Chapter Two
xxxxx
He waited a decent interval, until Ginny had Floo'd off to spend an afternoon at the Burrow. She'd been annoyed he hadn't wanted to come, but Harry had talked her down from the hair-tossing and lecturing and the threat of Bat-Bogeys. "Mum will be hurt, you know," was Ginny's parting shot. She'd wrapped her arms around him and dug her neat little chin into his shoulder. "I'll give them all a kiss from you, shall I?" Her playful nip at his neck was sharp.
"Oi, not if you're going to kiss them like that!" He inhaled the scent of her hair—less like flowers and more like sweat now that she spent half her time playing Quidditch—and pulled out of her arms, grinning. "I'll be along later."
Alone, he Apparated upstairs and summoned Dobby, then paced back and forth twiddling his wand as he thought about how to frame his request. "Sorry to ask on such short notice, but do you think you could poke around Hogwarts for me? I need to know where Snape's body ended up, and for some reason none of my friends has a clue."
A series of twitches percolated through the elf's nose and fingers, and his ears went up like flags. "Dobby is proud to be doing Harry Potter a favour, but he is thinking it best to let sleeping professors lie. Professor Snape is not liking Harry Potter very much, and Harry Potter is better staying far, far away."
"He's dead, though. Not like he can hurt me, right?"
"Harry Potter doesn't know that," Dobby pointed out, rather sensibly considering that Snape might be tempted to rise from his grave just to make Harry miserable.
"True, but I need to find him all the same. Will you help me?"
"Dobby is honoured to be doing anything Harry Potter asks." The elf wrung his knobbly fingers but made no further attempts to talk Harry out of it. "Dobby will be reporting back, sir, just as soon as he is hearing news of what is happened to Professor Snape." He bowed and adjusted his favourite striped sock a little more evenly over one ear, bulged a last anxious look at Harry, then departed with an audible twang of worry.
Feeling out of sorts, Harry wondered for a moment if what he was doing made any sense. In the vibrating silence, a clock ticked. It had probably been there all along, but now it sounded like the repeated snap of fingers trying to wake him from a trance. Wherever Snape was, perhaps a clock ticked there, too, tapping its beckoning nail on his last nerve. If Harry concentrated, he could almost see the git turning to stare suspiciously over his shoulder. Almost—he shut his eyes and summoned the harsh, sneering features to mind—almost see the room in which he stood and the shadows hanging over him.
But not quite. Slumping into the nearest overstuffed chair and raising a suspiciously dog-scented cloud of dust, Harry took off his glasses and pressed the heels of both hands to his eyes. His palms were unaccountably sweaty.
In the blackness, he saw only flashes of green.
xxxxx
The house elf grapevine was shockingly well-informed. Strange, under the circumstances, that wizarding families didn't take more pains to bribe and pamper their ubiquitous servants. Look how many secrets the elves were privy to that could knock wizarding society on its collective arse.
With that in mind, Harry resolved to stop corrupting his friend's innocence—just as soon as he'd confirmed that this was indeed the clue that would put him on Snape's trail.
"Spinner's End? Are you sure you heard that right? Huh. What's that when it's at home, then?"
The veiny ears wilted. "Dobby is terribly sorry, Harry Potter, sir, but he is afraid to be asking after details in case Willy is getting suspicious, sir, deciding that Dobby is a snoop and a spy, and thinking he is safer to be turning Dobby in."
That sounded dire. "Willy?"
Dobby nodded vigorously. "Senior house elf in charge of kitchens for Auror Shacklebolt and his family, sir! Dobby is knowing Willy since—since Dobby's former master is attending Hogwarts with young Master Kingsley." Oblique as this reference to Lucius Malfoy was, the elf trembled all over, then burst out, "Bad! Dobby bad!" and began yanking his ears and pummeling himself between the eyes.
"No, no, well done!" Harry said hastily. "I couldn't have asked for a better clue." Dobby paused mid-cudgel to blink up at him. "Absolutely smashing," Harry assured him, relieved when his friend lowered both spindly fists. "Thanks loads, Dobby, you've been a big help. This is exactly what I need. I'll take it from here."
The elf twined his fingers together and his face wrinkled earnestly. "I is sorry to be saying this, sir, but it is not like Professor Snape to be welcoming Harry Potter. He won't be happy if you is disturbing his peace."
"Trust me," Harry muttered, "making Snape happy isn't part of the plan," and in the longstanding tradition of mates-against-gits, he gave Dobby the smile the mirror saw every morning, the one that had put it on its best behaviour.
Dobby cringed and threw his arms over his head.
"What's wrong?" Harry said, but Dobby only whimpered and crammed his knuckles into his mouth, then aimed his head at the wall and ran smack into it. Harry caught him as he bounced off, listening in bewilderment as the elf babbled, "I is a bad friend, I is sorry, sorry, Dobby should not be thinking such things. Harry Potter is good, Harry Potter is kind— "
A few calming words later and the air snapped with the hasty pop of departure, as if Dobby couldn't get out of his presence fast enough.
Harry scowled. Fucking Snape. It was his all fault, naturally.
xxxxx
After poking around in the Ministry records and finding that all documents relating to Snape turned to alphabet soup when he opened them, Harry had the brilliant idea of consulting a Muggle library. The librarians were initially sceptical of his incompetence, but they quickly set him right on how to use the records to track locales and research wedding and birth notices. It impressed him how quickly they managed to pinpoint the address—not terribly far, it turned out, from where his mum had grown up, and wasn't that a disturbing thought.
His invisibility cloak bundled under one arm, Harry found the wizarding tearoom nearest his destination and Floo'd to it. He emerged from prim, mock-Victorian swank into the dreary business district of an industrial town. Map in hand, he legged it frantically after a bus, swung aboard, and fell back into his seat, frazzled with apprehension as they lurched into traffic. After much gear-shifting and off-loading of passengers—including, thank Merlin, a bloke whose radio volume was so massive it blasted Harry's eardrums even through a headset—the big diesel vehicle, vinyl tape bandaging its vandalised seats, nosed sedately onto a canal road and made headway, groaning every time it pulled to the kerb and braked downward with an hydraulic hiss.
Out the window, the clouds hung in thick, smoke-coloured blobs, cooling the light to mid-winter levels. The streets narrowed progressively after every stop, skinny municipal row houses banding together, thin dog-walks of roadway between gutterless pavements.
It figured Snape would choose to roost in some gloomy offshoot of industrial downslide, though Harry found it hard to imagine him suffering the infringement of so much Muggleness meekly.
He got so caught up in rubbernecking he nearly missed his stop. In a last-minute vault out the pneumatic door, he just saved himself from landing face-first in a lane paved with pigeon droppings, and was immediately set upon by a skin-nipping wind.
Charming. Harry sorted himself out with a warming spell, scraped his trainers on the kerb, and looked around for guidance. The noisy fluttering of wings in the surrounding eaves was the only sign of life. Harry sighed and fetched out his map, seeing very few people as he walked on, shoulders hunched. The relentless cooing and trilling of grey-feathered squatters followed him down the street. He much preferred owls; they didn't make constant, inane conversation.
Sagging phone wires swayed overhead, adding waves of oscillating hum to the weird sense of desertion. Sniffing, Harry flattened his nose several times before realising the stink blew off the canal.
Soon enough he found the corner he was looking for and turned down it. This was the street. There was the house. He was mere minutes away from knocking on Snape's door.
The buildings here were poorer, downtrodden, semi-detached with snippets of garden space. Holdovers from a different era, they all seemed to be marking time, like old-age pensioners with gin-blossom faces and shabby overcoats huddled on park benches. Weeds congregated along property lines, and even the wadded-up clouds overhead looked like used tissues. It looked like there'd been a health-services clean-up at some point, but nothing Muggle could leach a century's worth of caked soot out of the old brick.
Harry got behind a dried-out bit of box hedge, stuffed the map in a pocket, and wriggled under his cloak. Wand in hand, shivery with anticipation, he made straight for the house at the end, where he—
—found himself at the corner, heading home. If he hurried, he would most likely arrive before—
What the hell? Confused, he glanced over his shoulder and spotted his cloak lying at some distance behind him, discarded and shimmering on the pavement. Alarmed, he ran back and had barely sunk his fingers into the silky folds before he realised he was late, horribly, inexcusably late, and he'd only be in time if he Apparated now, hurry, not a moment to lose, they would never forgive him if—
At the corner again, Harry caught himself one second before Disapparating in full view of the encircling windows. Shite. Stupid of him not to expect Snape's house to be warded up the bunghole. He thumbed his forehead, driving out the last wisp of anxiety. That kick-arse compulsion charm was no joke.
Bugger. He hadn't prepared for this very well. Nothing for it, best to regroup. The abandoned millyard over there would make a decent place for Apparition and he could always come back later.
He was folding up the cloak and eyeing Snape's doorway when a man—not too tall, wearing a bulky Fair Isle jumper—crossed the street, stamped up the front steps, did a knuckle-brush that barely qualified as a knock, probed with a key, forced the sticky door open with a rugby move, and vanished inside. The door slammed. Harry, drifting as close as the charm would allow, heard the tumblers of the Muggle locking mechanism click together, and there he was, still on the wrong side of things.
Now who could that be? Snape on Polyjuice? Was it possible Snape had a keeper? Or had Harry somehow managed to lay hands on the wrong address?
He was about to give it another go when something sharp tapped him in the back, and a voice declared, "Well, if it isn't old Potty." Not the voice he'd been expecting, not dark and triumphant, but too casually sneering to be a friend's.
Harry spun around, primed to cast Protego. His wand arm didn't waver, but it took his brain a lot longer than it should have to come up with a name. "Nott?"
Bloody buggering hell. Theo Nott, former classmate and member of Snape's house, son of a now-imprisoned Death Eater. Tarted up in Muggle jeans and a leather jacket. Clearly passing, just like Harry.
A Slytherin swanning about as a Muggle? It didn't get much more suspicious than that.
For a moment they both held their wands at vaguely threatening angles, then Nott lowered his and snapped, "What are you doing here?" A brusque wave of his arm encompassed the length and breadth of the brooding street. If he was referring to Snape's house, it wasn't obvious enough for Harry to call him on it.
Still, Nott's proprietary attitude confirmed his hunch. "Official business," he said, rather sharpish, not flinching from using his Ministry position as a blind. "Following up on reports of a disturbance." Nott's frown grew a shade less belligerent and a touch more alarmed, so Harry pressed the advantage. "You?"
"Unofficial business," Nott mimicked, sounding insinuating as if he knew Harry was lying, but at the same time searching his face with anxious eyes, on the look-out for Merlin knew what.
"Seriously?" Harry flicked a glance at the house.
"Seriously."
Harry debated. A chill was rising from the pavement, and he hadn't dressed half warmly enough. Overhead, rainclouds blackened the sky from end to end. The whole neighbourhood was depressing, and he wanted to go home.
But first he wanted to lay hold of solid evidence. "I thought— " Just to be disobliging, the wind raked his hair on end, and his fringe proceeded to flutter. Feeling ridiculous, Harry flattened it. "Thought we might both be keeping an eye on Snape."
Nott gave nothing away, but after a short silence he said, "Snape. Really."
"Yeah," Harry said. "Really."
He half-expected Nott to roll his eyes and heckle him with the same exasperated complaint he always got about there being something wrong with him for dwelling on the past. Or maybe he'd earn a disgusted look for mentioning the traitor's name. He doubted Snape was popular with the ex-Death Eater crowd.
Nott shifted to stare at the house as if seeking a second opinion, and there was nothing sullen, sinister, or spoiled in his profile. Harry wondered if the apparent gullibility of a Death Eater's son could be taken at face value.
When Nott turned around, though, he was scowling. "Look, are you here to give Snape a hard time? Because if you are, and that's all, you can sod right off."
A tense thrill shot through Harry, the tingling sense of imminent victory that used to make him grin at his partner right before the wrap-up of a dangerous case. Holy shite. This was it. This was the opening he'd been looking for. Nott had spoken of Snape as someone alive. Evidently the secret of the bastard's existence had been shopped out to a select few, Harry obviously not included.
"I'd just like to ask him a few questions," he said, aware the crowing note in his voice came dangerously close to proclaiming 'smug arsehole.' "Or I can take you in for questioning instead, if you prefer."
Nott snorted. "Don't pull your Ministry shite on me. I've got a legitimate reason to be here, which I wager is more than you can claim."
"Legitimate? What, being part of the 'Suck up to Snape' brigade?"
"Hah. I'll let the others know you said so. Always glad to have the opinion of the Boy Who Cast Expelliarmus." The rising wind had started moaning around the chimney pots, buffeting them at ground level and sweeping leaves and crumpled litter down the pavement. Zipping his jacket all the way up, Nott cocked his head and surveyed Harry with a knowing, exasperated gleam. The exasperation was almost benign, and Harry wasn't quite sure what to make of it. "For your information, Daphne already refers to us as 'Snape's harem,' a stupid fancy of hers I personally think implies sexual misconduct, which I predict will get the Professor in hot water some day. So we don't need you adding your sordid Gryffindor spin to it."
Others? Harry wondered. Harem? The 'Expelliarmus' remark smarted. He blinked away a distracting flash of green and remembered he was here for a reason. Get Severus.
"Nott," he blurted, as if it had any bearing on their meeting whatsoever, "what were you doing in the headmaster's office the day Voldemort died?"
The other boy looked for a moment as if Harry had hexed all the air out of his lungs, and Harry expected he looked much the same. Nott had been there, but until that second he hadn't remembered.
Recovering first, Nott sneered, "Well, I certainly wasn't hanging about playing fiddlesticks with my wand, if that's what you're asking. More than that isn't for me to say."
Still flustered by the sensation of a missing piece snapping into place, Harry said, "Look, I'm asking on my own behalf, not the Ministry's. I really need some answers, and you might be able to help. Suppose you and I arrange to Apparate up to Hogwarts. To the headmaster's office. There's someone I want you to talk to."
"You've no grounds for taking me anywhere, Potter, and you bloody well know it." Nott shook his head and hunched his shoulders against a few spots of rain. "You're a Seeker, not a Beater, so put the Bludger down and pull your neck in. I've no connection whatsoever to the 'disturbance' you're here to investigate, assuming that's not just some convenient bunch of twaddle. So shut it, all right? You're not going to impress me with your threats."
Damn. Harry had lost the gamble, and been neatly one-upped to boot. He should have taken into account that he wasn't the only one who might have done some growing up. "Well, it was worth a try," he said, and Nott smirked. "Do me a favour, then," Harry added. "Tell Snape I want to talk to him."
"Not a chance." A few more drops spattered the pavement, and Nott turned to scrutinise a bundled-up, nondescript couple hauling shopping bags into a building across the road. "Merlin's balls," he said with sudden quiet vitriol more damning than any rude remark he'd flung at Harry so far. "I'm trying to imagine any situation that would convince me it's not a jolly swinish move to set you loose on the Professor."
The wind had worked its way up to banshee wailing, and with no further warning the clouds started pissing down in cold, wet earnest. Water streamed down Harry's face and under his collar, and he had to spell his glasses to keep the rain off or he'd be blind. The already gloomy buildings darkened under the onslaught as if resigned to their fate. Cripes. It was time to get out of there.
He didn't expect Nott to swing back around and prod him emphatically in the chest. "Leave. Snape. Alone. I'm not joking, Potter. Bad things happen around you, and I don't want him getting hurt just because you're a walking disaster area."
For Merlin's sake. Even a random bloke from a rival house treated Harry as an unacceptable risk.
Half soaked through, he still couldn't walk away without a parting shot. "So you're, what, Snape's guard dogs? I can't imagine anything he's got on offer being worth the trouble."
"Oh sure, that's us. Me and Daph and Blaise, guard dogs. The three-headed kind."
Nott made a disgusted noise, spraying rainwater. His gloved hands turned up the collar of his puffy, shiny jacket, and he fingered the dangly silver bits and bobs sewn over his pockets, peering at Harry through his already dripping fringe. Even drenched, he looked surprisingly dashing, which Harry had a hard time reconciling with his memories of Nott as just another weedy Slytherin prat.
"Keep this to yourself or I'll report you, got it? Fact is, Snape doesn't know. And don't think of being devilish clever by telling him, either, because he won't have a fucking clue what you're on about."
Harry had no intention of showing up at Snape's door looking well-nigh identical to a drowned rat, with Nott holding a cocky wand at his head. Grimacing, he said, "Fine. Tell the bastard cheers for me," and sprinted for the mill, barely slowing down to return the two-fingered salute Nott jabbed at his back.
He spent the evening alone at Grimmauld Place, drinking bitters and jotting notes. He couldn't sit still and kept getting up to pace, re-play the conversation in his head, and refresh his glass. It made him crazy to know Snape was alive. Not that he intended to tell anyone, at least not until he figured out who had gone to such trouble to keep Snape's survival a secret. Was the Ministry involved? Was someone being paid off? Why was it so widely believed that Snape was dead?
Once the first flare of excitement died down, his frustration about that blasted day started gnawing at him again. He racked his brains trying to visualise the headmaster's office, Voldemort's body, and where the hell Snape had been during the fight. He couldn't see Nott there. What about Daphne? Meaning Greengrass, he reckoned. And Zabini, of course. Had they been there, too? The haze of green in his memory confounded him. He'd cast Expelliarmus, he was sure of it. Was that all, though?
He reckoned he ought to pay Hogwarts a visit and share what he'd learned with Dumbledore's portrait, but the idea of summarising his utter toss-down made him squirm.
By the time Molly's unwanted gift of a grandmother clock had started to scold, "Past two! Off to bed! (Past two!) With you! (Past two!) All bad boys! (Past two!) In bed! (Past two!) You'll be sorry! (Past two!) In the morning!" Harry was tipsily preoccupied with the question of how to acquire a leather jacket. Wobbling to his feet, he flourished his wand and gave it a Transfigurative go. But his robes sported a Malkin label and weren't susceptible to amateur re-fitting. Besides, the liquor botched his concentration. Stupidest of all, he forgot to include a zip. He ended up encased in something more like a wetsuit, which put a serious damper on things, ha ha.
If he was reduced to snorting at his own feeble puns, it was clearly time to pack it in.