In the Harry Potter Without Harry Potter

Chapter 429: Questions and Answers (2 in 1)

"Snape had always kept a back door for himself in Britain, and previously when he was a deputy headmaster here in Britain, he had been in contact with this potion shop in Knockturn Alley, using an alias called Prince to supply the shop with illegal potions on a full-time basis. At the same time, after the two parties had worked together long enough to have trust, a sum of money was deposited in the potion shop, and it was agreed that if someone came to his shop and uttered the name, Prince, then the money would have to be given to that person, no matter who the person who uttered that name was."

Lily had learned all she could from the memories of the owner of the potion shop and quickly discerned the link to Snape in these.

Jon wasn't surprised by this, it was only normal for Snape to have a back door in Britain, it would only strike Jon as wrong if he hadn't prepared anything for himself after all these years in a high position.

"So we're off the trail now?" Jon said, squeezing his chin.

Lily, in turn, said calmly as she cleared the memory of the terrified-looking shopkeeper.

"It's not broken, after getting that money from this shop he left using the shop's fireplace, just ten minutes ago, and we can still find out where he went now."

Jon's face couldn't help but look a little strange, he couldn't help but remember the conversation Dumbledore had had with him privately before he left, telling him to just protect Lily and not to worry much about Snape's affairs.

To leave a clue in this situation gave the impression of a deliberate attempt to lure people into a trap, no matter how you looked at it.

He blinked, did Lily not even notice such a problem?

"Professor Potter, would Snape not even guess that someone from our side would be tracking him all along?"

The expression on Lily's face was calm, and she kept her feet moving as she led Jon towards the room at the back of the shop.

"So what if this is a deliberate trap he has laid, as long as he doesn't dare go back to his lord who has abandoned him, we will catch him sooner or later, even if we go along the trap."

Her words were like dead water without any semblance of emotion, but Jon could hear the determination in them.

"Open the shop door again, in a couple of minutes this shopkeeper will regain consciousness, don't give him any unnecessary suspicion."

Jon turned back and reopened the door of the potion shop, there are very few customers in Knockturn Alley, not even a few people can be seen walking down the street, and even fewer of them would enter the shop to make a purchase, so unless their luck was extremely bad, Jon and Lily wouldn't have to worry about anyone else entering the shop and noticing something wrong in those few minutes.

He then followed Lily's lead to the room at the back of the Potions shop, where a fireplace was present, and although there was only some ash left in it, it was obvious through the warmth around the edges that someone had just lit it a short time ago.

After ascertaining that the fireplace was the one that had been used, Lily reached out and took a handful of ash from the fireplace and gently ground it in her hand while raising her wand and waving it at the dust.

The next moment the ashes suddenly re-gathered in the fireplace and then actually rekindled into a small, faint blaze!

"Pinch some floo powder and then watch what I do, walk into the fire without mumbling any names of places in your mind, and preferably without thinking about anything at all, empty your mind."

With that, she sprinkled the Floo powder she was pinching in her hand into the fireplace, and the fire, which had been faint, instantly glowed green as if a bucket of oil had been poured on it, and just as the flames were at their peak, she stepped into the fire.

The flames wrapped around her and disappeared back into the fireplace.

Leaving Jon alone in front of the fireplace, he looked at the green flames that remained in the fire and silently put the Floo powder back in its place again, and instead snapped his fingers softly and the next second a golden flame lit up right in front of him!

Jon stepped into the golden flame, and his figure disappeared into the fireplace. The whole fireplace then looked as if a Cleaning spell had cleansed it, the remnants of the ashes, and the haze on the fireplace walls were all swept away and made clean, and no one would ever find anything else from the remaining traces of the place.

By the time Jon felt his feet hit the solid ground again, he could feel a choking, musty smell permeating his surroundings and making its way to his nose.

He pinched his nose and frowned as he waved the presumably mouldy ashes that hadn't been cleaned for who knows how long around him with the hand holding his wand while taking in the situation in front of him.

Lily was holding her wand, staring blankly without saying a word, and in the spot where her gaze had been focused, there was a fireplace that was lit by a green fire, the flames of which formed the face of a man with greasy hair.

He wondered if it was because there was no way to see the original pallor of Snape's face under the green flames, Jon actually felt that he was actually becoming very energetic now, even the expression on his face was vibrant.

"I knew it would be you, knowing that I had escaped, you would have come to capture me yourself and simply would not have delivered such a perfect opportunity to someone else."

He looked at Lily with an unblinking gaze, the voice didn't sound all that smug, but instead, like it hid a different kind of sneer.

Lily didn't even look at the image that Snape was sent over using the Floo powder, she walked right up to the flaming Snape with her wand in her hand and reached into the fireplace to see if she could still find any ash left to determine where Snape might be.

It turned out that she had actually grabbed a handful of ash.

The fireplace in front of her was occupied by Snape, but the one they had come from was still empty, but, when she threw the ashes into the fireplace, they didn't rekindle as they had before.

"Do you think I am that stupid? Here is a fallback I had prepared five years ago, I always had a Portkey kept here, and whenever the day comes that I need to have disappear from this world, then I will use it to secure the rest of my life."

Snape looked like he was sitting in some kind of chair as he narrowed his eyes at Lily, and Lily stopped her futile attempts after making sure that the ashes in her hands were really just plain, mouldy, useless dust that had been left lying around.

She met Snape's gaze, and a fire, a fire called hatred, finally welled up in those eyes that had no semblance of emotion in them.

"You want to live the rest of your life in peace and stability?" She said in a flat but clenched voice, "Why do you believe you shouldn't have to pay for what you've done? Severus Snape! Do you think it can all be over just like that?"

Snape in flames looked at Lily silently, as if he was looking seriously at this expression now on her face, and then he leaned forward as if to poke his head out, the face made of green flames filling the fireplace.

"You also believe that past hatred should not be forgotten, don't you? Then as a wise, fair and righteous witch, you also tell me, Lily Evans, that what James and the others did to me at school back then must not just go away either, can it? So my revenge is just, and I have never taken my anger out on a wrong person by doing so, just like you, even though you chose him and became his other half, I begged my Lord not to let them harm you who have shown some kindness to me in the past, and I have been merciful, what's wrong with that!"

Jon who was by the fireplace, had quietly found a small bench to sit on, he certainly couldn't interject much in the middle of this conversation, so he quietly acted as a spectator.

Well, even with the eyes of a spectator, Jon could actually see how out of character Snape's mockery and sarcasm were; he had said it deliberately, and what the purpose of this was, Jon didn't know at that moment.

But of course, Lily, who was the person in question, couldn't see so much, Snape obviously knew her far better than anyone else, and in three or two words he stirred her heart, which had been as silent as stagnant water, to reach out in the direction of the fireplace without a care in the world, as if she wanted to take the flaming Snape in her hands.

"Then why did you kill my son! And what did he do wrong! Why did you have to kill Harry! You tell me! When did my son ever offend you before!"

Her hand passed through the flames, unable to catch the phantom made of Floo powder, the green flames lingering around her hand like it was something she had always wanted to hold onto but never could.

Snape was still looking at her with his head held high, not looking half shaken by her emotional turmoil at the moment.

"I didn't kill your son, Mrs Potter; if anything, if you want to press the blame for James' death on my head, then, of course, I'll gladly accept it, but not with Harry Potter. My great lord couldn't have made a trip to your house like that just to avenge my revenge, could he? Harry was his purpose and I provided him with the prophecy as a part of the payment in exchange for your safety, why else do you think you are still alive and talking to me here? So, remember what I said to you every time I saw you? I'm your benefactor, and you should be thanking me for that."

Lily slackened her expression, as if collecting her outbursts, and looked at Snape gloomily.

"Then why don't you meet with me in person? Only when we're face to face I can thank you properly!"

Snape shook his head like he was enjoying the way he was communicating with Lily right now.

"It's rare, it's rare to hear you speak to me like this for once, aren't you eager to find me? Then we can make a deal now, I'll ask you three questions, and you have to make sure you're telling the truth, and at the same time I'll also show you a piece of information about where I am, and again, I guarantee that this information is absolutely valid and not half-assed, how about that?"

Jon, who was sitting on the sidelines watching the show, raised an eyebrow, he hadn't really thought that Snape, who had seemed like a boring gourd back then at Hogwarts Castle, was unable to get the honest word from his heart out of his mouth for a long time, could actually come up with such a deal now.

Lily had calmed down completely, she had changed back to her original expressionless face, she had lived through all these years and now even though Snape's words had stirred up that repressed hatred that still lingered, she didn't lose her mind that easily.

"What do you want to know?"

Snape just looked at her, his gaze not even once averted from Lily the moment she appeared in this room, even if he had sensed Jon was there at the beginning.

"If I hadn't called you a 'mudblood' that one time, that one time, would you still have cut off ties with me?"

At the question, Lily's face didn't change a bit, even a sneer crept across the corners of her mouth.

"What do you think, Snape. Is it really hard to figure out why I was so determined to cut off our friendship in the first place? Just because of that one insult? Do you remember what I said to you when you went off with those pureblood students from your Slytherin house and started to explore the dark arts, became interested in Voldemort's theories, and became associated with the already infamous Death Eaters outside the school?"

Snape was silent.

He certainly hadn't forgotten what Lily had said to him then, when they were still friends, best friends, she had advised him to stay away from the students around him who were already involved with Voldemort and told him to stop delving into those forbidden potions and dark magic.

But at that time he hadn't heeded her advice at all, or rather he had been completely obsessed with it, overwhelmed by his achievements in the dark arts and the sense of recognition he had gained from his friendship with the purebloods, and that was the key to their parting of the ways.

Could Snape really have failed to figure out these answers?

The question rose in Jon's mind as he sat off at the side, and he soon came up with the answer himself.

It wasn't that Snape couldn't figure it out, he was just trying to come up with a major excuse for all the wrongs he had done, and all his previous actions had actually been putting gunpowder in the powder keg, and that 'mudblood' was the trigger for it all.

So he had actually been fooling himself into thinking that the only thing that was his fault was that mudblood slur and that if only he hadn't cursed that phrase in the first place, then none of what followed would have happened.

However, it was only his self-delusion after all, and now Lily had stripped down the lie that he had used to deceive himself.

It just that Snape's silence didn't leave Lily with any semblance of emotion or any kind of emotional turmoil, she had long ago lost any other feelings she had had in the past towards Snape, after the night that had left her family in ruins, all that still remained was blood revenge!

"I answered the first question." She said icily.

Snape snapped back, and he made sure of his word to be in an indifferent tone.

"Don't worry, I'm not leaving Britain, I'll always be here. Neither Dumbledore nor my former lord, neither of them will be able to drive me out of this land, so if you want to, then look for me on this British Isles."

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