Chapter Text
Prologue
“Severus, we must fuck.”
Only decades as a spy, of having command of his every reaction, saved him from spitting out his tea across the High Table. But gods, it was a close thing. He slid Sybil Trelawny a narrowed look. “Must we?”
“Yes, yes we must.”
She waved her bone china cup and light skimmed the thick layer of tea leaves caught there in a brown splodge. The bangles on her thin wrists clanked and the waft of Assam, sherry and patchouli pricked pain at his sinuses.
“The leaves have never lied to me. Not once in all my years. It’s here.” Sybil thrust the cup under his nose and the shard of pain sharpened across his cheekbones. “There? See? The Horns of Aphrodite.”
Severus fought not to close his eyes, to pinch his nose, though the ache of his sinuses was deepening. Bloody patchouli. The witch had talent, history couldn’t deny it, he couldn’t deny it, but she’d never shown any control over her ability to bare witness to the future. Deep down, he believed she knew that…hence the grasping at all manner of…aids.
He had to be thankful that it was a fortnight before the new school year began and that there were no students and very few staff in the castle.
“Sybil…”
He could be sharp, he could be the Severus Snape of old and shred her words until she was little more than tatters. But that was before Voldemort fell. Before he survived. Before he sat again as the Headmaster of Hogwarts and as the wizard he wanted to be.
“In the time to match. The time to fix.”
A full shiver ran down his spine.
That voice, a low croaking that dragged him back to a door, to his ear pressed to cold wood and the spilling of a prophecy that would almost destroy him.
He caught the cup as it slipped from Sybil’s sagging fingers. The witch slumped back in her chair and her head flopped to her shoulder. A darkness twisted in her, as if the cloudless night sky moved across her eyes and her breath puffed in chilled curls.
Severus fought not to run, to scramble back and to get the fuck away from yet another prophecy.
The drone of her voice fixed him to his seat. “Snakes and lions, eagles and badgers. Matched and mixed. Caught and bound.
“Only they who lied, who then lie, will pull us free.
“There is darkness in the bindings. A pull, a weave, a drain, a death.
“Two will break them. The Man of Grey and the Woman of Gold.
“In the time to match. The time to fix.”
A sucking rattle of Sybil’s breath snapped across him. Done. It was done.
Fuck.
Fucking fuck.
“Severus?”
Sybil blinked, her eyes owlish behind the thick lenses of her spectacles. A shaking hand reached for her mouth and a tear tracked down her cheek. Her chest lifted on a choked sob. “A…another one?”
He jerked a nod in reply. “Best get you to Minerva.”
Severus helped the sobbing woman to her feet, tucking her into his body. Her thin fingers clung to the buttons of his frock coat. Gods, she was little more than a pile of layered silks, skin and bone. Poor witch. Life had never been kind to Sybil Trelawny.
They were both damned by prophecy, every time, because fuck-it-all, what were the odds he was the Man of Grey?