[AN. Disclaimer: not mine. In case you guessed, I wouldn't have killed off Sevvy had I owned Harry Potter.]

The Gilded Snake, Chapter 1

Severus Snape carefully laid his stirring rod beside the cauldron he had been tending. "Do you need more Temporis Emulsion?"

"No." Bill Weasley leaned back against the wall of the warehouse, swiping a little sweat from his forehead A few dull greenish-brown droplets of Temporis Emulsion dripped off his brush and onto his dragonhide cursebreaker's robes, until he absentmindedly set the implement down. "No, I'm finished. It's up to you now."

Severus wordlessly stripped to the waist, revealing thousands of runes painstakingly hand painted over his whole body, and laid his dark silk robes and boots atop a couple of crates. Then, he picked his way to the center of the concentric runic circles drawn on the concrete, until he reached the center. A flick of his wrist brought his wand into his hand; then he knelt. "The athame?"

Bill fumbled in his pouch a few anxious moments before bringing out the charmed blade, wrapped in emerald silk. He unwrapped it. Then, unsure if he could get it to Severus without disturbing the runic sequence, he muttered a few words and the blade rose above his hands, drifted by sheer willpower over to his companion. Severus caught it.

A moment of silence, and then Severus closed his eyes. "Isis give me strength." But it was not Isis that he thought of. It was his students, under Voldemort's control, it was the muggleborns, shut in concentration camps, it was the Order, his companions in arms, rotting in unmarked graves. He even thought of Lupin. He was surprised by the strength of his righteous fury. But there was no time now to deliberate.

"Hurry!" Bill hissed. "If they find us..." He didn't finish. He didn't need to. The sizzle of blasting curses against the warehouse door was already audible, and once the doors broke down, they were lost. There would be no second chance to finish the ritual- Voldemort was not kind to traitors, and Bill was already suspected, as he had been in the vigilante group which had opposed him since the first war. He had only been offered the chance to change sides because his skills as a cursebreaker were valuable...somehow, there was a very high turnover for cursebreakers in Voldemort's employ.

Severus sucked in a deep breath. This was it then. "Goodbye Bill," he murmured, in a fit of unusual sentimentality. "If this fails- if I die- keep on fighting."

Bill nodded, the motion causing the dim light to glint off his dragontooth earring. Severus somehow couldn't look him in the face. "Goodbye Severus. Give 'em Hell."

Severus jerked his head in the semblance of a nod, quickly turning away to begin the ritual. To hide the shimmer of liquid in his eyes. Slowly he raised the athame, the hieroglyphics carved into it glowing ever so faintly as he began the chant. "Cura vulnus temporis! Cura vulnus temporis! Cura vulnus temporis!" On the third repetition, he brought the knife down on his bare and unprotected wrist, letting blood splash onto the runes, which started to gleam a dull crimson. The runes painted on his body took on a similar glow within moments.

"Fatum non est quid facimur, facimus! Fatum est quid facimus!" Severus was beginning to pant, both with the pain and with the tension. The pounding on the door had reached a fever pitch, and they could hear the shouting of the Death Eaters and the scuffling of feet. Protection runes scratched or painted on the corrugated metal door were starting to wink out, one by one, like fireflies at dawn.

The glow of the runes brightened and paled in color, crimson to orange to gold, illuminating Snape's thin face in the unearthly shine. Snape cast a quick glance at Bill, momentarily breaking his concentration, to see the Weasley smile one last time.

And then, as quickly, he refocused. "SHAH MÂT!" he roared, and the runes blazed white, and he couldn't think, couldn't breath, and the world had devolved into a mailström of white fire and white heat, and he was falling... And then- nothing.

Severus's eyes snapped open- had the ritual failed? For a moment, he couldn't see a thing. And then the halls of Hogwarts swam into view.