The Chiroptologist and the Film Buff
"Stop struggling," he suggested conversationally, the wooden wand held firmly in his hand. His captive continued to flail in the netting that ensnared him.
"Believe me, you'd hate the after effects of a Petrificus Totalis curse," said Harry warningly. He had spent many evenings tracking this wily winged aberration, so he wasn't about to let it get away so easily. Almost as if it understood, the bat stopped thrashing about.
"That's more like it. Let me get a good look at you," he added conversationally, as he deftly untangled the claw of one of its wings from the net's filament and wrapped it in a towel, leaving a wing free. He pulled a metal tracking tag from the pocket of his field vest.
Before the bat could protest or struggle further, he'd clipped a metal tag on the leading edge of its wing with a practiced move using tweezers and used surgical glue to attach a radio transmitter to the skin of its back. Neither tag would prevent it from flying or hurt the creature, but Harry had also included a few spells of his own devising to make sure the radio chip on the tag wouldn't get removed accidentally or fall off.
He pulled the rest of the bat free of the towel and held it gently but firmly in his gloved hand. It was an adult male. He weighted it and flipped it over to observe it, yup, grayish belly fur typical of Myotis myotis, the Greater Mouse-eared Bat. The species had been very rare in the UK during most of the twentieth century, being declared extinct in 1990 in the UK. Since then a few males hibernating in southern England had been found in 2002. He wondered if this guy was native or, more likely, a European immigrant.
'So… where's your colony then? You got a lady friend having your pups in a nice old attic or cave?" The bat blinked its dark eyes at Harry and then turned his head away.
"I'm sure you don't want to be alone, going the route of Martha the passenger pigeon," Harry commented, measuring the bat's body length and wingspan and noting the data down in his Moleskin notebook. "You'll end up a bitter old bat, just as solitary as I am, talking to creatures who can't talk back." The bat chittered at him and struggled. His observation notes finished, he opened his hand. "Go on, then, maybe we'll meet again." It flapped off into the twilight towards the north and west.
Aunt Petunia hated bats. What was more, she was irrationally afraid of them. Her Dudykins might get bitten and get rabies. Never mind only a very very small percentage of bats were rabid and that humans were far more deadly to bats than the reverse.
Harry thought that any bat stupid enough to chomp on his cousin would die swiftly from clogged arteries from the fat. Never mind that vampire bats were native only to Central and South America, not Surrey England. Bats ate insects and fruit, not Dursley blood.
Anything that Petunia hated and Dudley feared was cool in Harry's eyes. One of the reasons he loved to hang out at the Astronomy Tower at Hogwarts wasn't to snog girls (or boys) but to observe its bat colony. After the war was over, Voldemort dead and the media frenzy about The Boy who Conquered had subsided to a duller roar, Harry had passed his NEWTS with distinction and, like Severus Snape before him, disappeared, presumably into the muggle world.
A few pulled strings, a few created school records and Alfred Wayne Harrison, "Harry" to his caving buddies and fellow zoology majors, matriculated at Trinity University in Texas. San Antonio had been an excellent place to lie low, study hard, meet some cute bi-curious frat boys and some definitely gay and talented male music majors. For years the sound of someone practicing scales reminded him of Chris, his jazz pianist boyfriend from junior year.
Harry practiced rock climbing and caving on breaks in Kentucky and Tennessee and interned tracking bats in Alabama and Texas with Bat Conservation International. His favorite place to hang out in the summer was the Camden Street Bridge at twilight, watching thousands of bats spiral up into the sky, in search of tasty bugs. After a post-doc fellowship, he'd returned to England, happy to be home after over a decade incommunicado in the States.
His latest job was working for Bat Conservation Trust helping coordinate volunteer groups doing surveys and observations of bat populations. However, in his free time, he followed up on sightings of the rarer species, and sometimes, like tonight, flying low on his broom, he got lucky.
A report of a possible Myotis sighting in the vicinity of the Welsh marches had brought him to Wales' rugged mountains where there was no shortage of caves, barns and old timbered buildings to tempt bats.
Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the lousy world, Harry Potter had to end up in his local on a Saturday night for a pint, Severus thought, channeling Bogart in Casablanca. It had been a pleasantly peaceful dozen or so years without the decidedly mixed pleasure of seeing the young man alive and in person.
He'd spent his copious free time doing potions research and working his way first through Hitchcock's oeuvre and then delved into film noir with a bit of Hepburn and Cary Grant and Ingrid Bergman along the way. The regional library knew Sebastian Prince well. Each Friday he would return five videos and check another five out. Interlibrary loans and now, video streaming, fed his visual addiction. assured him that film criticism books made their way to his bookshelves in the small but elaborately warded farmhouse.
He put a few pound coins down by his empty pint glass and tried to take a roundabout route to the front door without attracting notice.
"Seb! Seb Prince, Resolve me and Davy's bar bet. What's the earliest vampire in a horror movie? My money's on Nosferatu, that German guy."
Reluctantly Severus turned back towards the room. No need to upset his drinking buddies without good cause. It had taken years of buying rounds to be accepted, after all.
"And Daffyd Davies, what would your guess be?" he drawled, ugly flashbacks on goading Hogwarts students into using the brains that differentiated them from houseplants rising in front of his eyes.
"There's gotta be an earlier vampire film than that. Dracula," said Davy decisively. "He's the most famous vampire, after all."
"Call it a draw, gentleman and buy each other a round. You're half wrong Davies and you're totally off, Jones. The first horror film on record is Le Manoir du Diable (1896), by George Melies. It's three minutes long and has vampires, witches and other supernatural creatures in it," decreed Severus, making swiftly for the door. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Potter finish his drink and stand. He slammed the door decisively behind himself and left a tripping charm for Potter to discover on the doorstop.
He ducked into a garden and took a short cut through an alleyway. His apparition disturbed a few amorous moggies, but he got past his home's wards unmolested by the Gryffindor. He wanted to talk with Potter, but on his terms and on his turf, not in front of an avid audience of gossips keen to pick up scraps of information about their village's eccentric movie buff. Unfortunately all he needed to do was wait. Potter would come to him as surely as a compass turned northward.
He poured himself a few fingers of whiskey and set another glass out for his expected visitor. Soon enough, his gate creaked open. He waved a hand, letting the wards drop and the front door open slightly. He raised his voice.
"Get in here already, Potter. I've a bone or five to pick with you."
Potter entered his house, apologies already on his lips. That was gratifying.
"I'm sorry about the Pensieve and not preventing Nagini for using you as a chew toy and not writing—not that I've been in touch with anyone in the Wizarding world or knew where you had disappeared to—and…"
"Enough! Whiskey?"
Harry nodded and carefully perched on the edge of the wingback armchair across from Severus' chair as Severus poured an inch into the glass and passed it over.
"Where have you been, then, when you're not popping up in my hometown pub like a demented Weasley jack in the box?"
"Oh, Kentucky where whiskey is as much a religion as Scotland, perhaps more. And Texas and Alabama and in American caves and belfreys and barns," said Harry. "You have an unusual visitor in your house, probably roosting in your attic."
"You're a Chiroptologist," said Severus, as if that bland statement explained it all.
"How did you guess?" said Harry, choking on a swallow.
"You left me a few souvenirs the other night," snarled Severus.
He brought out his left hand. On his pinky finger a familiar metal tag was firmly wrapped, like an alumninum ring, its ragged edges indicating Severus had tried to cut it off by mechanical means with limited success.
"Oh! Oh…. You're the Myotis male I tagged last weekend and have been radio tracking. That explains why my radio tracker led me here."
"Quite."
"So you really were a dungeon bat," said Harry mischieviously.
"Get your dammed radio and metal tag off me, Potter."
"I created some damn near unbreakable spells to aid my research. Seems a shame to stop my tracking study after all this time… even if the bat in question is an animagus."
Severus growled and held out his hand. With a sour look he said, "Please, Potter."
Harry grinned at him and took his hand. Drawing out his wand he muttered a few words in Parseltongue followed by a squeaking noise that evaporated into frequencies beyond Severus' still keen human hearing. He followed up with a healing charm and slipped the band into his pocket. He continued to hold Severus' hand, Harry's callused fingertips rubbing soothingly, no, make that not-at-all soothingly on the older man's hand.
"And the RFID chip? As I recall that was a dorsal one. Would you like to keep it as a memento of our reunion, like a name in a heart tattoo?"
Severus rolled his eyes. Potter was being far too cheerful about this entire embarrassing event at his expense. He pulled off his pullover and unbuttoned his shirt and turned his back on Potter. Gentle fingers plucked it off from between his shoulder blades after a few more releasing spells.
He twitched his shoulder blades in relief. "You have no idea how much that itched and tugged. And of course I couldn't reach it easily to scratch."
"I could possibly address some other itches you might have, Severus. I can't imagine your small town provides many dating opportunities. After all, you didn't have a lady friend as a bat either."
"If you want a date with me, Harry, you need to provide the popcorn and I'll provide the films. We'll see," he said, drawing out the pun, "what develops..."