Sanction (Familia Ante Omnia - Book Three) by SaraJany
Summary: After their narrow escape from Voldemort’s clutches, Severus, Saturnine, Draco, and Harry retreat to Dumbledore’s safe house to lick their wounds. But what should be a peaceful holiday in the countryside turns out to be anything but.

The old man should have seen it coming, though. After all, what else did he expect thrusting four wizards—with the emotional baggage of a small royal court—together in a cottage by the sea for an entire summer.

Can Draco and Harry learn to become friends as they discover that they are not so different? Can Severus and Saturnine bury the hatchet long enough to remember how to be siblings? And what will be the price to pay for having thwarted the Dark Lord’s plan to take over Hogwarts?
Categories: Parental Snape > Guardian Snape Main Characters: .Snape and Harry (required), Draco
Snape Flavour: Canon Snape, Snape is Loving
Genres: Drama, Family, General
Media Type: None
Tags: Adoption
Takes Place: 7th summer
Warnings: None
Challenges: None
Series: Familia Ante Omnia
Chapters: 19 Completed: Yes Word count: 61349 Read: 9336 Published: 26 Dec 2021 Updated: 30 Dec 2021
Elemental by SaraJany

Elementals, first mentioned in the Bronze Age scriptures, are wizards and witches who can manipulate an element beyond use in simple spells and charms. They gained notoriety in the Middle Ages when dark wizards, such as Albian Morath and Caspian Vellar—known Elementals—were instrumental in the Fifty Years Wizarding Wars. Their cruelty and savagery went down in history and are often what first comes to mind at the mention of Elemental Magic. The stigma linked to Elemental Magic has endured through the ages.

In modern-day wizarding society, Elemental practitioners are heavily ostracised and either pre-emptively imprisoned or closely surveilled. While an accurate census of their number cannot be acquired, it is believed that about one to two per cent of wizarding children are born with the specific genetic mutation that allows them to become Elementals. Thankfully, few and far between are even aware of this difference, and most will never develop any particular skills.

Elemental Magic can be split into four categories based on the four classical elements: water, earth, fire, and air. While it is believed that certain wizards and witches can manipulate several elements at will, precious few are proficient in all four categories. Most Elementals tend to have a natural inclination towards one or two of them. Unlike Traditional Magic, which often requires a wand, Elemental Magic can easily be done wandlessly and nonverbally.

It is believed that Air Magic and Water Magic are the easiest to learn and the most used due to the ready accessibility of the elements themselves. Fire Magic is harder to control and near-impossible to create. And Earth Magic is only available to a select few Elementals who can achieve a connection with the earth itself.

Air Magic focuses on speed and evasion, forgoing a strong offence for a better defence. Always easily accessible, it is also the most dynamic of all the Elemental arts.

Elementals using Water Magic depend on the amount of water around them. But highly skilled practitioners can draw water from anywhere—including the humidity in the air and the water in all living things, such as plants, animals, and humans. As the element of change, water can fluidly and quickly alternate from defence to offence.

Fire Magic is the most aggressive of the four elements and allows for simple attacks. It is primarily used offensively, though Elementals who seize existing flames can also extinguish them. It is intriguing to note that most Elementals can only manipulate existing flames and require the use of their wand—or another external source—to create the initial spark allowing them to unleash their powers. No record of an Elemental capable of creating flames from nothing has ever existed.

Earth Magic’s strength lies equally in offence and defence, with an emphasis on fortitude and strength. However, it requires a special bond with the earth achievable only through intense meditation. Too few wizards and witches can reach a connection strong enough to use Earth Magic in battle. Wizards and witches with a Cartesian mind particularly struggle with this aspect of the element, which is why it is the most rarely used of the four.

Nicolas Flamel, an essay on Elemental Magic
The Leaky Inkpress – Bristol, 1934

***

As she paced in the bedroom, Saturnine wondered at her situation. Had she just lost everything? Could this be the day she finally lost her brother for good?

She had come so close to having him back. Her beloved brother, the courageous child who had stood between her and her father’s wrath, suffering through beating after beating to protect her. The intelligent boy who had taught her everything she knewbe it the alphabet or her first spells. The introverted teen who’d remained a shoulder to lean on despite the difficulties he’d had belonging anywhere.

Until she had lost him over angry words that should never have been spoken and drastic actions that should never have been taken. She’d allowed him to push her away and accepted the punishment that followed: the miserable days spent in the north of France as she tried to determine who she was and who she wanted to be. Harder still were the subsequent years spent traipsing the planet as she learned to become the witch she was meant to be.

Saturnine had spent months in the remotest of locations—hidden from sight—as she was taught to control the elements themselves. Elemental Magic was so pure that it should have been embraced by those who could wield it. But instead, it was feared by wizarding society at large. Banished centuries ago, the likes of her had been hunted into near extinction and forbidden to ever use their talents againas if they were something nefarious and tainted. The few wizards who were born Elementals often negated that part of themselves, refusing to even acknowledge that it existed within them. And they lived their entire lives without ever embracing their true natures. Like her, the few who sought to hone their skills lived in hiding. Veiled, avoiding crowds, they feared detection and subsequent arrest.

It had been hard for her to find literature on the subjectharder even to find teachers willing to help her understand that part of herself. She’d been forced to travel the world seeking guidance and spending years mastering her talents when, with the proper training, mere months would have been enough.

Since then, she had rarely let that particular brand of magic out, hiding it protectively deep within. Tonight, using her Elemental powers had been her intent all along. It was why she had drawn the fight towards the cliff, where ample amounts of air and water were at her disposal. She hadn’t meant for Severus to be there, though. She had hoped he would have left with the boys as he was supposed to. But he’d taken over the fight himself. And she had nearly hit him with her attack—wild as it had been.

Saturnine had gotten a good look at Severus’ face when he saw her and realised that she was the one behind the attack. She saw the instant understanding dawned on him when he realised what she wasthat same incomprehension and fear her kind had been subjected to for years. Sighing heavily, she pulled her gaze away from the window and settled it on the bed to her leftand the weary wizard that lay beneath the blankets.

Severus was still out cold. He had burned up too much energy at once—again. And she wasn’t sure what state he would be in when he awoke. But he would get back up eventually, she knewjust as he had before. He would be all right. They all would—she would see to it. And then she would leave if her brother so desired.

But even if this cost Saturnine her brother, she wouldn’t let it cost her Harry. She’d go to the Ministry the very next day to file the damn paperwork if she had to. She wouldn’t let anything separate her from that lad—her child.

A small moan broke the silence, and she stepped closer to her sibling when she saw he was stirring awake. Crouching by his head to get eye level with him, she waited for his eyes to flutter open. Severus emerged from the restorative sleep he’d been in for hours. And Saturnine could tell that he could not immediately recollect the events that had transpired in the cemetery. His obsidian eyes took her in, and he gave her a sleepy smile. She refrained from responding, knowing that it wouldn’t be welcome in a minute or two.

Severus frowned at her lack of reaction. And she could see his brain engaging behind his eyes. It was analysing what it saw, desperate to make the right connections. And then it did, and the smile on her brother’s face faltered as his memory returned to him. He heaved in a nervous breath and held it in as adrenaline kicked in.

“The boys?” he asked, and Saturnine was somewhat relieved his first words weren’t a variant of ‘you are a monster’.

“They’re fine,” she told him. “They’re sleeping in the next room. Both of them.”

Severus nodded, and some of the anguish lifted—some, but not all of it. He pushed himself up on his elbows and struggled to sit up. Saturnine refrained from helping him.

“You killed Lucius,” he said at last, and she nodded. Then Severus’ mind, his beautiful mind, took one step further. “You killed Bellatrix.”

Saturnine nodded again, wordlessly admitting that she had been the one controlling the flames. That night, she had done something she had promised herself she would never do. But then her love for her brother was such that it overcame everything else—it always had.

She had hoped Severus would never realise though, forever thinking it was accidental. But he was starting to make the right connections now. And it wouldn’t be long until he lined up all the clues in the correct order.

“Elemental Magic,” he murmured at last between clenched lips. “Has to be.”

She nodded again, even as she swallowed thickly around the lump in her throat.

“How long?” he asked, as if it were something she’d picked up along the way.

“I was born with it. It was always inside of me,” she replied truthfully. “For a long time, I didn’t know what it was. But I always felt ita dissonance. I only understood after I left school.”

Saturnine wasn’t sure how to encapsulate all those conflicting years into a handful of sentences, but she tried anyway. “The first times it manifested, I chalked it up to bursts of accidental magic. It took me a while to realise that it wasn’t. Took me even longer to learn how to control it.”

She couldn’t look Severus in the eye as she said it. She chose a spot on the blanket instead and found a loose thread to focus on. She felt like reaching for it and pulling it away. But she refrained; she’d have nothing to stare at then.

Saturnine couldn’t look at Severuscouldn’t bear to glance at his face. She refused to know what was going on thereif it was disgust or hate. She refused to let either be her last memory of her brother. She felt tears well up in her eyes and fought hard to hold them back. But water always found a way; she knew that well enough. A lone drop fell from her lashes to come trailing down her cheek.

She felt Severus move next to her, sitting up more fully, and she feared he was gearing up to tell her to leave and never return. She couldn’t look away from the tiny thread in the blanket. It was so small, so fragilelike the link between them. A small thread, growing smaller by the minute, to the point where it would only take a pinch of the potioneer’s nimble fingers to pluck it away for good.

Said fingers moved, long and pale, and they reached out for her. They grabbed her by the shoulders and hoisted her up. Saturnine had no strength left in her to fight them, and she let herself be pulled up until she was half-sitting, half-kneeling on the bed. Those deft fingers drew her into Severus’ open arms, and she went willingly, frozen by the incomprehension that surged inside her.

“I thought I’d lost you,” Severus murmured brokenly from a little way above her head. “Merciful Merlin, but I thought I’d lost you.”

There were tears in his voice, but they didn’t sound like tears of fear or rage; they sounded like pain. And Saturnine had never been able to ignore her brother’s pain. So, she pulled back just enough to look at his face. What she found there wasn’t anything like what she’d imagined; it wasn’t the animosity of uncomprehending strangers but a brother’s love.

“You don’t hate me?” she asked, seeking reassurance.

“I could never do that,” he replied gently as if this had been the stupidest question he’d ever heard.

Something broke inside Saturnine then. And the tears came pouring out of her. “I’m sorry, Severus,” she murmured through her sobs. “I didn’t know how to tell you. I’m sorry.”

Their gazes met, and she found a comforting understanding in his obsidian eyes and unwavering love. She prayed her own eyes reflected the same emotions.

“Thanks for saving me—again,” he murmured, his voice raw in its sheer honesty.

Saturnine lunged herself at her brother and wrapped her arms tightly around his neck as if she never intended to let go of him ever again, relishing the sweet realisation that she hadn’t lost anything tonight. She had regained her family.

The End.


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