darkly, darkly, dawn glittered in the sky - cheshire_carroll (2024)

Chapter 1

Chapter Text

Chapter One:

Melisandre finds her, hours into the Battle for the Dawn. The Red Priestess is wearing her usual silk dress, heedless of the freezing, howling blizzard that whips the thin material about her pale flesh. The only difference Sansa can see is the sword the woman carries, strapped to her back; what is visible of the shining steel is reflecting bright-red under the light of distant bonfires.

Sansa is standing on one of the turrets built into Winterfell's battlements, where archers tirelessly fire flaming arrow after flaming arrow into the unending press of the rotting dead that crash against the massive, grey granite walls protecting Winterfell, endless wights that fight and slaughter and ravage without tiring, puppets of otherworldly commanders in their icy armour, wielding crystalline swords, while Northern men fall and bleed, weep and perish under the onslaught. On a battlement further to the left of her, soldiers are firing from catapults boulders set alight with pitch, oil, animal fat– whatever they could gather from Winterfell's stores. The sight is nearly beautiful, Sansa thinks, set against the dark of the sky; like bleeding red stars falling to the earth below. It almost makes up for the eye-watering stench.

"What do you want?" She asks Melisandre sharply when the woman stops beside her. Sansa's guards shift uneasily, but at a gesture they return to releasing a flame-lit hail of iron from their bows that snaps bone and explodes skulls.

Good, Sansa thinks, savage as a snarling, bleeding wolf. They stole our Dawn– but we'll claw it back from their icy, rotted hands.

Her own hands are badly torn and bleeding from her efforts at the bow. She's no warrior, no marksman, but she knows the importance of keeping up morale amongst the troops. A good ruler lets themselves be visible to their men; Sansa is wearing Stark white and grey under a silver cuirass she asked Arya's blacksmith to make her. It is quick work, crushing the curves of her breasts beneath the hard steel, but she asked for haste, not quality– he had more important weapons to be forging and it serves its intended purpose. She is clearly visible to her people, her red hair fluttering about in the strong wind in a crimson banner of war.

The value of symbolism, of sending a message to her people, is also why she is also wearing a wreath of winter roses and weirwood leaves fixed atop her head. It is the only sign of discontent she will show, but it bolsters her Northern lords, it tells them that the Starks of Winterfell have not forgotten; they are not about to let a Southern Queen steal their freedom away. They remember the Northern daughter stolen away and raped to death by a Targaryen prince. They remember a Stark heir and a Stark lord unjustly imprisoned and brutally murdered by a Targaryen king. They will not kneel to a Targaryen Queen.

That is, Sansa thinks darkly, if any of them survive the Long Night.

It irks her, as she looks from her torn hands, her sleeves stained red where the blood has run down her wrists, soaking into the pale fabric, to the battlefield, that roiling sea of shrieks and moans, then to Melisandre; pristine and untouched through the hours of fighting. Sansa does not bother to hide the irritation from her face. Considering the slaughter of bone and death occurring around them, it is the safest emotion she can feel.

"Your grace," the Red Priestess curtseys gracefully.

"I'm not a queen," Sansa replies flatly. She has no interest in Melisandre's games.

"Aren't you?" the red woman asks, an almost pityingly condescending look on her face.

Sansa purses her lips.

Melisandre... isn't wrong. Since they received the letter from Jon that he bent the knee to Daenerys, and in front of Cersei at that, the Northern lords had treated her differently. They had always respected her, the eldest trueborn daughter of Eddard Stark, the Stark Princess who had been held hostage by Lannisters and Boltons both, who had endured atrocities at the hands of monstrous men, but they were more eager to obey her, to serve her, to seek her favour.

Yet such things matter little, at the end of all things.

"Do you know what will happen, when Westeros falls?" Melisandre asks and Sansa cannot help but flinch at the certainty in the woman's voice, as if the Red Priestess can pluck the thoughts from her mind. Perhaps she can– Sansa knows not what Melisandre's powers are capable of. "The white walkers will create great, floating icebergs to carry all the dead of Westeros, their army of millions, across the Narrow Sea," Melisandre says, her eerie red eyes flickering like a living flame. "Lorath, Pentos and Braavos will fall, the Three Daughters soon after, the Empire of Yi-Ti next, and then whoever is left north of the Summer Islands who hasn't starved or frozen will follow, falling to famine and ice."

"What do you want?" Sansa asks, barely audible over the screams of dead and dying men. Melisandre gestures out across the battleground, where the tides of war swept back and forth; wight-hordes frenzied by warm flesh, white walkers armoured in ice and snow and splattered blood, bonfires alight with piled silhouettes, carrying the stench of roasted flesh as the North's dead burned before they could join the Night King's ranks.

"I want this to be over," the Red Priestess says, "I want the Dawn."

"Is that not what we are all here for?" Sansa snarls, biting and furious, a wolf wounded and frightened and using her rage to hide it. Melisandre's eyes fix on hers unnervingly and Sansa freezes because there is something looking back at her from the Red Priestess's eyes, something Ancient and Otherworldly and Powerful. It takes her breath away, speeds her heart in her chest, where it flutters madly like the little bird Sandor always accused her of being.

"And what are you willing to do for our victory, Sansa of House Stark?" Melisandre asks, except it isn't her voice; it is deep and echoing and grates against Sansa's ears, building up like so much pressure she thinks they must start to bleed. "What are you willing to sacrifice, Child of Brandon's Line?"

Sansa swallows, looking deeper into Melisandre's eyes, into the presence there, the flickering flame that dances so hypnotically.

"Anything," she whispers, thinking of the churning mass of screaming bone, of stolen dawn and summer days and a childhood innocence that tasted of lemons. "Everything."

"So mote it be, Queen of Winter," the presence using Melisandre's mouth speaks and Sansa feels a freezing cold envelop her bones, spreading from inside out, as if anchoring into her very soul. Before her, Melisandre shudders then her eyes clear.

There's something almost like sorrow in the Red Priestess's mien now. A faint shadow of regret that passes through those eerie red eyes too quickly for Sansa to parse the true meaning behind it.

"The Ancient books of Asshai wrote of the Long Night," Melisandre tells her, "it was written that there will come a day after a long summer when the stars bleed red and the cold breath of darkness falls heavy on the world. In this dread hour a warrior shall draw from the fire a burning sword. And that sword shall be Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes, and he who clasps it shall be Azor Ahai come again, and the darkness shall flee before him."

"What does this have to do with me?" Sansa asks. She tries to speak sharply but her voice is too shaky for it to sound authoritative. Melisandre looks back at her, gaze weighted with meaning.

"Everything," she says, before reaching out and seizing on to Sansa's forearm. Her grip feels like a shackle. Sansa's guards should notice Melisandre's actions, should move to stop her– they don't even glance over. It is like Sansa and the Red Priestess have turned invisible to them.

"Take off the armour," Melisandre tells her, "it will get in the way."

Sansa swallows but does as ordered, tugging her arm free of the other woman's grip briefly to fight the clasps of the cuirass, her fingers stiff with cold and slippery with blood. Melisandre sighs sharply then steps forwards to help, her movements quick and efficient. Sansa is reminded of the rumours that Melisandre used to be Stannis Baratheon's lover. She wonders if Melisandre would help remove his armour, after battle. Men's blood runs hot after killing, or so her experiences with Ramsay have informed her.

Melisandre leaves the cuirass discarded on the snow-dusted stone. Sansa has to turn away from a sight that appears so– final.

She is the Lady of Winterfell, she should never be the one led in her own castle, yet it is Melisandre who leads her down off the battlements, through corridors and halls silent as a grave, into the empty courtyard where the sound from beyond the walls fully hits her, the roasting stench of the bonfires enough to make her gag as a tempest of screams rings out through the air.

"What is going on?" She demands, a little late but better than never. To be fair, she is exhausted and weary and likely quite traumatised by this point. Hours and hours of fighting a never-ending rotting sea filled with teeth and bone has steadily eaten away at her energy and she has never trained for a situation like this. Has never even dreamed of finding herself in such a position.

"You can rest soon," Melisandre says soothingly, once more appearing to pluck the thoughts from Sansa's mind, as if through sorcery.

Her words are not at all comforting.

"What is going on!" Sansa repeats, a demand this time, not a question. She draws herself tall, cloaking herself in the authority of her birth-right, of a line of Kings eight-thousand years long, standing in their ancestral seat of power, and stares the Red Priestess down. Melisandre looks as if she is about to argue, then she meets Sansa's gaze and thinks the better of it, stepping back as she releases her grip on Sansa's wrist, her chin falling slightly in deference owed.

"The battle being fought is pointless," Melisandre tells her. "For eight thousand years, men, women and children have been dying– the armies of the dead will never falter, never tire, and they will never run out of soldiers. There is only one enemy that matters– the Night King. It is his magic that keeps the dead fighting. Once he is defeated, the wights will fall and Dawn will break."

"I know that," Sansa snaps impatiently, "we all know that– it's why the trap was set in the godswood."

"If the trap had worked, the battle would be won," Melisandre says simply. Sansa doesn't say anything in reply, because the truth in Melisandre's words is obvious to her. She just isn't responding to it, because the thought of losing even the shade that Bran has become is too painful.

"What are we doing, then?" She asks instead.

"All hope is not lost," Melisandre tells her, glancing back at Sansa. Her eyes are gleaming with dancing flames again and Sansa holds back a shudder. "The champions still fight."

"And what am I supposed to do? There is nothing I can do to help in a fight," Sansa says, not shying away from the truth. "I'll only get them killed trying to protect me."

"There is one thing you can do," Melisandre tells her, lifting a hand to the handle of the sword strapped to her back. "Lightbringer, the Red Sword of Heroes," she murmurs, before fixing her gaze back on Sansa. "The blood of Kings is most powerful– and you, Sansa Stark, are of Brandon Stark's line, the blood of the Kings of Winter."

A terrible chill settles over Sansa, catches her breath in her throat.

"I don't understand," she whispers.

It is a lie.

Melisandre knows it is a lie.

What are you willing to sacrifice, Child of Brandon's Line?

Anything.

Everything

They reach the godswood in silence. Sansa is glad Melisandre does not try to talk to her. She feels numb. She doubts she could say anything, even if she wanted to.

There were so many days that she expected to die, so many days that she wanted to. She had never truly expected to survive the Long Night anyway.

But this wasn't how she was expecting to go.

Jon and Arya are in the godswood of course. So is Sandor, Brienne and Jaime Lannister, the Free Folk man Jon had called Tormund, and Daenerys Targaryen.

And, of course, the Night King.

He is an otherworldly being; strange, beautiful and so terribly cruel, with blue eyes brighter and hungrier than the dead hearts of stars. He is flanked by three white walkers, armed and armoured in jagged ice, fighting some of the best fighters in the Seven Kingdoms and making it look easy. Sansa is terrified to even be near him.

He is the only one to notice them– the only one, Sansa thinks, who can see through whatever sorcery Melisandre and her god are using to hide them. The Night King turns slowly, and in his endless bright-star eyes Sansa sees an eternity of cold and death and darkness; songs crescendo in her ears, a symphony of bloodlust and battle and screams as she sees the promise of an end of all things.

(Even stars burn out)

"Do it," Sansa tells Melisandre, because she is terrified, she is t e r r i f i e d, and there is comprehension in that face, carved from ice, in those eyes of bright and burning blue stars; her lungs burn, frost creeps over her skin, burning her flesh with its icy touch, and she knows that the Night King knows what they are planning.

Melisandre draws the sword from its sheathe as Sansa lowers herself gracefully to her knees in the snow. She can't help her shudder; she has always hated the sound of steel, has feared it, on a deep, primal level, since her father killed Lady.

How fitting, that she too will die of steel.

Some part of her, she thinks, always knew that she must. That her fate was always bound to Lady's.

Sansa's hair is whipping back and forth as if in a furious gale, but there is no wind in the godswood clearing before the Heart Tree. Everything around her feels frozen but for Melisandre before her, sword held in her two grasped hands, and the Night King across from them. In the sky above the clearing of the Heart Tree, trails of fire bathe them all in bloodied light.

Sansa can feel power building around her as Melisandre lifts the blade. It feels like the air before a storm. It presses against her skin as the point of the steel kisses the skin above her heart. Her breath mists before her face and then the Night King moves, a spear of ice flying through the clearing to shear through Melisandre's own heart, spraying Sansa's face with blood. Sansa is too frozen with shock to move.

The silence breaks then, the veil hiding her and Melisandre from all eyes but the Night King falling– or likely torn– away, and suddenly Sansa can hear voices crying out her name. Melisandre doesn't even flinch, flames melting away the ice spear, leaving nothing but pale, whole flesh where a bloody, gaping wound should be. The Red Priestess doesn't even sway on her feet, her grip on the sword not once faltering.

Sansa wants to close her eyes as the cries of her name increase in volume, wants to take the coward's way out. Instead, she forces herself to look, forces herself to meet each of their eyes; Jon, Arya, Sandor, Brienne, Jaime, Tormund, even Daenerys. The Seven Champions of the Dawn.

Melisandre shouts something foreign to Sansa's ears and then the world turns bright and raw and savage as the blade lights up into a brilliant white, almost blinding, as it sinks into her breast and the agony hits, harsh and unreal and overwhelming. Sansa doesn't even have the breath to scream; she lets out a final gurgling breath that is ragged, blood-soaked but alive and real, and then her world turns to flames so hot they eat outward from the blinding-white steel embedded in her flesh, setting her entire body alight.

She cannot scream. The pain is too much, leaving nothing but suffering. She is unable to move from her bowed position on her knees, the agony indescribable as she watches with blurred, rapidly fading vision, hardly able to concentrate on her last half-coherent thought as Melisandre draws the now-flaming blade from her breast before she mercifully blacks out and knows no more, dying in ice and fire.

(It is Sandor who pulls the flaming sword from Melisandre with a roar of pure, anguished rage.

It is Sandor who charges at the Night King and takes the monster's head.

It is Sandor who ensures that his little bird's sacrifice is not in vain)

::

Here is what Melisandre and her foreign god do not account for, when the Red Priestess sacrifices the Queen of Winter, Daughter of Brandon the Builder's Line, to R'hllor: Sansa dies in a Godswood, her blood spilling on the roots of a Heart Tree.

Sansa is a Stark of Winterfell, in her ancestral home, and the Old Gods are angry that R'hllor dares try and claim one of Theirs.

They claim Sansa's soul as Their own by Right before R'hllor can, yet her body is nothing but ash, tainted by the Lord of Light. There is nothing to tether her in this world.

But They are gods and They are not bound to This world. For her Sacrifice, and to spite R'hllor, They will breathe new life into Sansa Stark.

She will live once more.

::

For a span of time that lasts a second and an eternity, a soul slips beyond the realm that anchors its world, to a place beyond life and stars. Winding branches reach into the heavens, burrowing roots extend far into the underworlds. Realms and reality cling like clusters of leaves to pale bark.

It is a place unknowable, divine; it is everything and nothing, chaotic and orderly, light and dark, an intricate eternity spun between the quivering branches of a tree; every king and peasant, every creator and destroyer, every saint and sinner, all are equal and worthless, little more than a mote of dust on a fluttering leaf.

And yet– each soul is so unique, so infinitely complex, a fragile treasure.

The soul of Sansa Stark is held in the crucible of the World Tree for nine long nights, cradled and nursed by the Old Gods, until the price has been paid and it is time.

::

Warmth.

Peace.

Pressure.

Cold.

"Let's call her Violet– Violet Evans."

::

Chapter 2

Chapter Text

Chapter Two:

When Marigold Fields fell in love with William Evans, she didn't care he was nearly twenty years older than her, or about the shadows the war had left in him. She had loved him since the moment he stopped in the streets to help her pick up the bundle of flowers she'd dropped, straightening to smile warmly at her, the bouquet in his large, gentle hands a splash of bright colour against the drab, dreary town of co*keworth she'd grown up in.

She'd been determined from that moment on that she would marry the man– and if anyone could say anything about Marigold Fields, it was that once she'd set her mind to something, she was bound to fight for it tooth and nail.

Her Sweet William had honestly seemed confused by her affections. Marigold was a pretty, petite young woman, all blonde curls and blue eyes, and he was twenty years her senior, tall and broad with too many freckles and thick red hair already turning grey at the roots. He had a steady job as an accountant and a good head for numbers, enough to have saved for a small house of his own, but he wasn't a well-off man who could afford to keep her in pretty dresses and jewels or take her out to fancy parties.

Marigold simply didn't care.

They were a most unlikely couple but she wore him down and he finally agreed to dinner, thinking that the reality of being with him would turn her towards greener pastures. It didn't, and two years later Marigold was dressed in white, a beaming smile on her lovely face as she walked down the church aisle to a still-bemused William and made her vows to become Mrs Marigold Evans.

Their first child was born a little over a year later. Their darling Petunia Grace; named for the flowers William had stopped to help Marigold pick up the first time they'd met, and for the grace of God in helping to bring them together. Beautiful Petunia, who took after her mother with her big blue eyes and wispy blond hair.

Having a baby was difficult but they loved her so much. She was such a clever thing, meeting all her milestones early, walking and talking and so inquisitive. She wanted to know all there was to know about everything and everyone they came across, eyes bright with interest, her little head craning about to see the world.

When Marigold fell pregnant again, it came as a surprise. They weren't trying to have another baby– Petunia had turned two only a few months ago and she was enough of a handful on her own, no matter how much they loved her. And children were expensive, and finances were tight enough as it was, but after much discussion they decided the new child was a blessing to their family.

And when they learned there were twins– well, after the initial, scrambling panic, they decided it was twice the blessing and William started to inquire about a pay rise at work.

Petunia was a few weeks shy of her third birthday when Marigold went into labour with the twins.

Their Lily Joy was born rosy-cheeked and radiant; the baby was filled with life, positively blooming as she screamed her little lungs out in protest of the new, cold environment she'd found herself in. She was such a plump, lovely little thing, all strawberry pink as a new-born should be, with tufts of red hair and blue-green eyes that Marigold suspected would turn bold green over the following weeks.

The second twin, the doctors told them, wouldn't even survive the night.

Silent as death, even as her chest fluttered up and down, this baby had the same tufts of red hair as Lily but an unhealthy pallor, as pale as fresh-fallen snow, and too fragile, each tiny vein visible. Her limbs were too thin and frail, barely any muscle or fat clinging to them. Marigold had dragged herself from the hospital bed, aching and still bleeding slightly, to the special crib where her baby lay, tubes in her nose, monitors over her heart, and stared down at her, heartbroken. She could feel tears dripping down her cheeks as her Sweet William wrapped his arm around her, carefully supporting her weight as she half-collapsed back into him.

That was when the baby's eyes fluttered open; unfocused, distant, and a startling, eye-catching shade of blue that Marigold knew, with a certainty that surprised her, in some far-off, distant part of herself, would not fade or change.

Roses are red– "and violets are blue," she whispered, voice broken and tender.

"Let's call her Violet– Violet Evans," her William suggested gently.

"Violet Hope Evans," Marigold agreed.

They expected to bury their child.

But Violet survived the night. She survived the week. The month. The year.

She survived.

And that was how Lily Joy and Violet Hope came to join the world.

::

Petunia didn't seem to think much of her new sisters when they were brought home from the hospital. Lily was healthy enough to go home after the standard day of observation, but Violet seemed stronger, responding better to treatments , when her twin was close, Lily reaching out to clutch Violet's hand when they were placed in the same crib. It made Marigold's heart melt and even stoic William would have to clear his throat multiple times at the tender sight.

"There are studies, you know, about this sort of effect," one of the treating doctors told them. "Cases where if one twin is ill, the other twin can help them pull through."

It gave Marigold and William hope and after two months of intensive care, they could finally take Violet home from hospital.

Marigold honestly didn't blame Petunia for resenting the twins. She must have felt very neglected with all the time her parents had been spending at the hospital, left in the care of Marigold's mother, Primrose. She'd gotten to sit and hold Lily on her lap, but she'd really only seen Violet in her special crib before this, attached to all sorts of tubes and monitors.

It was with such a feeling of joy that Marigold was able to lay a blanket on the floor to place the twins out together, then bring Petunia in to play with them.

But as she said– Petunia didn't seem to think much of the twins at all.

"Lily's too loud an' Lety's too quiet," was her cutting judgment, accompanied by a disdainful sniff as she looked down at the twins with distaste.

William laughed quietly, reaching out to gently tug on one of Petunia's slightly lopsided pigtails. Marigold felt a squirm of guilt, wondering if William was responsible or if Petunia had carefully tied up her own blonde ringlets.

"Lety? That's lovely, petal," he said and Petunia swatted his hand away from her hair but smiled up at her daddy, pleased.

"They're twins, so they should match," she said imperiously.

"Lily and Lety," Marigold murmured, looking down over them. Her heart still clenched as she saw how much smaller and paler Violet was, but she took a breath and smiled, reminding herself of her child's strength. Violet was a survivor– and she would survive anything this world could throw at her.

::

Sansa spent the first years of her new life drifting in and out of awareness. She fed when she hungered, slept when tired, played when bored, listened to the crooning of voices wash over her, soft and comforting, and drifted along in Dreaming.

Sometimes they were Dreams of pale trees with many faces and many branches that would cradle her and sing lullabies to her in the voices of rustling winds and rushing rivers and soft-falling snow of the world she had left behind; of a North that refused to bow to a Dragon, of the West that followed suit, led by a Lion in love with a Lady Knight; of the Vale and the Riverlands allying with the North and the West; of a land of melting ice and fresh green shoots that would never kneel, led by a Free Man Kissed By Fire; of a Lioness and Dragon who fell in battle over the Iron Throne; of Seven Kingdoms splitting once more; of Sansa Stark's name being memorialised, the First and Last Queen of Dawn.

But not all of her Dreams were spent cradled in the protective embrace of the Old Gods. Sometimes she would Dream of old faces, of old pain and old hurts that had scarred deeper than her flesh, wounding her very soul. Other times, they were Dreams of roaring flames and the enraged howls of a thwarted god that had her cringing away in terror, her entire being trembling when she awoke, leaving her slow infant brain confused and distressed by the fright that consumed her so. Worse still were those Dreams of the cruelly, inhumanely beautiful man-shaped creature with bright eyes like blue stars, Dreams that had her wake screaming, gripped by a mortal fear she didn't understand, couldn't possibly comprehend.

(she never remembered her Dreams of the place between reality, of the World Tree, an existence outside of her soul's comprehension, yet her nine-day trial earned her knowledge by right, would never let her truly forget)

True understanding of her situation came both slowly and all at once. It was a few months after her fifth nameday– birthday?– that she truly regained the clarity of mind to understand who she was and to remember her history, to recall the horrors and heartbreaks and heartfelt love and joy that had existed in her past.

It wasn't a shock to her, remembering being 'Sansa Stark'. Even if she hadn't had the capacity to form proper thoughts and make the connections before then, the memories had still existed. She'd had five years, in the end, to get used to it, and even if she didn't always Know, she still remembered, had always known the truth, though it wasn't until a few months past her fifth birthday that she thought– oh. Yes, that's right.

She was lying in a bed when it happened, one so different from her bed in Winterfell with its thick furs and dark heirloom wood carved with the ancient protective runes of the First Men. This bed was made of wrought iron curled into hearts, painted a bright white and instead of furs, there were strange bright pink coverings with colourful flower shapes–a comforter, her memories whispered. It hurt her eyes to look at, so Sansa moved her gaze down to tiny, pale hands, child hands, like those of a little doll. Delicate, soft, unmarked.

The last she remembered of her hands, they had been those of a woman; palms ripped and torn from firing arrow after arrow, the tips of her fingers turning blue-tinged from the blizzard winds.

She let her hands fall back to her sides, hitting the strange, too-firm mattress with soft thuds, and turned to press her face into the too-soft pillow with its strange covering, closing her eyes. It was too much effort to make her heavy body move.

Behind her eyelids, all she could see was the charnel house Winterfell had become; a world reduced to a stretch of burning corpses and living bone.

Sansa didn't move from the bed for three days, bar to use the privy. Or bathroom, as her memories told her it was called. It was odd; there were things she remembered, like the language the concerned couple she knew to be her parents, Marigold and William, spoke, but at the same time she didn't understand anything at all. Before her awakening, she had taken the world around her for granted. There had always been a strange sense of displacement, but it wasn't until now that she realised the cause– this wasn't her world.

No, it was leaps and bounds beyond the progress Westeros had made. Even something as simple as their sanitation system would have been revolutionary in Westeros, preventing hundreds if not thousands of deaths every year from disease.

It was just hard to appreciate the wonders with the crippling weight of grief and horror pressing down on her chest, crushing her heart, stealing her breath and sapping at her strength, turning her limbs to lead.

William– father– carried her to the automobile on the fourth day. Sansa knew, in some distant part of herself, that she had travelled in this strange metal, horseless wheelhouse many times before. It was also an entirely new experience, one unlike any she had had before. It took her breath away, feeling the rattling purr that rumbled under her, the scratchy music that blared from the front, even the odd strap that William had pulled across her chest, holding her firmly in place every time the wheelhouse– car– jolted and jerked.

It was– terrifying, awe-inspiring, breath-taking. It was foreign, and it was exciting. Sansa found herself truly awake for the first time since she had awoken as herself, pressing one of her too-small child hands against the cool glass window, watching with wide eyes as the world blurred by.

It was so different.

There was nearly nothing she could recognise, nothing she could relate back to the world she had called hers. Oh, she had memories still, memories from this world that tickled of familiarity, that told her what it was she was seeing around her, but now– now she was viewing everything through a new perspective, that of Sansa Stark of Winterfell, not Violet Evans of co*keworth.

"You've always loved driving around in the car," William– father– said suddenly. Sansa jerked in place, her heart rabbiting in her chest as her body flinched around to face him, having truly forgotten his presence, so wrapped up in the wonders of this new world.

He didn't look surprised by her distraction, looking back at her through the reflection of a small overhead mirror. He smiled slightly, though his eyes were shadowed, distant.

"When you were younger, you'd have these terrible nightmares where you'd wake up screaming and nothing we'd do would calm you down," he told her, "then one day, to give your mama and sisters a rest, I put you in the car and started to drive. And you looked out the window from your bassinet and you just went silent, watching the world with such wide eyes... from then on, whenever you woke up screaming, or crying, and nothing else would calm you, we'd put you in the car, start driving, and you'd just get lost in the world out the window."

"Oh," Sansa said, very quietly.

She knew she'd Dreamed– she remembered them, even now. Clearer, with the comprehension that clarity of self had lent her.

She wasn't surprised she'd woken screaming and crying so many times– she'd done that enough, back in Westeros, even before the Long Night and all the fresh horrors that had brought with it.

"I like to remind myself as well," her father said quietly, his gaze flicking back from the mirror to the road. "That even with all the ugliness, the world can be beautiful too." He then smiled. "And this world is a more beautiful place with you in it– never doubt that, Lety love. Promise me."

"I won't," Sansa said. "I promise."

She could feel something crackle through her then, sinking deep into her bones, deeper, and she shivered at the hauntingly familiar sensation. Her father spoke before she could dwell on it.

"Thank you, love," he said warmly. "Are you ready to go home now? Or would you like to keep driving?"

"Can we keep driving?" Sansa asked softly. "Just a little longer?

"Of course," her father said. "As long as you need."

And Sansa settled back into the seat, her gaze turning back to the window as she watched the new, wonderous world pass by.

Chapter 3

Chapter Text

Chapter Three:

William wasn't sure what it was about his youngest daughter that concerned him so much.

No– that was a lie. He knew what it was, he just convinced himself his mind was playing tricks, right up to the moment he looked eyes with her once more.

Violet Hope, his lovely little Lety, was a beautiful child by all accounts. Doll-like even, with those vivid blue eyes, framed by dark lashes, pretty porcelain skin and brilliant red hair she wore long. His mama would have loved her, all the best of their blood coming out.

But there was something off about Violet, like there was a barrier between her and the rest of them; a barbed wire fence, a ditch filled with broken glass, a trench of mud and blood.

All his children were precocious and charismatic; from Petunia, who was all sugar and spite, and so, so smart but clever enough to hide it; to his bright, elfin Lily, the prettiest tomboy he ever did see, never without scrapes on her palms and knees and a brilliant, laughing smile on her face.

And then there was Violet, who startled at shadows, who tensed at swift movements, who looked off into space with hollow, empty eyes– she was graceful and gracious with a refined temperament unusual in a child, yet when she thought nobody was facing her way she had the look of a child who had been beaten and battered down until something shattered underneath her skin, where no doctor or surgeon could reach. She had the look of those soldiers who'd come back from liberating the camps; of a grown man who had seen things words could never describe, who knew how the blood and ash of the dead smelled mixed in with the sweat and sh*t and piss and fear.

It was the look of a man who had been to war, who had seen the dregs of all humanity had to offer, all the filthy f*cking death and rot and misery and it still hung just behind her eyes.

He would know– he saw it himself, whenever he looked in a damn mirror.

William didn't know how much he was projecting. His daughter was a child, barely more than a toddler, and sheltered too. They didn't have much, but they had enough that she didn't go without food or shelter or warm clothes and boots in winter. At night when he tossed and turned next to his pretty young wife, the sound of mortar shells and gunfire screaming in his ears, he tried to convince himself he was imagining it. That he was seeing things, that no little girl knew what it was like to sleep in a pile of shrapnel shreds and rags, to crawl through splintered bones and mud and corpses piled too high, the scent of burning flesh thick in his nose–

William tried to convince himself, but when he looked into his youngest daughter's eyes, he saw his reflection looking back.

::

As Sansa Stark, she had been the eldest daughter, the first Stark child born in Winterfell. Her father had ordered the bells in Wintertown to be rung all day and night and free ale was handed out among the servants and smallfolk who all toasted to her name– Sansa, a Northern name given to dutiful daughters who fathers believe will bring great honour to their families after the first Sansa Stark in their history books who brought great honour to her family when she set aside the lowly knight that she loved to marry her half-uncle, as per the wishes of her father. A younger Sansa had been so proud of her name, of what she felt it implied about her character.

Now, Sansa wondered if her father had simply named her that out of desperation, or wilful thinking. That if he repeated duty enough to her, repeated honour, that she would learn to embody it, that she must. For surely he must have known that Robert would insist on betrothing his son to a Stark daughter, and just as surely he must have known the consequences if a second Stark daughter spurred a Baratheon betrothal.

He feared Sansa's teeth, her wildness, even her piety to the Old Gods of the North who demanded blood and sacrifice, so he built Catelyn a sept for the daughters of Winterfell to pray, let her bring a septa into their household to teach his Northern daughters how to become pliant Southron women, who served and obeyed the men in her life only second to the Seven.

Even when he had met Joffrey, had seen his cruelty, her father had been willing to sacrifice Sansa to Robert's son until he learned the boy was all Lannister seed. Then and only then, had he been willing to break the betrothal, to take her back North.

Sansa wondered if he had regretted what he had raised her to be, if he had regretted sacrificing her to the South to keep the North's peace.

She thought that he did. He had always found it easier to bond with Arya, to spend what little free time he had spare from his duties and his sons with his youngest daughter. Perhaps it was guilt that had kept him away.

But the dead couldn't give any answers. Only questions. And if Sansa allowed herself linger on all the questions she had for her dead, she would collapse under the weight of them.

Violet Hope Evans was simpler. Violet, she learned, was the name of a flower with heart-shaped leaves and pretty flowers that came in blues and purples and sometimes even white or yellow. Violets tolerated cold temperatures, and they could bloom just as beautifully in winter as they did in spring. Fitting, Sansa supposed.

Violet Hope Evans was not the eldest daughter; in fact, she was the youngest of three sisters, albeit only by a few minutes. And Violet's parents weren't the Lord and Lady of a sprawling kingdom of ice and snow; no, Violet's parents were simple folk, not wealthy but not poor. She wasn't certain of how this world worked, she knew there was a Queen but from her time watching the television, a bizarre, fantastical contraption that was something akin to a moving painting and a town crier and captured lightning, all at once, that there was also a prime minister who ruled a government of elected officials. Such confusing, confounding ideas– elected officials? And not by the Queen, no, but by the people? The common people?

Sansa had been so sure that she must be mistaken that she had dedicated the next several moons– months– to learning her letters in order to read of the histories of this new world, of her new country.

England, it was called. Or Britain. Or possibly the United Kingdom.

It was very confusing.

Honestly, Sansa had been quite convinced she lived in the kingdom of co*keworth for the first moon– month– after her awakening. It took Petunia complaining loudly about their town for her to realise that that was what co*keworth was– the name of a town. Her town.

Petunia had proven herself Sansa's source of much information of this new world, as Sansa puzzled her way through teaching herself to read with William's morning papers. For instance, it was from Petunia that Sansa had first learned of "school", an entirely foreign concept to Sansa. Only children of Lords and Ladies, or otherwise those of wealthy parents who could afford Maesters, septas or learned men to teach their children, were taught their letters and numbers in her world. Here, it seemed, even the poorest children from the poorest of families were given the opportunity to attend an institution where many learned men and women were hired to teach large groups of children valuable skills and information on many subjects.

Sansa found herself surprisingly keen on the idea. She had already resigned herself to the life of a smallfolk woman, but it seemed the station of her birth was not such an obstacle here as it was in Westeros, where social mobility was near non-existent.

Petunia had also been the one to give Sansa her first tour of the local neighbourhood and playground since her awakening, as prim and proper as a seven, nearly eight-year-old girl could be when still growing into her awkward, coltish limbs, chatting nearly non-stop the entire time, giving Sansa an entire rundown on the neighbourhood gossip, from how Mrs Walden kept inviting Mr Sudbury to private tea in her house when her husband was away, to how the local Deacon was stealing from the church collection, to how Peggy from her class liked Tim, who was a whole year older than them!

Oddly enough (particularly considering the age difference in their own parents' marriage), Petunia seemed the most scandalised by the last. Sansa was mostly just impressed by how clever her eldest sister was– and unnerved by what a successful career she would have had in Westeros, moving about in high society, trading secrets for gold and influence. Picturing Petunia as a female Varys was very disturbing.

(She refused to think of Petunia as anything like Petyr)

Petunia certainly ruled the park with a flick of her blonde ringlets and an imperious sniff. Sansa thought that the gaggle of girls who trailed after Petunia reminded her almost of Margaery and all her cousins, ladies in waiting and maids, forever giggling and gushing as they trailed after Margaery. Petunia did share Margaery's cunning but at least when she drew Sansa close, introducing Sansa to her court as her littlest sister and levelling them all with a threatening stare, Sansa knew that Petunia was genuine in her care and affection, that her offer of protection was true and without ulterior motive.

It was harder for Sansa to connect with Lily, as her twin reminded her far too much of Arya at times. Oh, Lily wasn't begging their father to let her wield a sword or shoot a bow, but she was just as likely to be found in a pair of trousers, red hair tangled and windswept and face ruddy with exertion after playing footy with the neighbourhood boys, as she was to be wearing dresses and skirts, hair neatly braided and making flower crowns in the park with Petunia and her friends.

Sansa tried not to let old resentments colour her interactions with her twin, reminding herself that Lily was her own person, with her own faults and merits. And as time passed, it did become easier to do.

Lily Joy Evans was aptly named, for she was full of joy and embraced life fully; there was a naive sort of beauty in that, one that both brought Sansa her own sense of joy, but also a heavy sort of grief and even resentment, at times. Lily was a child unburdened in a way that Sansa had never been, not in either of her lives. Lily was free to be whatever and whoever she wanted.

Sansa Stark had never known such freedom, and Violet Evans would always be scarred by the memories of those shackles. Sansa Stark had been the property of her father, her brothers, to be sold off to her husband, who would own her unto his death, whereby she would be owned by her sons. It was a woman's lot, in Westeros. To be owned by men. To know that the most valuable part of her was not her wit, nor her heart, but her womb, and that the sons it would bear her husband was an acceptable price for her to pay with her life on the birthing bed.

But that was not a woman's lot in this world.

It was Petunia who had been the one to bring up divorce first. Apparently Mrs Sudbury had finally found out about her husband's "tea visits" with Mrs Walden and left him, taking half his money with her.

"What?" Sansa asked, only half listening as she tried to convince her small legs to walk with something that approximated the grace and poise she'd learned as the Lady of Winterfell.

"They got divorced," Petunia explained with a sniff. Seeing Sansa's confused look– a common enough sight, considering her recent confusion over the existence of the telephone, just the previous night, or when their father had recently mentioned Ireland, and Sansa hadn't known what he was talking about.

(To be fair, neither had Lily– and Lily still liked to pretend a banana fruit was a telephone)

(Sansa had also been very confused by the odd banana fruit. She'd tried to eat the peel, the first time Marigold had absently handed her one without divesting it of the peel first)

"Divorce," Petunia said, with an air of great knowing that was slightly ridiculous on the face of such a young girl, "is when a marriage is legally over." She placed extra emphasis on 'legally'. "And because it was Mr Sudbury's fault, there's some legal clause or something that means Mrs Sudbury– or Ms FitzHugh, now, I suppose– gets to take lots of his money. Because marriage is a binding legal contract and Mr Sudbury was an idiot who didn't take proper precautions," Petunia added disdainfully.

Sansa was too busy being shocked to be amused or surprised by Petunia's attitude– not that she would have been anyway, that girl was as much a predator as any of the courtiers of the Red Keep, nest of vipers that they were, with a keen nose for spilled blood.

Before this moment, Sansa hadn't realised that the institution of marriage was any different in this world, then it was in hers. She'd just... assumed that Marigold was William's property. There had been no talk of betrothals or marriage contracts, but Sansa knew such things were uncommon amongst smallfolk who were more likely to marry for love and affection, with the families of daughters paying a dowry to her new husband upon her marriage.

There was no concept of divorce in Westeros. Especially not because a man cheated on his wife– no, that was practically expected. A man could always set aside his wife, should he judge her defective in some way, and she would then be sent back to her family or to join the Silent Sisters, but divorce? Sansa couldn't think of a word that translated even slightly equivalent.

This– this was so far beyond Westeros that Sansa suddenly found she couldn't breathe.

I'm free, she thought suddenly, wildly; and, for the first time in her life, the thought rang true.

She was free.

Sansa collapsed to the pavement, her legs unable to support her as her entire body trembled too hard. Her face was numb. She couldn't feel her hands. Was she crying? She thought she might be crying.

"Violet? Lety? What's wrong, Lety?" Petunia was demanding, on her knees beside Sansa, the panic clear on her young face.

Sansa couldn't reply. Even if she was able, though, she didn't know if she would be able to find the words.

She had lived a life in chains and now she was free and she felt so light that she could fly.

"LETY!" Petunia suddenly shrieked. Sansa's eyes flew open and she gasped through her choked sobs, realising what had alarmed her sister– Sansa had started to float off the ground.

Sansa shrieked herself, hands flying out to desperately clutch on to her sister. To her relief, her feet hit the ground with a small thud and she and Petunia both stared at each other, wide-eyed, Sansa's chest heaving, her face wet with tears.

"Let's never talk about this again," Petunia decided and Sansa slowly nodded. If Petunia wanted to pretend Sansa hadn't had a breakdown in front of her and then started to– to somehow float into the air, then Sansa was more than happy to go along with it.

But even as they walked back together, a very set and determined look on Petunia's face, Sansa knew it wouldn't be the end of it.

Not when as she exhaled, her breath misted slightly before her face.

::

Chapter 4

Chapter Text

Chapter Four:

Sansa Stark died on her knees in melted snow and scorched earth. She died in the home she never thought she would return to, the castle of Brandon the Builder, and there was a power in that, in being surrounded by the ancient lands her ancestors had ruled for millennia.

She died in agony, short-lived as it may have been, at the foot of Winterfell's Heart Tree, her lifeblood spilling on roots where her Stark ancestors had made sacrifices to the Old Gods for thousands of years past, shedding blood in Their name.

Sansa Stark died for the Dawn and the Old Gods noticed Their daughter of the North held in the greedy clutches of the Red God R'hllor and They raged and They fought and They claimed her life, her death, her sacrifice for Their own.

For Sansa Stark was a Stark of Winterfell; she was a daughter of the North, a daughter of the Old Gods, and They would not suffer any other to claim her soul.

::

Even after her awakening, when Violet Evans realised she was also Sansa Stark– or rather, when Sansa Stark had realised she was reborn as a little girl named Violet– Sansa still Dreamed.

It was more difficult to grasp the abstract meanings with the clarity of her adult mind then it had been as a child, when it had made sense for stones to whisper to her, for rivers to sing, for trees to cradle her and croon welcome and warnings both.

Sansa found herself spending more time in nature during her waking hours. She had returned to school for the first time since her awakening, but found herself disappointingly unoccupied by the institution of learning. The small children in her class didn't even know their letters, let alone how to read.

She was almost disturbed by the slow pace of learning in England, of how slack the teachers of the schooling institutions were. As a noble lady of the North, from a very young age Sansa's days in Winterfell had been filled with more that just sewing dresses, embroidering and learning the word of the Seven. Sansa was raised with the expectation that she would be queen and she grew learning not just the art of state-craft, but history, and theology, and philosophy, and more. From a young age she was expected to study mathematics and astrology, cartography and politics, music and calligraphy. She studied the great written and bardic works of her people, and listened in as Maester Luwin spoke of military strategies to her brothers, deconstructing with them past battles and wars from the time the Andals invaded Westeros, bringing with them Maesters and their recorded histories.

To prevent the boredom from overwhelming her during classes spent with small children who preferred to paint with their fingers than learn their numbers, Sansa found herself having to sneak in the books she'd taken from the shelf in her father's office, pouring over texts on history and war and botany, of all things. Well– Sansa supported healthy hobbies. Learning of botany was certainly more productive then chasing animals through the woods on horseback to shoot them with sharp projectiles and mount their heads on the wall.

And the history of England, of Britain– it was fascinating.

It was still confusing– and indeed, quite marvellous, Sansa decided– how her country could be ruled by a constitutional monarchy, yet also be considered a parliamentary democracy.

Head of state and head of government, she learned, were considered two different positions, with different rights and responsibilities to the people. While the Queen was the head of state, she was not the head of government and thus, had no say in most of the decisions regarding how the country was run; instead, that role was given to the parliament, who at the head resided the prime minister, head of government.

It had been nearly eight hundred years, Sansa learned, since the monarchy of the United Kingdom had ruled with absolute power. In 1215, the Magna Carta was signed by King John, after rebellious lords banded together in protest of the tyrannical monarch. It secured liberties for the elite class of England and barred an absolute monarchy, requiring that a King, too, must be held accountable by law.

Such a concept was entirely novel to Sansa, who remembered the ease in which Joffrey had people beaten, tortured and murdered, how he himself tortured, raped and murdered prostitutes– and there were none who could refuse him, for he was the King and his word was absolute law.

It was 1689 that the Bill of Rights was then put into effect. It laid down further limits on the power of the crown, and set out the rights of the people; firmly establishing the principles of free elections and freedom of speech within Parliament, no right of taxation without Parliament's agreement, and freedom from government interference, the right of petition and just treatment of people by courts.

To the granddaughter of Rickard Stark, the niece of Brandon Stark, and the daughter of Eddard Stark, all men killed by kings for speaking inconvenient truths, for demanding justice, Sansa couldn't help but resonate deeply with the Bill. She wondered how her world would have looked, should Robert's Rebellion have ended with the power of the Iron Throne limited by the rebellious lords, instead of placing another king with absolute power upon it.

By the time Sansa herself– or Violet Evans– had been born in England, the Queen's role was largely ceremonial in nature, a figure of national identity, unity and pride within the United Kingdom who remained strictly neutral in politics.

It was, Sansa decided, a far more just system than Westeros.

Not all of her new country's history seemed so different from Westeros, however. Sansa could see a mirror, almost, in the Romans to the Andals of Westeros; the Romans had invaded and colonised Britain, spending four-hundred years desecrating all aspects of traditional beliefs, concepts, understandings and practices of the traditional people, just as their empire invaded, raped and pillaged other lands and cultures until they held nearly the entire Western world, from northern Europe to Africa and the Middle East, imposing Roman laws, ideas, religion and language.

Sansa found she could empathise with the severance to the links to their traditional land and customs the Ancient Britons must have felt, of the cultural void left in the Romans' wake, the unfulfilled longing and need to recreate and redefine their spiritual connection. She could empathise, because she felt the very same now; left guided by her Dreaming, she sought to recreate and redefine her connection to the Old Gods, the last piece of her culture she had left to cling to, in the face of the abyss in her soul where her world once existed for her.

The local playground that Petunia ruled was edged by an overgrown wooded area, mostly untended in a town that Sansa recognised was suffering from rising levels of unemployment following the Mill shutting down. Their family was fortunate that their father was employed as an accountant by a large firm, and therefore had the job security many in co*keworth currently lacked.

Sansa wandered amongst the trees in the woods, searching; most were disappointedly young, their ashen grey-brown trunks thin and peeling, their leaves shades of green and orange and brown, but she did find a cluster of trees she thought she recognised from one of her father's books as silver birches. Their leaves were green but their trunks were pale enough to resemble a weirwood, so long as she didn't look up.

Sansa took care to make note of where the glade of silver birches could be found, and next time she visited the woodland she made sure to 'borrow' her father's pocket knife, with the intention of carving the traditional face into the trunk of the largest of them. She had to close her eyes during the carving and let instinct guide her hand, the sight of a steel blade sending a sharp slice of fear down her spine. She didn't think she would ever be able to bear the sight of a blade, to hear the sound of steel against steel, without feeling nauseous and sick with old, stale terror.

But the pocket-knife did its job. Sansa wasn't a master carver by any stretch of the imagination, but the rough face glowered down at her, just as fierce as the Heart Tree of Winterfell, and when she pressed her hand against the finished carving, she could swear it felt colder than the rest of the trunk– like it had been exposed to the icy winds of the North.

Kneeling at the foot of the tree, pressing her forehead against the trunk, Sansa closed her eyes, listening to the world around her.

It was quiet in the woods. It was something she noticed, considering how much louder it was, in this world compared to Westeros. The cars, the people, all packed together, all busy– nowhere was truly quiet.

Here, beneath her recreated Heart Tree, it was.

Her father, Ned Stark, had once told her that he found the Old Gods through being around nature. He'd never spoken overmuch of them to her. She had her suspicions why. But he had told Sansa that he never felt closer to them then when he was kneeling in the godswood, surrounded by nothing but the natural world. That he felt the Old Gods in every tree, every plant, every stone, every bird, every animal; seeing, feeling and hearing them, knowing he would know if they had a message or guidance for him.

Sansa let her mind settle, let go of her thoughts, let them drift away as she instead embraced the woods around her; the rustling of the leaves of the silver birches, the damp soil beneath her, the singing of the birds fluttering about in the branches above; it was here, now, that Sansa felt that cold in her bones, felt it under her skin; she opened her eyes and smiled as she saw the frost on her fingers, on an otherwise spring day.

Brandon the Builder had crafted a Wall of ice and snow and carved ancient runes into his creation powerful enough to keep out the Enemy for eight thousand years. His blood ran in her veins; his magic in her soul. Her Sacrifice, it seemed, had broken something inside her, or perhaps it had unlocked some previously unmet potential, and now...

Sansa breathed out and watched her breath mist before her.

Now, she had been unmade, the threads that made up the tapestry of her existence unravelled, unspooled, only to be rewoven, remade anew.

(She Dreamed that night of white roots winding around her wrists; around her, void, as unknowable as the space between stars while she hung at the Tree of Knowledge, the threads of Fate looped ever-tightening around her pale neck.

She Dreamed of a Man with Stark-grey eyes and a long face, a crown of iron and weirwood upon his brow, wearing thick furs as he carved lines into a Wall of ice that towered high above, too high to see, before cutting open his own hand to drip crimson on the runes, letting them sear blindingly bright before fading away)

Sansa woke with a gasp, frost on her eyelashes, hands fluttering to her neck.

Runes.

It was clear to her, or at least as clear as the confusing Dreams gifted to her by the Old Gods could be, their message hidden in history and metaphor, that the Runes her ancestor, Brandon the Builder, had carved into the Wall were important. Why? She did not know. But deep in her bones, where the cold winds swirled, Sansa knew.

The Runes were important– and somehow, she had to learn more.

(She had to admit, though, she wasn't sure how much luck she was going to have searching for information about Runic languages of another world in her school's library)

Despite the warm blankets covering her, Sansa shivered, rubbing her wrists as she unwillingly recalled hanging from weirwood roots, how they had bound her; helpless, pinned. There had been something else, too, something vast and abyssal– but she couldn't remember.

She didn't think she was meant to.

Some things were simply beyond mortal comprehension.

(There was always a price for Knowledge)

::

"What are you even looking for?" Petunia complained as Sansa searched through the public library.

Sansa hadn't even known public libraries existed until she was telling Petunia about how pitiful the school library was and Petunia idly mentioned that the district council hadn't managed to close co*keworth's public library yet, though it was probably only a matter of time.

Petunia wasn't known for her optimism.

"Runes," Sansa answered her older sister, who their parents had insisted accompany Sansa into the busier streets of town where the public library was located.

"Why can't you be interested in normal things, like Lily?" Petunia sighed, incredibly put upon as she leaned against one of the shelves. "I mean, it's ridiculous how she likes running around in the mud after a football like a boy, but at least she likes dress ups and dolls and fairytales."

"You'd be bored if I was interested in normal things," Sansa said absentmindedly, flicking through a rather ragged book on Egyptian mythology that appeared as if it could be promising. The squiggles decorating the cover looked a bit like the ones Brandon the Builder had been carving into the snow, anyway.

Well, they looked closer to Brandon the Builder's carvings than anything else she'd seen so far.

"Maybe," Petunia admitted. "You're probably the only one around here smart enough to actually talk to. I mean, Lily's fine, but she's so nice," Petunia said the word like it was something horribly distasteful, "that she makes you feel terrible for everything you've ever done in your life."

That wasn't untrue, Sansa conceded. Lily was still naive in a way that expected the best of people and made you feel as if you'd done the wrong thing if you fell short of those expectations.

Sansa's relationship with Lily was still... complicated. This wasn't helped by the twins starting school, where Lily had the opportunity to make so many more new friends outside of those she met at the park.

Lily was popular at school in a way that Sansa and Petunia weren't. Petunia, because her underlings were just that– underlings, and Sansa because she didn't mind little children but if she wasn't related to them, she didn't have a lot of patience for indulging in their whims.

But Lily– Lily drew people to her, made them love her as easily as she breathed and laughed and loved in return.

Arya had been like that.

Sansa had been a proper young lady, always concerned with propriety and duty, allowing it to colour even her acts of kindness, distancing herself from those around her the way she was told a proper, well-bred lady ought to distance herself from her lessers and her betters both.

They were both taught the smallfolk should be treated with a firm and guiding hand, and that bastards kept a wary eye on as greed and treachery was in their blood, but where Sansa obeyed these rules of society passed down to her, Arya had no such compunctions. Arya was wild and wilful and cared little for what a lady should or shouldn't do– she loved freely and without care, befriending commoners and adoring Jon, where Sansa followed the rules that strictly forbade her from both.

Sansa loved Arya. She loved her so much the grief of her loss still bled in Sansa's soul. But love– love was complicated. Love was a wild, wild beast with claws and fangs that growled and snarled and tore at you, made you bleed, but then it would lick at your wounds, soothe away the pain, and you would remember why you suffered, why you paid the price for those brief moments.

It struck Sansa then, standing in the library, holding the book of Egyptian mythology, that it was quite possible the reason she'd shied away from Lily was that she was afraid. That she had seen the ghost of her sister, of Arya, in her twin, and had sought to protect herself from the pain through distancing herself so she could never be hurt.

Oh, she thought, quietly stunned.

"You've got a funny look on your face," Petunia observed shrewdly.

"I think I've been a fool," Sansa admitted.

"Is this about your sudden, very odd obsession? Because in that case; yes, I quite agree," Petunia said and Sansa couldn't help her smile.

"No, I'm still interested in runes," she said. "I'm talking about Lily."

"Ah, Lily," Petunia spoke with an air of great knowing. "Well, you've always been funny about her. I've just assumed it was some kind of subconscious resentment about her being born so healthy, while you were so sick."

"...no," Sansa told Petunia, her mouth twitching slightly in amusem*nt. "No, it's not subconscious resentment about her health."

It was fear. And the more Sansa thought about it, the more foolish she felt.

Lily wasn't Arya.

Lily was free, in a way Lady Arya Stark never was, always weighed down by the legacy of their name, even when she had left the shores of Westeros and had nothing else. Even when she was No One, she was still Arya Stark of Winterfell, with the duty that such a name and lineage entailed.

Lily wasn't Arya, and in her heart of hearts, Sansa had always known that Lily wasn't Arya. Because Sansa hadn't been afraid of seeing Arya's ghost in her twin. She had been afraid of seeing herself.

Lily Joy Evans had no legacy to bind her, to chain her, to drag her down. No, Lily had freedom to give her wings, to let her fly, to soar through endless skies of possibilities. Lily was everything beautiful about this new world, and Sansa found herself abruptly terrified that if she tried to touch it, to touch Lily, she would taint her with the echo of Westeros, that she would destroy that freedom, tear that joy away from her twin, leaving her twisted and cold and broken, forever marred by the filth of the worst of humanity.

Leaving her just like Sansa.

"Do you want to know what I think, Lety?" Petunia asked. She didn't wait to hear Sansa reply, of course. Petunia never thought to doubt for a moment that the world would want to hear her opinion– and she would never give it a chance to tell her otherwise.

(And Sansa loved her for it, knowing how Westeros would have silenced Petunia, would have beaten her for her cleverness and her cheek and her ambition, replacing it with meekness and spite and resentment)

"I think," Petunia said, "you and Lily need to find something you have in common. The way you and I like gossiping together."

"We're not gossiping, we're creating an information network," Sansa playfully protested, even as her stomach twisted with nerves.

"You read too many of daddy's old war novels," Petunia sighed, with a roll of her eyes. "Yes, fine, we play spies together, and Lily and I like to play dolls."

"The last time I saw you and Lily play with dolls, you'd set up some sort of business empire," Sansa said, "and you were forcing Lily's dolls to sell you their house so you could knock it down to build a new store."

"Just like I said," Petunia looked very satisfied with herself, "Lily and I like to play with dolls."

Sansa tried to think of something she did that Lily might like.

"Does Lily like singing?" She wondered.

"Like it? Oh, yes. Is she any good at it? From what I hear of her singing along to daddy's radio, not even slightly," Petunia cut down that idea very quickly.

"Reading?"

"Reading, Lety, is not a group activity."

"Does she like sewing?" Sansa asked, a little desperate.

"No, she pricked her finger when Gran let her try and cried for forever," Petunia said. "But I like sewing and I'm very annoyed you've hidden this from me. Next time we play spies, we're doing it with a bit of sewing instead of all these ridiculous books about– good lord, is that a book about witchcraft?"

It was actually a book* about the attitude of the Catholic Church towards witchcraft and the allied practices of sorcery and magic, written in 1915 by a woman by the name of Sister Antoinette Marie Pratt. Sansa had only picked it up because the word 'witchcraft' had caught her eye and considering Marigold's faith and her own... somewhat uncommon abilities– well, Marigold already made her children go to church every Sunday, Sansa wanted to have more of an idea of what Marigold's reaction could be to discovering her daughter's gift, should Sansa ever accidentally float in front of her as she had Petunia.

Considering Sister Antoinette had described witchcraft as a dark and tragic practice which had stained so many of the pages of history with unnameable deeds was not a promising start.

Marigold would probably cry.

And pray.

Oh Old Gods green and wise, there'd be so much praying. Sansa already knew far too much of the Christian's Bible as it was. At least that was something she and Lily had in common– Lily seemed to have no interest in Church either.

"Really, Lety," Petunia sighed, giving her a pitying look as Sansa failed to come up with anything she and Lily shared, other than a dislike of Sunday morning mass. "It's obvious, isn't it?"

"Pretend it isn't," Sansa said, wincing a little as Petunia snorted.

"Oh, you're hopeless," she said. "Gardening, Lety. Lily loves gardening. And you're always reading those plant books of daddy's and playing in the woods. You probably wouldn't hate gardening."

"How recently have I told you how clever you are?" Sansa asked.

"Clearly not recently enough if you have to ask," Petunia informed her, but Sansa could see the pleased smile on her sister's face.

For all her prickly exterior, Petunia was more sensitive and vulnerable then she'd like to admit. It was why she protected herself by forging armour of poisoned courtesies and blackmail.

Gardening, Sansa thought to herself.

It was certainly worth a try.

::

*Sister Antoinette Marie Pratt's "The Attitude of the Catholic Church Towards Witchcraft and the Allied Practices of Sorcery and Magic" is actually a fascinating thesis submitted in 1915, however I'm using my fanfiction literary license to make it a book

Chapter 5

Chapter Text

Chapter Five:

Sansa watched as the delicate, wilted rose Lily had cupped in her soil-caked hands unfurled its petals and bloomed.

Lily's beautiful green eyes, not at all similar to the cold-cut emeralds of the Lannisters, but rather the green of sunlight filtering through a forest canopy of leaves, looked up from the fresh-bloomed rose to meet Sansa's own vivid blue eyes.

Other than their eye colour, the twins were remarkably alike. Both slight of build, both fair of skin, both with the same vibrant shade of hair; all fire and autumn and sunset, a bright, burning red shot through with tongues of copper, amber and gold flames, a flickering crimson fire that lit up almost sun-bright in the right light. Kissed by fire, the Free Folk had called Sansa. Seeing Lily under the light of the sun, knowing herself to be her twin's mirror, Sansa could understand why.

"Isn't it pretty, Lety?" Lily asked hopefully, almost pleading, and Sansa suddenly felt quite awful.

She had somehow managed to convince herself that Lily had no need for her, that her bright twin had so many friends and so much love that Sansa's presence was unnecessary. She had never paused to think of how her distance from Lily could perhaps end up being the cause of her fear becoming true, of Lily losing some of that brightness, that joy, of becoming more closed off, colder– a true mirror of Sansa, her twin.

I truly have been a fool, she thought, as she reached out to gently lift the rose from Lily's hands.

It was more than just 'pretty', fresh-bloomed and fragrant, each petal silky-soft and vibrant. "It's beautiful, Lily," she said and Lily's face lit up briefly before falling.

"Tuney hates it when I do freaky stuff," she confessed, and there was real hurt in her soft eyes. Sansa winced slightly, knowing Lily was too young to understand the need to not take Petunia's careless insults seriously, and Petunia too young to know better than to insult Lily so carelessly in jest.

She also understood more of Petunia's uneasiness of the unusual gifts she had witnessed from Sansa, and it seemed, from Lily too; once, witchcraft, magic and sorcery were universally believed, but now, to most people, if one were to assert the existence or even the mere possibility of witchcraft, such a belief would be dismissed in scornful silence and pity for the foolish individual; such a belief was absurd, abnormal, even monstrous, in the face of twentieth-century scepticism with its knowledge of science, medicine, nature and her laws.

In her own way, Petunia was trying to protect both herself and the twins. But Petunia was still a child and her understanding limited by her limited experiences.

"Tuney," Sansa told Lily, "sometimes forgets to mind her manners, don't you think?"

Lily giggled, nodding her head. "I heard her say something really, really, really rude last week!" Her twin confessed, with hushed glee. "Mama washed her mouth with sudsy water!"

Sansa remembered Petunia complaining about that– and using far worse words to do so than the ones Marigold had rinsed her mouth with soap for.

"Our big sister can be silly sometimes," Sansa said. "Big sisters aren't always right. And sometimes– sometimes when they're scared or upset or- or jealous of their little sisters, they'll say silly things, or call their little sisters mean names, but that doesn't mean they don't love them."

Lily started sniffling and Sansa had to blink back the tears welling in her own eyes.

Oh Arya, she thought, angry and grieving and loving, all at once, before gently, tenderly, placing the rose down beside her then leaning forwards to pull Lily into her arms.

Her twin fit there perfectly. Like they were two halves of a whole, and Sansa leaned her forehead against her twin's shoulder and breathed in the flowery scent of Lily's shampoo.

"I love you, Lily," she whispered. "I love you so much."

"I love you too, Lety," Lily said tearfully, sniffling a bit more before– "whoops," Lily squeaked. Sansa lifted her head from Lily's shoulder and started laughing through her tears as she realised a ring of dandelions had sprouted around them, the cheerful little weed-flowers blooming sunshine golden-bright. "I didn't mean to," Lily said sheepishly. "It just happens sometimes!"

"Do you want to see something secret?" Sansa asked Lily, suddenly feeling a bit reckless– and also, at the evidence of this other magic, so different to her own, the summer to her winter, suddenly eager to share.

"Secret?" Lily immediately perked up at the word and Sansa smiled mischievously, holding a finger to her lips as she focused on the feeling of cold, of how it swept through her body, enveloping her bones, sinking deeper, until she reached out to touch the rose Lily had made bloom.

Lily gasped as the rose was encased in a thin layer of ice, both her hands clapping over her mouth as her eyes widened almost comically. "Violet!" She hissed through her fingers. "Violet! You can do it too!"

"Not quite the same," Sansa said, picking up the frozen rose and handing it to Lily with a smile. Lily cradled it reverently in her hands.

"It's cold!" She marvelled, as if surprised by the fact.

"It's ice," Sansa said with a laugh, her heart light in her chest in the face of her twin's joy. "It's supposed to be cold."

"Well, I love it!" Lily declared. "I'm going to keep it forever!"

"I think it might melt before that," Sansa teased gently, before looking back down at the dandelion ring. "We better do something about these," she said. "Mama won't be happy about letting us garden, then coming out to find weeds growing in her lawn."

Lily, still clutching her ice rose, looked sheepish. "I can't make them go away, only grow," she admitted.

"Hm," Sansa mused, "probably best. Growing flowers is one thing..." but making them die? Killing a living thing, even if it was just a plant, with a thought alone? That sort of potential, at such a young age, was terrifying. It made a person think of just what such magic could be capable of as Lily grew in age and strength– or if she fuelled it by sacrifice. It was the sort of power that was whispered of the ancient, terrifying Dragonlords of Old Valyria. Sansa just couldn't picture Lily being capable of such evil as they were said to be.

But people did surprise you, Sansa knew, and one could never discount just what a person was capable of when trapped in a corner.

Even mice will bite when cornered by a cat.

She and Lily spent the rest of the afternoon first carefully digging the dandelions out of the lawn and replanting them in the corner of the garden that Marigold had kindly donated to the twins, where they were joined by an acorn Lily had collected and wanted to see if it would grow (Sansa suspected that with Lily's help, yes it would), and several different wildflowers they'd collected from around co*kesworth and carefully dug up without disturbing the roots.

After going back inside to wash their hands and change their clothes, Lily met Sansa in the family room where they laid out on the rug together, shoulder to shoulder stretched out on their bellies as Sansa carefully flicked through the pages of one of William's botany books so they could try and identify the different wildflowers they'd planted in their garden patch, Sansa gently teaching Lily how to read aloud the names of the different, colourful plants embossed on the glossy pages as her twin's head rested gently on her shoulder.

(Sansa Dreamed that night of the Wild She-Wolf of Winter, she who delivered with unrelenting fangs the Old Gods' justice upon those who would break sacred guest right; of how the Wild She-Wolf came to bear a crown and a kingdom she had never expected or wanted; a wolf with slain kin, but now all of the North to call her pack.

Sansa Dreamed of how the Wild She-Wolf rose up to her crown, to her kingdom, to her pack; how before Dawn had even broken over the Long Night, the Wild She-Wolf slayed two beasts of myth, magic and legend, beasts too exhausted by the battle to react to a sword through the brain.

Sansa Dreamed of the Dragon Queen's rage when she found her Children dead, but the Wild She-Wolf called the men and women of the North to arms and banished the Dragon Queen and what was left of her army from the North under threat of iron and steel.

Sansa Dreamed of how the Wild She-Wolf took no man as her King, how she roamed the lands she ruled, quelling the rebellions between the lords and the Free Folk as two different peoples learned to live without a Wall, how she bore only one child, a daughter, who she claimed to have been fathered by the North itself.

Sansa Dreamed and when she woke she wept for the sister she lost, until Lily and Petunia crawled into her bed, cradling her on either side, reminders of the sisters she had gained. Though Arya was gone to her forever, Sansa could rest peaceful with the comfort of knowing her sacrifice for Westeros, for the North, for her family, had not been in vain).

::

There were days where Sansa almost felt like a whole person.

Days where she could trade playful, snide remarks and gossip with Petunia, days where she could garden with Lily, days where she could pray to the Old Gods before the silver birch, days where she could practice the magic They had gifted when they re-spun her anew, days where she could lose herself in books of the history of this new world that she now called hers.

And then there were the days where her lungs tightened and spasmed at the memory of being unable to draw breath as she gurgled blood, where echoes of the flames that had burned her alive had her nails tearing long rents down skin that felt too hot and too tight. Behind her eyelids, an unrelenting tide of the undead swarmed, grey-rot and glowing-blue eyes as the living screamed their defiance and the sky itself seemed to bear down on them in red fire as flaming arrows and catapults rained like bleeding stars.

Sansa remembered loosening an arrow with a dragonglass arrowhead that pierced a White Walker through the skull and how the monster dissolved into steam and snow, dissipating in a matter of seconds. It was not a matter of skill, for she was no marksman– just the sheer numbers they were facing increasing the likelihood of her chances of hitting one of their enemy. Most of her time was spent helping cull the endless sea of wights that piled up against the walls of Winterfell as she went numb from the bone-chilling cold, not even noticing as her hands tore and bled as the battle seemed to blur, yet drag on as an endless horror, a massacre of the living as above them the winds of winter howled their rage.

And that was just the memories.

In Sansa's nightmares, skeletal hands grasped at her, strangling her, the cold flaying her to the very bone. In her nightmares, Melisandre held a blinding-white sword as flames burned in her eerie red eyes, shadows creeping out like snakes from under her silken dress to wind around Sansa, binding her, squeezing tighter and tighter until she had no breath left to scream. In her nightmares, she saw the Night King's face; carved from ice, inhumane cruel beauty, that awful promise in those hungry, dead, burning star-eyes of an endless winter and eternal silence as he reached for her–

Disturbed, sleepless nights would sap the life and strength from her days, leaving them to become a foggy mess of emotion, alternating between raw and numb, rage and grief, and Sansa would curl in her bed, drowning in her past.

Her family did not know how to deal with Sansa's pain, her grief, the broken pieces of herself that had shattered apart so long ago as she watched her father's head roll from his shoulders, and that she was now left to piece together with too-small hands, hands unscarred and unbloodied. Petunia's tongue would turn sharp and cutting with her fear while Lily grew tearful and clingy. Marigold, her sweet, young mother, would cradle Sansa, her arms holding tightly to Sansa's trembling body, her warmth and gentle murmurs, her floral scent and sweet songs, all a reminder of golden summers so far removed from the darkness of winter.

William took her driving, for hours on end, using up petrol they couldn't really afford as he spoke until his voice ran hoarse on history and politics and botany and, sometimes, very quietly, on war.

He had fought in the Second World War, Sansa knew. She also knew that while the bookshelves in his small office were filled to the bursting with books of wars in history, there was not one book about World War II.

"Some memories," he told her, when they were parked near the river. In the dark of the night she couldn't see the litter that was strewn across the banks, the dirty water instead black and glittering under the light of the stars above. "Some memories, they just crawl deeper and deeper into your mind. I will never forget the sight of that barbed wire fence, at least ten feet high... and beyond it, two more layers of barbed wire." He fell silent, eyes distant as they stared at something Sansa couldn't see, something that haunted him.

"And that smell," he whispered hoarsely. "That ugly, horrible smell."

He shook his head slowly. "There are times," he said, "when I feel lost. It was the most shattering experience of my life. The whole war... I saw things, unimaginable things. I had to do things no man should. And I can't forget it. More than twenty years and I still can't forget it. But I can write about it– and that helps."

He leaned over then, opening the glovebox of the car with hands that were trembling slightly, just enough for Sansa to notice, and pulled out a bound leather notebook. There was a violet embossed on the cover. It had to have been made especially for her and Sansa accepted it with gentle, reverent hands, opening it to see her father's rough writing on the first page.

Remember – this world is a more beautiful place with you in it

"I haven't forgotten," she promised, carefully tracing the inked words with her fingertips.

"I know," William said gently. "But I thought a reminder might help, on the harder days."

"Thank you," Sansa whispered.

When they returned home, hours later, Sansa sat on her bed with her legs curled under her, her lamp turned on as Lily slept soundly on the twin bed next to hers, the journal lying open in front of her, a ballpoint pen in hand.

My name, she wrote carefully in the language of her first world, of Westeros, is Sansa Stark of Winterfell. And I died.

Chapter 6

Chapter Text

Chapter Six:

Primrose Fields loved all her grandchildren, but she had a special place in her heart for her Petunia. Not only was Petunia her first grandbaby, but when the twins were born, Marigold and William had been forced to split their time between work and the hospital, leaving Petunia almost solely in Primrose's care for two months. Petunia was argumentative and stubborn, clever and quick, and Primrose just adored her.

She'd worried, as the twins grew older, that Violet and Lily would form a bond that would leave Petunia excluded. Because of that, she had perhaps overcompensated in her care for Petunia, buying her sweets and spending time with her, but her fears turned out for nothing as she listened over the years to Petunia's chatter fill with stories of her time spent with her sisters. Lily and Violet seemed to adore their big sister and Petunia thrived under their attention.

It was still a surprise to Primrose when Petunia asked if Violet could join them for their next sewing project. As far as Primrose knew, Violet had shown no interest in sewing in the past, too lost in her books. She was a clever one, that Violet. Odd, too– far too knowing for her age, and haunted the way Primrose remembered seeing in the eyes of the women around her during the war.

As a single woman in her mid-twenties at the time, Primrose herself had been conscripted under the 2nd National Service Act, and while she never served overseas, she still vividly remembered her role as an air warden through the Air Raid Precautions during the Blitz, remembered digging and digging in the aftermath of the bombings until her fingers bled, of listening for the tap-tap-tapping of someone, anyone, still alive under all the rubble.

The memory of those bloody sirens still woke her up at night in a cold sweat.

Primrose didn't know what it was that had put that look in her grandbaby's eyes, if it was some subconscious memory of nearly dying when she was born, of her struggle to survive when her own little lungs were failing, when her tiny heart struggled to keep on beating, but she would do whatever she could to help chase those shadows away.

Violet was such a perfectly courteous and respectful child, too– she had the sort of old school manners that Primrose's own grandmother would have approved of, and that old bat never approved of anything. She always seemed ready to dip into a curtsey, so graceful in her movements, practically gliding as she walked. She said all her please's and thank-you's, she deferred to her elders, and she never spoke out of turn. It was downright unnatural in a child so young, but it suited the little girl who always wore her hair neatly braided, who Primrose had never seen in a pair of trousers, and who always had such interesting questions about the world, able to see an uncommon beauty in it that Primrose had... taken for granted, she supposed.

It made sense, when she thought about it, that Violet would be interested in sewing– a very traditional sort of activity, for a more traditional girl. It also made sense, in accordance to Violet's character, that she would have waited until Petunia offered, rather than intrude on Petunia's time with Primrose.

Far too self-sacrificing, that one. Not used to putting her own needs and wants first.

Primrose was happy to welcome both girls into her home, as she answered the door to the sight of them both on her doormat; Petunia looking so much like her mother, all blue eyes and blonde ringlets and slightly too-long teeth, in her button-up shift dress, tights and red Mary-Janes; and Violet, looking far more conservative in a white frock, with her father's hair and fair skin. She also had blue eyes, but hers were a more startling deep and vivid shade than the softer, paler blue of her mother and older sister.

"Gran, I've picked out the dress pattern," Petunia announced, one of her magazines clutched in hand, a bag slung over her elbow filled with bundled, pastel fabrics. "It's just like the ones Twiggy wears– it's short and ruffled and gorgeous."

"It's lovely to see you too, petal," Primrose said, amused. "And you, Lety love."

Petunia didn't look ashamed of her enthusiasm, though her cheeks did turn a little pink at the gentle admonishment to her manners. Violet turned a fond look on her impatient sister before reaching up on her tiptoes and Primrose bent down obligingly to let her grandbaby press a kiss to her cheek. "I've missed you, grandmother," Violet said, in her oddly lilting voice, formal but no less genuine for it.

"I've missed you too," she said, straightening back up and waving both girls through the doorway, into the house. Petunia headed straight for the living room, where Primrose had already set up her sewing machine.

Violet looked it over with great interest. "I've only done sewing by hand," she explained, "mother doesn't have a sewing machine at home."

"Mummy doesn't appreciate sewing," Petunia agreed, smoothing out the magazine with the dress pattern open on the coffee table, before gently pulling out the soft pastel green fabric, ready to be measured and cut. They spent the next few hours in quiet conversation; Primrose quickly noted that while Violet had never used a sewing machine before, she was impeccably talented at sewing by hand, her needle darting through the increasingly complicated stitches she was assigned without any signs of difficulty. The stitches themselves were all perfect; tiny, even, barely visible.

"I know," Petunia said, looking over at her sister with a proud, slightly exasperated look that warmed Primrose's heart. It would have been so easy for Petunia to be jealous of Violet's apparent skill, but instead Petunia had adopted a protective role over her little sister from the stories she'd heard, both from Petunia herself and her daughter, going so far as to help reconcile the twins from whatever estrangement was keeping them apart. "She won't join any of the sewing clubs at school," Petunia went on to complain with a sigh, "I told her, 'Lety, you might finally find some children worth your time, who don't bore you to tears', but she said she's not interested."

"I prefer to spend my time with you," Violet said, "or Lily."

Petunia tried very hard not to look pleased and smug by that. She didn't succeed very well and Primrose had to hide her smile.

Petunia was her favourite grandchild, for all that a grandparent wasn't supposed to have favourites, but oh, she did love Violet too.

::

"You must be so bored at school," Petunia observed. Considering she was watching Sansa complete her mathematics homework for her while flipping through a Woman's Own magazine, her observation was rather apt.

"Mm," Sansa said, pencil easily skating over the page. It was so easy to lose herself in the logic of numbers and their patterns and sequences. The rules hadn't changed in this world from Westeros, only the symbols representing the numbers had– and once she'd translated those in her head, she'd suddenly found centuries worth of new research into the field of mathematics to add to the solid basis she'd already learnt, all within her grasp. In Westeros, her education had focused on learning numbers involved in running a keep– here, she could learn anything, from statistics and probability, to geometry, to algebra. It was knowledge that could help shape her entire understanding of this world, the connections and possibilities– Sansa easily lost herself in it, something her sister was happy to take advantage of, considering her own personal dislike for the subject.

Petunia huffed, flipping the magazine shut as she leaned further back in her chair. "Honestly, Lety, I don't know why mummy and daddy bother to keep you in school at all. We all know you don't get anything out of it– you don't like the other children and you're too advanced for any of the lessons."

"I don't actually dislike the other children," Sansa clarified, finally looking up from Petunia's homework. "I just don't like being forced to spend long periods of time around them."

"I really don't think that's the distinction you think it is," Petunia said almost pityingly. "You know, it's a shame mummy and daddy both work– I've heard some of the other students talk about home-schooling."

"Like a–" maester, Sansa almost said, but managed to swallow the foreign word, replacing it with, "–teacher, coming into the home?" It sounded like how she had been taught at Winterfell, under the tutelage of Maester Luwin and Septa Mordane, along with her brothers and sisters. Except Petunia shook her head.

"No, it's where one, or both, I suppose, of your parents teach you," her sister explained. Sansa blinked, surprised– that didn't sound anything like in Westeros. The Lord and Lady of Winterfell had certainly been too busy to teach their children the basics, such as Sansa's numbers and letters and her first stitch. Their time was far too valuable for such trivial matters; the education and upbringing of their children was left to the servants they hired, while they ran their lands.

"Is it very common, this 'home-schooling'?" she asked Petunia.

"Not around here," Petunia said. "I've only heard of the Snape boy being home-schooled by his mother– Vera Douglas told me; she lives on the same street as the Snapes."

It was the first time the name 'Snape' was mentioned in their home.

"Does Vera know why he's home-schooled?" Sansa asked, mildly interested. Petunia shrugged slightly.

"She says they're both strange– and the husband is the no-good sort," her sister said. Sansa grimaced slightly – the 'no-good sort' tended to mean the sort of husband who liked to beat his wife and children black and blue after drinking away his wages. Sansa knew how it was, to be trapped and beaten by men who had power over you. She had thought it couldn't get worse than Joffrey ordering his kingsguard to beat her with their mailed fists and the flats of their swords before the entire court, until she had been forcibly married to Ramsay.

Even thinking of Ramsay brought out a cold sweat. She knew the word this world used to describe men like him– a sad*st. He had had her entirely at his mercy; all he needed was her face, the face of Eddard Stark's daughter, but the rest of her... she wondered, often in the aftermath of her escape, how she had ever survived the monster. He had beaten her, he had violently raped her and sodomised her until she was torn and bleeding, he had cut her and flayed the skin from her tender belly and thighs, he had even slathered her hips and thighs in still-sizzling fat from the kitchens and set one of his hunting dogs on her, laughing as she so desperately screamed and pleaded, the hound's vicious teeth dug deep into the meat of her hip.

The maester had to sew her flesh back together from the mauling with over three hundred stitches. He hadn't been allowed to give her milk of poppy or dreamwine, but Sansa had been delirious anyhow, so far past hysterical with panic she'd moved on to numb. The maester had barely finished sewing the last of the bites when Ramsay had banished him from the room and raped her, still bloodied and limp and trembling with shock and agony. It had been with that memory in mind that Sansa had fed Ramsay to his own starving hounds, remembering his laughter at her screams, remembering his arousal at her agony and terror. After, she had taken enough tansy to kill any seed of his that could possibly have taken root in her womb and bled for nearly a week, cleansing her body of his taint.

"Have you nearly finished that?" Petunia interrupted and Sansa flinched, her attention turning outward from the clawing, greedy memories of Ramsay, as hungry for her suffering as the monster himself had been, to her sister, who was watching with a badly hidden look of concern on her face.

"I've finished," she said, putting the pencil down.

"Good," Petunia said, "let's go– walk in the woods. You can talk to that tree of yours."

Sansa smiled, the warmth in her chest helping to dispel the chill of the memories of Ramsay. Petunia had so little interest in nature, but she knew how Sansa loved the woods, loved spending time at her silver birch, the closest she had to a weirwood, and her sister was seeking to bring her comfort in the face of her distress.

"Or," she said, because Petunia really did hate the woods, "we could fetch our new tennis rackets and go play on the school courts."

The local day school they went to took students from co*keworth and two other, neighbouring towns. Its facilities weren't exactly the sort to get excited about, but they'd recently had a new hard tennis court built and it was very popular amongst the students. Sansa had very little interest in tennis, but according to Petunia it was the sort of proper sport an English schoolgirl should play, and she'd begged and begged their parents until Marigold and William had folded and bought them all a tennis racquet.

Sansa could have told them to save the money on hers, except Petunia and Lily were so excited that she found herself being practically dragged to the tennis court after school and on the weekends, where she was expected to run after a ball and hit it over a net with her racquet, all while following complex rules about painted lines, boundaries and the number of times the ball could bounce.

Still, it made Petunia and Lily happy and if there was one thing that Sansa had truly learned from her first life, it was that sometimes it was necessary to do things she wasn't interested in, for the sake of her sisters' happiness. If she and Arya had made more of an effort to be engaged in each other's interests, or to at least be willing to participate in them, than perhaps their relationship wouldn't have become so strained and distanced. Maybe they could have even been happy spending time together.

Sansa wasn't willing to let that happen again. She had spent years thinking that Arya had died, had been brutally murdered, before they could make up the rift between them that a childhood of misunderstandings and distance and then Lady's death, and the blame Sansa held towards Arya in the aftermath, had caused. And then, even after she found out Arya was alive, there had been no time to truly work through their years of issues, to come to an understanding and love untainted by guilt and resentment before Sansa's own death.

Never again, Sansa swore, as she changed into her tennis dress with its pleated skirt that she had sewn herself, and prepared for a sweaty afternoon failing terribly at hitting the tennis ball over the net.

Chapter 7

Chapter Text

Chapter Seven:

It still stunned Sansa, just how unfathomably large this world was. How many different countries were mapped out, how many kings and emperors and ministers ruled them. How many people could be packed into a single city, amidst great towers of glass and metal that reached up to the stars.

Sansa had seen wonders in her life. She had been raised in a magnificent castle, surrounded by farms and small towns and wilderness. She had lived in Kings Landing, the capital city of her country, sprawling across three tall hills, defended by tall walls and overlooked by the Red Keep. The Eyrie, situated thousands of feet in the sky, astride a mountain peak; Riverrun, rising sheer from the confluence of rivers it was built upon; even Castle Black, stronghold of the Night’s Watch, built along the Wall; that mighty barrier of ice, stone and earth, over one hundred leagues long and seven hundred feet high, woven through with old Northern magic to guard Westeros from the threat beyond.

Yet those wonders seemed to pale before the cities of this world. The disparity of wealth in Westeros meant that the castles, the keeps, they were not the norm. They were kingdoms unto themselves where the nobility ruled and the smallfolk toiled under their sworn liege. The larger towns and cities carried with them the stench of waste, beggars with little more than rags to cover their privy parts wandered streets between ramshackle huts, and the smallfolk starved in their slums while the nobles feasted.

Britain was– different. There was still a disparity, yet the towns she’d seen were noisy but clean; there were no children dying of starvation in the streets, no stench that she could barely breathe through, no shelters held together by a nail and a prayer. And they were busy; roads filled with traffic, streets filled with stores, diverse architecture of wood and bricks, steel and glass, stretching green lawns and bright, colourful gardens, and thepeople. So, so many people.

Sansa rarely had the opportunity to see her new country outside of co*keworth, but on occasion Marigold and William would take their daughters to Northampton, one of the largest nearby towns, where Sansa often found herself swiftly overwhelmed. Northampton’s population was just over two hundred thousand people– a little under half of the total population of Kings Landing, the most populous city in all of Westeros, and yet, Northampton was not even considered to be a city in this world.

When Sansa tried to imagine the bigger cities, her mind struggled to truly comprehend the numbers. London’s population was over sixteen times that of King’s Landing– how could a city even support that many people? Did they all live in those towers, spiralling up to the heavens? Sansa just couldn’t imagine it.

That was likely why she was reluctant when Marigold and William decided that the family would be visiting London, to see William’s brother and his family.

Petunia was thrilled. They so rarely left co*keworth and Sansa’s sister was excited for a taste of city life. Sansa could empathise with Petunia’s longing eagerness. She remembered growing up in Winterfell and wanting so desperately to escape, to go to King’s Landing to see the southern knights in their shining armour, to see the court ladies in all their jewels and finery, to be surrounded by grandeur and glitter. She had been so ignorant then, to the poison and rot that lurked beneath.

She only hoped that Petunia wouldn’t be disappointed by London, as she had been by King’s Landing. Though she couldn’t say she’d spent much time in the city, as opposed to being a prisoner kept in the Red Keep.

The family left for London by car. Sansa spent the hours-long journey reading on the history of the city that stood on the River Thames; a city that had stood for two millennia, founded by the Romans, a patron to arts, education, entertainment, fashion, and more. It did little to calm the nerves in her belly.

Her first thought upon entering the city was– busy. Packed with people, with cars, with bright lights and billboards, the buildings all seemed to reach up, the skyline filled with a silhouette of towers and spires, nothing at all like anything she had ever seen before. Sansa was almost too frightened to set foot out of the car. Years she’d lived as Violet Evans now, and yet, this city still seemed so unnatural to her, utterly foreign and terrifying in its differences from her first world.

Neither of her sisters shared her hesitation. Petunia couldn’t leave the car soon enough, Lily tumbling out after her. Sansa was grateful for the chance to stretch her legs, cramped as they were after several hours of driving, packed tight with Lily and Petunia in the rear seat, but she still hesitated, one hand clutching onto the car door as a safety line, a slight tremor in her hands as traffic whizzed past, the world so busy all around her.

“Come on, Lety!” Petunia called out, impatient. “Mummy said we could go shopping before going to Uncle Ollie and Aunt Ettie’s!”

Petunia’s face was flushed in her excitement; she looked so lovely in her navy shift dress, with its white buttons, paired with white tights and her red Mary Janes, a red, floaty scarf looped around her neck. Petunia had sewn the dress herself; it was the latest of fashions in London, she’d claimed.

“Are you alright, Lety love?” Marigold came to stand beside Sansa, gently brushing a hand over Sansa’s shoulder. Sansa inhaled sharply, steeling herself.

“I am well, thank you, mother,” she said, forcing her mouth to curve into a gentle smile as she finally released her tight grip on the car door and stepped after her two sisters, both waiting impatiently.

They had arrived early in London, in order for Petunia to be able to visit one of its many department stores– Sansa hadn't even heard of a department store before Petunia started to chatter excitedly over them. The establishment was quite unlike any other she’d seen before; levels upon levels of shops, people everywhere she looked, the press of noise almost a physical weight against her.

Sansa could feel her breath speeding, her heart thudding harder and harder in her chest the longer they lingered within the department store. The crowds of people pushed up against her, most of them failing to spot the small child in their rush to get wherever they wished to be.

Sansa wasn’t used to people in her space. She was a noble lady, even when she was the disgraced daughter of Winterfell– the only people within arm’s reach of her were guards, handmaidens, or those who wished to do her harm, and only the latter would dare touch her without her explicit permission. The only similar experience she could relate this to was the bread riot of King’s Landing, where the smallfolk had been worked into a frenzy by a slow starvation.

She still remembered the sheer terror of that day, even in the aftermath of the horrors that had followed; the greedy High Septon being torn apart by the maddened crowd; the wretched poor crushed under the stampeding mobs or cut down by the guards, blood and entrails spilling on stone and mud; the filthy, stinking men who had chased her, grabbed her, torn her dress, seized her hair and pulled, one panting in her face as he asked, “you ever been f*cked, little girl?”and her terrified certainty that she was to be raped to death, her bones left to scatter the city.

The sudden touch of a hand on her shoulder tore a strangled, gasping sound from Sansa’s throat, almost a scream. She almost fought before realising it was William gently steering her from the unrelenting press of the crowd, that it was her father taking her back out to the streets where the sight of the sky, even hindered as it was by the towering buildings, helped her draw air into her lungs.

She was trembling, her body shaking as violently as leaves during a storm, clinging desperately to the branches as the wind ripped and tore at them. She loved this new world, she truly did, but sometimes it was too other, set so far apart from everything and anything she’d ever known, that it frightened her beyond what she could bear.

“Why don’t we go wait somewhere a little quieter?” William asked gently and Sansa nodded, forcing more air into her lungs as she rearranged her frozen, numb expression to something closer to serene.

Few had been the times when she couldn’t breathe past whatever terror or heartbreak had stolen the air from her lungs, courtesies spilling from her lips as she kept her expression blank and even, a proper little lady. It was easiest to hide herself in the same trappings now, when overwhelmed by unfamiliarity and left feeling akin to an unmoored ship, drifting aimlessly along in an ocean beyond her understanding.

Sansa didn’t know where the danger lurked in this world. With its parliamentary laws and justice system and the Geneva Conventions, it should feel safer. But Sansa had learned better than to trust pretty words with their pretty promises and there were times when she lay awake in bed too afraid to sleep and finding herself wishing that she was back in Westeros; a world where lords and kings could rape and murder at will without true oversight, where wives and daughters were chattel to be traded by men, but where at least she knew the dangers, knew the people, knew how to play the Great Game.

She hadn’t realised the security that knowledge had offered her until it was so brutally stripped away, leaving her bare and vulnerable– and afraid. Bravery for her had only ever been another mask to wear. Sansa didn’t want to have to be brave. She just wanted to feel safe.

“I hate seeing you like this,” William said quietly, one hand still resting on the small of her back, guiding her through the paved streets as cars roared down the road. “Like there’s a wall between you and the world.”

Sansa stayed quiet, because she didn’t know what she could say. Sometimes, she thought she didn’t even know who she was, behind the wall of courtesy she had been forced to hide behind for so long in order to survive. A wall of courtesy she’d been trained to build before she could even walk. Practically before she could even talk.

William led them both to a café. Warmth washed over Sansa as they stepped inside, along with the almost bitter scent of roasting coffee beans. William didn’t try to make her talk as they sat together at one of the tables. He simply brushed a hand over her hair as she ordered a hot drink– at home, she usually drank lemon tea on bad days. They didn’t have any at the café, so she settled for hot chocolate instead. The café staff brought it out quickly and Sansa sipped it; enjoying the hot, rich drink, the sticky-melting marshmallows sweet on her tongue.

“Is there anything I can do?” William asked, his voice as gentle as his touch.

“You already are,” Sansa said. Grateful, always, for her new parents. For how they had accepted her, in all her strangeness, a haunted child who wasn’t truly a child, instead a broken woman tangled in the trappings of false-youth, and loved her regardless. Loved her unconditionally.

::

Oliver and Ethel Evans– or Uncle Ollie and Aunt Ettie, as Petunia called the pair– both appeared delighted, if slightly awkward, about greeting Sansa's family and welcoming them into their home. There was a stiffness to the clasp of hands between Oliver and William that spoke of a past tension, but both brothers were clearly trying to not allow it to affect their reunion now.

Oliver resembled William greatly; they both had the same thick red hair that was greying at the temples and the same green eyes, not quite as brilliantly vivid as Lily’s, and the same tall, broad build. Ethel was also tall; a slender, willowy woman with brown hair severely cut to chin-length and sharp brown eyes. They had one child, a cousin for Sansa and her sisters– a boy called Rory. Cousin Rory was older than them, about sixteen or seventeen years, Sansa would guess, with his mother’s slender build, and his father’s thick red hair and green eyes. He was even more awkward than his parents in his greetings of his much younger, female cousins.

“Rory, love, why don’t you give your cousins a tour?” Ethel suggested. Rory looked like there was nothing he’d like to do less but he obeyed his mother, and the three sisters trailed after him as he led the way through the London flat.

It wasn’t a large space; two bedrooms, a living space, and the necessities, such as a bathroom, a kitchen, and a laundry. It was neat, with very little clutter and the main point of interest were the number of photographs of Rory up on the walls, depicting him at various ages.

The short tour finished, the four of them stood awkwardly outside Rory’s bedroom, none quite sure what to say.

“Cousin,” Sansa finally arranged her features into a light smile, remembering her chirping courtesies, “how do you like to spend your time? There seems an awful lot to do in London.”

“Er,” Rory said hesitantly, “I like listening to music, mostly.”

He showed them his transistor radio. “Everyone has one,” he explained, tuning it to a clashing clamour of noise that Sansa thought was supposed to be music. The singer drawled out about being pleased to meet her, and sang about wars fought for ten decades by kings and queens, of the blitzkrieg and stinking bodies, asking over and over what’s my name?

It caused an honest chill to run down Sansa’s spine; the dark rhythm, the grinding tune as the voice sang his mantra out over and over, almost taunting. Her fingers were twitching slightly when the last beats faded away. Petunia looked unaffected and largely uninterested, though she tried to hide it under a veneer of politeness. Lily, however, appeared intrigued.

“Who sings that?” Sansa’s twin asked, leaning forwards. Rory grinned at Lily, his shoulders finally set at ease.

“It’s the Rolling Stones’ new song,” he told her. “’Sympathy for the Devil’. Did you like it?”

“It was wicked!” Lily announced. “What other songs do they have?”

“I have one of their tapes,” Rory said eagerly and Sansa traded looks with Petunia before reluctantly following the pair as Lily skipped after Rory.

The walls of Rory’s room were plastered with bright posters. Sansa felt her cheeks warm at the state of– of dishabillesome of those featured were in. She wasn’t used to seeing the bare chests of men, and the purposefully sexual poses struck her as particularly scandalous.

At least Lily was enjoying herself, Sansa thought with a quiet sigh, watching as Rory chatted to her twin, his hands swooping in wide gestures as he explained his favourite bands and singers to her.

Lily did enjoy herself– in fact, she loved Rory’s music collection. Rory ended up giving her one of his Beatles band posters for her to take home to hang up on their bedroom wall and Lily begged their parents until William and Marigold bought Lily her own transistor radio. Watching Lily dance around their room singing, “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da!” made Sansa want to laugh and groan. Petunia had been right to say that Lily hadn’t been gifted with a voice for singing, but there was something truly uplifting to hear Lily’s voice, high and hopeful, as she sang out, “la-la, how the life goes on!”

Sansa had been taught to sing, as a noble. She had even enjoyed it– Sandor had called her ‘little bird’ for more than her chirping courtesies, ever-so dutifully parroted back to her captors. She had sung love songs, had sung tragedies, had even written her own. The songs Lily sung felt more real and Sansa found herself humming along to them, more often than not.

“Rory says he’s been to concerts,” her twin said dreamily, stretched back across her bed, radio by her head. “I’d love to go to a concert– you’d go with me, wouldn’t you, Lety?”

“I absolutely would not,” Sansa mercilessly crushed that thought. Rory had indeed told them about concerts, with thousands of screaming fans packed into one place. Sansa couldn’t even bear a department store!

Lily pouted, jutting out her bottom lip. “You never want to do anything fun,” she said sulkily. “Will you at least join the school choir with me?”

“There’s a school choir?” Sansa asked. She knew there was a church choir, but they sung traditional religious hymns that Sansa had little interest in.

“Not yet,” Lily said, conviction settling over her face. “But I’m going to start one.”

::

“No,” said the deputy principal, Mr Addams. “I’m sorry, Miss Evans, but you’d need a teacher to supervise, and frankly, there’s nobody who can spare the time.” The man had a tired look of someone who was overworked and underpaid. Frankly, Sansa felt sorry for him. Mostly because she knew Lily wouldn’t give up that easily.

Sure enough, Lily’s face was set with steely determination as they left the office. “Fine,” she said, her small hands clenched in fists at her sides. “If the teachers won’t help, I’ll just organise it myself!”

Oh dear, Sansa thought, more amused than anything.

Except, of course, Lily wasn’t about to let her stay out of it. Sansa wasn’t sure why she’d have expected any different– Lily had already dragged Sansa along with her to the meeting with Mr Addams.

“Lety, you’re really, really good at organising stuff,” her twin said determinedly, “you have to help me organise this!”

“Or we could listen to what Mr Addams told us,” Sansa suggested without much hope that her sister would heed her words.

“Adults,” Lily said firmly, “don’t always know what’s best.”

Sansa found herself struck silent by the statement. It was seemingly simple, childlike even, yet it was something that Sansa herself hadn’t figured out until she was years older than Lily was now. After that, she found herself unwilling to get in Lily’s way as her sister set about making her choir a reality.

Her twin wrote to Rory, asking him to lend her cassette tapes from his favourite bands– the Beatles, the Animals, Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, and more. She then enlisted Petunia’s help to find someone in their neighbourhood who owned a boombox, a relatively new invention she’d heard about from Rory, who Sansa was beginning to consider Lily’s enabler. A boombox was a portable music player that could play both the radio and cassette tapes. One of Petunia’s “friends” had an older brother who owned one and who was willing to lend it to them once a week.

Lily then set about gathering students to join the choir. For the first meeting, she offered free cordial for whoever showed up, at Sansa’s advice that people would be more likely to show if there was some incentive for them. The first choir meeting was held during lunch break and all of Lily’s friends turned up, of course. But students from the older year levels did too. Some seemed more curious than anything, some amused. But they still turned up.

“She really can move mountains when she puts her mind to it,” Petunia muttered to Sansa as Lily put one of the cassette tapes into the boombox and climbed up onto a chair, holding out a long twig she'd found as her conductor’s baton. She looked slightly ridiculous, waving her hands and “baton” around to conduct the Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’, but the other students were laughing and smiling, singing along to the music, some clapping their hands along to the beat, some dancing and swaying to the lyrics. There was an energy to the exultant, playful music that Lily led, so brave and effortless and enthusiastic that swept up the crowd, leaving none unaffected.

Sansa noticed about half an hour into the “choir” rehearsal that Mr Addams and several of the other teaches had gathered to watch, standing slightly apart from the crowd of students. The teachers were smiling and nodding along to the music, a few laughing, and Mr Addams had a resigned look on his face. He caught Sansa’s eyes on him and the corner of his mouth twitched up slightly as he nodded at her.

Lily, it seemed, had won her choir.

Chapter 8

Chapter Text

Chapter Eight:

In late January of 1968, Lily and Violet Evans turned eight years old.

It was still so odd for Sansa to think of herself as a child, even after three years of awareness, of clarity, in this new body of hers.

Once, long before Sansa had ever been betrothed to Joffrey, Arya had enlisted the help of Robb and Jon to move all the furniture in Sansa's bedroom three inches over. Sansa didn't even remember what she'd done to irritate her sister, but it was certainly far more subtle than Arya's usual retaliations. That didn't mean it wasn't effective. She'd found herself standing in a familiar, recognisable space, and yet everything was wrong; it was disorientating, an itch at the back of her mind she couldn't scratch as she bumped her hips and shoulders into bedframes and wardrobes and bruised her shins against chests.

Sometimes, this new body felt like her Winterfell bedroom, after that prank. It was hers, but it was also wrong; too short, too soft, familiar but not quite right. Violet Evans was so similar to Sansa Stark, but the body was not a mirror and Sansa felt those differences in every step, every breath, every glance of the mirror. The jarring strangeness clung to her, sat under her skin, an otherness that tasted of hoarfrost on the back of her tongue.

Sansa knew most people would surely feel horribly disturbed by such a thing. That they would resent their new, oddly-fitting body, with its differences that never went away, not how the wrongness of Sansa's bedroom gradually did, Arya revealing a full turn of the moon later what she had done.

Sansa wasn't most people.

However ill-ftting this new body was, however disturbing it may feel at times, she could not help the relief she felt; there were no memories carved into this skin, no scars where the ugly horrors of her past had permanently marred her flesh. Her new body was untouched by the violence, the horror, that Sansa Stark had suffered, even before her death; the beatings, the humiliation, the violations– and then Ramsay. This new body, it had never been so horrifically invaded, leaving her with nowhere to hide as the tortured flesh being violated belonged solely to the bastard they made her call husband while she herself no longer had any claim to it and there was nothing left within her that she could call her own.

While the memories remained, as Sansa thought they surely always would, there were no scars to act as a map across this flesh, leading her to the horrors of her past. She had been made anew; unspooled, rewoven, by the grace of the Old Gods. A blessing she had not expected, could never have dreamed of, but found herself perhaps selfishly grateful for even as she struggled to understand why it had been bestowed upon her.

Perhaps that was why she found herself seeking guidance from the Old Gods so often. There was no Heart Tree in this world, but she did have her silver birch with its pale trunk and carved face; an altar for her worship. And on her eighth birthday, as she did most days, Sansa slipped away from the Evans house to make her way to the woods. There, she knelt before the silver birch and rested her head against the trunk as she offered the Old Gods her thanks for the blessing They had given her, offered Them her devotion; as a Northwoman, as a Stark, and now, as an Evans.

"I know not why I am here," she whispered in the Old Tongue; the true language of the North, one she knew little of, but for what Jon had taught her in their time between their reunion at Castle Black and Jon leaving for Dragonstone. Most of what Jon knew he had learned from his time amongst the Free Folk, he had told her, with the sort of aching look in his eyes that spoke of lost love and a broken heart.

It felt right, to Sansa, that she spoke to the Old Gods in the Old Tongue, when she could manage to find the words to do so.

"I know not why I am here, but I am–" loyal, grateful, lost, devoted– "I am yours, for whatever you ask of me."

There was a soft, feeble noise, then; Sansa opened her eyes, leaning back slightly to look up, towards the direction of the sound. A moment later, she cried out as something fell from above, reaching out automatically to catch it.

It was a bird's nest.

Sansa swallowed her gasp as she looked inside; there were two small forms, fragile and weakly stirring, nearly all pink but for a fine black fuzz, eyes tight shut but their pink beaks wide open.

"Old Gods, green and wise," Sansa breathed, wide-eyed. She knew it could be no coincidence, that when she prayed for guidance, that when she vowed she was obedient to her gods, she was delivered a pair of raven nestlings.

The Old Gods had tasked her with this responsibility, and Sansa was ever the dutiful child.

Marigold was less than pleased when Sansa returned from the woods with the nest in hand, the two raven nestlings squeaking their hunger. "Don't bring them into the house!" Her mother tried to block the doorway, but Lily squirmed past, her eyes bright with interest.

"Ooh!" her sister breathed, "ooh, they're so sweet!"

Sansa wouldn't have described the little nestlings as 'sweet'. They were ugly and already very needy, judging by their increasingly loud, pitiful cries. But she knew that Marigold was really quite terrible at saying no to Lily, so she stayed quiet and let her sister work.

Sure enough, Lily turned wide, wet eyes towards Marigold, her lower lip quivering. "But mummy!" she said tearfully. "If we just leave them, they'll die! And on our birthday!" She said this as if it was the greatest of horrors.

Marigold folded almost immediately.

"I don't want them anywhere near me," she threatened with a shudder. "And don't you dare let them make a mess of my nice couches– do you hear me?"

"Of course mummy," Lily promised and Sansa echoed her, before hurrying after Lily into the house with the nest before Marigold could change her mind.

Sansa hadn't been very involved with the ravens kept at Winterfell, that fell largely as one of Maester Luwin's duties, but she knew enough about them to know how to keep the nestlings alive– she hoped.

"We need to get them warm," she told Lily, "they'll need help with that, at least until they grow their feathers." Lily nodded determinedly.

"I'll find a shoe-box– we can fill it with a knitted scarf and put it near the fire," her twin said. "Do you know what they eat?"

"Right now? Mostly caterpillars and crickets, if we can catch any," Sansa said, thinking back to Winterfell and Maester Luwin, "liver, and boiled or scrambled eggs too." She looked down at the nestlings, trying to judge their ages. "They can't be more than two or three days old," she decided before wincing. "We're definitely going to need to borrow Petunia's tweezers."

Lily gave a nervous giggle. "Tuney isn't going to be happy about that."

"No," Sansa said with a sigh. "No, she definitely isn't."

Petunia wasn't happy. In fact, Petunia was downright disgusted and had no interest in being involved in their bird-rearing project. She didn't want the "filthy wild beasts" anywhere near her, even when Lily protested that they weren't dirty or wild, as she and Sansa were raising them from practically birth. Petunia didn't care– their older sister wasn't what anyone would call an animal person.

She did lend them the tweezers though, somewhat begrudgingly, and Lily scrambled some eggs over the stove under Marigold's stern eye, some of which she and Sansa then carefully fed to the nestlings, both mimicking a raven's call to get the nestlings to gape their mouths wide open and then using the borrowed tweezers to carefully place the food inside their mouths, careful not to block their tiny throats. The rest of the scramble was packed away in the refrigerator for later.

It wasn't an easy task, to keep the ravens alive. It was fortunate that Sansa and Lily's school teachers didn't mind her and Lily needing to feed the nestlings every half hour, as they required from sunrise to midnight– they seemed amused by the project. It wasn't until the nestlings started growing feathers, nearly two and a half weeks after Sansa first brought them home, that they needed less frequent feedings.

By then, the pair had opened their eyes too, and their beaks had started to darken. Lily, astonishingly, still adored them despite all the work their care required, cooing over their first, wobbly steps. The pair loved Lily too, recognising the sound of her voice and trying to stumble over in her direction. Sansa would admit, if only to herself, there was something very sweet about having the black, feathery nestlings nuzzling against her hand, when she placed it in the shoe-box.

"They should have names," Lily said determindly, a little after three weeks since Sansa had brought them home. Sansa hadn't let Lily name them earlier, in case they didn't make it, but the pair of nestlings were growing stronger by the day and Sansa was now certain they would so she nodded at Lily, whose face lit up with excitement. "Can I name one, Lety?" she begged.

"Of course," Sansa said, surprised that Lily thought she wouldn't let her name them, after all the time and sleepless nights that Lily had dedicated towards the pair– Sansa hadn't had a full night's sleep in three weeks, neither of them had. "You can name them both."

"No, you should name one," Lily said stubbornly, before cooing down at the pair of nestlings. "I'm going to call you Buttercup," she tickled under the smaller of the pair's beak and it squeaked back at her.

"Buttercup?" Sansa asked, her mouth twitching.

Lily looked up from the nestlings and grinned at her, the expression startlingly mischievous. "Buttercups are pretty," she said, "and they're also wild and poisonous. Wildflowers that can kill." Seeing Sansa's surprise, Lily looked quite pleased with herself. "I do pay attention when we read daddy's botany books," she said.

"I know you do," Sansa told her. "I'm just..." surprised, she thought to herself. She sometimes forgot that Lily wasn't a stranger to hardship; like Sansa and Petunia, she was growing up in co*keworth, a dying town, with a father haunted by the war, and a sister who was haunted by horrors that none of them could understand. Lily had her own hurts, her own challenges, and Sansa should know better than to dismiss that.

"I like it," she said aloud. "It suits him." Buttercup felt like a 'him', anyway. "I think I'll follow your theme," she added, reaching into the shoe-box to gently tickle the darkening beak of the second nestling. "I'll name her Nightshade." She said, for this one felt more like a 'her'. Sansa wasn't sure how she knew it, but the feeling settled deep and certain within her.

"After Deadly Nightshade?" Lily asked, her eyes bright with happy amusem*nt. "Buttercup and Nightshade," she cooed down at the pair of nestlings.

"Fly strong," Sansa murmured.

Once they had their feathers, Buttercup and Nightshade seemed to grow quickly. Marigold reluctantly bought raw cat food for the twins to feed them and the pair of now-fledglings started to ride around on Lily and Sansa's shoulders, eager to explore the world from the safety of one of their mamas. It got them odd looks, wandering around co*keworth with a raven riding on their shoulder, but neither girl let it stop them.

Sansa was especially eager to take Buttercup and Nightshade to visit the silver birch. She waited until a day when Lily was busy with schoolfriends and, with a fledgling on each shoulder, she set off for the woods.

She hadn't been for weeks now– raising the pair of raven nestlings to fledglings had taken all her time and energy for the past weeks and it was with a sense of relief that Sansa found herself walking the familiar path through the trees, to the grove of birches, carefully lowering herself to her knees before her silver birch. Buttercup and Nightshade were noisy in general, always begging for food and attention, but here, before the carved face, even they fell silent.

"I am here, before the Old Gods, to present Buttercup and Nightshade," Sansa said, her phrasing slightly awkward as she tried to remember the traditional words for a parent introducing their newborn to the Old Gods, unsure how else to present the pair. "I ask the Old Gods to grant them strength and courage and wisdom as they grow."

She reached up then, to brush her hand across the carved face. She had to bite back a sudden hiss, her finger having caught on a protruding piece of bark that scratched deep enough into the skin to cause her to start bleeding.

"Ouch," she murmured quietly to herself, looking down at the blood welling up on her finger. A drop rolled off, falling to the ground. Sansa blinked, watching as it splattered onto the root of the silver birch, where it rose slightly above the earth. On her shoulder, Buttercup gave an inquiring chirp. "Oh," she murmured, understanding sweeping through her.

This was her Heart Tree, in the absence of a weirwood. This was a vessel of her gods and there was no coincidence here.

Sansa carefully lifted each raven from her shoulder, so instead they were perched on the upraised root of the silver birch. They both made uncertain, cooing noises, shifting uneasily and fluffing their wings. Sansa made the mimic sound she and Lily had used to tell the pair when they were nestlings it was time to eat and both automatically opened their mouths.

Sansa let a single drop of her blood fall into each beak. "Let the will of the Old Gods be done," she murmured. There was a stirring in the air around her; frost crept along the ground, Sansa's breath misted before her face, and the two ravens let out loud caws that shivered through Sansa, both spreading their wings out in display, feathers dark against the pale trunk of the silver birch.

Sansa found herself breathing heavily, feeling suddenly drained; it was as if she'd run from one side of Winterfell's keep to the other. She also felt odd, in a way she couldn't quite place, as if something had shifted within her; she could taste hoarfrost and blood on the back of her tongue, cold and sharp, and she shivered. She trusted her gods, however; trusted They would not be cruel, that They would not lead her astray.

(The Gods have no mercy. That's why they're Gods)

"Let's go home, sweetlings," Sansa told the pair of ravens, carefully lifting each to her shoulder, bowing her head reverently to the Heart Tree a final time before rising to her feet and leaving the woods, trailing frost in her footsteps as she went.

The ravens grew quickly after that. Marigold banished them from the house once they started flying, but William built the pair a bird house in the backyard and though they often took to the skies, Buttercup and Nightshade always returned home, begging for treats and affection that Lily was all too eager to give them, and Sansa was willing to indulge.

Sometimes, when Sansa went to pray in her grove, at the silver birch, she found them already perched in the branches, as if they were waiting for her.

Sometimes, when she Dreamed, Sansa flew over co*keworth, the wind buffeting beneath her wings as she dipped and soared.

It scared her. She knew what a skin-changer, a warg, was. She knew she had the potential within her– but she knew what Bran had become, how his warging had changed him. How he had become lost, little more than a shade of who he had once been. And as ashamed as she was to admit it, even if just to herself, Sansa pretended she didn't understand, even as she spent her nights flying through the open skies.

::

"What do you mean, women aren't paid as much as men!?"

Lily's outrage was clearly visible, her fiery hair practically crackling and sending off sparks as she stared aghast at Sansa, who was looking up from the newspaper in surprise.

It was near the end of the summer term, after which they would move up a year, and while Lily continued to thrive amongst their peers, especially with the choir she'd started, Sansa continued to largely keep a polite distance from all but her sisters. Lily had at least managed to talk her into joining in playing jump rope on a handful of occasions, but it was far more common to find Sansa spending the time between lessons with her head buried in a book, working on a bit of sewing or embroidery, or writing in her journal– she was on her second now, having already filled the first.

William had been right, in that it helped with her darker days, when her emotions were raw and her body felt too heavy to leave her bed. It also helped her to organise her thoughts and opinions of this new world, the world she felt less and less like a stranger in. The world she was beginning to think more and more of as hers.

She liked to keep track of what was happening in this world, her world, and William was always happy to give her the newspaper in the morning after he'd finished reading it, allowing her to keep abreast of what was occurring outside of co*keworth.

It was at the breakfast table that Sansa had commented aloud on the progress of the women's strike for equal pay at the Ford Motor Company plant in East London. It was a point of interest to her, certainly, but in the face of Lily's shock it quite suddenly occurred to Sansa that her twin, raised as she was in their progressive household, Lily whose wings had never been clipped, who had never doubted she could fly to the sky, was truly unaware of the injustice in a world where women were being forced to fight for their rights, for equality. That she was truly unaware that only mere decades ago, women had marched and fought on, enduring police brutality, assault, imprisonment and force-feeding, all in the relentless pursuit of the right to vote. Of how, still, women couldn't open a bank account unless a husband co-signed for them. How even women who had gone on to receive an education found themselves limited in their opportunities to teacher, nurse or secretary. Of how the women who were employed were paid less than their male co-workers.

Sansa could compare the situation to Westeros, to where even a Queen could be beaten black and blue by her husband and nobody would blink, where little girls could be married off to grown men as soon as they bled, where a lord could rape a servant and face no consequences, and think that this world was an ideal. That the situation, that the current rights of women, so much better than her old world, were something she should celebrate not challenge.

But why should she accept it? Why, when she knew women were not lesser, when women had proved they were just as capable, just as intelligent and strong and worthy as any man, why should she accept anything less than what she, what they, deserved?

Why should she accept that women were treated as lesser, when they were not worth less than a man?

There was a part of Sansa that wanted to protect Lily from this truth, that wanted to hide it away, to tell Lily that there was no need to fear, that there was no battle ahead, no injustice facing her as she advanced out into the world. But that would be a lie– and, worse, it would be disrespecting Lily's ability to choose, her ability to make this fight her own.

"Apparently," Sansa told her sister as she placed the newspaper down, "the sewing skills required of the women making seats for cars is far less complicated and difficult than the spray-painting skills required of the men, so their job has been graded as less skilled and they are paid fifteen percent less than their male colleagues."

Lily looked positively aghast– and then, her expression rapidly shifted to enraged.

"But– but sewing is so hard!" she cried out.

"Yes," Petunia said snidely over her fried eggs, "but the spray-painters are men."

"Is this– does this happen a lot?" Lily asked, horrified.

"It's very common, love," Marigold said gently.

Lily stood abruptly from the table, her green eyes practically alight with her fury– Sansa thought they looked like wildfire, burning bright with passionate rage. "This– this is wrong!" she declared, her voice trembling. "Lety, Tuney– this is wrong! Mummy, daddy– how can they do this?" she demanded, angry tears thick in her voice.

"They do it, because they can," Sansa told her, "because they think women are worth less than men, so they can pay them less. But we're not accepting that any longer– the sewing machinists at the Halewood Body and Assembly plant have walked out too, now, and they're saying it is only a matter of time before stock runs out and all car production stops. The company is going to have to do something."

"Good!" Lily said fiercely, before nodding resolutely. "After breakfast, we're going to the library– Lety, you're going to show me which books I need to read to learn everything I need to knowabout this!"

And that was how Lily was introduced to the concept of justice– and injustice. It was also when she started to wear purple, white and green ribbons in her hair as she poured over books about Emmeline Pankhurst and her Women's Social and Political Union; everything from Christabel Pankhurst's political history about parliament's dodging dances in the face of the movement, to Sylvia Pankhurst's chilling accounts of allegations of torture endured in prison, to Elizabeth's Robin's 1907 play, 'Votes for Women' with its poignant, caustic lines such as "Mad! Unsexed! These are the words today. In the Middle Ages men cried out "Witch!" and burnt her– the woman who served no man's bed or board!"

Sansa felt for her twin as Lily was often reduced to tears of upset and anger as she struggled through the books, determined and heartbroken in equal measures. It was difficult for Lily to comprehend what these women faced, difficult to comprehend the battle still ahead of them, but her twin forged on, determined and resolute and Sansa knew she had made the right decision, to not shield Lily from the truth.

The Ford Sewing Machinist Strike finished three weeks after it started, with a deal struck that increased the pay of the women to eight percent below that of the men instead of fifteen. The fire in Lily's eyes said clearer and louder than any words that she didn't believe this was enough– and Sansa agreed.

Their fight wasn't over– but as she saw Petunia running a purple ribbon through her fingers, a thoughtful look on her face, Sansa knew that there would always be those willing to don their armour and take to the battlefield.

::

Chapter 9

Chapter Text

A/N: Chapter Warning: Animal Death - scroll down to the end for further details, if concerned

Chapter Nine:

The town of co*keworth was worlds apart– quite literally– from any city or town of Westeros that Sansa knew of, from King's Landing, stinking of waste and packed tight with starving smallfolk, to Winter Town, with its muddy streets and small houses of log and undressed stone. Yet Sansa knew co*keworth, with its streets filled with identical old brick terraced houses and a dirty river that wound between overgrown, rubbish-strewn banks, all overlooking a disused, abandoned mill, was not considered anything special in this world. Likely, it was considered quite the opposite– a weed stubbornly clinging to life, a dying relic akin to the autumn leaves that drifted to the ground to decay underfoot. And still, Sansa loved it; perhaps not with the same fervour and devotion that she had loved Winterfell, but it was her town, her home, and for that alone, co*keworth was beloved to her.

Petunia couldn't understand it, Sansa knew– her older sister wanted nothing more than to get out of co*keworth, her eyes constantly looking onward towards greater things than their decaying town. Sansa could empathise; once, she had felt restrained by the North, her wings clipped by lands of snow and isolation while her lady mother sang stories of jewelled courts with their chivalrous knights and courteous ladies, saying nothing of the poison and rot that lurked beneath the surface. Sansa had left her home, left the North, with barely a moment's hesitation, her heart set on a grander future– only for the reality of the world to crush her down, her prince turned into a nightmare, her lord father's head mounted on a pike, the chivalrous knights and courteous ladies instead turned instruments of her suffering and torment.

Sansa didn't want the world to crush Petunia the way Westeros had crushed her, stripping her of childhood innocence, leaving her shattered heart flayed and bleeding, but she knew better than to tie her sister down– that would only breed resentment, and Petunia deserved the chance to learn her own lessons in life. Even Lily had dreams that would one day take her beyond the confines of their town; she was determined to go to university, though her ideas for her future career were as changeable as the winds.

Sansa, though– Sansa thought she could be content in co*keworth. She didn't deny she had ambitions, that she didn't have her own plans for this world, to study and speak out and enact change, yet for all her ambitions, Sansa did not feel the urge to leave co*keworth to achieve them. Perhaps it was the way she had been raised, during her first life; travel was less convenient in Westeros, and uncommon for noble ladies who spent their lives either in the King's court or in castles and keeps, not on the roads. Sansa felt no drive to travel, to seek out adventure; she was content to read of far-off places in books, to see them in wondrous, glossy photographs. co*keworth, and the freedom it offered her, were more than enough.

In Westeros, Sansa would never have been allowed to simply wander the streets of Winter Town, the way she could co*keworth. As a child, whenever she left Winterfell, it was with guards to watch her every move– and when Winterfell hosted guests, she had guards following her even in her own home. After her return to Winterfell, as a woman grown, she was rarely without her sworn shield and household guard a few steps behind her. She had been so accustomed to it, that the sudden freedom of this world had been jarring initially. Surrounded by guards and spies and courtiers, Sansa didn't realise how little freedom she had been afforded in Westeros until the first time Marigold had shooed her and her sisters out of the house, saying she wanted to do some cleaning, to come back before it started getting dark.

Now, Sansa was free to wander the town, though Marigold had warned her daughters to stay away from the poorer side of co*keworth. For the most part, Sansa was happy to do so; when she wasn't in the woods or the library, or forced by one of her sisters to the park or the tennis courts, she was content to walk through the streets, taking in everything from the cars to the street lamps to the storm drains; such everyday wonders that nobody here truly knew to appreciate. There was a beauty hidden in her town; when the bright sunlight filtered through the clouds drifting overhead, it made co*keworth look fresh and clean, hiding the grime of the decaying landscape.

Her only true issue with her wanderings were the dogs chained up in the yards of some of the poorer houses in town. They acted as guards, Sansa knew– slobbering beasts with horrid, jagged teeth that would bark up a cacophonous storm whenever somebody walked past.

Sansa didn't like dogs. Odd, some would think, considering her deep and enduring love for wolves. But when she looked at a dog, all she could see were Ramsay's hunting hounds, the vicious beasts that tore women and babes apart, that hunted down terrified young girls in the woods, that had savaged her so viciously, mauling her tender flesh while Ramsay had watched on and laughed. Sansa took care to always cross the street when she spied one of the hounds tied outside a house, steering well clear as echoes of fear clenched at her heart with the memories of the smell of dogs and blood and the glint of sharpened teeth as they tore into her flesh...

Later, she would look back and think it was the stench of her fear that did it; strong prey-scent carried in the wind. Or perhaps the hound could sense her otherness, and saw her as a threat. Sansa didn't know. She just knew that one day during her wanderings closer to the poorer areas of co*keworth than she usually ventured, the rusted fence serving as the barricade between her and one of the beasts gave way under the weight of the dog throwing its body at her, and then it charged.

Sansa was frozen in terror as the hound approached, heavy paws thudding against the ground, jowls flapping, teeth barred, tongue lolling, the rumble of angry snarls reverberating through the air. It took her far too long to react, only throwing her arm up at the last moment to protect her face from the flash of teeth.

Her entire body was thrown back to the ground with the weight of the dog, its jaws fastening around the meatiest part of her forearm, and Sansa screamed; loud and piercing and terrified. In that single moment, her entire existence was reduced to pain and fear and a frozen, crackling ice that shattered through her body– and then the dog was howling, its jaws releasing their grip on her as frost crept greedily from her skin, icing over its jaws, its teeth, its eyes.

Sansa scrabbled back, harsh, desperate breaths escaping her as blood streamed down her forearm, turning the ground beneath her hand slick. The hound was shaking its head, scratching at its face and eyes as the frozen chill sunk deep into its skull. Sansa could see where the gangrene had already set in, impossibly fast, skin and fur rotting from bone with frostbite.

The dog was still howling madly and Sansa wanted to move, she so desperately wanted to move, but terror had hazed her mind and the beast's head turning unnervingly in her direction as it snarled, rabid with agony and dumb animal fury.

That was when small, strong hands grasped under her arms, pulling Sansa to her feet and dragging her away from the rabid, dying dog, almost carrying her as together they half-stumbled, half-ran.

Pants tore from Sansa's throat; her arm ached and burned, raw with pain, and her heart felt raw with terror. Her stumbling legs barely cooperated beneath her, feet tripping and dragging, even as she pushed desperately on. It wasn't until they were nearly three streets away that she started to slow, trembling too badly to stay upright, her saviour slowing with her.

Lowering herself to the cracked pavement, heart still thundering in her chest, Sansa slowly became aware of her surroundings. It took her a few moments to recognise where she was; she had never been in this part of co*keworth before, as she'd stayed away from the poorer streets as per Marigold's instructions, but she had still glanced down them as she passed. Somewhat assured by her recognition of her surroundings, Sansa finally looked up at the one who had helped her.

It was a boy, about her age. She didn't recognise him– he was thin with dark, stringy hair, sallow skin and sharp cheekbones. His nose was slightly crooked, as if it had already been broken at least once, and his clothes were oversized and frayed and held the lingering scent of bitter cigar smoke and alcohol. The skin under one of his dark eyes was puffy and purple, the bruise a violent stain on pale skin.

"Are you alright?" The boy asked nervously, fiddling with his cuffs.

"I– have been better," Sansa said, her voice hoarse. "Thank you," she added, fervent and genuine.

The boy's sallow cheeks flushed pink and he ducked his head. "I didn't do much," he mumbled. "You'd already... stopped it."

Sansa stilled, remembering the chilled rush through her body, the frostbite that had eaten unnaturally through the dog's flesh.

"I'm not sure what you're talking about," she said, affecting a puzzled tone. The boy shook his head, looking back up at her, his dark eyes gleaming.

"You used magic," he said reverently.

"I didn't–" Sansa started to argue, a fresh wave of panic washing through her, but he interrupted her protests.

"It's okay," he said earnestly, "I'm magic too."

The protests died in Sansa's throat as she looked up at the boy in surprise.

"Excuse me?"

"I'm magic too," he repeated with a growing enthusiasm. "I'm a wizard– and my mum is a witch."

Sansa went silent. She couldn't think of what to say– she wasn't sure why, but she had always just assumed that she and Lily were alone in the world with their strange, wonderful gifts. She still wasn't sure they weren't. But if the boy was telling the truth...

"Can you prove it?" She dared to ask and the boy smiled.

"I can," he said confidently. "And, um, Mum can give you a bandage for your arm."

Sansa winced; she had been trying not to think of the dog bite, still steadily leaking blood and pain. Almost without thinking, she moved the opposite hand over the weeping wound, applying pressure. The flare of pain this caused had her gritting her teeth, but new body or not, Sansa knew pain; she knew how to breathe through it, to bear her suffering with dignity, to separate her mind from a broken body so she may function through dysfunction.

"A bandage would be wonderful," she said to the boy. As would whatever knowledge he had of the magic in this world. "My name is Violet," she added, almost as an afterthought as he carefully helped her stand.

"I know," the boy said before flushing. "Um, I've seen you and your sister in the park," he mumbled. "Your sister makes flowers grow."

Sansa wanted to sigh in exaspperation– at least she had only exposed her gift during a situation that had felt to her as life or death. She was going to have to talk to Lily about hiding her abilities better.

"My name is Severus," the boy– Severus– added, head still ducked, but looking shyly up at her through a curtain of dark hair. "Severus Snape."

"I am very pleased to meet you, Severus," Sansa said to the boy who had helped her escape the rabid dog– and who was willing to enlighten her to the secrets of the mysteries of magic hidden from her.

Severus's complexion truly was awful for hiding his blushing, she thought, faintly amused even through her weariness and leftover echoes of terror as the boy ducked his head even further in a futile effort to hide the redness of his cheeks.

"It's nice to meet you too," he mumbled, offering her his arm like a true gentleman, not flinching away from the blood soaking her hand as she laid hers over his and let him escort her to his home.

::

Severus lived on Spinner's End, as Sansa distantly recalled Petunia mentioning once. It was one of the poorest streets in co*keworth. The house he lived in was dilapidated, though Sansa noted that the garden was in fine condition, clearly carefully tended.

Severus didn't knock, instead opening the front door and calling out to his mother as Sansa followed him into his house. The inside was hardly any better than the outside; the walls were bare and stained, the floors cracked and there was a smell of dampness in the air. The woman who had to be Severus's mother emerged from the kitchen, wiping her hands dry on the apron she was wearing, her eyes narrowing as she took in the sight of Sansa accompanying her son into her home.

Sansa's first thought was that Eileen Snape reminded her of Cersei.

Eileen was not a beautiful woman as Cersei had been, not by any stretch of the imagination; she had sharp features, her pale skin was sallow and her long, dark hair ill-kept. No, it was in the haughty pride the woman wore, under the yellowing bruises on her face and the darker ones colouring her wrists, that Sansa saw the resemblance. The way Eileen pursed her lips at the sight of her, as if she were lesser. The way her dark eyes swept from Sansa over to her son in a clear dismissal.

"What is she doing here?" Eileen asked Severus, as if Sansa were not even present.

"She's a witch, Mum," Severus blurted out, his apparent rising nerves overtaking the excitement that had brought a flush to the pale, sallow skin he shared with his mother. "I saw her use magic!"

"Not this again!" Eileen hissed, a quiet, burning anger in her dark eyes. "I've told you about wishful thinking, boy; you have no idea what magic truly looks like! That ridiculous flower trick you keep saying you've seen in the park is just a sleight of hand, and now we're going to have to summon the Obliviators–"

"Mum, this was magic, I swear," Severus interrupted her, quite bravely in Sansa's opinion, considering Eileen's clear displeasure. "Violet ki– stopped a dog that was attacking her, using magic!"

Eileen pursed her lips, her rage dimming slightly. "Stopped?" She asked.

"Um," Severus looked nervously over at Sansa, who turned her sweetest smile up at Eileen.

"Stopped," she said, with great finality, leaving no doubt as to the attacking dog's fate. Not because she was proud of it– on the contrary, she felt quite ill as she thought of the hound's fate, despite her fear and dislike of dogs– but in defiance of Eileen's dismissal of her.

Eileen looked down at her, dark eyes heavy with something that was very nearly loathing. "A muggleborn witch in co*keworth," she said sourly, "what are the chances?"

"Two," Sansa corrected, deducing that 'muggleborn witch' must be the label for whatever it was that she and Lily were. "My twin sister has magic too." Here, she practically bared her teeth at Eileen as she smiled; a proud wolf showing her fangs. "Her ridiculous flower trick is how we keep winning co*keworth's best lawn award– being able to make any plant grow with her will alone is quite valuable for making our roses bloom, no matter the weather." Not to mention how Lily scared away the neighbourhood cats from Buttercup and Nightshade by coaxing the trailing vines around their house to reach and tangle around their paws, causing them to panic and bolt.

Eileen's expression grew even more sour, but at least it then shifted to the blood that Sansa was starting to drip on their floor.

"Come here, girl," she ordered and despite the rudeness, Sansa went, following the woman to the kitchen where Eileen turned on the sink tap and, with more gentleness than Sansa was expecting, reached for her blood-soaked arm and guided it under the stream of cool water.

Sansa hissed at the fresh surge of pain this brought, but the chill of the water quickly brought more relief then it did discomfort as she kept it under the flow, and Eileen carefully examined the bite now that the blood had been washed away as Severus hovered in the doorway to the kitchen.

"It needs stitches," Eileen said finally and Sansa couldn't help her reflexive shudder, remembering the painful tug at her skin as a maester had sewn cuts and dog bites back together. Eileen saw her flinch and sighed. "Severus, go get the dittany," she ordered and Severus hurried off.

"Dittany?" Sansa asked, fighting the dread rising within her. Eileen nodded shortly but didn't expand with any explanation. Severus returned a few minutes later, cradling a small glass bottle carefully in his hands, offering it up to his mother.

Eileen took the phial, pulling out the stopper, placing it down beside the sink and then reaching for Sansa's wrist. Her movements weren't gentle, but they weren't rough as she tugged Sansa's arm out from under the stream of cool water and then tipped a few drops of the liquid in the phial over the wound.

Sansa bit back a cry at the fresh, stinging pain, then she sucked in a harsh breath as, before her very eyes, her skin started to knit itself back together, the wound closing over and ageing until it had faded to pale, almost unnoticeable scars that blended with the fair skin of her arm.

Old Gods be good!

The traces of blood on her sleeve and skin suddenly seemed very out of place and Eileen pushed her arm back under the water to wash away what was left of it.

So Severus hadn't been lying. There was magic in this world, and if he was telling the truth about his mother having magic, then he must be telling the truth about having it himself.

Sansa didn't know what to think. She hadn't truly believed Severus's claim, even with Eileen's talk of magic, until that very moment. Until the wound that would have scarred so horribly, leaving behind a mark from Sansa's nightmares, a fresh, permanent reminder of past terrors, had healed in mere moments, fading to nearly nothing.

"Thank you," she told Eileen, who was stoppering the bottle of dittany, that wondrous, magical elixir. Eileen nodded shortly before turning her attention back to Severus. "Make sure she's gone before your father gets home," she warned before leaving the kitchen without so much as a backwards glance at Sansa.

Severus looked embarrassed by his mother's rudeness, but Sansa honestly didn't care as she turned off the tap, examining her forearm with wide, amazed eyes before turning to fix her gaze on him.

"Please," she said, only a childhood of ingrained courtesies reminding her of the need for proper manners. "Please, Severus– tell me everything."

::

Chapter Warning: Sansa is attacked by a dog, her accidental magic causes a nasty frostbite. We don't see it die, but it's implied.

Chapter 10

Chapter Text

Chapter Ten:

"You're back late– is that blood?" Petunia practically shrieked in her alarm.

Sansa cringed. She had been hoping to change her dress before anyone saw the torn sleeve and blood stains, but Petunia had walked in on her trying to slip unnoticed into the house.

"I'm perfectly fine," she started to tell her sister, only for Petunia to seize onto her arm, pushing up her sleeve with tight fingers, furiously searching for the wound responsible for the blood. Petunia's keen eyes quickly found the scars left by the dog bite, faint but present, and she went still.

"Violet," she said, her voice very stiff, "what happened?"

"It's a long story," Sansa admitted, gently pushing Petunia's tightly-gripping hands away. "You're not going to like it."

"I already don't like it," Petunia snapped angrily and Sansa fought the urge to wince in the face of her sister's upset.

"I was attacked by a dog– it got through the fence of its yard," she explained, picking out her words carefully, already knowing how this was going to upset her older sister. "I managed to use..." she trailed off meaningfully and Petunia's lips thinned before she nodded sharply and Sansa continued, "the dog backed off, but I was... frightened. I couldn't move and I thought it was going to attack me again."

Sansa couldn't help but shudder at the memory, at the deep, enduring fear that still lingered.

Petunia had paled; she knew how afraid Sansa was of dogs, as Sansa had never hidden her fear well. She didn't doubt that her sister was imagining the scene now; Sansa, paralysed with fear; the rabid dog, ready to attack.

"That's when he helped me," Sansa said softly, causing Petunia's eyes to snap back to hers. "Severus Snape. He practically had to carry me away, but he brought me to safety."

"Snape– from Spinner's End? The home-schooled boy?" Petunia clarified and Sansa nodded.

"He... saw me use my magic," she said, still soft, watching how Petunia twitched at her use of the word 'magic'.

"He's not going to tell anyone, is he, the little rat?" Petunia hissed, covering up her discomfort with anger– an easier emotion, Sansa knew, for her sister to process.

"No, no, he's not going to tell," Sansa hastened to reassure Petunia, hesitating slightly as she tried to decide how best to word the next part of her retelling. "He has no reason to," she finally decided. "He has magic too."

Petunia's lips were pressed together so tight, they were little more than a thin, pale line on her pale face. "He's lying," she said flatly.

"He isn't," Sansa replied gently, brushing a hand over the pale scars on her forearm. "He took me back to his house to clean the dog bite, and his mother, she has magic too, she used a magical elixir to heal it. That's why there are only scars left."

Petunia stayed silent for a long moment, staring down at Sansa's bloodied sleeve. Then she turned and stormed off, leaving Sansa with an aching, hollow feeling in her chest.

I'm sorry, she thought, staring after Petunia's retreating back.

Lily's reaction was almost the opposite to Petunia's, as Sansa told her twin what had happened to her that day. Her twin's eyes went very wide as they sat together on Lily's bed, in the room they shared. The room itself hadn't changed much since Sansa had first awakened in this life; all cream walls and soft brown carpets, but Marigold had framed some of Sansa's best pieces of embroidery and hung them up and Lily had tacked several black-and-white photos to the walls that depicted their family, including many of the three sisters together.

Sansa swallowed and wondered how long it would take Petunia to forgive her for this– for having magic.

Lily, at least, was thrilled.

"And he told you there's a– a whole hidden world out there, of witches and wizards?" Her twin asked, voice hushed with amazement.

"I'm quite certain he was telling the truth," Sansa said. She knew how to read a person's body; she had been taught how to size them up, to find their weak points, their fears and desires, in order to render her own power absolute against all their mere physical strength. Severus had not appeared dishonest when he told her there was an entire world of magic hidden within this one.

When Sansa had first awakened in this world, it had been to the understanding that magic did not exist. That there were no dragons, no sorcerers, not outside of old lore and religions given the label of 'pagan'. She had thought herself alone with her gift from the Old Gods, aside from the sister who had shared a womb with her. To find out this understanding was false...

It had taken years for Sansa to adjust to this new world. To rewrite her expectations, to rediscover the rules for society. The thought of having to endure the entire process again, it was daunting. She would not lie.

But– magic.

Sansa would not deny that there was a part of her that thought of magic and felt only terror, that remembered a Red Sword and burning flames and agonising death. But she also remembered the way her magic had flowed through her, defending her, against the attack by the dog. The thought of not being so helpless, of having the means to defend herself against that which would hurt her– it was almost painfully alluring.

"Oh Lety!" Lily breathed, looking just as enthralled. "Oh Lety, let's go talk to Severus tomorrow! We have to! I have so many questions!"

"Let's," Sansa agreed, for she had more questions too– and would surely think of even more, as she laid in bed that night. But she did not forget Petunia's reaction and her chest once again ached at the memory, hollow and painful.

::

Severus Snape met them at the park.

He looked nervous and eager, his hands twisting in the frayed hems of the woollen sweater he was wearing. Beside Sansa, Lily was eager and bright-eyed, practically skipping in place as she crossed over to where he was waiting for them.

"Hullo!" Lily greeted him, beaming brighter than the sun. "I'm Lily, it's so nice to meet you!"

Severus's sallow cheeks flushed pink as he looked at Lily and Sansa felt a brief stirring of amusem*nt at how Lily so easily drew him to her, like a flower unfurling itself towards the face of the sun.

"My name is Severus," he said, stiff and a little formal in his obvious anxiety. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Lily."

Lily beamed even brighter.

"Lety says that you're like us!" she said, managing to hush her voice, even though the park was mostly empty, and certainly none of the other children present were paying them any mind. "That you're magical!"

Severus nodded. "My mum's a witch," he explained, "and I'm a wizard."

"Wicked!" Lily breathed, enthralled. "What about your daddy?"

Severus's face immediately darkened, a shadow drawing across his mien, his dark eyes shuttering. "He's just a muggle," he muttered, looking down and away from Lily.

"Muggle?" Lily asked, not quite adept enough at reading expressions and moods to pick up on how Severus clearly wished to talk about something other than his father. A father who beat him and his mother, Sansa thought, looking at the fading bruise under his eye, and remembering Eileen's own bruises.

"It's the word we use for people who don't have any magic," Severus explained to Lily and Sansa felt a stirring of unease.

'Muggle' did not sound... flattering. And Severus was hardly hiding the dislike in his voice when he spoke of 'muggles', though she couldn't quite blame his prejudice, should his father be the only muggle he had spent time with.

"Does that mean Tuney and mummy and daddy are muggles?" Lily asked, frowning slightly, her lower lip jutting out in a pout.

"Don't call Petunia a muggle, Lily," Sansa chastised her twin gently. "It doesn't sound very nice and it might hurt her feelings."

"But she is a muggle," Severus said. "She's not like you two– you're special. You're magic."

"Petunia may not be a witch," Sansa said, taking care as she chose her words, "but that doesn't mean she isn't special."

"Tuney's very special," Lily agreed earnestly. "And she has her own special powers! There was this girl in my class at school who was so mean to me– she put mud in my desk and chewing gum in my hair, and I wanted to tell the teacher, but Petunia said she'd take care of it and she did! Beth-Anne came to me just two days later and told me how sorry she was and she'd never be mean to me again."

Sansa remembered this– it had been during some of her... darker days, where she rarely left her bed. Lily had returned home from school in tears because another student, Beth-Anne Hughes, had been quite cruel to her. Lily didn't understand cruelty well, so she couldn't understand that the Beth-Anne was petty and jealous and lashing out because of it. Petunia had taken one look at Lily's tear-wet cheeks and wobbly lip and marched out of the house. Nasty rumours began flying around the schoolyard about Beth-Anne and two days later, Beth-Anne had been begging for Lily's forgiveness– and for her to call off Petunia.

"Your sister sounds like a Slytherin," Severus said. The way he offered it up to Sansa and Lily, hesitant but earnest, made her think it was his attempt at an apology. A pity she had no idea what he was talking.

"A Slytherin?" Sansa enquired and Severus nodded, his dark eyes lighting up.

"There's a special school that witches and wizards go to when they turn eleven," he told them, "it's called Hogwarts and it was built a thousand years ago, at the end of the tenth century, by four really powerful witches and wizards– Helena Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, Godric Gryffindor and Salazar Slytherin."

"Interesting family names," Sansa observed, a little incredulous.

"They weren't actually their surnames," Severus explained. "Only nobles really had family names back then. Salazar was given the name Slydrian*after the Norman invasion–it means 'slippery', I think. Because Salazar was known for being cunning and sly and he could talk to snakes. And then it sort of evolved as language changed, from Old English to Middle English, and then just English, to Slytherin."

Sansa couldn't help her impressed look and Severus's cheeks flushed. "I've reread my mum's copy of 'Hogwarts: A History'," he mumbled. "Anyway. Hogwarts sorts its students into four Houses– they're all named after one of the Founders."

"And you think Petunia would be in Slytherin House?" Sansa asked and Severus nodded.

"People are sorted into Slytherin House if they're cunning and sly and ambitious," he said. Lily and Sansa exchanged looks before Lily started giggling.

"That sounds exactly like Petunia," she said. "What about me, Severus? Which House do you think I'll be in?"

"Um," Severus said, his cheeks flushing an even deeper red upon finding himself the focus of Lily's rapt attention, "well, students in Ravenclaw are known for being clever and wise, and in Hufflepuff they're really loyal and hardworking, and Gryffindors are brave and chivalrous."

Chivalrous. Sansa's lip wanted to curl at the very word. It sounded as if Gryffindor was the House extolling the values of knights– of chivalry, and courage, protectors of the innocent. The House of Heroes. Well– Sansa knew better. True knights did not exist, only brutal monarchs and weak-willed fools willing to follow them. In life, there were no heroes– only the monsters won and Sansa had been forced to become what she loathed, to shed her childhood notions of good and evil in order to claw victory from the grasping hands of her enemies.

"Which House do you think you'll be in, Severus?" Lily asked.

"I want to be in Slytherin," Severus said. "My mum was in Slytherin, and so was all her family. And I want to– to be a really good wizard." So that he never had to return to Spinner's End again, Sansa thought.

"I want to be a Slytherin too, then," Lily decided, her sunlit-green eyes alight with burning passion. "I'm going to be like Emmeline Pankhurst and I'm going to help make sure women get paid as much as men!"

That was when Severus made his mistake. "Who is Emmeline Pankhurst?" he asked, confused. Lily gasped audibly, making Severus look quite alarmed, before she launched into a lecture of her idol, the leader of the suffragette movement that had helped women win the right to vote.

Sansa watched in amusem*nt as Severus's eyes widened further and further as Lily spoke passionately of her role model, her arms waving about as she threw her whole body into the explanation.

She didn't try to interrupt and save Severus from Lily's lecturing– leaving her twin to distract Severus gave her time with her own thoughts, in the wake of Severus's explanations. From his talk of laws the previous day about keeping the magical world secret, she had already inferred the existence of a government of magicals. It made sense, then, that there would be a school too.

Sansa wasn't sure how she felt about the idea of this 'Hogwarts'– she wasn't currently too invested in her lessons at school, simple as they were, however she was invested in her future, and that included graduating from secondary school and enrolling in university, hopefully with a scholarship. From everything she'd heard and inferred in the very short time she'd known it existed, the magical world existed separately from the non-magical world and Sansa didn't know if she was prepared to abandon one in favour of the other.

To most children, she thought, the choice must be an easy one– which child wouldn't want to enter a world of magic and mystery and wonderment? Except Sansa already had; this world was magical to her already, with its endless possibilities stretching out before her, of education and freedom and human rights, and she wasn't certain she was prepared to abandon it so easily.

Even as she and Lily later bid Severus farewell, promising to meet up again the following day, Sansa found herself too occupied with her inner turmoil to truly pay attention to Lily's excited chatter. She almost didn't even notice they'd arrived home– not until the front door opened to reveal Petunia, thin-lipped and stormy-eyed in her anger.

"And where have you been?" she snapped, her arms crossed tightly over her chest.

"Um," Lily said, hesitating and looking anxiously over at Sansa before turning back to their older sister, "we, um, we went to go see Severus," she mumbled. "To learn more about magic."

Petunia's lip curled, her eyes flashing. "Well!" she hissed. "I hope you enjoyed yourselves!" She then shoved roughly past them, causing Lily to cry out and Sansa to stumble, and disappeared off down the street.

Looking out after her, at the head of bobbing blonde ringlets, Sansa couldn't help but feel her stomach sink with foreboding.

::

Petunia's dark mood persisted over the weeks that followed. She refused to talk to Sansa or Lily, turning away from them with pinched lips and furious eyes. She had even reduced Lily to tears with a harshly spat "freak!" when Lily had pleaded with her to just come and meet Severus with them, that she would like him too.

Sansa wasn't pleased with Petunia for that, she wouldn't lie. But unlike Lily, she was quite aware of what was going on inside Petunia's head and heart.

Jealousy was poison. It was insidious, creeping around, whispering in your ears, stoking cruelty and resentment in the soul. It was a poison Sansa had tasted many times; sharp and bitter on her tongue. She had been jealous of Robb for being born the eldest son, jealous of Arya and Jon for having the Stark look and her lord-father's attention, jealous of Bran and Rickon for taking up so much of her lady-mother's time. And oh, how that jealousy had festered in her child-heart, and left unaddressed by her elders the rot had spread.

Loss and heartbreak had tempered that jealousy, upon reunion with her surviving kin, but did not cleanse her of it entirely. It only added guilt to the bitterness she already felt.

She did not want Petunia to become her. She refused to allow her sister to fall into that trap, to become so tangled up in resentment and anger and bitterness, that their bond was forever tainted by its shadow.

Petunia deserved better.

Sansa just wasn't sure how she could make things right.

::

::

*Surnames weren't popularised in Britain until after the Normandy Invasion, when the Doomsday book was created. Because of this, the Founders of Hogwarts probably wouldn't have had surnames, especially ones that don't make much sense etymology-wise. When surnames were popularised, they often came into being through a person's relation to another, or an occupation, or through a person's nickname. For the Founders to have gained such unusual "surnames", my headcanon is that their surnames came through an epithet. "Slydrian" is Old English for slippery. It evolves to "Slyderen/Slideren" in Middle English, and then "Slither" in English- or, in the case of Salazar's surname, "Slytherin".

Chapter 11

Chapter Text

Chapter Eleven:

It became clear to Sansa that giving Petunia time and space wasn't allowing for anything but the jealousy to fester and grow. She had barely spoken a word to Lily or Sansa in weeks and Marigold, William and Primrose had all taken the girls aside to ask them what had happened.

Sansa wished she could explain, but she and Lily had yet to tell their parents about the magical world. Severus had told them that their Hogwarts acceptance letters would be sent out with a professor, when they were due to start at Hogwarts, and by silent, unanimous agreement, she and Lily had decided to wait until there was an adult to explain to their parents the truth of their gifts.

This also meant, however, that their parents could not help with the rift between the twins and Petunia– it was up to Sansa to try and heal it and she felt hopelessly ill-equipped for the task. Odd as it would seem to any outsider, Petunia had been the one to keep the peace amongst the three Evans daughters. She had ruled with a firm but kind hand, guiding Lily and Sansa together even as she ordered them about.

Now, Sansa felt oddly set adrift. By all rights, as the true eldest of the three girls, in soul if not in body, she should be able to work to fix this. But whenever she tried, she found the words would fail to avail themselves to her. Petunia was angry, jealous, hurt– and, it seemed, unwilling to confront the twins over it.

It wasn't as if she didn't understand Petunia. Sansa certainly remembered feeling the odd one out amongst her Stark siblings– she hadn't been interested in swords or horse-riding or rough and tumble play or even exploring Winterfell. This had set her apart from the rest of her siblings and there were times that Sansa had felt so achingly lonely, even when surrounded by family. She didn't want the magic that she and Lily shared to be the cause of Petunia's loneliness. She wanted to include Petunia, to involve her elder sister in every part of her life, but she just didn't know how to achieve that.

Sansa blamed the stress and upset on the resurgence of unsettling Dreams. They were filled with the harsh croaking of ravens, of dark fluttering wings and bone-white weirwoods rising high, their red leaves falling around her like weeping drops of blood. Above, in the pitch-dark sky, a skull of emerald stars glittered, a serpent winding from its grinning mouth; twisting, twisting, twisting through the sky, closer and closer, until it was winding around Sansa. Solid, each scale a bright-burning star so cold it burned; Sansa fought uselessly as it tightened and tightened, crushing her until she couldn't breathe. Its head rose up before her, its eyes meeting hers; they were hungry, black holes, beautiful and terrible, dragging her in even as she wanted to run, run, run–

She would wake, choking and gasping for breath, hands scrabbling at her chest as she trembled in fear, her teeth chattering from the a chill that seemed to seep deeper than her bones.

Sansa found herself dreading her nights and her waking hours were of little improvement as her emotions spiralled down, her limbs growing heavier with each passing day. Rising from bed each morning started to feel more and more as if she was ascending the chopping block.

She had yet to reach any resolution about her Dreams or come up with any ideas for healing the rift between her, Lily and Petunia when Lily asked Marigold over breakfast if she could invite Severus over for dinner.

"Severus Snape?" Marigold asked, surprised.

"Is that Tobias's boy?" William frowned.

"I don't know, we've never met his daddy," Lily said. "But Sev is so nice!"

Petunia glared down at her breakfast, stabbing her fork angrily into her toast. Marigold and William exchanged a long look before Marigold turned back to Lily and nodded.

"We'd be very happy to have Severus over for dinner," she said, and Lily beamed.

"Thank you, mummy!"

Petunia pushed herself out from the table, a scowl on her face. "I've had enough," she snapped, before turning and storming off without so much as waiting for a dismissal, or emptying her plate into the container Marigold kept on the bench for leftovers to feed Buttercup and Nightshade.

Marigold and William exchanged another long, significant look that Sansa could easily read the meaning of– their parents had come to the accurate conclusion that Severus was somehow involved in the rift that had appeared between Petunia and the twins and they were hoping that having him over would lead to some sort of resolution.

Which Sansa agreed it might.

Either that, or it would lead to utter disaster.

Severus arrived early for dinner, looking very nervous in possibly his neatest, best-fitting clothes, his hair nicely combed and his fingers once again fiddling with his cuffs.

"Welcome to our home, Severus!" Marigold said brightly, ushering him in. "I don't know if my girls have told you about me, but I'm Marigold Evans, and this is my husband, William."

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mr and Mrs Evans," Severus mumbled.

"What lovely manners," Marigold said approvingly. "Please, head through to the family room with the girls– I'm just finishing up in the kitchen."

Lily reached out to grasp onto Severus's hands, smiling brightly at him as she excitedly pulled him after her, towards the family room. Sansa followed at a more sedate pace.

Petunia was already sitting in there– which Sansa didn't believe was a coincidence on their mother's part for a moment– with a bit of sewing on her lap, a magazine open on the diagrams of the dressmaking patterns she was practicing her stitching for. She automatically scowled as she looked up to see who had walked in.

Lily shot Severus a meaningful look and he cleared his throat, looking nervously over at her. "Hello Petunia," he said, "my name is Severus. It's nice to meet you."

Petunia's eyes narrowed. "I didn't say you could use my name," she said coolly and Severus flushed, ducking his head, his hands twitching at his sides. Sansa gave Petunia a reproving look and she let out a huff. "But, I suppose it would get too confusing otherwise in a house filled with Evanses, so you can call me Petunia," she allowed grudgingly.

Sansa drifted over to where her sister was seated, looking down at the dressmaking pattern laid out before her in interest. She and Petunia hadn't done any sewing together in weeks now and she found that she missed it.

To her surprise, Severus also looked interested, peering over at Petunia's work with his dark eyes.

"You're really good at that," he said and Petunia sniffed haughtily.

"Of course I am," she said. Always so modest.

"I, um, I've been trying to teach myself," Severus offered, and Sansa blinked in surprise. Even Petunia seemed startled at Severus's efforts to reach out. "I've been trying to fix some of my things, but the stitches keep falling out or tearing."

"I'm surprised you don't just use magic to fix it," Petunia said snidely and Sansa had to admit she was impressed that despite the flare of temper on his face, Severus instead took a deep breath, calming himself before answering.

"I don't know much magic and mum doesn't like using it," he said. "And clothes and things can be charmed after they're made, but if you use magic while you're making them, the spells could be undone or wear off, and then, well," his cheeks went pink.

"Then you'd be very nude," Lily finished with a giggle.

Petunia's expression had lost some of its hostility during Severus's explanation and she carefully set aside the fabric she was practicing on and plucked from her sewing basket a new needle, which she threaded with expert skill. "Sit," she ordered Severus, nodding at the couch beside her.

Severus sat.

"Here," Petunia handed him the threaded needle then fished a bit of loose, cut fabric from her sewing basket, "show me what you've been doing, then."

Severus only hesitated a moment before obeying. Petunia watched his movements with a critical eye.

"That's where you're going wrong," she said, nearly instantly. "You're using a running stitch and not pulling the thread nearly tight enough. You'd be better to use a back stitch or a whip stitch. A back stitch is better for repairing tears and fabric that's unravelling, and a whip stitch can be used to fix split pockets, hems and seams."

Before Severus had any time to reply, Petunia was already demonstrating the back stitch for him and Sansa and Lily traded a look before sitting back to watch Petunia in her element, ordering around a startled Severus, who kept looking anxiously back at Lily, who would, in turn, smile and nod encouragingly at him.

"Not bad," Petunia finally declared, around a half hour after she'd started her impromptu lesson with Severus. To his credit, Severus seemed honestly interested in learning from her, focusing his attention as she demonstrated and led him through the motions of the back stitch. "Keep practicing," she instructed. "And make sure you bring over whatever you're trying to mend so we can unravel whatever disaster you've created and fix it up properly. You still need to learn the whip stitch, too, don't think I'm going to forget about that."

Lily was doing a terrible job of hiding her delight and Petunia frowned when she looked up and saw it, before glancing back over at Severus. "I suppose you're not horrible," she muttered. "And clearly magic isn't good for everything. You'd still be useless without me."

And that was the root of the issue, Sansa realised, quite suddenly. Petunia had felt as if she'd gone from being an authority in their lives who the twins turned to with their problems and questions, to being excluded– they wouldn't need her to help with their problems if they could just fix them all with magic. And Severus, as the one to introduce them to the magical world, the one who had, in her mind, supplanted her as the authority of all things in their lives, was the one to bear the brunt of her jealousy and anger at her perceived displacement.

Except Severus had just proved that magic wasn't good for everything– and that even he needed Petunia's help.

Petunia needed to be needed and now she had realised that she wasn't useless, that had shifted something for her. Sansa could see it in the softening at the edges of her mouth as she swept her gaze over the twins and Severus, as if reaffirming her place in all their lives as someone they still needed, still relied on, still looked up to.

"Dinner time!" Marigold called from the kitchen– with suspiciously good timing– and as they all stood to head in, Sansa touched a hand to Severus's arm.

"Thank you," she murmured and the corner of his mouth quirked slightly, in what was very nearly a smirk.

"You're welcome," he said, and that was definitely smugness in his voice. The little brat.

Still– "very clever," she had to admit. "Definitely a Slytherin," she added, remembering their previous conversation about the Hogwarts Houses.

Oh, that was definitely a smirk.

::

To Sansa's relief, the tentative truce between Petunia and Severus held firm. Petunia had softened towards the twins again, the Evans house no longer filled with stormy silences and slammed doors. Instead, Severus had brought over a pile of obviously second-hand clothes that Petunia helped him repair and alter, so he wasn't tripping over the hems, or looking as if he was dressed in his father's cast-offs. Petunia was a talented seamstress for her age and Severus was both patient and a keen learner, apparently no matter the subject.

Petunia was still uncomfortable talking about the magical world, and in deference to that, they would try to avoid bringing it up when she was around. There were many other things to talk about, after all; Lily had somehow talked Severus into playing tennis with them, so that they could play doubles, and Sansa was dragged into even more matches than before. At least Severus was as terrible as she was, and appeared to enjoy it about just as much. Yet both of them folded far too easily to Lily's pleading eyes and Petunia's prim expectation.

Lily had also introduced Severus to Buttercup and Nightshade, and when Severus told them about how the magical world used owls to deliver mail, Lily became determined to train the pair to deliver letters between their houses through much bribery of liver they purchased from the local butcher.

Sansa wouldn't say it worked flawlessly– the ravens had a tendency to get distracted, though they would eventually get around to delivering the letters, often in much poorer condition than when they set off– but it helped Lily and Severus stay in contact on school days.

"You really should ask your mum if you can join our school, Sev," Lily said one afternoon. It was a Sunday and Petunia had commandeered Sansa's steady hands to paint her toenails a pearly pink. Lily had painted her fingernails an electric blue and her toenails a bright, sparkling green and was now trying to convince Severus to let her paint his too. Sansa knew it was only a matter of time before he folded to her sister's pleas.

"Why would I want to?" Severus asked, looking honestly confused.

"Well, don't you get bored and lonely when we're at school?" Lily asked. "We're the only people your age that you ever talk to. You'd know so many more people if you went to school with us, and you'd be in our class– we'd get to see each other every day!"

Sansa imagined that Lily also wanted Severus there for the days that Sansa missed. Her Dreams had lessened in frequency since she and Lily had made up with Petunia, but their effects lingered unsettlingly.

Severus frowned. "But," he said, "witches and wizards are always home-schooled. That's just how it works."

"But that's just silly," Lily said. "Lety and I aren't home-schooled."

"Yes, but you're muggleborns!" Severus protested. Sansa tilted her head slightly at the word, remembering Eileen using it, back after the incident with the dog.

"Muggleborns?" she asked. To her surprise, Severus stiffened slightly.

"It, um, it means witches and wizards born to muggle parents," he said, a little stiff and awkward in a way he'd mostly stopped being around them.

"But that doesn't matter, right?" Lily said, looking anxious. "It doesn't make a difference that we're, um, muggleborn?" Her nose twitched slightly as she tried out the new word.

"No," Severus said, shaking his head. "It doesn't make a difference."

Liar, Sansa thought, uneasiness swirling up inside her.

"What about those who are born to witches and wizards?" she asked. "What are they called?"

Severus looked uncomfortable. He clearly didn't want to be talking about it, which only served to make Sansa feel even more uneasy and quite certain that this was information she needed to know. That it was important.

"Wizards who have a parent or grandparent that's a muggle or a muggleborn are called Halfbloods," Severus said finally, as if the words were being dragged out from him against his will. Sansa supposed that wasn't entirely inaccurate.

"So you're a Halfblood," Sansa said and Severus twitched slightly.

"I am," he agreed reluctantly.

"What about those who don't have muggle or muggleborn parents or grandparents?" Sansa pressed.

"They're called Purebloods," Severus said after a short pause and the unease in Sansa's stomach solidified, turning to lead.

Pure. Meaning untainted. Their blood was untainted by muggles.

Sansa could see that Lily didn't understand. From the careful look that Petunia gave her, however, she knew that her older sister did have an idea.

"Halfblood, Pureblood– 'Muggleborn' doesn't really fit with the 'blood' theme," Petunia commented archly, her mouth only twisting slightly in distaste at the magical terms.

Severus paused again, quite noticeably this time.

"What's wrong?" Lily asked, a frown on her face.

"There used to be a different term, used instead of Muggleborn," he said, finally. "It's... considered outdated now."

Sansa observed his use of the word 'outdated'. There were many words considered 'outdated' when it came to describing minority groups. None of them were pleasant. All were quite prejudiced.

Petunia glanced over at Sansa again, a silent understanding passing between them. There was something wrong here, something Severus didn't want them to know– something Sansa was going to have to find out, for her and her sister's sake.

Sansa had once left Winterfell, left the North, to go South to King's Landing and entered an entirely new world she knew so very little about; too innocent and naïve and unaware to recognise the dangers that lurked below the glittering surface of silks and jewels, Queens and Princes.

Never again. If she and Lily were to join the magical world, then Sansa refused to be blinded by ignorance to the dangers, the threats. She wouldn't lose Lily, not like she had once lost her family to the Game of Thrones she hadn't even known existed until it was too late.

Chapter 12

Chapter Text

Chapter Twelve:

Lily was still fiercely determined that Severus join their school and Sansa honestly thought it a fair idea, if only to get the poor boy out of the house more. She had yet to meet Tobias Snape but the evidence of his existence was painted over Severus's pale skin in hues of ink-stain purples and yellowing-greens. It was rare to see the boy without a bruised face or a swollen lip and more often than not he was cradling a tender wrist or wincing against bruised ribs.

"We can tell somebody, you know," Sansa said quietly to Severus one day, when Lily was not close enough to overhear. They were at the park and Lily was collecting wildflowers in her skirt.

"Tell who what?" Severus asked, his voice sounding thick through a dark-bruised jaw.

Sansa just gave him a look and he scowled, looking down at his lap.

"There's nothing the police can do," he muttered. "Mum would just use magic to make them forget or believe that they didn't see anything to be worried about."

Sansa wanted to be shocked.

She wasn't.

Eileen Snape was a proud woman. Too proud to admit she needed help. Too proud to admit the man she loved was a drunkard and an abuser.

Too proud to admit, even to herself, that there was something inside her that was very broken.

Lily sat down beside them then, with a lap full of flowers and a wide smile on her face.

"We're making flower crowns!" She said brightly, and Sansa obligingly leaned over to pluck a few flowers from Lily's skirt.

"I've never made a flower crown before," Severus said cautiously.

"Oh, it's easy, I'll show you," Lily assured him, scooping up a handful of daisies with their white petals and bright yellow drop centres, and dropping them on his lap.

Sansa watched as Lily showed Severus how to split the stems and carefully thread the flowers through to make a chain, quietly humming to herself as she made her own flower crown from the daisies Lily had collected. She had many fond childhood memories from Winterfell of weaving roses in all shades of white and red and pink and yellow into wreathes tied with satin ribbons. Sansa would then get her brothers to play Knights and Ladies with her and have the winner crown her Queen of Love and Beauty, all the while dreaming of the days when she was at a real tourney, where real knights would crown her.

Real tourneys, of course, had been nothing like she had imagined. Vicious bloodsports where spectators cheered and jeered and men died like cattle, cut down for others amusem*nt, their lives gambled on by those with fat pockets and greedy hearts and cutthroat souls– so, most of Westeros nobility.

Her lord-father had never liked to see Sansa wearing wreathes of roses, even if she never wore winter roses– they hadn't been grown in the gardens of Winterfell. Sansa knew why now, of course. When her Aunt Lyanna was crowned, the realm had bled. Her lord-father had wanted no reminder of the tragedy that stole from him half of his kin.

Sansa had died wearing a wreath of winter roses, her promise to her Northern Lords. A promise that she knew Arya had kept.

She didn't think she could ever bear to wear roses again.

Daisies, though... they were simpler. Humble.

Just like this new life.

"You know," Lily said, very nearly casually, except Lily and subterfuge were two things that did not go well together, "in Victorian flower language, daisies can symbolise new beginnings."

"Flowers can mean things?" Severus asked, looking interested.

"Oh yes, back in Victorian times, they used flowers for all sorts of messages that couldn't be said out loud," Lily said, with a nod. She lifted her completed flower crown of daisies onto her head, the white petals bold against her red tresses, before leaning forwards to pluck Severus's crown from his hands and drop it on his dark head. "Daisies can mean new beginnings," she repeated. "Like you starting the new school year with us."

"Lily–" Severus started to protest.

"Severus!" She interrupted. "You haven't given a single good reason why you shouldn't! You'd get to spend so much more time with us and join my choir and meet more people our age–"

"I don't even like other kids our age!" Severus protested.

"Neither does Lety," Lily said with a shrug. "You two can read your books during lunch together. Except on choir days, of course. And you have to try out for the football team– do you know they tried to say I couldn't play? That it was for boys only?"

Mr Addams' resistance to Lily joining the school football team had lasted only slightly longer than his resistance to Lily starting her choir. There wasn't a team for girls, as there weren't enough girls who wanted to play to form a team, but there weren't actually any rules that said girls couldn't join the school team that had, up until that point, consisted solely of boys.

Petunia had been horrified at the very idea of Lily doing something so "brutal" – she'd lectured Lily endlessly about the dangers of horribly disfiguring her face if her nose ended up broken. Sansa had felt no urge to join the football team herself, but she remembered just how much more determined Arya became when told she couldn't do something, and simply sat back to watch Lily face off against the world.

Lily had ended up challenging the football coach to let her join the try-outs– if she didn't make the cut, then she would stop kicking up such a fuss. If she did, then he would have to let her join.

He clearly wasn't expecting her to be any good, because he made the mistake of agreeing.

Lily was sporting a new football jersey by the following day.

Marigold had been mortified. "What will the other mothers think of me?" she had wailed, looking as aghast as Petunia.

William had been more amused than anything– and perhaps a little proud too. Not because it was football, he didn't particularly care about that, but because Lily had fought for something that she was passionate for.

When the co*keworth Primary football team faced other schools, there was always laughter and jeering when the boys first saw Lily– that was, until the first time she stole the ball from right under them or kicked it into their shins. They quickly learned to stop laughing after that. Lily's coach had started to call her 'Red Pepper' with a genuine, if bemused, fondness– because she made the other teams cry.

"Why would I want to play football?" Severus looked about as interested in the sport as Sansa felt.

"Urgh," Lily said, flipping her head back in exasperation, her daisy crown slipping down over her forehead, "you and Lety are more like twins than me and Lety!"

"Lety and I," Sansa and Severus corrected her at the same time and Lily threw her hands up into the air.

"Exactly!"

Sansa smiled at Severus, who was smirking slightly back at her.

"You know," she said, "you would be out of the house more, if you attended school. And there would be more eyes on you."

Her meaning was not lost on Severus– he would not be such an easy, convenient target for his father if he wasn't around for half the day, and if Tobias was aware that the teachers would notice his son walking around with fresh bruises and broken bones.

"We could also do study groups at our house after school," Lily added slyly. "And there are after school clubs you can join– and sports teams."

Severus hesitated.

"We'd like our friend to be with us," Sansa said softly, going for the fatal wound. Severus crumpled under the blow, folding to their pleas.

"I'll talk to mum tonight," he promised.

::

Severus must have been more convincing than his reluctance to join a "muggle" school would suggest. To Sansa's surprise and Lily's delight, their friend was enrolled at co*keworth Primary School for the start of the new school year in early September of 1968.

He arrived at their house on the morning of their first day. This was because Petunia had practically bullied him into it, saying that his association with the Evans family meant he would reflect badly on them if he made a poor showing.

Petunia had an abrasive way of showing that she cared.

Whatever Severus had been expecting when he arrived for a morning at the Evans household, he certainly didn't get it.

Marigold was arguing shrilly with Lily over pile of toast about the trousers she had decided to wear, pleading that Lily at least wear a nice dress and some ribbons in her hair on her first day of the new school year. Two seats down, Sansa and Petunia were heatedly 'debating' politics– Petunia was a staunch supporter of their current Prime Minister, Harold Wilson of the Labour Party, and Sansa had to admit that she approved of his choices to legalise abortion, protect and preserve trees, and increase funding towards opening educational opportunities for children of working-class backgrounds.

However, Sansa had recently come across the political ideology known as 'communism*' in the context of her country and had found herself intrigued. It wasn't that she was unaware of the existence of communism– it was hard not to, with the papers reporting on the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia the previous year. She had just associated it with foreign powers, irrelevant to her life in England.

She was quite wrong, it seemed. co*keworth was primarily a working-class neighbourhood and it was one of growing poverty and disenfranchisem*nt. It wasn't surprising that she had overheard talk of the Communist Party of Great Britain. The political party wasn't just a leader of trade union movements; it strongly opposed sexual discrimination and was organised upon Marxist communism ideology– the premise being that, ultimately, private property meant inequality and inequality destroyed the chance of moral and intellectual progress; where there was wealth, there was pride and ostentation, vanity and corruption– in Sansa's opinion, one need only look at the Lannisters as proof of concept.

Petunia, needless to say, opposed the CPGB quite vehemently– and was not afraid to express this. It was to that loud scene, of Marigold and Lily's arguing, and Petunia and Sansa's 'debating', all across the breakfast table, that Severus found himself walking into, William at his shoulder.

"You'll get used to it, son," William advised, clapping Severus on the shoulder.

Severus flinched slightly at the touch, even as he stared wide-eyed at their usual morning chaos.

"Urgh!" Petunia made a disgusted sound, scowling across at Sansa. "You're just awful!"

"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution**," Sansa replied, smiling sweetly back at her. Petunia made a sound of inarticulate rage before shoving herself to her feet.

"You!" She focused her attention on Severus with razor precision. "Follow me!"

Severus looked like he'd rather do anything but, yet he didn't dare refuse, trailing after Petunia as Sansa's sister stormed from the room.

"Do you really have to rile her up like that?" William asked as he sat down beside Sansa with a heavy sigh.

"Honestly, I'm helping her," Sansa said. "She needs to learn not to get provoked so easily."

"But if she did, then she wouldn't be our Petunia," William said fondly as he lifted up his morning paper.

That made Sansa pause. It was ingrained in her to hide how she felt, to conceal her reactions and her emotions, with the knowledge that they made her appear weak, that they exposed vulnerabilities. That to have an outburst was unladylike, undesirable– that it was to be avoided, and trained out of noble girls as they grew.

Yet here William was, saying that he wouldn't want Petunia to change– ill temper and outbursts and all.

It was just another way that this world was so different from Westeros. Another chain that Sansa could cast off, this one she hadn't even noticed tying her down.

"Are you alright, love?" William asked, a quiet concern in his voice as he lowered his paper back to the table to peer down at her.

"I'm perfect, father," Sansa said.

And she meant it.

::

Severus was looking nervous but far better dressed than usual as he and Petunia met Lily and Sansa at the front door of the Evans house. He was wearing a pair of slacks that were neatly hemmed, not a thread out of place, paired with a dark navy-blue v-neck over a lighter blue turtleneck pullover. His hair was neatly combed and pulled back from his face, tied at the base of his neck.

"You look lovely, Sev!" Lily gasped, delighted, upon seeing him. Petunia looked quite smug.

"Christine's brother grew a full foot last term," she said. "They had to buy him nearly an entire new wardrobe– Christine gave me several of his things that I altered for Severus, so he doesn't have to wear those oversized smocks of his."

Severus's cheeks reddened slightly, but he looked too pleased to be upset by Petunia's lack of tact and sharp tongue.

"We best get going," Sansa said to her sister. "I feel it would be a poor omen to be late on yours and Severus's first day."

Just as Severus was starting at co*keworth Primary School, Petunia was to start her first year of secondary school. The secondary school was located one town over– Petunia would need to catch a bus every morning. Unlike co*keworth Primary, it had a uniform and Petunia looked very smart in her grey pleated skirt, white shirt and royal blue cardigan, over which she wore a crisp grey blazer. Sansa had helped Petunia fashion her blonde ringlets in the style Margaery had favoured; braiding her wet hair overnight, then pulling the braids loose, combing them gently through with her fingers and pinning loose twists of hair back from Petunia's face. Her older sister looked wonderful; so smart and so pretty. Sansa couldn't help but feel achingly proud of her.

The four of them bid Marigold and William farewell before setting off. Petunia's bus stop was located just outside co*keworth Primary, so they were able to walk to school together. co*keworth Primary was fifteen minutes from the Evans house and Sansa could see how Severus grew more nervous with each step.

As they approached the school grounds, Petunia looked around disdainfully. "I'm glad to see the back of this place," she said.

"We're trying to encourage Severus to like it here," Sansa reminded her and Petunia sniffed.

"Your company should be encouragement enough," she said before sweeping a narrowed look over the three of them. "Lily, do try to comport yourself with just the slightest bit of decorum. Lety, talk to at least one person other than these two. And Severus," here, Petunia fixed her stern, blue-eyed stare on the dark-haired boy standing between the twins. Severus looked like he'd really rather she focus her attention on anyone else. "Do not shame us through our family association with you," Petunia warned. She paused. "Also," she added, "if anyone gives you any trouble at all, do not even think about turning the other cheek– you tell me at once. That sort of disrespect will not be tolerated and while I may not be attending the school anymore, you best believe I still have connections."

With a last, brisk nod at them, Petunia turned on her heel and marched over to the bus stop, where several other high schoolers were beginning to mill about, waiting for the bus to arrive. Severus stared after her, appearing lost for words.

"She's secretly soft on the inside," Sansa said, looking fondly after her sister.

"Like one of those hard toffees that almost break your teeth, but have a sweet, gooey chocolate centre," Lily added knowingly.

"I will never understand her," Severus muttered, shaking his head.

"Come on," Lily said brightly, linking her arm with Severus's. "We'll give you a tour before the bell rings!"

co*keworth Primary wasn't a very large school, according to Petunia– Sansa, of course, had nothing to compare it to. It had a library, a hall where the school gathered for assemblies, a dining room where the children sat to eat and had the option of buying a hot lunch, a field where they played sports, the tennis courts that both her sisters loved so much, a playground, and, of course, the classrooms.

Lily was only about halfway through the short tour when she was waylaid by the football coach.

"Red Pepper!" He bellowed out cheerfully.

"Coach!" Lily beamed up at him.

"Are you ready for the new season?" the coach demanded and Lily nodded enthusiastically.

"Yes, coach!" she cheered.

"And who's your friend?" the coach asked, peering down at Severus. "Is he going to be trying out for the team?"

"Yes!" Lily said, at the same time as Severus said,

"No."

The coach ignored Severus, even as he gave him a doubtful look. "You sure, Red Pepper?" he asked. "Boy looks skinny. No muscle."

"He's fast," Lily promised. "And smart."

"Alright," the coach nodded. "We'll give him a chance. Lord knows you surprised me."

Lily's smile brightened further.

"I'll only try out if Violet tries out," Severus said as soon as the coach jogged off, having spotted one of the other players.

"Oh, Lety, you really should!" Lily said eagerly.

"No, thank you," Sansa said and Lily frowned.

"I don't understand you sometimes, Lety," she said. "It feels like... I don't know, like there are things that you just don't let yourself to do. It's like you think that they're not right for you to do. That it's not proper– like how you never wear anything that shows your knees! And– and you only ever call mummy and daddy 'mother' and 'father', and you call gran 'grandmother'. And you never run around and play at lunch, you sit and read.

"It's not bad that you do that stuff," she said earnestly. "It's just... I feel like sometimes you don't let yourself try to do things you want to, because you don't think you're supposed to. But you can. Lety– you can do anything."

Sansa... Sansa just stared at her twin, at Lily's earnest green eyes, like sunlit leaves, and wondered at the insight evident in her innocence.

How much had she been holding herself back, by holding herself to what was seemly by Westerosi standards? Sansa Stark would never dream of running around in shorts, kicking a ball, so Sansa-as-Violet had never paid it any mind either. Had never even given it a chance. And maybe she wouldn't enjoy it– she certainly didn't enjoy tennis– but how could she know, when she had never tried?

Lily was right– she could do anything. So why wasn't she even trying?

"Alright," she said, aloud. "If you try out, Severus, I'll try out too."

Severus looked dismayed.

Lily looked like all her birthdays had come at once.

::

Football was...

Interesting.

Lily taught her and Severus during morning break how to do a credible 'dribble'– an odd movement where Sansa had to use both her feet to lightly kick the ball while controlling where it moved and moving with it. It was even more complicated than it sounded. Severus firmly declared his intentions to be the 'goalie', whatever that was. Lily looked delighted. Sansa was just confused.

At least she wasn't in too much danger of being shoved or hit by the other players, as the sport forbade the touching of other players– she was just in danger of being kicked in the shins, or having the ball smack into her face.

The atmosphere at try-outs was friendly, good-natured and slightly-competitive, with a bit of shoving back and forth between the boys. Sansa was relieved to see that she and Lily were not the only girls– bolstered by Lily's presence on the team the previous school year, a few other girls had decided to try out for the team.

Sansa could make no pretence of her own performance on the field. She was entirely new to the game and only had her endurance in her favour. She also had an unfortunate habit of flinching away from the other players when they got too close. Severus did much better than her. The 'goalie' apparently stood before the netting and caught the ball, to stop the other team scoring. Sansa watched, quite impressed by Severus's quick reflexes, as he jumped up to bat the ball away whenever one of the players tried to kick it into the net– apparently, the goalie was allowed to touch the ball with his hands.

The rules were very confusing.

Lily was amazing. She practically danced the ball along, sprinting down the field and scoring again and again against the other goalie. Sansa could see why the coach adored her.

Sansa wasn't at all surprised when, at the end of the try-outs, she wasn't given a spot on the team– though the coach encouraged her to still come along to practices, so that she might be good enough by next year– but Lily reclaimed her spot with pride, and Severus was made the reserve goalie, receiving many claps of congratulations on his back from the other boys.

He looked quite befuddled by this.

It was, Sansa thought to herself, a good start to the new school year.

::

::

::

*this is based before the "Iron Curtain" fell, so the damages of Soviet communist politics aren't so widely known. Also, Sansa is very anti-monarchy and pro-worker after seeing the damage that the lords and ladies of Westeros caused with the power they wielded, and with her experiences growing up in co*keworth. The Communist Party of Great Britain actually had some decent ideas too. It was strongly opposed to British colonialism, sexual discrimination, racial discrimination, it supported trade unions, and in 1984 the leader of the CPGB's youth wing founded the 'Lesbians and Gays Support Miners' which is a recognised turning point for recognition of LGBT people in the UK. Personally, I'm not a believer in communism myself, but I find the ideology interesting.

**part of a quote by Karl Marx– "Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workers of the world, unite!" Sansa isn't actually advocating for revolution here, she's just teasing Petunia.

Chapter 13

Chapter Text

Chapter Thirteen:

Autumn crept into winter as the frost lingered on sidewalks and lawns and breath fogged on their morning walk to school.

Sansa found a comfort in the cold that she hadn’t thought that she would. She still remembered the howling blizzard of the Long Night, how every breath was so icy it felt akin to knives piercing her throat, her lungs. This was different, though. This wasn’t the unnatural, deathly chill brought by the Night King and his legions. This was the simple change of season that brought to mind softer memories of her childhood at Winterfell, of playing in the flurries of snow with her siblings before her septa and lady-mother decided she was too old for that to be proper.

When the first snows fell, blanketing the world in white, Sansa found herself sitting on the front steps of their home, a mug of steaming lemon tea in her hands as she watched the soft flurries spiral down.

“You holding up alright, little blue?” William asked, as he came out to fetch his morning paper. He was moving stiffly, old injuries playing up with the cold.

“I love the snow,” Sansa said softly, and William’s face crinkled in a smile.

“I’m glad to hear it,” he said warmly, nodding his thanks as she passed up his newspaper so he didn’t have to bend down.

Sansa waited until he had returned inside before placing her mug down on the step beside her and holding her hand out, as if in supplication. The chill in the air called to the winter in her blood, in her bones, and she curled her fingers, catching the ripples of her magic that flowed around her, curling them around her hand and tugging.

Clumps of snow rose up before her, floating shapeless in the air. Sansa squeezed her hand, calling on the power deep within her soul and welcoming the cold that settled within her veins. Before her, the loose packed snow crushed together, forming an almost perfect sphere of glistening ice. Sansa watched it rotate, throwing off prisms of dancing light under the weak rays of the winter sun, before she released her hold on her magic with a flick of her fingers. The sphere of ice seemed to burst, almost like a soap bubble; glittering chips of ice scattered through the air, falling harmlessly to the snow-dusted ground below.

Sansa’s hand felt numb with cold, her fingers pale and the skin under her nails tinted faintly blue. Frost had dusted along where she’d wrapped the ripples of her magic, the thin flakes of ice so cold they almost burned. Sansa brushed her palm against her skirt, dislodging the ice, before picking up her tea once more. The difference in temperature between her skin and the warm ceramic of the mug was so glaring that it hurt.

As she sat there, she found herself feeling relieved that she had met Severus and he had told her the truth behind her magic. If she hadn’t, she feared her mind would drift unwillingly to the Night King and his white walkers with their unnerving mastery over winter’s icy cold. She wouldn’t want to believe she was tainted by them, by how she had died, but there was a small part of her that still feared it, even now. They were winter’s monsters, and she had winter in her blood, in her soul.

I am not like them, she thought fiercely to herself. The Night King and his creations were everything wretched and terrible about winter– but winter was not just about ice and death. Winter was as necessary for new life and growth as spring and summer; if plants did not have the opportunity to go dormant in order to store up their energy and establish strong root systems, they produced fewer, weaker crops. The trees that produced the sap made into syrup likewise only produced sap in cold weather. The severe cold of winter also culled populations of various pests and vermin that spread pestilence.

And winter was beautiful; pure white snowfall and ice that sparkled like diamonds under the soft rays of sunlight, the trees and rooves dusted with a powdered white. Winter brought to her mind memories of her childhood at Winterfell, of Arya jumping in puddles, of building castles in the snow with her brothers, of sitting before a warmly-burning hearth and embroidering with her lady-mother, of her lord-father wrapping her in his heavy cloak and carrying her in his arms during a visit to Wintertown– memories of the innocence and joy of her youth that she would never regain but would always treasure.

The Night King and the Others had tried to make winter their own, had tried to wield it as a weapon against Westeros, but Sansa refused to let them win. She had fought to take back the Dawn, and now she would fight to take back the winter in her soul, to truly embrace it as her own.

::

When the first term of the new school year ended for the Christmas holidays, Sansa wasn’t surprised that Severus was disappointed. Despite his initial misgivings about joining a “muggle” school, he had enjoyed the institute of learning, just as she had suspected he would. It wasn’t just that it took him out of his house for the better part of the day, away from his father, he also thrived under the attention of the teachers, studious and attentive in his studies, and he even made friends through Lily and the football team.

As the reserve goalkeeper, Severus attended every practice with Lily, and he had even had the chance to play in a match against another school, when the usual goalkeeper was off sick with the flu. This made him ‘one of the team’ and the other players seemed to include him as a friend by default.

Oh, Severus was certainly still awkward and hesitant amongst other children and he often attempted to keep them at arm’s length, but Lily refused to allow that, instead dragging Severus into her busy social life by forcibly carving out a place there for him to fit. For all that he protested it, Sansa privately thought that Severus was secretly pleased Lily was still so determined to be friends with him, even when she already had so many school friends.

Unlike Severus, Sansa still didn’t enjoy school. It wasn’t just the children, though she wouldn’t deny they were utterly exhausting to spend time around, it was also the fact that the majority of the learning was too slow-paced and simple for her. Too often Sansa found herself bored in the classroom, forced to occupy herself with books she had borrowed off her father after completing the assigned work. The only classes she could truly say she enjoyed were history and French– and the less said about the physical education classes, the better!

The holidays were a welcome break from the dull routine of primary education, though Christmas was not a holiday that Sansa understood well, mostly due to the religious aspect to it. Christianity seemed so illogical to her– but perhaps that was because her piety was owed so fiercely to her own gods.

Sansa had been devout as a child; growing up, she had routinely prayed at the Sept her father built her mother at Winterfell, knowing from a young age that she would be expected to marry South, perhaps even to the Crown Prince himself, should she be so lucky– her poor girlhood self truly had had no conception of the evil that could lurk behind a pretty face– and as a Southern Lady she would be expected to worship the Seven. Knowing this, Sansa had memorised the Book of Seven, had listened with rapt attention to her Septa, had spent hours kneeling before the Maiden and the Mother.

That didn't mean she had been any less devoted to the Old Gods, though her faith had been sorely tested by her time spent in the Red Keep.

She was a Daughter of the North; when the Andals came to Westeros bearing their iron weapons, burning the weirwoods, her ancestors fought for their gods. Where the other Kingdoms were Andalized and adopted the Seven Pointed Star, the North stood defiant with their 'heathen gods' and fought many bloody battles against the Andals and their Seven.

Sansa was a Stark; she was the descendant of Brandon the Builder, she was a Daughter of the North– her faith would always be in the Old Gods, her worship offered at the foot of a Heart Tree. No amount of Sunday mass she was forced to attend could ever sway her heart, though she did make an effort to get into the “Christmas Spirit” that was sweeping through the neighborhood as snow-dusted houses were decorated with colourful lights, trees strung through with ornaments, wreaths hammered to doors, even themed statues of reindeer and Father Christmas and nativity scenes posed in gardens.

Marigold had enlisted the aid of her three daughters as she swept through the Evans home, hanging baubles and bells, fixing stockings over the fireplace, and setting up a Christmas tree under which a small pile of brightly wrapped presents had already accumulated. Even Severus had been dragged into the decorating frenzy before they were shooed away as Marigold turned her attention towards baking the Christmas puddings. Uncle Oliver, Aunt Ethel and Cousin Rory had been invited to spend Christmas Day with them and Marigold was determined that everything would be perfect.

Once they’d reached the safety of the twins’ bedroom, away from Marigold’s manic Christmas cheer, Lily flopped down on her bed amidst her collection of stuffed animals with their unsettlingly shiny black eyes that Sansa always felt staring at her during the night. Severus carefully settled down next to Lily with all the restraint that Lily lacked while Sansa curled up on her own bed, reaching for a book. She’d borrowed ‘The Great Gatsby’from William’s bookshelf, and despite the long look he’d given her upon seeing her reading it, her father had left her to read, though he had said to come to him if she had any questions.

“What are you doing for Christmas, Sev?” Lily asked, rolling over slightly on her blankets so she was looking up at their friend.

“My family doesn’t celebrate Christmas,” Severus said and Lily gasped, jerking upright which sent several of her stuffed animals spilling off the bedcovers to the floor with the abrupt movement.

“What?” She demanded. Severus flushed slightly, his pale cheeks staining pink as he ducked his head.

“Lily,” Sansa admonished, seeing Severus’s discomfort, and Lily reddened too.

“I didn’t mean that was a bad thing!” She protested. “I swear, I didn’t! I was just surprised!”

“Christmas is a mugg– non-magical holiday,” Severus corrected himself, remembering Sansa’s dislike of the word ‘muggle’. “Mum comes from an old Pureblood family– she’s never celebrated Christmas, she celebrates Yule instead. And Dad…” Severus pulled a face. “Christmas is the same as any other day for him,” he said bitterly.

Meaning Tobias Snape spent it drinking away any money he had or beating his wife and child.

“What’s Yule?” Lily asked curiously, not even trying to hide how she was steering the conversation away from Severus’s father. It worked though. Severus brightened up, his face losing that bitter twist that any mention of Tobias Snape brought to it. “Yule is traditionally celebrated on the Winter Solstice,” he explained, “we burn a Yule log and make evergreen wreaths and decorate our house with holly to celebrate the Holly King– he’s one of our old gods, the Dark god of winter.”

“Witches and wizards have gods?” Lily asked, entranced. Sansa found herself paying her full attention towards Severus now, too, her interest in the conversation having risen sharply from the moment the words ‘old gods’ had left his mouth.

“Sort of,” Severus said, shrugging a little. “Only the more traditional families still follow what’s known as the ‘old ways’,” here, he scowled. “Mum said they celebrate Christmas at Hogwarts, now. The traditional families don’t like that at all.”

“But why would they celebrate Christmas at a magic school?” Lily asked, clearly confused. Sansa, however, had the sinking feeling that she already knew why.

“Because of muggleborns and halfbloods,” Severus said, confirming her fears. “For hundreds of years, most of them have been Christians and there was a lot of fear about witch hunts. It got really, really bad after Salem, so the Ministry at the time made changes, banning different branches of magic, like ritual magic and blood magic, and changing the different holidays to be more muggle-friendly.”

“They sought to appease those coming into the magical world,” Sansa murmured. “To make it more familiar and less objectionable, to discourage them from turning on it.”

“Yeah,” Severus nodded, mouth twisted down unhappily. “Exactly.”

And to think that Sansa had been wondering why the magical world had issues against ‘muggleborns’– other than the lack of ‘purity’ in their blood. Why was she not surprised it was the foolishness of politicians that had, in part, led to the schism?

“That seems so silly,” Lily said with a frown. “Why can’t they just celebrate both?”

“Because they wanted to distance themselves from pagan celebrations,” Sansa explained to her sister gently. “They were afraid that those celebrations may have made muggleborns–” she really hated that word– “afraid. And that if they were afraid, they could lash out.”

“I wouldn’t be afraid!” Lily protested. “I think celebrating Yule sounds brilliant!”

“You and Lety can celebrate Yule with Mum and I this year, if you like,” Severus offered, ducking his head a little. Lily’s eyes lit up before her face fell, her mouth turning down in a pout.

“Oh Sev, I’d love to, I really would, but Mummy and Daddy wouldn’t be happy if we weren’t with them on Christmas, and Uncle Ollie, Auntie Ettie and Rory are all coming around for Christmas dinner,” she said sadly.

“That doesn’t matter,” Severus explained. “Yule isn’t celebrated on the twenty-fifth, like Christmas is– it’s celebrated on the day of the winter solstice, December twenty-first.”

Lily’s eyes lit up again and Sansa couldn’t deny her own excitement.

“Your mother won’t mind?” Sansa had to ask, though, because she quite clearly remembered Eileen’s dislike of her.

“She’ll be fine with you being there,” Severus said firmly. “Yule – it’s not supposed to be celebrated alone. The more people, the better.”

“So Tuney can come too, if she wants?” Lily asked hopefully.

Sansa had to bite down the inappropriate burst of laughter that wished to escape at the thought of Eileen and Petunia in the same room. Severus looked faintly horrified at the thought.

“Er,” he said weakly, “if she wants to?”

He appeared to desperately be hoping otherwise.

“This is going to be so much fun!” Lily said gleefully.

“You should spend Christmas with us, if we’re spending Yule with you,” Sansa found herself offering. “We’ll have to check with mother and father, but they both like you– I don’t see them having an issue with it.”

“Really?” Severus looked surprised and pleased.

“Definitely,” Lily said firmly.

::

Chapter 14

Chapter Text

Chapter Fourteen:

Marigold and William agreed to let the twins celebrate Yule with Severus and Eileen, so long as Tobias Snape was absent– which Severus assured them he would be, after William awkwardly brought it up.

Marigold was a little nervous about how very “pagan” a traditional Yuletide celebration held on Winter Solstice all seemed, which didn’t surprise Sansa considering Marigold’s religion, but William thought it sounded very educational and was supportive of their involvement. Sansa wondered if Marigold would react better or worse if she knew about the whole magical aspect of it all. It made her feel a little ill to consider, so she pushed the thought from her mind to worry about on a later occasion.

Severus did invite Petunia to join them, and without any further prompting by Sansa or Lily too, however Petunia turned down her invitation.

“It’s not the magic thing,” she said airily, a very self-satisfied look on her face, “I just have too many commitments.”

To the surprise of no one, Petunia had firmly established herself at the top of the pecking order of her year at her secondary school, undoubtedly through a combination of her skill at successful social climbing and her equally successful talent for getting her hands on blackmail-worthy gossip.

Severus wasn’t offended by her prioritising other plans– rather, he seemed rather relieved that Petunia wasn’t about to be pitted against Eileen, and increasingly excited about celebrating Yule with them. Lily and Sansa even got permission to spend the night at the Snape house.

On the day of the Winter Solstice, Lily was so excited she could barely sit still. They weren’t due to head over to the Snape house until later that afternoon, so Sansa did their poor flustered mother a favour and dragged Lily out of the house, taking her to the park so she could rid herself of some of her energy– Sansa personally would have preferred the library but she wasn’t cruel enough to set her sister on the librarians in her current mood.

The heavy snowfall had either buried or iced over the few pieces of equipment that co*keworth had managed to put together for the town’s children but Lily wasn’t bothered. There were several other children at the park and Lily rounded them up in no time to have a snowball fight. Sansa even joined in, though admittedly she cheated, using her magic to help make her snowballs compact enough they wouldn’t fall apart in the air and hit their targets with a satisfying ‘thud’. Only Lily was aware of her cheating and Lily’s shrieking as chunks of snow dripped down her collar was well-worth the pouting.

They were both soaked and shivering as they made their way back home, the snow having melted through their clothing and soaking them to the skin, but Lily wasn’t practically bouncing off the walls anymore so Marigold just sighed and sent them off to shower and change out of their wet things before they caught a chill.

After drying off, Sansa changed into one of her newly-sewn dresses for the occasion; old-fashioned and off-white, the dress had long, flowing sleeves tied up with red and blue ribbons and a flared skirt with more ribbons tied along the hem. Marigold had cooed over the dress, only to make a sound of despair as Lily bounded from the twins’ room wearing her matching denim jacket and jeans and a ruffled red and white knit-top. Marigold put her foot down when Lily refused to change and wouldn’t let her leave the house until she at least tied some white ribbons in her hair.

Because of Marigold and Lily’s arguing, Sansa and Lily were late to leave their home and Severus ended up meeting them halfway to the Snape house, his pale face already flushed pink with badly repressed excitement.

“Sev!” Lily practically knocked the poor boy over as she hugged him tightly, before pulling back and beaming. “I’m so excited!”

“I am too,” Sansa said, genuinely meaning it. The prospect of learning more about the ‘old gods’ Severus had talked about as he explained Yule to them had her nearly breathless with anticipation– she hadn’t been able to find anything in co*keworth’s library about the ‘Holly King’ or ‘Oak King’ that he had referred to and she was desperate to learn more.

It had been years now since Sansa Stark had ‘woken up’ as Violet Hope Evans and she still didn’t understand it, not when the last she remembered of Sansa Stark was dying, a sacrifice to a god she did not even worship in the hopes of destroying a monster that wished to lay waste to everything she held dear.

So why was she alive?

And for that matter, howwas she alive?

It was through magic, through the old gods, that Sansa hoped to find answers.

“I really hope you enjoy celebrating with us tonight,” Severus said shyly and Lily slipped her arm through his, beaming at him.

“Let’s go!” she urged, and Sansa followed as Severus led the way back to his house, anticipation continuing to build inside her.

Instead of walking through the front door as they arrived at his home, Severus led them around the side of the house to the small backyard, over to the single, proud evergreen fir tree that grew there.

“We need to cut down some of the branches to make wreathes,” Severus explained to them.

“Please tell me that doesn’t require climbing a tree,” Sansa said with a small wince even as Lily lit up with delight.

“I’ll toss you down some, Lety,” her twin promised, already shrugging off her jacket and shoving it eagerly into Sansa’s hastily outstretched arms. Sansa watched Lily scramble up the trunk of the tree in exasperation, Severus only a foot or two below her twin as Lily climbed like a squirrel, jumping from branch to branch. Severus, surprisingly, appeared just as spry, though he reminded her more of a slinking cat than a squirrel. Watching them climb, Sansa just knewLily was going to be oh-so smug about her decision to wear trousers today despite Marigold’s efforts to get her into a dress or skirt.

Lily and Severus found several offshoots of the fir they apparently deemed suitable, Severus using a pair of pruning shears to cut through the long, slender branches and letting them drop to the ground below until he judged that they probably had enough. Sansa winced as she watched them both slide down the tree trunk to the ground below, probably scratching their hands bloody on the bark, not that either seemed to notice or care.

Lily reclaimed her jacket once her feet were both firmly back on the ground, much to Sansa’s relief, and the three of them collected all the fir branches, carrying the bundles over to the back door. Severus and Lily’s faces were flushed from the wind and excitement both as they all made their way inside, straight to the living room.

The room looked very different to how Sansa remembered it last; sprigs of holly decorated the mantle and the photo-frames, an unlit log rested in the previously empty fireplace, tall, white candles burned merrily on every surface, and at the very centre of the room sat a heavy yellow-hued candle on what was unmistakably an altar. It was the only candle in the room that was unlit. Stacked around the unlit candle were polished, gleaming stones with symbols engraved into them– familiar symbols that drew Sansa forward, hungry to trace with her hands the runes that she had seen before only in her dreams.

“They’re ancient runes,” Eileen said quietly, startling Sansa who hadn’t noticed the woman even enter the room. The older woman reached out to carefully trace the air above one of the runes and it flared up in response, glowing with a soft, orange-ish light. Sansa could almost taste the heat on her tongue.

“What do they mean?” She asked, her voice hushed.

“It depends,” Eileen told her, looking back up from the rune to meet Sansa’s eyes. She seemed to see something in Sansa’s expression that had her expanding on her short answer. “Runes contain the secrets of the universe; they have always existed, just as the primordial worlds of fire and ice existed before the creation of the universe. For those who understand them, who study long and diligently to uncover their meaning, those secrets can be glimpsed, and much can be learnt and manifested.”

“And how do I learn about them?” Sansa asked eagerly and Eileen’s mouth pressed in a thin line.

“You will learn at Hogwarts.” She said shortly, turning away. Sansa wanted to call her back, wanted to finally get some answers, but she managed to bite back her frustration, realising that now was not the time to push. Today was a day of celebration, not for debate and argument.

She would ask again later.

Weaving the evergreen wreathes was a familiar task that Sansa was well-practiced in, swiftly twisting branches together, overlapping them and using bits of twine to hold them together before trimming the ends. It was fun too– like their days at the park, making daisy chains, except they were inside and out of the cold.

Once they finished the wreathes, they hung most of them around the room, except for the ones Lily playfully dropped on each of their heads and Eileen called them into the kitchen for dinner.

Eileen had made them chestnut soup and some sort of roasted, stuffed bird– chicken or goose, Sansa guessed. For dessert, they ate baked apples glazed with honey and dusted with powdered sugar. It was delicious despite its simplicity, even compared to the feasts Sansa had eaten in the past. Perhaps even more so, for it– there was true emotion in this simple meal Eileen had cooked for her son and his friends that Sansa had never tasted at the Red Keep, where the food served was always fit for royalty.

They returned to the living room after dinner, where Eileen brought them steaming drinks as the sky darkened outside the window, flakes of snow carried aimlessly about by the wind, frosting over the glass. The room was lit now solely by the flickering light of the candles which set the shadows dancing around them. Sansa sipped quietly at her drink, the warm hot cider filled with sweet spices.

“It’s time,” Eileen said suddenly, the older woman walking over to the unlit fireplace.

“The Yule Log represents the old year, and the cold and death,” Severus whispered to Sansa and Lily. “When we light it on fire, we’re watching as winter is replaced with heat and light.”

“Wicked,” breathed Lily, leaning forwards to watch as Eileen slipped a slender wooden stick from her sleeve. Lily gasped at the sight of it, and Sansa felt her own breath catch. “Is that–?” Lily asked breathlessly and Severus nodded before she’d even finished her question, his dark eyes gleaming with anticipation.

So that was what a magic wand looked like, Sansa thought.

“Incendio,” Eileen murmured and Sansa gasped along with Lily this time as the log burst into bright, dancing flame. Eileen straightened, her wand disappearing back up her sleeve as she made her way over to the altar, where the lone, unlit candle stood.

“Severus,” Eileen prompted, and Severus hastily nudged Sansa and Lily so they were standing around the altar, all holding hands. Eileen’s hand felt dry and cold in Sansa’s own.

“Tonight we pray,” Eileen said softly, “The longest night has come once more,

the sun has set, and darkness fallen.

The trees are bare, the earth asleep,

and the skies are cold and black.

“Yet tonight we rejoice, in this longest night,

embracing the darkness that enfolds us.

We welcome the night and all that it holds,

as the light of the stars shines down.”*

The runes surrounding the candle lit up, almost too brilliant to set her gaze upon as they left streaks of light behind her eyelids. The unlit candle glowed, its wick erupting into tongues of flickering bright fire that reached far higher than was natural.

Sansa could feel the magic shivering in the air, the kiss of frost numbing her lips, ash scraping her throat, blood on her tongue. The magic in the room felt as if it was pressing down on her, trying to force her to her knees. Absently, she noticed how Severus and Lily had buckled down under the weight, even Eileen was half bent over, and Sansa locked her knees and braced herself against the weight, stubbornly refusing to kneel, refusing to bow to a god not her own.

“Yule is the time of the old winter gods,” Eileen’s words curled around Sansa, a noose around her neck, bindings around her wrist, frost and flame licking across her skin as in the distance she heard the harsh cawing of ravens. “The Oak King slumbers, and the Holly King reigns—

Hear us as we honour You

may You grant us Your blessings on this Winter Solstice.”*

Sansa’s head was spinning, her body swaying in place as the magic in the room danced with her, pulling and tugging and twirling; it was almost as if she were drunk from it, even stumbling when Eileen released her grip on her hand.

Those cold, dry hands were surprisingly gentle as they guided Sansa to the sofa where she was joined shortly by Lily and Severus, Lily sprawling across Sansa’s lap as Severus slumped against her, his head falling heavily onto her shoulder.

“Wow,” Lily mumbled, her words slightly slurred, her eyes almost glowing they were so vividly green. “That was brilliant.”

Sansa hummed her agreement, letting her eyes drift shut. She could still see the afterimages of the runes behind her eyelids; they seemed to be getting brighter, bolder…

…a towering tree stretching endlessly into the constellations… branches twisting and reaching… runes brighter than dying stars carved into pale wood… a whisper, a call–

–her name…

Sansa gasped, jerking slightly as she opened her eyes. She was lying in a bed, she realised, with Lily tucked up beside her under thick blankets. It took Sansa a moment to realise it must be Severus’s bed they were lying in as she failed to recognise the room around her, though their dark-haired friend wasn’t with them.

Careful not to wake Lily, Sansa slid out of the bed, stepping as quietly as she could as she left the bedroom. It was pitch black in the Snape house and Sansa used the wall as her guide, tracing her way by memory to the backyard. She wasn’t certain what it was guiding her footsteps until she stepped out of the house, into the yard.

There was someone standing under the fir tree.

(a whisper, a call–)

The sky was dark as spilled ink, no stars or moon visible, but movement under the evergreen still managed to draw her attention. Sansa thought she ought to be afraid, but there was an odd sense of surrealness as she looked out in the dark, trying to make a shape from the shadows. She thought she saw a glimpse of green eyes, vivid and unnatural and eerie, nothing at all like Lily’s.

Sansa blinked and when she opened her eyes again, the figure was gone– if they had even been there at all. There were no marks left in the snow, nothing but a sprig of holly, brilliant crimson against the pure, untouched white.

“What are you doing?”

Sansa startled, jerking around to face a sleepy-looking Severus. It was clear he had not seen anything or anyone outside under the tree, for there was no fear or confusion on his face, just heavy-lidded confusion and sleepiness.

“Violet? Are you alright?” he asked when she stayed silent, losing some of his sleepiness, his eyes sharpening as it was replaced by concern. Sansa shook herself slightly.

“I’m fine, Severus,” she said, stepping back into the house and slipping her arm through his. “I was just a little warm. I think I’d like to go back to bed now.”

She let Severus guide her back through the darkened house, to his room where Lily was still sprawled in the bed, fast asleep. Sansa stopped him when he tried to untangle their arms, presumably to head back to wherever he was sleeping, finding herself reluctant to let go, uneasy over the midnight visitor. She tugged him after her instead, into the bedroom.

“Lety!” Severus’s face flushed so violently she could see how red he was, even in the dark. “It’s not– it’s not proper!” he hissed.

“We’re children,” Sansa countered, “and we can wrap blankets between us.”

Severus dithered for a moment before going along with it. Sansa wasn’t fooled– he was obviously more than happy to pile onto his bed with them, carefully wrapped in a blanket to maintain ‘propriety’ even as he tentatively reached out to hold her hand, squeezing gently, and Sansa drifted back to sleep between her sister and friend.

She did not dream again that night.

~

Uncle Oliver, Aunt Ethel and Cousin Rory arrived in co*keworth bright and early on Christmas Day. Lily was thrilled to welcome Cousin Rory into their home, practically dragging him to the bedroom she shared with Sansa so she could show him the band posters she’d stuck to the walls on her side of their room and her collection of cassette tapes.

“Wicked,” Cousin Rory said approvingly, seeming to forget his initial awkwardness as he sat down beside Lily on her bed, eagerly picking up each tape to read the name of its album.

“Have you been to any more concerts recently?” Lily asked excitedly.

“I got to go to a Led Zeppelin concert, just two weeks ago– they’ve been touring the U.K.,” Cousin Rory said, just as enthusiastic as her twin as he described how the music was so loud he could feel it pounding throughout his entire body, how he had lost his voice for three days after from all the screaming and singing. “I got you a poster,” he added shyly, and Lily flung herself at him in a hug that nearly knocked them both to the floor.

“I can’t wait until I can go to a concert,” she said dreamily, after Cousin Rory had regained his balance.

“You certainly won’t be taking me with you,” Sansa replied, having shuddered her way through Cousin Rory’s narrating of his experience.

Christmas Dinner was a joyous occasion at the Evans home. Severus had arrived at around midday, smiling awkwardly as he was introduced to their Aunt, Uncle and Cousin. He’d brought wrapped presents for the three sisters, as well as a bouquet of flowers for Marigold and William.

For Lily, Severus had gifted her a copy of ‘Hogwarts: A History’and for Petunia, a set of bobbins. “They’re enchanted to prevent thread from ever tangling,” he told her shyly and Petunia looked surprised and a touch wary but still pleased by the gift.

His gift to Sansa was a book too– and when she opened ‘The Beginners Guide To Ancient Runes’ she felt dizzy with excitement.

“Thank you!” She breathed, delighted. “Oh, Severus, thank you!”

“It’s mum’s old copy,” Severus mumbled. “It’s not that special.”

“It’s perfect,” Sansa told him firmly, brushing her fingers over the stamped lettering on the cover.

Inside it, she hoped, she would find answers at last.

::

*pagan Yuletide prayers used by Eileen located from 'Wigington, Patti. "12 Pagan Prayers for Yule." Learn Religions, Aug. 2, 2021'

Chapter 15

Chapter Text

Chapter Fifteen:

At the centre of the Universe, holding the worlds together in its roots and branches, exists the World Tree, Yggdrasill.

The Norns, those who weave the tapestry of Fate and tend to Yggdrasill, carve runes into the trunk of the World Tree. The meanings and intentions of the runes are carried up through the trunk and into the branches, where they affect everything within the worlds that reside there.

Yet just as the primordial worlds of fire and ice existed before the creation of the Universe, there is no being or force who created the runes– they are eternal, containing in them the secrets of the Universe since the beginning of time, before even the birth of the gods.

Runes are a tool in which we can communicate visually, as opposed to verbally, with the Universe. They aid us in expressing our complex ideas through a simpler form in the invisible planes of reality through which we may manifest our desires.

The names of runes have emerged over time from the everyday experience of those who have used them. Objects, natural phenomena, divine forces and intangible experiences are all incorporated within this system of symbols, however these names are rarely literal– more often, the meanings associated with runes are individual to the caster, rooted in personal interpretation and metaphor and esoteric association.

Each rune name therefore serves as a bridge between human minds and the ethereal realm of creation that runes exist within. It is through contemplation of the rune and the implications of its name that we may come to an understanding of the energies of each rune and how to link or bind them to combine and amplify their energies.

“Why are you so interested in runes, anyway?” Severus asked. Sansa glanced up from the battered textbook and hummed.

She had barely looked away from the book of ancient runes since Christmas Day when Severus had gifted it to her, hungrily devouring the knowledge held within its pages, her head full of the ancient symbols and the mythology and piety entwined throughout their history.

Sansa wasn’t surprised that Severus was confused by her intense focus. Ancient runes weren’t a particularly flashy type of magic, nor did they offer a glimpse of the world of magic the way Lily’s gifted copy of ‘Hogwarts: A History’did, but to Sansa, who was so desperate for answers, the book was priceless.

“Violet?” Severus prompted.

“I have dreams,” she said, feeling as if she owed Severus an answer after he’d been so kind and thoughtful, convincing Eileen to hand over the textbook despite the older woman’s assertions that Sansa would learn when she attended Hogwarts.

“Dreams?” Severus asked, his brow furrowing in confusion.

“I see the runes, sometimes,” Sansa elaborated, “in my dreams.”

“That’s… strange,” Severus said, his cheeks immediately flushing red as he realised what he’d just said. Sansa laughed, not at all offended.

“It is strange, isn’t it?” she agreed. And yet, Sansa couldn’t help but be drawn to them, hungry for more knowledge, hungry for learning how to use the magic inside her to speak with the gods, to use their energies to shape and change the world around her, just as her ancestor had once carved runes into the Wall that for eight thousand years had protected the Seven Kingdoms from the Others.

“Just… be careful,” Severus warned her. “Runes can be dangerous. You probably shouldn’t try anything without Mum or another grown witch or wizard to help, in case things go wrong.”

“I’ll be careful,” Sansa said. “I promise.”

~

With the dawning of the new year, classes started once more. Sansa couldn’t bring the ancient runes textbook to school, of course, not when it was so clearly magical in its origin, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t occupying her attention.

As the months passed, the winter snow melted away to the fresh, bursting colour of spring. Sansa still marvelled over the brief, fleeting seasons in this new world, lasting only a handful of turns of the moon, barely granting them time to enjoy before spinning away. Like a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis, spring was beautiful and bright and briefly-lived, and instead of mourning its loss, Sansa instead enjoyed its life, no less lovely for passing in a blink.

The beginning of spring had brought with it more than just a change in weather– Petunia, newly turned fourteen, had begun dating a boy.

When Petunia told her, over their sewing, Sansa felt all the blood drain from her face.

She didn’t know why she was so shocked. She had been two years younger than Petunia was now when she had been wed to a man more than twice her age.

Sansa still felt sick at the thought of what Petunia would endure. She remembered her first wedding night so vividly still; she remembered her terror, Joffrey‘s threats, how Tyrion stared at her naked body, how he had groped the barely-there swell of her immature breast. “You’re a child,” he had told her. “A child, but I want you. Does that frighten you, Sansa?”

It had frightened her. It had frightened her so badly that she spent her nights lying in the bed next to him sick to her stomach. She had never slept well after her lord-father’s death, but it had been different after she was forcibly wedded, crying silently into her pillow in the dark of the night or waking from nightmares with a racing heart.

To her utter shame, there had even been a night where she had woken with one of Tyrion’s legs tucked over hers and in her fear and panic, there was a wetness between her thighs that spread into a puddle on the sheets below even as she choked on sobs, pressing her hands between her thighs in a desperate, futile effort to hold back the stream, her entire body shaking with fear and humiliation. Tyrion’s disgust when he awoke had been humiliating yet also a relief to her, as it was preferable to the nights where he stared at her barely clothed body in obvious hunger.

Sansa remembered him saying later, in Winterfell, after he helped bring a foreign conqueror to Westeros, that they should have stayed married and she wanted to laugh until she broke down in tears at just how differently they remembered their time married; she had been forcibly married into the House that had slaughtered her family and was terrified each night that he would rape her, while Tyrion worked with his murderous family to keep a bastard born of incest who had murdered her lord-father and abused Sansa, a boy-king whose rule was as illegitimate as Joffrey himself, on the throne.

Sansa didn’t understand Petunia’s excitement and every time her sister mentioned the boy, she felt the sick feeling inside her grow and grow. Poor Petunia, surely she didn’t realise what was to come, what the boy would expect from her, what he would take and take and take from her body until she had nothing left of her own.

Sansa couldn’t not warn her, just as she had not been able to help warning Margaery of Joffrey. It would be truly monstrous, if she let Petunia blindly accept the boy’s advances, when she surely had no idea of the pain and humiliation that would follow.

She pulled Petunia aside one afternoon, tugging her out to the garden, taking a breath and steeling herself before letting the words spill out.

“I– I am worried,” she said, “that you do not understand what T-Timmy wants from you. Men… men have hungers. They want to– to touch us,” she could feel how her face flamed red. “They want to put their– their m-manhoods inside of us, and I have heard it is so painful and there is so much blood as he tears you apart from the inside.”

Petunia listened silently through Sansa’s trembling warning.

“Wait here a moment,” she said, when Sansa finally managed to get all the words out. “I need to get Mum.”

Sansa waited, confused and still trembling, until Marigold exited the house alone.

Her mother took one look at her and then pulled Sansa into her arms.

“Oh Violet,” she said, “oh my sweet girl.”

Sansa let her tears spill as her mother held her close, her entire body shaking with remembered pain and terror. Eventually, the tears slowed and Marigold guided them to the garden bench, tugging Sansa down so she was sitting beside her.

“Violet, love, Petunia told me something that is very concerning to me,” her mother spoke so gently that Sansa couldn’t help but feel soothed. “I won’t be cross, my darling, I promise, but I need to know, has anyone done anything to you that made you uncomfortable? Has anyone ever touched you in your private places?”

“No,” Sansa said truthfully. “No one has ever touched me.” Violet Hope Evans had never been forcibly groped or bedded by her husbands, not how Sansa Stark had been. This body was pure, mostly unscarred by life.

“I am very relieved to hear that, my love,” Marigold said, after shakily exhaling, looking as if a weight had shifted from her shoulders. “But I am still worried about what Petunia told me. You warned her about sexual intercourse. You said it was very painful and there was blood and tearing involved.”

“Yes,” Sansa nodded. “That’s what I’ve heard. I wanted Petunia to be prepared,” she explained.

“Oh darling,” Marigold sighed, looking forlorn. “My precious little flower. Petunia is far too young to even be thinking of sex. She and her boy are simply dating, perhaps sharing a few brief kisses as they spend time together. Nothing more than that. But when she is older, when you both are, it’s important that you know, Violet, that sex with the right person is a beautiful thing. When you are with someone you love, it’s a beautiful experience that you share together. It shouldn’t hurt, and there shouldn’t be any blood, and if there is bleeding or discomfort, you should most certainly go to a doctor to make certain everything is okay.”

Sansa stared at her mother, wide eyed and honestly not quite believing her.

“You don’t need to be afraid, Violet,” Marigold said gently. “I promise.”

Sansa wanted to believe her, she truly did. She just wasn’t sure she could, not yet.

But perhaps… perhaps one day.

~

It was early May when Sansa and her sisters, all of them following the aftermath of the Ford equal pay strike from the previous year, heard through one of the older girls at Petunia’s school of a demonstration in London demanding equal pay for women that had been organised by the National Joint Action Campaign Committee for Women's Equal Rights.

The Committee had been formed in the wake of the Ford protests by women inspired by the Ford machinists, lobbying for equal pay for men and women– not just for the same job, but for work of equal value.

“We have to go!” Lily declared, eyes bright and fervent after Petunia shared the news of the protest at Trafalgar Square.

Sansa agreed. “We do,” she said.

“I certainly can’t let you go without supervision,” Petunia said airily.

It was Primrose who took them to London for the march. She also paid their train fare and organised and paid for a hotel in London where they could spend the night too.

Severus joined them, mostly because he and Lily were joined at the hip, but also because he truly believed in the cause. With Lily as his best friend, it would be impossible for him not to.

The day before the demonstration, Lily, Petunia, Severus and Sansa gathered at Primrose’s cottage to paint their picket signs using white paper glued onto cardboard, paint and paintbrushes, duct tape and cardboard tubes.

Severus had painted a big white and black sign which read ‘Equal pay will benefit ALL workers!’ which had Petunia nodding in approval while Lily beamed at him.

Lily had painted her sign a bright sunshine yellow with white flowers and in pink letters she had written: ‘We REFUSE to be second-class workers!’

Petunia’s white sign with its black and red letters boldly stated: ‘We are the granddaughters of the witches you couldn’t burn!’ Even Severus looked moved by Petunia’s unspoken acknowledgement and acceptance of their magic as Sansa’s older sister made her statement about equality for women as fierce, confrontational and spiteful in the face of men who had persecuted them as only Petunia could.

Sansa had thought long and hard about what she would paint on her own picket sign, until at last she painted a gravestone in dark grey, onto which she wrote in black ‘HOW LONG MUST WE WAIT?’

“I am so very proud of you all,” Primrose told them. Sansa’s grandmother had painted her own sign, simple black letters on a white background, but carrying a powerful message: ‘I marched so my granddaughters wouldn’t have to!’

“Did you really?” Sansa asked and Primrose smiled down at her.

“Years ago, I marched so my future daughters and granddaughters would be able to vote,” she said. “And I am so very proud of all of you today, ready to march for yourselves and your own daughters and granddaughters for their futures. My darling Lety,” her grandmother leaned over, cradling Sansa’s cheek in her hand, “you must never, ever let anyone tell you that you are less than what you are worth– and you, Violet Hope Evans, are worth the world.”

The day of the demonstration, Sansa, her sisters, her grandmother and Severus joined a thousand other people to march through the streets of London, holding their picket signs high. Sansa had seen battle, had waded through the filth of it; the stench of spilled gut, of burning corpses, of spilled blood. This? This was a different kind of battle, but in its own way, it was just as important as any other.

The press of the people around her had Sansa’s breath coming quick and sharp, her fear of crowds no less frightening today than it had been in the past, but she steeled herself, drew tall and reminded herself; she was Sansa Stark of Winterfell, and she was Violet Evans of co*keworth– she had the soul of a wolf, and the heart of a flower stubborn enough to bloom even in winter. She would march today alongside her sisters, her grandmother and her friend, and she would do it standing tall and proud.

The march ended in Trafalgar Square, where over one thousand people stood waving their picket signs and chanting “Equal Pay!” Sansa felt caught up in the rush of it all, thrilled and empowered as they all spoke with one voice and made their demand.

When the fervour began to die down as the afternoon shifted towards the early hours of evening, Sansa took a break, sitting down with Petunia away from the press of the crowd.

In hindsight, they really should never have left Lily unattended.

“Lety! Tuney!” Lily waved frantically at them from where she was standing with a group of long-haired, brightly clothed men and women in their early twenties. The group were holding a large rainbow banner together which read ‘Peace And Equality!’ surrounded by painted flowers and rainbows and odd circle symbols that Sansa didn’t recognise.

“Oh no,” Petunia said with a dawning horror.

Lily’s face was bright with her excitement. Next to her, Severus had a very panicked look on his face.

“Guess what?” Lily said, not even waiting for them to reply before bursting out with, “they’re hippies! Have you heard of hippies? They’re so amazing! They believe in peace and freedom and feminism and no wars and protesting authority! Also, they love rock and roll music! Isn’t that amazing?”

“Oh no,” Petunia said again, this time with even more alarm.

The hippies laughed.

“You have such wicked-awesome energy, Lily-flower,” one of them, a woman with loose hair down to her waist, a rainbow-coloured t-shirt, strings of bright beads looped around her neck and a long skirt frayed at the hems, told Lily. Lily beamed like this was the greatest compliment she had ever been given.

“I’m going to be a hippie too,” Sansa’s twin decided, and Sansa rather abruptly understood Petunia’s alarm. Standing slightly apart from the rest of them, Primrose looked like she was trying not to laugh.

“What about you, love?” The same woman who had complimented Lily’s energy asked Sansa with a smile.

“Oh, don’t bother with her,” Petunia said dryly. “She’s a commie.”

The hippies all laughed, as if Petunia had been joking. When no one else joined in, the laughter awkwardly petered off.

“What, really?” One of the men asked. “Blimey.”

“It has some solid principles,” Sansa defended; was it really so wrong to believe in a society where there was no class divide to perpetuate injustice and poverty? She wasn’t supporting how certain countries had gone about implementing the systems; the Old Gods knew that the revelations to the world on the nature of Stalin’s rule by Krushchev had thoroughly disillusioned many now-former members of the Communist Party of Great Britain, but Sansa still believed in the principles of the theory.*

“Lily, you can’t become a hippie,” Petunia said very firmly.

“Why not?” Lily demanded.

“Because I would literally die inside,” Petunia told her. “Do you want to kill me?”

Lily reached up and patted Petunia’s shoulder. “Don’t worry,” she said, something cheeky sparkling in her eyes, “I’ll leave flowers on your grave.”

Petunia groaned as the hippies laughed again, and Primrose turned away slightly, her shoulders shaking.

“You’ll be a hippie too, won’t you?” Lily asked Severus, looking up at him with hopeful eyes. “Your hair is even already long!”

Severus looked even paler than he usually did and Sansa stepped in to rescue him. “If you want to be a hippie, Lily, then you have to respect other people’s freedom to make their own choices,” she said firmly. “You said hippies believe in freedom, remember?”

Her twin was wonderful and passionate, but Sansa wasn’t blind to her habit of accidentally trampling all over other people when she was chasing one of her ideas– that wasn’t always a bad thing, in the case of the football team and lunchtime choir and Severus joining them at school, but it wasn’t always a good thing either.

Lily wilted slightly, her bottom lip jutting out. “I’m sorry, Sev,” she said. “You don’t have to be a hippie if you don’t want to.”

“I, um, I don’t really want to,” Severus said. “I mean, I do believe in all that stuff too, but… I don’t really suit rainbow colours.”

“Don’t worry, Sev,” Lily promised him, “I can wear enough rainbow for both of us!”

“Oh no,” Petunia said a third time, and Primrose finally broke down and started to cackle.

~

~

*I wasn’t sure if I should include this considering the current events, but I want to firmly establish that Sansa is referring to the Communist Party of Great Britain, not the Soviets, when she talks about communism

Chapter 16

Chapter Text

CHAPTER SIXTEEN:

Sansa understood that her idea of morality was different to this world’s.

It was difficult for it not to be, when with but a word she had had the power to take someone’s life. She had arranged for Petyr’s throat to be slit and Ramsay to be torn apart alive by his own hunting hounds and she had smiled at their begging and screams. This world would have expected her justice to come from laws and courts, but in Westeros the nobility had existed above the laws of common men, both to Sansa’s benefit and detriment.

She still wasn’t truly confronted with the difference in morality between this world and Westeros until the day she met Tobias Snape.

The school year had ended as summer sank cloyingly over Britain. Considering that in Sansa’s first life it wasn’t unusual for it to snow in summer, the intense heatwave was taking some adjustment. She had even done away with the tights she usually paired with any skirts higher then mid-calf out of the sheer necessity of it.

Petunia was busy that summer; as well as dating and studying, she had managed to get a part-time job working as a secretary at an office in the nearby town, having learned at school how to type. She looked very grown-up as she set off each morning in her neat blouses, pencil skirts and black Mary-Janes with slight heels, her blonde curls pinned up out of her face.

Lily, meanwhile, having taken her decision to be a hippy to heart, started refusing to tie back her hair, instead wearing it long and loose. She’d also started sewing flower patches onto all her clothes, wearing handmade necklaces of beads and flowers, and even managed to get her hands on several white t-shirts and blouses she’d dyed a psychedelic-rainbow of colours.

Marigold was horrified. William, always the more easy-going parent, told their mother that at least Lily followed through on her decisions. Because Lily hadn’t stopped with just dressing as a hippie– she’d become determined to fully immerse herself in the culture. She had stopped eating meat and started growing her own vegetable garden, she read up on the Beat Generation which had inspired the hippie movement, managing through Cousin Rory to get her hands on several copies of the ‘City Lights’ magazine which had published some best-known Beat literature, and she had become interested in seeking spiritual guidance from sources such as Buddhism, Hinduism and Daoism, as well as Astrology.

From what Sansa understood, hippies were part of a countercultural movement that rejected mainstream life. They promoted nonviolence and love, enlightenment and adventure, and enjoyment of folk and rock music.

Lily thrived in her new lifestyle, determined to spread happiness wherever she went, accepting diversity without judgment, and being true to herself. She had even started a new club at school, where she and a group of other children who decided to style themselves as hippies played rock music, meditated, learned how to best tie-dye their clothes, and started a community vegetable patch. It was driving poor Mr Addams to despair, especially when Lily and the hippie club started a newsletter that spoke out against obeying authority and controlling emotions and trying to fit in.

Coach, of course, didn’t care one whit how Lily dressed or what she believed in, so long as she kept playing football– and Sansa and Severus were just amused to see the looks on the opposing teams’ faces when a little girl with bright flowers woven in her hair and flower patches sewn on her team jersey crushed them on the football field.

Severus hadn’t exactly submitted to the whole hippie lifestyle, but he had joined Lily’s club, mostly because Lily had founded it, and he’d even worn a tie-dye t-shirt once. It had been a surprise to Sansa– usually only Petunia could bully Severus into wearing clothes that weren’t black, grey, or (on the odd, rare occasion) white.

With the school year over, though, Lily had left co*keworth to go spend a week with Cousin Rory so she could attend the Led Zeppelin United Kingdom Summer Tour of 1969 concert in London with him. Sansa had to admit she missed her twin– she even missed her unpleasantly loud music, her new habit of burning incense in their shared room and her insistence that they both meditate before bed each evening to open their minds to spiritual enlightenment.

With Lily absent and Petunia busy at work, Sansa found herself spending her time with Severus. The boy was quiet and serious, content to spend hours in silence with her simply reading. Severus loved William’s botany books, pouring over them with intense concentration as Sansa worked to learn the Younger and Elder Futhark runic alphabets, the most widely-used of the runic scripts.

They spent most of their time either reading at the Evans home or at the park, by the river, and Sansa had quickly adjusted to the comfortable routine of it. It was why it concerned her so much when Severus was over an hour late arriving at her house one morning and a check of the park revealed he wasn’t waiting for her by the river either. With growing apprehension, Sansa waited and waited until it was past lunchtime. Now alarmed, she set off to Severus’s house on Spinner’s End, to check that he was okay.

That was the first time she’d met Tobias Snape.

She had knocked sharply on the door of the Snape house, only instead of Severus or Eileen answering, the door swung open to reveal a scowling man with greasy black hair like an oil slick. The man was very tall and thin, his over-long limbs making him appear strange and spider-like. His hooked nose was bent out of shape as if he had been hit in the face one too many times and he was clenching a half-empty bottle of beer in a long-fingered hand. His watery eyes were blood-shot and narrowed as he took her in. Sansa couldn’t have stopped her instinctive step back if she tried.

“Who the f*ck are you?” the man grunted.

“My name is Violet Evans,” Sansa fell back on her ingrained courtesies, forcing a polite smile on her face. “Is Severus home?”

The man who must surely be Tobias grunted again, turning and shuffling back into the house. He had left the door open behind him and Sansa took the hint, steeling herself then following after the man.

Severus was sitting in the living room, where they had once celebrated Yule together. His face was strained and there was a new bruise staining his left eye, the dark purple spanning across the sharp jut of his cheekbone.

Severus didn’t look happy to see her and Sansa didn’t blame him. As concerned as she had been for Severus when he failed to show, following Tobias into the Snape house felt like a mistake.

“Who is this then, boy?” Tobias demanded, waving the hand holding his beer bottle in Sansa’s direction. Some of the beer slopped from the neck of the bottle, dripping over Tobias’s fingers and the floor below him. “Another voodoo whor* like your mother?”

Severus’s face twisted in rage.

“Don’t speak about Violet like that!” he shouted at his father. Tobias sneered.

“You fancy her, then, boy? And here I always thought you were a useless poofter, with that bloody foppish hair of yours.”

Sansa gasped at the foul slur directed toward her friend by his own father.

The same-sex relationships in this world had been a revelation to her and she was still confused by them*, though Lily preaching about free love and acceptance of differences had gone a long way to convincing her that there was nothing inherently wrong about two women being intimate together, or two men. It reminded her of that conversation in the garden with Margaery, when the other woman had mentioned some women liking pretty girls.

(It made her wonder what exactly it was that Margaery had truly been hinting at that day)

Despite her own uncertain opinions on same-sex relationships, however, Sansa would never use a slur as Tobias had. It was simply unthinkable to her.

Severus’s face had flushed a splotchy red in his humiliation, and he lashed out at his father with his sharp tongue.

“Even if I was a poofter, it would still be better than being a useless, deadbeat drunk like you!” he spat.

Sansa immediately knew that Severus had made a terrible mistake.

By the look of dawning horror on his face, Severus appeared to have realised this too.

Tobias snarled something truly, unspeakably disgusting at his son, his expression twisted into one of utter loathing, and before Sansa could even move or react, before she could even say anything, he had hurled the beer bottle in his hand straight at Severus.

Sansa actually screamed when the bottle shattered against Severus’s head. Severus immediately collapsed to the floor, his head hitting the ground with a sharp smack as his dark hair fell about his head where it slowly soaked in the spilled beer and ever-expanding puddle of blood.

Tobias didn’t even care that his son was unconscious on the floor and bleeding heavily, instead turning and storming from the room. Sansa dropped to her knees beside Severus, smoothing his blood-drenched hair back to try and assess the damage. The gashes from the broken glass were mostly hidden by his hair, but Sansa could tell that the wounds were deep and painful. Severus was also still unconscious which concerned her greatly.

She wasn’t sure what to do, or who she was supposed to go to in order to get help. The Snape household didn’t have a telephone and Sansa didn’t want to leave Severus alone in order to go find one and call for an ambulance.

Eileen’s sudden arrival home solved that problem. She had entered the house so quietly that Sansa didn’t even realise she was there until the older woman was storming over, her pale face twisted in anger.

“Why are you here?” she demanded of Sansa, instead of asking what had happened to her son. Sansa supposed it was no great mystery, considering the broken glass scattered about the floor and the sour scent of beer in the air.

“I was worried about Severus,” Sansa said tightly. Eileen’s face twisted in fury.

“If you weren’t here, this wouldn’t have happened!” she hissed.

“What?” Sansa demanded, incredulous.

“Severus knows better than to agitate his father,” Eileen snapped. “The only reason he’d open his mouth would be because of you! I want you to get out and don’t come back!”

Sansa stared at her, incredulous. Was she truly blaming Severus and Sansa herself for Tobias’s actions?

“Out!” Eileen repeated darkly, “or Severus will not be returning to that muggle school again!”

Sansa’s mouth tightened into a thin line and it was only the thought of how much Severus loved school that had her getting to her feet and leaving her unconscious friend bleeding on the ground.

Angry tears threatened to spill down her cheeks as she stormed along the streets of co*keworth, her footsteps leaving rapidly melting fractals of ice on the sun-baked footpath in her wake.

Marigold was home when she returned, and her mother took one look at Sansa’s face and pulled her into her arms.

“Oh, my little love,” she murmured, running one hand soothingly over the back of Sansa’s head as she cradled her close. Sansa let the tears finally fall, let herself acknowledge her fear and anger as she wept into the cotton fabric of her mother’s dress.

“I couldn’t do anything,” she sobbed. “He hurt him and I couldn’t do anything! And– and Eileen said it was my fault, that Severus wouldn’t have been hurt if I wasn’t there– what if it’s true? And then I just left, like a coward, because Eileen told me to go and threatened that she wouldn’t let Severus attend school if I didn’t!”

“Oh Violet,” Marigold said sadly. “I wish that hadn’t happened to you. It isn’t fair, my darling. And it most certainly is not your fault, no matter what Eileen says. We’ve all seen the bruises on that poor boy, and I know that your father and the school have both contacted the police to report it.”

“They have?” Sansa asked with a damp sniff.

“Yes,” Marigold sighed, “but Eileen refuses to admit anything is wrong and Severus always claims any injuries are accidents. Your father has spoken to Severus, tried to get him to open up, but Severus won’t admit to the abuse.”

“What about if I tell them what I saw?” Sansa asked pleadingly, but even as she spoke, she knew it was useless– Severus had already told them that Eileen would use magic to convince child services not to take any action.

“We can try,” Marigold said wearily, “but Eileen and Severus will likely tell them you’re just making it up, and then Eileen could decide to pull Severus out of school.”

“So we do nothing?” Sansa asked.

“Of course not,” Marigold said firmly. “We will continue to provide Severus with a place where he can be safe, away from that horrid household of his, and make sure that he knows he can tell us anything and that we are on his side.”

Despite Marigold’s words, it didn’t feel like enough to Sansa. Especially not when Severus knocked on the door of the Evans home three days later, the first she had seen him since Eileen had banished her, and when she went to hug him he flinched away, wrapping an arm protectively over his ribs.

Sansa was filled with a helpless rage, her hands curling into fists at her sides. “We should kill him,” she said before she could stop herself, could make herself remember the morality standards of this world, this country.

If this was Westeros, Sansa would have already called for Tobias’s head. She might have even slit his throat herself. She would be glad to, in fact. Perhaps that would be difficult for somebody of this world to understand, but Sansa had grown up knowing her noble blood gave her the power to wield life and death with but a word.

“Violet!” Severus looked shocked.

“I mean it,” Sansa said, because she truly did mean it. “Nobody has to know. We’re clever enough to figure out how.”

Severus stared at her for several long, wide-eyed moments. “My mum loves him,” he said finally.

“I honestly don’t care,” Sansa said flatly.

“I… I…” Severus appeared unable to find the words. “Thank you,” he said finally. “But… I can’t.” He shrugged helplessly. “Mum loves him,” he repeated.

“My offer doesn’t come with an expiry date,” Sansa told him, biting back her disappointment. “If you ever change your mind, tell me.”

“…thank you,” Severus repeated. There was true gratitude in his dark eyes, along with the shock.

“Just maybe don’t mention it to Lily,” Sansa added and Severus huffed a laugh that had him wincing, his hand pressing against his no doubt broken ribs.

“I don’t think murder really fits with her whole hippie thing,” he agreed.

“Though out of all of us, she’d probably be the best at getting away with it,” Sansa mused. “One look at her and anyone would just automatically assume she was innocent of any crime.”

“No, Petunia would be the best,” Severus disagreed. “She’s too clever not to. There’s no way she would ever kill somebody without a precise plan that she’s arranged to frame someone she has a grudge against.”

“That is true,” Sansa admitted.

“Petunia is terrifying,” Severus said, as if it was a fact.

It was.

If Severus ever did agree to them killing his father, Sansa would probably need to recruit Petunia to help, just to ensure they didn’t end up arrested for murder.

*I mean no disrespect here, I’m a proud LGBT gal myself, but this is set in the ’60s and Sansa has come from a medieval society – it’s 2022 and the world is still a mess over same-sex relationships today; Sansa is going to be confused, uncertain and indecisive over her opinions on it. I’m a proud believer of the bisexual!Sansa theory though :)

Chapter 17

Chapter Text

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN:

After what became known in the Evans home as the “incident” with Tobias Snape, Sansa’s parents purchased a new bed with a proper mattress. Before this, when Severus spent the night he would usually sleep either on an old air mattress they owned that was jammed between Lily and Sansa’s twin beds, or Sansa and Lily would share one bed and Severus would sleep in the other. Now, Marigold and William worked to convert the house’s small attic, previously used for storage, into a “spare bedroom” which they all knew was really Severus’s room. William moved one of the bookshelves from his study up there, and Marigold managed to source a nightstand, wardrobe, and chest from various members of her church that William applied a wood stain and varnish to so it all matched.

With Sansa’s help, Marigold then went on a cleaning spree, scrubbing every surface of the attic until it smelled of sharp citrus and the sun streamed freely through the dust-cleared window. To complete the re-design or the room by adding a personal touch, Sansa took the time to sew a matching set of curtains and bed cover for the attic bedroom using deep green fabric that she embroidered with a pattern of violets, lilies, petunias and little silver serpents.

When Severus first saw the attic bedroom, his pale skin coloured a rosy pink and he blinked rapidly, his eyes damp.

“I– this is too much– I can’t–,” he stammered, but Marigold simply swept her arms around him and pulled him into a tight hug.

“Of course you can,” she said firmly, “you’re my boy.” Severus trembled faintly in her arms and Sansa quietly slipped away to let Severus have his moment with Marigold.

This wasn’t the same as putting Tobias in jail (or in the ground), but Sansa knew she would sleep better that night knowing Severus had a safe place to call home.

::

Lily returned to co*keworth in a whirl of colour and energy, wearing bell-bottom jeans and an oversized tie-dye ‘Grateful Dead’ t-shirt, wild flowers in her hair and glitter painted on her cheeks.

“The concert was amazing,” she said dreamily, flopping back on Severus’s bed after ooh-ing and aah-ing over his new bedroom. “It was so loud I could feel the music vibrating through my entire body and it was like my soul was floating. All of us, we weren’t a crowd of separate people, we were one.”

“…you didn’t use any drugs, did you?” Severus asked hesitantly. He was sitting against the head of the bed, a copy of ‘The Hobbit’ propped open on his knees. Sansa was sitting shoulder to shoulder with him, embroidery hoop and needle in hand.

“Old gods green and gracious,” Sansa breathed, horrified. “Oh Lily, you didn’t!”

“Of course I didn’t!” Lily protested. “I promised Genesis and Serenity and Haven and Alder that I’d wait until I was at least fifteen!”

“Who in Merlin’s name are they?” Severus asked, looking as bemused as Sansa felt. She had thought she knew all of Lily’s friends– it wasn’t as if co*keworth was overly large.

“Don’t you remember?” Lily demanded, even more indignant now. “They’re my friends from the march! You know, the people I met in the Square.”

“Oh, the hippies,” Sansa realised. The ones Petunia had sworn a painful vengeance on.

“Genesis told me he grows his own weed,” Lily explained. “I asked why he would want to grow weeds in his garden, and he explained he was talking about cannabis, which he said is a drug. That’s when he made me promise not to take any drugs until I was at least fifteen. And then Serenity made me promise too, and Haven and Alder agreed with them. But Serenity did invite me to a drumming circle at their commune that Rory and I went to. I think some of the people in the drumming circle might have taken drugs– they acted super strange. But it was brilliant and Alder gave me this awesome t-shirt– it’s an American band, he gave me some of their cassettes too!”

“I’m not sure if you’re a worse influence on Cousin Rory, or if he’s a worse influence on you,” Sansa said dryly.

“I don’t think that’s really in question,” Severus replied, just as dry. He gave Lily a significant look and she blushed pink in response.

“Okay, okay,” she grumbled, “maybe I’m sometimes a bit bossy.” Severus arched an eyebrow and she huffed, crossing her arms and flopping back down on the bed again, pouting up at the sloped ceiling. “Or maybe I’m a lot bossy,” she admitted. “But Serenity, Alder, Genesis and Haven were so, so, so nice and Rory really liked them too! Do you know they’re all dating each other? Even Serenity and Haven, and Alder and Genesis kissed each other!”

Sansa blinked, surprised. “And they didn’t try to hide it?” She asked, unsure how to feel.

It wasn’t as if she didn’t know that some men liked men, and some women liked women, and of course men often had mistresses along with their wives*, but such things were not discussed or flaunted in the open. It was simply not done, not in Westeros or in co*keworth.

“Serenity said they believed in the freedom of the body and the pursuit of joy,” Lily said, sitting up again as she looked over at Sansa with an uncharacteristic firmness. “She said they’re not hurting anyone so their love can’t be wrong.”

Sansa looked over at Severus, feeling lost. He looked just as uncomfortable and awkward as her.

“But… do you really think that?” He asked. “That it’s… okay?”

“I believe in freedom, peace and love,” Lily declared, with steel in her eyes. “And that means freedom for people to love whoever they want to love in peace. How can Serenity’s relationship with Haven, or Alder’s relationship with Genesis, or their relationship with the four of them together be wrong when they love each other and they’re not hurting anyone?”

“But…” Sansa’s voice trailed off.

Was Lily right?

Women had a duty to bear children, and men had a duty to ensure the legacy of their House, their family name, was carried on. How was that possible without a man wedding and bedding a woman?

…except things were not so straightforward now, in this world where Sansa’s worth lay in more than her name, her womb and her maidenhood. A world where she had choices, where she could learn and work and vote for the people who governed her country.

Westeros, she had long since realised, was so very often wrong. Why was she maintaining their beliefs on marriage, on relationships and love, when she already knew them to be fundamentally flawed?

“This world isn’t always a nice place,” Lily said quietly, with an uncharacteristic seriousness in her sweet, piping voice. “It’s full of war and unhappiness and hate and inequality and prejudice– and it’s time for that to change. All that fighting violence with violence ever does is create more violence in the world. If we want to make a better world, one that’s more just, we need to fight violence with love. We need to protect nature, take care of each other, and love freely.”

“I’ll never love my father,” Severus said, almost defiantly. “I don’t care if I shouldn’t fight violence with violence, I hate him.”

“That’s because he’s a rubbish human being,” Lily said and Sansa almost laughed at her twin’s matter-of-fact tone. “Loving freely means having choices with love– like the choice to not love someone who’s an utter wanker.”

“Lily!” Sansa gasped, scandalised by her twin’s choice of profanity. Lily’s grin was downright wicked.

“I learned lots of cool new words from Alder,” she said.

“You’re going to turn Petunia’s hair grey,” Severus said with a smirk.

“And Mother is going to need to buy more soap to wash that filth from your mouth,” Sansa sighed, and Lily and Severus both laughed before Lily’s face fell back into a more serious expression.

“Is it wrong,” she said softly, “to want to lead a kinder life? Is it naive to believe that the world can change? All I want to do is make a difference.”

Severus reached out to grasp Lily’s hands in his own, his face solemn.

“You already have,” he said, very quietly. “You’ve changed my life so much since we became friends, Lil. I was… I hatedso many things. All I ever thought about was magic and going to Hogwarts. I wasn’t… I never really lived, not until I met you. All I cared about was the future, not what was happening now. You changed that. You made everything better– you and Violet and Petunia, and your parents.”

Lily burst into tears, flinging herself at Severus, almost hitting Sansa in the face as she wrapped her arms tight around him. When Severus immediately flinched at his badly bruised ribs being jostled, she released him with a very apologetic look even as she continued to cry.

“I didn’t mean to upset you!” Severus said frantically, still cradling his sore ribs.

“I’m not sad, I’m happy!” Lily sobbed. “Well, I’m really, really sad and mad that you’re hurt, but I’m so happy about what you said!”

Severus’s face softened. “You’re amazing, Lil,” he said. “So are you, Violet. And so is Petunia– and your Mum and your Dad. Your whole family is… they’re amazing.”

“You’re family too, Sev,” Lily said tearfully, and Severus immediately flushed a deep, almost violent shade of crimson.

“Mother and father love you,” Sansa added softly, knowing it wasn’t a replacement for the love his parents should give Severus, but also knowing it to be a balm to the wound.

“So does Petunia– you can tell, because she’s so mean,” Lily explained. “She’s always all sickly-sweet with people she doesn’t like.”

“You’re one of us now, I’m afraid,” Sansa teased gently, amused to watch as Severus’s blush extended all the way down his neck, to under his collar.

“Wait!” Lily’s face lit up. “Does this mean you’ll become a hippie too?” She asked hopefully. “You’ve already got the right hair for it!”

“I will literally die before willingly wearing anything tie-dyed,” Severus said flatly. “But,” he added begrudgingly, “maybe I can meditate a bit. And plant some vegetables. And… and be like you said. A kinder person.”

“It’s not just about being kind,” Lily said earnestly. “It’s about being true to yourself and aspiring to be a kinder version.”

“That seems contradictory,” Severus frowned.

“You’re contradictory,” Lily retorted, and the maturity of the conversation was abruptly lost to playful bickering between the pair.

That didn’t mean Lily’s words didn’t linger in Sansa’s thoughts for days to come.

::

The start of the school year brought with it Lily’s first ever detention, a badge of honour that she wore proudly. The slip she’d had to take home to their parents cited “disruptive behaviour”– Lily had argued loudly with their teacher when he’d made a disparaging comment about how she was dressed like a loose woman who had turned her back on God. Lily, wearing another one of her bold, colourful band t-shirts and a ruffled denim “micro-skirt” she had apparently been given by Haven on her trip to London, had not accepted his criticism– and had expressed her dissent very loudly.

It turned out to be the first of many detentions as Lily refused to back down, her fierce stubbornness rearing its head. Sansa wasn’t sure if Marigold had given up out of despair or if Lily’s impassioned speeches were finally starting to win her over, but either way she eventually stopped bothering Lily over what she dressed in and grounding her whenever Sansa’s twin came home with a new note from a teacher citing her disruptive behaviour and more detentions.

Lily really was too progressive for their conservative little town but Sansa wouldn’t have her any other way– even when it meant their room always smelled of incense, that band posters were plastered across their bedroom walls, that Lily was constantly playing loud, scandalous music, that most of the meals at the Evans home now lacked meat, that her twin coaxed her into spending far more time tending to her vegetable patch then any noble daughter of Winterfell could ever have dreamed of, or that Lily insisted on daily meditation.

One day, Sansa imagined her sister would take her war from the classroom to the courtroom, fiercely forging onward to make the world better. Less filled with hate and war and prejudice and inequality. Filled instead with peace and freedom. And Sansa… Sansa was inspired. For so long she had clung to Westeros’s ideals, so deeply ingrained into her they had been. It was time to start dismantling those foundations. With Lily in mind, Sansa’s first step was to confront Westeros’s conception of modesty; before, she had kept to the standards of propriety she had been raised with– now, she took her first brave steps forwards to embrace the change Lily embodied.

The first time Sansa wore a dress that ended above her knees and didn’t pair it with stockings or tights, Lily had actually squealed in excitement and Petunia arched a surprised eyebrow before giving an approving nod. The first time Sansa wore a pair of shorts, she had almost been too frightened to step outside the house. She could just imagine her Lady-Mother Catelyn’s horror and her Lord-Father Ned’s deep shame as their daughter dressed as scandalously as a whor*. To wear breeches as Arya had was one thing, but to wear breeches that ended at mid-thigh? She may as well be wearing only her small-things, for all the skin she was flaunting!

Except… except nobody stared. Nobody whispered. As she sat among the other students, she was just a child dressed like any other in the room.

It was a revelation. It was terrifying. And, for the very first time, Sansa had the conscious thought ‘I never want to go back to Westeros’.

She had long since made her peace with this new world, had fallen in love with it and with the people in it, but never before had she consciously acknowledged that she felt no urge to return to her old world.

It felt as though she was betraying her remaining Stark siblings by her lack of desire to return to them, that she was betraying her House and her bloodline of eight thousand years by not wishing to return to her old kingdom. But Sansa had died for Westeros, the tapestry of her existence unraveled by the God of Light, only for the Old Gods to re-weave her, to breathe new life into her ashes.

Why would Sansa wish to return to her old kingdom, when she was building a new one? This world was far from perfect, as Lily’s crusade demonstrated, but Sansa would never go back to a world where she was looked down on and treated as a second-class citizen for what was between her legs. She would never allow a facet of her biology to be used to define her as lesser, would never allow it to take away her power.

She was Sansa Stark, and she was Violet Hope Evans, and just as her ancestors had, she made her vow in blood before the Old Gods, kneeling in the woods before the silver birch with its carved face, carefully slicing a shallow line across her palm with the blade she’d once flinched away from and letting her blood spill on the roots.

Nightshade and Buttercup, perched on the branches, watched her with almost unsettlingly intense focus. Sansa’s breath fogged upon her exhale, and where her blood had splattered frost had crept over the earth.

(That night, Sansa Dreamed she was flying, soaring high in inky-dark skies as her nestmate flew beside her, a sheen of black feathers under a tapestry of stars)

::

It was on July 21st of 1969 that the world as Sansa knew it, that the world as they all knew it, changed forever.

Neil Armstrong had taken a step on the moon.

“Is this when humans become gods?” Sansa wondered aloud, piled together with her sisters and Severus on the Evans’s battered sofa. Lily and Severus were both giddy beside her, and even Petunia’s eyes were shining in excitement.

Along with the rest of the world, the four of them and Marigold and William had been glued to the small screen of the television, watching the BBC channel every day as the studio showed broadcasts that varied between long programmes about the launching and undocking of the Apollo 11, to shorter progress reports, and special Moon-centric contributions which included (much to Lily’s delight) an exclusive instrumental piece “Moonhead” by the rock group Pink Floyd and David Bowie singing “Space Oddity”. Personally, Sansa had enjoyed the quotes and poetry read by distinguished actors far more.

Until that moment, the idea of humans flying in space had seemed so abstract to her, so distant and impossible.

But humankind had now officially achieved the impossible.

It took Sansa’s breath away, it truly did. She had never even imagined such a feat as for humans to step into the celestial world of the gods.

It felt sacrilegious.

It felt thrilling.

The possibility, the potential– it felt limitless.

(How could Sansa ever wish to give this up for a world that had only ever crushed her down?)

Chapter 18

Chapter Text

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:

It was with the chill of Autumn nipping at their heels, the heat of summer having grudgingly withdrawn as the months rolled by, that tragedy struck the Evans family.

It was afternoon and Petunia and Sansa were headed to Primrose’s cottage after a day at school, ready to spend a few hours sewing with their grandmother while Lily and Severus were at football practice. Sansa could almost taste the first snowfall in the air around them and she was already anticipating the approaching end of the year.

She and Petunia arrived at Primrose’s house just as it began to lightly rain and they both hurried to duck under the shelter of the awning, Petunia hurriedly rapping her knuckles against the glass pane window. Only, quite unusually, Primrose didn’t call out at once for them to enter the cottage, and when Petunia tried the door handle it was still locked.

Petunia frowned, pursing her thin lips. “It’s not like Granny to forget we’re coming over,” she said, a trace of unease in her voice. Meeting her sister’s eyes, Sansa felt a distant dread begin to creep up her spine. Petunia bit her bottom lip. “Let’s go around the side of the house,” she decided. “She usually leaves the back door open.”

Sansa couldn’t help but reach out and cling to one of Petunia’s hands as her older sister led the way down the side of Primrose’s cottage. The gate was locked, but Sansa didn’t hesitate to press her fingers against the padlock, letting frost spiral out from her touch, icing over the metal until it was brittle enough that a single blow with a closed fist shattered it.

“Convenient,” Petunia murmured, with a quick, approving nod, even as her hand squeezed Sansa’s tighter. Sansa’s older sister swallowed audibly before visibly steeling herself and walking forwards.

Only, it turned out they didn’t need to use the open back door to the cottage to find Primrose after all.

Sansa gasped in horror and Petunia let out a sharp cry of alarm as they rounded the last turn that opened up the side of the cottage to its backyard, only to be confronted with the horrific sight of their grandmother’s limp form lying face down on the ground, a tipped-over watering can and a pair of secateurs scattered on the ground beside her. Sansa immediately bolted over to Primrose, Petunia close on her heels, both of them collapsing to their knees at their grandmother’s side.

Primrose’s silver-streaked hair was askew, her skin clammy and icy-cold to the touch, and her clothes soaked through from the light rain that had already plastered Sansa’s hair to her scalp. Sansa couldn’t tell if Primrose was breathing or not, and, desperate, she licked her fingers and held them in front of her grandmother’s nose. She almost started to weep with the sheer flood of relief that washed over her when she felt the faintest brush of warm air against her damp skin.

“She’s still breathing,” she told Petunia urgently. “Quick, go inside and call 999– now!”

Petunia did as Sansa bid, bolting for the open back door and disappearing into the cottage.

Shuddering with the rush of fear and anxiety, Sansa very carefully examined Primrose for any injury that could explain her grandmother’s current state of unconsciousness. She couldn’t see anywhere where Primrose was bleeding from, but one side of her grandmother’s face was sagging strangely, almost like the melting wax of a candle.

It was then that Sansa noticed Primrose’s lips were now tinged purple.

Her grandmother had stopped breathing.

Sansa’s next decision was not based on logic, but on a desperate sort of recklessness that she couldn’t bring herself to halt. Without giving herself a chance to second guess her decision, Sansa snatched up the pair of secateurs lying nearby, rolled up the sleeve of her dress and pressed the sharpened metal against her skin, digging the blade harshly into flesh that gave way before it with a sharp flare of pain.

Blood spilled hot across Sansa’s pale, chilled skin, like red rose petals spilling across fresh-fallen snow. And with the spill of blood, Sansa could feel the power she contained within her straining at the thin skin of her wrists, against the crook of her elbows, over the fluttering pulse at her throat. Where her blood had dripped to the ground, frost was spiralling outward across the grass.

Sansa hadn’t noticed Buttercup and Nightshade arrive, but she felt when the ravens settled each on one of her shoulders. Buttercup ran her beak soothingly along the curve of Sansa’s ear while Nightshade crooned, low and hoarse. Their presence calmed some of the wild, frenetic energy inside Sansa, let her mind settle to a place of focus. She tore open Primrose’s blouse, baring to the chilled autumn air the flesh over her grandmother’s heart, then dipped her fingers into the hot blood welling from the cut on her forearm.

The meanings of runes, Sansa knew from her research, were deeply rooted in metaphor and esoteric associations drawn by the unconscious mind; they served as a bridge between Primordial Magic, the ethereal realm of Divine Wisdom, and her own human mind and magic.

Sansa half-closed her eyes as she let her fingers move on instinct, using her blood to draw Dagaz, flanked on either side by Perthro, with a double version of Tiwaz running vertically through the centre of Dagaz.

Dagaz was the rune of daylight, representative of growth, prosperity, strength, good health and general well-being. Dagaz, as daylight, was also considered a protective force that guided away from danger, out of harm’s way. It had magical uses for good luck, promoting positive transformations and turning the corner in challenging situations.

Perthro was attuned to the Universe’s energies and with bringing forth life from the non-physical realms. It had known magical uses in health and healing.

Tiwaz was associated with courage, strength and victory, a positive sign of success for those who withstand sacrifice and remain true to their faith and knowledge. It had magical uses in healing and strengthening willpower.

All three runes belonged to Tyr’s Aett, one of the three families of eight Futhark runes; the runes of this Aett spoke to the dance between the visible and invisible realms that were directly connected to ancient deities, natural forces and humanity itself.

Binding and activating more than three runes together to a single purpose was beyond Sansa’s abilities. If she was being honest with herself, even activating one rune was truly beyond her current abilities. She only had a theoretical knowledge of drawing and activating runes before this day– but she was, at her core, Sansa Stark, a direct descendant of the line of Brandon the Builder. Runic magic was in her blood and it was instinct that guided her to bind the distinct, individual magical forces of the runes together to form a single symbol that would blend and amplify their magical energy.

As she drew the runes, interweaving threads of fragile crimson with her magic, Sansa could feel the echo of a call with each beat of her heart, could feel her magic reaching for connections, like twisting, reaching branches of trees stretching to the frozen skies, or roots curling and tangling towards the fiery core of the earth; under her blood-wet fingers, Sansa could feel the power of the runes blooming, blossoming, binding.

She gritted her teeth, feeling how her own magic traced along her bones, its cold and icy touch as familiar to her as her own breath. The Primordial Magic she had called upon seemed to hum around her, as if pleased– and then, as she finished the last rune, she felt it burn through her, setting every vein and artery that guided her blood through her body alight; Sansa was fire, she was ice, the magic in the air around her singing of snow and flames.

On the ground before her, Primrose gasped suddenly and loudly, once-blue lips now flushed pink with health; pale, clammy cheeks now ruddy as they should be; her bared breast heaving with breath.

Sansa had a moment of triumph, exhilaration soaring through her as she took in the sight of her living, breathing grandmother.

And then she collapsed, a wave of black rising up from behind her eyelids and swallowing her into darkness.

::

When Sansa next awoke, she was no longer in Primrose’s garden. Instead, she found herself laid out in her own bed, tucked in under her warm blankets. Confused and wondering if everything that had happened was simply just a terrible dream, she blinked blearily up at her bedroom ceiling with its glow-in-the-dark stars that Lily had spent an entire afternoon painstakingly blue-tacking into their correct constellations.

“Lety?” Sansa heard her twin’s urgent voice. She turned her head slightly, the movement slow and ungainly as her head felt far heavier than it should, to see Lily and Severus curled up together on Lily’s bed. The moment her blue eyes caught Lily’s green, her twin sister burst into a flood of tears and scrambled forwards, half falling off her bed in her rush to practically climb on top of Sansa, burying her face into Sansa’s neck and sobbing as she hugged Sansa the best she could in the awkward position.

“Violet,” Severus said hoarsely, also spilling from Lily’s bed in order to kneel beside Sansa’s bed where he could press his face against her stomach. Sansa could feel his body trembling as he clung to her.

“What– what is it?“ she rasped, panic flaring hot and sickly in her heart. “Is grandmother–?”

“She’s okay,” Lily choked out. “You saved her, Lety, you did, but she’s– she’s hurt. In her brain. Daddy said she had a stroke. Mummy and Tuney are at the hospital now. Tuney told mummy and daddy you fainted from the stress and fear and she hid your bleeding arm, but she told us what really happened. She said she wiped away the runes you drew so that nobody else would see them and she called Eileen on Granny’s phone and Eileen came over to Granny’s house to check on you.

"Eileen said that– that Tuney saved your magic, when she destroyed the rune. She said that it would have k-k-kept draining your magic to keep Granny alive until your magic core was destroyed completely!” Lily’s voice rose shrilly in her distress. “She also– she healed your arm but she said she was going to let it scar to remind you of how reckless and stupid you were.”

“I was reckless and stupid,” Sansa admitted. Her arms were stiff but she managed to lift them to run her fingers through Lily’s hair with one hand, while reaching out to do the same for Severus with the other. “Petunia’s probably very cross with me and I deserve it too. But… Lil, Sev, I just couldn’t just do nothing,” she said, her voice breaking. “It wasGranny.”

“I know,” Lily said tearily, against Sansa’s throat. “I know.”

Severus continued to tremble under Sansa’s touch.

“It would have been my fault,” he rasped. “If you had… if you had… I gave you that book, even when Mum said I shouldn’t! It’s because of me that you almost– you almost lost your magic!”

“Severus,” Sansa said softly, tugging gently on his dark hair so he was forced to look up from where his face was pressed to her stomach (and just how much she must trust him, Sansa quietly marveled in a distant part of her mind, that she would allow a male to touch her, to share her room, her bed).

“It was not your fault,” she told the boy firmly. “I refuse to allow you to take ownership of my decisions. And either way– you saved our Grandmother’s life. If I didn’t know what to do… she would have died. She stopped breathing right in front of me! But thanks to you, Sev, I could save her. So don’t you ever be sorry you gave me the book– because even with everything that happened and everything that could have happened, I’m not sorry and I would do it again in a heartbeat for someone I love,” she said fiercely.

“You’re such a Hufflepuff,” Severus choked out and Sansa gave a wet laugh, before tugging gently on Severus’s hair to coax him to climb up and join her and Lily on the bed, all of them curled up together, holding each other tight.

When Petunia returned home from the hospital with Marigold later that evening, she looked pale and drawn. Her normally perfect curls were in disarray, her blouse was crumpled and there were grass stains on her pleated skirt. Her tense shoulders still managed to relax when she saw the twins and Severus all sitting together on the sofa, a blanket tucked around them.

“Lety,” she sighed, looking as if a weight had lifted from her thin shoulders. “Oh thank god.”

“I’m so sorry, Petunia,” Sansa said, feeling so guilty that she may just choke on it. Petunia let out a long sigh, crossing over to them and nudging Lily until she and Severus shifted over to the left. Sansa lifted the blanket and Petunia squeezed herself in so she was sitting on the couch with them, tucked under woolen blankets she and Sansa had knitted together with Primrose. Sansa’s older sister rested her head against the top of Sansa’s head, wrapping one of her arms around Sansa’s waist.

“I’m not angry,” Petunia said, finally. “I’m really not. I ought to be, you scared the bloody life out of me, when I saw you laying all pale and limp on the ground, not responding and with that awful cut on your arm. But the doctors… they said it’s a miracle that Granny survived. Except… except it’s not a miracle, is it? It’s magic. Your magic saved her.”

“And you saved me,” Sansa said softly.

“Yes, Mrs Snape made that very clear,” Petunia said sharply. “And don’t you ever think I’m going to let you forget that, Violet Hope Evans.”

"I wouldn't dream of it," Sansa assured her.

“Such a Slytherin,” Severus mumbled and Petunia sniffed haughtily.

“Says the Hufflepuff,” she said.

Severus made a sound of pure indignation. “I’m not a Hufflepuff, I’m a Slytherin!” he protested.

“Oh please,” Petunia scoffed, already sounding much more like her normal self. “Loyal to a fault, hard-working, and trustworthy– you, Severus Snape, are most certainly a Hufflepuff.”

Sansa didn’t think she’d ever seen Severus look more simultaneously insulted and touched, and the moment she met Lily’s eyes, the pair of them started laughing so hard that Sansa didn’t think she’d ever stop, even when she felt the tears start to roll down her cheeks.

So many things had gone so terribly wrong today, but she still had her sisters and Severus and Primrose, and she still had her magic, and for now, in this moment, that was more than enough.

::

Primrose did survive what Sansa learned had been an ischemic stroke, but she was frail afterward in a way Sansa had never seen her grandmother before. After her discharge from the hospital, Primrose was easily exhausted, shaky on her feet, and forgetful. Sansa overheard her parents whispering urgently to each other, concerned about Primrose living alone when she could fall and break a hip, or forget about the stove and accidentally start a fire.

It wasn’t until Primrose flooded her kitchen when she forgot she’d left the kitchen sink tap on that the difficult decision was made that Sansa’s fiercely independent grandmother needed to move into a nursing home. “I’m ‘low care’,” Primrose said regretfully, after finally acquiescing to the need, “but I’m not ‘no care’.”

Packing up Primrose’s cottage was very difficult for everyone involved. Primrose was bringing most of her clothes and photographs to the nursing home, which was located in the same town as Petunia’s secondary school, but most of her furniture and the rest of her belongings were either being boxed up for storage or sold away.

William and Severus did most of the heavy lifting together, while Petunia focused on wrapping up anything fragile with old newspapers, and Sansa and Lily folded clothes. Marigold, who had grown up in the cottage, wasn’t much use as she kept bursting into tears. Primrose was much more pragmatic, though Sansa did see her tear up when she picked up a framed wedding photograph of her and Sansa’s deceased grandfather, Heath Fielding. He had died before Marigold was born, but Primrose had loved him deeply and never remarried after his passing.

“It’s the end of a chapter,” Primrose said wistfully when it was finally time to lock up the cottage for good. Lily let out a sob and Primrose smiled gently down at her. “Oh darling,” she said, reaching to stroke Lily’s long, red hair. “You oughtn’t waste your tears over a chapter ending– not when there are so many new chapters to come. If you live your life mourning your yesterdays, how can you celebrate your todays and look forward to your tomorrows?”

“You’re so wise, Granny,” Lily said, her voice choked. Primrose threw back her head and laughed.

“It’s the grey hair and the wrinkles, Lily-Bear,” she said with a wink. “It lends a certain air of wisdom, even when you’re speaking absolute tosh. Don’t let it fool you, loves.”

Chapter 19

Chapter Text

CHAPTER NINETEEN:

Sansa was disappointed but not surprised when she and Lily didn’t receive an invitation to celebrate Yule at the Snape household that year. She suspected Marigold and William would not have allowed their daughters to attend, even if they had been invited, but she was still disappointed not to have been given the opportunity.

Sansa had not visited Spinners End since she had witnessed Tobias throw his beer bottle at Severus, with the glass bottle smashing against his head– none of the Evans girls had. Instead, Severus would come over to their house. He spent at least three or four nights a week sleeping in the attic bedroom set up for him, more now that the Christmas holidays had started and he didn’t have the excuse of school to get him away from his abusive father and neglectful mother.

Sansa’s family ended up spending Christmas in London that year, with her Uncle Oliver, Aunt Ethel and Cousin Rory. Severus had been invited along, of course, and Marigold had refused to leave Primrose to spend Christmas alone in the nursing home.

It was cramped at Sansa’s aunt and uncle’s apartment, but they all packed in together; Primrose shared the sofa-bed with Petunia in the living room, Severus and Cousin Rory shared Cousin Rory’s bed with both with their heads at opposite ends, Lily and Sansa doing the same on a single air mattress set up in Cousin Rory’s room, and Marigold and William slept on a double air mattress set up in Uncle Oliver’s home-office.

Christmas Day in the London apartment was crowded but truly wonderful. They all opened their presents in the morning; as well as some spending money each, Sansa received a compilation of Edgar Allan Poe’s poems and a bolt of soft blue fabric; Lily received a VHS of ‘Monty Python’s Flying Circus’ and a collection of coloured glass and painted wooden beads; Petunia received a bolt of fabric, just as Sansa had, and a beautiful hairbrush with a polishedsilver back; and Severus received a transistor radio of his own and several cassettes.

Christmas supper was utterly delicious. Without even needing to be asked, Aunt Ethel had thoughtfully roasted the vegetables for the roast supper in a separate tray to the beef so Lily’s food wasn’t contaminated by the juices of the roasting meat and when it came time to carve the roast, Uncle Oliver guided a blushing Severus through the process.

After their Christmas supper, Sansa, her sisters, Severus and Cousin Rory were all allowed a small glass of traditional eggnog with a dash of brandy and Cousin Rory set up his boombox to play Christmas Carols which they all danced to in the living room. Sansa taught Lily, Severus, Petunia and Cousin Rory one of the simpler Northern dances from Westeros and they all danced together; spinning and stomping, twirling and trading partners, moving in time with the beat of the music.

It was a truly wondrous Christmas, and Sansa’s heart felt as if it was overflowing with love and joy as she fell asleep that night to the sound of Christmas carols still playing softly in the living room.

The Evans family ended up staying in London until the New Year, making the most out of a rare visit up to the capital city. Sansa, her sisters and Severus spent the days after Christmas exploring London together, visiting landmarks such as St Paul’s Cathedral, Big Ben and the Tower of London. They watched the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, used their Christmas money to buy tickets to cruise on a boat down the Thames River, and went ice-skating together at one of the nearby public rinks, Sansa and Petunia having a good laugh at the usually graceful Lily and dignified Severus tripping and stumbling while they glided on their skates around the pair.

Far from the terror she had experienced during her first visit to London, Sansa found herself more confident managing the crowds. She still didn’t like when strange bodies were pressed up against her, so when riding the London Underground she made sure she was standing between one of her sisters and Severus, letting them protect her from the press of bodies around her, but she now had the confidence to make her way through a crowd (admittedly while holding tight to either Severus, Lily or Petunia’s hand).

On New Year’s Eve, they all stayed up until midnight to watch the fireworks display from the South Bank. There were barges along the River Thames where the pyrotechnics were launched and Sansa was truly in awe of the different shapes and colours; it seemed as if it must be magic, for surely humans were not capable of creating such dazzling displays that erupted across the sky, brighter than the stars. Beside Sansa, Lily’s eyes were bright with excitement, while Severus’s eyes were round with wonder as he held hers and Lily’s hands tightly.

When the crowd started counting down from ten, Sansa met Lily’s eyes and saw the same spark of mischief in them that she felt. The moment the count-down reached ‘zero’, she and Lily both leaned in to press a kiss to one of Severus’s cheeks. Their poor friend’s pale skin immediately flushed a deep, deep red that spread down his neck, disappearing under his collar, and Sansa couldn’t help her laughter even as she felt her father’s arms wrapping around her, scooping her up so William could kiss her forehead. Lily was leaning into Severus and giggling as their friend held her upright, still bright red and looking exasperated, while Petunia was blushing prettily after a nearby boy had kissed the back of her hand. Marigold was hugging Primrose, who had a soft smile on her face as she watched the festivities around her.

It was a perfect moment and Sansa knew she would never forget it, preserving it forever in her memory.

::

Time was strange. It could drag by until it felt as if every second was like wading through mud that caught and dragged making each step a nearly insurmountable struggle, or it could speed by in a blink until weeks or months had passed before she had even realised it.

1970 was a strange year for Sansa. She felt both wistful and quietly apprehensive at the thought that it would be the last year she and Lily would spend as “muggles” before heading off along with Severus to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

Sansa knew how excited her twin and Severus were, but try as she might she just could not summon up that same excitement for herself, though she did her best to feign it. Truthfully, she was deeply apprehensive about officially becoming a part of Britain’s Magical World. She had heard how Eileen Snape spoke about her and Lily, and she had borrowed the copy of ‘Hogwarts: A History’ that Severus had gifted Lily– Sansa knew how to read between the lines. It wasn’t even difficult, the prejudice was so thinly veiled.

Severus had told Lily that it didn’t matter that she and Sansa didn’t have magical parents.

He had lied.

The first time Sansa came across the term “mudblood”, she remembered her previous conversation with Severus, from years ago now, when he had explained the terms “pureblood” and “halfblood” to her, Lily and Petunia. He had used “muggleborn” to describe a witch or wizard born to “muggles”, vaguely dismissing an ‘outdated’ term that he refused to say.

Sansa immediately understood why. There was no disillusionment, no pretence of value or equality, in the term mudblood.

Dirty blood.

(Traitor’s blood)

Sansa felt sick.

She knew that for all her twin was thoroughly disillusioned to the idea of fairness and equality in this world, Lily had been swept away in excitement and wonderment at the idea of a world of magic, of a school where they would be taught it. Lily saw it all as a storybook, a fairy-tale, come to life.

Sansa knew better than to believe in the lies of storybooks, of fairy-tales, of songs. She had not been much older than Lily was now when she had been so brutally disillusioned to the truth of the world– the truth of both worlds, it seemed. That behind the glitter and glamour of the of the Magical World (of the South, of the Red Keep, of golden Queens and Princes) there lurked poisoned goblets and daggers in her back and courtiers who thought nothing of stepping over her bleeding body to reach greater heights.

(Mudblood, Traitor’s Blood– it all meant the same, in the end; it meant they saw her as lesser, saw her as tainted, that the blood in her veins marked her as unworthy)

It was terrifying to Sansa, the idea of leaving the safety of her new home, of the small kingdom she was building herself in this world with her family, to venture into a new world of danger and threats and prejudice, with unknown, faceless enemies. There was a not insignificant part of Sansa that wished there was no magic in this world, or that she and Lily were not obligated to leave the “muggle” world to join the magical one. She loved her world as it was now. She loved her parents, her older sister, her routine; there truly was very little part of her that desired to leave her life in co*keworth behind in order to step into the Magical World.

But the Old Gods had Gifted her with her magic when They wove her anew, and Sansa knew that They must have Gifted it to her with a higher purpose. She would not, could not, spit in the face of Their Gift, no matter how it frightened her. If They believed in her, then Sansa would find the strength within herself to fulfil Their wishes. The Old Gods had breathed new life into her ashes, and she had a duty to Them.

And, of course, there was Lily.

Sansa knew that her twin sister would refuse to back down, no matter the risks or threats she faced. Lily was brave and bold and she would seek to change the world, rather than suffer inequality, submitting to prejudice and bowing down under the current order. Lily was driven by justice and peace and freedom, and Sansa was terrified for her. She knew, deep in her bones, that she could never abandon Lily to face the Magical World alone, no matter how much she would rather stay in the “muggle” world.

After all, she could never forget– Family, Duty, Honour.

Sansa would protect Lily, her Family; she would do her Duty by the Old Gods, who had woven her anew in this world; and she would Honour her new kin, the parents that had raised her so lovingly, the grandmother who had taught Sansa her womb did not make her lesser, and the elder sister who protected her so fiercely with her sharp tongue and sharper mind, never bowing to the Magical World’s belief that without the magic in their veins they were beneath witches and wizards, that their blood was mud.

::

It was in February, as the snows began to thaw and hints of the first green shoots began to emerge from branches stripped bare by winter’s harsh touch, that Sansa was introduced to a new, unexpected horror in her new life– a musical genre known as ‘heavy metal’.

On the 13th of the month (and Sansa did not believe the day to be a coincidence, for it was as unlucky an occurrence as she could imagine), a British band by the name of ‘Black Sabbath’ released their debut album, and Cousin Rory sent a copy of their cassette to Lily.

Sansa hated it from the very first ominous, detuned note of the guitar.

Lily, of course, loved it– Sansa didn’t know why she would ever expect anything different.

And yet shockingly, so did Severus.

“What?” He protested when Sansa looked at him in horrified betrayal. “It has good energy and interesting lyrics and it’s kind of relaxing.”

“Relaxing?” Sansa repeated incredulously. “It’s so loud and– and menacing! How is that relaxing?”

Severus shrugged. “There’s so much happening in it that it basically overloads my brain, which means that after listening for a while my thoughts blur until I can’t make them out. Being mindless like that… it’s relaxing.”

“Sev gets it,” Lily said sagely with a proud nod.

“I don’t understand either of you,” Sansa said flatly. “And I’m officially making a rule that there’s none of that awful music allowed in our room, Lily. You two can play it in Severus’s room, if you have to play it at all.”

“Only if I’m allowed to hang up the album poster in our room,” Lily bargained.

“Deal,” Sansa sighed, already knowing she would regret her agreement.

Just as she had expected, when the poster of the album cover arrived from London, Sansa could only stare at its point of pride above Lily’s bed in utter horror. It depicted an eerie scene shaded in hues of autumn of an old watermill over a river with an eerie figure dressed in black at the center.

“That is bloody horrifying,” Petunia said after Sansa's elder sister first laid her eyes on it. “Good luck sleeping with that in the room, Lety.”

“I think I’ll share your room from now on,” Sansa said faintly.

“You’re both being silly,” Lily huffed with a roll of her eyes. Sansa and Petunia traded a look behind Lily’s back, silently agreeing that their sister had lost her mind.

Severus was examining the poster with great interest. “Don’t worry,” Lily reassured him. “Rory sent you one too.”

With that horrifying piece of news, Sansa had no choice but to spin on her heel and flee the room, Petunia’s laughter following her out.

::

It was later in February that Sansa read in the paper about Britain’s first ever National Women's Liberation Conference that was to be held at Ruskin College in Oxford. It had been initiated by Sheila Rowbotham, a feminist who Sansa knew had written the pamphlet ‘Women's Liberation and the New Politics’ the previous year.

Attending the Conference would require catching a train to Oxford and spending five nights there to attend the four-day conference, which would be expensive and require Sansa and her sisters to miss school if they were to attend it. It took quite a bit of arguing and begging and even subtle emotional manipulation (Sansa wasn’t proud of herself, but she didn’t regret it either) to convince Marigold and William to agree to let their daughters go.

Marigold fretted about how attending the Conference would reflect on her daughters in their small, conservative town. Of course, then she looked at Lily in her psychedelic knit sweater with her long, loose hair with its scattered beaded plaits, her headband embroidered with bright flowers, her hoop earrings, her rainbow-painted nails, and her knee-high tasseled boots (with the right motivation, Lily had become a very enthusiastic student of designing, knitting and sewing her own clothes– she’d also kept in contact with Serenity, Haven, Alder and Genesis, who occasionally sent her gifts) and their poor mother immediately gave up on any hope of preserving her daughters’ reputation.

The entire family ended up attending the Conference, William and Severus included. Primrose, unfortunately, was unable to join them after a recent bout of pneumonia had left her weakened and frailer than Sansa had ever imagined her fiercely independent grandmother to be.

“You promise to keep your head high and raise some hell for me,” Primrose had said, upon hearing of their planned attendance.

“I promise,” Sansa vowed, leaning forwards to kiss her grandmother’s cheek. Primrose smiled fondly.

“Good girl, petal.”

Sansa felt the aching, empty space where Primrose ought to have sat as they boarded the train for Oxford, but the excitement of the upcoming Conference soon had her not forgetting her grandmother’s absence however making the choice to acknowledge then move past it in order to focus on what was about to come.

It turned out to be just as brilliant as Sansa had hoped it to be. The organisers of the conference were forced to expand the event into the Oxford Union due to the unexpectedly high turnout of attendees. It wasn’t just crowds of British women in attendance, there were also men and children, and women who had flown in from Canada, America, France and other parts of the United Kingdom.

There were several key issues raised during the Conference, such as that women still required a man’s permission to borrow money from a bank; that of the 659 members of Parliament, only 26 were women; that domestic violence and marital rape were not considered crimes; that predominately male doctors were so often unacceptably ignorant of women’s health; that in the case of divorce, it was the husband who so often got custody over any children, regardless of the best-suited guardian or who it was at fault; and that marriage was still idealized as the high point of a woman’s life and limited to only heterosexual relationships.

The last point surprised Sansa, but when she thought further on it, she found herself having to confront her own internal bias. Demanding an end to discrimination against lesbians was not harming anyone– indeed, it was rather the opposite. Why should anyone be able to tell any women, or in fact tell anyone, who they may or may not love? Why, when she believed that no one ought to be able to tell a woman who she was permitted to marry, should she believe any different from women in love with other women?

Sansa’s favourite speaker at the Conference was a woman by the name of May Hobbs. She was a cleaning supervisor who sought to improve the pay and conditions of women who not only bore the burden of low pay at work, but also carried the responsibility of unpaid work in their own homes. To Sansa’s surprise (and delight) she learned that May Hobbs had approached the International Marxist Group, who had then helped her make contact with Sheila Rowbotham.

May Hobbs spoke with passion and conviction, expounding on the various factory and industrial jobs she had worked, of her campaigning in striking and unionisation, and how women were generally excluded by trade unions and labour activism despite their physically demanding and exhausting work and desperately low pay.

By the end of May’s speech, Sansa felt equal parts infuriated and inspired. She gripped Petunia and Lily’s hands, her throat tight with the overwhelming emotions she was experiencing. Her sisters gripped just as tightly, May’s speech resonating with the two other girls born and raised in their poor, working-class neighbourhood. Marigold, standing behind them, rested her hands gently on Sansa’s shoulders, and when she glanced back over at her mother, she saw that Marigold’s eyes were wet. Her father had his arm wrapped gently around Marigold’s waist, a silent support, and Severus had hesitantly reached to do the same, his one-armed hug of Sansa’s mother awkward but endearingly sincere.

It was in the final session of the conference, a session called “Where Are We Going?”, that all the attendees were given the option to vote on the demands they would make. It ended up being unanimous on four demands– Equal pay; Equal educational and job opportunities; Free contraception and abortion on demand; Free 24-hour nurseries.

Sansa couldn’t help but think of how the men of Westeros would react to such demands, and she wanted to laugh, and she wanted to cry, and she was just so fiercely, fiercely grateful that she lived in this world where she did not have to fear death or confinement or a beating from her lord-husband, lord-brother or lord-father for speaking up about her rights as a woman.

Despite the excitement of the Conference, the Evans family were subdued on the train journey home to co*keworth. The poignant words of the speakers had stripped them bare, leaving them all emotionally raw– William and Severus had not been exempt, both confronted with their own privileges for simply the sex they had been born and what– or rather, who– that privilege came at the expense of.

That night, back home in co*keworth, Sansa wasn’t surprised when both Petunia and Severus ended up slipping into the twins’ room, not long after they had all gone to bed. Petunia slid into Sansa’s bed, wrapping her arms around her little sister, while Severus and Lily curled up together, Lily resting her head on Severus’s shoulder.

“Do you ever think we’ll be able to do what those women do?” Lily asked, sounding far more hesitant and unsure of herself than Sansa had ever heard her sister. “Do you think we can ever make a difference, like they do?”

“Lily Joy Evans,” Sansa said, warmth curling in her chest, chasing away the tightness, “there is not a single doubt in my mind that you, dearest, are capable of toppling a dynasty.”

::

Chapter 20

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty:

The end of 1970 crept up on Sansa, the chill of winter’s return chasing away the remaining warmth of the year.

It was a shock to her, how quickly time had passed her by, and that Christmas was once again approaching.

co*keworth Primary being on holiday once more meant Severus spent most of his time at the Evans house, though he already spent most of his time there anyway. Sansa sometimes wondered what Eileen thought of Severus having practically moved out of Spinners End– all his clothes and books and most of his belongings were neatly stored in the attic bedroom that was firmly known in the Evans house as “Severus’s Room”. She would then recall Eileen’s reaction to Severus lying unconscious in a pool of his own blood and remember she didn’t actually care about what Eileen thought of her son’s abandonment.

Severus moving into the Evans house wasn’t the only change that 1970 had brought. Petunia was fifteen now and continuing to blossom into a beautiful young woman. She was slender and willowy, with blond curls falling to her elbows that Sansa adored styling in Northern and Reacher fashions. Her neck was slightly too long to be considered classically attractive, but Sansa thought it still elegant; swanlike, almost. Petunia was dating a different boy now, a local lad of seventeen who she actually met at one of Lily and Severus’s football games.

William had been promoted at work to senior accountant at the firm and Marigold was now a verger at her Church, having spent the year training under the Church’s Reverend. Marigold flourished at taking care of the logistical and behind-the-scenes support of the Church as well as assisting in leading processions. It did mean that Sansa, her sisters and Severus were forced to spend more time at the Church than perhaps any of them were interested in, but for Marigold’s sake they went along with it. Sansa just hoped she wouldn’t be struck down by the Christian God for praying to her Old Gods instead during services.

She always made sure to visit the silver birch glade after attending one of the Church services, anxious to appease the Old Gods that she was not betraying her faith in Them, for she was as pious now as she had been when she was Sansa Stark in Westeros.

Sometimes, when Sansa was kneeling before the frowning face carved into a silver birch with bark that seemed to grow paler each year while the carved face seemed to sink deeper and the pale-green leaves flickered deep red out of the corner of Sansa’s eyes, she wondered about Westeros, about the North. There was a guilt in her that she had moved on from the world that had once been hers, the kingdom she had once ruled in spirit, if not in name.

Sometimes, Sansa wished she didn’t remember Westeros at all. Sometimes, she wished that the Old Gods hadn’t woven her into being with all her memories spilling across her mind, like dark blood staining pure white snowfall. If she did not remember, she would not have to live as a Queen without a crown, without a throne, in a world that didn’t know her name, didn’t know her loss and her suffering and her victory, as she had rebuilt herself and her home from bones and ash and rubble.

Sansa had moved on from Westeros in both mind and (almost) in heart, but she could never forget it. Could never forget the weight of duty on her shoulders, could never forget the power she had both wielded and had wielded against her, could never forget the titles she had carried, either proudly or with disgust, could never forget the graveyards in her soul where she had buried her family.

She could never forget she was Sansa Stark before she was Violet Hope Evans.

But sometimes, she truly wished she could.

Sansa Stark did not belong in this world.

Violet Hope Evans did.

(Sansa still Dreamed)

::

Then, on a frosty January morning, there came a knock on the door.

::

Minerva McGonagall walked briskly down the road holding two crisp letters with her destination marked over the parchment in emerald-green ink. This would be her first muggleborn visit to introduce a new witch to the magical world– or witches, as it happened to be in this case– of the year. Once, it was a duty that had filled her with a quiet pride and joy– and a protectiveness too, for there were parents out there who did not take kindly to learning of their child’s gift (though never, in her experience, had they taken the revelation as poorly as a Pureblood family took to learning of a child’s lackof magic).

This time, however… this time, it was with a sense of rising guilt in her chest that she approached the small, neat house near the end of the street. There was unrest in the magical world and within Hogwarts’ own halls that she was not blind to. She couldn’t be, not when such divisive lines were being drawn between the Houses, between the tiers of Blood Status, and she could almost taste the oncoming storm like ozone on her tongue.

Was what she was doing today, introducing two young, innocent muggleborn children to a world in turmoil, a world with a growing prejudice and violence directed towards those like them, truly the right thing for her to be doing? Was it a choice she really ought to make for them, on their behalf?

It was only knowing the consequences of not bringing young magical children into their world, of just what accidental magic was capable of if a young witch or wizard wasn’t trained how to control and channel the power within them, that had Minerva continue to walk determinedly forward.

co*keworth was not a particularly prosperous town, that much was clear from the unkempt streets and shabby houses she had passed, but the small house she was approaching was neat and well cared for and Minerva felt her eyebrows lift as she caught sight of the garden, a splash of colour amongst the pure white dusting of snow. There was no small amount of magic that must be present for those violets, petunias, red lily royals, and black hollyhock to be blooming so brightly with the chill of winter still lingering in the air.

Pomona, Minerva thought as she stepped up to the door and rapped her knuckles against the wood, was going to adore whichever twin was responsible for such an unusually specific form of accidental magic.

A young girl answered the door and Minerva had to prevent herself from reacting visibly at the sight of her. She was a beautiful child with bright green eyes and brilliant red hair worn loose down her back, a crown of the flowers Minerva had noticed earlier in the garden perched atop her head. She was also wearing the brightest clothes Minerva had ever seen, and she’d spent the last sixteen years working alongside Albus! Her knitted sweater was splashed in a dizzying array of rainbow hues and her flared pants were a blinding pink. Minerva blinked at the sheer brightness before managing to smile at the girl.

“Hello, Miss Evans,” she said, “my name is Professor McGonagall. I would like to speak with your parents.”

The girl’s eyes lit up.

“Hello Professor!” she beamed, looking like she could barely restrain her excitement. “Come in!”

The girl practically skipped as she led the way into the house. Minerva raised her eyebrows at the rather… exuberant welcome, but nevertheless followed the young witch through a small foyer to a neat living room where the rest of the girl’s family was seated.

Minerva immediately recognised which of the children must be the twin of the child who had answered the door, the second muggleborn witch, although the two girls could not be dressed any more differently. The second twin wore an ankle-length white skirt and a deep blue blouse with an unusual but beautiful embroidery pattern of shimmering silver icicles amongst deep red leaves. It appeared as if it had been embroidered by hand and Minerva took a brief moment to admire the talent and skill that would have been required. The girl’s hair was braided in a coronet with flowers threaded through the thick plait, and her nails were a glossy silver with tiny painted red leaves that matched the embroidery of her blouse.

The older Evans daughter, Petunia Evans, Minerva recalled her name to be, was also present, as well as a fourth, unexpected child who appeared to be styled in a mix between the three daughters, Minerva thought as she peered down at him. He had dark hair that fell loose to the small of his back with a flower crown perched atop his head like Lily Evans. His nails were the same shimmery silver as Violet Evans’, though he had little painted green snakes as decorations instead of the red leaves. He was wearing flared black slacks and a mint green pullover sweater– the same mint green as the ribbons tied in Petunia Evans’ hair.

“Lily, who’s this?” The woman who must be Marigold Evans asked in surprise, glancing briefly at Minerva in confusion before turning back to her daughter, the twin who must be Lily Evans.

“This is Professor McGonagall, mummy,” Lily Evans said brightly and Minerva took that as a prompt to step forwards and introduce herself.

“Good morning,” she said, nodding politely at the Evans couple, “my name is Minerva McGonagall, it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

William Evans stood from the couch, his brow furrowed in confusion as he looked over at her. “Are you from child protection services?” He asked.

Minerva blinked. She had been mistaken many times for belonging to various religious groups, or a sales representative or local council member, but never a muggle child protection officer before. It was concerning to hear William Evans make such an assumption, as if he was expecting a visit.

“Oh!” Marigold Evans’ eyes widened and Minerva, who had begun feeling a terrible suspicion and wariness, was surprised to see the relief clear on her face. “Oh, it’s wonderful to finally meet you,” she said, “please, take a seat. Children, perhaps you could go to Severus’s room until we call you back down? Unless, of course, you’d prefer to speak to Severus first?” Marigold Evans cast an inquiring look over at her.

“I’m afraid you’re mistaken,” Minerva said, confused but disciplined enough to not let it show on her face. “I’m not from child protection services. I was, in fact, only aware of three children living in this household,” she added, frowning lightly. It was customary to do background research into a muggleborn’s family before approaching them so as to have an idea of any potential issues, such as strictly religious parents. The check into the Evans family had been clear that William and Marigold Evans had three daughters– an eldest, Petunia Grace, and the muggleborn twins, Lily Joy and Violet Hope.

Unexpectedly, Marigold Evans bristled. “I don’t know who you think you are or what you think you know,” she said sharply, her pale blue eyes narrowed, “but Severus is my son.”

“And what do you mean, you were only aware we had three children?” William Evans asked with a growing frown. “Who led you to believe this? You still haven’t explained who you are,” he said pointedly.

“I imagine she’s come here to talk about Hogwarts,” Petunia Evans said, saccharine sweet. Minerva’s head snapped around in shock to meet sharp, pale blue eyes. The impertinent child arched an eyebrow at her. “Well?” She said, her expression very nearly a taunt. Minerva wasn’t sure if she was more outraged or impressed by the girl’s sheer gumption. If any of her students had dared speak to her as this child had, Minerva would have seen them in detention for an entire term! She put that aside for now, however, instead focusing on the more pertinent issue.

“Where did you hear that name?” She asked sharply.

“From me,” Severus– Evans?– said when Petunia continued to look spitefully amused. Minerva had taught Slytherins for decades, she knew how to read that expression.

“From you, Mister Evans?” She asked, her voice still sharp. Severus Evans’ cheeks unexpectedly flushed red.

“My, um, my birth mother is Eileen Sn– Irene Augusta Prince,” he said. Minerva felt both her eyebrows raise. There was quite a bit to unpack in that statement, not least how the son of a Pureblood witch from a prominent Dark-aligned family had ended up with a muggle family with twin muggleborn daughters when from his phrasing it seemed that Ms. Prince was still alive.

“Sev’s told us all about Hogwarts,” Lily Evans said brightly.

“Well, nobody’s said anything to me about this ‘Hogwarts’,” Marigold Evans said sharply. Minerva noticed that Violet Evans, who had remained silent since her introduction, was sitting very still. Minerva thought she looked pale, though with how fair her skin was it was difficult to be sure. But Minerva had taught enough Pureblood Slytherins to recognise that blank mask the girl was wearing as nothing good. Nothing good at all. A slow concern began to grow inside her.

“Hogwarts,” she said calmly, despite her unease as Violet Evans seemed more statue than little girl, “is a school of magic.”

“What?” Marigold Evans demanded, her voice rising shrilly. Minerva let her wand slip from her sleeve into her hand, the fir wood warming under her touch, and even after twenty-four years together it still felt like coming home. Minerva leaned forwards and tapped the teapot still sitting on the coffee table, the magic so familiar to her it didn’t even require words. The teapot sprouted fur, its form twisting and reshaping until a sleepy-looking homunculus of a kitten was in its place.

Marigold Evans screamed, collapsing back against the sofa in shock, her face having blanched pale white. William Evans was staring at the kitten in stunned silence. Normally, Minerva would be stepping in to calmly talk down the muggle parents before they wound themselves up into a babbling state of shock.

Normally, the muggleborn child of the parents hadn’t been reduced to short, sharp panicked breaths as she shook so violently that the cup of tea clattered off her lap.

The sound of the falling teacup had managed to attract the attention of Marigold and William Evans, even in their state of shock, and Minerva watched, quietly astounded, at the abrupt change that came over them both. It was as if they’d shelved their shock for a later moment, instead both of them stood nearly at the same time and rushed over, Marigold Evans dropping to her knees beside her daughter, uncaring of the puddle of spilt tea slowly soaking into her stockings and the hem of her skirt, while William Evans crouched beside his daughter, gently taking her trembling hands in his far larger ones.

“Breathe for me, little blue,” William Evans said gently, “breathe for me; in, one, two three; out, one, two, three.” He repeated this several times before Violet Evans managed to take a shaky but far more controlled breath than the near hyperventilation from before.

“My precious baby,” Marigold Evans crooned, reaching to cradle Violet Evans’ face within her hands. “What’s wrong, my little love?”

“I– you–” Violet Evans choked the words out like there was a noose around her neck, strangling her. “Mama, please– don’t hate me!”

Marigold Evans’ face crumpled. “Oh my sweet girl,” she breathed, leaning forwards to wrap her arms around her daughter, even with as awkward as the position was, with her still kneeling on the ground while Violet Evans was sitting up on the couch, her hands still cradled in her father’s. “I could never hate you. I love you and I love your siblings so much. I am– I am shocked. I am– afraid,” Marigold Evans admitted, her voice trembling slightly, “but not of you, my precious baby.”

Violet Evans started sobbing then, tugging her hands free so she could hide her face in them as she wept. Minerva felt deeply uncomfortable, as if she was witnessing something intensely private. She was relieved when she noticed the other children standing up.

“Would you mind following us into the kitchen, Professor?” Lily Evans asked politely. “Only, this might take a bit.”

“I’ll come with you,” William Evans said quietly. Feeling a little shaken herself, Minerva followed the trio of children and their father into the kitchen. There were three stools tucked against the counter, and Lily Evans was quick to offer her one. Minerva couldn’t help but smile down at the kind child.

“Thank you, Miss Evans,” she said, “but if you don’t mind, Mr. Evans,” she switched her gaze from Lily Evans to the girl’s father, “I might conjure us up some temporary chairs.”

William Evans’ bushy red eyebrows rose steadily up however he gave a hesitant nod and Minerva swished her wand. The chairs that appeared, temporary constructs formed and held together by nothing more than the magic in the air around them with Minerva’s own magic to shape it, were nothing like the chintz armchairs Albus was so fond of conjuring. Instead, they were practical with the appearance of steady, solid wood.

William Evans’ eyes were quite wide. “That’s conjuring, isn’t it?” Severus… Evans, Marigold Evans had been very stern about that point, asked as he leaned forwards eagerly, his dark eyes glittering with childish wonder. Minerva again couldn’t help but ponder uneasily how a witch’s child could have seen so little magic in his life that a simple conjuration had captured his attention and awe.

“It is indeed, Mister Evans,” she confirmed, not one to discourage academic interest. Severus Evans blushed again, even as he turned to William Evans.

“They’re a temporary creation,” he explained to his father. “They’re not actually real, they’re more of an illusion that’s been given solid form.”

William Evans nodded slowly. Minerva wondered if only she could see the fine tremor in his hands.

“So magic is real,” he said quietly. For a moment, his gaze was just as distant as his young daughter’s had been. “It… isn’t as surprising as perhaps it should be,” he admitted. “The camp we liberated, during the war… there were strange experiments that had taken place there. Experiments on children, none older than eleven. The notes the doctors and scientists kept… they didn’t make sense. They wanted something from the children, wanted something from their blood… we couldn’t figure out what they could want from small children so badly that the… alternative would have been a better fate for them.”

Minerva swallowed, closing her eyes briefly in remembrance and guilt. There had been rumoursfrom Germany and Poland, during the war. Rumours of muggleborn children too young to have been brought into the magical world, muggleborn children who disappeared on the trains before they could be spirited away, muggleborn children who had been subjected to atrocities by muggles, atrocities that had only been uncovered at the war’s end when research notes just as the ones William Evans had been referring to were found and recognised for what they were by the higher up American and British Generals who had been read in on the existence of magic for the purpose of the war effort.

“Yes,” she confirmed quietly, “we only did find out in the aftermath of the liberations. But yes.”

It had damaged the partnership between the German Ministry of Magic and the office of the German Chancellor beyond repair, even to this day.

“It wasn’t us, Daddy,” Lily Evans said, sweet and earnest as she squeezed her father’s hand. “We’re here.” William Evans visibly brought himself back into the present, blinking away the old ghosts that lingered behind his eyes.

Minerva didn’t miss how he was still squeezing his daughter’s hand, how Petunia and Severus Evans had gravitated towards him, silent supports.

“I apologise,” William Evans said, looking to her with quiet chagrin on his face. “I did not intend to bring up such… unpleasant memories.”

“Magic is a wondrous thing,” Minerva said gently. “But we keep ourselves hidden due to very real concerns, both for the safety of those born into our world, and perhaps even more so for those with magic born into your world, as your daughters were, who do not have the protection of a grown witch or wizard or a hidden community to protect them from those that would… misuse them.”

William Evans’ jaw clenched, his green eyes turned to steel. “You don’t have to be concerned about Marie or I revealing your secret,” he said grimly. “There is nothing an Evans will not do to protect their family.”

Minerva couldn’t help but smile. There were old families that could trace their lineage back to the age of the Founders and Camelot’s court, or even further back, thousands of years ago, to Rigantona of the Cornovii and her lover, the legendary sorcerer Myrddin of the Caledonii; and yet, in her opinion, there was a greater power in the blood of this simple family who loved each other so dearly then in the vicious Pureblood families that would just as soon tear each other apart if it meant gaining an advantage.

“I believe you, Mr Evans,” she said warmly. “And I apologise for all this upset. We do try to make this rather shocking revelation as minimally distressing to families we can.” William Evans smiled wryly at her.

“I somehow doubt that they ever go smoothly,” he said and Minerva couldn’t help but smile too.

“You would be quite correct, I’m afraid,” she said. “Changing someone’s entire fundamental understanding of the world as they know it is never quite without its turmoil.”

“I always knew my children, all of them, were meant for greater things than this small town,” William Evans said simply. “If this is the path that Lily, Violet, and Severus are meant to walk, then I am hardly one to deny them it.”

“I won’t say I’m not hurt that none of you felt you could confide in your father and I about the existence of– of magic,” Marigold Evans spoke from behind Minerva, and she twisted around to face the small, slight woman who had one of her arms wrapped around Violet Evans as they stood in the doorway, “but magic or not, you are my children and I love you all.”

“How about a cup of tea,” Minerva suggested, “and then we can discuss Hogwarts.”

“I think a cup of tea is a very good idea,” Marigold Evans agreed, before narrowing her pale blue eyes. “William can make it. I have questions for you, Ms. McGonagall.”

And it was clear Marigold Evans expected answers too. Fortunately, this was the purpose of Minerva’s visit to ease the Evans family into the magical world and as William Evans busied himself in the kitchen behind her, Minerva settled into one of the conjured wooden chairs and began the long, winding explanation into the history of Magic’s existence, the decision of their community to hide, and the schools that taught the necessary control to young witches and wizards so their magic didn’t injure anyone, including themselves.

::

Chapter 21

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty-One:

On the brisk, overcast morning of the last day of January, Eileen Snape knocked sharply on the front door of the Evans home.

It was Marigold who answered the door, and her mother’s shockingly hostile, “what are you doing here?” instantly caught Sansa’s attention, and had her moving swiftly to her mother’s side.

The sight of Eileen standing in the entry to their house had Sansa’s eyes narrowing, the wolf inside her soul rearing its head and baring teeth, letting out a low snarl that rumbled through Sansa’s bones. The woman looked as pinch-faced and sour as she had nearly every time Sansa had seen her. She was dressed all in black with her dark hair pulled into a tight bun atop her head.

“I’m here to collect my son,” Eileen said shortly. Marigold’s eyes flashed in fury.

“Yourson?” She demanded. “You mean the child that you allow your husband to beat senseless? The child that hasn’t even lived at your house for months? My child?”

Eileen’s expression soured further. “My family is no concern of yours, muggle,” she said coldly, her lip curling up in disgust, as if Marigold was no better than the dirt beneath her feet. “And if you have any sense at all, then you’ll keep it that way.”

“Are you threatening me?” Marigold demanded, furious, and Sansa felt herself tense up, the temperature of the air around them dropping sharply as her magic responded to the sudden surge of emotion.

“Why would I need to threaten you?” Eileen asked dismissively, scorn evident in those familiar yet foreign dark eyes. “You’re just a muggle with two untrained mudblood daughters. How could you even hope to stop me?”

Sansa stepped forwards then, the wolf in her soul rearing up and snarling viciously. Marigold’s hand lashed out, firmly catching Sansa’s shoulder and pulling her away from the open door, putting Sansa behind her and keeping her there with a tight grip.

“You’re despicable,” Marigold told Eileen, her voice actually shaking in her fury, meeting Eileen’s eyes, unafraid. “Where is all this power of yours, all these threats, when it’s your son, your own flesh and blood, being abused by a– a muggle?”

“Severus’s father has the right to discipline his son how he chooses,” Eileen said coldly. “Now bring Severus to me, this instant, or I will make you.”

Marigold lifted her chin high, taking a step forwards, toward Eileen.

“Make me,” she said fiercely.

Sansa felt fear seize at her heart as Eileen’s wand slid from her sleeve and into the woman’s hand, only for Severus to rush forwards from where he and Lily had apparently been hiding out of sight and planting himself between Marigold and Eileen, his arms spread wide as if he to shield Marigold from his mother.

“Don’t!” He pleaded with Eileen, wide-eyed and pale with panic. “Don’t hurt them! I’ll come with you!”

“Severus–” Marigold tried to protest, but Severus shook his head, turning briefly to face Marigold and Sansa. There was fear evident in his eyes– fear not for himself, but for them.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and there was something particularly wretched in his voice. “I’m so sorry, you’ve all been– brilliant. But I have to go h-home now."

Nobody missed how he stumbled over the use of the word ‘home’ to describe the residence where Eileen and Tobias Snape resided.

“Come along, Severus,” Eileen ordered, her wand already slipping back up her sleeve. “I have your Hogwarts letter; we’ll collect your school belongings today.” Eileen then turned to Marigold, narrowing her eyes again. “I don’t want to ever see you, your husband or your children near my son again,” she said, her voice as cold as the Long Night. “Don’t try me– you’ll regret it.”

And all Sansa and Marigold could do was hold each other’s hands tight as they watched Eileen and Severus walk away, Lily bursting into hysterical tears behind them.

That night, Sansa was unsurprised when Petunia and Lily joined Sansa in her bed. Lily buried her face in the curve of Sansa’s neck, unable to stop the tears still silently seeping down her blotchy cheeks, while Petunia had wrapped her arms around them both, holding them tight. Sansa wanted to cry too, but the tears wouldn’t come as ice encased her heart, leaving her instead numb and distant.

Sansa waited until her sisters had fallen asleep before slipping out from between them. She didn’t bother with a coat, merely pulling on a pair of boots before slipping silently out the backdoor.

Sansa thought the trek to the silver birch glade ought to be eerie, lit only by the odd flickering streetlamp and the stars glittering above her, the moon a mere sliver of a crescent. It wasn't. It felt...

It felt right.

Buttercup and Nightshade were already perched on the branches of the silver birch with the face carved into it, waiting for her to arrive. In the dim light of the witching hour, the birch appeared white as bone, its leaves dark as the woods around them. The face carved into the trunk was unmistakably blood-red.

Sansa knelt before the tree, closing her eyes as she rested her forehead against the pale trunk.

“Old Gods, green and wise,” she murmured, in the language of her ancestors. “I ask of you this boon, that you watch over the brother-of-my-heart.”

One of the ravens cawed, the sound harsh and eerie– and, to Sansa, just as comforting as the dark of the night around her.

When she opened her eyes again, Buttercup was gone; only Nightshade remained, looking down at Sansa with eyes as red as weirwood leaves.

~

When the school term started up, Sansa wasn’t surprised that Severus didn’t show for classes. Lily wasn’t surprised either, though her twin’s eyes still welled with tears when the final bell rang and Severus never appeared.

Sansa hadn’t seen Buttercup since the night she had prayed for the Old Gods to watch over Severus, though Nightshade would fly to and from Spinners End to deliver letters between Severus and the Evans sisters. Where Lily tended to write entire pages crammed with words, Severus’s notes in return were always short and hurried, consisting mostly of reassurances that he was alright that couldn’t have been less convincing to any of the Evans girls if he had actually tried.

Weeks passed by without a single sighting of Severus, and then months. Before Sansa knew it, summer had arrived in Britain and half a year had passed since the last time she had laid eyes on Severus.

Sansa and Lily had offered to sneak over, of course they had, but Severus was firm in his refusal. He feared what his mother would do if she caught them visiting, or him sneaking out to visit them– he wrote that he couldn’t risk any of them or their parents being harmed, and Sansa was wary enough of Eileen to heedhis concern. They would see each other at Hogwarts, she comforted Lily the best she could. It wasn’t too far away now, and Eileen wouldn’t be able to threaten them while they were safe within Hogwarts’ halls.

Still, Sansa wasn’t surprised when her words did very little to comfort her miserable twin.

(If she was honest with herself, her words did very little to comfort her either)

It was on a hot, sticky afternoon in the midst of summer, the relentless waves of heat having left Sansa’s thin, cotton sundress plastered against her flushed, damp skin, that, for the first time in six months, Buttercup soared through the open window of the Evans home with a harsh, grating caw.

Sansa was the only one home; Marigold was at her Church, William was at work, and Lily and Petunia were out, Petunia’s boyfriend having invited the three Evans girls along to his football match, though Sansa had politely declined attendance as she had very little interest in football, and even less so when neither Lily nor Severus were playing.

She was relieved for that decision now, as the very moment Sansa saw Buttercup, she knew deep in her bones that something was horribly, terribly wrong. She was on her feet in moments, her fingers made clumsy by panic as she yanked on the closest shoes she could find, a pair of tasselled boots belonging to Lily, before she was out the front door of the Evans house and running.

Nightshade had joined Buttercup, both ravens leading the way as they soared in the skies overhead. Lily and Petunia, Sansa thought, sweat dripping along the curve of her spine, down her forehead, her feet pounding on the pavement, jarring her each time. Get Lily and Petunia. For a heartbeat, Sansa was soaring in the sky on swift wings, co*keworth spread out beneath her like a colourful, embroidered tapestry, and then Buttercup and Nightshade were wheeling away from Sansa in the blue-blue-blue sky, quickly vanishing from her sight.

Sansa could taste blood and frost, the phantom echo of feathers and hollow bones giving her frantic run new speed.

The Snape house as it loomed up ahead appeared dark and foreboding, though Sansa could admit her perception may be coloured by her own knowledge and experiences. The garden was overgrown and untended, the shutters were nailed shut, the curtains drawn, and there were no signs that anyone was living there, bar the broken beer bottles that littered the porch.

Sansa didn’t knock on the door. It was abominably rude, but when it came to Tobias and Eileen Snape, Sansa hardly cared what was considered rude or not. There was a security chain preventing Sansa from fully opening the door, but several solid kicks were enough to yanking the chain free from the wall and the door swung open, nearly falling off its hinges it was so old and ill-cared for.

Sansa prowled into the house with all the focus and ferocity of a wolf on the hunt, tracking down her prey. As she stepped through the doorway, the noise previously concealed– by magic, she assumed– was suddenly all too loud in her ears, turning her blood to ice.

Severus was crying.

A man– Tobias– was swearing.

And there was that far too familiar sound of heavy thudding against flesh.

(It was a sound Sansa still heard in her dreams, memories of the fists of grown men colliding in force against her fragile child body, of the bruises that bloomed in their wake like blue and purple roses on her fair skin, of the wretched pain she suffered with each terrible blow on Joffrey's orders)

Sansa followed the noise into the kitchen, where one look into the room had her incandescent in her fury.

Severus was on the ground, Tobias standing over him as he drove his foot into her brother’s chest and stomach. Severus was trying to curl up, trying to protect his organs, only for Tobias’s heavy boot to next collide with his face with a sickening crunch and a spray of blood. Head knocked back, Severus could only gasp and choke for air as the impact of Tobias’s boot drove it fromhis lungs with each heavy kick.

Sansa’s magic burst out of her, the temperature in the room plummeting so sharply that the glass of the windows frosted over and sheets of ice spiralled out over the laminated floors from where she stood. Tobias was hurled across the room, away from Severus, where he collided with the overhanging cabinets with a meaty thud.

The tall, thin man swore violently as he stumbled back to his feet, holding his now-bleeding head with one hand, his lips pulled back in a terrible rictus of a snarl. Laid out on a floor smeared with his own blood, Severus didn’t react to her sudden intervention, remaining entirely motionless.

“You f*cking bitch!” Tobias spat, eyes bloodshot and blood dripping down the side of his face; he looked like something twisted and damned, like a monster from an old fairy-tale, the ones filled with haunted woods and cracked bones and spilt blood. “Just like that whor*,” Tobias growled, looking rabid with rage, “using that f*cking voodoo sh*t–”

“Leave!” Sansa demanded, her voice high and trembling– not in fear, but in fury. “Leave now, or next time you won’t be getting back up!”

Tobias spat at her, the glob of saliva falling short but its intended message made clear. The man eyed Severus’s limp, motionless form with disgust, before storming for the only doorway to the kitchen.

That was where Sansa made her terrible error– she let Tobias get within arm’s reach of her as he passed where she was still standing far too close to the door.

The blow to the side of her head caught Sansa by surprise. She stumbled, her world spinning as her vision blurred. She barely noticed long, thin fingers gripping her shoulders, but she felt when she was yanked forwards and a knee was brutally driven into her head.

The world came back to her slowly after that.

Gradually, bit by bit, her senses started to trickle into focus. The pain came first, of course; agonising and overwhelming. Sansa could taste blood coating her mouth, her teeth, her throat. She heaved, vomit tasting of copper spilling down her chin. Her head was spinning, as if someone had taken a rock to it. She couldn’t remember what had happened.

She couldn’t remember where she was.

Moaning softly, Sansa forced open eyelids that felt as heavy as lead. She didn’t recognise her surroundings at first, not helped by how her vision swam in and out of focus and the pinpricks of light triggered bolts of pain so intense she almost passed out again. The room was in was dimly lit. Dark, heavy curtains were drawn over the windows. She was laying on a hard, blood-spattered floor. The stench of alcoholic spirits polluted the air.

It was only when she managed to turn her head and recognised the old, shabby cabinets that Sansa realised where she was– she was in the kitchen of the Snape house.

That was when she finally noticed the muttering, and she managed to turn her head slightly, towards the sound.

Tobias Snape was pacing, leaving bloody footprints across laminated floor wet with blood and half-melted ice. There was an almost-empty bottle of something alcoholic clenched in his white-knuckled fist.

Sansa couldn’t remember why she was in the Snape’s kitchen. Her brain was moving too sluggishly, her thoughts slipping through her fingers like smoke no matter how desperately she tried to grasp them. But when she saw the limp figure of Severus sprawled out across the room from her, his pale face a mask of smeared crimson, it didn't take much for her to assume how she had ended up in such a state– and with that knowledge came a sinking awareness of danger.

Sansa used her own blood to paint Dagaz on her neck, over where she could feel her pulse fluttering like hummingbird wings. Dagaz wasn’t just the rune representative of strength, good health and general well-being; it was considered a protective force that guided away from danger, out of harm’s way, with magical uses for good luck, promoting positive transformations and turning the corner in challenging situations.

She closed her eyes as she felt the burning fire of the runic magic colliding with the icy surge of her own, innate magic in a song of power. Strength flooded through her weakened limbs as her head cleared, her thoughts now sharp and clear. She remembered now exactly what had led to her current condition. And with that memory came the very real fear that Tobias was not about to let her leave this house– not with what he had done to her, and what she had witnessed. Not if he didn’t want to end up arrested.

Sansa very much doubted Tobias would allow himself to be arrested.

Ultimately, she made up her mind before the thoughts truly even had time to form. The next time Tobias passed close enough by her in his frenetic pacing and muttering, Sansa lashed out; her boot-clad foot hit Tobias in his genitals, and hit him hard.

Tobias fell to his knees with a wheeze, all the air escaping his body in a sudden heave. There were tears in his eyes as he gasped for breath and Sansa didn’t hesitate, didn’t allow herself to hesitate. She dragged herself to her feet and then, in a mirror of how he had attacked her, she drove her knee up into his chin with all her strength. Tobias's head snapped back and he collapsed to the floor. Without hesitation, Sansa stomped her foot with all the strength of her fury and her magic down on his throat, and then she held it there.

Tobias didn’t die quickly.

Sansa didn’t bother to pretend to herself that she wasn’t viciously pleased by that fact. She had had Ramsay torn apart by his own starving hounds as he screamed for mercy, for the sake of Robb and Rickon. For his violence and cruelty against this brother of hers, Tobias deserved no less.

Sansa watched Tobias’s face change colours, feeling almost detached from her body as his skin turned from red, to purple, to a pale white as he suffocated to death under his crushed airway, almost her entire weight leaning on the boot pressed to his neck.

It felt almost poetic that he would die as scum beneath her shoe, Sansa mused. Just as poetic as Ramsay’s death, as Petyr’s.

She knew the moment Tobias Snape ceased living, watched his eyes lose focus, turning blank and glassy. She didn’t smile, she simply turned from the body and moved to kneel at Severus’s side. It was only then that she realised Severus was awake, that he had been watching as she murdered his father without making a singl sound.

“I’m sorry,” she found herself saying before she even realised she had opened her mouth. “Not that he’s dead,” she hastened to clarify, “I’m not sorry he’s dead. I should have asked you first, though.”

“You are,” Severus rasped, “so bloody strange.”

Sansa let out a small huff of air. “You truly have no idea,” she said. “Can you move?”

“A bit,” Severus muttered. With her help, he was able to shift up to a sitting position, leaning back against one of the kitchen cabinets for support, his face bone white as he gasped in agony, arms curling around what were almost certainly broken ribs. “We– we need to do something– something with the body,” he managed to wheeze out. Sansa frowned.

“Surely it would be considered self-defence,” she said, but Severus shook his head.

“No,” he croaked, “I mean, yes, the police'll probably agree it’s self-defence. Which it was. I think? But Violet,” Severus's dark eyes were frantic with fear as they met hers, “Violet, my mum will murder you. And she won’t do it quickly– she’s from an old Pureblood family, she knows terrible, awful magic. If she finds out you killed him, she will hurt you really badly and then she will kill you.”

“…that is a complication,” Sansa said faintly. She hadn’t factored that in, in the brief, brief moment where she’d spared a thought to consider the probable consequences for killing Tobias. Clearly, it had been an oversight.

With absolutely wonderful, perfect timing, however, it was in that moment of growing panic between her and Severus that Lily and Petunia stormed into the kitchen of the Snape house, Petunia armed with a hammer and Lily with a garden rake. Each of Sansa’s sisters had a raven perched on a shoulder.

“Oh my god,” Lily blurted out when she saw the mess of blood, the injured Severus and Sansa, and the corpse that had once been Tobias Snape. Her already fair skin bleached of all colour and she looked as if she was about to vomit, her wide green eyes unable to look away from Tobias’s body.

“Bloody buggering hell,” Petunia agreed, looking just as stunned but far less queasy than Lily.

“We need to get rid of the body,” Sansa told them, barely clinging to the last of her composure with the reality of her sisters knowing what she was capable of, what she had done, feeling somewhat alike to being dropped into a bath of freezing water. In this different world, little girls didn’t execute grown men. In this world, her actions wouldn’t be considered justice– they would be considered murder, even if it was in self-defence.

Abruptly, Sansa wondered if her relationship with her sisters would ever be the same after this.

While she was trapped in panic, Severus managed to choke out an explanation of why they couldn’t just ring the police. Sansa forced her spiralling thoughts to focus back on the prsent as Petunia’s lips thinned while listening to Severus, her expression darkening. Lily looked fierce as she turned back to Sansa.

“We won’t let her hurt you, Lety,” she promised, and Sansa's mouth twitched into a weak, grateful smile.

“I borrowed Johnny’s car to get here as quickly as possible,” Petunia muttered, her mind clearly racing ahead. “Those bloody birds were creating enough of a ruckus that Lily and I figured it was urgent. We’ll need to get some garbage bags or a blanket or something to wrap the body in so we can get it in the trunk.”

“There’s a few blankets in my old bedroom,” Severus offered, and Lily rushed off to collect them. While she was doing that, Sansa and Petunia helped Severus to the car, leaving him laying across the backseat, as with his injuries he would be no help with moving the corpse. Sansa's head spun sickeningly with each step, but she managed to stay upright. As Sansa and Petunia returned to the house, Petunia looked down at her with a sharply arched eyebrow.

“A bit careless of you, Lety,” she said.

“I may have lost my temper,” Sansa had to admit.

“That,” Petunia said dryly, looking briefly up at the cloudless skyas if to pray for patience, “is rather obvious.”

It took all three sisters to drag the body wrapped in blankets from the kitchen, and out into the car. Tobias had been a very thin man, but he had also been very tall. Once the body was lifted into the trunk, Petunia didn’t waste time starting the car engine and speeding away from the Snape house. Sansa didn’t bother to ask where Petunia had learned to drive so confidently and capably despite being only fifteen. She assumed Petunia’s older boyfriend, Johnny, must have taught her.

“Where are we going to hide it?” Lily asked anxiously. While Sansa was sitting in the passenger seat, Lily sat in the back with Severus, his head resting on her lap. Lily was fidgeting with the long strands of his black hair, twisting it into braids left loose at the end.

“The river,” Petunia answered grimly.

Nobody asked any other questions.

Petunia drove them to the outskirts of the town, where the clusters of trees thickened into a what was almost a forest–an extension of the one bordering the park they all frequented, with the polluted river winding through it. It again took all three of the sisters to haul the body from the trunk, Severus staggering after them as they dragged the corpse into the forest until they had reached the banks of the narrow, filthy river.

At Petunia’s insistence, they didn’t stop there and instead they kept dragging the body along until they reached an area of the riverbank where the ground was much harder, jutting rock than soft soil. Sansa was drenched in sweat, as were Lily and Petunia. Severus’s breathing now had a concerning whistle with each shallow breath, but he had refused to stop and wait for them to finish whatever Petunia had thought up.

“Okay,” Petunia said, with a firm nod, all of them pretending they couldn’t see how her lips trembled. “Lety, I need you to freeze him–it, I need you tofreeze itas cold as you possibly can.”

“Freeze it?” Sansa asked, confused.

“You know,” Petunia waved a hand absently in the air, “do that magic ice thing.”

Sansa nodded slowly. She didn’t understand why her sister would want the corpse frozen as surely that would only delay its decay, but considering her elder sister seemed to know what she was doing, Sansa followed Petunia’s instructions.

Kneeling beside the corpse, Sansa placed her hands over its still chest and closed her eyes, focusing on the blizzard inside her. Her magic felt… tender, much the same as her head did. As if it was bruised and she was rudely poking it. Sansa still grasped for it despite this, pulling until she felt the flow through her body, felt her magic gather in her hands before spreading out in frozen fractals, misting her breath as the corpse iced over under her touch, the cold sinking deeper and deeper, freezing skin and muscle, nerves and arteries, organs and bones.

Sansa could see bright pricks of light behind her eyelids, and there was a pressure building in her head, a pressure that grew sharper and more painful with each second that passed, as if her brain was freezing and burning and she thought she might pass out, the agony was just too much. Sansa didn’t even realise she had collapsed until she was already slumped in Lily’s arms. Lily had been mostly quiet up until this point, but Sansa could see the softness in her twin’s eyes as she carefully set Sansa down next to Severus, before going up to Petunia, her determination clear.

“What’s next?” she asked. Petunia was staring down at the corpse, looking sickened; it wasn’t even recognisable as Tobias now, any skin visible through the frost a sickening grey.

“It looks like it should be fragile enough now,” she muttered, before looking up to Sansa’s twin. “Do you think you can make it float, Lil?”

“I can try,” Lily said slowly. Sansa, who had seen Lily floating flowers and jumping off swings at their peak only to float through the air, did not doubt her sister. Sure enough, despite how squeamish she was about touching the frozen corpse, Lily was able to coax it into floating up, up, up until it was nearly ten yards up in the air.

“Perfect,” Petunia said, with a brisk nod. “Now let it drop.”

The corpse turnedfrozen through Sansa's icy magic, a cold far beyond any naturally occurring phenomenon, didn’t stand a chance after hitting the rocks from such a height.

It was almost a familiar sight, to Sansa; she remembered watching White Walkers be hit by arrows and shatter apart. The magically-frozen corpse of Tobias Snape shattered into just as many pieces over the rocky ground, the smallest chips of the corpse no larger than Sansa’s smallest fingernail, the biggest chunks no larger than a grown man’s fist.

Petunia looked very satisfied, even as Lily made a small, retching sound, clearly fighting the urge to vomit.

“It’s a good thing we have a hammer and rake,” Sansa’s older sister said. “Alright Lily, I’ll smash, you rake all the smaller pieces into the river.”

Watching through half-lidded eyes, Sansa was impressed by the vigour in which Petunia smashed the hammer into the magically frozen chunks of human remains with great prejudice, breaking them down to the size of marbles, while Lily used the rake to get all the frozen pieces off the bank, into the murky, rubbish-filled river. It took nearly a half hour, by which time both Petunia and Lily were red-faced and dripping with sweat from the exertion but the corpse was gone, the hundreds and hundreds of pieces of Tobias Snape washed away in the filthy river water.

“Right, I don’t have anything too flammable, but this should do the trick for the blankets,” Petunia said, pulling from the handbag she carried everywhere a small can of hairspray and a lighter. “What?” she said with a shrug when Lily looked accusingly at the lighter. “A smoke every now and then isn’t the end of the world.”

“I feel like Johnny is a bad influence on you,” Lily muttered accusingly.

“Lily,” Petunia said slowly, looking down at Lily, incredulous, “we are, at this very moment, illegally disposing of a human body and you’re saying that he’s the bad influence?”

“I never said that we’re good influences,” Lily retorted and Sansa couldn’t help how her lips twitched. Beside her, Severus let out a very quiet snort.

Petunia didn’t waste time spraying the bloodied blankets they’d transported the body in with the hairspray, the chemical fumes causing Sansa to wrinkle her nose, before with a flick of her lighter she set the blankets on fire.

They burned quickly, hungry flames creeping over the cheap fabric. Petunia had been careful to lay the blankets out on the rocks, far from anything potentially flammable, and it only took around twenty minutes for the blankets to be reduced to charred ash which Lily kicked into the river while Petunia used the rake to move around rocks and soil to cover up most of the evidence that something had been burned there.

“It’s done,” Lily announced. Then, she leaned forwards and vomited into the polluted river, heaving over and over until she was gagging and retching up nothing but thin vile. She then burst into tears, great big sobs that shook her entire body.

“It’s okay, Lily, it’s okay,” Petunia murmured, wrapping her arms tight around Lily, who buried her face in Petunia’s blouse. “It’s almost over," she soothed, "I promise, we just need to finish getting everything set up and then you can cry as much as you need.”

Lily let out a final loud, wet sob, but obligingly she straightened up and stepped away from Petunia. “Let’s get back to the car,” Petunia suggested. Sansa hummed her agreement. She could barely hold her eyes open, the pain was so intense, let alone try to make her mouth work. In the end, Petunia had to lift her and practically carry her back to the car, while Lily supported most of Severus’s weight as he staggered alongside her. Once they reached the car, Petunia had to lift Sansa until she was lying across the backseat before helping Lily to get Severus up too, so he was laying along the seat next to Sansa.

Sansa didn’t remember the drive back through co*keworth. It felt as if she had merely blinked and then Petunia was helping her out of the car, half carrying her back into the Snape house.

“Wha–?” she managed to slur.

“When the police ask what happened, tell them you don’t remember anything,” Petunia told her firmly. “Do you understand, Lety? Tell them you don’t remember.”

“Mm,” Sansa agreed, confused but willing to do as Petunia instructed. “Don’ ‘member.”

“That’s right,” Petunia said, leaning to kiss Sansa’s forehead before lowering her onto hard, laminated ground. “That’s right, love. Close your eyes, you can sleep now.”

Sansa let her eyes drift shut.

Chapter 22

Chapter Text

Chapter Twenty-Two:

Sansa opened her eyes to find herself in a hall that was large and echoing, dimly lit. The shadows danced up and down the walls, the air around her was cold and still and she could see nothing ahead but found herself walking forward anyway, as if drawn by some unknowable compulsion.

Frost clung to her pale limbs and crunched under her bare feet as she walked further and further, deeper and deeper, into the endless corridor until, quite suddenly, she found herself standing at the foot of a raised stone dais.

On the dais there stood a strange structure that had a cold, prickling feeling crawl down Sansa's spine as she gazed upon it. It was a tall, pointed archway of stone, ancient, cracked and crumbling. Within the archway hung what appeared to be a tattered black curtain, gently fluttering and swaying ever so slightly, as though it had just been touched.

That same compulsion that had drawn Sansa to the Veil had her now ascend the dais, climbing steep stone steps until she was close enough to touch, though some deep, buried instinct within herself stopped her from reaching out. She could hear faint whispering and murmuring noises from behind the Veil, though when she stepped around to peer behind it, she could see nobody there.

As Sansa stood before the eerie, foreboding archway, she couldn't help but think it beautiful, in some strange, otherworldly way. Just as she thought it, the Veil began to shiver and shake, as if caught in a gust of wind. Ice began forming on the dais, creeping up the archway and forming frost-flowers.

Sansa couldn't stop herself then from reaching out, her hand brushing the tattered curtain aside.

A familiar, much-loved figure padded forward to meet her.

With a coat of fur that shone like pure starlight, glittering and brilliant, and warm, trusting eyes of blazing sunshine-gold, Sansa fell to her knees without even thinking about it, tears trickling down her cheeks as Lady pressed her head into Sansa's open, welcoming arms.

Everywhere around them was cold and dark, yet with Lady in her arms, how could Sansa feel anything but warm?

Sansa threaded her fingers through starlight fur, bowing her head to press her face between Lady's ears, and a keening gasp wrenched from her throat as she grieved anew for the life that had been stolen from Lady, from the bond that had been stolen from them both.

The tattered black curtain draped over her hair much like a Veil as Sansa knelt half crossed-over the archway. Her hands, as they were wrapped around Lady, wavered and trembled.

"I love you, I love you, I love you," Sansa rasped with a ruined throat, pressing her lips to Lady's starlight fur, over and over.

She could have stayed there with Lady forever, even as guilt and grief shuddered through her, but her direwolf, her precious Lady, was blocking her from moving any further through the archway. Even in the cold emptiness, with Lady pressed against her, Sansa still felt warm.

"I am sorry I let them murder you," Sansa whispered hoarsely, the well of bitter anger she held against her lord-father that she had tried so hard to ignore, feeling that it tainted his memory, rising anew.

Lady made a quiet, whuffingsound, raising her head from where it was resting over Sansa's heart to lick the tears from Sansa's cheeks, leaving streaks of warmth behind. Sansa laughed, the sound wet and sorrowed and drenched in love. She tangled her fingers in starlight fur, smoothing them across Lady's ruff, where once she had tied silk ribbons in colourful bows.

Lady made a chuffing sound, nudging her head against Sansa in demand of more pats. Sansa felt the corners of her trembling mouth tilt up slightly in a tremulous smile.

Kneeling halfway across the archway, the tattered black Veil tangling in her hair, in her very soul, Sansa Stark closed her eyes and waited, though for what, she did not know.

::

When Minerva McGonagall received the muggle envelope delivered by post owl as she sat down to dinner, she was surprised.

There were systems in place for the parents of muggleborn children to contact her, after she had given them their welcome to the Magical World speech, but it had been nearly two months since she had last visited the family of a muggleborn.

Frowning, she peeled open the edge of the envelope and pulled from within the crisp white folded sheet of paper. Smoothing the letter open, Minerva felt her eyes widen with horror as she read the neatly inked words.

She stood in such a hurry that the wooden chair she was seated on made an audible scraping sound as it skidded back against the floor.

"Minerva?" Albus asked, surprised, but Minerva didn't have time to explain now, instead rushing from the Great Hall in as dignified a manner as she was able, her mind hundreds of miles away.

Madam Poppy Pomfrey was bustling around the Hospital Wing when Minerva hurried through its doors. There had been an incident in the corridor with a handful of Slytherin and Gryffindor fourth years earlier that day, and Poppy was the poor dafty who had signed up to be responsible for fixing such messes caused by rebounding curses and jinxes.

"Poppy," Minerva said urgently, hurrying to the other witch and pressing the letter into her hands. Poppy frowned, accepting the letter and scanning over it. Her eyes widened.

"Oh dear," she said, immediately moving to action and heading straight to her office, Minerva following behind. With a sweep of her wand, Poppy's empty hearth was alight with flames and Poppy threw a handful of floo powder over the fire, declaring, "the Three Broomsticks!" before stepping into emerald green fire and disappearing. Minerva followed, gritting her teeth through the floo journey and stepping out into the Hogsmeade pub.

It was Minerva who apparated them both to co*keworth, to the Evans house. Apparating directly into somebody's home was abominably rude, but it was the only destination in the town that Minerva was familiar enough with.

Petunia Evans flinched horribly at their sudden appearance. The young girl looked pale, her long blonde hair falling loose and haphazard around a blotchy, tear-stained face, her eyes rimmed red from weeping.

"I apologise for startling you, Miss Evans," Minerva said, speaking as gently as she would to a startled kitten. Petunia Evans certainly appeared ready to swipe out at them with pinprick claws. "I just received your father's letter– can you direct us to the hospital? This is Madam Pomfrey, Hogwarts' equivalent to a doctor, and she's come to examine your sister."

Petunia's shoulders sunk from their tense position as the young girl lost her defensiveness. "I can take you there," she said, in a voice hoarse from tears.

"Can you tell us what you know of what happened along the way?" Poppy asked as the blonde girl led them out of the house, to a battered looking automobile parked on the street outside, and the blonde girl nodded.

Poppy appeared bewildered by the car, reminding Minerva that her colleague was born and raised in a pureblood family, but Poppy didn't protest the muggle transport, even if she swallowed and gripped the edge of the upholstered seat with a white-knuckled grip as Petunia started the car's motor engine.

"Severus's mother took him back in January," Petunia started to explain as she navigated the automobile through dark streets dimly lit by yellowing streetlights. "She threatened our parents with magic, if any of us went near him or he came near us. We've stayed away since, except Violet... I don't know why she went there last week, but she did. Severus told us that when she arrived, his father was doing his drunken best to beat Severus to death."

"Oh dear," Poppy murmured, distracted from her discomfort by her sorrow at the unfolding tale. Petunia made a sharp sound.

"Oh, it only gets worse from there," she said grimly. "Severus said Violet tried to get between them. Tobias Snape grabbed her by the hair and that– that bastard hit her in the head so hard that Severus said she fell unconscious immediately! That was when Tobias started to really panic– it was one thing for him to beat his wife and son half to death, but attacking a little girl? That could see him end up in prison."

Here, Petunia shuddered violently. "Severus said– he said that Tobias was going to kill her," the blonde girl said in a strangled voice. "He was going to kill her and hide her body so nobody would ever know."

Minerva, remembering the quiet, polite little girl who loved her family so dearly, couldn't help her pained gasp. Beside her, Poppy looked horrified.

It was easy to forget, in the shadow of war that Magical Britain was living under, just how dangerous the muggle world could also be.

"What happened?" Minerva asked, already dreading Petunia's answer.

"We don't know," Petunia admitted. "Severus was in and out of consciousness at the time and his memories are fuzzy. He just remembers Violet's magic– apparently, she managed to turn the room into a blizzard when Tobias tried to finish her off. Tobias ran from the house and he hasn't been seen since. Severus managed to crawl over to the landline and call for an ambulance and the police. They're searching for Tobias to arrest him, but he hasn't been found. And Lety..." here, Petunia's voice broke. "Lety hasn't woken up since. The doctors don't know what's wrong. They scanned her brain, in case there was any bleeding or swelling, but... It was Severus who said we should ask for your help. He said that the reason she won't wake up might not be something that people without magic can fix."

"I am one of the best Healers in Britain," Poppy said, firm and factual. It was the truth, too– she had to be, to keep up with the demand and challenges that came with being the Head Healer of a Magical School. "I promise you, your sister will be receiving the best possible care available, and if I am unable to carry personally out any treatments required, I will transfer her to our hospital where they will do so."

Petunia let out a sharp sigh, her thin shoulders slumping ever so slightly. "Thank you," she said quietly. "I just... we can't lose her. We just can't."

Petunia pulled sharply into the car park, easily finding a space and neatly pulling into it. Honestly, Minerva was impressed with her skill. She knew firsthand how tricky driving an automobile could be.

Petunia led them through the entrance, through the corridors to the hospital room where Violet was being kept.

It was a room with only a single bed room. Plastic chairs lined up along both sides of the bed and the peeling wallpaper was a cheerful, pastel yellow with gold patterned flowers. The entire Evans family, in addition to a heavily bandaged Severus with one of his arms and his ankles in white plaster casts, were seated in the plastic chairs.

Lily and Severus both had colourful, finely embroidered quilts tucked around them. Lily's was covered in scenes of wolves and wild woodland with its wildlife and flowers of every type and colour. The embroidery on Severus's quilt was of knights with colourful favours competing in tourneys on horseback and sparring with broadswords, castles rising high in the distance, and lilies, petunias, violets and black hollyco*ck forming a pattern around the border. Minerva immediately recognised it as Violet's work and was utterly stunned at the sheer skill and artistry, as well as the time that must have gone into such masterpieces.

Her gaze then turned to Violet, and her lips thinned at the sight of the little girl. Violet was so pale her skin appeared corpse white, her lips a mottled purple. Her hands, folded across her chest above stiff white hospital blankets, were also a mottled purple. Her breaths, as Minerva watched, came few and far between– Minerva counted almost a full thirty seconds between one breath and the next.

"Why are there no doctors or nurses in here?" She heard herself demand before she even realised she'd opened her mouth. It was William Evans who answered her, eyes red and swollen, a week's worth of stubble on his face.

"They told us– they told us the brain scans showed– they told us she's on a p-palliative pathway."

Minerva felt cold, turning to Poppy who immediately stepped forward and pulled out her wand, flicking it once at the closed door behind them to ensure they wouldn't be disturbed before waving it over Violet. Bright bursts of magic danced above the unconscious girl; a red faintly pulsing light rose above her heart, and even Minerva could see the pulse was far too slow and uneven, but both she and Poppy were far more interested in how Violet's entire body lit up with a silvery-blue glow, visible even beneath the blankets.

"I see," Poppy said grimly.

"What is it?" Marigold demanded, voice hoarse from her tears. "What's wrong with her?"

"What do you know about accidental magic?" Poppy asked.

::

Sansa knelt there, on the dais, stroking Lady's starlight-bright fur as the Veil draped across her head, not unlike a true veil, spooling over her shoulders, tangling down her arms. Lady nosed it and whined but Sansa just smiled, not concerned though she was unsure why. It didn't feel wrong. It felt natural. It felt familiar.

Something she had once known well.

As she continued to stroke Lady, she listened almost absently to the whispering, murmuring voices. She wasn't truly paying attention to them or trying to make out what they were saying, which is why it took her by surprise when she heard what sounded like her name.

Startled, she stood automatically, moving to take a step forward in the direction of the voices, onlyLady stood in the way.

"Sansa!" She heard again, beyond the Veil, and this time she was not only certain she had heard her name, but she was sure the voice was familiar. She tried to step forward again, and this time Lady very purposefully pushed her back.

"Lady, what are you doing?" Sansa asked with a confused smile as her wolf blocked the way through the archway. Lady gave a low whine and nudged at her face with a wet nose that left a warm, tingling stamp on Sansa's cheek. Sansa lifted her hand to brush her fingertips against the damp patch of skin, bemused.

"Lady, I can hear people through there," she tried to explain, "there are voices... I think... I think it's Rickon..." she said breathlessly as she heard that familiar voice repeat her name once more.

Sansa had many complicated feelings about the Starks, even after theirs and her deaths. She loved them, of courseshe loved them, how could she not? They were her family. But Rickon... Rickon was different.

The small, sweet giggling babe was so dear and darling to her. Her other siblings always loved wild, rough, outdoor things. She knew Rickon would grow up to love them too, but it was different with him, because her other siblings hadn't needed her, not the way Rickon had. Her poor Lady-Mother had been so busy, by the time Rickon was born. So many children, so many responsibilities running the keep and helping her Lord-Father rule the North, and Lord Hoster had already been suffering from bouts of illness. And Bran– Bran had always been their Lady-Mother's favouredchild.

Sansa had eagerly taken up many responsibilities of the care for baby Rickon. She would play with him, sing to him, carry him around, and sew clothes for him, always working on new pieces with how fast he outgrew them.

When Rickon's corpse had been recovered from the battlefield, Sansa had insisted on being the one to bathe the body as she had once bathed a small, wriggling toddler, to remove every arrow from the too-still, too-cold form that had once been a bright, happy living boy. Her bright, happy living boy.

It was only after she had clothed Rickon for the last time, brushed out his blood-red curls, the same shade as her own, as she never would again, then kissed his eyelids shut, that Sansa made her way down to the kennels where awaited Ramsey Snow, the Bolton Bastard.

She hadn't been able to save Rickon from that monster; she had only been able to avenge them both. But she could hear Rickon now, through the stone archway, could hear him separated from her only by the tattered Veil she was tangled in. It was only Lady who was stopping her from crossing over.

"Please," Sansa begged her bonded wolf, "please, I have to see him, I have to speak to him– please!"

Lady whined, piteous and pleading, in the same mannershe once had as a cub when Sansa had tried coaxing her to do something that frightened her. It was this, more thananything, that had Sansa pause.

One previous time Lady had refused to move, had stopped Sansa from moving forward also, was during a walk through the godswoodin Winterfell. Puzzled, Sansa had returned to the Keep where later she learned there had been a sharp-clawed, mean-toothed wildcat the size of one of the hunting dogs shot down by the guards that day in the godswood after it attacked one of the servants who went there to pray. Sansa felt terribly guilty, though she knew that truly there was nothing she could have done when she knew not what had disturbed Lady earlier that day, but she promised herself that she would trust Lady's instincts from then on.

If only she had kept that promise– after all, Lady had whined and hesitated when she first saw Joffrey.

Sansa hadn't really noticed or cared at the time, blinded by what she thought was love at first sight as a pretty boy promised her love, a kingdom and a crown.

What a pretty little fool she had been. A silly, stupid little girl.

Sansa let her hand drift down from her face, let her fingers tangle in Lady's fur. "Alright, my heart, my soul," she murmured, "alright. I will trust you."

This time, she would keep her promise. This time, she would listen to Lady's instincts.

Sansa closed her eyes and bowed her head, kneeling once more to bury her face in Lady's soft starlight fur.

The Veil tangled in her hair,draped over her shoulders, weighed as heavy as the deaths of every person she had ever loved, and in her earsshe could hear the sound of Rickon's laughter as he called her name, bright and cheerful, just a little child as he had been when he was so brutally murdered.

"Sansa! Sansa! Come and play with me and Shaggy!"

Beneath her face, Lady's fur soaked wet with Sansa's tears but she did not lift her face.

::

"You're saying that Violet is like this because of accidental magic?" Lily piped up, confused. Her voice sounded nasal, like she had been crying endlessly. Minerva suspected she had been.

"Accidental magic is very normal in children who haven't yet learned to channel their magic through a focus," Poppy explained, "but there is a reason why, at eleven, we begin teaching children how to channel it. Imagine... magic is salt and your body is a cup filled with water. When you're using magic without a focus, you're channeling your magic through your body. Now, that's fine in small doses, like if you drop pinches of salt in that glass of water and it dissolves.

"The problem is if too much salt is poured into that cup, then eventually the salt stops dissolving because the water is so saturated with the salt that it is simply unable to dissolve any more of it. Obviously, neither the cup or water suffer any ill consequences when this happens. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of the human body when so much magic is channeled through it that it becomes saturated– and then more magic continues to be channeled."

Poppy's face was very sympathetic. "From what I've heard of what happened," she said gently, "young Miss Violet was in a very dangerous situation with a head injury that was potentially far worse than it may have appeared. Her magic worked to protect her, to heal her, and likely to also protect and heal young Master Severus. In trying to do so, she was unfortunately forced to use so much magic in her efforts to survive the situation that she ended up in this equally as dangerous situation."

Marigold, Lily, Petunia, and Severus all started crying then. William was far more stoic but no less anguished in his grief. Poppy had to raise her voice to talk over the sound of their distress.

"Fortunately," she said loudly, "Miss Violet is not the first child this has happened to, nor is she the first child I have treated for this. I cannot promise you that she will recover, but I can tell you there are decent odds in her favour, so I'll kindly ask that you now leave the room and let me start treating her." Poppy spoke firmly but kindly.

"Can one of us stay?" William asked hoarsely. "It isn't that we don't trust you. It's only... we just want to be here for her. So she knows we love her. That we're waiting for her to come home to us."

Poppy's face softened. "Yes, Mr. Evans, one of you may stay," she said gently. "I will need you to remain seated though, and not move, speak or disrupt me, nor will you be able to touch your daughter unless I say so."

"It will have to be you then, my love," Marigold said with a trembling smile. William smiled gently back at her.

"I'll watch over her, Marie," he promised. "I'll help guide her home."

"I love you, darling," Marigold whispered to Violet.

"We miss you, Lety," Lily kissed her twin's cheek.

"You're not allowed to leave us," Petunia told her firmly, brushing Violet's hair from her face. "And you're my baby sister, so you have to do what I tell you."

"Thank you," Severus breathed, gently touching her mottled purple hands. "I love you, little sister. Thank you."

"Come back to us, my little baby blue," William told his daughter softly, gently. "We're all waiting."

Minerva followed the family outside. Marigold set the children up in one of the waiting areas before returning to the corridor outside Violet's room to hold vigil. Minerva followed her, watching as the woman leaned against the wall, looking utterly exhausted.

"It terrifies me to see her like this," Marigold was wan and fragile-looking, lavender bruises under eyes swollen from crying. "When– when she was a baby, when the twins were born, they told us Violet wouldn't survive. She was too small, too sickly. She spent so long in the hospital–" Marigold's voice cracked and Minerva reached out to squeeze Marigold's shoulder.

"And yet, against those odds, Violet survived," she said, gentle but firm, leaving no room for argument or doubt. "Just as she will survive this."

Marigold let out a long, shaky breath and then nodded. "You're right," she said, her voice almost even, "you're right. And Violet– right about now she would be very politely but pointedly mentioning that there are quite a few very urgent things I could be attending, instead of sitting here fretting over her." Seeing Minerva's raised eyebrow, Marigold smiled, rueful. "Teaching Violet to accept us taking time out of our lives to comfort her has been a challengefrom before she could even talk."

"Indeed," Minerva said, surprised by the un-childlike behaviour.

Marigold nodded before appearing to steel her spine, looking up to meet Minerva's eyes. "Tobias Snape beat his son half to death, then tried to do the same to my daughter before going on the run from the police. Eileen Snape has done nothing to protect her magical son from her muggle husband. Tell me how to get custody of Severus. Tell me how to get custody of my son."

::

Sansa wasn't sure how long she had been crying. She could still hear Rickon's voice when she finally lifted her head from Lady's fur and stood once more, but it was muted, as if he had moved further away from her. Lady's fur had muted as well, the glow no longer quite so bright.

Sansa looked around her, feeling as if she was finally taking in the large, echoing hall for the first time.

"Where is this?" She murmured aloud. "Where am I?"

Lady did not reply, of course.

Sansa looked down, at the dais she stood upon. She was standing underneath the archway, halfway beneath the Veil currently draped over her, spooled over her shoulders and down her arms. Absently, she lifted one hand to stroke down the tattered black material. Before her eyes flashed a second of a memory, of a Tree beyond her comprehension, of bone-pale branches that wound around her, of hanging from those Branches in the Void of emptiness that surrounded Creation.

A strangled scream left her throat, her hand snatched away from the Veil as quick as if she had touched a hot stove. Her chest heaved, her fragile human mind struggling to comprehend the memory of her time between her death and her rebirth, where the Old Gods had plucked her soul from R'hllor's grasp, had gathered the ashes and breathed new life into her, placing that spark into this new body as They spun a new string into her tapestry of Fate.

Sansa swallowed, a sudden thought striking her. She looked down at the Veil, at the tattered black fabric then, very carefully, she reached up to the archway, to a particularly rough jut of stone, and dragged her finger roughly against it.

Surprisingly, there was no pain, even as blood welled up on the pad of her finger. Taking a deep breath, Sansa let the blood drip onto the Veil.

It happened in an instant.

Before her eyes, the tapestry appeared. Coloured threads spun out across the black fabric– it was a tapestry of telling the story of a life, her life. First in Westeros, then in the time InBetween (she shuddered and turned her eyes aside from the immense, many-limbed Tree that held within its Branches all of Time and the Worlds), and then on Earth. With reverent eyes, she traced her journey, her path, her Fate, following the thread until she reached where it ended at an archway that led to two diverging pathways, the tapestry beyond those pathways unfinished.

Looking at the tapestry, gazing down at herself depicted in the hospital bed, surrounded by her family, then at where her thread of Fate ended under the archway, Sansa finally understood.

She was dying. Or nearly dead. And she was being offered a choice between two Paths.

Stepping through the archway, passing under the Veil, would take her to Rickon, to her family who had passed on. It would mean death.

Or she could wait here instead, with Lady.

For all her grief, for all her love for the Starks who had loved her and who she had loved so dearly in return and lost in a brutal manner that haunted her still, there really was no question about what her choice would be.

Sansa looked one more time at the tapestry before stepping away from the archway, away from the Veil, and moving to the edge of the dais where she sat down to wait, smiling as Lady came to sit down beside her, the wolf letting out a pleased-sounding wuff and leaning against her.

"Thank you," Sansa whispered and Lady gave a comforting rumbling sound, leaning to rest her chin over Sansa's head.

And so they waited.

::

"Well," Minerva said, surprised at Marigold's sudden, bold declaration of her desire to seize custody of Severus. She was also impressed yet again by this fierce-willed muggle woman, ready to take on a witch for the happiness and well-being of a child she loved. "It will be both easier and more difficult then I suspect you realise," she told Marigold. "Before she married Tobias Snape, Eileen Snape was Irene Augusta Prince, daughter of the now-deceased Saloninus Augustus Prince, who was the third son of Sallustius Augustus Prince, the brother of the patriarch of one of the oldest Roman wizarding families, largely now based across Italy. Yes, it is exactly as presumptuous as it all sounds," she added dryly, seeing Marigold's expression.

After learning of Severus Snape's existence, she had investigated. It had taken a favour from Amelia Bones to get access to the necessary records, they were buried so deeply, hidden so well. Once she found them, Minerva was unsurprised why finding them had been so difficult.

"Irene Augusta was rather unceremoniously disowned from the very prestigious Prince family when she chose to marry a muggle. It was an enormous scandal in Britain at the time; having a daughter of the Prince family attend Hogwarts was considered quite an opportunity as the family's line can be traced back to the sorcerer brothers, Romulus and Remus themselves– and then, Irene Augusta ran off with a muggle. I have nothing against people who have no magic," Minerva assured Marigold, seeing the pinched look on the other woman's face, "but to some in our number, it would be considered similar to if British royalty decided to wed a foreign commoner afflicted with leprosy." Honestly, that was the kindest comparison she could think to make; poor young Severus was fortunate that the identity of Irene Augusta Prince's muggle was unknown, and that although the students at Hogwarts may suspect, judging from his name, they would not be able to confirm he was Irene Augusta Prince's son with her muggle husband. Minerva did not even wish to contemplate what sort of an example would be made of Eileen, Tobias and Severus Snape if the extremists currently growing in power managed to get their hands on the family. Eileen Snape had made many, many mistakes in her life, but she had hidden herself and her family away well.

"Sallustius managed to keep it fairly hushed up over in Magical Rome," she told Marigold. "Frankly, to Sallustius, Eileen Snape is an embarrassment to his entire line he'd rather be forgotten entirely. She's kept hidden away in England and Wales by an Unbreakable Vow, far from where she could be a public embarrassment to him. Unfortunately for Sallustius, young Severus has no Vow upon keeping him from Roman Magical Society and is living proof of the whole affair with the potential to bring it all back up again when Sallustius would prefer it forgotten.

"According to Roman Magical Law, as Severus's closest magical relative who has not been disowned from the family, Sallustius has the legal right over Eileen Snape to make decisions regarding young Severus's custody. And in return for Severus making a similar Vow to the one that Eileen once did, to never make a public spectacle over his identity as a Prince, Sallustius would undoubtedly be very willing to sign custody over to whomever Severus wishes. Normally," Minerva felt the need to add, "I would never condone twisting the law against a mother in such a way as to override her basic right to the custody of her own child, but as far as I am concerned Eileen Snape lost the right to call herself Severus's mother when she failed to remove Severus from that household the moment Tobias Snape laid a hand on that boy, on her son. It is only because I know full well that Britain's magical courts would never award custody of a magical child to a muggle family that I have suggested this path."

"Will you help us, Ms Minerva?" Marigold demanded fiercely. "If Severus agrees to make this- this Vow, agrees to let us take custody, will you help us find this Sallustius and get Severus away from that awful, terrible household? And– and even if he doesn't want to make the Vow, can you go to Britain's magical courts and get him out of that house anyway, to whichever magical household they find suitable?"

"I don't care what household they might find suitable," a young boy's croaky voice interrupted. Minerva almost had to bite back a smile as a very determined dark-haired little boy limped around the corner on his crutches, flanked by a red-haired little girl and a taller, older girl, a young woman almost, with long, loose blonde curls. "I don't care about what they think, and I don't care about this Prince family or whatever stupid Vow they want me to make," the boy, Severus Snape, said firmly. "All I care about, all I want, is to be your son."

"Oh Severus," Marigold's voice cracked as she rushed over to the trio, almost crashing to her knees as she pulled Severus into a careful hug, her two daughters joining in. "You already are."

It was then, with almost serendipitous timing, that Poppy exited the hospital room, a weary but pleased look on her face.

"Young Miss Violet is now in a natural sleep," she announced. "She will wake once her body is rested."

Minerva had to admit, that in the wake of that announcement, there was not one dry eye in the hospital corridor.

Chapter 23: Chapter 23

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:

“And do you remember anything after he hit you, Miss Evans?”

“I’m sorry,” Sansa said softly, peeking up under wet eyelashes at the man dressed in his neatly pressed uniform, holding a small notebook in his hand. A single tear rolled down her wan, hollow cheek. “All I remember is the–theblood– there wasso much blood.” Her voice cracked pitifully, and her small, thin hands trembled as she brushed her hair back, offering him a brief glimpse of the brutal violence that had left her face swollen and bruised even a week after the assault.

The policeman looked down at the pitiful smokescreen she had created for him, one of a traumatised little girl curled up in her hand-embroidered quilt, her frail, abused body propped up by pillows in the hospital bed, and Sansa could see the sincere sympathy on his clean-shaven face. She watched from beneath her tear-soaked eyelashes, hands trembling ever so slightly, just enough for the sharp eyes of the investigator to pick up on, and watched the inevitable conclusion write itself across his face.

It was almost too easy. After all, she was the victim, was she not? The bruised, battered child who had been in a coma, unconscious for days on end in a hospital bed. Tobias Snape had clearly fled when he heard his son calling the police; the man was known to be a violent drunkard, and he would know just how much time he would spend in prison once the police arrested him for assaulting an innocent little girl.It wouldn’t even cross the policeman’s mind that the delicate child in the bed before him had made the cool, calculated decision to crush the throat of her brother’s abuser under her heel and look him in the eye as he suffocated to death.

“I’m sure that Tobias Snape will be found soon,” the policeman told her, in a reassuring manner. “And when he is found, he’ll be spending a very long time in prison.”

No, he wouldn’t have, Sansa thought to herself, even as she gave the policeman a wobbly smile. Sansa knew that Eileen would have ensured that everyone involved in the incident forgot Tobias Snape’s actions and the vile man would have been free to continue abusing Severus. Sansa did not doubt for even a single moment that she had made the correct decision to save her brother from further suffering– and while she hadn’t been able to feed Tobias to a pack of starving hounds, having him die choking beneath the foot of one of the witches he feared so much still tasted of the sweet, sharp bite of justice.

Sansa waited for the policeman to leave the hospital room she was confined to before blinking away the tears clinging to her eyelashes and shifting up in the bed, her shoulders straightening from their previously cowed position.

That policeman wasn’t the first person who had asked her about the events at the Snape house since she had woken up in the hospital bed, surrounded by her family and, much to her surprise, two adult witches; one she had recognised as Professor McGonagall, and the other, a matronly woman in deep burgundy robes with a white apron, quite unfamiliar to Sansa.

Sansa had remembered Petunia’s hastily whispered instructions even in the fog of pain that muddled her last memories prior to her loss of consciousness, so she had feigned ignorance to anything following the initial head injury. It was her father who had filled her in on the events as he believed them to have unfolded, telling her how Tobias Snape had fled the house after Severus managed to get to the landline and dialthe police.

Considering how battered she and Severus had been, not a single person had expressed any doubt of their story. Certainly Sansa’s parents were oscillating between deathly furious at Tobias and desperately grateful for the assistance of the two witches. Sansa knew how close she had been to death, tangled as she was in the Veil, yet it had been a more abstract idea while she existed in that space between life and death. In the face of the grief and fear and relief of her loved ones, however, it had become very, very real.

Madam Pomfrey, the witch in burgundy robes who was apparently the medi-witch who worked at Hogwarts and was responsible for healing Sansa, had reassured both Sansa and her parents that she would be fine, that any additional symptoms she experienced from this point was simply a result of the imbalance of magic in her body finding its equilibrium once more.

Sansa was surprised to see how her parents immediately and unquestioningly trusted in Madam Pomfrey’s diagnosis. She supposed Madam Pomfrey having accurately diagnosed and treated Sansa when the doctors at the hospital had been resigned to palliating her had gone a long way towards reassuring them of her skill and competence.

Professor McGonagall, the other witch who had been waiting in her hospital room when Sansa woke, had apologised most sincerely to both Sansa and her parents for not explaining the risks involved in accidental magic. Professor McGonagall had explained to them that most muggleborn children did not have the understanding and connection to their magic that it was considered a risk that they would channel it without a focus as Sansa had.

Sansa had sincerely thanked Professor McGonagall and Madam Pomfrey before the witches departed, Madam Pomfrey leaving her parents with strict instructions for Sansa’s recovery. Once they had left, Lily, Petunia, and Severus in his casts all piled onto her hospital bed to smother her in greedy, grasping hugs, as if they needed the reassurance that she was there, that she was alive. Sansa held them just as tightly, her parents sitting on either side of the bed, joining the pile of cuddling children on the bed.

Surrounded by her family, Sansa had closed her eyes and committed the moment to her memory, letting the warmth melt the cold grief in her soul as she thought of her lost Stark kin, and her decision to turn back from them.

She did not regret her choice.

That did not mean she was not grieving wounds torn open anew.

The next few hours were a blur of doctors and medical scans and then the interview withpoliceman who had just left the hospital room.

Sansa barely had to wait a moment after he left before her siblings all rushed back into the room. “Mum and dad are talking to the doctor,” Lily explained as she slid under the quilt next to Sansa, Petunia helping Severus climb onto the bed on Sansa’s other side with his bulky casts before she sat at the end of the bed.

“Madam Pomfrey couldn’t heal you?” Sansa asked, frowning slightly at Severus as she took in the casts. He shook his head.

“She’s already healed them,” he explained. “I just have to keep the casts on until we leave the hospital. So there’s no questions.”

“Makes sense,” Sansa murmured.

“So,” Lily said hesitantly, after a moment where they all sat there silently. “Are we going to talk about it?”

It was Severus who spoke first.

“The first time I ever remember using accidental magic,” he said, speaking very, very softly, his dark eyes unable to meet any of theirs, “I was five years old. I made something explode– my father’s beer bottle, I think. He broke five of my ribs, my jaw, and my nose. Mum wouldn’t take me to St Mungo’s to be healed, she was too afraid of the questions they would ask. She took me to a muggle hospital instead and once I’d been treated, she erased the memories of everyone involved and took me back to that house with a wired jaw, taped nose, and bandaged ribs. I couldn’t even breathe without pain for almost two months.”

“Oh Sev,” Lily said, her eyes filling with tears. Even Petunia’s perfect mask had cracked, exposing how sickened and furious she was.

“I’m not sorry,” Sansa told them, blunt yet honest. “I am sorry I had to involve you all, and I am sorry you had to witness it, but I’m not sorry I did it.”

“How about we don’t discuss this in a rather public space where anyone could walk in at any time?” Petunia suggested dryly, even as she reached out to give Sansa’s hand a squeeze. “Though before you panic too much, I agree with the end result, just the lack of forethought and planning beforehand.”

“…are you saying that you’re not upset that she,you know,” Severus said, voice hushed and eyes wide with how bewildered he seemed, “you’re just upset it was a spur of the moment decision, not premeditated?”

“It was messy,” Petunia complained. “My manicure was barely two days old, you realise, and it was entirely ruined!”

Severus, Lily and Sansa all traded looks, before they burst into laughter. If their laughter was slightly hysterical, well, nobody could blame them considering the circ*mstances.

Petunia rolled her eyes playfully, but even her mouth twitched into a smile and when Sansa’s eyes met Petunia’s pale blue, Petunia winked at her and Sansa felt a swell of affection for the older sister who was always her protector, this time saving her from a conversation she was not ready to have.

And hearing Severus’ fervent whispered, “thank you,” Sansa felt a lightness settle over her.

There would be further discussion about the fate of Tobias Snape and the role they had all played in it, Sansa knew. But for now she felt her heart eased by the acceptance of those she loved most.

::

Sansa only had to stay in the hospital for three more days before the bewildered staff discharged her with warnings to see a doctor immediately in the case of any illness. Sansa was not concerned; Madam Pomfrey had already given her a clean bill of health, even if she had also prescribed bed rest for at least a week.

It was during her first night back home at the Evans house that Sansa learned of the plot between Professor McGonagall and her parents to take away custody of Severus from Eileen. It was a neat little plot, made even neater by Eileen’s current absence– nobody had seen her since Severus and Sansa had been admitted to the hospital.

Sansa would admit it made her nervous, not knowing what Eileen was doing, however she was careful not to let that show. She knew that Severus did love his mother, deep down, and Sansa didn’t want to hurt him by suggesting Eileen might resort to violence against Sansa for her part in the narrative of Tobias “running off so he wouldn’t get arrested”, as the official story went.

The first night home and in her own bed at last, Sansa wasn’t surprised when her siblings all gathered in the twins’ shared bedroom after their parents had fallen asleep.

“I suppose now is the time for that conversation,” she said, resigned.

As someone who had once held the power to order an execution with but a single word, it was difficult for her to fully place herself in the position of her siblings. While to Sansa her actions seemed the logical, inevitable conclusion, for Lily and Petunia, and Severus too even, her actions must seem extreme, illogical, and even frightening. Death was a more abstract concept to them, not a daily reality, and the morals of Westeros, the morals that had raised and shaped Lady Sansa Stark, were not the morals of this world, not in Britain in the current day and age that Violet Hope Evans was born into.

“To be honest, it doesn’t really feel real,” Lily admitted, reaching out to tangle her fingers with Sansa’s, as if in reassurance that Lily was not rejecting her. “I mean… the idea that we could dothatis just… and I think we’re going to get away with it?”

“We will,” Petunia said sharply, her pale blue eyes sweeping sternly over the three of them, “as long as we do not tell anyone, ever, or speak about it outside of the four of us. Understand?”

“I do,” Sansa assured her, as Severus and Lily nodded their agreement.

“Let’s properly swear it,” Lily suggested, glancing around the room before retrieving one of Sansa’s sewing needles from her bedside table where she had been embroidering a handkerchief for Primrose. “Let’s make a proper blood oath, between the four of us.” She punctuated this by sharply prodding the tip of her right pointer finger with the sharp needle, drawing a bead of bright crimson blood.

“Is this a witch thing or a hippy thing?” Petunia asked suspiciously.

“A bit of both, I think,” Severus said, but he still reached out gamely to take the needle from Lily and jab the tip of one of his fingers hard enough that it started to bleed, before holding it out to Sansa, who Lily had turned her hopeful eyes towards.

Sansa was very aware of the power in blood, especially the blood of Kings such as that which ran in her veins, and the thought of spilling her blood to swear an oath made her uneasy. At the same time, however, she could acknowledge that there were none that she’d trust more with her blood than the three children she sat with. With this in mind, Sansa accepted the needle and used its sharp point to prick her fingertip and watched the blood well up, a bold splash of colour against her pale skin. Petunia made a huffy sound before accepting the needle and doing the same, making a face at the flare of pain.

Sansa could feel a shiver in her bones as she clasped hands with Lily, Petunia and Severus clasping over hers, so they were all joined, their blood smeared and mixing between their fingers. “Okay,” Lily said determinedly, “now we have to swear that we’ll never speak of Tobias Snape’s fate to anyone other than the four of us here.”

“I swear it,” Severus said solemnly.

“I swear it,” Sansa and Petunia echoed.

“I swear it,” Lily finished.

There was a weight to their words, and even Petunia had lost her scepticism as Sansa could swear the air around them shivered.

“Thrice sworn, thrice bound,” Severus murmured, and Sansa felt her fingertip suddenly burn. Judging by the yelps from the others, they’d felt the burn too. When Sansa pulled her hand back, it was to see dustings of ash on her skin where before there was blood, and her fingertip was fully healed of its small wound.

“Well– I suppose that’s that,” Petunia said, looking queasy and slightly shaken as she stared down at her ash-dusted hand.

And to Sansa’s surprise, it really did seem as if that was that. The questions and accusations she had been waiting for were never voiced from those she’d dragged into the crime she had committed, a crime so alien to these children, in this world.

As if she could read Sansa’s mind, or more likely read the mix of confusion and apprehension on her face, Petunia’s expression softened, and Sansa’s sister reached out to tuck a strand of Sansa’s hand behind her ear. “Lety,” she said, voice uncharacteristically soft, “we spent the better part of a week thinking you would die. The only emotion I feel right now is sheer relief that you’re alive.”

“I love you,” Sansa told her sister through a throat that felt too thick for her to swallow. “I love you all. I never want to leave you.”

“As if we’d let you,” Lily huffed, wrapping both her arms around Sansa. “We’re all sleeping here tonight–yes, you too, Sev. It’s not improper anymore, you’re our brother– we’ve sworn a proper blood oath between us and everything now. Blood of the covenant is thicker than water of the womb, and all that.”

Severus rolled his eyes at Lily, but tellingly he didn’t argue before getting under the duvet. Petunia had grown too much to comfortably fit on a single bed with three eleven-year-olds, but instead of returning to her room, she took Lily’s bed across from Sansa’s for the night, and Sansa fell asleep surrounded by her kin.

::

Sansa didn’t waste her time in the following weeks that Professor McGonagall had advised Marigold she would require to arrange the journey to Rome and schedule a time to meet Sallustius Prince, Severus’ great-grandfather and current paterfamilias. Instead, with her parents bundling her up on the sofa or in her bed at every opportunity, Sansa bent over her sewing with a single-minded focus. Perhaps not ideal for her recovery, but she hadn’t wanted to waste a moment.

Sansa used the best fabric she had at her disposal, cutting up the formal suits that had once belonged to Primrose’s deceased husband, Sansa’s maternal grandfather. The suits had been gathering dust in the attic where they’d been stored away, so after checking in with Primrose, Sansa harvested from them strips of crushed velvet, silk trimmings and polished silver buttons, in addition to sending Lily and Petunia out with her birthday money to purchase rolls of linen, cotton-wool blend, and spools of embroidery thread.

The end result of her hard work was a crisp white tunic that fell to mid-calf and was layered with a shorter, heavier ash-grey tunic that reached mid-thigh– adalmatica, according to the book Professor McGonagall had sent her of Magical Roman fashions when Sansa had written to her inquiring. Sansa had them embroidered the dalmatica with snarling black and silver wolves facing each other over the chest and a pattern of silver daggers on the hems.

Black cotton pants completed the look, tucked into a pair of black leather boots that Sansa had requested Petunia source from one of her “friends” for the occasion. Petunia, of course, had not let her down. The final touch was a cloak; black and lined with silk trimmings and a black velvet collar, fastened with fine, polished silver buttons and ornately embroidered over the back and shoulders with a pack of four wolves; all howling, snarling, and poised to fight and all stitched with silver-grey thread. Each wolf had different coloured glittering beads for the eyes; vivid green, sky blue, glittering onyx and deep blue. Winding around the necks and the paws of the wolves were vines of lilies, petunias, black hollyhock and violets, and each wolf was crowned by a wreath of marigolds and sweet william in shades of red, orange, bronze and gold.

When she finally presented the clothing to Severus, the day before he was to set off to Rome to confront his paterfamilias, he looked stunned beyond words, as did the rest of her family. Even Petunia, who had a better understanding then the rest of Sansa’s skill with a needle and thread, appeared to be taken aback.

“I– I– this is– Lety, this is– I’m not– this is–royaltycould wear this!” Severus stammered.

He wasn’t wrong– Sansa had sewn clothes for royalty before, clothes that the royals had worn, herself included, though she hadn’t put nearly as much of her heart and soul into those that she had put into Severus’s.

“You are part of the Prince bloodline,” she told him primly. “It’s only right that you present yourself as a prince.”

“Violet, love… this isbreathtaking,” Marigold breathed, running her fingers delicately over the wreathes crowning the wolves, blinking away the sheen of tears glittering in her soft blue eyes. “This sort of work would cost a fortune.”

“I’m not worth this,” Severus said, sounding lost. Petunia scoffed loudly before Sansa had the chance to respond.

“Of course you are!” She snapped. “You’re anEvans, and you are going to show those backwards, stick up their arses, racist pricks exactly what an Evans is worth, magic or not!”

Petunia’s words visibly steeled Severus, a look of ferocious determination settling over his face.

“I won’t let you down,” he promised her.

“I know you won’t,” Petunia said, all prim and proper in a way that didn’t at all match her fierce smile, reminding Sansa as it did of a wolf showing off its fangs before it devoured its kill.

Pride and joy both warmed Sansa as she gazed upon her family; at her parents, Marigold leaning into William who had his arm tucked around her, both so in love; at Lily, with her tangled hair, rainbow painted nails and flowing tie-dyed dress, bold and defiant; at Petunia, so poised and proper with a soul as vicious and protective as a she-wolf; at Severus, who was afraid yet so determined and brave, a survivor who was prepared to fight against the odds for his freedom with sheer grit and courage and steel spine and wit.

She loved them. She loved this family,her family. The Evanses werehers, they were wonderful, they had accepted every shattered, splintered piece of her left after her suffering in Westeros, had held her tight to their hearts even as her broken edges cut them and made them bleed, and with their love they had slowly healed her until Sansa could finally breathe without it cutting raw in her chest. Until each heartbeat no longer felt heavy and aching. Until she no longer felt a bitter, lingering disappointment each time she opened her eyes in the morning.

Sansa loved them with all the fierce, bloody, vicious possessiveness of a direwolf whose pack had once been torn from her and brutally massacred– and she loved them, too, with the tender heart of a little girl who had always dreamed of handsome princes and brave knights and happy endings. This family, Sansa knew, was her happy ending.

She would doanythingfor them.

She would doeverythingfor them.

She wasSansa Stark of Winterfell, and she wasViolet Hope Evans– she was Queen of the Dawn and a Twiceborn Soul; she was God-Touched and Fate-Spun; she had stood under the Veil of Death and hung from the Tree of the Worlds; within her, she contained the soul of a Wolf and the blood of Winter. Nobody, not even this old, powerful wizard lord, the head of an established magical noble family, could stop her.

Sansa Dreamed that night; she Dreamed of bronze eagles that soared on glorious wings, leading armies into battle; of two men, two sorcerers, raised by a wolf of pale grey and white coat and gleaming gold eyes; of a city built upon seven hills with seven kings who were overthrown by the people they ruled.

She flew alongside the eagles, walked amidst the soldiers, stood beside the kings as they fell, and finally stopped before the wolf; time moved oddly around her, as if years and centuries passed with every step. As she approached the she-wolf under which two toddlers suckled, her eyes met familiar warm sunshine-gold, and Sansa’s breath caught in her throat as she desperatelyreached out toLady–

Sansa woke with a gasp, her eyes flying open to stare at the ceiling of her and Lily’s bedroom. It took time for her to try and make sense of the dream, her head pounding in exhaustion. She found herself reaching to rub at her aching arms and when she glanced down, for a moment she could see blackened bruises winding up her forearms, disappearing past her elbows under the fabric of her nightdress. She blinked and the bruises were gone but Sansa couldn’t help her shudder, forcibly pushing away the threatening memories of pale branches.

She knew she wouldn’t sleep again that night, and looked over at the clock, visible from the pale moonlight peeking through the gap in the curtains. It was barely three in the morning, yet Lily’s bed was empty– Sansa’s twin was with Severus in his room, she guessed, as anxious as the rest of them about the events of the day ahead. Lily’s absence meant there was nothing stopping her from turning on her bedside lamp and taking out her sewing basket to put together the final touches for her own dress.

Severus really ought to have known better then to think that she’d let him go off to Rome without her.

Chapter 24: Chapter 24

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR:

The morning that Professor McGonagall had arranged to escort Severus to Rome to confront his paterfamilias, Sallustius Prince, Sansa donned a dress of pale blue with a delicately embroidered pattern of snowflakes across the bodice arranged to in an outline of decorative roses. The skirt of her dress fell to her mid-calf, as was the appropriate length for a girl too young to marry. Under the dress she wore opaque white tights, and a pair of Petunia’s old Mary Janes coloured a light beige with shiny silver buckles. She also left her hair down, as was proper for a young lady of unmarriageable age, with the exception of two braids that twisted around the crown of her head in a simple northern style that she secured in place with hidden pins and pale blue ribbons stitched with simple little wolves, silver against the blue.

Having donned her armour and feeling assured that she had met the standards of propriety per the more antiquated fashions of the magical world, which were much more akin to the styles and societal rules that had been necessary for her to defer to in Westeros, Sansa met an anxiously pacing Severus in the living room. His dark hair was tied back in a low ponytail and he was dressed in the clothes she had tailored for him. She was pleased to see he looked as fine as Robb ever had at a formal feast, even if the layered tunic style favoured by Roman wizards was markedly different from the Northern, Vale, or Crownlands fashions she was more familiar with.

Sansa could see the brief flicker of confusion in Severus’ dark eyes as he took in her appearance before a spark of understanding lit in them.

“Violet,” he immediately began to protest, as she knew he would, “you can’t come– what if it’s dangerous?”

“Professor McGonagall will be accompanying us the entire trip,” Sansa said firmly, “and if we are asking your paterfamilias to sign over custody rights to mother and father, it will look better for you to have a representative of our family at your side. Mother and father wouldn’t be suitable, not without magic– and the same goes for Petunia, though she would otherwise be well suited for the role. And Lily… well, Lily is Lily.”

“Lily wouldn’t turn the cheek to any insults given to Marigold or William, or me, or herself,” Severus agreed, because Lily was many things, but neither subtlety, nor clever wordplay or tolerance of perceived injustice were among them. “But Violet–”

“’But’ nothing,” Sansa told him firmly. “I will be joining you. I’ve already spoken to mother and father, and they’ve agreed.”

Marigold and William hadn’t liked the idea of Sansa going to Rome anymore then Severus did, but they had both agreed with her reasoning, and they did trust Professor McGonagall to keep her and Severus safe.

Sansa could see the badly hidden relief paint itself across Severus’ face as he realised there was no changing her mind at this point, even as the apprehension lingered.

“Lety,” he whispered, his hands clenched in fists at his side so tight that she could see the stark white of his knuckles, “Lety, what if he says no?”

Then I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow his house down, Sansa thought grimly to herself.

“He won’t,” she told Severus aloud, with a steady, unshakable confidence that she could see visibly settle her sworn brother.

It was a lesson she had learned from her Lady Mother, the importance of projecting calmness and confidence, especially in situations where she felt anything but. Never let the people see you afraid, Lady Catelyn had told her; if they see that their liege is afraid, then they too will be afraid. If they see that you are calm and controlled, however, so too will they be.

Sansa would not let Severus see her flinch, not in this matter, and she could see how he straightened slightly in place, his shoulders easing at the sight of her mask of easy confidence.

When Professor McGonagall arrived, she looked a little startled to see Sansa joining them. Marigold was certainly not happy about it still, her lips pressed in a thin, tight line, but she said nothing in protest– Sansa’s parents were just as unwilling as she was to allow Severus to face his distant kin alone, and her parents recognised that Sansa was the best choice to accompany him, however much they disliked having to send two of their children into an unknown, potentially dangerous situation.

“I don’t anticipate there to be any trouble,” Professor McGonagall told them all, as they gathered in the living room. Professor McGonagall had pulled what looked like a copper kettle from her pocket, a feat that had them all blinking slightly at the casual display of magic. She’d then placed the kettle on the coffee table, where Marigold eyed it as if it was about to grow fangs and attack them all. “However, I do need your word, Miss Evans and Mister Evans, that you will follow closely and obey any instructions I give, once we have arrived in Rome.”

“You have our word,” Sansa agreed easily, Severus nodding beside her, cheeks pinkening at being referred to as ‘Mister Evans’. Sansa certainly had no intention of placing herself in danger during this trip, and she knew Severus had a healthy instinct for self-preservation. Professor McGonagall smiled. It was a small smile, but a true one, and it softened her strict features.

“I’m pleased to hear it,” she said warmly. “Now, if you could both please touch the kettle, the portkey will activate shortly.”

“What is a portkey?” Marigold asked nervously, her hands twitching at her sides as if she was fighting the urge to seize Sansa and Severus and prevent them from going near the kettle, which she now eyed as if it was about to grow scales and claws and breathe fire.

“A portkey is an enchanted object that allows wixen– that is, witches and wizards– to travel long distances, such as to another country,” Professor McGonagall explained. “It’s very safe, albeit a tad uncomfortable, especially for those who aren’t accustomed to using them. You both may feel some nausea when we arrive,” she warned Sansa and Severus, “but it will pass quickly.”

Sansa hesitantly reached out to rest her fingertips against the kettle, Severus doing the same beside her. Professor McGonagall also touched the kettle with one hand, while she pulled her wand from her pocket with the other and tapped her wand sharply against the kettle. “Portus,” she said crisply.

And Sansa–

–fell.

The world blurred around her, blending into a spiral of colour and light. Out of the corners of her watering eyes, she could see familiar pale white branches stretch, and she wanted to scream–

–and then she found herself with her feet planted on solid ground once again, the world solid and tangible around her and under her feet once more.

(Beneath her eyelids, she could still see flashes of that unfathomable void of tangled, stretching white branches)

Sansa felt her stomach lurch and barely managed to swallow down the urge to vomit. Beside her, Severus looked as peaky as Sansa felt, though he too managed to avoid losing his breakfast.

Professor McGonagall appeared entirely unruffled by the experience though she gave them both a sympathetic look as she straightened her robes slightly before gesturing around. “Welcome,” she said, “to the Occultum, the largest magical district of Rome.”

Sansa had no issue with admitting that what she could see of the Occultum so far was quite lovely. She, Severus, and Professor McGonagall had arrived in what appeared to be the town square before a tall marble fountain decorated with an elegant statue depicting two eagles in flight over a model of the city of Rome. The marble eagles, each with wingspans of over twenty feet, flew freely above the fountain, held in the air by what Sansa had to assume was magic, each individually carved marble feather of their wings gilded with bronze. Surrounding the fountain were cobbled stone pathways which led to buildings, the architecture of which was clearly designed with the intention to impress with its arches, domes, and vaults lending to the air of grandiosity.

Sansa took a moment to breathe in the air and appreciate the history that surrounded her. From her research into the history of this new world she knew that the Roman Empire had controlled the destiny of all civilization known to Europe for well over a millennium before it had fallen into dissolution and disrepair, its economy paralysed and military made impotent by the late Middle Ages. As the direct descendant of a line of Kings and Queens that could trace their lineage back eight millennium, Sansa supposed a single millennium failed to compare to the history of the Kings and Queens of the North, yet there was a… pride to the Occultum she supposed, and she felt a certain sense of familiarity to the city around her.

The Occultum reminded her of Kings Landing, she realised quite suddenly; Kings Landing was a young city when compared to the ruling seats of the Great Houses across the Seven Kingdoms and many of the holdings of the noble Houses they presided over, yet it still holding a certain sense of dignity and prestige for the history it told. Sansa certainly wouldn’t deny that she had found Kings Landing to be a cesspit of filth and rot behind all its glitter and gilded wealth, yet all the same, there was something… monumental about the city she had once called her prison. Something powerful for all its youth, which was echoed in her memories by the sight of the Occultum. For all the few scant centuries it had existed, Kings Landing was the birthplace of such significant, critical events in history, such horrific yet remarkable change, just the same as Rome.

Standing in the Occultum, Sansa observed how the streets around her bustled with men and women dressed in similar fashions to how she had dressed Severus, albeit in brighter colours then Sansa had been expecting. While British fashion for men amongst non-magicals consisted largely of conventional solid block colours and neutral tones, such as creams, tans, navy blues and charcoals, with perhaps a splash of colour added by a tie, the wizards in Rome appeared to dress closer to Sansa’s expectations of Westeros. Around her, she could see men and women favouring bright, exotic colours with daring contrasts and patterns.

In Westeros, the quality and variety of the fabrics and dyes of clothing often reflected one’s wealth, social status, noble House, and even their alliegances. Sansa was uncertain if this was true of the magical world, yet found there was a part of her that both tensed and relaxed at the familiarity, She was relieved too that she had taken such care and effort with Severus’s clothing to meet his paterfamilias.

“Well, no time to waste,” Professor McGonagall said briskly, after giving Sansa and Severus a few minutes to take in the sight before them. “We’re expected shortly.”

Severus paled at that, and Sansa reached out to give his hand a quick squeeze. “Together,” she promised, and he took a deep breath, before nodding back.

“Always,” he agreed.

::

Minerva hadto hide the small smile on her face at the whispered promise her temporaty charges had shared as she led them to the Occultum’s public floos, keeping her face turned away to give the poor, nervous young Severus some privacy.

It was an unlikely friendship, that of a boy descended from the ancient Prince bloodline, and a muggleborn girl that he had met and befriended by chance in a muggle neighborhood, yet the bond between them was unmistakable, and it warmed her heart even with how apprehensive she still felt about introducing muggleborns into wizarding society considering the current political climate.

There had been another terrorist attack the previous week, Minerva recalled with a heavy heart. The attack had targeted a member of the Wizengamot known to cast her vote in favour of laws supporting muggleborns and squibs. The witch, Catalina Mayhew, had barely managed to escape with her life, however her husband and infant son had not been so lucky, nor her house, which had been swallowed up by fiendfyre until little more than charred ash remained.

It was not the highest loss of life resulting from the Death Eater terrorist attacks, however it had been one of the most heart-wrenching yet considering the age and innocence of the youngest victim.

Explaining how the floo system worked to two curious children managed to distract Minerva from her more maudlin thoughts, and she watched carefully as her charges both disappeared in a flare of emerald flames, before stepping through after them.

The property owned by Sallustius Prince was ostentatious enough to have a private tower built for the floo separate from the main villa. Minerva found herself relieved that the children had dressed to impress considering the show of wealth, and she herself was certainly very impressed by the intricate embroidery she was certain was the work of Violet Evans herself. The girl truly had an astounding gift, and Minerva made note to direct the girl towards thread magic after she started at Hogwarts.

Leading the way out of the stand-alone tower, Minerva followed the paved pathway towards the villa’s grand entrance with its towering archway. The entire property was nothing short of a frightful, ostentatious show of wealth and power, she couldn’t help but judge. Beautiful, yes, but still rather overdone in her opinion as they passed a waterfall flanked by ancient marble statues, magnolia trees and box-tree hedges arranged in formal patterns enriching the terraced landscape.

Minerva had written to Sallustius Prince in proxy of young Severus shortly after the terrible incident that had almost cost young Violet her life and had seen young Severus badly beaten, in addition to the extensive history of abuse that Poppy had identified in her magical scans. Poppy had appeared shaken as she disclosed, with Severus’ permission, multiple fractures which had healed poorly due to a lack of medical care, organ damage from repeated blows, evidence of long-term malnutrition, and multiple poorly healed lacerations on his skull and arms from what appeared to be broken glass – young Severus had advised that his father frequently threw glass bottles of alcohol at him, and that he wasn’t always able to duck in time.

Poppy was furious, and determined to bring both Tobias Snape and Eileen – or Irene Augusta, whichever name she was going by now – on charges of child abuse, child endangerment, and potentially attempted murder, as the head wounds and broken ribs that young Severus had suffered could just as easily have killed him. Poppy was certain it was only Severus’s accidental magic that had seen him survive this long. Even before Poppy’s report, Minerva had been determined that Severus would not be returned to the custody of Eileen/Irene Augusta. Now her determination to convince Sallistius to sign over the rights to custody of young Severus had increased tenfold.

The reply Minerva had received from Sallustius after posting her letter to him had been short and to the point, advising her of a time and date to arrive for negotiations. She could only hope that the lack of questions or interest in Severus’s life and wellbeing in the letter was reflective of his lack of interest in acknowledging Severus as a child of his bloodline, and indicative of his willingness to sign away guardianship, even to a muggle.

As Minerva and her charges approached the stairs leading up to the villa’s entrance, the sharp sound of Violet Evans’ sudden inhale had her pausing, turning to look behind her to see what had startled her young charge.

It was a pair of wolves wandering towards them, wolves too large to be any breed but direwolves. Almost as large as a horse, with jagged teeth like daggers, and paws the size of dinner-plates, direwolves were known to be as vicious and protective guardians as they were rare. Honestly, this was just like the Malfoys with their rare albino peaco*cks, or the Parkinsons, and their orchard of golden apples, or even the Macmillans with their pair of griffins– the direwolves that Salliustius kept on his grounds were yet another display of the Prince family’s wealth and prestige, and likely intended to remind visitors of how the Prince family bloodline traced back to the sorcerer Romulus himself.

Minerva was about to tell the children to ignore the direwolves and continue on, confident that the pair would not outright attack, when young Violet suddenly let go of young Severus’ hand and darted off the path, and over to the closest direwolf.

Minerva felt her heart skip a beat in her chest, her wand sliding immediately into her hand as she prepared to defend Violet from a vicious mauling. Only instead, Minerva found herself watching, astounded, as both the direwolves crouched down on their front legs, lowering their heads almost as if they were bowing to Violet, who reached out without any hint of hesitation or fear to rest her palm flat on the head of the larger direwolf.

It was such an innately dominant act, gentle as Violet’s touch was, that Minerva’s heart skipped yet another beat, once again expecting the direwolf to react with violence. She was left waiting once more, however, as the direwolf only lowered its head further in supplication, and Violet’s hand moved to stroke along the side of its face, far too close to those overlarge teeth for Minerva’s comfort. The direwolf reacted with no aggression, however, instead it appeared to be trying to push its head into Violet’s hand, as if begging for more pats. The other, smaller direwolf let out a whine, trying to nose at young Violet’s free hand, and Violet Evans was practically glowing as she stroked both wolves, not hesitating to touch around their mouths or necks. The look of peace and contentment on her face in this moment was one that Minerva did not think she had ever seen the girl wear before. Even young Severus seemed surprised.

“How unusual,” an unfamiliar voice spoke in heavily accented English from behind her. Minerva turned sharply to see a tall man with fine grey hair pulled back in a low braid, sharp cheekbones, and a severe, Romanesque nose standing a few feet behind her. The wizard was observing Violet with familiar-looking dark eyes to any who had met young Severus before, his head tilted slightly as if curious.

“Sallustius Prince, I presume?” Minerva asked politely, refusing to be intimidated even as her heart was still beating far too rapidly for her health the longer Violet stayed within jaw-reach of the direwolves.

“And you must be Professor Minerva McGonagall, and this is Irene Augusta’s child,” Sallustius confirmed, those dark eyes moving away from Violet and the direwolves to stare down at Severus instead. Minerva found she struggled to read anything in his expression, though she was proud to see Severus remain tall and unflinching despite the heavy stare. “I cannot say that I recognise my third guest, however,” Sallustius noted, after a long, uncomfortable moment where he appeared to examine young Severus.

It appeared that young Violet had heard him, even preoccupied as she was by the direwolves, and she stroked the kneeling direwolves a final time, her fingertips lingering briefly on the fur over their necks, a barely hidden grief on her face, before she returned to where the rest of them stood.

“Well met,” she greeted Sallustius, dipping into one of the most graceful curtsies that Minerva had ever seen, and she had taught a lot of purebloods over the years. Violet’s expression was polite, courteous, and almost demure as she looked up at Sallustius from under her eyelashes, the very image of a doe-eyed ingénue. “I am Violet Evans, sworn sister by oath of Severus.”

“Well met,” Sallustius returned the formal greeting, one of his eyebrows ticking up slightly as if curious. “I see you have already acquainted yourself with my Diana and Mars.” He gestured briefly over to the two direwolves, both who appeared to be watching the exchange.

“They are truly wonderous creatures,” Violet said, unflinching under the heavy regard of the much older, more powerful wizard. Minerva couldn’t help but take note of the body language of Sallustius and Violet, of how they stood and presented themselves, and it dawned on her, quite suddenly, what it was that had caught her attention– Violet stood and spoke to Sallustius spoke as if they were equals, as if Sallustius’ wealth and influence and bloodline prestige didn’t automatically assign him as the superior. For all that she feigned demureness, there was no mistaking that Violet Evans did not hold herself in supplication before the older wizard, nor did it appear as if this was intentional on her behalf, simply a natural thing for her to do, to don that mantle of authority and prestige.

“Named for the goddess of the hunt and the god of war?” Violet continued, voice lilting in query.

Sallustius almost smiled. “Indeed,” he agreed. “They are living symbols of the proud heritage of the Prince bloodline and our most well-known ancestor, the sorcerer Romulus himself, and have proven to be fierce guardians of my lands… usually. I must admit that before today I have never seen them behave in such a manner to a stranger on my lands.” Violet was spared needing to answer or give any explanation by Sallustius waving a careless hand through the air. “Curiosities aside,” he said, “I believe you have a request for me and my time is precious, so let us get this sorted before my meeting at the Ministry of Magic with the Minister of Finance.”

And it was with those encouraging words that Sallustius turned and strode towards the villa entrance, fully expecting them to follow. Minerva disliked his attitude and presumption, however in this case, all she could do was chivvy along the children after the man as he led the way into the villa and hope for the best.

::

Chapter 25: Chapter 25

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE:

Walking through the opulent halls of the Prince villa, Sansa knew most would feel out of place amidst the wealth and richness of the architecture, furniture and decorative objects around them; accompanying her, she could see the discomfort lining the faces and stiffening the postures of her two companions, and Severus’s grip on her hand had tightened considerably. Sansa, however, was not ‘most people’. She was muggleborn Violet Hope Evans from a working-class family, yes, but she was also Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell, eldest daughter of a line of Kings eight thousand years long.

This opulent, grandiose display did not phase Sansa, it did not give her pause or make her feel small and out of place, for it was nothing she had not seen before, nothing she had not lived before. She felt no admiration for the gilded halls, only a vague contempt as Violet Hope Evans settled further into her mind while Lady Sansa Stark swept gracefully forth, old lessons and instincts guiding her movements as they passed tapestries, intricately carved cabinets, gilded consoles, dripping chandeliers, sweeping frescoes and elaborate marble pediments inlaid with the Prince family’s coat of arms until they reached a room that reminded Sansa of a Lord’s solar, rich in lavish gilt work with a large, frescoed vaulted ceiling, and a grand desk carved of dark wood and gilded with gold.

Sallustius Prince seated himself at the desk, pointedly leaving the rest of them to stand in a petty if effective power play– Sansa would know, she’d utilised the same strategy herself in Westeros. Sansa would be more annoyed at the man’s presumption of superiority if not for the memory of familiar fur against her skin, a sense memory that had never faded, even when Lady was long gone.

Sansa missed Lady– she didn’t think she’d ever stop missing her. The loss of her beloved companion felt akin to a tear in her very soul, a tear that had yet to heal even as her soul had been spun anew by the Old Gods. Having seen a living direwolf for the first time in over a decade, Sansa found her heart aching anew with Lady’s loss. Her beloved wolf had saved her, protected her– it was all she had ever done. Her death, her execution, was an unimaginable injustice that had torn apart Sansa’s very soul. Yet those direwolves ‘owned’ by the Prince family had still recognised her as a Stark, had recognised the ancient oaths woven into her soul, despite this new body. And Sansa had not been able to resist approaching them the moment she had felt that pull in her chest, that instinctive connection that drew them together.

Yet now was not the time to marvel over the fact that direwolves lived and breathed in this world too; at this moment in time, standing in this ostentatious office before the paterfamilias of her beloved brother, Sansa’s single purpose and full focus had to be directed to getting Sallustius Prince to sign over guardianship of his great-grandson to her parents in trade for keeping the family ‘shame’ as out of the limelight as possible.

It was Professor McGonagall who explained the situation to Sallustius; she described Eileen’s current absence, the abuse Severus had suffered at her and her muggle husband’s hands, and how the muggle Eileen married was now on the run after he attempted to murder a child in his neighbourhood. Professor McGonagall did not clarify that Sansa was the “child” in question, for which Sansa was grateful. She had no intention of portraying herself as a victim to Sallustius, but rather a power in her own right, no matter how young and unpolished as she must appear in this youthful body.

When Professor McGonagall finished explaining, Sallustius steepled his fingers together and leaned forward on his elbows, gaze sharp and assessing.

“If that pitiful beast Irene Augusta bound herself to in a pitiful farce of marriage is gone,” he said, “why would it be necessary for the boy to leave her care? Even a witch as foolish and incompetent as Irene Augusta has proven herself to be is an improvement on a boy with Prince blood being fostered with– what are the phrases the British use? Muggles and mudbloods? What could I possibly gain from approving such a ludicrous suggestion?”

Sansa could easily read the sudden flare of protective fury in Professor McGonagall’s eyes at the slur Sansa knew Sallustius had very intentionally used, knowing just how inflammatory the degoratory term was. At Sansa’s side Severus had gone stiff in anger and humiliation both. It was Sansa alone who had been successful in letting the words flow off her, unflinching and unaffected by their poison. She knew these games Sallustius was playing, was far too intimately familiar with the dance to misstep, not when it was so important for her to get it right.

Appealing to Sallustius’ better nature would be useless, Sansa knew, so she gentled her expression, intentionally softening her body language as she took a step forward, away from Professor McGonagall and Severus and closer to Sallustius so she was able to rest her palms lightly on the edge of his desk, drawing Sallustius’s full attention towards herself, away from her companions.

“If you are curious about what you would gain from muggles and mudbloods raising a child with Prince blood,” she said, honey-sweet and kind-voiced, meeting the weight of Sallustius’ gaze boring into her without flinching or backing down, “I would be more then pleased to enlighten you. You see, if Severus doesn’t leave here today with you having signed an agreement for my muggle parents to be his legal guardians by magical law, then Irene Augusta, your granddaughter, is going to make international headlines across Europe when she is charged with illegally using magic against muggles to falsify and erase their memories, all to prevent the muggle law-keeping authorities from arresting her muggle husband for viciously beating their son.”

Sansa leaned forwards, unflinching as she maintained eye-contact with Sallustius while she blatantly threatened him, still sweet as spun sugar. “Everyone will know that Irene Augusta didn’t just allow her muggle husband to beat a child of the Prince bloodline half to death, over and over and over again– no, she used illegal magic to ensure that the muggle would face no consequences for his crimes against a magical child and never once used her magic to protect her magic child from her muggle husband’s abuse.”

Sansa didn’t turn back to see how Severus and Minerva had reacted to the metaphorical gauntlet she’d just thrown between Sallustius and herself, her attention focused fully on the wizard before her.

“A witch from the Prince bloodline, sentenced to Azkaban for use of magic against muggles and for enabling the abuse of her son by a muggle, a muggle that she sullied and disgraced her entire bloodline by actually marrying and being bedded by– why, I can only imagine how wide-spread talk of such a scandal all across Europe!” She said with a faux-gasp, her head tilting slightly, eyelashes fluttering as she maintained eye-contact with Sallustius. “Can you? I imagine it will be all the talk for days, for weeks– perhaps months even! Though, I must ask you to enlighten me– do you believe that this will be more or less scandalous then those old headlines, back when Irene Augusta first snubbed the pureblood elite of Europe to marry a muggle?”

Sansa smiled then at Sallustius with all her teeth. “Don’t you think all that fuss just sounds so time-consuming, though? Especially as it’s almost time for Severus to attend his first year at Hogwarts. It would all just be so much neater, so much more discrete, if we could keep this custody arrangement amicable, don’t you think? Especially when the other option is so much more… messy for everyone involved.”

Sallustius smiled back at Sansa, cold fury and a reluctant appreciation evident on his sharp features.

“You are playing a dangerous game, child,” he said.

“Maybe,” Sansa told him, still smiling her wolf-smile the older wizard, all her teeth on display in blatant threat. “But I only play games when I know I am going to win.”

“I am unsure if you are more brave or foolish,” Sallustius mused, and the look in his dark eyes cold as they bored into her own, as if they were staring directly into her very soul. “Though I cannot fault your loyalty to the boy.”

Sansa found herself thinking of Tobias Snape, of the sound his fists and boots had made when he violently beat Severus, the sounds that Severus had made when his flesh was battered and his bones were broken, and finally the sound Tobias had made when she suffocated him under her heel, watching the light leave his eyes as he died slowly, gasping for breath that would not come. Sallustius’ eyes never left Sansa’s own and she felt almost as if she was falling into them, like tumbling into dark, endless pools. It was a disconcerting sensation, and she had to blink, shaking her head slightly to break the intense stare.

The cold anger seemed to have left Sallustius’ face, and he leaned back slightly in his seat, something contemplative now playing about his gaze. “Loyal indeed,” he murmured.

“Severus is mine,” Sansa told Sallustius, letting him read the promise– the threat– in her expression, in the curl of her lips and glimpse of sharp teeth; in that moment, every inch of her was Lady Sansa Stark; the woman who had ordered a man to be torn apart alive by a pack of hounds in revenge for the brother he had murdered, the woman who had ordered a man’s throat cut for the role he had played in her Lord-Father’s death, the woman who had stood up to and challenged the Mother of Dragons who presumed herself a Queen of the North, the woman who had willingly died an agonising death to defeat the greatest threat the people of the North, her people, would ever face. “I have spent years as a bystander to his suffering,” she told Sallustius, “I will not be a bystander any longer.”

Sallustius remained contemplative for a long, long moment before he finally turned his head slightly to look at Severus where he stood several feet behind Sansa. “And you, boy?” He asked, arching an elegant brow. “Are you prepared to cast off the prestige of the Prince name, to claim as your kin nothing but common muggles and mudbloods? Once the ink has dried, there will be no turning back, no changing your mind.”

“My name,” Severus said, louder and fiercer then Sansa had honestly expected, “is Severus, not boy. And I would choose being an Evans a thousand times over choosing to be a Prince.”

Sallustius nodded slowly. “Then it will be so,” he said. “For your sake, Severus, I hope you are aware of the protection you are willingly casting aside– there is an unrest brewing in Britain, and blood is at the heart of it.”

“I’m sure,” Severus said firmly, without even a hint of hesitation.

“So mote it be,” Sallustius agreed, retrieving a scroll of parchment from his desk. It was a contract, Sansa realised, written in black ink. She accepted it from Sallustius as he offered it to her, carefully reading the clauses outlined and finding it to be straightforward; it was a formal agreement that Severus would forfeit the name and all rights he was due as a son of the Prince bloodline, and that he was to swear his silence regarding his blood relation to the Prince family and the true identity of his mother, Irene Augusta Prince.

Sansa and Severus traded looks after they’d both finished reading it, picking it apart for any fine print or unnecessary or one-sides clauses. Sansa had not identified any; for all his earlier threats otherwise, Sallustius seemed as eager to sweep the entire situation under the rug, where it would stay buried under magical oath, as they were to have him sign guardianship over to Marigold and William Evans.

It was a simple matter for Sansa to write her own and the names of her parents in the appropriate sections, and then sign her name as witness with a black-feathered quill that drew her own blood as its ink. Severus and Professor McGonagall each signed after her, Professor McGonagall as another witness, and Severus as the subject of the contract, agreeing to its terms. Sallustius was last to sign, also in his own blood. He then drew a wand from his sleeve and tapped the contract; immediately, the blood turned black as the ink and Sansa felt something deep inside her shiver, similar to when she had sworn the blood oath with her sisters and Severus.

“There,” Sallustius said, satisfied. “Signed, witnessed, and sealed with magic and blood.” He tapped the scroll with his wand, and Sansa blinked as two copies of the scroll appeared, one floating over for Severus to pluck out of the air. “The original will be filed with the Italian Ministry of Magic,” Sallustius told them. “I’ll be filing mine with my solicitor, I advise yours is filed discretely with your British Ministry– the discretion will allow you to avoid any… unpleasantness that may arise regarding Severus’s preference to live with muggles.”

“So that’s it?” Severus asked softly, his copy of the contract clutched tight in his hand. “I get to be an Evans now?”

“What or who you are is no longer any concern of mine,” Sallustius said dismissively, and Severus immediately straightened in place, his chin jutting up as he looked challengingly at Sallustius.

“That’s funny,” he said flatly. “I was about to say the same thing.”

Sallustius didn’t look amused, and Professor McGonagall chose that moment to cut in.

“I believe that concludes our business here today,” she said briskly. “I’m afraid we have no time left for exchanging pleasantries, our portkey is scheduled to leave shortly. Come along, children,” and with a brief nod at Sallustius, Professor McGonagall dismissed herself, as well as Sansa and Severus, without so much as waiting for Sallustius’ acknowledgment or permission.

It was, Sansa thought admiringly, a very satisfying snub to the bloodline supremacist. She could hardly fault Eileen for wanting to escape such a stifling environment and marrying a “muggle” to spit in their faces, though Sansa certainly did fault Eileen for her choice in humans without magic.

Professor McGonagall was able to lead them adeptly from the solar to the front doors of the property and then out onto the grounds with an ease that came from spending years navigating castles. Sansa thought she was the only one who was not surprised when the direwolves– Diana and Mars, she remembered Sallustius had referred to them as– approached them before they reached the tower through which the Floo network could be accessed, though Sansa thought she heard Professor McGonagall mutter something rude under her breath.

Sansa’s heart ached something fierce as the closer wolf bowed down, bringing her face level to Sansa’s own. Sansa closed her eyes briefly, leaning forwards to rest her forehead against the furred muzzle, the innate trust she felt in her very soul telling her that she was in no danger.

“Miss Evans,” Professor McGonagall said, far too soon for Sansa’s bruised heart, “I’m afraid we have to leave.”

Reluctantly, Sansa stepped back, feeling as if she was tearing her soul apart as she did so.

The second direwolf approached then, and Sansa didn’t notice the tiny bundle held gently in those large jaws until the direwolf had already lowered her head to the ground, releasing the tiny, mewling cub on the ground.

“Oh,” Sansa breathed, immediately falling to her knees to lift the cub in her suddenly trembling hands.

The direwolf cub was small enough to fit in her cupped palms, its eyes still tight shut and when it opened its mouth to mewl, she could see only pink gums, not even little pin-prick teeth. Its soft, downy fur was a deep red, more akin to fox fur then any wolf Sansa had seen before. She didn’t hesitate to cradle the little cub right to her breast, over her beating heart, and she just knew that she wouldn’t be leaving Rome without the cub.

“I should have expected this,” Professor McGonagall sighed, looking furtively over her shoulder, back at the villa. “Hurry along now, children, before his Lordliness realises we’ve stolen the wee bairn.”

“Liberated,” Sansa corrected, even as she hurried to the tower, as instructed, taking only a moment to look back over her shoulder at the two direwolves and let them read the gratitude on her face.

She was anxious to travel by floo with the cub, however Professor McGonagall assured her it would be fine, and proved to be correct. What was slightly less “fine” was Marigold’s reaction to a wolf cub in her home– Sansa hadn’t even broken the ‘direwolf’ part to her yet– as Sansa walked through the front door of their home, cradling the cub to her chest. Thankfully, her mother’s agitation was significantly tempered by her relief and jubilation that Sallustius had signed over guardianship of Severus to her and William.

While Lily and Marigold fussed over a silently pleased Severus and Petunia watched them with an amusem*nt that Sansa knew hid her own relief, Professor McGonagall pulled Sansa and William aside to explain the presence of the cub.

“Witches and wizards are known to form familiar bonds with animals that resonate with their magic on a soul-deep level,” she explained. “Honestly, soul magic is a very esoteric field, one that so few of us specialise in the study of, so our understanding of these bonds is mostly through anecdotes of those who have bonded. It’s not so rare that Miss Evans, Violet that is, will stand out, but it’s also not a common, everyday occurrence. The resonation between Violet and the direwolves that Sallustius Prince kept on his lands was unmistakable, and one of the grown direwolves brought her the cub. The moment Miss Evans picked the cub up, it was too late to prevent the bond forming.”

“Oh,” her poor father said weakly, having already paled when Professor McGonagall said ‘direwolf’.

“Rest assured I understand that a muggle suburb is not an appropriate place to keep a growing direwolf,” Professor McGonagall soothed him. “When Miss Evans brings the cub to Hogwarts, it will be cared for by our groundskeeper and Care of Magical Creatures professor, with Miss Evans given the opportunity to spend time with the cub after classes and on weekends. The cub will be staying at Hogwarts over all holidays too, as bringing it back to a muggle neighbourhood would be considered a breach to the Statute of Secrecy.”

William looked relieved, though Sansa could admit she was disappointed as she cradled the direwolf cub protectively to her chest.

“I’ll let Marie know,” her father told Professor McGonagall. “Thank you, ma’am, for all you’ve done to help us. I can’t tell you how much it means, knowing Severus never has to go back to that place. That boy is as good as my son and it broke my heart knowing he was hurting and I could do nothing to stop his pain.”

Professor McGonagall’s stern face gentled into a warm smile.

“It was a true pleasure,” she said, “although I have to admit, it was Miss Evans here who did most of the talking, when we met Sallustius. And a right nyaff his Lordliness was.”

William let out a surprised chuckle, before smiling fondly down at Sansa, still cradling her direwolf. Her familiar.

“Now why doesn’t that surprise me?” He said warmly.

Professor McGonagall left shortly after that, and after finding a hat box which she padded with a quilt to let the cub sleep in for the time being, Sansa joined her parents, sisters, and Severus downstairs, at the dining table.

“I can’t tell you how pleased we are, Severus, to finally call you our own,” William began, and Sansa hid a smile as Severus’ pale cheeks reddened. “Truth be told, we already thought of you as our son, but now we can say it in truth. And because you are now legally ours, we wanted to offer you something that we’ve wanted to offer you for years now– there’s no pressure on you to accept, but if you choose to, we’d be honoured for you to claim Evans as your surname.”

“I’d love that,” Severus blurted out, practically before William had even finished speaking.

“We’d like to give you a new middle name too,” Marigold said, gently reaching out to hold both of Severus’ hands in her own. “So you don’t have to carry a reminder of– of that man with you.”

Severus ducked his head, though Sansa could still see how his blush reached down his neck.

“Yes please,” he whispered, and Marigold beamed.

“We thought Severus Prosper Evans,” she said. “Because we want nothing more for our son then for you to prosper in life, just as we picked grace, joy, and hope for our daughters.”

Severus started to cry then, great big sobs that shook his entire body. Sansa traded looks with her sisters, and the three of them silently agreed to leave the room together and give their parents and Severus some privacy.

Moving to the kitchen, Sansa strained her memory for the milk formula the kennel master at Winterfell had used. She ended up measuring out a mix of cow milk, three egg yolks, a splash of oil, and a pinch of salt, stirring the homemade formula together and heating it over the stove. She then managed to find an old baby bottle with a nipple amongst Marigold’s collection of Tupperware, and filled it with the homemade formula.

Back up in the bedroom she shared with Lily, Sansa coaxed the tiny cub to feed, teaching it how to latch on to the nipple of the baby bottle. Once the cub figured out how to suckle, it was insatiable, eagerly drinking until the bottle was empty. Smiling as she set aside the baby bottle, Sansa reached out to stroke the now sleepy cub’s head with her fingertips, tracing tiny, fuzzy ears and listening to the soft little breaths.

“Do you know what you’re going to call it?” Lily asked curiously, peering down at the cub.

“Her,” Sansa corrected absently, surprising herself slightly as she spoke without thinking, and yet she knew that she did not need to check the cub to know she had spoken truthfully. “I think… I think I’ll name her Flora.”

“Flora?” Lily asked, curious. Sansa smiled slightly.

“After the Roman goddess of flowers and spring,” she said. “Considering where we found each other, the naming theme of our family, and cub’s mother being named after a Roman goddess, it seems… fitting.”

“Flora…” Lily repeated thoughtfully, before smiling. “I like it.” She said, reaching out to gently stroke the fluffy fur of the now snoozing cub.

“Only you would call a man-eating beast something as dainty as ‘Flora’,” was Petunia’s input from where she was pointedly keeping her distance from the tiny cub. Sansa couldn’t help but laugh.

“Oh, it could have been much worse,” she said teasingly. “I could have picked a name like ‘Lady’.”

“You know what?” Petunia said, with a faux shudder, “it wouldn’t have surprised me one bit if you’d done just that.”

That night, with little Flora curled up in the hatbox beside her bed, and Severus sharing Lily’s bed across from her, Sansa closed her eyes, a feeling of peace settling over her, as comfortable as a handmade quilt.

(She Dreamed that night of a Red Direwolf fighting a Giant Serpent with scales of poisonous green and a girth thick as a tree-trunk; shadows spilled instead of blood when the Red Direwolf locked its jaws into scales, while violets spilled from the Red Direwolf where fangs tore her open–)

When Sansa was woken by a hungry, mewling wolf cub, barely two hours into her sleep, she couldn’t shake the uneasiness brought on by the vivid imagery of her dream, no matter how she told herself it was only a nightmare.

(Sansa had learned how to lie from the best– even to the point where she could lie to herself)

Chapter 26

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX:

Diagon Alley looked very different from Rome’s Occultum, Sansa thought.

It was a bright, sunny day and with less then a week until the first of September, Sansa, her siblings, and her parents had all taken a train to London to attend the muggleborn tour of Diagon Alley. The tour would give them an introduction to the magical world and assist them with purchasing their school supplies.

Severus had already gone shopping with Eileen, months ago, but Marigold had insisted that he come along anyway. Sansa knew that it would take time for Severus to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop, so she was not offended that he had assumed he would not be part of the family outing.

Sansa had been too concerned to leave Flora behind with Primrose or one of Lily’s school friends to feed regularly throughout the day, despite Flora being so small she could still easily be mistaken for a domestic dog. Instead she had borrowed a satchel she had gifted Lily a few years before that was covered in bright, crocheted flowers, padding it with a blanket before placing Flora inside, where the cub curled up to snooze. Being so little, Flora spent nearly twenty-two hours of the day asleep, only waking briefly to be fed.

Flora was still so light that it was no effort at all for Sansa to carry the satchel hitched over her shoulder as she and her family set off to meet Professor McGonagall at a pub in Charring Cross.

They were one of the last families to arrive and Lily was practically glowing in her excitement as Professor McGonagall led the crowd of muggleborns and their parents through the pub, to a wall of bricks out back where she tapped her wand in a brisk pattern that Sansa took care to memorise.

Even with her exposure to magic, it still made Sansa’s breath catch to watch the bricks fade away, revealing an archway into what almost appeared to be another world, compared to the London behind them.

The shops were bright and piled precariously, as if a stiff wind would knock them over, with signs advertising everything from bottomless trunks to eye of newt to broomsticks. Witches and wizards– or ‘wixen’, as Professor McGonagall had previously referred to as the plural– hurried around, dressed in more neutral and darker colours then Sansa had seen in the Occultum; long robes of black, dark grey, deep emerald green, navy blue, burgundy red, and a rich, royal purple, with the occasional pointed hat perched atop their heads.

Professor McGonagall was smiling as she watched the amazement of the families, though Sansa was certain she could read a hint of some other emotion buried deeper in her eyes, something sad.

After letting them all gawk for a few minutes, Professor McGonagall first led the group of muggleborns and their parents to a towering bank staffed by fierce-looking beings that the Professor had identified as goblins. Sansa couldn’t help but think that even Littlefinger would have thought twice before trying to swingle gold out of a goblin, judging by the abundance of sharp-looking weapons.

After their currency had been traded for galleons, sickles, and knuts, the official currency of magical Britain, the group was off to get measured for robes (Sansa had absolutely used part of her saved-up birthday money to buy one of those flying, self-measuring tapes for herself). Her parents also insisted that Severus be fitted with new robes, as the ones Eileen had bought him were secondhand and ill-fitting. When he tried to protest, Marigold had firmly reminded him that parents were meant to provide for their children, and Severus wasn’t just her child in her heart now, he was also her child legally. Severus had been too flustered to argue with her after that.

The booklist had been next, and Sansa knew her parents had been relieved that the bookstore stocked secondhand textbooks; their family was financially comfortable, Sansa knew, but not to the point where they could just throw money around.

After the booklist, it was off to purchase telescopes, cauldrons, parchment, and more. While they shopped, Lily had eagerly struck up a conversation with several of the other nervous and excited muggleborn children on the tour. Sansa and Severus were both more reserved, keeping their own company along with Petunia, who was doing a good job of hiding her discomfort and slight wistfulness at all the magic surrounding them well, though not so well that Sansa and Severus didn’t notice.

When they passed Eeylops Owl Emporium, as the shop was titled, Professor McGonagall explained that while there were school owls available for the students to use, there was never a guarantee that they would be available and she recommended that the families consider purchasing an owl to assist with keeping in contact. Surprising Sansa, it was Petunia who spoke up then.

“Well, we will certainly need an owl, then,” she said briskly. “It wouldn’t do at all to have to wait for the twins or Severus to write, lord knows how forgetful they can be.”

This was an exaggeration, but Sansa knew it was Petunia’s attempt at hiding her soft belly from predators, disguising her wish to be able to write to them while they were at Hogwarts without having to reveal that self-perceived vulnerability to the world.

“Don’t use the Lord’s name in vain,” Marigold scolded Petunia, even as she looked at Eeylops with reluctance clear in those sky-blue eyes that she shared with her eldest daughter.

In the end it was decided by Marigold and William that they would need to purchase two owls– as well trained as Nightshade and Buttercup were with letting the twins trade notes with Severus in co*keworth, Sansa didn’t think they were up to playing courier from Scotland to co*keworth, and her parents agreed.

To Sansa’s surprise, it was Petunia who picked the owl that would live in co*keworth, with the aim of giving Petunia and her parents the option to write to Sansa, Lily, and Severus without having to wait for them to write first. Petunia had picked out a small owl with brown plumage speckled with white, yellow eyes, and a pattern of feathers around its face which gave the owl a very cross, unimpressed looking expression. The label on the cage informed them it was a female boreal owl.

Lily and Severus chose the owl that would accompany them to Hogwarts; together they decided on a rather slim tawny owl with long wings and prominent ear tufts which they were informed by a shop employee was a northern long-eared owl.

Sansa thought that her mother would have been far more reluctant about the owls if it wasn’t for “those winged fiends” as she often called Nightshade and Buttercup desensitising her to birds flying into her home; as it was, she merely appeared resigned to her fate, while Sansa’s father seemed rather intrigued, already poking a finger through the bars of the cage to let the owl nibble at his fingertip.

With all their other supplies now purchased, there was only one item left on their school list, and it was the one that everyone was most excited for– their wands.

Professor McGonagall had all the families wait outside the wand shop, advising them that finding a wand was a deeply personal experience that was best undertaken without a crowd. Sansa stood back with Severus and Lily, watching as one by one, the nervous-looking children walked into the wand shop alone, emerging after a handful of minutes with bright eyes and flushed cheeks, clutching a long, narrow box with both hands.

Lily went first, out of their family, and Sansa waited with bated breath for her twin to emerge. It took a little under seven minutes for a brightly beaming Lily to skip out of the shop, narrow box in hand.

“Ash wood with a dragon heart-string core,” she announced brightly. “Apparently it means I’m stubborn, courageous and can be somewhat temperamental, but I have a lot of magical potential. Also, I checked and Mr. Ollivander promised me that the dragon died of natural causes. I told him I couldn’t accept the wand otherwise and he said I was definitely suited to an ash wand. I’m not sure if that was an insult or some sort of backwards compliment, but he was weird so it could be either or both, really.”

While Marigold scolded Lily for calling the wandmaker ‘weird’ it was Severus’s turn to go in, as though Eileen had taken him shopping for his school supplies and robes, she had refused to purchase his wand at the time. Sansa assumed she was concerned either Tobias would break it, or that Severus might attempt to curse Tobias if given access to a wand. Or perhaps it was Tobias who had forbidden it, preferring a son who was not able to fight back during a beating.

Well, that certainly wouldn’t be an issue any longer.

Severus was in the shop even longer than Lily, taking nearly eleven minutes before he finally emerged, clutching the long, slim box containing his wand tight to his chest in a white-knuckled grip as if he was afraid it would disappear, his pale face flushed with a quiet, steady joy.

“It’s acacia wood with a dittany stalk core,” he said softly, just to their family. “Mr. Ollivander said it indicates I’ll likely be suited well for the more subtle magicks, not the ‘bangs and smells’ type.”

“It suits you,” Petunia said, with a small smile. This took Sansa slightly aback, as Petunia had so far appeared very uncomfortable during the shopping trip and, as sad as it made Sansa feel, her sister had also been trying to hide her jealousy. Sansa wished that Petunia was a witch too, that her sister wasn’t excluded from this experience that she, Lily and Severus all got to share, but Sansa was proud of Petunia that despite her personal feelings her sister seemed genuinely pleased for Severus.

Sansa didn’t think she’d ever been so kind to Arya as Petunia was being to them, she could admit; she had always lashed out when their Lord Father seemed to see Arya when it never felt as if he saw her, Sansa, at all.

Sansa pushed those lingering thoughts of guilt and anger away, focusing instead on the scene playing out in front of her, as opposed to past, bitter sorrows.

“You’re definitely more subtle than Lily has ever been in her life,” she told Severus, agreeing with Petunia’s assessment of the wand. Severus’s blush deepened, but he appeared quietly pleased, and even more so when William gently clapped a hand on his shoulder in congratulations.

With Lily and Severus now proud owners of their new wands, it was Sansa’s turn.

Stepping into the wand shop, she found that all the noise from the busy street behind her abruptly disappeared the moment the shop door shut behind her, plunging her into a heavy silence. The silence was not oppressive, rather it felt almost… reverent. Like when she stepped through the doorway she had crossed a threshold to hallowed ground. It reminded her of the godswood of Winterfell, the weight of sanctity and otherness resting heavily on her shoulders.

Despite the sacred feel to the air, the appearance of the shop was about as far from a place of worship as Sansa could imagine; a fine coat of dust seemed to cover every surface, and towering, teetering shelves packed with narrow boxes were crammed into every available space, making it nearly impossible for her to squeeze her way through to the counter at the centre of the chaos. The counter itself had more narrow boxes piled precariously, and a step ladder had seemingly fallen on its side and had yet to be returned upright.

“Good afternoon,” a wispy voice greeted from behind her, and it was only a lifetime of etiquette training that prevented Sansa from either screaming or attempting to hit the person who had startled her.

“Apologies,” she said instead, her heart thudding in her chest, but taking care to keep any sign of how taken by surprise she was from her face as she turned to face the shopkeep. “I’m afraid I did not see you when I entered. My name is Violet Evans, it’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

The man seemed to be studying her, his wide, pale eyes never blinking. He appeared elderly, with wrinkled hands and his grey hair in disarray. The robes he wore were a deep navy blue, with a geometrical pattern embroidered in white thread at the hems. This, she assumed, was the wandmaker and proprietor of the shop, Mr. Ollivander.

“Miss Evans…” Mr. Ollivander said slowly, still unblinking as his eyes bore into her. “Are you quite sure?”

Sansa kept her surprise and unease off her face, making sure to keep smiling politely at him.

“Yes,” she said, her tone leaving no room for doubt. “My name is Violet Hope Evans of co*keworth.”

Mr. Ollivander blinked finally, still staring at her with those pale, almost luminous eyes.

“Yes,” he said, “I suppose you are now.”

“Excuse me?” Sansa asked sharply, the hairs on the back of her neck prickling, small shards of ice slithering in her veins.

“You are strong,” Mr. Ollivander mused, ignoring her query entirely. “Courageous and loyal, cunning and keen to learn. And you are a survivor, able to persevere through devastating loss and against seemingly insurmountable odds.”

Sansa found herself struck silent, staring at Mr. Ollivander with wide eyes, the small part of her that wasn’t stunned silent instead relieved Professor McGonagall had advised they meet the wandmaker alone. She wasn’t sure what her parents’ reactions would be to Mr. Ollivander’s words, but she imagined it would be… loud, and prompt from them questions she had no intention of answering.

Sansa and Mr. Ollivander stared at each other in silence for a small eternity, neither blinking, before the wandmaker finally made a small, considering noise and abruptly turned away from her, shuffling over to one of the teetering shelves and pulling from it a long silver-grey box. He shook the box slightly, causing a large puff of dust to shake free, before shuffling back over to Sansa.

Sansa had to resist the urge to step away as he drew nearer and was relieved when he stopped several feet away, a knowing look in his eerie eyes.

“This is your wand,” he said, and there was not a trace of doubt in his voice as he held out the box. Sansa accepted the box warily, and he nodded, satisfied. “Yes,” he said, “yes, now take it out and give it a wave.”

Hesitantly, Sansa removed the lid of the box, revealing a bed of black velvet on which a long amber-brown wand rested. Looking down at it, Sansa could immediately feel a pull in her chest, a tingling under her skin. Her fingertips had barely brushed against the smooth wood when she sucked in a sharp breath, icy snowflakes melting against her cheeks like tears as a sudden gust of wintry-cold wind whirled about her. Beneath her touch, Sansa felt as if she could hear her wand sing– and it was her wand, she knew it was her wand, she could feel its rightness in her very soul.

As the icy gust of wind died down, leaving stray snowflakes to drift to the ground where they melted against the wooden floorboards, Sansa looked back up from her wand to the pleased wandmaker.

“Cypress wood, with the flight feather of an augurey for its core,” Mr. Ollivander said, in his soft, whispery voice. “A fitting wand for one who has been touched by death.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Sansa asked sharply. The calm that had settled over her melted away as rapidly as the snowflakes on the shop’s floor as the wandmaker once again alluded to knowledge he should not have. Not a single soul in this world knew of Sansa Stark of Westeros, and that was exactly how she intended it to remain.

Mr. Ollivander tilted his head in response to her sharp demand. “Wands crafted of cypress wood,” he said, “will only bond with those who are brave and self-sacrificing, who are unafraid to confront the shadows in their own and others’ natures, and who will not hesitate to lay down their lives to save another. And this particular cypress wand has an augurey feather core– ancient superstition tells us an augurey’s song is said to foretell death.”

Sansa felt unease shiver through her. Sacrifice, death, the shadows faced in others and herself…

That all sounded far too familiar for her comfort.

“Thank you for your services, sir,” she said instead of asking further questions. If she was honest with herself, and she did try to be, she didn’t want to know any more and wished only to retreat from this dusty, crammed store, too uncomfortable with how Mr. Ollivander seemed able to pick her very soul apart with but a glance into her eyes.

The look in the wandmaker’s eerie eyes was one of knowing as they met her own. “That will be seven galleons,” Mr. Ollivander told her, and Sansa handed over the foreign currency she had been given by her parents before entering the shop, Professor McGonagall having advised them that all the wands would cost seven galleons, regardless of when they were crafted, or what they were crafted from.

Despite her earlier excitement, there was an uncomfortable, heavy feeling weighing down on Sansa’s shoulders, and she found herself gripping the box containing her wand hard enough to whiten her knuckles. She did not want to turn her back on Mr. Ollivander to exit the shop, yet she steeled her spine to nod at him in farewell before turning to walk as confidently as she could manage, her chin held high, to the exit.

It was a relief to step out into the fresh air, though she had to blink rapidly as her eyes adjusted from the dimly lit shop to the bright, sunny skies.

“Well?” Lily asked eagerly, as Sansa crossed over to where her family waited. Sansa thought for a moment of lying before deciding against it.

“Cypress,” she said instead, managing a true smile as she remembered how the wand had sung under her touch, “with a core of an augury feather.”

“That sounds wicked!” Lily’s smile was wide and enthusiastic, Severus nodding beside her, though he was clearly distracted as his eyes kept darting back down to the wand box he was holding as if he couldn’t quite believe it was his.

Only Petunia and William seemed to pick up that something was amiss, and Sansa shook her head slightly when her father tilted his head in question, not willing to discuss what had unsettled her with him.

Once all the muggleborns had been paired with a wand, their tour of Diagon Alley ended at an ice cream parlour where Sansa took the chance to feed Flora before ordering a small lemon sorbet to nibble on while trying to suppress a smile at Lily’s bright red, sweaty face as she tried the ‘Spicy-Sweet’ scoop, which was advertised as being made with three kinds of hot peppers and two kinds of hot sauce.

Severus had selected a much more sensible flavour called ‘Tiger Tail’ which consisted of orange-flavoured ice cream with swirls of black liquorice sauce giving it an appearance of tiger stripes, while Petunia had selected a flavour labelled ‘Strawberry Honey Balsamic With Cracked Pepper’ which she gave every appearance of enjoying.

Instead of attempting to return to co*keworth that afternoon, Marigold and William had booked a hotel for the night, where they left all their purchases, including the owls in their cages, and Flora in a wicker basket meant for pet cats, before going out for fish and chips– or just chips for Lily, who was still choosing not to eat meat– at a nearby pub. After, as a surprise, William and Marigold then took them to the picture theatre to watch an animated film ‘The Aristocats’.

Sansa had watched films on television, but watching one at a theatre was an entirely new experience. With buckets of buttery popcorn that greased her fingers, spun fairy-floss that stuck to the roof of her mouth and a strange, sweet bubbly drink to sip from, Sansa was enchanted by the animated film. The plot itself was silly and heartwarming and Sansa found herself thinking wistfully of Arya and her bastard blacksmith as she watched duch*ess and O’Malley’s love story.

Back at the hotel that night, sharing a single bed with Petunia while Severus and Lily slept on pull-out camp beds, little Flora curled up and snoozing on the pillow next to Sansa’s head, Sansa couldn’t help but think that as excited as she was beginning to feel at going to Hogwarts, she would dearly miss moments such as this.

(That night Sansa Dreamed of snow-dusted cypress trees reaching high up into the sky, while a beautiful bird with feathers of such a deep, dark green they appeared closer to black soared through the skies, singing its mournful song)

Chapter 27: Chapter 27

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN:

Upon their return from London to co*keworth, Severus, Lily, and Petunia had pored over William’s botany books, searching for names for the newly purchased owls while Sansa had made herself comfortable on the couch, her little Flora curled up on her lap as she stroked the downy red fur.

For the boreal owl that would remain at the Evans home while not delivering mail to Hogwarts, it was Petunia who decided on the name “Rue”. She had informed them that the owl was named after both the evergreen plants with their bright yellow flowers, much like the boreal owl’s bright yellow eyes, and as a reminder of her threats that they would ‘rue’ not answering in a timely and detailed fashion the letters that she planned to send them.

Severus and Lily ended up picking “Catnip” for the northern long-eared owl, as Lily had reasoned that the owl’s ear tufts looked a bit like cat ears. Sansa considered it possibly in poor taste, but Lily thought it was clever and “punny” as she described, and Severus tended to have the sort of gallows humour that found naming a bird ‘Catnip’ entertaining.

Catnip was a sweet thing, happy to accept gentle petting and to play with Nightshade and Buttercup in the open aviary that William had built the ravens in the yard so that the pair had a place to roost outside without restricting their freedom.

Rue, on the other hand, seemed supremely unimpressed by everything and everyone, only begrudgingly accepting the company of the other birds so long as they did not intrude into her space. She was certainly not willing to be cooed over like a pet– she was a delivery owl, and she apparently took those duties very seriously.

“Honestly, we might as well call the house a zoo,” Marigold fretted, though she did agree it was better to have a reliable form of communication while the trio were away at Hogwarts– an idea that Marigold was becoming increasingly distressed about, now bursting into tears every time she was reminded of their upcoming departure to the boarding school. Sansa thought that venting about the menagerie in their home had also become an outlet for her distress.

“First those sneaky ravens, then a magic wolf, and now a pair of owls! What will the neighbours think? What if our congregation finds out?” Marigold would bemoan, even as she bought extra red meat, fish, seeds, and fruit that she would chop up each evening, entirely unprompted, to set out in the aviary for the ravens and owls, in addition to mixing up extra homemade ‘puppy formula’ for Flora that she kept in their fridge for Sansa.

Flora hadn't opened her eyes for the first four days after her arrival at the Evans home. Sansa would have fretted if it wasn’t for how eagerly the pup suckled at her homemade milk formula, or how eagerly she nuzzled Sansa’s hands and tried latching onto Sansa's fingers when the pup was curled up in her lap. Sansa knew that she would never stop missing Lady, not when Lady's death had felt akin to a piece of her soul had been carved from her, yet that gaping, jagged emptiness seemed as if it was finally beginning to heal, like scar tissue and callouses had begun to form where previously a bloodied wound had wept.

Flora was too young for Sansa to truly get an understanding of her personality, yet she suspected Flora’s temperament would be closer to Lady, Summer, and Ghost than to Nymeria, Grey Wind,or Shaggydog. She didn’t have any evidence to base this on; it was simply that same instinct that had let her know Flora was a girl without checking, that same connection she had once shared with Lady, always knowing where her companion was even if she was in the Keep and Lady had been wandering the godswood.

As the days leading to their first day of Hogwarts sped by, Sansa found a comfort and peace in lying on Petunia’s bed with Flora curled up on her chest, over her heart, while Petunia hastily attempted to finish all the summer holiday homework she had left to the last minute, swearing under her breath multiple times and occasionally pleading for Sansa’s help with her sums.

It was while Sansa was in Petunia’s room, laying on Petunia’s bed half-propped up by hand-embroidered cushions, that Flora finally opened her eyes for the first time.

“Oh,” Sansa breathed in a quiet, astonished joy, as she first saw the hazy, grayish-blue eyes. “Oh, hello elskling.” The Old Tongue endearment for loved oneslipped out without Sansa even meaning it to. Petunia, entirely occupied by struggling through her French proverbs, didn’t hear. Flora did, though, wriggling in place as her hazy blue-grey eyes attempted to focus on Sansa, a squeaky sound escaping her as Sansa gently stroked one of her fluffy ears with the tip of a finger.

Sansa might have been concerned by the milky appearance of the pup’s eyes if it wasn’t for the time she had spent with the kennel master of Winterfell after the direwolf pups had been distributed between the Stark children. Ever the dutiful daughter, Sansa had dedicated herself to teaching Lady as best she could, including seeking advice from the closest that Winterfell had to experts in the training of canines. While spending time in the kennels, the kennel-master, Tym, had shown Sansa a litter of pups from one of the hunting hounds that were only a few weeks old– at the sight of their milky eyes, Sansa had thought them to all be blind, only for Master Tym to explain it could take up to a moon after they’d been whelped for the pups’ eyes to develop enough that they could see.

Despite her Lady-Mother considering it menial work, the type to leave for servants trained in such things, Sansa had enjoyed her time spent in Winterfell's kennels learning from Master Tym– with her companion Jeyne accompanying her, of course, as a young lady had to be careful not to allow for any rumour to spread of her virtue being compromised, such as by spending extended periods of time with a male non-family member while unchaperoned. Sansa had learned all sorts of commands to teach Lady from Master Tym, in addition to learning what to feed her, how often she should brush her, and, Sansa would admit, getting to spend time with the puppies too, watching them grow.

(Sansa sometimes wondered what had happened to Master Tym, whether he had died at the hands of the Ironborn or if he was a victim of the Boltons, yet another unclaimed pile of charred remains or bones gnawed clean by Ramsey’s hounds for she had not seen him upon her return to Winterfell)

In her more ungracious moments, Sansa would admit that she had resented her siblings not seeming to put the same effort into teaching their direwolves as she had. If Arya had bothered to do anything except let Nymeria run wild, Sansa thought that perhaps Nymeria wouldn’t have attacked Joffrey– or at least Arya could have commanded Nymeria to halt the attack. If Nymeria had been trained, Sansa had bleakly ruminated at the time amidst all her grief and rage and the pain of her soul being torn asunder, perhaps Lady would have survived, perhaps Lady would have been given the chance to live as she deserved, Sansa's gentle, sweet companion.

She was better able to set aside those bitter thoughts now, with time and an increased understanding of why the situation had unfolded as it had. Sansa knew very well that even if Lady had survived the journey to Kings Landing, Joffrey or Cersei would have seen her direwolf dead the moment Sansa’s Lord-Father was arrested for “treason”. Lady would have been a risk to their safety, a weapon and protector of the young girl they intended to keep prisoner and torment. Neither son nor mother would have stood for that, would have taken that risk.

Cersei had been prepared to feed deadly poison to her youngest son to protect him from pain and injury when Stannis’ forces attacked; for her eldest son, her prized boy-king, she would have done no less. And Joffrey… Lady would have torn out his throat the very first time he raised his hand to Sansa, and Joffrey had always liked her best when she was grieving, afraid, and in pain. Lady’s execution at Sansa's Lord-Father’s hand could almost be considered a blessing when she was forced to consider the no doubt horrific, violent, drawn-out death Lady would have endured on Joffrey’s orders, with Sansa forced to witness the bloody spectacle.

She could almost forgive her Lord-Father for the quick, clean death that Lady had suffered were it not for the fact that he had never fought for her Lady. He could have asked his good friend King Robert to overrule Cersei, as kings could so easily overrule their queens, or he could have ordered his men out to hunt down Nymeria to capture and execute as the wolf actually responsible for attacking Joffrey. Instead, her Lord-Father had bowed his head to Cersei’s orders, executed Lady, and then let Arya get away with no consequence for her lie that Nymeria had run off.

Ned Stark could have protected Lady yet he hadn’t. It was an eerie mirror, almost, to how he could have protected Sansa in Kings Landing yet he hadn’t. Her Lord-Father had seen Joffrey for the beast that he was, however he did not attempt to end the betrothal between them until he discovered Joffrey was not of King Robert’s seed. He had told Sansa nothing of his suspicions or investigations, hehad not warned her to be wary of Cersei, a woman who had intentionally built up a relationship of trust between Sansa and herself, a woman Sansa had grown to idolise. And he had not seen either her or Arya smuggled out of Kings Landing prior to warning Cersei that he had learned the truth of her children’s parentage and intended to reveal said truth to King Robert.

Sansa didn’t consider herself blameless in the events that followed, yet neither did she blame herself in full the way that she once had. A second lifetime in this new world had offered her a perspective of the situation that Westeros had not. Sansa had been a child backthen, had been the same age Lily was now, a tender eleven years, and she had been trained all her young life to obey her Lord-Father, her future husband, and the ruling King and Queen. To the greater powers around her, to her own kin even, Sansa Stark had been little more then a pretty doll, her only worth to be found in her beauty, her maidenhead, and her womb to birth sons. Sansa had not known any better than to trust in the Golden Queen Cersei, because nobody had ever told her or taught her otherwise, not until long after her Lord-Father was dead.

Sansa had not been able to protect either herself or Lady in that life. Yet in this life, just as she had in her first, at eleven years of age Sansa had once again been gifted a direwolf pup; to train herself, to feed herself, and to bury herself if she died. And once again, in a mirror to the first life she had lived, Sansa was about to travel to a great castle, to be immersed in a society and culture that she was ignorant to, unknowing of whether threats lurked beneath the gilded surfaces. This time, however, Sansa was not the naive child she had been, dependent on the men in her life to protect her and Flora from harm and ill-will. This time, Sansa had her eyes wide open and she was determined to protect Flora the way Lady should have been protected.

“I swear to you, by the old gods and by the ancient oaths of our ancestors,” Sansa whispered, tilting her head forward to brush a kiss against Flora’s tiny wet nose, “hearth for service, life for life; I will protect you, as you will protect me.”

For a single moment, it seemed that Flora’s hazy, unfocused eyes managed to fix on Sansa’s own, the world stilling around them. And then Flora gave a tiny sneeze, squeezing her eyes shut as she did so, and the moment was broken.

Sansa tilted her head back down on the piled cushions, a small smile on her face as she stroked soft, downy pup fur and listened to Petunia scribble away with her pencil, basking in the feeling of completion in her heart.

::

The night before the twins and Severus were due to leave for Hogwarts, the three of them plus Petunia all dragged their pillows, quilts, and duvets into the living room where they piled their bedding together to make what Lily referred to as “a cuddle pile”. Sansa honestly didn’t have a better description of it and Sansa could read, despite the mask of enthusiasm she wore for Lily's sake, just how upset Petunia wasabout the fact they were about to leave her for months on end by Petunia’s silence on Lily's label of choice.

“I always thought I’d be so excited to leave for Hogwarts,” Severus admitted to them after the lamps had been turned off, leaving the shadows to dance along the walls of the living as the moon peeked through the lacy curtains. “I just wanted to get away so badly, there was nothing that I thought I was leaving behind. But now… now there’s Will and Marie, and Granny, and there’s the football team and the choir– and you, Petunia.”

“I can’t believe my name came up last,” Petunia said crossly.

“Because I saved the most important for last,” Severus defended himself and Sansa let the darkness in the room hide her smile as she listened to her siblings bicker. Next to her, curled up on her pillow, Flora made a soft, mewling sound, the tiny pup nuzzling against Sansa’s cheek.

For all their nervous energy, Lily and Severus fell asleep fairly quickly. It took Petunia much longer, and the older girl shifted slightly in place, so she was closer to Sansa and could speak quietly to her without waking the other two.

“It’s not going to be as easy as McGonagall and Sev have made it sound, is it?” She said, the tension evident in her voice. Sansa sighed, thinking of Sallustius’s warning of unrest in Britain centred around blood, thought of the slur ‘mudblood’ which referred to those like Lily and herself, as opposed to the ‘purebloods’.

It reeked of elitism, bringing to mind a grim comparison to the Targaryens and their so-called “Doctrine of Exceptionalism” which allowed them to wed sibling to sibling, niece to uncle, aunt to nephew, and so on; interbreeding within their own House to keep their Valyrian bloodline ‘pure’. This, of course, had led to an inevitable decrease in birth rates and mother’s surviving labour in addition to an increase in birth defects and mental instability. Despite their delusions of their own superiority, the Targaryens were as human as the rest of them and had faced the inevitable consequences of more than three centuries of incest.

In Sansa’s opinion, all that the Targaryens had achieved with their precious Doctrine was to breed any and every bit of sanity and competency out of their House. Despite the clever quips about the gods flipping a coin between greatness or madness, Sansa personally thought that it mattered little which face of the coin landed up, not when both sides of the coin were forged of the same metal.

“No,” she agreed with Petunia. “I don’t think it’s going to be anywhere near as easy as everyone is pretending.” Her sister’s face was a washed out pale in the moonlight peeking through the curtains.

“I don’t want you to go,” Petunia admitted in barely a whisper, a vulnerability Sansa knew her proud sister would have hated admitting to in the light of the day.

“I’m sorry,” Sansa whispered back, her heart breaking for her sister. Beside her, Flora let out a soft whine.

“I know,” Petunia sighed, her shoulders slumping in place. “But promise me, Violet– promise that you will do everything in your power, and I mean everything, to keep yourself, Lily, and Severus safe.”

There was a weight to those words with the shared knowledge between them that Sansa had killed a man to protect their brother. A weight and an understanding that if it came down to it, Petunia trusted that Sansa was capable of even murder to protect their family.

“I promise,” Sansa vowed.

It was nearly one in the morning before Sansa was confident that all in the Evans home were asleep. One of her legs was tangled with Severus’s and Petunia had rolled into one of her arms in her sleep, but Sansa did manage to extricate herself without waking any of her siblings.

After untangling herself, she took care to leave the room as quietly as possible. Exiting the house through the back door during the dead of night was familiar to her as she started the familiar trek under the light of the stars and waning moon to the silver birch grove, Buttercup and Nightshade barely perceptible to the eye as they soared above her in the sky and Flora tucked under her sweater as she made her pilgrimage to honour her gods at her place of worship for the final time before she was to set off to Hogwarts.

The trek under the gloomy night sky through dimly lit streets and into the quiet woodland that surrounded the old, rusted children’s park until she had reached the grove of silver birch trees, now almost bone-white to the eye, was familiar to Sansa. It was a trek she had made many times before, Buttercup and Nightshade her lone companions as she paid homage to the Old Gods– perhaps that was why it was so shocking to her when a shadowy figure seemed to melt out from the trees that surrounded the silver birch grove, invading her sacred space.

Heart in her throat, Sansa felt herself automatically bracing to run until the shadowy figure moved close enough for Sansa to make out their features. Recognising those distinctive features, she made a sharp sound of shock.

“Mrs. Snape,” she breathed.

Chapter 28: Chapter 28

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT:

Eileen Snape looked truly ghastly, Sansa thought. There was a thinness to her face that reminded her of the starving population of Kings Landing during the riot, all sunken flesh and jutting bones. Her long hair hung lank and stringy about her face while her familiar dark eyes were set in deep, sunken hollows. The dress she wore was tattered and creased as if she had not showered or changed for days on end.

"You," Eileen rasped, a terrible rage on her face. "This is your fault!"

"What are you talking about?" Sansa feigned ignorance even as her heart raced with fear. She was forced to contemplate the current vulnerability of her position, having ventured as she had deep into the woodlands during the dead of night without a single person wise to her whereabouts.

"My husband!" Eileen's raving sounded half-mad, and the woman looked it too. "My husband is gone! And you took my son! My son! You destroyed my family!"

"I don't know where your husband is," Sansa lied, "and I had nothing to do with Sallustius Prince's decision to revoke your custody of Severus, that was all Professor McGonagall!"

Eileen laughed, the sound of it crazed as it echoed around the grove.

"Do you really think I'm that foolish?" She demanded. "Do you really think I don't see you for what you truly are?" Eileen's face twisted into something vicious. "You're the conniving little viper hidden in the grass, ready to sink your poison into whoever passes by, careless of the pain you cause! I told you to stay away from my family, but you didn't listen! You didn't listen and now everything is ruined! You took everyone I love away from me!"

There was a crazed look in Eileen's eyes as she ranted, and Sansa noticed too late that a wand had slid from the sleeve of Eileen's tattered sleeve and into her bony hand.

"You will pay for what you've done!" Eileen promised, her eyes crazed. "Blood for blood!"

"Wait–" Sansa started to protest, raising her hands in a futile attempt to shield herself as her mind raced, desperately trying to think of what she could say to de-escalate the situation as Eileen pointed the wand at her heart.

Sansa didn't get the chance to try.

"Crucio!"

Sansa knew pain, she knew it intimately. She had been beaten by grown men with their mailed fists and the flat edges of their swords. She had been violently raped over and over, had lines carved into her with blades, had her skin flayed from her body, had been attacked by starving hounds. She had had a sword driven through her chest and burned alive while drowning in her own blood.

Sansa had truly believed that there was no pain that existed worse than the pain she had already suffered.

She was wrong.

And as the flash of sickly red light from Eileen's wand hit her, Sansa screamed.

Her entire world turned red. There was no room for thought, only agony as every nerve in her body was set aflame, every bone crushed and splintered, every muscle torn and shredded, her skin melting as if bathed with acid–

–and Sansa keened, heaving and wretched sounds as the torture finally ended, her head left spinning at how abrupt the relief was from the indescribable pain. Sansa barely managed to roll over from where she was lying on the ground to vomit up the entire contents of her stomach.

Laying there in her own sick and piss, Sansa struggled to breathe through a throat torn raw by screaming. She could taste coppery blood where she must have bitten her tongue, yet the pain was so negligible in comparison to what she had just experienced that she did not even notice it.

Something nudged against her, yet Sansa couldn't summon the energy or will to react to the touch. Her limbs felt heavier than stone, refusing to obey commands from a brain too overwrought by the assault it had suffered to send out the necessary signals to move.

Through tear-blurred vision, Sansa could just make out the shape of Eileen kneeling beside her. The older witch leaned in close to Sansa, not seeming to notice or care how her loose, lank hair dragged through the vomit on the ground.

"I've heard if you cast the Cruciatus curse on a person long enough, it completely destroys their mind," Eileen said. The very distant part of Sansa which still had the capacity for rational thought as opposed to raw animal panic vaguely noted that there wasn't any viciousness or cruelty evident in Eileen's voice or on her face. She just looked and sounded hollow. Broken. Empty. "You destroyed my life," Eileen told her, leaning in even further to meet Sansa's tear-soaked eyes, mere inches between them. "So I'm going to destroy you. And then I'm going to destroy that woman who dared claimmy Severus asher son."

The tip of Eileen's wand pressed against Sansa's forehead and Sansa could see the witch opening her mouth to cast the torturous curse once more. It was not with any scraped together remnants of courage or heroically summoned willpower or even a single ounce strategic thinking that gave Sansa the strength to move then. There wasn't even any rational thought or planning behind her actions; in that single, awful moment, Sansa was nothing more than a wounded, dying animal backed into a corner, and she didn't thinkshe just reacted.

Eileen certainly hadn't expected Sansa to still have the ability to move, nor that Sansa would go for her throat so quickly.

It truly was only luck that had her biting through Eileen's carotid on her first attempt.

The older witch collapsed back, dropping her wand as she did so. Sansa immediately scrambled for the wand, her badly shaking hands just barely managing to snatch it up from the ground. With a surge of vicious relief, Sansa snapped the wand and tossed the two halves out of reach before letting herself fall forward, kneeling with her palms pressed to the earth below, violent tremors setting her entire body trembling as she gagged and retched, over and over.

Her mouth still tasted of blood as red drip-drip-dripped to the ground beneath her.

The sound of tiny whimpers had her dragging her tear-blurred eyes from where she was staring sightlessly at the bloodied dirt beneath her palms to frantically search the grove, struck suddenly by the memory of Flora being tucked in her sweater before Eileen had cursed her. To Sansa's relief, Flora appeared unharmed, the tiny pup having crawled to the roots of Sansa's chosen birch with its carved face. On either side of Flora, Buttercup and Nightshade stood, each raven holding their wings at half-mast as if they were protecting the pup.

Sansa barely managed to crawl over to the base of the tree before collapsing, her limbs jerking violently in aftershocks. She still managed to press her lips against Flora's head in a blood-smeared kiss, before repeating the action for each raven, silent gratitude for their efforts in guarding the most vulnerable among them.

It took Sansa nearly a half hour to summon enough energy and for her limbs to stop shaking so badly that she was able to get back on her hands and knees and crawl over to where Eileen had collapsed. She was mildly surprised to see that the woman was still alive. Sansa's teeth had torn her flesh and opened an artery, yet Eileen had managed to clamp her hand over the bleeding quick enough to prevent herself from immediately bleeding out, though without her wand there was little else she could do to help herself.

Sansa thought about sending the ravens to fetch help, to save Eileen's life. She thought it would probably be considered the morally correct action at this point in this world. It was the memory of the unbearable, indescribable agony Sansa had just suffered, however, and Eileen's threat that she planned on going after Marigold next and subjecting Sansa's mother to the same torture, that had Sansa ignoring this world's morals. Instead, she sat next to Eileen and simply watched as the witch's life blood spilled betweenEileen's fingers.

Eileen didn't bother to beg for Sansa to save her. They both knew it would be useless. Instead, Eileen gurgled out a single question.

"My Tobias– where is he?" She pleaded, blood burbling from her mouth with each wet, gurgling breath she took.

Sansa looked down at Eileen, stone-faced as she answered. "Resting in pieces. Many, many pieces." She said flatly. Cruel of her, perhaps, but Sansa had no kindness left in her for this woman. "He can never hurt Severus again," she told her. "And neither will you."

Eileen let out a harsh, gurgling sound. It took Sansa a moment to realise it was a laugh.

"I knew it," the woman managed to get out the words, blood spraying from her lips as she gazed distantly up at the night sky. "I knew he would never leave me."

Disgust overwhelmed Sansa at Eileen's twisted priorities and without really even thinking about it she seized onto Eileen's wrist, yanking away the hand Eileen was using in her attempt to stem the blood flow. Having already lost so much blood, Eileen was too weak to stop her.

Without the pressure applied over the gaping tear in her carotid, blood started spraying out from Eileen's neck in great, spurting gushes. Eileen could only choke and gurgle and Sansa watched as her face turned a ghastly greyish-white as those familiar dark eyes went glassy.

Eileen's face had slackened in death's cold embraceas if all the burdens of her life had been lifted at last. Sansa stared emotionlessly at the dead woman on the ground, at the bloody mess of flesh Sansa had turned her throat into, and wondered how she was going to tell Severus that she had now killed both his parents. Or if she even should.

As with Tobias, Sansa found she did not regret her actions. Like her husband, Eileen had been a threat– to Sansa herself, and to Sansa's loved ones.Family, duty, honour. Sansa had learned better than to leave an enemy alive, to give them the opportunity to regroup and attack once more.

It took another hour of kneeling in the grove for Sansa's limbs to stop their uncontrollable tremors. Her entire body still ached fiercely, as if she had been abed with a fever for a week, yet she finally had enough strength to grip onto one of Eileen's arms and drag the corpse made heavier by death to the roots of her heart-tree.

For millennium it had been common practice for Northerners to make sacrifices to the sacred heart-trees. These sacrifices could be fresh-killed animals, or lawbreakers whose throats would be slit over the weirwood roots, or captured enemies and oath-breakers who would be hung by their entrails and left to bleed to death on weirwood branches where they would be claimed as tribute by the Old Gods.

As far as Sansa knew, there had not been any sanctioned sacrifices of criminals or enemies in the North since the war against the Andals. Beyond the Wall, however, was a different story.

There had been many armies of different cultures that had gathered at Winterfell for that final stand of humanity against the dead, and with those cultures came many and varied means of worship and prayer as the people entreated their gods for a victory for humanity. Those of Andal descent prayed on the Seven Pointed Star; the red priestess had stared for hours into flames, communing with her Lord of Light; the Dothraki had performed a war dance for the Great Stallion, chanting and stamping and beating on drums of dried animal skin; the Unsullied kneeled on one knee for the blessing of the Graces, priestesses of the Gods of Ghis who had followed Daenerys to Westeros; and the Northerners had gathered to pay homage to the Old Gods amongst the sacred weirwoods in the Winterfell godswood.

It was the religious rites of the Free Folk, however, that had simultaneously fascinated and horrified Sansa. Sansa knew of the North's history of animal and human sacrifices, of course; it was one of the many reasons the Southerners still referred to Northerners as "savages" and "barbarians". She hadn't realisedit was still practiced by the Free Folk until they had gathered at the heart-tree in the godswood and an elderly, stooped woman with long, knotted hair tangled with beads, feathers, and carved bone had chanted a prayer in the Old Tongue before gutting a hare, letting its entrails spill over the roots of the heart-tree, the hot, steaming blood melting the snow where it fell.

Sansa had asked Jon's friend Tormund after about the ceremony and he had seemed surprised that 'the kneelers' had forgotten how to give a proper sacrifice to the Old Gods, before explaining the Free Folk traditions in disturbing detail to a wide-eyed Sansa, a far too intrigued Arya and a horrified Jon who kept looking like he would have covered Arya's ears with his hands if he wasn't liable to lose a finger trying as Tormund described what a "blood eagle" was, and how long it took a person to bleed to death while suspended on the branches of a weirwood with the flesh of their back spread and displayed like the wings of a bird.

Sansa didn't have a blade on her now, she didn't have a true heart-tree in a godswood, and Eileen was already deceased, yet she still managed to awkwardly drape Eileen's body over the roots of the birch tree she had carved a face into, its bark steadily paling over her years of worship. Grimacing slightly as she did so, Sansa pushed her fingers into the wound on Eileen's throat to widen it, allowing fresh blood to spill on the roots of the tree.

"It is the Hour of the Wolf," Sansa murmured in the Old Tongue, kneeling before her heart-tree with her bloodied sacrifice draped over its roots, bowing her head in supplication even as Flora crawled onto her bloodstained lap. She thought it would be difficult to remember the words of the ritual described by Tormund, an entire lifetime ago. Instead, they flowed easily from her lips in the first language of her people. "To the Old Ones of the earth, the skies, and the seas, to the Gods of the North, this blood of life I offer you, drawn by mine own hands, and with it I forever swear my fealty."

Sansa almost screamed when beneath her, deathly-pale roots writhed and twisted, rising up from the earth below to tangle around Eileen's body and drag it down beneath the churning soil. Before her stunned eyes, Sansa watched as the green leaves of the birch tree stained bled the red of weirwoods, while the carved face wept tears of blood against a now bone-white trunk. Despite the summer evening heat, Sansa realised she was now kneeling on a thin layer of frost, her breath misting visibly before her as she panted in shock.

Staring wide-eyed and stunned at the tree before her, it was immediately clear to Sansa that this was no longer a silver birch before her but a weirwood in truth, barely past its sapling years yet still growing strong and tall.

"Gods rise and fall at the whims of the worshipful masses," she breathed. And in this case, her steadfast worship and belief in the Old Gods had given them a foothold in this world.

Had that been their intention all along?

Sansa inhaled sharply a sharp, sudden wind shook the branches of the tree, snatching leaves from the reaching branches that spiraled down to where Sansa knelt and settled on her head. Without even needing to lift a hand to confirm, Sansa knew that the weirwood leaves had formed a wreath– or rather, a crown.

As Sansa forced her aching arms, still jerking with occasional tremors, to lift Flora and cradle her over her rapidly beating heart, Sansa looked around the grove of trees. With Eileen's body swallowed up by the earth, the only sign of the violence that had taken place in the grove was the patch of earth darker than the rest where blood had soaked into the ground, and the tacky, dried blood painted down Sansa's chin and neck, and splattered over the nightdress she was wearing.

It took Sansa nearly two hours before she had gathered enough strength to make the walk back home. She hurt; her entire body ached and twitched, her head was pounding, and her stomach churned. She still managed to reach her house as sunrise stretched its rosy fingers across the dawn sky, slipping through the back door and making her way straight to the bathroom. After locking herself in, Sansa got the first look at her reflection in the mirror and couldn't stop from grimacing. She looked even paler than she usually did with tacky, rust-coloured stains around her mouth, chin, and neck, and a swollen lip.

Before doing anything else, Sansa made Flora a nest of towels to snooze on them before seizing her toothbrush and the toothpaste. She brushed her teeth desperately then, enough that her gums bled under the forceful motions. This wasn't helpful at all in her attempts to forget how it felt to bite down on another human being until their skin tore apart at the force of her teeth and jaw.

Sansa kept brushing her teeth, spitting and rinsing her mouth until the pinkish-red foam ran white. Only then did she strip out of her bloodied, piss-stained nightdress and step gratefully under the warm spray of the shower, sitting on the ground to let the water pour over her, not even having the energy to stand. After nearly five minutes of letting the heat in the water soothe her aching body, Sansa managed to summon the will to lift her weary, aching arms up to wash her hair, grimacing at the need to comb the dried vomit out of the strands with her fingers.

Sansa felt almost like she was moving in a daze as she dried herself andthen bundled the ruined nightdress as she retrieved Flora then slipped quietly through the house, avoiding the living room where her siblings slept as she went straight to the bedroom the twins shared. She stuffed the ruined nightdress into her new school trunk where it stood packed at the foot of her bed, deciding that she'd dispose of the evidence at Hogwarts, far from where her parents or Petunia might accidentally stumble onto it. The weirwood crown she reverently placed on the dresser, where she suspected it would remain unchanged between now and her return from Hogwartss.

Sansa dressed slowly in the outfit she had carefully chosen for the train; a forget-me-not blue dress with a bow accent at the collar that she had embroidered with a pattern of violets, hollyhock, petunias, lilies, marigolds and sweet william flowers, and a pleated skirt that fell to Sansa's mid-calf. Under the skirt, Sansa wore opaque white tights and a pair of black patent leather Mary Janes, another set of hand-me-down shoes from Petunia.

Exhausted from even the small effort required of her to dress and her hands still trembling minutely, Sansa let herself slump onto her bed with Flora curled up beside her. She promised herself that she'd just rest her eyes for a few moments.

She was asleep in seconds.

It was Petunia who woke her. Her older sister was standing over her, frowning down at Sansa with concern shining in her light blue eyes.

"What happened?" Her sister asked– demanded, really. "You look terrible!"

"Thanks for that," Sansa rasped, wincing at how raw her throat felt when she spoke aloud. She wondered how much damage she had done with her earlier screaming. "I feel like I'm coming down with something. It's why I woke up and showered so early."

"I'll go make you some of that lemon tea you like," Petunia said, still frowning. "You really do look awful, and you sound even worse– are you sure you should be going to your new school today?"

"I'd like to try," Sansa said honestly. "I don't want to stand out by being late. Could you maybe help me look less..."

"Less like you're about to pass out if you try standing?" Petunia suggested. "Just give me a moment."

It took a herculean effort for Sansa to stay awake and upright in her bed while waiting for Petunia to return. When she did, Sansa was surprised to see that instead of her usual lemon tea, Petunia had brought her a large mug of their father's black tea.

"It has more caffeine," Petunia explained at her questioning look. "Just block your nose and drink it, it should give you some energy."

As well as the tea, Petunia had brought her make-up bag with her. She carefully applied a dusting of foundation and blush, adding colour to Sansa's wan face and concealing the lavender shadows under her eyes. Petunia even did Sansa's hair after, fixing it in twin milkmaid braids that she wrapped around Sansa's head and pinned in place like a crown.

"I'm going to miss this," Petunia said quietly, and Sansa reached back to squeeze her sister's hand.

"Me too," she said softly. "I love you, Petunia. I couldn't imagine this life without you in it. From my earliest memories, you've always been my guide, my inspiration, and my protector. I could never have dreamt up an older sister better than you."

"You're going to make me cry," Petunia said in a voice thick with tears. Sansa twisted in place, careful not to dislodge the sleeping pup on her lap, and wrapped her arms around her sister. Petunia hugged her back, pressing her face into the crook of Sansa's neck. Sansa could feel Petunia's tears against her skin, and she hugged her sister tighter.

"We'll always be a letter away," she promised, knowing it was a poor consolation.

As Lady Sansa Stark, Sansa had always expected to be sent away from her childhood home and her family when she was wedded to the heir or Lord of a new House. And due to the difficulty of travel and a noble Lady's duties to run the household and bear her husband's heirs, there would be little if any visiting from her kin. Having known this since she was a small child, the idea of a few months separation did not seem as daunting to her as it did to Petunia, especially when they would see each other again so soon, but she could understand Petunia's distress regardless.

"Promise me you'll be safe," Petunia whispered against the curve of her neck. "Please, please promise me."

"I promise," Sansa vowed, clinging to her sister as she hoped she hadn't just made herself a liar and an oath breaker.

Chapter 29

Chapter Text

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE:

It was with a bone-deep exhaustion that Sansa made her way to the kitchen where she found her parents and other siblings all gathered. As a treat, Marigold had cooked up a traditional English breakfast; fried bacon, eggs, and sausage, black pudding, baked beans, grilled tomato, and fried bread and toast served with a generous helping of margarine, jams, and marmalades, and everyone was tucking in, already dressed in preparation for the big day ahead of them.

Severus’s hair, now long enough to brush past his collar when loose, had been pulled back in a neat ponytail and he was dressed in a pair of corduroy slacks matched with a navy blue knitted sweater. From the brief glimpse of colour that Sansa caught as the sleeve of his sweater slid up when Severus reached across the table for another piece of fried bread, she could see that he had tied a royal-blue ribbon around his wrist, hidden out of sight by his sleeve. Sansa knew the ribbon was embroidered with petunias, lilies, violets, hollyhock, marigolds, and sweet william– a knight’s favour to bring him luck, she had told him when she had given the ribbon to him. She was pleased to see he was wearing it, even as her stomach twisted with guilt as she thought of Eileen’s corpse being dragged beneath the earth.

Where Severus had dressed smartly and conservatively, Lily had most certainly not. Instead, Lily appeared to have chosen to wear her favourite psychedelic-print dress, a gift from Haven and Serenity which Marigold had tried to throw away more times than Sansa could count. The skirt of the dress ended only halfway to Lily’s bare knees and had long, bell sleeves that were actually longer than the skirt. Lily had paired the dress with a ‘distressed’ denim jacket that had flower patches sewn onto it and a pair of bright yellow, knee-high flat-soled boots. Her hair she wore loose with multiple small braids tied with flowing bright yellow ribbons, and her fingernails were painted in bright, alternating shades of pink, yellow, blue, green, and purple with tiny white flower art and peace symbols.

“But don’t you want to make a good impression on your new professors and the other students?” Marigold was pleading with Lily.

“I want to make my impression on them,” Lily argued back, and Marigold let out a sound of pure despair.

“What sort of mother will they think I am?” She bemoaned.

“A strong-willed woman who has raised her daughters to be equally strong-willed?” William suggested from behind his morning paper.

“Oh, don’t you start!” Marigold said crossly even as her cheeks went pink. She caught sight of Sansa and Petunia standing in the threshold of the room and immediately started beaming. Sansa couldn’t help but think that when Marigold smiled like that, it was very easy to see where Lily got it from.

“Oh Violet! Oh darling, don’t you look lovely!” Marigold exclaimed. “Petunia, dear, did you do her hair? Do you think you could try and convince Lily to do something about–” she waved her hand vaguely in Lily’s direction, “all that?”

“I don’t fight battles I know can’t be won, thank you very much,” Petunia said dryly.

“Not unless you’ve skewed the odds to your favour,” Severus added with a smirk and Petunia nodded at him.

“You understand me,” she said, pleased.

Sansa sat down at the table, relieved for the chance to get off her feet, and her mother immediately pushed Sansa’s standard cup of hot lemon tea with three heaped teaspoons of sugar stirred through into her hands.

“Drink up, love, you look a bit peaky,” she fussed, kissing Sansa’s cheek before turning back to her argument with Lily. “Stockings at least! Will you put on stockings?”

“I’m not ashamed of my body!” Lily replied hotly, and Sansa buried her smile at the familiar “debate” into her sweet lemon tea.

Sansa found her breakfast difficult to stomach. In addition to her sore gums, raw throat, and the cuts on her tongue from biting it during Eileen’s torture spell, Sansa felt queasy with every chew of her food as she recalled how she’d bitten into Eileen’s neck. She didn’t regret what she’d done, she still truly believed she had been left with no other options at the time, but it had been horrifically violent and Sansa honestly thought that if she had to eat too much she would vomit at the memory of flesh giving away and hot bursts of copper-iron blood–

“You’re quiet this morning, little blue,” William said quietly, his unspoken question hovering in the air between them.

“I might be coming down with something,” Sansa said, the faint rasp in her voice supporting her lie. “I’ll go visit Madam Pomfrey tomorrow if it’s any worse.”

“She’s a good woman,” William said with a small, warm smile. “You make sure you let her take care of you, love.”

Her parents really did know her too well, Sansa thought ruefully, including her propensity towards suffering in silence.

“I will,” she promised.

The Hogwarts Express, the train that would carry them to Hogwarts’ hidden location, only left from Kings Cross Station in London. William and Marigold planned to accompany Sansa, Lily and Severus on the two-and-a-half-hour journey by train they would need to take to arrive at King’s Cross Station on time. Sansa was surprised when Petunia also decided to join them. Sansa knew that Petunia didn’t have to come along on the long, undoubtedly boring train journey, only to turn around to catch the same train from London back to the midlands. She was touched that her older sister had decided to make the round trip anyway.

Sansa slept most of the train journey to London, slumped against a very tolerant Petunia who seemed to very determinedly be ignoring all the looks they were getting for the birdcage containing Catnip and the second birdcage holding Buttercup and Nightshade. William eventually took pity on Petunia and his wife and took off his coat, using it to cover up the birdcages. Sleeping in a wicker cat basket, Flora at least was hidden from sight.

Sansa’s napping on Petunia’s shoulder had left her feeling much more rested after her sleepless night when their train pulled up at Kings Cross Station. Her body still ached all over, but at least she didn’t still feel like it was a fight just to keep her eyes open.

William helped them all lift their heavy school trunks off the train and wheel them over to the brick wall between Platforms Nine and Ten where they had been instructed by Professor McGonagall to wait for her to arrive. Sansa recognised a few faces from the tour of Diagon Alley already waiting there and Lily eagerly went over to greet them, while Sansa remained standing with her parents.

“We’re going to miss you so much, my darlings,” Marigold said in a choked voice, and Sansa gave in to the urge to hug her mother tightly, burying her face into Marigold’s shoulder and trying not to cry so she didn’t make the carefully applied concealer smudge. Marigold squeezed her back so hard that it made Sansa’s aching body throb uncomfortably, but Sansa didn’t care. All she cared about was the feeling of safety and protection she felt in her mother’s arms.

When Marigold finally released her so she could squeeze her arms around a blushing Severus, her mother’s light blue eyes wet with tears, it was William that Sansa turned to, her kind and gentle father who cradled her in his arms like she was the most precious thing in his world, softly kissing the top of her head.

“I’ll miss you, little blue,” he murmured.

“I’ll miss you too, daddy,” Sansa whispered back, choked. “I love you so much. Thank you.”

William would never know what she was thanking him for in that moment, her gratitude such that she did not have to doubt her father truly loved her and that he loved Sansa for herself, yet it almost appeared that he understood as he gently kissed the top her head once more, an open, easy affection bestowed upon his beloved daughter.

Petunia was next in the line of farewells, and this time Sansa truly could not hold back her tears.

“I don’t want to leave you,” she choked, and Petunia sighed, tugging Sansa into her arms so she could rest her chin atop Sansa’s head.

“I wish I was coming too,” she whispered, “I wish I wasn’t so… ordinary. Just a boring old muggle, nothing special at all.”

Sansa pulled back abruptly, looking up at Petunia in horror. “How could you think that you’re not special?” She asked, utterly shocked. Petunia smiled bitterly.

“Because I am,” she said. “I’m not pretty or clever or brave, not like you, Lily and Sev. I’m just… me. Boring, ordinary me.”

Sansa could feel her heart breaking as she looked up at Petunia. “How could you possibly believe such– such utter horse sh*t?” She demanded, feeling her eyes well with fresh tears. “You’re one of the cleverest people I know, you can stay calm and take control in a crisis, you’re a natural leader, and you’re beautiful. You’re going to be the first woman in our family to graduate from university. How can you ever think that you’re just ordinary? Petunia, you’re extraordinary.”

Petunia started crying then, which immediately alarmed Sansa. It also brought the attention of the others over to them, and Lily soon had her arms wrapped tightly around their older sister.

“I wish you were coming,” Lily said tearfully. “It won’t be the same without you.”

“Breakfast and dinner at home will be so quiet that you won’t know what to do with yourself,” Severus added, and Petunia laughed wetly.

“It will certainly be more peaceful in the house without you and Lily playing your awful music all the time,” she agreed. “And I won’t have to be around while Lety is trying to toilet train that beastie of hers, thank goodness!”

“We’ll miss you, Petunia,” Severus said softly, and Petunia sniffed then tugged Severus in for a hug too.

“I’ll miss you all,” she sniffed again. “Don’t get into too much trouble without me there to help you get out of it. And I don’t care if I don’t have magic, if anyone is bothering you, you write to me about it and I’ll figure out how to destroy them, just watch me!”

“None of us doubt you for a second,” Severus assured her. “You’re the most Slytherin person I know next to Salazar Slytherin himself.”

Lily giggled at this, and it was with a last round of hugs and wiping of eyes, Petunia giving a quick extra dab of concealer under Sansa’s eyes, it was finally time.

Professor McGonagall had arrived at the Platforms at some point during all the farewells being traded, and Sansa took a deep breath as she turned away from her parents, her older sister and her life in a world without magic yet Sansa had found to be magical beyond all possible imagination to follow the Deputy Headmistress of Hogwarts through the magical gateway to Platform Nine and Three Quarters where a scarlet steam engine awaited.

::

Due to the need to wait for all of the muggleborns to arrive before showing them how to use the magical entrance to Platform Nine and Three Quarters, Sansa, Lily and Severus were three of the last students to board the train. This meant the majority of the compartments had already been filled by the time they’d stowed their trunks and the birdcages away in the designated carriages, so they ended up sharing a compartment with a couple other first years.

Both of their new companions were dark-haired boys wearing finely tailored robes with the type of ease that spoke of a background of wealth– Sansa would know, having played that role herself a lifetime ago. One of the boys had messy hair, a deep tan with freckles, and a pair gold-rimmed spectacles. The other body had very fair skin, sharp aristocratic cheekbones and grey eyes that widened dramatically when he caught sight of Lily’s bold fashion choices.

With the awkwardness of strangers forced to share space, they all nodded politely to each other before Severus, Lily and Sansa sat; Severus and Lily to the right of the boy with the spectacles, Sansa next to the grey-eyed boy.

Lily’s eyes were still wet and she sniffed loudly in a way that prompted Sansa to wrinkle her nose and pull an embroidered handkerchief from her pocket to hand her sister, who accepted it with another loud sniff. “I’m going to miss them all so much,” Lily said tearfully.

“Me too,” Severus agreed, reaching around Lily’s shoulder to give her a one-armed hug. “But we're going!" He added, unable to suppress the exhilaration in his voice. "This is it! We're off to Hogwarts!"

Lily nodded, mopping her eyes and smiling.

“Which House do you think we’ll all be in?” She asked, a topic that Sansa knew Lily and Severus had talked to death between them, each passionately arguing for their picks of choice, yet they never seemed to get bored of it.

“Violet is definitely going to be a Gryffindor,” Severus smirked at Sansa, and Sansa scoffed, knowing that he was provoking her yet unable to let such terrible falsehoods stand uncorrected.

“Chivalry is dead,” she said pointedly, causing Severus’s smirk to only widen. “I am far more likely to be Sorted into Slytherin before I’d ever condescend to wear red and gold with a lion mascot.” Even the thought was ghastly.

"Slytherin?"

The spectacled boy sharing the compartment with them, who had shown no interest at all in the trio until that point other than the odd looks he’d shot at Lily’s psychedelic outfit, looked around at the word. "Who wants to be in Slytherin? I think I'd leave, wouldn't you?" He asked the other boy lounging on the seats opposite him. The grey-eyed boy didn’t smile.

"My whole family have been in Slytherin," he said.

"Blimey," said the spectacled boy, "and I thought you seemed all right!"

The other boy grinned. “Maybe I'll break the tradition.”

“A bold choice,” Sansa said. “Certainly one suited to the House of red and gold.”

“You think?” The boy practically preened before the spectacled boy interrupted.

“Why would you pick Slytherin over Gryffindor?” He demanded. Sansa had not been at all impressed with his attitude thus far and was about to let him know exactly that in her best cuttingly polite manner when her brother jumped in first to defend her.

"If you'd rather be brawny than brainy, then why would anyone have a problem with being Sorted into Gryffindor?” Severus said with a sneer.

"Where're you hoping to go, seeing as you're neither?" interjected the grey-eyed boy, abruptly losing any goodwill Sansa had felt towards him.

The first boy roared with laughter, which Sansa knew was the exact wrong choice he could have made. She resigned herself as now Lily sat up straight, tears forgotten as her pale skin coloured with rage.

Once, in a world where Lily hadn’t been introduced to the suffragette movement at a young and impressionable age, where she hadn’t marched for her rights as a woman, hadn’t argued her way onto the school football team, hadn’t helped cover up the murder of Severus’s abusive father, and hadn’t dedicated herself to embodying the words of chief philosopher of the woman’s rights and suffrage movement Elizabeth Cady Stanton that “the best protection a woman can have… is courage”, perhaps Lily might have chosen that moment to back down from the potential confrontation and suggest they leave the compartment to find another without the two boys in it.

This was not that world.

And Lily? Well, the headmaster and the football coach of their primary school could educate these boys on just how well Lily ‘backed-down’.

“Your prejudice,” Lily said fiercely to the laughing boys, “is as ugly and divisive as the type of people you are showing yourselves to be! My brother is daring and clever and strong and kind– so far, all that you both have shown is me is your ability to form opinions without learning facts and there’s nothing brawny or brainy about that!”

Both boys were gaping at Lily now, the boy with spectacles flushing in embarrassment while the other boy looked pale.

With a satisfied nod that set her long, loose hair swishing about her face, Lily stood up in her bright yellow boots and beckoned to Sansa and Severus with all the authority of the nobility that Sansa had once been. “Let’s find another compartment,” she said, “I’m not interested in spending my first train ride to Hogwarts with these tossers.”

Sansa didn’t hesitate to pick up the wicker cat basket containing Flora and stand, nor did Severus. The boy with the spectacles finally finished spluttering long enough to speak an actual, coherent sentence.

“Oi!” He said indignantly. “I’m not prejudiced like a Slytherin!”

Lily gave him a very unimpressed look over her shoulder as she yanked open the compartment door. “Funny,” she said flatly. “Every word you just said then was wrong.” Then, with a flip of her long, bright hair like she was waving her victory banner in their faces, Lily swept out of the compartment.

“Come on, Severus,” Sansa said, with a resigned sort of amusem*nt at her twin not even waiting to get to Hogwarts before she started tackling injustice and prejudice. “Letting her get too much of a head start is just asking for trouble. Well– it’s asking for more trouble, that is.”

“Couldn’t agree more,” Severus replied with a faux shudder.

Sansa neatly stepped over the foot extended by the spectacled boy in an attempt to trip her and carefully didn’t smile when Severus very intentionally stomped on the still extended foot as they both exited, prompting the spectacled boy to shout, “see ya, Snivellus!” after them.

“Creative, isn’t he?” Sansa said with a roll of her eyes. “I wonder what they’ll come up with for me when they learn my name– Vomit? Vile-let?”

She was pleased to Severus’s expression, which had started to crumble at the cruel, insulting twist to his name, start to lighten up again.

“They’re not clever enough to think up Vile-let,” he said. “The wordplay would be too much for them. I think you’re going to get stuck with Vomit.”

“Vomit, Snivellus and… Dilly?” Sansa suggested. Severus snorted.

“Lily can be a bit of a dill, sometimes,” he said, the fondness in his voice softening the insult to something gentle and teasing.

Neither Sansa nor Severus could see Lily waiting in the corridor travelling down the train, so they continued walking along it until Lily poked her head out of one of the compartments behind them. “In here!” she said cheerfully.

There were three others already in the compartment, however seeing as they appeared to be first years too by their plain black robes, it was easy for the seven of them to fit in the space.

“This is Pandora Pythos, Charity Burbage, and Archibald Croaker who prefers Archie,” Lily introduced their new companions.

“A pleasure to make your acquaintances,” Sansa said politely. “I’m Violet Evans, Lily’s sister, and this is our brother, Severus Evans.”

“Lovely to meet you, Violet and Severus!” Piped up the girl who Lily had introduced as Pandora. Pandora was a very pretty child with long ropes of golden-blonde hair and almond-shaped eyes with unusual honey-gold irises that gave her an almost fey-like appearance.

Sitting next to Pandora, Charity had round, pink cheeks, a button nose, and her strawberry-blonde curls tied in pigtails. The lone boy of the trio, Archie, was tall and gangly with a skinny face and disproportionately thick eyebrows which made him look like as if he was thinking very hard about something.

“They’re much more pleasant company then the idiots from before,” Lily said happily as Sansa and Severus made themselves comfortable. “We were just talking about an experiment Pandora did recently– she was trying to figure out how our electricity works, except she accidentally burnt down half her back porch while she was dismantling a microwave.”

Sansa felt her eyebrows raise incredulously at this. Pandora smiled sheepishly.

“My parents weren’t too happy about that,” she said, in a high, sweet voice that lilted in an accent Sansa didn’t recognise, before Pandora’s face brightened. “Lily and Archie are going to help me figure out how to make something Lily called a ‘boom box’ work using magic, not electricity, so we can use it at Hogwarts!” She said excitedly before sweeping an admiring look up and down Lily’s outfit. “She’s also promised to let me borrow that dress!”

“I told you so,” Sansa said immediately, turning to Severus who let out a long-suffering sigh.

“We shouldn’t have let her get so much of a head start,” he agreed.

“Oi!” Lily exclaimed with a laugh, Pandora and Charity joining in while Archie grinned.

Charity smiled shyly at Sansa, who was now seated beside her. “I’d love to learn braids like yours,” she said. “My dad is really bad at braiding.”

Sansa noted the conspicuous absence of the mention of a mother, however she knew better then to comment. Instead, she offered, “I can braid your hair now for you, if you like?”

“Oh, would you?” Charity asked, excited.

“I’d love to,” Sansa answered honestly.

Everyone in the compartment settled in happily for the long journey ahead; Pandora, Archie and Lily chatting together about the magic they’d most like to learn and why, Severus lost in his copy of ‘Animal Farm’ borrowed from Sansa, and Sansa, after she’d finished styling Charity’s hair in a waterfall braid which framed her sweet face nicely, had happily engaged in conversation about pets with the other girl, who very enthusiastically described how one of her uncles bred orthros hounds. These were, apparently, large two-headed dogs which Charity assured were much less vicious than their three-headed cousins, the cerberus.

Charity’s obvious love for dogs– and deadly sounding dog-adjacent creatures– had prompted Sansa to introduce Flora, who had been due for her next feed anyway. This briefly derailed all other conversation in the compartment, Pandora and Charity both cooing over the pup while a curious Archie leaned over to get a closer look.

“Is she a direwolf?” He asked her, and Sansa blinked, surprised that he had managed to recognise it when Flora was still the same size as a cat. “Standard wolf breeds don’t have coats that colour,” Archie explained as he saw her surprise, before adding sheepishly, “I read a lot.”

“There’s certainly nothing wrong with that,” Sansa told him before confirming, “yes, Flora is a direwolf.”

“Is she your bonded familiar?” Pandora asked enthusiastically. “Well of course she is, she’d have to be if they’re letting you bring her to Hogwarts! What’s it like being bonded to a familiar?”

“Like I’m complete,” Sansa answered honestly, and Pandora sighed dreamily.

“I’d love a familiar,” she said, “I tried to hatch a basilisk when I was eight, but my páppa and táta stopped me, which really was a shame. I was so sad that mamá bought me a hive of myrmekes and they’re now the size of small dogs!”

“What are myrmekes?” Lily asked, intrigued.

“Ants,” Pandora and Archie said at the same time.

“They’re a breed of ants found in Greece,” Archie added. “They can grow to the size of a bear.”

Sansa blanched, hugging Flora closer to her at the mere thought of how terrifying ants the size of a bear sounded– and at how interested Lily looked in.

“This is their fault,” Severus muttered to her. “Those boys, back in the first compartment. Lily wouldn’t be getting all these ideas if they’d managed to keep a civil tongue.”

“There is no chance that Pandora and Lily wouldn’t have found each other at some point,” Sansa said dryly. “Like calls to like.”

“Crazy calls to crazy,” Severus corrected, which made Charity laugh.

When the snack trolley came around, Pandora happily spent a small fortune to get them a bit of everything to try, telling Sansa, Severus, and Lily that they simply had to sample them all to decide which were their favourites, with hers being the co*ckroach clusters. “They’ve just got this delicious nutty flavour,” she explained enthusiastically.

Sansa made sure to stay very clear of those and of the every flavour jelly-beans which really were every flavour, as Lily found when she sampled one that tasted of rotten fish. Personally, Sansa enjoyed the sugar quills the most, having always had a terrible habit of chewing on the tips of her quills which she was sure her new favourite treat would do nothing to improve. Severus liked the toothflossing stringmints best, while Lily’s favourite turned out to be the tiny black pepper imps that let her breathe fire.

Sansa, Lily and Severus had to leave the compartment briefly to go back to their trunks and retrieve a set of robes to change into. Sansa was unsurprised to see the flower and peace-sign patches that Lily had sewn onto her plain black robes or the neon rainbow laces Lily had replaced the plain black laces of her brogue ankle-boots with. She also found herself unsurprised by the enthusiasm with which Pandora greeted Lily’s uniform alterations, nor by the happily accepted offer for Lily to help Pandora sew some of her extra flower patches onto Pandora’s school robes.

When the train finally pulled in at the stop, there was no questioning that the group would stay together. Sansa was reluctant to leave Flora behind in the compartment but Professor McGonagall had promised that she would be taken from the train and cared for by the groundskeeper until the following afternoon so that Sansa could focus on the Sorting and her first night and first day of classes without the need to feed Flora every few hours.

The largest man Sansa had ever seen, and she’d seen the Lannister’s pet monster the Mountain, waved all the first years milling uncertainly on the train platform over to him. Unlike the Mountain, this very large man had a kind face as he introduced himself as Hagrid, the “groundskeeper and keeper of keys” of Hogwarts.

At his instruction, together the first years followed the light of the lantern the groundskeeper was carrying, its soft glow barely cutting through the darkness that had settled over them since leaving the train platform. Nobody was speaking, though Sansa wasn’t sure if it was the oppressive dark or the nerves. She suspected it was both.

"Yeh'll get yer firs' sight o' Hogwarts in a sec," the groundskeeper called over his shoulder, "jus' round this bend here."

There was a loud gasp from the crowd as the narrow path they were following opened suddenly onto the edge of a great black lake, and built atop a high mountain on the other side of the lake was a castle– Hogwarts.

Sansa had to admit that even if it was far from the most impressive castle she’d ever seen, there was still a rugged beauty to it, one that reminded her of Winterfell. Of her very first home.

She had to swallow a lump in her throat.

Welcome, she thought to herself, to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

"No more'n four to a boat!" the groundskeeper called, pointing to a bobbing fleet of little boats sitting in the water.

Sansa nudged Severus over to Lily and their new acquaintances, stepping back herself to search for another boat. Archie joined her, though he had to split off too when they were unable to find a boat left with two spaces. Sansa had to fight the urge to sigh in resignation when she saw that the only boat with space left was, of course, the one containing the two boys from the first train compartment, in addition to a third boy she didn’t recognise.

Sansa arched an eyebrow at the two boys as she stepped into the boat, daring them to say something. It seemed the nerves of the fast-approaching Sorting had stolen their cheeky tongues, however, as both looked away from her rather than comment.

"Everyone in?" shouted the groundskeeper, who had a boat to himself. "Right then– FORWARD!"

And the fleet of little boats moved off all at once, gliding across the lake.

“I’m Violet Evans,” Sansa introduced herself to the other first year sharing the boat. He had sandy blond hair and he was so hunched over that Sansa could barely see his face.

“Um, I’m Remus, Remus Lupin,” Remus Lupin mumbled shyly.

“Aiming for Gryffindor, mate?” The spectacled boy asked pointedly, shooting Sansa a look as he did so. It seemed he’d found his tongue again. Pity.

“Um, I’d like to be Sorted there, yes,” Remus mumbled, flushing as he did so. He was fiddling with the sleeves of his robes and Sansa caught a brief glimpse of some nasty-looking scarring hidden under his left sleeve before Remus shifted and it was hidden again.

“Gryffindor is the best House,” the spectacled boy asserted then continued to monologue about how Potters were always Sorted into Gryffindor. Sansa assumed from this speech that the spectacled boy’s surname must be Potter. The other boy from the compartment was clearly trying to hide the dread from his face, and Sansa recalled his earlier reluctance to be Sorted into Slytherin, as he’d said was the tradition for his family. Potter’s current spiel certainly must not be helping his anxiety about his upcoming Sorting.

“I’m a muggleborn, so please excuse my ignorance on the subject,” Sansa interrupted Potter, assuming a look of confusion as she tilted her head slightly, “but are you saying that Wizarding children are just always Sorted into the Houses their family lines were Sorted into? That there is no taking into account the individual virtues and aspirations of the students being Sorted?”

“What? Of course not!” Potter exclaimed, and Sansa could see how the grey-eyed boy relaxed minutely even as he shot Sansa a speculative look, having apparently caught on to what she’d done for him even if Potter was continuing to be ignorant of the subtext by the way he was now going on about how all Potters had been Sorted into Gryffindor because they were all brave and daring and chivalrous and so on. Sansa arched an eyebrow back at the grey-eyed boy, who jerked his head in a stilted nod of thanks before hastily looking away from her to join Potter’s conversation, which had been very one-sided until then. Sansa hoped he truly did appreciate her efforts– Potter’s monologuing had gotten old before it had even begun.

The little boats carried them all through a curtain of ivy that hid a wide opening in the cliff face. They were then carried along a dark tunnel which seemed to be taking them right underneath the castle, until they reached a kind of underground harbor.

Sansa was glad for the opportunity to leave the boys behind and join a very nervous-looking Severus and wide-eyed with wonder Lily as they followed the light of Hagrid’s lamp up a passageway in the rock, coming out onto the smooth, damp grass right in the shadow of the castle.

With her heart fluttering in her chest, Sansa reached for Lily and Severus’s hands, squeezing them tight as they walked up a flight of stone steps and crowded around the huge, oak front door.

"Everyone here?” the groundskeeper called before raising a gigantic fist and knocking three times on the castle door.

Chapter 30

Chapter Text

CHAPTER THIRTY:

It was Professor McGonagall who met them at the doors and led them into the Entrance Hall, looking stern and imposing with her tight black bun and deep burgundy robes.

The other students were gazing around them at the castle, most gasping in amazement or attempting to hide how impressed they were. If Sansa was honest, the Entrance Hall did not quite compare in grandiosity to other castles she had lived in, though she once again found it similar to Winterfell in the unadorned yet arresting impression it left rather than one that was gilded and glittered. Hogwarts, like Winterfell, was practical, Sansa thought. Considering it was a school for students learning magic, “practical” seemed very wise.

Professor McGonagall cleared her throat, drawing the attention of the crowd of first years.

"Welcome to Hogwarts," she said. "The start-of-term banquet will begin shortly, but before you take your seats in the Great Hall, you will be sorted into your Houses. While you are here, your House will be your family within Hogwarts. You will have classes with the rest of your house, sleep in your house dormitory, and spend free time in your House common room.”

Sansa wasn’t quite sure how she felt about that. She knew enough about the shape of her own soul and that of her siblings that she sincerely doubted they would end up in the same House and the thought of attending classes and eating meals apart from her beloved siblings had the wolf inside her that was so fiercely protective of her Pack howling in protest.

"The four houses are called Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin,” Professor McGonagall continued her explanation. “Each House has its own noble history and each has produced outstanding witches and wizards. While you are at Hogwarts, your triumphs will earn your House points, while any rule-breaking will lose House points. At the end of the year, the house with the most points is awarded the House Cup, a great honor. I hope each of you will be a credit to whichever House becomes yours.”

Professor McGonagall smiled then, a small, kind gesture. “Follow me,” she said. “Your future awaits.”

Entering the Great Hall, Sansa finally felt the sense of awe hit her. It was very different from any feasting hall she had been in before, brightly lit by thousands and thousands of candles that floated in mid-air over the table where the professors were seated at the top of the Hall. Four long tables were decorated with large banners featuring the respective House colours; blue-and-bronze with a coat of arms featuring a soaring eagle; yellow-and-black with an odd-looking creature she knew from previous discussions on the Houses to be a badger; silver-and-green with their elegant, winding serpent; and finally, a table decorated with red-and-gold with a roaring lion.

Sansa hated the red-and-gold table the very moment she saw it, inhaling sharply as she dug her nails into her hands. Staring at the lion that loomed over them all, she wanted to be sick. She could almost hear Cersei’s voice, hear her coos of little dove, could feel the weight of the red-and-gold bridal cloak as Tyrion fastened it at her throat where it choked like a collar, a chain, the grey-and-white maiden cloak stolen from her along with her House name, her freedom, and what was left of her hope.

Sansa wanted to be ill at the mere thought of being draped in Lannister colours once more; she could feel her heart pounding, could feel the sweat beading on her palms.

“Violet?” Severus whispered, looking at her in concern. Sansa took a quiet breath, donning the mask of serenity she had worn at her wedding, a mere three-and-ten name-days and wedded to a Lannister more than twice her age. She had not kneeled at her wedding to be cloaked in Lannister colours, and she would not falter now.

“It is nothing,” she murmured, turning her eyes from the red-and-gold table, back to the out-of-place stool where an old, scruffy-looking pointed black hat sat. “Just a spot of nerves.”

Sansa did not have time to ruminate on her anxiety as she watched with a bewildered sort of amazement as the hat seemed to open a rip in its brim to extol the virtues of the various Houses in poetic verse like a court fool.

“We only have to try on the Hat?” Lily whispered, sounding disappointed. “Some of the students thought there might be real badgers and snakes and lions and eagles that we would have to fight.”

Sansa could not help her grimace at the very thought. “Trying on a Hat seems much more sensible,” she whispered back.

“But so boring,” Pandora complained, trading a commiserating look with Lily.

As Professor McGonagall read from a list of names, Sansa found herself watching, interested despite herself, as Professor McGonagall called out, “Black, Sirius!” and the grey-eyed boy walked up to the Hat, the co*cky look on his face only just hiding the anxiety underneath.

He needn’t have feared. The Hat had barely touched his head for more than ten seconds before the rip on its brim called out; “GRYFFINDOR!”

A great hissing of whispers almost drowned out the hesitant applause from the red-and-gold table as the boy, Sirius, appeared to slump slightly in relief as he made his way over to his new House, the previously plain black robes now decorated with red-and-gold trimming and a lion crest.

Good for him, Sansa thought to herself.

Of their new friends, it was Charity who was Sorted first as Professor McGonagall called out, “Burbage, Charity!”

Charity steeled herself with a deep breath before stepping forward, making her way to the stool where the Hat was placed on her head, and slipping down to cover half her face. The Hat was silent for perhaps thirty seconds before the rip in the brim opened and it called out, “HUFFLEPUFF!”

Archie was next and was almost immediately Sorted into Ravenclaw and then, in what felt like no time at all, Professor McGonagall was calling out, “Evans, Lily!”

Sansa thought that Lily looked fierce, almost, as she marched determinedly over to the Hat. It took nearly two minutes of Lily sitting there before the brim finally widened and Sansa closed her eyes in resignation, already preparing herself as the Hat announced, “GRYFFINDOR!”

Sansa still clapped, of course, yet her heart sunk as it was confirmed for her that Lily, Severus, and herself would not all be in the same House.

It did not surprise her, though. In truth, she had already been preparing herself for her sister’s Sorting. Lily was brave, she had always been brave. Her twin was not afraid to take a stance, yet she was also not afraid to admit that she had made a mistake,or that she was out of her depth, or that she was afraid. That, Sansa knew, took true courage.

If Petunia were to be Sorted, Sansa knew that her older sister would have been Sorted into Slytherin in a heartbeat; Petunia was cunning, ambitious, and had a talent for spotting the weaknesses in others that would allow her to get in front and achieve the most advantageous outcome for herself.

Before Tobias’ death and his official adoption by the Evans family, Sansa would have assumed her brother would have been Sorted into Slytherin too. He was a survivor to the bone, and had been desperate to improve his situation, to rise above the poverty he had been born into, and to prove himself as more than his father’s son and the product of his mother’s “mistake”. Yet Severus did not have that same drive anymore, not now that he was so loved and unconditionally accepted for who he was by Sansa’s family, now his family also.

Severus had chosen to forgo any chance of adopting the distinguished Prince name with its millennia-old magical bloodline, instead proudly choosing Evans for his name, a muggle name, all his previous ideas around magical superiority over “muggles” havinglong-since been erased by the love and care he was given by Marigold, Primrose and William, and the admiration he had for Petunia. Without the external pressures that had previously driven Severus to desperately reach for fortune and success, he was now free to pursue his passions without that need to prove himself. He was free to seek out knowledge for the sake of knowledge, to explore magic because he loved it, not out of a desperation to survive.

Yet for all Sansa thought that Severus was suited to Ravenclaw, she did not think he was entirely without his own ambitions still. Only, instead of ambition to improve his situation, to rise above poverty and prove himself as more than the sum of his parents, it was Severus’s ambition now to prove himself to the Wizarding World as an Evans; to prove what an Evans was capable of to the Purebloods who thought that blood defined a wizard and their future and to prove to Marigold and William that adopting him was not a mistake, though Sansa knew they would have ever thought such a thing. Severus had been raised to earn his place and it would take years to teach him otherwise. Sansa hoped he would wear a tie of bronze-and-blue, yet she found he doubted he would don colours other than silver-and-green.

Sansa watched as “Evans, Severus!” was called next to be Sorted, giving her brother’s hand one last squeeze before the very nervous-looking Severus approached the stool.

It was Professor McGonagall they had to thank for Severus’ name being officially changed in the Magical World– apparently she had a friend in Magical Law Enforcement, a witch by the name of Amelia Bones, who had been able to pull a few strings to get everything regarding the official name-change sorted out at the Ministry without making any waves or alerting anyone who would make the situation ‘problematic’.

Sansa was unsurprised that it took much longer than Lily for Severus to be Sorted, but when the Hat finally opened at the rim of its brim after nearly four minutes to call out, “SLYTHERIN!” Sansa was not surprised and she hid any disappointment she might feel as she met Severus’ anxious eyes with a bright smile as she clapped her hands hard for her brother who now bore a serpent crest on his robes and green-and-silver trimming on his robes.

Finally, it was Sansa's turn to be Sorted, with Professor McGonagall calling out, “Evans, Violet!”

She walked over to the stool, her head held high, refusing to turn and acknowledge the distractions in the Hall even as she heard a few curious murmurs from the House tables about the third ‘Evans’ name to be called.

Lowering herself gracefully onto the stool, Sansa closed her eyes as the Hat was placed on her head only to have to prevent herself from flinching as she heard an unfamiliar voice speak in her mind.

Well, well, well, it seemed to muse, after how difficult your siblings were to Sort, I thought you would be another puzzle for me to be sure.

Get out of my head, Sansa thought fiercely. She had too many secrets for her to feel comfortable with some– some objectporing over her thoughts and memories as if poring over a scroll.

Oh child, I am not the only mind-reader in Hogwarts, though I am the only one bound by the blood and oaths of the Founders themselves to never reveal what I have gleaned from the minds of those who don me, the Hat… reassured her?

It was not reassuring at all.

Please, Sansa thought desperately, despite herself, please, get out.

She could not bear the thought of her last sacred place, the only part of her that her tormentors had never been able to desecrate, being violated. It made her skin crawl and nausea crawl in her throat. She was half convinced she would be sick then and there before the entire student body.

I’m sorry, child, the Hat apologised.

I don’t need you to be sorry, I need you to be gone and for this to be over, Sansa pleaded. She would be insulted by the Hat repeatedly calling her ‘child’ laterwhen she did not feel on the brink of a break-down.

It will be in mere moments, the Hat assured her. As I said, you are certainly the easiest of your siblings to Sort. The virtue you value most, your most defining characteristic, is not ambition or survival, for you have previously sacrificed both to save your kin and your people; you believe not in chivalry, not after you were beaten bloody by those who made sacred vows of such; you are not interested in knowledge for the sake of knowledge alone, though you will seek it to aid those you love.

Your soul, my Lady, is one shaped by loyalty; loyalty to the kin that you love, and loyalty to the kingdom you once ruled in deed if not in name. You are prepared to do anything for those that are yours, even die without hesitation or kill without remorse.

I have never Sorted anyone so quintessentially Hufflepuff since the day Helga herself donned me to imbue her personality into the fabric of my being, so brutally, viciously loyal to all children of magic that she was, prepared to destroy any threat, to sacrifice anything and everything, even the royal title she had been born with as the daughter of Eiríkr “Blood-Axe” Haraldsson, King of Norway and Northumbria, in her drive to keep the children of magic, witches, wizards and magical beings alike, safe from persecution.

There is only one House I could have ever Sorted you in, the Hat completed its monologue, and that House is, “HUFFLEPUFF!”

The Hat was lifted from her head as the yellow-and-black table clapped enthusiastically for her and Sansa gave Professor McGonagall a quick smile that she knew did not show any hint of the fear and revulsion she had buried deep in her soul before making her way over to where Charity already sat, the horror she felt from the violation of her mind perfectly hidden from her expression.

“I’m so happy you’re here with me,” Charity whispered to Sansa as she sat, the other girl’s face glowing with pleasure. “I am sorry you weren’t Sorted with your siblings, though.”

“I always knew we wouldn’t be Sorted into the same House,” Sansa admitted out loud for the first time what she had always known in her heart with a small, resigned smile for her new Housemate. “I’ve always been prepared for it, I think.”

The rest of the Sorting seemed to drag on now that Sansa and her siblings had been Sorted. Remus Lupin, the boy she had shared the boat with, was Sorted into Gryffindor, as was the spectacled boy, whose name was indeed ‘Potter’, first name ‘James’. Pandora, last of those to be Sorted whom Sansa was familiar with, joined Archie into Ravenclaw which Sansa thought suited the girl well, though Lily seemed disappointed over on the Gryffindor table.

When the final student– a “Zabini, Cesare”– was sorted into Slytherin, the Hat and stool were put away and the wizard seated at the centre of the staff table, in the most elaborate of the carved wooden chairs, stood.

His robes were easily the brightest of all the staff; a brilliant royal purple and cerulean blue with embroidered gold suns which emitted tiny beams of light and silver stars which actually moved across the fabric like shooting stars across the sky, leaving sparkling trails in their wake. Sansa was immediately determined that she learn how to achieve such effects with her own embroidery, though perhaps in a style less ostentatious. The wizard appeared older, though there were still traces of auburn in his waist-length silvery-grey beard and equally long hair. His blue eyes seemed to almost twinkle behind a pair of half-moon spectacles.

There was a certain weight to the man’s presence, a gravitas in the way he only had to stand for the entire Hall to fall silent. Sansa had seen such gravitas, such respect, before; in Tywin Lannister and in Daenerys Targaryen. Each of them uniquely powerful people and uniquely dangerous in their own way. Both Tywin and Daenerys had been equally confident in their own power too. This man, Sansa thought to herself warily, was not one to underestimate.

“Welcome to all our new students,” the man said, his voice deep and carrying. “And to our old students, welcome back. For those who do not know, I am Professor Albus Dumbledore, the Headmaster of this fine institution. I only have a few words before we begin our feast; first, a reminder to our students that the Forbidden Forest is out of bounds to all and that there is to be no dueling in the corridors.

“In addition, our Professor Sprout has managed to source a rare specimen that she has planted on the grounds, a type of tree I believe is most well-known as a ‘whomping willow’ for reasons that will become abundantly clear should you decide to make the poor decision to approach it. Madam Pomfrey has informed me that any students foolish enough to do so can expect an overnight stay in the hospital wing and a helping of her nastiest tasting brews of Skelegrow.”

Sansa felt her eyebrows rise higher and higher during the Headmaster’s speech. What sort of school was this? She could not help but think incredulously. Worse, none of the older students seemed even remotely surprised by such strange warnings.

“And with that, I bid you all to enjoy the Welcoming Feast,” Professor Dumbledore wrapped up his speech with a wide smile and a clap of his hands. Sansa watched, amazed, as piles of food appeared on the gold-plated dishes in front of her. It was not quite the feast of seventy-seven courses at Joffrey and Margaery’s wedding, the finest course being the taste of vengeance on her tongue as she watched Joffrey choke to death in Cersei’s arms, yet it was certainly an impressive spread, a spread that Sansa would have been proud to present to a visiting noble.

“Hullo first years,” an older girl with a silver ‘P’ badge on her robes greeted Sansa, Charity, and the handful of other boys and girls who had been Sorted into Hufflepuff. “I’m Maya Bridges, Hufflepuff’s seventh year prefect. If you have any questions or if you’re having trouble with finding your classes, feel free to come ask myself or any of the other Hufflepuff prefects,” she pointed to five others sitting at the table, two girls and three boys who waved and smiled. “We’ll be doing a tour of the school bright and early tomorrow, before breakfast,” she added. “We’ll send someone to wake you up so you don’t miss it, plus there will be a prefect to help you get to your classes for the first week of school.”

Sansa joined the other first years in nodding and thanking Miss Bridges, and she gave them a brilliant smile before moving back to her previous seat.

That was when the ghosts appeared.

Sansa swallowed her scream as a pearly-white, slightly transparent fat little monk seemed to rise up from the floor beneath them, beaming brightly.

It took everything in her not to react outwardly as the ghost greeted them most enthusiastically. “Welcome, welcome!” He exclaimed. “Congratulations on being Sorted into Hufflepuff! It was my old House too, you know. I’m the Fat Friar– yes, that is my name,” he chuckled when one of the other first years made a squeaking sound. “Please feel free to ask me for directions or advice during your years here at Hogwarts!”

“Do all witches and wizards become ghosts?” Sansa immediately asked, as a horrible thought struck her. Would Eileen come back as a ghost? Or would her sacrifice to the gods prevent her return? The last thing Sansa wanted was her role in Eileen’s death to be revealed, especially as she’d revealed to Eileen that she’d been involved in Tobias’s death too.

“Oh, an inquisitive one!” Chuckled the Fat Friar. “Are you a muggleborn, my dear?”

Sansa smiled prettily and nodded, and the Fat Friar chuckled again.

“Ah, I thought so,” he said. Sansa was unsure if that was an insult or not. “To answer your question, it is usually only those of us with unfinished business who decide not to go onwards.”

“Thank you for explaining,” Sansa said with another pretty smile. She watched the Fat Friar float away, her mind spinning. She was quite confident that Eileen did not have any unfinished business, not after the revelation that Tobias was also dead. Sansa felt her tension relax slightly, enough that she could turn her attention to the feast and her new roommates.

As well as Charity, there were two other girls who had been sorted into Hufflepuff; a tall, willowy dark-haired, dark-skinned girl who had introduced herself as Harlow Everleigh and a frowning girl with flaxen-straight pale gold hair, an upturned nose, and light green eyes that appeared washed out compared to the vivid brilliance of Lily’s green, who had reluctantly introduced herself as Alyssa Parkinson before turning away to talk to one of the first year boys who she clearly was already acquainted with.

“She’s going to be trouble,” Charity murmured, resigned.

Sansa looked at the little girl with her nose in the air, tossing her head back as if she was better than her, then Sansa Stark, Lady of Winterfell, Queen of the Dawn. She almost laughed. Instead she smiled, slow and toothy, like the wolf she was. Even though she was not looking at Sansa, Alyssa Parkinson stiffened and shivered, as if the little girl realised she was in the sights of a predator.

“No,” Sansa said, turning back to Charity. She was not sure what Charity could see in the expression on her face but the other girl’s eyes went wide and round. “I rather think Miss Parkinson will not be any trouble at all.”

If any of the children of Hogwarts threatened Sansa’s pack, they would see just how sharp a wolf’s teeth were.

Eileen Snape had certainly learned.