Due to a quirk of my twisted mind, all references to Snape's father as a violent character until now are now to his grandfather. Trust me, it'll be more interesting that way. Previous chapters are edited to comply. The necessities of a WIP... I just couldn't resist this new subplot, but you'll see here, many past mysteries are slowly unfolding.

Thanks for reading along.
____


The library was too suffused with her presence at his knees, he hauled the Pensieve to his room.

He looked at it properly for the first time in years, and asked himself whether his propensity to fall asleep in the library was only due to love of books. He'd moved back into the house from the Spinner's End miserable hut, the Snape sole heir, the night after his father's first -and last- burst of magic.

Polly had showed him to the Master bedroom, but he'd chosen the ill-lit narrow cell, and there cried himself to sleep for the first time of many.

It was stocked with the graceless furniture the Prince bride had slept in as a girl and brought into matrimony, a cupboard blackened by centuries of greasy hands and a heavy mahogany bed. The old writing table was the same she, and then he, had written desperate poetry on during the stifling summer days off school, and he still slept in the same scrupulously clean Prince monogrammed sheets, too many times washed for even Polly to make them look fresh. The once-green paint had faded into yellow and vert-de-gris splotches; the bare walls seemed to cave around wooden shutters crackled with age, which starkly projected their shade over the wavy windowpanes of centuries-old thick glass, unsoftened by any drapes. The only object he'd brought in was cavenged from a burning house whose inhabitants would need it no more, a goose-necked metal reading lamp, which also thought it was connected to electricity…

He briefly reflected on the misery of it all, and preferred it with all his might to the sumptuous suite he'd probably share soon with Bellatrix, all luxury in all the senses of the words. His thin lips pulled the usual sneer, acid.

He had to know exactly which words the girl had heard.

His wand made short work of the Pensieve transfer, and he dived and hurried through his memories of that day, fast-forwarding to his first meeting with Narcissa.

"But why do you want this boy for," she asked again, upright and uptight.

"We had an agreement, Narcissa. You accepted my money, you demanded… many other things, which you got. Narcissa, this boy is mine."

"No," she said. "This boy was conceived only so he could be raised as the coming King of the Wizarding People. As Lucius' widow it is my duty and my right to see to his upbringing."

"Then you should have had it stated in the Breeding arrangement. There are some Breeding ceremonies in which the Breeder is only a womb. Not here. You accepted –

"Don't lecture me. Without the Tripartite Bond your little Mudblood paramour would never have accepted… Lucius had to promise her that the fetus wouldn’t be harmed in any case, that she'd have a say in his upbringing, what else…" Her shoulders slumped. "In hindsight, I should never have accepted this farce of a Breeding arrangement at all…"

"Indeed. Many were of the same opinion."

She turned on him viciously. "Don’t you remember, how it was after the Dark Lord fell? We had to do something." She spoke with passion, red spots flaming on her pale noble cheeks. "Eveything in shambles. Every second boy of good Family dreamt to snatch a Mudblood and raise children with 'new beliefs'! Everything that stood for our values was reviled and thrown to the mud… The winds blowing at the Ministry… next thing we knew we'd have had to open our houses and fraternize with actual Muggles, and not only their miserable magical offspring."

Snape silently asked himself if she'd ever held as much disgust for her rapist brother-in-law as for a Muggle, per se.

"Lucius wanted to slowly bring our World back to its real values, you see, after the other megalomaniac's fiasco. Mudb.. Muggle-borns could do no wrong, and mixed blood was the thing a mother was to vie for in securing a good match for her children." She couldn't help her snort. "Lucius had to be elected. He had to be elected to Minister of Magic, to stop that folly, to keep a chance to steer our world back to its rightful path. So… his idea was brilliant, like himself. What more than an alliance with that… that Granger daaarling, could persuade the public we were not dangerous Pureblood supremacists, or Death Eaters extremists, or whatever slurs were running at the time. She could be made actually useful. And she did. Do you have an idea how many Muggleborns actually voted for Lucius because of the Tripartite?

And in the longer term, it should have been even better. Lucius wanted to bring all those Muggleborn girls who were running amok in Diagon Alley with their painted faces and loose morals into the folds of good families, who would have taken charge of the offspring, taught them our values before we all bowed to Muggle culture."

She fidgeted on her brocaded chair. "So… The Tripartite Breeding Ceremony… it was supposed to be a… a celebrity-poster so many other girls would follow the Granger example and agree to Breed for Pureblood families. It was hard enough for him to get the Granger girl to agree to this. He had to go to extreme lengths… he had to act as if he saw her as an actual partner, and not as the vessel she was."

She caught his look on her. "For me, too. It was a simple choice, really. The… the other boy was already showing his failure as a hope for our next King. And in a Breeding arrangement the child is considered as the Family's offspring, in all regards, not as a Half-Blood, or as the child of a Muggleborn."

"As a Half-Blood myself…"

"Stop this charade with me, will you?" She was incensed now. "I already told you nobody with a minimal knowledge of their genealogy was fooled by that Snape charade. Your Serape grandfather might have been a Squib, but he was a rich and powerful one, and well-connected. He knew exactly how to steer his dynasty, he married a powerful witch… If he chose to bring his son up in that flat Muggle world to spare him the humiliation of being called a Squib too, that doesn't turn him, or your father, into Muggles. And the proof is," she turned on him viciously, "the proof is after they got that banking empire all set up in the Muggle world he chose an excellent witch for Tobias. Excellent magical stock."

"Excellent?" His grandfather had called his mother poor (it was an insult in his mouth), shabby, cunning, homely, pushy, harpy, unfeminine… never excellent for sure.

"A tit for a tat, Severus. The Prince magical abilities and youth for the Serape money. Very good matchmaking. And it worked."

He kept his eyes steady on her. How could he presume to explain –assuming he'd want to- the utter misery of a young, enthusiastic, incredibly powerful witch married off as cattle to an older sour Squib who saw her as a breeding cow and a constant reminder of his own incapability? The suffering of both under his tyrant of a grandfather? The match had been made in Hell, had probably sent both his parents there. And the sins of the fathers were visited on him. Repeatedly.

Aloud he only said, "You know how it ended." Much like the twisted matchmaking of Lucius and Her…

"It wasn't so rare in the old times… But if your father hadn't had this… inconvenient bout of magic he'd have been able to proudly go back to the old family name, in due time, and send his extremely magically gifted children to Hogwarts with his head held high and his coffers full. The Serape dynasty shouldn’t disappear," she said. "You should go back to your rightful name."

"Let me keep the boy, and I will."

"But you see, Severus. This boy must be mine. He's a symbol, don't you see? Lucius wanted to bring all those Mudblood girls to give good stock to the Families. From before his inception the boy was a Malfoy. What kind of a message would it- "

"So give him to my Family."

"You would not dispose of him the way you should, if the boy takes after his Mudblood grandparents." The echoes of their conversation on the terrace were clear in their minds. The way I accepted my own children to be torn from my womb, the way she would not agree to even if it meant plunging our whole world into chaos...

Aloud she said, "You would not breed him as befits the next King."

It was useless. "Narcissa," he said lazily. "You ripped from me a very profitable settlement for this boy. And I am ready to stand by our agreement. But if you renege, I will crush you." And myself. "Don't make me."

"Severus." Her smile was warm and almost compassionate. "You know I've always liked you. You shrug at the money, like I would if I didn’t need it for loftier purposes. But if you had anything else up your sleeve, Severus, you'd never have agreed to keep company with Bellatrix in exchange for the boy. You were Lucius' best friend… don't diminish yourself with empty threats."

If he told her anything she'd have Bella killed by morning.

Sometimes you had to marvel at the universe's sense of humor…


He fast-forwarded the Pensieve to his meeting with Bellatrix.

He skimmed over the first instants of their meeting, the checking for wards and listening devices, the time spent stoking her lust on her fur-covered reclining bergere…

He'd made it good though, softened and opened her to him in the most basic way possible… and then whisked her Side-Along to the French lake of Bois-le-Roy, at the edge of the Fontainebleau forest in France.

"Where are we?" Her whisper was lost in the wind howling around them, amplified as it streamed around the columns of the cathedral of night-black trunks and statues ruins.

He firmed his arm around her shoulders. "This, my dear, is the original Forest of Brocande, whatever the tourist-mongers say. This is the cradle of your real family."

He'd made a conscious decision to depart from Slytherin subtlety. A little.

Gallantly he led her to a thunder-stricken trunk, charmed it so it could sit them both comfortably. A whispered Lumos, and the headless statue of a bathing Nymph glowed faintly, its light yellow and softly flickering. For a moment they sat together in silence. He shifted so as to face her.

"I suffered from seeing you so… subservient to Narcissa today."

Her swollen mouth hissed as she licked her lips. He'd always marveled how her tongue wasn’t stained blood-red, considering the amount of lipstick it rubbed against. "You don't suffer by my humiliations, Severus… Quite the contrary."

"Only when it's to me, Bella. Only to me. I want to see you at your rightful place, at the pinnacle of society. And there I want you bending to me… to my pleasure. Wouldn't you relish that?"

She purred. The sound echoed and buzzed through his chest.

"I could give you freedom, Bellatrix." His tone was still lazy and indifferent, while his stomach twisted itself in the same ugly knots as Bellatrix' mouth. If only the girl had talked to him before, he could have saved himself months of keeping company… months of havoc.

He'd pushed his annoyance at Granger's clumsy political game down, to where he could retrieve it later.

"I could give you power greater than your sister's… Glory. Maybe… maybe political power, if you'd care for it."

"Why now?" Her eyes were cunning, and elusiveness redundant.

"Because'e only now has it come to my…." Knowledge? Power? His hooded eyes were keen on her, and she would think "interest." Aloud he said, "attention."

"You were splendid at the audience," she mused, her tongue-on-lips thing flickering again.

The Snape out of the Pensieve remembered how this lick of hers had driven him crazy when he was fourteen…

He focused back on the Pensieve, where the witch was leering at him.

"You were masterful…and soo cruel to Narcissa… Now think of this... coincidence... that you can make me stronger, just at this point in time. How convenient."

"Indeed." He made a point of looking upwards. No stars were showing through the naked branches, only heavy clouds rolling pregnant with thunder. "Who knows, Bella? Maybe it's destiny."

"What do you have?"

He leaned forwards, intently. "Doesn't this place talk to you? Who are you, Bella? Why is it that Lucius married her, and not you? You were his first love, his…"

"He was meant for Narcissa from infancy. Lucius and I… we were too similar anyway. And my parents and his were dead-set against this match…" She shrugged. "Anyway... After a very short time our Lord came along... and Lucius paled. Narcissa was welcome to him."

Of course. Incest was nothing, but the dangers of inbreeding… both families had intended to restore Pureblood supremacy through a highly gifted child.

Bella was still talking. "I was your first too. And you didn’t marry me either."

"You were our Lord's favorite by the time I came of age. And then he gave you to Rodolfus." Thank Merlin for small mercies. Yet the witch still managed to stir something in that part of him who'd relished darkness, when she wasn’t in the throes of her demented lust or sadistic moods.


"I am a widow now. And you never married." She let out a small coquettish laugh. "It gave me much comfort, knowing you'd never tethered yourself to another witch…"
Her leer became more pronounced in the eerie nocturnal light.

She pulled her wand , began playing with it evocatively without taking her eyes off him.

The Snape in the Pensieve seemed oblivious, although it had been a moment of deep anxiety. He'd suddenly known what she would bargain for. He had the power to make her agree to anything, if only he would… He bloody wouldn’t. Or so he'd thought at that moment. He'd tried to steer the conversation back to its proper path.


"Women," he sighed. "Who can understand you? Narcissa has proven so very unreasonable about the boy… Would you know anything about it?"

She sprang up, flipped around their seat so now she was standing behind it, her hands white-knuckled on the jagged wood backrest, looking at him from above. "I did nothing to the boy! As to Narcissa… Nothing I can do about it, is there? I can try to talk to her of course. But why would she care?" Her tone had turned coarse and cheap. Elemental.

Snape-out-of-the-Pensieve squinted, trying to suck more meaning from the scene playing before him, from the protestation of innocence.

"You are… Your welfare is important to her." He'd guarded himself for saying aloud what she already knew, that his renewed interest in her had been a payment to Narcissa for keeping the boy.

"Not enough." She was harsh with distress now, fully expecting him to threaten her with the end of their relationship, for what it was, if the boy was taken from him.


"She would make an effort, if she knew how much you want the boy to be mine. The Blacks stand up for each other. Although for you…"

"Nobody ever has much stood up for me… apart from our Lord." Her keen intelligence shone through. Could her madness have been born –apart from her birth mother's heritage of course- from this insidious feeling of not really belonging? She could be his for the plucking...

He waited. Patiently, as her mad eyes shone with pride at her Black heritage, and with the insecurity which had always been there, the keen not-fitting feeling that may have spurred her spinning so fast, so off... her need for him so early in her life, and so late. She began pacing the clearing, passing before and behind him, supple, panther-like and high-strung.

"What do you know?"

He shrugged. "Many things."

Snape-out-of-the-Pensieve squared his shoulders backwards. This had been the moment he'd realized the consequences of granting the knowledge to Bellatrix, the status, without steel hawsers to keep her from plunging their world into her own brand of chaos. Realized the nature of the only steel hawsers he could tether her with.

At this moment in time, Severus Snape had seen his two options unfurl before him: he could relinquish the boy to Narcissa, or he could reveal to Bellatrix the secret of her birth, and have her pull rank to give the boy to him, now she'd be Em's next-of-kin... provided he gave her something she wanted. Both were damning.

He never really had had a choice. Since the other impudent wench had barged into his study, all starved and twitchy...

At this moment the man in the Pensieve sat bolt upright, realization stark in his dark eyes. He rose in a fluid movement, tall and dark among the dark tall trees.

"If you had the power to give this boy to me, Bellatrix, would you do it?"

She strained towards him from the inviting pose she'd stricken by the unnervingly glowing statue. Its graceful arms were holding an urn high above, washing her absent head and graceful stone body. The living witch's face was cunning and hungry.

"How could I?"

"Assuming."

Her lower lip stretched itself horribly towards her ears, baring very sharp, very small lower teeth.

"I hate this boy," she growled. "Without it I would have gotten the Mudblood years ago. But Lucius was keen on protecting her…"

Suddenly she was at kneeling at his feet in a supplicant's pose, hands gripped in his belt, her silk robes pushed into the mud. "Give me the Mudblood, Sev. Give her to me, and I will give you the boy, if I can. I must have her."

"She's not the first Mudblood you have tortured but not ended, Bella. Why her?"

Her laugh was the ominous cackle which had propelled witches up burning stakes for centuries.

"Because of her I have no children. She cursed me. I know this, and it won't be over until she dies. She… she bewitches men, even though she's uglier than sin. Even my Rodolfus had eyes only for her, Mudblood that she was … he almost hit me that night, so I'd stop having fun with her when I could … Even Lucius. Whatever Lucius told you, he fell for her at the end. Let her kill him when he should have, could have reduced her to ashes three weeks before… But he couldn’t bring himself to harm the Mudblood b.tch. And Narcissa knew it. That's why she didn’t hex me when I sent- " Her hand flew to her mouth, but her appalled eyes were open wide at her gaffe, and Snape slipped in a very thin, very rapid arrow of Legilimency. Fighting figures by the Thames, seen through a Pensieve. He retreated before she noticed.


Bellatrix was all concentrated on her jealous rage. "Even you. You've been sheltering her for more than a year now."

"I've been using her."

"Give her to me!" Rage had taken her over now. Her hands tortured the Tudor open collar which set off her ravaging décolletage, creamy in the surrounding blackness.

She calmed her voice although she was still panting, infused it with all the exceptional sex-appeal she was capable of. "Give me the girl, Severus. And if I have it in my power, the boy will be yours." She pushed herself upright, facing him wildly.

Snape out-of-the-Pensieve was so tense, so angry at his Pensieve-doppleganger, he almost fell.

He could have agreed. He should have agreed. Instead of that he'd gone off on a hare-brained plan… maybe Bella was right. Maybe the Granger girl had him bewitched. What he'd done in the scene he was looking at was foolhardy enough for her, or even her friends, to have done when they were but teenagers.

He watched as he in the Pensieve leaned backwards, sat again, stretched his long legs, oblivious to the fat drops of rain which had begun falling upon them.

"Wouldn't you prefer a child, Bella? Your own child… who could be King one day?"

"Who… would be the father?" A half-smile played on her ravaged countenance. Water rivuleted down her face.

"What does it matter? To be the Queen Mother… Wouldn't you like that?"

The cunning look took the upper hand again.

"This boy. Why do you want him for, so much? So you'll be the next King's father? Or is it only to please the Mudblood b.tch?"

If you only knew what I endure at this moment to please her…

"If I have this boy, Bella, and if I have it my way, this boy will not be the next King. Unless of course, I have no choice." He should never have said that.

"So what do you want him for?"

He shrugged. "Potions ingredients. What is it to you?"

"What is it to me? He's my sister's. As you said, we Blacks stand up for each other. And… I cannot afford Narcissa crossed with me."

"But you wouldn’t need her anymore… Not with…" He gestured at the encompassing forest. "Not with your heritage, that was born here."

She looked at the forest around them, ears stretched to grasp behind the sounds of the night. "Why are we here? Tell me, Severus."

"I will tell you a story, Bella. A story about a beautiful young witch, with black hair and eyes just like yours, and about a blond wizard who met her when she was only thirteen…"

"I was fourteen when Lucius and I-"

"It's not you I'm talking about. And not Lucius…"

She'd stayed uncharacteristically quiet during the story, and for a few moments after… Seeing her again in the Pensieve, how she'd swallowed and turned away to hide her eyes, Snape-from-the-outside was almost sure she'd been weeping for her mother. The water drops on her cheeks were rounder, more plentiful than on her shoulders.


But the witch in the Pensieve only said, "It could explain many things…"

"Yes Bella. It could. It could also make you the boy's legal guardian. His next of kin… You're a Malfoy true and true… on both sides. And I can prove it. Only – I – can prove it."

Her mask of rigid, angry covetousness was back. "I will give you the boy," she hissed. " But I want her."

When he'd taken the Mark he'd done it with dark gusto. The second time Severus Snape damned himself he did it with a cramping stomach and a heart which didn’t bleed, but menaced to stop beating.

He did it to protect this Mudblood witch who had probably bewitched him, as she'd done Rodolphus and Lucius. He did it with the mad, desperate hope that had risen in his chest but a moment before, to play everybody once again, but this time to turn it to his advantage.

"You've suffered enough, Bella. The boy… the boy under my care will not become King, if I do not wish so." Now. "But our son may."

"I cannot bear children. The Dark Lord…"

"The Dark Lord was… physically diminished. And I don't believe the girl cursed you, you're infinitely more powerful than she is. Maybe Rodolfus wanted you to believe so… Maybe the Dark Lord didn’t want you to bear children to another man…"

Her mad, beautiful eyes bore into his, and he let her see what he wanted her to. What he wanted. Severus Snape holding a black-haired baby with piercing eyes.


"Did you say… our son?" She brought a hand to her chest, without affectation this time.


He pushed his advantage to the hilt. Ruthlessly. "Give me this boy, Bella, and I will give you a son. I believe," he thoughtfully examined his nails, "that I am powerful enough to sire a King to the Malfoy line's last heiress…"


"But… but if I can't… or if you… after all your father…"


"Was thought a Squib, indeed, until he exhibited great power. And my grandfather too. But think of the great house of Serape. Think of the Princes. Think of the Malfoys, which you are on both sides. And in the worst case…"


Snape-out-of-the-Pensieve winced with pain. And shame. And deep, burning longing for what he'd thought he could achieve at that moment. What the real Severus Snape knew now was forbidden to him to even dream of.


The man inside lowered his voice to a conspirator's whisper.


"We can have the Mudblood Breed for us. If the outcome is unsatisfactory… well. I already know not to make the mistakes Lucius made." He allowed himself a chortle. "She'll be duly obedient to me. But if the child is fit, Bella… We will have sired a King."


Poor fool him. He'd been relying on his skill with potions to keep Bellatrix barren… relying on this complicated charade to cover his terrible, his sick need for a child with Her, a child nobody would be able to tear from him. He'd grown truly attached to Em, but with this new capacity for… love, if that was what it was, had grown a raging need for a child that would be his, and Her's. Theirs. A child that couldn’t be born in their circumstances, unless… there in the clearing he'd thought he found a way.


From the outside of the Pensieve he could coldly analyze his alter ego's conduct. He could snort all his might at Her's foolhardiness, at her reckless actions. But how had he shaped his own life?

He'd rushed in to receive the Mark in the stupid belief the shame and hate he'd lived in since childhood would be alleviated… by swearing allegiance to a monolithic freak bent on destroying human civilization for a return to values which included burning children alive to appease higher powers. And after he was finally set sort of free, which had taken him more than twenty years of Hell…


He'd had offered matrimony and a family to a crazed, malevolent witch he'd probably have to kill if she didn't annihilate him first, in order to protect the one he really wanted to have a family with. And the smoothest way he'd found to do it, was to offer his most intimate enemy to have his secretly beloved carry a child for the three of them.
He shook his head slowly at the scene in the Pensieve.


He would have tried to make it work yet, if he hadn't hurt Her again in the nursery. But. But he had proven, again and again, that the violent streak which made Snape men kill their wives was alive and raging inside himself. That was, also, part of the reason he'd proposed to Bellatrix, if the ugly truth must be considered bluntly. If he had to kill a woman he was living with… Let it not be Her.


His whole being had shattered in the nursery, when he'd hurt Her again. He wouldn’t put himself in a position to do it anymore, ever.


Nor the child he'd been dreaming of having with her, he'd been dying to have with her… because there would be no such child.


He plunged back into the Pensieve, stomach churning with acid no potion could counter.

Bellatrix had been watching him from under hooded eyes, her lips apart and wet and not only from the rain. "Did you just propose to me, Severus?"

"I will not slight you with maudlin words, Bella. You do not believe the next Heir would be a bastard?"

"But still-"

"I took you to the most magical forest in France, where the Druids gave magic to your ancestors, and here I talked about a son. It should be enough, woman."


She nodded thoughtfully. "Indeed. And for my wedding present, Severus… the Mudblood?" A hopeful smile made her both very young, very touching, and deeply horrible.


"No," he said easily. "I shall keep her as my plaything."

"But-"

"You are not, I hope, suffering under these delusions of equality between men and women the Mudbloods have propagated? We shall present a model of return to our traditional values, Bellatrix. A self-respecting, well-born wizard will not be grudged his privileges. And you will refrain from any attack on her, that I have not authorized. Is that clear, Bellatrix?" His voice had swelled on the last words, threateningly.


"But-"


"I shall keep my house, Bella. With all that's in it. The other boy will be raised there until he goes to Hogwarts by the Mudblood, per my orders. I shall work there everyday, and you may visit, from time to time. We shall acquire a suitable abode for the both of us as soon as the little matter of the payments to Narcissa is settled." He cut her renewed attempt to talk. Your father – or should I say both your fathers? – also kept secondary quarters. It is practically a requisite for a man of standing. And I shall not tolerate anything but a suitably traditional wifely behavior from you, apart in those areas where... we are already in the habit of playing differently." Let her take lovers and rid him from her repulsive lust… He raised his hand and let it rove over her torso. "And I shall fulfill… my duties…to the best of my abilities."


She gasped, she bucked… she surrendered.


He felt like a whore. But she wasn't satisfied yet.


"She must pay. She must suffer. I want to see her suffer. Promise me…"

He called her eyes with his, let her skim over many scenes. Their first interview. Hermione waking up after her sickness and bargaining for the price of potions. Her eating Em's leftovers. The separation. "Help is not wanted in this family reunion…" A ravaged Granger leaving with slumped shoulders and red eyes…


"This is of no consequence almost," she hissed. "I want… I want to see her broken. I want to see her writhing on the floor again. She must suffer."


His smirk sent the black-haired witch clinging to him with dark lust. "Do not fret, Bella. As you shall see for yourself… living with me entails no small suffering."