the homunculus from a pregnant woman’s body. The Dark Lord’s burning crimson eyes were the same, and the length of his fingers as he reached out and tilted Severus’s head.

Then his Legilimency struck.

Severus gave and froze before it, showing the memories of him sneering at the Gryffindors, his sense of ill usage at Albus’s hands, how he had asked again and again for the Defense post and been denied it, how he had touched the darkening Mark on his arm with hope and dawning wonder, how he had made sure to keep the child credited with the Dark Lord’s defeat close at hand so that he could destroy him on his lord’s command. Everything was there, everything the Dark Lord wished to see, glinting back at him from the ice of Severus’s Occlumency, which picked up and reflected the Dark Lord’s desires.

The Dark Lord was quite possibly the greatest living Legilimens in the world, or at least in Europe.

That meant Severus had to the greatest Occlumens to match him. And because he must be, he was.

The Dark Lord pulled out of his mind at last. “Ssslytherin, for Harry Potter?” he murmured, with a hint of laughter in the back of his voice. Severus supposed he must enjoy the irony of it all. “I knew it, but I thought that Dumbledore would have more of a problem with it. Dumbledore is not upssset over thisss?”

“Albus sometimes seems puzzled over the boy, and sometimes disapproving,” Severus said. It was purely honest. “But in truth, I do not think he fears Harry Potter turning Dark in the way that I would have believed he would. He does approve of my overcoming my grudge against his father to watch over the boy, and he approves even more of the boy’s closeness to Alastor Moody.”

“Doesss he.”

Such laughter now. Severus wondered why, and then drained the wonder and simply knelt in place.

The Dark Lord gave a few thoughtful hisses, of the kind that he used when he was talking to himself. Or perhaps in this case to the great snake, who slithered around the chair and lay on the floor at his feet.

“Continue your guardianship over the boy,” the Dark Lord ordered at last. “I forgive your defiance against me in the passst. It would be mossst convenient to have you bring Potter to me if I decide to get rid of him that way.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“And make sure that Dumbledore hasss no reason to sssussspect I have returned even asss much as I have.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The Dark Lord watched him in silence. Severus simply waited. Everything that came to mind—the pain in his knees, his despair, the flickering dance of the fire, his discomfort with the snake being so close—came to mind and was dismissed, because that was what he must do.

“I am sssomewhat curiousss over your loyalties, Sseveruss.” The hiss was more pronounced now. “You came promptly when called, and yet you have also ssserved Dumbledore all thessse years, have you not?”

“I have convinced him that I have served. It was simpler when he believed that I wished to reform after Lily Evans died.”

“The Mudblood you had a friendship with.”

“Yes, my lord.”

The Dark Lord twisted his head back and forth. Severus wouldn’t have thought his current body’s stumpy neck would allow for that, but it did.

“I did asss you assked.”

“Forgive me, my lord. I do not know what you mean.”

“I offered to let her ssstand assside. But she chossse to die in defenssse of her ssson.” The Dark Lord twisted his neck back and forth again, as if he did not comprehend it.

The blow did not shatter Severus, because he did not permit it. “My gratitude for what you offered, my lord. It is her own fault that she did not accept.”

“It isss.”

The Dark Lord studied him some more in silence. Severus did not know why. He did not need to know why. He knelt, and he waited, and the Dark Lord finally turned his head to the side and nodded, waving a hand in dismissal.

“Go your way. I will sssummon you again at a future time.”

Severus stood and bowed in full from the waist, although the Dark Lord was no longer looking. It did not matter. The Dark Lord would know every gesture he made without looking at him.

He turned and left, the snake looking after him.