Rose stood up, rubbing her aching ankle and glanced at the piece of paper in her hand. It was yellowing and felt fragile to the touch. It was obviously old. She examined the oh-so-familiar spiky handwriting on it – the ink had long since turned brown and it spelled out the words she had just read out moments ago. Rose wondered what kind of book Severus Snape could have left in 12 Grimmauld Place. Her heart jumped with eagerness.
She stood up cautiously and put a bit of weight on her ankle, to see how it reacted. It was still slightly sore but didn’t seem sprained or broken. Rose stood on it completely for a moment, just to make sure and then hurried over to the book she’d thrown across the room. She picked it up almost reverently. It was bound in red leather and had no title on the front cover. Rose could smell the mustiness of it as she opened the top cover and slipped the fallen page back into it. She flipped through the first few pages idly, noticing that it was some sort of textbook. Notes in the same spiky writing on the front page were scribbled all down the margins of the book. Rose tried to decipher one set of notes, her forehead wrinkled in concentration, but it was almost impossible to understand Severus Snape’s writing. No wonder he’d left the book here, Rose thought. No one would ever be able to make any sense out of what he’d written in it.
Rose flopped down on a sturdy-looking stack of books and fanned out the pages of the book, sighing as she did so. She had done it twice, not really looking for anything but rather hypnotized by the way the inks all melded together to form a patch of black and brown on white, when she spotted a flash of red. She immediately stopped the rapid-fire flipping and turned back a few pages. There, in the margins, were a set on notes written in deep red ink. Rose brought the book closer to her face, eyebrows together. These notes were much easier to read, written so neatly that Rose had to wonder if it was still Snape doing the writing. Here and there words had been scratched out repeatedly, as if the writer had been frustrated with himself for making such silly assumptions and writing them down in the first place. Rose didn’t understand everything it said – there were a lot of Latin terms – it seemed Snape liked writing down his ingredients’ names in their true form.
It was a potion-making method. Rose flipped back one more page and found another set of notes in read. They outlined the use of the potion – to cure some sort of rare illness, Rose deciphered. Words jumped out at her from the pages: Pain; Hallucinations; Incoherency; Death.
Rose’s heart seemed to freeze up in her chest.
She flipped forward one page with such ferocity that the paper almost tore. Her eyes raced along the handwritten lines. There were ingredients, methods of preparation – but it was incomplete. Ingredients had been crossed out only to be replaced by question marks. The preparation method cut itself off abruptly. Rose flipped forward a few more pages, hoping for more, but in vain. There was nothing else.
Rose slumped back against the bookshelf behind her and slammed the book shut. A flurry of dust engulfed her, but had no effect: she still had a bubble of clean air around her head.
This was a cure for what had killed Hugo. What had killed Scorpius. What was killing so many children in the Wizarding World. If only she had all the instructions – she could have gotten help and made the potion and then everyone would get better! Severus Snape had been a Potion’s Master. Her parents and Uncle Harry had told her all about Snape’s time as Professor and she’d read so much about him that it was second nature to recall it by now, as if she’d been there herself. Snape had made potions for Remus Lupin, Teddy Lupin’s father, potions that had helped his lycanthropy, Rose remembered. He could have cured this disease.
She felt like taking the book that was in her hands and ripping it in two. She wanted to scream. She wanted to bang her feet on the wooden floorboards and throw a tantrum. Why, why, why hadn’t Severus Snape completed the directions?
Rose Weasley knew more about Severus Snape than anyone could guess. She hadn’t just heard about him from her parents, she hadn’t just seen his name in a few potions books – she’d read up on every written detail of his life. She’d gone through the Revised Edition of Hogwarts a History, in which Snape’s role in the school was outlined in detail. She’d poured over books written specifically about him, by biographers who had leapt for the rights to his story sometime after the Battle of Hogwarts. Rose had often wondered how Snape would have felt about his personal life history being thrown to the public, but the fact was, no one was interested in Severus’s life. She was apparently the only one who’d ever borrowed those specific books from the library.
Rose didn’t care. She found Severus Snape terribly intriguing. She had ever since she’d heard that he’d been a double-agent. She knew who his parents were, where they’d been married, when Severus had been born, how he’d spent his school years, when he’d left home, when he’d become a Death Eater. She knew what his Patronus was (though it made little sense to her – a doe? How did that fit?), what he ordered most from the House Elves at Hogwarts, which wine he liked, how he dressed. She knew how he’d taught, what he’d taught, who’d made him Headmaster, how he’d left just before the battle. She knew how he’d died.
She rested her head against the bookshelf as the answer to her earlier question came to her: because he had died.
No, because he’d been killed mercilessly. Because in the last few months of his life, everything had come tumbling down. Why would he have been bothered about a cure for a rare disease that no one had?
He was dead.
The only way to get the cure would be to go back and save his life.
And that… was impossible.
Rose walked home slowly the tattered old book of Snape’s tucked safely under her shirt. She knew the name Severus Snape not only from stories told by her parents from his portrait in the Headmaster’s Office. Rose had made more trips to the Headmaster’s Office than the average student but in all that time, Severus Snape’s portrait had never uttered a word to her. He had only stared down at her from the wall, with a very peculiar expression on his face, making her more uncomfortable than the Headmaster was ever able to. She’d even asked him questions and when he had made a point of not answering, she’d made a point of asking even more.
Rose also knew, however, that Severus Snape had spoken to her cousins James, Albus and Lily. All three combined had made fewer trips to the Headmaster than she had, but each had been spoken to once or twice by Severus. Rose had always found this terribly nerving – that he would speak willingly to them – but nothing he’d ever said to them had been very interesting.
She was still a long way from home when she became tired and decided to Apparate the rest of the way. She jumped behind a tree in case any Muggles were watching and, holding her wand in her right hand, she turned quickly on the spot.
The suffocating feeling was something Rose had always hated, but now it was ten times worse. It reminded her of death and it reminded her of Hugo, and when she appeared in front of her house, gasping for breath, the only thing she was thinking was:
Please God, let me live, let me live, let me live!
When she opened her eyes again and saw her home, the fear abated. It was like coming out of a nightmare. One that she would visit over and over again.
She climbed up the steps to the house and walked in through the front door, trying to be as quiet as possible. If her parents were asleep, the last thing she wanted to do was wake them. But as she passed the first room from the front hallway, she found it empty, the bed made and the curtains flung open to coax in some light. She moved on, towards the kitchen, and heard her father’s muffled voice. As she grew closer, his words became clearer.
‘It’ll be okay, Hermione,’ he was saying repeatedly. ‘It’ll be okay, really, we’ll be okay, it’ll be okay.’ Rose peered around the doorway, hidden in the shadows.
They were sitting at the dining table in the kitchen. Hermione had her head in her arms, on the polished chestnut table. From the way her shoulders were shaking, Rose knew that her mother was crying again. Ron was sitting on a chair next to her, a hand on her shoulders, rubbing her back now and then, trying to comfort his wife. Rose could see his determination not to collapse breaking. His other hand supported his head, fingers in his red hair, the strands of which stood slightly on end. Rose could see his hand shaking slightly.
Sometimes, when she was more angry than afraid, she found herself hating Hugo for doing this to her parents. For doing this to their parents. She hated him for dying.
There was nowhere to run and that was why it was so petrifying. Witches and wizards had heard about the disease, realized it was an epidemic, and started packing. They’d taken their most prized possessions and their children and left the country – only to find that this disease had spread farther and faster than they could imagine. Just because Muggles were not harmed by the disease did not mean they could not contract it, and Healers suspected that Muggles and wizards alike had aided the spread of the disease.
The only thing to do was stay put, try to avoid the disease and then, if it got to you, die.
Every second of every single day was filled with the probability of death. The ticking of a clock was now torture. Rose couldn’t make herself wear a watch anymore. She had stopped counting the days. If she pretended that time was at a standstill, then maybe it would be.
She walked upstairs to her bedroom, and flopped down on the bed for a moment. Outside it was getting dark, and she hadn’t lit the lamps in the room. On the ceiling above her a multitude of stars began to glitter as the room grew darker. Her father had put them up when she had been a little girl and Rose had never bothered to have them taken down. Uncle Fred and Uncle George had invented them and they were always doing something new: falling, exploding, dying.
She watched one star in the corner particularly. It had, for three days, been slowly dying, turning into a red giant and then suddenly going supernova one night while she had been in the middle of a nightmare – the light had been so bright that it had jerked her out of her dream… and then she’d heard screaming…
The stars on her ceiling were in accelerated-life mode. Rose was waiting to see what would happen to her the star in the corner now. She was particularly curious to see what would happen if a black hole formed on her ceiling, but apparently it wasn’t to be. The core of the star was the only thing that remained and it had decided to become a neutron star. Not enough mass, Rose thought vaguely as she turned over onto her stomach. A corner of the book that was still under her shirt poked at her stomach and Rose realized she’d forgotten all about it. She sat up and pulled it out, just as she heard footsteps on the staircase outside.
She was glancing at the replaced first page, with Severus Snape’s name on it, when her father entered the room.
‘We didn’t hear you come in,’ said Ron to his daughter. Rose wondered where he’d left her mother.
‘No, I didn’t want to disturb you.'
Ron sat down next to Rose on the bed and gave her a small smile. ‘You could never disturb us, sweetheart.’
Rose smiled back at her dad but her heart wasn’t really in it.
‘Dad?’ she said after a pause. ‘How did Severus Snape die, exactly?’
Ron’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Severus Snape?’ He watched her for a moment and Rose could tell he was wondering why she was asking. Rose had never mentioned her odd obsession with the man (it made even her feel weird) and Snape had never really been a topic of conversation at their house – whenever her parents and Uncle Harry had tried to tell her this stuff before she had listened quietly, but the fact of the matter was, she’d heard all these stories. Millions of times. Her parents had told her when she’d been a child yearning for bedtimes stories, and then she’d heard everything in more detail at school, where many children seemed amazed that she was the daughter of Harry Potter’s two best friends. Rose didn’t see what difference it made – her parents had been the best friends and everything that had happened to them had happened a long time ago. They didn’t often want to talk about it and so, really, others had no right to gossip. Rose had been through every single book in the school library that even mentioned Severus’s name. She had never really required a question-answer session with her parents.
Now she wanted to hear the tale once again. Hear it from someone who’d witnessed it. Not one of those researcher quacks who couldn’t help mentioning the fact that Snape had been a Death Eater every other sentence – as if it mattered. Look at what he’d done for England! All those years of being a spy…
At that moment, Ron’s eyes fell on the book Rose was holding.
‘What’s that?’ he asked, and he held out his hands. Rose handed him the book willingly.
Ron flipped through the pages slowly, after a brief pause on the first page. Rose saw his eyes trace Severus Snape’s name, but he didn’t react. When he had paged through the entire book, stopping momentarily at the red notes, but not reading them, he handed it back to his daughter.
‘You went to Grimmauld Place?’ he asked, and there was an uncharacteristic frown tugging at the corners of his lips.
‘Well – yes,’ replied Rose, wondering how he had known. ‘I didn’t mean to – I just found myself on a familiar street and followed it. I didn’t think about not going in.’
‘What if—’ began Ron, but seemed to think better of it. ‘You’re mother seems to have rubbed off in me these past few years,’ he went on, looking slightly amused. ‘Just be careful, Rose. Don’t go anywhere dangerous. Trust your instincts.’
Rose nodded slowly, and then asked, ‘How’d you know?’
‘I guessed. Where else would you find a book of Snape’s? You don’t know where his house is and anyway, it isn’t anywhere near here. The only other place where Snape had ever stored his things was Grimmauld Place.’
‘Will you tell me how he died, again?’
Ron seemed loath to recall the events of that night. Perhaps all the death it contained made him think about the here and now – about Hugo. Nevertheless, he humored his daughter – fatherhood had taught him a lot and it was only after the birth of his daughter that he’d learned a little patience. He went over everything that had happened that night, from when he, Harry and Hermione had run to the Shrieking Shack under the Invisibility Cloak, to Snape’s death.
After awhile Ron lapsed into silence. Rose had heard everything she needed to hear but she stayed put next to her father. Father and daughter sat in the dark, quieter than the night that enveloped them, thinking about everything. About the past, the present… about the future. But most of all they thought of Hugo Weasley and wondered where he was right now and what he was doing and if he was, finally, at peace.