If a Great Wave Shall Fall (Severus Snape & Lily Evans)

Chapter Eight

Disclaimer: Me no J.K Rowling, me no own Harry Potter

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When Pettigrew didn't get up Severus shouted, "Get up, Wormtail! Show me that you belong in Gryffindor!" the squat boy barely budged except to curl into a tight ball. Growing frustrated, Severus shot off the first spell that came to mind, "Sectumsempra!" Pettigrew cried out as the spell cut his leg.

"Get. UP!" Severus roared, partly from anger, partly from anguish. "Or are you too weak?" he asked in a low voice, his voice cracking. "You're always hiding behind your so called friends and shouting insults from behind their robes... you sicken me Pettigrew." Severus spat at the shorter boy.

"Y-you're wrong," the thin voice said feebly, "I'm not w-weak."

"Then prove it," Severus snarled. He watched as Pettigrew struggled to get to his feet; he wasn't in the slightest impressed a few minutes later when the murderer was standing before him, favoring his right leg.

"I'm not weak," Pettigrew said a little stronger this time.

"You have yet to prove it to me," Severus's voice sounded like a rumble of thunder as he tossed Pettigrew his wand, who fumbled with it before he fell back down with a resounding thud. It was another five minutes before Pettigrew had righted himself and had his wand at the ready. "Are you finally ready?" there was a testy edge in Severus's voice.

Pettigrew could only nod, exhausted from how much blood he was losing, "Not fair," he rasped, "you're – you're-"

"I'm what? In better shape, have more blood? A better wizard? Let me tell you something Wormtail, life isn't fair. Just like it wasn't fair when you murdered my mother." If possible, his voice turned even more menacing.

Fear filled Pettigrew's paling face, his grip slackening on his wand, "How d-did you k-know?"

Severus smirked coldly and asked icily, "Ready to suffer?" without waiting for an answer, he shot off a round of non-verbal Sectumsempras so fast that a fully matured wizard would have had trouble blocking or dodging them all. He slashed his wand through the air for maximum damage – most of his spells hit their target.

With a strangled cry, Pettigrew fell to the floor – a bloody mess – just as Dobby popped in, "Master Severus sir, Dumbledore's letter!" not taking his eyes off of Pettigrew, Severus reached for the letter and scanned it slowly, when he had finished reading a sneer was planted firmly on his face.

"Typical Dumbledore, don't bother to tell her ONLY SON that she was dead," he thought bitterly, he incinerated the letter with a bit of accidental magic, and he crushed the ashes in his fist. A weak moan brought Severus back to reality, and saw that Pettigrew was close to bleeding to death. Severus sighed exasperatedly, as if this was a chore to him, and walked over to bloody mess of a boy and dropped to his knees gracefully; he began to chant, "Vulnera Sanentur, Vulnera Sanentur," while he ran his wand up and down the length of Pettigrew's body. Before his eyes, the wounds inflicted by his spell began to knit together – leaving ghastly scars – some of the blood had seeped back into Pettigrew's pathetic body, the rest had been soaked up by Severus's robes.

He would have said the healing spell a third time – which would have vanished most of the scars – but he wanted Pettigrew to remember just what happened when you harmed a Slytherin's family. He sat back on his heels to survey the scared body next to him, seeing that Pettigrew's face had relaxed and was drifting into unconsciousness, Severus said while making an elaborate swishing movement with his wand, "Ennervate."

Pettigrew's eyelids fluttered open and seeing the angry orphan so close made him whimper. "D-d-did you h-heal me just to hurt m-me again?" he asked, sounding close to tears.