Testing the waters here with the first six pages of my Severus/Ginny fic.


She wasn’t certain, when she first woke, of what had happened. She knew her name, of course, and she knew, generally, that she was lying on wet grass in a field still shrouded in some sort of smoky haze. She remembered a lot of shouting, and rage-filled golden eyes, and a handsome black boy sprawled at her feet. She remembered a Grim--no, an Animagus, though he’d scared loads of them at first, even some of the Death Eaters. And of course the pudgy silverhanded man, and the Nameless One with his red eyes and the same cold voice that still haunted her serpentine nightmares, eight years after she first encountered it as a child. She remembered the sudden relief that flooded her when she saw a silver-haired boy and a black-clad man fighting back-to-back against the Unnamed Evil.

But what had happened? Those were all flashes of images in her mind, snippets of sound like songs from a wireless switching frequencies. She squinted up at the scarlet sky, trying to push past the throbbing in her head and the frightening no-feeling in her hands. Some of the haze drifted down to kiss her face, and she found it was ashes; was the Forest still burning?

She closed her eyes, dredging names up out of her stunned mind, and connecting them with images. Dean…Dean was dead. A quavering sigh, a searing in her eyes as if they wanted to cry, but could not. Remus Lupin, glaring at Silverhand (at Peter? Yes) with hatred--old, for Lily and James, and new, for Dean. Padfoot, Sirius Black, after Peter’s hand had felled Remus, tearing Peter’s throat out with razor teeth. Her own terror as Voldemort (a stab of pain and fright--she hadn’t meant to connect that name) recognized her and began to laugh. He had offered her another pet, hadn’t he, seeing as Harry had killed her first one. Her horror, as he drew nearer, ignoring for the moment Harry, who seemed angry at her encroachment on his nemesis. Even if she had saved his life by distracting--Him.

Then the Dark Lord’s robe caught fire somehow (Hermione, she remembered, had always had a knack for flames) and for perhaps the first time today (or had it been yesterday, or last week by now?) Voldemort had looked surprised. An unpleasant sort of surprised, which transferred to her when he lunged at her. She had put up her hands to ward him off--

And at the memory, her hands began to hurt again, throbbing with pain both remembered and new. She whimpered. Gryffindors were courageous, but she was sick with fear and pain, and it was either whimper or vomit.

Harry was dead. He must be. Even if he loved Morag McDougal--or was it Padma Patil? (and she felt a stab of satisfaction that she couldn’t remember which)--more than he loved her, he would have come looking for her. He wouldn’t have left her like this. He had been bleeding badly from the forehead when she saw him last. He’d been limping, too. He must be dead.

And her family--but her mind skittered away from that thought. Was the Forest really still burning? But it was a very large forest, after all, and would probably burn for weeks before burning itself out. She hoped for Ron’s sake--tall, laughing Ron, no longer envious Ron--that Aragog’s children had been burned to a crisp. Ugh, but then that would mean those were spider-ashes raining down on her.

And it was this last, absurd thought, of course, that was too much, and she hiccupped and began to cry. Not wailing, because that would take far too much energy, nor yet leaking real tears, because her eyes hurt too badly for that. Her entire body began to shake and she breathed in jagged gasps, keening softly in her throat.

Her grief may have saved her life. As she hiccupped herself out of the initial stage of shock, someone heard and came to lean over her. He was silhouetted sharply against the red sunset, but she would have known his voice without seeing the hooked nose. Indeed, she thought after today (or yesterday or last week) that she would always recognize his shoulders, because they were so broad and set when he and the silver-haired boy had Apparated to the middle of the battlefield.

“Miss Weasley? Thank God!” His mordant voice had never before sounded of either hesitance or fervour before now. It was the most beautiful sound in the world.

“Professor Snape,” she said simply, and when he lifted her up she buried her face in his chest and wailed like a little child.

*

He had hardly recognized her. The poor child was so badly burned he felt his own fingers curl in commiseration. Her hair, which had been a glorious riot of sunset-coloured curls--and she would never know how she had often reminded him of Lily, when she sat by Harry and leaned her head against his shoulder--had burned half away. Her eyebrows her completely gone. Her nose, cheeks, and forehead were blistered, and her lips were cracked and leaking blood. She stared up at him with glazed brown eyes--brown, not green, thank God!--and lifted her hands to him, as a child would--to others, of course, never to him--to be held. And though he had believed he had no paternal instinct, his body betrayed him by moving forward to gather the poor child into his arms.

Such a noise she had already been making, that odd, broken keening that had caught his attention to her in the first place, half-hidden as she was behind heaped bodies. Heaped bodies, and eons-old stone dolmans which had at long last toppled and crumbled with the heat of the battle. What a mess for the new Ministry--convince the Muggles that an earthquake had brought down the dolmens, starting a chain reaction within the circle. He wondered if the draw of Salisbury Plain would decrease, and how the Muggles would like the strange new landforms that would have suddenly appeared.

The moment the Weasley girl was in his arms, she did what no woman had voluntarily done to him since his school days: she pressed her face to his chest and mourned.

Severus frowned. He had been one of the few survivors at this location, once Potter and the others had pursued Voldemort, who had fled after Hermione’s little fire spell (and there Severus had found an answer to a question that had troubled him since the Terrifying Trio’s first year). He had been sifting through the carnage carefully, looking for other survivors as well as compiling a list of families who must be notified. He had sent Draco with the Trio, assuring him he would be quite capable of cleaning up here. Draco had met his eyes, judging, perhaps, how much of the Potions Master’s sanity was intact. Then he had given that sharp laugh of bitter amusement, and gone.

Snape had paced the bloody field, feeling his anger mounting at each new death he discovered. Long experience told him the anger was just a cover for grief; but experience also told him that anger could last a very long time. So it was with muttered oaths and burning rage that Snape closed the unseeing eyes of Lavender Brown, straightened the jumbled heap of Justin Finch-Fletchley, administered a tiny sip of Peaceful Repose to Ernie MacMillan--who closed his eyes with relief against the sight of his own entrails piled on his stomach. It was with a vow of revenge on any Death Eater who had escaped that he pulled Padma Patil’s cloak over her unnaturally peaceful face (she had been the clever twin, Parvati the brainless gossip) and untangled, with fingers unused to gentleness, the ever-present camera strap from Colin Creavey’s throat. It had been with a certain quiet despair that he forced George Weasley to loosen his grip on his twin’s body and drink a resanguination potion, and had blocked from him the sight of Charlie Weasley, crushed under the body of one of his beloved dragons.

It had been too much to hope, he supposed, that all nine of the Weasleys would survive the war. Still he had hoped, for Molly’s sake as well as for Arthur’s. Unusually optimistic, for him, but he’d always been partial to red hair. Besides, he and Bill had been at school together, that last year.

Severus discovered he was automatically smoothing Ginny Weasley’s wrecked hair, that he was supporting her weight effortlessly, for all that she was a tall girl. She was only the second living person he’d discovered, in hours of searching. He felt a desire to murmur something vague and comforting, but he had never become familiar with the notion of comfort, so he kept silent. After a time, the violence of her grief abated; her body ceased heaving with sobs, the sound of her tears faded into the irregular gasps for breath that followed tears. She began to shiver, and huddled into his protective embrace.

“Miss Weasley,” he said gently, and his voice croaked. She tensed in his arms (remembering who it was held her?). He wondered what to say. “You are…injured.”

She nodded slightly against his chest. She took a breath, almost as if she would speak, then breathed slowly out.

“Come. Madam Pomfrey is--“

“No!” The girl found her voice again, and she sounded panicked. “No, please! Don’t take me back there! Please!” She pulled away to stare at him, her eyes wide. He restrained himself from wincing as he again took in her damaged face. “Please, sir--you’re Potions Master--you can help me, can’t you? Oh, sir, won’t you?”

He hesitated. It seemed irregular, but he remembered Charlie, thought of Fred and George. Perhaps it would be better if she didn’t return there now. The sun was setting. Whatever he did, he must decide soon.

How many dead? And some of them because of him, because of his ruse to lull Voldemort into a false sense of security. But Ginny Weasley had been given to him--damaged, but living. And that, too, he had the power to affect. He nodded shortly.

“I will take you to Semele. It is--my home,” he added, in response to the question in her eyes. She nodded and he took from his pocket the watch-fob that bore his Portkey. With a jerk and a momentary whirling blackness, they were there.

His first order of business was to put her to bed. His lone House Elf scurried to prepare the one guest room (well, the only one not shrouded entirely by dust sheets) and then went to fetch a bottle of brandy.

Severus made Ginny comfortable onto a clean--if threadbare--settee, then poured her a glass of brandy (was she old enough for that?) and one for himself.

“Careful, girl,” he said gently. “It’s a very fine brandy. Strong.”

She bridled, showing for the first time that fiery spirit she had learnt from her brother. “I have had brandy before. We’re not so poor as all that.” At his pointed look she added, “I’m twenty years old, Professor. It’s legal.”

Ah. As old as that? (Severus, you’re getting old. You never used to lose track of the years.) He nodded in lieu of an apology, then stood.

“Please excuse me, Miss Weasley. I must fetch some potions for those burns.” Alarm flared in her eyes, then faded, and she nodded, her mouth resolute. “I will return soon,” he promised, and swept out of the room.

*

She had mastered her fear before he even left the room, hoped he hadn’t seen it. To be left alone again, even in such a place as a guest bedroom--even after the enthusiastic ministrations of Wicket the House Elf, and the odd kindness of Professor Snape--made her heart race with fear

Harry had left her. Hermione and even Ron had left her. Draco had left her, Dean had left her. Remus and probably Sirius had left her (don’t think of Dumbledore, her mind chanted, don’t think of McGonagall). Now Professor Snape. She shivered under the duvet, feeling vaguely anxious about the mud and blood she was leaving about.

As if on cue, Wicket reappeared, nearly buried in white cloth. “Master Severus is sending these to Missy Weezy,” it (she?) squeaked. “Master Severus is wanting Missy Weezy to wear them. They is being clothes from Master Severus’ sister.”

“Professor Snape has a sister?” Ginny asked before she thought.

The House Elf’s face grew sorrowful. “He was having one. But Missy Sancia was being a reckless girl. But she was being a generous witch, too. She would share clothes with Master Severus’ Missy Weezy.”

Oh dear. Ginny managed, with Wicket’s help, to shrug out of her robes. Before she could reach for the clean clothes, however, the House Elf clapped her hands. A washbasin and sponge appeared, and Wicket quickly bathed Ginny’s uninjured bits. Only then did she let the nightgown (a patched silk, like the sheets on the bed) float down on to Ginny’s aching body.

Ginny’s eyes were closing on their own, and she felt her body trying to shut down. She leaned back into the pillows, but her hands and shoulders hurt badly enough to keep her shifting, and every time sleep began to steal over her, she heard a high cold voice shrieking, and her entire body jumped, jolting her back to agonized wakefulness.

When Professor Snape returned, he made her drink a potion that chilled her straight through, but which somehow stopped her shivering. Then he dabbed a thick clear ointment onto her forehead, nose, and cheeks. His fingers were strong and sure yet somehow gentle, too. She could feel calluses on his fingers. The soft light strokes on her face soothed her in addition to cooling her burns, and she allowed her eyes to flutter closed.

He warned her before he deftly unbuttoned the top button of her nightgown and slid the cover off her shoulder. He did not falter as he smoothed the ointment on the front and top of her shoulders. Carefully he lifted her into a sitting position to coat her back. By the time he eased her back against the pillows again, her face was comfortably numb, though it had begun to itch.

“Your hands, Miss Weasley.” He murmured over them as he took painstaking care with them, working in a layer of ointment, then going back over them with another layer. When he had done, he wiped his fingers precisely on a towel, then worked light cotton gloves onto her hands. “It will hold the healing moisture in, and it will prevent you from scratching.”

She opened her eyes and looked up at him, surprised at his gentleness and grateful. “Thank you, sir.”

He nodded curtly and held a bottle to her lips. “Dreamless Sleep,” he explained.

She sipped, and this time when oblivion came, she slid under without a ripple.




Thunder woke her, much later, and she sat up with a whimper. It was so dark! Where was she? Had the twins just blown something up? Or had that only been Ron and Hermione, sneaking in late? Then a brilliant flash lit the room, and the walls shook with the roar, and Ginny ducked under the covers with a stifled cry. No, she remembered the noise and the explosions, and the shrill whine of incoming curses!

But then someone was there, and a half-remembered voice said, “Ginny. It’s a storm, only a storm. Fear not. Go to sleep.”

Glass pressed cool against her lips, and a splash: she swallowed reflexively. “Sleep,” the smooth voice urged, and Ginny obeyed.

*



I think it's going well. I only have 9 pages typed, but there's more written. I don't think it's going to be as long as my Schnoogle fic. I have a clearer plan for this one, too. It's obsessed me - I dream about it. Weird.

I wanted to become a 3-House author with this one, but I'm afraid it's too dark for Astronomy Tower. Whaddaya think?