Lucy Snape and the Final Battle (Book Seven)

A Family Affair

Chapter Nine: A Family Affair

Snape was having nightmares again.

They went something like this:

He was looking down at Lily's tear stained face as she sobbed. It hurt because he was the reason she was crying. He was the reason she'd had to be associated with the slur of mud-blood. It was all his fault.

She wiped the tears from her eyes and as she did her expression became disgusted. It was a look only one other aside from himself could produce. Her hair became brunette and she grew a few inches and he saw a shade of his younger self within the girl Lily had transformed into.

"I don't want to hear it," Lucy's tone echoed through his brain. "In fact I don't want to hear from you ever again. You're not my father; you're dead to me."

You're not my father.

You're not my father.

You're not —

"Snivels."

Snape's eyes snapped open and he stared up into the face of Shona McGuire.

She was letting him sleep on her couch now until further notice. Now that his house had burnt down he was homeless and so this was the only place he could have a comfortable sleep without forking out too much money.

"McGuire," he sat up and rubbed his eyes furiously. "Please don't feel the need to watch me sleep."

"Okay you need to reign in that overactive imagination and listen up," she folded her arms but Snape was covering his eyes still. The subsequent action of rubbing ones eyes usually results in the need to have a few moments to recover while specs dance across your eyes. "I didn't tell you the whole truth."

"The truth?" Snape removed his hands from his eyes and finally looked at Shona properly, the daylight streaming from the living room curtains felt fresh again to him.

"About how I heard about your house," she took a seat on the arm of the three seater sofa and stared out of the window onto the rubbish strewn road. "It was Lucy."

Snape's stomach did a terrible yet thrilling somersault.

"She came by yesterday after you left to go and get some milk — " (Shona's made up house rules: couch surfer has to run errands) " — and told me about it."

"And you didn't think to ask her to stay?" Snape was aghast, he'd do anything in the world to see Lucy right now.

"She wanted to go and I let her; it looks like she's nearly finished running."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"She's just come back from the Medieval Islands."

"ARGH!"

Snape gripped his forearm in sudden shock. The Dark Mark; it was searing his forearm.

"Yeah I know, I was shocked too."

"No," Snape got up. "I have to go."

"Oh," Shona raised her eyebrows in sudden realisation. Snape had been darting off here and there all summer, aside from when he wasn't getting milk, to the call of Lord Voldemort. "Snape, mate, can't you just tell Lord Voldie to give it a rest? We've got our own royal pain in the ass to deal with."

"My loyalty lies with the Dark Lord if I want to keep drawing breath." The Dark Mark gave another throb of pain on his arm. "I must go."

Shona said nothing and so Snape apparated.