Severus' eyes widened. He glanced from her to the photograph, probably for the thousandth time, while her grin grew wider and wider. When he finally found his voice, he managed to utter the only words his overloaded brain would allow.
"It's impossible."
"I know," Omegas replied.
"That means…" he breathed.
"Yes," she confirmed. "It means that the Resurrection Stone is a real thing. It means—"
"It means you were wrong," he cut her off.
Omegas suddenly lost her grin. She glanced around warily and shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
"Sometimes I am," she whispered. "But let's keep that between us."
Severus let out a dry chuckle, and Omegas immediately regained her smile. They sat in silence, pondering the implications of the existence of something like the Resurrection Stone.
"If someone can be brought back to life, it means that…" he began, but could not continue.
Omegas nodded gravely. "It means they have to be somewhere when they're not alive. That they really do end up in an…"
"Afterlife," Severus concluded.
They looked at each other. In those quiet moments, they both knew where the other's thoughts were going.
If there was an afterlife, then they weren't lost forever. If people ended up somewhere after death, then Lily was there. So was Jay. Their lives hadn't just ended; they hadn't just disappeared. They were somewhere real, perhaps even somewhere happy. They truly were in a better place.
Neither of them dared to voice the thought. When Omegas spoke again, it was in her usual inappropriately calm tone.
"So…" she murmured, her eyes glowing eerily once more. "Shall we go and get it?"
Severus frowned. He narrowed his eyes in scrutiny; for a moment, he suspected that she was suggesting they bring them back to life.
"For what purpose?" he asked.
"Well, not to use it, of course," she chuckled. "We couldn't take it otherwise, could we?"
Only then did he remember Dumbledore's spell. He sighed in relief.
"Of course," he said. "Then why?"
Omegas stood up and began to pace slowly around the room. "The Dark Lord—" she began, but stopped immediately.
Severus' eyes darted to her to find a disgusted grimace on her face.
"Forgive me. Force of habit. Riddle…" she resumed, "knows about the spell on the Stone."
Severus stood as well and joined her. "And how does he know?"
She gave him a fleeting, guilty look. "Because I had to give him information good enough to make him believe I had switched sides, and that seemed the only thing interesting enough, yet harmless enough, to tell him," she explained.
He reprimanded her with a glare, to which she responded with a loud huff.
"I know; I was stupid. But I thought that, even if he knew, he wouldn't be able to do anything about it. Even if he sent a Death Eater without specifying what they were looking for, they would know that they were going there to retrieve something that Riddle wanted to use, and they wouldn't be able to take it."
Severus raised an eyebrow. "I presume it didn't go that way?"
Omegas lowered her gaze. "No, it didn't…" she mumbled. "Well, technically it did, but then Riddle found another solution."
"And that would be?" he demanded.
"He… he thought of using Draco," she explained tentatively. "The plan was to take him, use him to get the Stone, since at that point he was sure Draco was on our side and would never want to use it, and then kill him. He already has the Cloak. Harry practically handed it to him… and of course, he has the Wand. He would become the Master of Death."
"But he doesn't have Draco," Severus pointed out.
"No, he doesn't," she said, her steps quickening. "But what if Lucius was seen? What if they were caught coming out of the Cabinet in the middle of the Ministry of Magic? I mean…"
She steppedd closer to him and shot him a grave look.
"If we get the Stone back, not only will we stop him from becoming the Master of Death. If we get there in time, if Draco has been captured, we might be able to stop Riddle from killing him. He could stay in the forest, searching for the Stone, for hours. For days, even, before Riddle gives up and kills him. The war could end in the meantime. Harry could manage to kill him. It would give Draco some time."
Severus studied her purple eyes for a long time. For several minutes, he tried to read her face, searching for the slightest hint of dishonesty. He still found none.
Eventually, he felt guilty for giving in to McGonagall's words. Those were the same eyes that had come close to never opening again countless times in the past few months alone, all in the name of winning the war.
He looked away quickly, because looking at them was starting to hurt.
"Why didn't you tell the Order?" he asked, more to fill the sudden silence.
She let out a bitter scoff. "After I exposed myself as Gellert Grindelwald's daughter and showed them the Deathly Hallows symbol branded on my wrist? Brilliant idea. They would certainly have believed me in good faith. Especially McGonagall."
She pulled an annoyed grimace and glanced away.
"Have you noticed how she looks at me? She's always looked at me like that ever since I set foot in this school. As if I were some sort of bloody monster. Both her and Dumbledore."
She flopped into an armchair and bounced on the cushion. Not only did he feel guilty, he now hated himself for having doubted her a moment earlier. He sat back down opposite her and watched her irritated scowl for a while.
"Well, perhaps showing up covered in blood on the first day of school didn't help your cause," he remarked.
Omegas' eyes snapped to him, he frown slowly softened. "Was that a joke, Severus?"
He averted his gaze. "No," he replied in all seriousness. "It was an observation."
"Right," she chuckled.
Severus paused for a few moments. Leaning forward in his chair, he addressed her in an extremely convincing yet utterly false tone of reproach.
"What exactly are you suggesting? That we sneak out of the castle while there's a risk of war breaking out here at any moment, to retrieve a stone hidden somewhere in the middle of the Forbidden Forest?"
She pondered; then pulled an insolent face and sshrugged. "Yes."
They stared into each other's eyes for the better part of a minute—she with her usual smile, and he with his usual scowl.
Severus, who found that prospect even less appealing than talking to Nagini, finally got up, turned his back on her, and reached the door.
"Shall we?"
Omegas jumped up from the armchair. Beaming and as excited as a schoolgirl, she slung her bag over her shoulder and rushed towards him. She gave him a look that he interpreted as 'You never disappoint'. All of a sudden, he forgot how much he had hated the consequences of her latest idea.
After leaving the dungeons, the first thing they did was to check that the battle hadn't already started. Looking out of one of the large barred windows on the ground floor, they found the park devoid of both golden shields and hooded figures.
Everything was quiet, an eerie stillness—the calm before the storm. The atmosphere in the castle was darker than ever. Everyone looked around warily and stood by their loved ones. Some wandered the corridors; others had seemingly lost the ability to move altogether. The air within the walls was heavy with an almost unbearable tension.
Omegas strolled along the corridor, as jovial and carefree as ever, and stopped in front of the barred doors guarded by stone statues.
"I imagine the Headmistress is preparing a grand exit," she said cheerfully. "We'll have to find another way out."
She walked over to the stairs and turned to face him.
"Coming?"
Severus followed her. They went up to the third floor and reached the wall on which the door to the Room of Requirement manifested. Omegas walked past it three times quickly and waited for the room to appear before her.
"Ah!" she exclaimed. She opened the door, peeked inside and came out with a smirk. "Perfect."
She stepped inside, and Severus hurried to follow her, closing the door behind him.
The room was tiny and completely empty, except for two brooms and a large window that took up most of the wall in front of them.
"So…" she said, already mounting one of the brooms. "Are you going to fly like us mere mortals, or put on a show?"
Severus raised an eyebrow and shot her a condescending look. Before her broom had even left the ground, he was already flying through the open window. Omegas caught up with him and spoke to what she could only perceive as a black shadow.
"Shall we land in the forest?"
Severus nodded, but she couldn't see him. Nevertheless, she guessed his answer, and the two of them flew beyond the Astronomy Tower.
Once they were high enough, they changed direction and reached the edge of the Forbidden Forest within minutes. Omegas landed almost immediately; Severus, still flying, manoeuvred through the trees and circled the area. After ensuring there were no Death Eaters around, he joined her and landed beside her.
"Seriously though," she said as she made the broom disappear inside her bag. "If you ever take the Animagus Potion, you should choose a bat."
He shot her a murderous look and walked quickly in the opposite direction.
"It was meant as a compliment!" she clarified, hurrying to catch up with him.
They walked in a shared silence that Severus once again experienced as unnatural. It had been years since he had felt the desire or need to speak; he had no idea how to handle it.
Omegas seemed lost in her own world, as always. He soon found himself wondering where she truly was, beyond the silent forest. She held her head high and watched the sun's rays filter through the orange trees as though she had never experienced an autumn before. Her red dress blended so well with the surrounding colours that Severus found himself gazing at her as one would at a painting.
Suddenly, all the feelings he had tried to hide from himself during her absence because they had caused him too much pain came flooding back. He had never been good at hiding such things. As unconventional as he might look, Severus had always been a lover of beautiful things, and he had never learned to be discreet when confronted with one he considered to be such.
She turned and looked at him for a moment. He looked away immediately; he felt uncomfortable. He had rarely felt uncomfortable in her presence, whether they were in his office preparing potions or in the privacy of his quarters. He knew he was the problem. It was his feelings that had made things awkward, as they had in the past. It was his fault if the once pleasant silences now felt unbearable.
Omegas smiled in his direction, clearly embarrassed. She lowered her head and, when she spoke, it was clear that she was trying to break the unnatural silence—one that seemed to be too much even for the quietest woman he had ever known to handle.
"You know, my father wanted me to be the last to gather the Hallows," she said.
She chose to talk about her father to avoid remaining silent beside him. The situation must have been more serious than he had thought.
"My mission was to use them to dominate non-magical people," she continued, grimacing with disgust. "The Resurrection Stone was the Hallow he was most interested in. He believed that I would be able to create an army of the dead."
She scoffed in annoyance and kicked a small stone that she found on her path.
"Then I was supposed to die of old age, leaving no heirs. That way, ownership of the Hallows would pass to no one, and the title of 'Master of Death' would die with me. Interesting plan, don't you think?"
Not knowing how to respond, he just looked at her without saying a word. She smiled at him as though he had offered her encouragement instead of an awkward silence.
"That's why he called me 'Omegas'," she explained. "I was supposed to be the 'Omega'. The last Master of Death. In that bizarre metaphor, he probably thought of himself as the 'Alpha', right?"
She laughed bitterly and shook her head.
"Too bad he never gathered the Hallows, so he couldn't be the Alpha of anything."
Severus remained silent for a few moments, desperately searching for something to say.
"What about 'Sylith'?" he finally asked.
"Hm?" she replied absently.
"Why 'Sylith'?"
She shrugged. "I chose it myself. I just like how it sounds."
Barely a few seconds later, Omegas halted abruptly.
"Ah, here it is!"
Severus was too busy alternating glances between her and his own shoes to register how long they had been walking for. He lifted his head and looked at the tree he had seen in the picture. In person, its effect was completely different: there was a kind of mystical aura around the twisted branches and dead trunk, a sensation that was impossible to capture in a photograph.
Omegas approached the black trunk and placed a hand on it. He kept his distance, wondering why, whenever she came across something unpleasant-looking, she seemed to feel the inexplicable urge to touch it.
"Isn't it strange that it isn't guarded?" he asked curiously. "I mean, this tree is obviously… odd."
Severus looked around warily. "Yes, it is strange."
He approached the tree too, watching as she ran her fingers along one of the lower branches. Then Omegas' grip tightened and she snapped the branch clean off.
"What are you doing?" Severus asked, looking up at her.
"Well, this tree is unique," she remarked.
He raised an eyebrow. "So?"
She shrugged. "There are a few experiments I want to do."
"A few… experiments?"
Omegas smirked and nodded vigorously. Severus, who was fully intending to participate in said experiments should they survive the day, rolled his eyes and scowled at her.
"We're here to get the Stone," he said gravely.
"Right," she replied calmly.
She crouched down and started moving the piles of yellow leaves that were stuck between the tree's roots. Severus joined her on the ground. It wasn't long before he noticed something unusual. Embedded beneath one of the oak's thick roots was a black, shiny, perfectly smooth stone.
He stared at it for a while, unable to move. Omegas approached him and followed the direction of his gaze.
"Is that… is that it?" she breathed.
He nodded. They stayed still, staring at it for several minutes, until Omegas sat down on the ground, crossing her legs and resting her chin on the back of her hands.
"We should have brought someone else," she said softly.
Severus turned to look at her and found her gaze unusually intense.
He frowned. "Why?"
She looked back at him. "Well, you know…" she whispered. "We're probably the two people most tempted to use it."
Severus watched her guilty face for a few seconds, then turned back to the Stone. When he looked at Omegas again, it was with one of his best scolding glares.
"You know the legend," he said sternly. "You told me about it yourself. It doesn't really bring the dead back to life, not completely. It would only be a reflection. A half-life. It would be a horribly selfish act."
"You're right," she conceded.
She turned back to the Stone in silence, clearly considering something.
"You take it," she said at last.
He turned to her sharply. "Why?"
She offered a weak smile. "Because you're a lot less selfish than I am."
Severus stared at her until the horror he felt at the thought of her suffering to the extent that she was tempted to use one of the Deathly Hallows compelled him to look away.
He cautiously reached out an arm towards the root. He grabbed the Stone, squeezed it between two fingers, and pulled. It came loose from the root almost immediately. Suddenly, he found himself holding the Resurrection Stone. He stared at it, unable to speak or move a muscle, and so did Omegas.
Their silent contemplation was interrupted by an eerie creaking. They both looked up in confusion and caught sight of the tree swaying back and forth.
Severus swallowed. "I think… I think it's…"
"Yes," she confirmed.
Before he could finish his thought, she threw herself on top of him, pushing him out of the path of the falling tree. The dead oak crashed to the ground with a loud thud—it was just a broken trunk once more.
Severus lifted his head to find Omegas' hands on his chest. When she moved them away and sat down on the floor, he tried to thank her, but no sound came out. He stared at her, his lips parted, mentally cursing himself.
He had held that woman in his arms as she mourned Tonks' death. He had supported her while she wore nothing but his cloak in that very same dark forest. He had treated her wounds while she lay half-naked on a white bed, without batting an eyelid. And now, in the middle of a mission and just steps away from a war that had possibly already started, he had the audacity to feel embarrassed?
He immediately regained control of himself, but it didn't last long. Omegas looked at him, smiled and raised a hand to his face. She pulled an orange leaf out of his hair, turned it around in her hand a few times, then threw it on the ground with the others.
"Do you have it?" she asked.
Severus was on the verge of betraying himself with a 'Do I have what?' when he finally remembered that he was holding the Resurrection Stone in his right fist. He opened his hand and showed it to her.
"Good!" she exclaimed.
She jumped to her feet and brushed the dirt off her blood-red dress. She held out her hand to Severus, who had now regained some semblance of composure and was able to take it and stand up, too.
"That was easy!" she declared happily. "Well, we'd better go."
She turned on her heels and headed back the way they had come.
Severus managed to take precisely three steps towards her. As he lifted his foot to take the fourth, the ground beneath his feet began to freeze, and a thick mist spread above him. Looking up, he tried to find the source of the mist, but he could see no more than a hand's width in front of his nose. When he turned back to look at Omegas, the mist was so dense that he could barely make her out.
"Omegas?" he called urgently.
A moment later, she was standing beside him, looking around and shivering as she wrapped her cloak tightly around her shoulders.
"Dementors?" she asked.
Severus nodded gravely, his eyes fixed forward.
He was terrified. Dementors didn't just mean imminent danger; they meant he would have to summon a Patronus. In front of her.
He turned pale as he looked back at her, hoping to find her busy summoning her hedgehog so that he could go unnoticed. But that wasn't the case. She was staring back at him just as anxiously. He understood why when he looked up again: it wasn't just a few hooded figures coming towards them. There were dozens, perhaps even hundreds of Dementors. Omegas raised her wand decisively and pointed it upwards. She continued to move it from one Dementor to another as she tried to decide exactly where to summon her Patronus.
Finally, she lowered it, swallowed audibly and turned back to him.
"Run?" she asked in a whisper.
Severus couldn't even nod. Horror had gripped him so completely that his body went rigid. All he could think about in those few seconds was that he did not want to die. Omegas turned, grabbed his arm and dragged him away.
They broke into a frantic run through the trees of the Forbidden Forest. They ran until Severus could no longer feel his feet touching the ground. He didn't feel tired, he didn't feel the icy air on his face, nor did he care about the mist that prevented him from seeing where he was going. His mind was empty except for that one intrusive, terrifying thought. He did not want to die.
Their run came to a halt after what felt like a few seconds, or perhaps months; Severus had lost his ability to measure time. Another dozen Dementors appeared in front of them. They looked around—they were everywhere. In front, behind, above: a compact dome of black cloaks gradually closing in around the two of them.
They looked at each other. Omegas glanced from him to her bag, then approached him with surprising steadiness.
"Fly," she said firmly.
Severus looked at her, dazed. "What…?"
"Fly," she repeated. "They won't notice you if they're busy with me. Take my bag and—"
"No," he replied.
She met his eyes, her apparent calm unshaken. "Yes, Severus," she innsisted, handing him the bag. "Take it."
He looked down at the object. His clarity returned, if only temporarily. He met her gaze unyieldingly.
"No," he repeated.
Omegas swallowed. She glanced around quickly; when she looked back at him, she suddenly lost her composure.
"Take it, Severus!" she barked.
Severus shook his head decisively. He no longer understood his own actions; his decisions were now guided by instinct rather than the cold, rational thinking he had always relied on.
She cast another anxious glance at the Dementors surrounding them—they loomed closer by the second. Her anger gave way to despair.
"Please," she begged. "Don't let me kill you. Not you." She raised the bag in her trembling hands again, tears trickling down her round face. "Please, take it."
He walked up to her and looked her in the eye. "No."
Omegas' face was crossed again by a flash of pure rage. "Why not?" she cried. "Do you want to die, Severus? Is that what you want?"
Severus could sense the Dementors approaching. He could feel their cloaks displacing the air behind him.
Suddenly, it all made sense. As joy drained away, stolen by the creatures flying overhead, his mind quietened and everything became clear. He saw his life flash before his eyes, just as it had done when Nagini's fangs tore at his neck. But this time it was different. The life he could see was no longer filled with regret, pain, and guilt. There was joy in the last few months he had been given. There was sharing, affection—life. A real life; a life worth living. It was that life he did not want to lose. It was because of that life that he did not want to die.
It was because of her that Severus feared death again.
He moved closer to her, watching her tear-streaked face and her wide, purple eyes. He felt his own heart beating as it hadn't for years, and he was almost sure he could feel Omegas' heart racing as fast as his own. A new consciousness invaded him—so similar yet so different from the one that had been with him for so long. He did not want to die… but if he had to, he wanted to have uttered those words at least once.
"Omegas," he murmured, closing the distance between them.
"Shit… I did it, didn't I?" she murmured shakily. "I killed you."
"Omegas," he repeated calmly.
She burst into tears. "Don't do this to me, Severus. Please—"
"Omegas—"
"WHAT?" she shouted.
Severus clung to the one emotion the Dementors had not yet been able to take from him. Beautiful, powerful, but with a veil of bitterness that made it untouchable.
"I love you."
He closed his eyes and felt light. He would die, and there would be no way for him to witness the consequences of his declaration, whatever they might be. He would die knowing that he was capable of love and, for the first time in his life, capable of declaring it. For those few seconds that separated him from oblivion, he felt powerful.
"Say it again."
Severus opened his eyes.
Lately, he had been making a mental list of the reactions he might expect if Omegas ever discovered his feelings. At the top of the list was, of course, disgust. He had decided to put genuine pity in second place, which seemed almost as plausible. After that came a series of progressively worse catastrophes, culminating in an unlikely but not impossible surge of pure hatred. As he looked at the woman in front of him, however, he saw something that not even his most pessimistic fantasies could have predicted.
Omegas was pointing her wand at him.
"W-what?" he stammered.
"Say it again," she pressed.
Severus blinked, torn between terror and an odd sense of intrigue. He thought he could see a hint of a smirk on her lips again.
"I… love you?" he whispered.
The hint ceased to be such and became a full-blown grin. Omegas stopped pointing the wand at him and raised it into the air, brushing the Dementor above her head with the back of her hand.
"Expecto Patronum!" she shouted.
For a few moments, Severus could see nothing. A blinding light burst from the tip of Omegas' wand, and a powerful blast of air knocked him to the ground, his arm shielding him from the bright glare. He felt the Dementors scatter quickly around him, the mist lifting and the cold giving way to a pleasant autumn breeze.
Once the light had moved far enough away, Severus was finally able to lower his arm and see the creature hovering above his head. It was bigger and brighter than any Patronus he had ever seen. Lying on the ground with his eyes wide open and unable to move a muscle, he stared at what was undoubtedly a giant bat.
He glanced at Omegas, who, with one hand shielding her forehead from the light, watched the result of her spell with immense satisfaction.
"Yes. Oh yes!" she exclaimed. She turned and pointed a finger at him. "You! Perfect timing, Severus. Extraordinary timing!"
She approached him quickly and held out her hand. Trembling, dazed and pale, he took it and let her pull him up. She looked back up, smiling and nearly jumping with excitement.
"Do you realise what you've just done?"
He opened his mouth, closed it again and swallowed. "What… I have done?" he rasped.
"Yes, you!" she confirmed. "You made me cast a Present Patronus!"
Severus tried to speak again, but nothing came out this time. He looked her in the eye. He couldn't tell whether she was about to cry or burst out laughing.
She settled for a trembling chuckle. "Can you believe it?" she murmured.
As he regained the ability to form clear—or at least coherent—thoughts, Severus slowly realised the obvious implication of producing a bat-shaped Present Patronus in response to his love declaration.
She… loved him back.
Omegas turned sharply and walked back to the spot where she had summoned her Patronus. He searched for something to say that would be appropriate to the situation; he searched his experience, but he had never experienced anything like that in his life. Then he searched for something to do—he knew exactly what he wanted to do. But his body refused to move.
Finally, he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and forced his composure back. He took a single, hesitant step forward and waited for her to meet his gaze. Feigning an indifference that was the antithesis of his actual feelings, he raised an eyebrow and shot her a dry look.
"That wasn't your Patronus," he remarked, his tone deliberately argumentative.
She bowed her head and blushed visibly. "Well, I… I told you it was meant as a compliment, didn't I?"
A half-smile spread across his face before he could suppress it. "How long has it been like this?"
Omegas twirled the wand in her hands. "A while," she muttered. "Luckily, I was gone by the time the Dementors got to the shield," She chuckled. "Can you imagine the awkwardness?"
Severus managed to take another step towards her.
"I assume that's why you didn't summon it immediately when we were attacked," he said in a surprisingly convincing tone of reproach.
"Yes," she mumbled, lowering her head again.
"You would have preferred to die, wouldn't you?" he said scornfully.
He watched as she opened her mouth, trying in vain to stammer out a response. He grinned, amused and vaguely malicious. He told himself that seeing that aura of calm shatter before his eyes was worth all the effort he had put into regaining control.
Finally, once he had taken in the sight to his satisfaction, he drew his wand, raised it into the air and whispered, "Expecto Patronum."
Omegas watched as the silvery snake hovered in front of them, drawing irregular circles in the air. It stopped in front of Severus' face and finally disappeared as quietly as it had appeared. She gave him a mischievous grin and sucked her teeth in annoyance.
"You're a bloody hypocrite," she declared.
She looked him up and down with barely concealed fondness. Then she turned her back on him and walked briskly in the opposite direction, confident that he was following her.