A Matter of Black and White

CHAPTER 31-SNOW ANGEL

Snape and Aurora’s contact decreased dramatically after her initiation into the Death Eaters. A few days after the meeting, she had inexplicably come into the Potions lab, where he had been brewing for the Infirmary. She hadn’t said a word about her initiation, and he hadn’t mentioned following her into the Forest after the meeting. The two had simply sat and worked in silence. After that, they had rarely seen each other except for at meals, where the rest of the staff was still quite happy to leave an open space next to the sour Defense professor. At these times she was back to her usual mercurial self. One minute, she would be conspiring with him about ways to skive out on Slughorn’s upcoming Christmas party; the next she would be arguing with him about the severity of his House point deductions.

They never spoke of her new career as a spy. Snape was not sure whether he was glad to be freed from the burden of her training or whether he should worry how his counterpart’s work might affect him. He didn’t even know if she had been back in contact with the other Death Eaters or with the Dark Lord himself. When Dumbledore announced a meeting for the Order of the Phoenix one weekend in early December, one to which Aurora was finally invited, Snape was curious to hear Aurora’s report.

Snape met the Runes teacher at the gates to the grounds. He had been saddled with the job of showing her to Grimmauld Place and was impatient for her arrival so that he could escape the sting of the early December wind. When she showed up, he could not help but be annoyed at the way the Swiss Miss who was always complaining about the castle’s drafts suddenly seemed impervious to the outdoor cold, no doubt because of the heavy traveling cloak—white, of course—that hung about her shoulders.

“You really ought to find a color that draws less attention to yourself,” he chided her.

“What, like black?” she asked, surveying his own equally monotone garb.

“It is the standard color of the wizarding world.”

The look she cast him made it clear that altering her wardrobe was one concession she was not willing to make to her new life as a spy.

“This will just have to do,” she said, pulling the hood of her cloak up to cover her attention-attracting bright blonde hair.

Snape shook his head but silently headed down the road toward Hogsmede. Aurora followed and they passed beyond the castle gates, the frozen mud crunching beneath their feet. Aurora chatted merrily about her most recent co-teaching project—Hagrid was showing her class some living models of creatures described by a runic zoologist—until Snape stepped off the road and moved toward a grove of trees. “That’s not the Forbidden Forest?” she asked, somewhat less lightly.

Snape wanted to comment that she had not seemed intimidated by the Forest the night of the Death Eater meeting but chose to save that knowledge for a later date. “I assure you this is only a small wood neighboring the village,” he answered, rather enjoying the idea of leading her into the unknown. “There is a clearing not far from here where we can Apparate out of sight.”

“Oh, in that case,” she said with a new surge of enthusiasm. Before Snape realized it, she had hiked up her robe and cloak hems and was forging past him into the trees.

“You don’t know where you’re going!” he called after her.

“Then you had better hurry up and show me,” she replied brightly, “because I’m bound to find the place at some point!”

Bewildered by her capricious playfulness, Snape lengthened his already long stride. He was, however, surprised by how nimbly Aurora trekked over the rough terrain. Begrudgingly, he broke his normally smooth gait to jog a few strides in a half-trot. Only when he had come up alongside her did she acknowledge him by conceding him some room on the narrow deer path they were following.

“Oh, there you are,” she said as if she had only just him. “I thought you’d never catch up.”

Snape didn’t know hot to reply. He had known Aurora for long enough to now know that she meant no harm by her teasing, yet she continued to torment him with that baffling playfulness that he had thought only Dumbledore possessed. Snape pretended not to hear her but pressed forward until he had led them to the clearing. Once they had stepped out of the trees, Snape was surprised to feel a hand on his arm.

Clearly amused by the surprise that had registered on his face from her touch, she said, “As you pointed out, I don’t know where I am going.”

Snape took her more firmly by the arm, his bare hand suddenly warmed by the soft folds of her cashmere traveling cloak.

“Just don’t splinch us,” she said with a grin.

“I assure you, you have nothing to fear.”

“I’m sure you’re quite the expert.”

“Quite.”

Before he could give her the chance to continue this maddening banter, Snape focused his mind on a street in London. With a lurch of his stomach, he felt himself spinning to his desired destination. He drew his passenger more closely to him so that he felt the hood of her cloak brush his chin. Even with his other senses overwhelmed by the experience of Apparition, his keen sense of smell caught the aroma of her lilac-scented hair through the hood that covered her head. She really was quite small, he realized, as he tilted his head down to catch a better whiff of the sweet fragrance. Somehow—it must have been that larger-than-life Great Hall persona—he had missed that before.

“Severus?”

Snape jerked his head up and saw that they were standing in a familiar alleyway lined with Muggle rubbish bins.

“It this not it?” she asked with confusion from his distraction. She had drawn her wand.

Snape realized he was still holding onto her arm. Quickly, he released his grasp and stepped away from her, accidentally stepping on a tin can that gave a great metallic crunch. “You won’t need that,” he said with a sharp nod to her wand. “We don’t want to draw attention to ourselves.”

Aurora returned her wand to her pocket, but not without saying, “Unless all the neighbors here are deaf, I think it’s too late for that.”

Snape shrugged impassively and surveyed the main street, which fortunately seemed as abandoned as the derelict buildings around them. Without checking to see if Aurora was following, he led the way past several grey-faced houses until one with a black door seemed to spring up out of the grime. Surveying the empty street one more time, Snape walked up the weed-strewn path to the house. Rather than use the silver serpent knocker, Snape uttered a password and the door creaked open.

“You’ll want to be quiet,” he informed Aurora and was surprised when she didn’t offer him some retort about the affair in the alleyway. Instead, the bleakness of Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place had a sobering effect on her, and she crept wide-eyed through the house’s collection of macabre paintings and mounted elf-heads. She followed him past the curtained portrait of the ill-tempered Mrs. Black, down the faintly orange gas-lit hall, and into the surprisingly warm kitchen where the Order of the Phoenix was meeting.

“Aurora, dear!” Mrs. Weasley exclaimed, looking up from the cauldron of stew she had been attending.

Aurora proceeded to greet the Weasleys affectionately, leaving Snape to marvel at how the Dark Lord’s latest recruit was able to make friends wherever she went. Naturally, Dumbledore twinkled at her, and even the otherwise sullen Tonks managed a small smile in honor of their previous revels in bad music. (Of course, the Metamorphmagus’s glint of gladness was quickly tempered by a strained look when Remus Lupin entered the room. Lycanthropic lost love—the whole affair made Snape nauseous.)

Dumbledore introduced the rest of the present Order members—Mad-Eye Moody, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Mundungus Fletcher. Then everyone began their reports: the Aurors were increasing protection around the Muggle Parliament; the werewolves were still siding with the Dark Lord; and the wizarding underworld was generally gleeful about the Ministry’s disregard for petty crimes that did not involve a dark wizard’s quest for world domination. In other words, it was much of the same old thing. Snape could only imagine how little the actual Ministry was accomplishing in the fight against dark forces when Dumbledore’s own Order was spinning its wheels.

The lack of any interesting news made Aurora’s report even more enticing. Snape still wasn’t wild about the way in which Aurora’s spying suggested a certain inadequacy in his own work, but he had to admit that he was curious about what she had been accomplishing since her initiation.

When it finally came to her turn, Aurora let Dumbledore explain how she had infiltrated the Death Eaters and why she did not wear a Dark Mark on her arm—a story which elicited a gasp from Mrs. Weasley and a penetrating stare at the Runespoor ring from Moody’s magical eye. However, Dumbledore listened just as attentively as the rest of the group once Aurora began her actual intelligence report.

“The Dark Lord wants to increase his forces,” the newest Order member began.

“No news there, lass,” Moody interrupted. “Werewolves, giants, Dementors…he’s pickin’ up allies like a Kneazle picks up fleas.”

“Yes, but now he wants the Inferi too,” she continued. “And not just the corpses of the people he himself has killed. He wants to control the bodies of anyone whose death he has been even indirectly responsible for.”

“All the more reason I want to be cremated,” Moody grunted. As any sensible witch or wizard knew, the only way to prevent one’s body from being turned into an Inferius puppet was to burn the corpse. Unfortunately, Muggles were not always so wise, and proper last rites could not be performed on the body of any victim—Muggle or magical—whose body was never found.

“The Dark Lord discovered the magical power of responsibility several years ago when he and Harry Potter dueled. Priori Incantatem showed the specters of people who had died at his orders but not by his hand. He realized that this new circle of victims could expand his power, but he hasn’t yet learned how to actually command this new set of corpses. He’s hoping that my access to old Holdahexe magic will help him make the breakthrough.”

“Do you think it’s actually possible?” Lupin asked.

“Unfortunately, yes,” she answered. “The Holdahexe have long known about the power of responsibility. Especially with life-and-death magic, we are accountable for more than just the spells that issue from our wands.”

Snape arched an eyebrow. No wonder Aurora had an overactively guilty conscience. Then again, he still thought there ought to be some sort of caveat for children who didn’t know what they were doing. As for adults who served the dark ways with full knowledge of their actions…well, Snape didn’t really want to think about what the eternal ramifications of responsibility might be in that case.

“We tend to think of that responsibility as being a deterrent from evil,” she went on, “but there’s nothing to keep evil from twisting that magic for its own designs.”

“But you can’t actually give You-Know-Who the secret,” Shacklebolt protested. “We’re having enough of a problem trying to fight the forces he already has.”

“Kingsley is right,” Dumbledore said. “You’ll only be able to stall your research for so long. At some point, Voldemort is going to want an answer, and you’ll have to give it.”

Fletcher choked on his soup.

“Severus, I want you to work with Aurora,” Dumbledore instructed. “If we’re going to have more Inferi to fight, we ought to know how to do so.”

Snape gave his best scowl in response but couldn’t help but sit a little taller at the reaffirmation of his own usefulness.

Aurora threw him a knowing smile from across the table. Once the meeting was over and she had bid an individual goodbye to each and every Order member, she rejoined him with a grin. “Guess you’re still stuck with me after all.”

“No surprise,” Snape drawled. “Dumbledore knows my experience as a spy is vastly superior to your own. Of course you’re going to need my help.”

Aurora stepped out into the early-winter chill and raised her hood, but not before rolling her eyes at him. “You know you’ve missed me,” she said in a sing-song voice.

Snape grunted and started stalking back to the Apparition point. Once they were in the alleyway, Snape stepped behind an overflowing skip to obscure the view from any passing Muggle traffic in the main street. He reached out for Aurora’s arm, but she shimmied out of his grasp.

“Oh, I can Apparate myself,” she said coyly. “You see, I know where I’m going this time, so I don’t need any help.”

Fine, if she wanted to be like that. “Don’t splinch yourself.”

“I never do.”

With a scowl, Snape focused on his own Apparition. Let her splinch herself, he thought as he directed himself toward the clearing near the castle. She was a full-grown witch and she could make her own decisions. No one—not Dumbledore, not the Dark Lord—could blame him if she left half of herself in the alley and half of herself somewhere in the Hebrides. But when his feet touched down on the soft woodland ground and he heard a small shriek, he couldn’t help but wonder with a touch of apprehension if she had actually miscalculated the Apparition. After all, she had only been to the clearing once.

Snape shook his head once to get his bearings and then spun around, expecting to find a limbless Aurora flailing on the ground. Instead, she seemed to be all limbs—or wings…soft, white wings—as she spun around, her arms outstretched and her cloak and robes flying as they caught the chilly winter air.

“Snow!” she exclaimed with delight. She leaned back her head to let the great, fluffy flakes brush her flushed cheeks. The hood of her cloak fell back so that her long yellow hair was free to wave about like her swirling white garments. “Oh, I thought it would never come!” she cried. Still, she did not stop her magical snow dance, which seemed to summon the silent crystals to her—a joyously spinning whirl of white and gold.

Only when Snape felt something cold land and disintegrate into a light sweetness on his lower lip—his mouth was hanging slightly open—did he notice that he was also standing in the snow. He looked down at his feet and saw a growing blanket of white covering his boot tops. His eyes followed the smooth white ground to where Aurora’s shoes (yes, these were also white) had tracked an increasingly wider circle of packed snow.

Aurora twirled more and more wildly until at last she stepped out of her spin with a stagger. She gasped and laughed as she turned back to him for a moment, clearly expecting him to join in her raptures. When he simply stared at her, a new gleam flashed in her eyes. There was another blur of cloak and hair and Snape felt something cold hit him on the shoulder.

Snape instinctively tensed from the siege upon his person. Memories of four boys pummeling him with snow- and ice-balls flashed into his mind. Some of them, he recalled, had been magically propelled to chase him even when he ducked around a corner. Without thought, Snape’s right hand flew from his robe pocket, his tightly clenched fingers gripping his wand.

“You should not have done that,” he said softly.

But Aurora paid no heed to the wand pointed directly at her. “What are you going to do about it?” she asked, her still gleaming blue eyes meeting his own dark pair. She didn’t give him a chance to stare her down with any of the well-practiced glares that reduced students to tears. Once again she dropped in a blur of cashmere and gold and scooped up another handful of snow.

This time he was ready for her. Snape’s wand made a brisk shoveling motion and a ball of snow removed itself from the ground and hurtled itself at her. It hit her squarely on the chest.

Rather than being chastened by his quick wandwork, she grinned mischievously. “If that’s the way you’re going to play….”

She flung the already made snowball in her palm at him with expert aim, nearly knocking his wand out of his hand. Then she produced her own wand and directed a legion of magically-made projectiles at him.

Finding himself bombarded with a host of snowy rockets, Snape had no choice but to duck and return fire. Sometimes he had to blindly send his frenzied volleys over his shoulder as he dodged the next wave of her attacks. Nevertheless, he knew some of them reached their target because he heard them break apart with a satisfying “Pfft!”

At one point he realized that she had charmed his own snowballs to reverse course and attack their commander. Unwilling to be outmaneuvered, he noticed that he had pushed her toward the edge of the clearing so that she was standing beneath a tall oak tree. He pointed his wand at one of the weighted-down boughs and shouted, “Occido!” A heap of snow fell from directly above her, covering her head and shoulders with several inches of white powder.

Aurora gasped at the impact of the assault, a silvery mist issuing from her open mouth. She stood immobilized from shock, her eyes wide as she felt the ice crystals start seeping into her skin and clothing.

Snape was also frozen, wondering how she would respond to this whole new level of attack. He studied her warily as a drop of water dripped from the bit of snow that had collected on the tip of her nose.

Then, to his amazement, she laughed. She laughed fully and without reserve. She looked up to make sure there were no more heaps of snow directed at her and then laughed some more. Then she shook her head vigorously to release the snow from her hair and created a second, miniature snowstorm all around her.

Snape was so relieved and astounded that she was not responding in a blizzard of anger that he hardly registered how she was grabbing him by the hand and dragging him with her across the clearing.

“Come on!” she cried, flitting around the open space. Occasionally, she would mutter to herself, “Here?...No, no…,” or sometimes, “Perhaps…It’s almost right…No, this won’t do.”

“What on earth are you doing now?” Snape asked with what he hoped was a sufficient combination of boredom and exasperation. Secretly, though, he couldn’t help but wonder what she was up to now.

Aurora, however, ignored his words and his feigned annoyance. She pulled him to several arts of the clearing, their tracks making crosses in the once unblemished snow. Finally, she stopped at a bank with the slightest of inclines where the snow was still soft and smooth.

“Here,” she declared decisively.

“Here?” he asked with a touch of impatience.

“It’s perfect,” she answered confidently.

“For what?”

Her face set into all seriousness. “For this.” Then, as stiffly as if she had been Petrified, she fell back onto the bank.

“Professor Bernard, what in the name of Merlin are you doing?” Snape cast an embarrassed glance over his shoulder as she began sweeping her arms and legs across the surface of the snow.

“Haven’t you ever seen anyone making a snow angel before?” she asked with a laugh that sang like sleigh bells on the winter air.

“Not anyone older than a second-year.”

She sighed. “All the doom and gloom around here really does suck the fun right out of everyone, doesn’t it? Are you sure the English aren’t half-Dementor?”

“There is nothing wrong with behaving in a mature manner.”

“I assure you that maturity is highly over-rated. Too much of it makes you go mad.” She energetically swung her arms and legs outward again like a madwoman. Then she halted to peer at him. “Have you ever even made a snow angel?”

“I assure you that ‘snow angels’ are and always have been completely out of my character.”

“That very well may be,” she said with an assessing look, “but you can’t make fun of it until you’ve tried it.”

“That is about as likely as….” But he stopped short.

“As what, Severus?” she asked sweetly. This time her wand was aimed directly at him.

“As a house-elf being elected Minster,” he finished coldly. His hand slowly crept back toward his wand.

“I don’t think so, Severus,” she tisked with a disapproving glance at his wand hand. “Now, the way I see things, you have two choices: One—you can humor me and give this a try…it’ll be quick, easy, and painless; Two—I can ‘help’ you make a nice little angel with the aid of a few spells I learned at Beauxbatons.”

“As if Beauxbatons teaches anything that treacherous.” He spoke snidely but was still eying her wand.

“Oh, not treacherous enough to interfere with my Dark spell hang-ups…”

After seeing her Crucio of Derek Derrick at her initiation, he didn’t think that hang-up was such an issue anymore.

“…But treacherous enough.”

Damn, he didn’t understand this witch. He never knew where he stood with her or what she would do next. What he did know was that he had a wand pointed at him and that she was threatening him for her amusement. He stood rigidly before his tormentor.

“Am I really asking so much?” She spoke more gently this time, though she did not lower her wand.

Snape reassessed her. He read amusement in her eyes, but also something softer—certainly nothing in line with the malice to which his childhood had made him accustomed. “Fine,” he hissed.

Aurora grinned as he scanned the trees one last time to make sure that not even a rabbit was nearby to witness him sink to this level of humiliation. Then he plopped himself onto the bank. He was far less certain that the white blanket would soften his fall, so he landed rather gracelessly—rear- and hands-first—and then tentatively lowered the rest of himself onto the ground.

“Now what?” he muttered, rolling his eyes.

“You make the wings and the dress,” she explained as patiently as if speaking to a toddler.

“Dress?” he grimaced.

She laughed. “Robe, then. Like this,” she added definition to her angel, making wide sweeps with her arms and legs.

Snape again rolled his eyes but followed her suit, slowly pushing his limbs away from his body and then quickly snapping them back together again. What would the Death Eaters say if they saw him now?

“You’ll have to do it several more times or you won’t leave an impression.”

Snape begrudgingly acquiesced. He felt the plowed snow build into piles at the arcs. It felt cool against his arms and legs, but somehow the cushion below him seemed to wrap him in his own warmth. After a few more passes, he returned to his rigid position with his hands at his sides and his legs locked together.

After some time, he felt that Aurora had stopped moving. He rolled his head to the side to see her lying, mid-angel, with her eyes closed. The feathery flakes landed on her fair eyelashes so that her lids sometimes fluttered, but otherwise she seemed completely at peace. Snape watched as she received this snowy gift from the heavens, as flakes caught the stream of her breath and were blown away on the otherwise calm air, as a lucky few still managed to kiss her bright lips.

Redirecting his thoughts, Snape broke the silence. “I thought Beauxbatons was in a warmer climate than Hogwarts. How can you like this weather so much when you can’t even stand a chill in the castle?”

“I can’t stand being cold indoors,” she answered, “because there’s this little thing called climate control which makes it unnecessary. As for legitimate cold spells, you’re right that no one at Beauxbatons appreciates Jack Frost, but my aunt’s home in the Alps always had half a meter of snow by this time of year.”

There was another silence. When she spoke again, it was much quieter, and her eyes were open to watch the hundreds of snowflakes falling to meet her. “You get to start over with the snow,” she whispered. “You can make a whole new world, carte blanche. You can build it with ice castles and snow people—all from something so white and pure that it has never touched his earth.” She paused for a moment and then turned to smile at him. “And then there are always snow angels.”

Snape studied her face. The melted flakes looked like tears on her cheeks. Snow angels. Yes, he was looking at one.

“Shall we look at them?”

Snape blinked. “Sorry?”

“Our angels. You’re not planning on lying out here in the cold all day, are you?” The calm, reflective Aurora was gone. His teasing tormentor was back.

Snape propped himself up on his elbow and started to hoist himself off the ground.

“Oh, no, no, no!” she protested with nothing less than a giggle. “You’ll ruin it! Lay back down.”

Dear Merlin, now what?

“This is why snow angels are best made in pairs,” she explained. “Wingardium Leviosa.”

Snape felt himself slowly rise from the ground and be gently placed on his feet in front of her.

“Now you do me,” she said eagerly.

“M-me?”

“Yes, you. The least you can do is return the favor.”

Snape cleared his throat awkwardly. It was a simple spell. No big deal. He croaked the incantation. He could almost feel her warm and living force as he enveloped her with his magic, lifted her off the ground, and set her down at his side. There…nothing…it was nothing.

“Quite the pair, don’t you think?” She was studying the shapes in the snow with a tilted head and a slight grin.

Snape reexamined the two figures—one faint and misshapen with a crooked wing from when he had tried to sit up, the other crisp and unblemished and looking like it might soar off into the heavens. “Ridiculous,” he muttered finally and started stalking back to the castle.

Aurora cast a last wistful glance at the two angels in the crystal clearing and then trotted after him. She seemed lost in a reverie of lazily falling snowflakes and did not speak a word to him as they shuffled along the snowy path and then up the main road. Snape, meanwhile, tried to return his mind to sensible, adult matters that did not include snow angels, to proper thoughts such as mentally inventorying his private potion supply or calculating the average number of points he would have to deduct from Potter each day in order for Slytherin to win the House Cup. He had just started a new mental list of the most satisfying ways to punish Potter when Aurora suddenly stopped in her tracks.

“Wait,” she cried, just before they were through the gates. She grabbed his sleeve and pulled him off the road and into the woods.

Snape drew is wand. “What is it?” he asked tensely, his spy nerves suddenly on end. “Did you see something?” He couldn’t imagine how she had noticed something that his own keen senses hadn’t.

“We’re less than fifty feet from the gates.”

Snape clutched his wand. “You run. I’ll cover you and follow.”

What was that look in her eyes? “Are you sure you want us to do that?”

Snape scanned the area. He still couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. “What do you mean?”

“Are you sure you want to get back to Hogwarts?”

“What are you talking about, woman?” Snape growled.

The sparkle of snowflakes glittered in her eyes. “The way I see it, we’re only fifty feet and fifteen seconds from you being out of time.”

“Time for what?”

“Time to kiss me,” she answered simply.

He stared blankly at her. Why…what…how could she think that he would want to do that? Yet as she stared expectantly up at him, he found that he wasn’t bolting to the castle gates either.

“It’s actually easier than Apparition, you know.” She stepped up against him and for the second time in the day he felt her small, warm body pressed up against his.

Again he caught the scent of lilacs and found his head dipping to breathe her in. But then his head dropped a little more and a little more, until he found her clear eyes level with his and both of their heads so perfectly tilted that their noses did not bump. The angle let him draw even closer toward her face until, before he knew it, his lips were brushing hers.

Before he could analyze the preposterousness of the situation, he plunged into the moment and pressed his lips against hers. When she moved even closer to him, he dared to taste her lips. They weren’t sugary with gloss like he might have imagined but tasted of a delicate, melting sweetness that invited another sample. She parted her lips, allowing him a momentarily deeper taste. Then she flicked her tongue against his in a move that could only be performed by someone who wore a snake in their crest. It was so tantalizing that he drank her in until neither of them could breathe.

When they finally separated with a gasp, neither of them seemed to know which way to look to discover just who had so suddenly sucked all the breath out of them. Their once perfectly aligned faces no longer seemed capable of facing each other, and they each gazed somewhere over the other’s shoulder.

“We should….”

“It’s getting….”

“Right.”

“Right.”

They both scrambled up the bank to the main road and hustled through the gates. Back on Hogwarts grounds, things felt almost normal again. He was the Defense Professor. She was the Runes Professor. They would be working together at Dumbledore’s orders in a strictly professional capacity. That was the extent to which the sour and sarcastic Severus Snape could coexist with the pretty and popular Aurora Bernard. They had nothing else in common besides professional obligations.

This is what Snape told himself when they parted for their separate corridors inside the castle, though a look into any magical mirror worth its frame’s golden gilding might have told him that both his and Aurora’s cheeks were flushed from more than just the cold air outside.

* * *
AN: Fluffy snowflakes, fluffy romance. I have to say I’m glad to give our heroes a little happiness, even if certain gits don’t quite know what to do with it.