Epilogue - May 1998

David

David McAllister walked down the stairs of his home to answer the doorbell.

He expected no visitors at this time. Sarah had been with him throughout the worst days, taking all the leave she could get from Porton Down. Everyone else had come and gone by now, too – extended family, his own friends and colleagues, Kyra's friends and colleagues, her entire orchestra, in fact, and last but not least Simon. He was Sir Simon now, of course, but even at the zenith of his meteoric career he had always found the time to enquire after them both, and he had refused to give Kyra's place in the orchestra to anyone else until the very end.

David was grateful to all of them for their words of comfort and their offers of support, but it became a little too much after a while. If solitude was to be his lot from now on, he felt he needed to start facing it at some point.

It was therefore with a mixture of curiosity and resignation that David opened the front door, expecting yet another kindly-meant attempt to cheer him up or take his mind off things when he didn't even want to feel cheerful or diverted.

But the young man who stood outside did not look like a threat to David's sobriety. He had very dark, rather messy hair, wore round glasses and was not very tall - almost a boy still, although the grave expression on his fine-boned face sat there far too naturally for his age.

There were other things wrong with the stranger's face, too. It was scratched and bruised around the eyes and across the bridge of his nose, as if he had had a run-in with a gang of thugs. For a moment, David thought in alarm that he was being asked for help in an emergency. But then he realised with some relief that the injuries were not fresh but healing already.

The cello case by the young man's side did not make his visit look random or accidental, either. David could tell, however, that in spite of neat black clothes that wouldn't have been out of place on a concert stage, this was no musician. The young man was holding the instrument close to his side, but the pose was too stiff and self-conscious for the cello to be an old friend. It was only then that David recognised the shabby case and knew whose old friend the instrument inside had really been.

"I've brought this," the stranger said a little awkwardly, indicating the cello. "We found a note inside the case that said to return it to this address once it was no longer needed."

"I'm afraid it is no longer needed here, either." David had not meant to sound harsh or unfriendly, but the request overwhelmed him. He had never even seen Kyra play it, but he knew that she had prized this old cello like a treasure, until she had passed it on to -

David looked up sharply into the young man's solemn face again, and a sense of foreboding crept up on him, strong enough to make him shiver.

The stranger stood his ground. "I'm sorry to hear that," he said politely. "But I still think it belongs in your world rather than in mine."

His choice of words was strange enough, but they made more sense to David than they had any right to. That lingering sense of mystery about Kyra's past, her extreme reluctance to talk even about innocent details of her early life, and her evident desire to keep her new family separate from her old one even once her brother had re-entered her life… David had never allowed himself to imagine any explanation beyond the obvious. He loved his wife and had not wanted to see her upset by unwelcome questions. But now it was as if this strange messenger was finally giving him permission to wonder whether he had ever even known Kyra well enough to love her like she truly deserved. He could already tell that it was no coincidence that his visitor, like a mirror image of David himself in recent days, had chosen to dress all in black.

"I know so little," David said helplessly.

"So do I, actually," the young man admitted with equal candour. His eyes were startlingly green, but they also seemed to contain the wisdom and the sadness of a hundred years.

Pulling the door wide open suddenly did not seem enough. David held out his arms, and the young man did not hesitate to step into the embrace. In their grief, they were brothers before they even knew each other's names.

THE END

Bird's Eye

noun

(1) [tech.] an elevated view of an object or area from above, facilitating orientation by giving a better overview than can be achieved from ground level.

(2) [mus.] a symbol used in musical notation, also known as a fermata, indicating that a note or a pause is to be prolonged beyond its normal duration at the discretion of the performer, disrupting the expected flow and rhythm of the music.

(3) [bot.] a distinctive, unusual pattern sometimes occurring within certain kinds of hardwood, forming tiny, swirling eyes that disrupt the smooth lines of grain. Origin unknown, with both genetic mutation and external influences such as climate and soil quality discussed in science. Impossible to discern from the outside without felling the tree and cutting it apart. Extremely valuable due to its rarity.

Endnotes:

I would like to express my greatest respect and admiration for the heroic women who are fighting Kyra's battle in real life. May all your stories end more happily than this one.

This story set a new standard of 'slow burn' for me. The first draft goes back to the year 2003 and was originally intended to counterbalance the shameless pro-Gryffindor bias of "The Summer of the Phoenix". The early outline stalled in 2005, when HBP came out and shot a lot of my preconceptions about Snape's family and personal history to pieces. Then I nearly burned the notebook containing the draft in total frustration in 2007, when DH gave us far more definite canon backstory than any Snapehead had ever bargained for. It didn't occur to me until earlier this year, when I dug the notebook back out of a drawer, that it's not healthy to hold a grudge forever. (I'm sure Kyra would agree.) It took the most ruthless revising I've ever done on a story, but here I am, 16 years later, finally reconciled with both this very old plot bunny and the final two books of the series.

I'm aware of the historical prejudices against left-handed people, and the traditional association of left-handedness with evil or untrustworthiness. I in no way endorse such ideas. The only reason why my Snape is originally a lefty is because playing the cello (an ordinary one at any rate, that wasn't constructed especially for lefties) makes bigger demands on the agility of your left hand than your right. I honestly wasn't aware until this story was three quarters written that there is a movie with a cello-playing Alan Rickman in it. I apologise for my completely unintentional lack of originality on that account.

Sincere thanks to RubraSaetaFictor (on AO3) for the language help and the lovely picture of the Hogwarts Inter-House Knitters Guild, and to my fellow Snapeheads Jaxon (on AO3) and Rachel Indeed (here on the site) for some extremely insightful character discussion.

I am also much indebted to the Harry Potter Lexicon, which IMHO is and remains the most reliable research tool for HP canon, and to Madasafish's excellent deep-dive essay about the likely location, layout, historical and social contexts of Spinner's End.

Last but not least, thank you to all reviewers for sharing your thoughts and reactions – it's the greatest joy for a writer to know that one's ideas resonate with others. I hope you've enjoyed the journey - I certainly have. :)