Chapter 4
Little boy blue, come blow your horn,
The sheep's in the meadow, the cow's in the corn.
Where is the boy who looks after the sheep?
Under the haystack, fast asleep.
"Potter," a voice barked from somewhere above him, "What the hell are you doing?"
"Thinking." He was cold and tired and just wanted to sleep. He wrapped the tapestry tighter around himself, stirring up a cloud of dust motes. "Go'way!"
The pointed toe of a shiny black boot nudged at the edge of Harry's tapestry cocoon. "Have you discovered a new fashion?"
"S'not fashion. S'family. Grandfathers, godfathers." Harry squinted at the names woven over his shoulder, then he poked his finger through the singed hole Sirius had left in the fabric of the family, and pointed at someone else. "Charlus Potter," he read. "Y'think he's my great-great-great-grand… something?" He thought again, putting the dates together and guessed pensively. "Maybe not all that 'great'. Probably 'great' just once."
"My Gran's brother is on that tapestry." Snape said carefully. "I believe you were drooling on him just now."
"Oh," Harry said. "Sorry."
"He despised Gran, and my mother by default. I never met him." Snape bent down, and for some reason tilted Harry's head up, turned it right and left, touched Harry's forehead. His hands were too rough and quick. Harry batted them away, or tried to.
"Has Gran got a name, b'sides 'Gran'?" Harry asked around a thick, sluggish tongue. He eyed a sallow finger that for some reason moved right and left in front of his eyes.
"Yes," Snape gave an odd huff; it almost sounded like he was laughing. "Elphaba. Went a bit kinky in her old age: developed a thing for flying monkeys."
"Really?" Harry's head poked out a bit further from the tapestry: he looked up and around, like a wary turtle peering out of its shell. "Monkeys? Where?"
Snape sighed. "What year is it?"
Harry frowned at the dates on the tapestry. "This one?" he guessed, pointing at the number below another singed hole. "Or that?"
He didn't have a chance to point out any more years, because Snape hauled him to his feet, yanked the tapestry off him, and shook him roughly. "Wake up!" he commanded. "If you've got pissed just a week after your liver survived a terrible strain, then Merlin help you!"
"Not a drop."
"Then you've no excuse!" Harry made a protesting noise – it was too much effort to whinge in words – but Snape was already frogmarching him to the nearest window in the hall. "I am tired of your constant idiocy!"
Snape ripped the curtains angrily aside with the hand not holding Harry up, and Harry thought for a moment that Snape was going to pick him up off his feet and chuck him straight through the window and out onto the street, but Snape only nudged him forward into the window niche. The ground spun under Harry's feet. Shaky from being curled up so long, Harry looked out the window and it was dark outside and there was a ghost looking in. "M'I dying?" Harry asked Snape or the ghost or simply the cold night air. His voice was detached; the question didn't feel particularly important. The ghost was all pale and wispy and skinny. Weird, the thought trudged wearily through Harry's mind, why's a ghost haunting the outside; shouldn't it be inside the house?
"No, you're not dying just yet," Snape drawled, before asking "When was the last time you ate?"
"Dunno. Tea time?" Tea at Snape's place stood out the clearest. But that was ages ago. I think. "M'not hungry."
"If you're planning to lock yourself away here for the rest of your life, you've chosen a dangerous crypt."
"Don't insult m'house! It hates greasy gits already." Harry protested, staring at the window some more. The ghost in it had a familiar key on a chain around his neck. That key. What's a ghost doing with my key?
Bloody hell, it's not a ghost! It's not even a window. Must've swapped places with a mirror when I wasn't looking. Or maybe not, because what it reflected back looked even worse than the distortion he'd seen in Snape's pensieve. Can't be me! He squinted. The reflection's eyes, dulled to an almost-blind looking grey, squinted back out of bruise-dark sockets.
"Is this what you want?" Snape, a mere shadow standing behind him, whispered into Harry's ear. Oddly, the brush of warm breath ruffling his hair was the only bit of warmth Harry could feel, outside himself or in. "Do you want to waste your life? To waste away?" Harry stared into the mirror, mesmerised. Shocked to the core. "To stay trapped in here, and haunt this Place until it's dust, and never ever leave?"
Oh God, Harry thought. M'paler than the Git! How'd this? How'd I… is that really me?
oOo
Snape went away; then he was back, rain dripping off the point of his nose. Or maybe Snape was really a storm who looked like a man: robed in black clouds that billowed with blustery winds, with eyes cold as sleet and a distant-thunder grumble of a voice. He even smelled of lightning, as well as something earthier, wetter.
Harry inhaled the rusty reek of the damp smears on Snape's black sleeves. Were those stains there before? Harry shrugged inwardly. Probably the Death Eaters' idea of a party. Or maybe Snape dissects Muggles in his spare time, and boils them up in his cauldron for soup. The front door shut the storm out with a bang, but the storm was still inside anyway, on Snape's face and in his eyes; all over him, except for a bag that, Harry suddenly realised, smelled of garlic and spices. Like takeaway from the Chinese place up the road, and even though Harry didn't much care for thunderstorms, he really liked the way the takeaway smelled. So Harry followed that bag downstairs into the below-ground kitchen: a place he usually visited as little as possible.
A warm container of soup was thrust into his hands, his cupped hands were lifted and, Honestly! M'not a toddler! "Lemme 'lone! Can do it m'self!"
"Fine," Snape snorted.
Harry tried to drink it. It was hot and sticky and the carrots got in the way and tickled the bridge of his nose. The world turned watery and fuzzy for a second but then he took his glasses off, and he could see better again. He was quite proud of himself for that discovery.
Snape stood in the middle of the kitchen. "Expecto Patronum," he muttered. Fawkes, but a ghost, flared to life from the tip of his wand like a flame from a match. S'pretty, Harry thought, staring. Fire. We should make some more.
"Felis." Snape whispered to the ghostly shape. "Thirteen. Seventy-four. Forty-nine. Ninety-seven. Eleven. Six." The fire-bird nodded and spread its wings, soaring away through the ceiling, leaving them in the dark. Harry wanted the fire back, but Snape just charmed his robes clean.
Harry stared at the ceiling. "Fawkes left," he said, 'cause it was too hard to ask all the questions in his head.
Snape eyed him. "Yes."
"Why'd y'chase him off? Call him back."
"Tomorrow," Snape said carefully. "He has a job to do."
"OK," Harry agreed. "Promise?"
Snape nodded, and he didn't look quite so much like a storm anymore.
"What's 'Felis'?"
"McGonagall."
"Ah," Harry nodded. Somehow that made sense. "Thirteen?"
"Number of new initiates this month."
"Seventy-four?"
"A Death Eater vault at Gringotts."
"Eleven?"
Snape hmphed. "If I told you anything else, I'd have to Obliviate you, so what would be the point of explaining it to you?"
"S'OK," Harry said, just to have the last word. "Don't wanna r'member."
Snape didn't reply.
The walls whirled like a mad merry-go-round and the ceiling either stretched insanely wide or shrunk to a size of a cupboard, but at least he could focus on random things again and comprehend where he was without his vision blacking out. If Harry squinted and looked directly above the kitchen door, he could just barely make out a scorched stain on the ceiling that looked like smoke damage. He waved his wand at it and said "Evanesco," but it only crackled back menacingly like all nasty curse residues. There was plenty of it in the kitchen walls too, along with a sooty child's handprint that reappeared every time it was wiped off the hearth and pumpkin juice stains on the window, but those stains were all shapeless. The one on the ceiling – Harry tilted his head to make out its shape and gasped in horror – was the profile of a long-eared house-elf, complete with a chef's hat and stirring spoon, his limbs all askew.
"That'ss what Ssizzly got for sstirring Master's potion like it was jusst another sstew," a snake-handled ladle hissed in explanation, giving Harry a mournful silver stare. He almost dropped it back in the drawer.
"Honestly Potter," Snape told him, "If you can't pay attention to a kitchen utensil that large, the Wizarding world is doomed. Focus!"
Can too! Harry thought about asking Snape to stun the ladle first but that was too much bother to explain, so he just dipped the entire ladle into his soup – it was an awkward fit into the small container – and slurped from the ladle's bowl, just to prove to the greasy git that he could pay attention.
He hadn't even known how hungry he was until he'd eaten a bit and then eaten some more. Snape perched at the counter the whole time and picked crossly at his share with a silver fork engraved with the Black family crest. For all his complaints about Harry, Snape didn't eat enough to feed a bird. Obviously, he was a vampire who hoarded a large supply of Muggle blood in his Potions stores and slept hanging by his toes from the rafters, or so the school rumours went. But then, vampires didn't bring people garlicky takeaway.
Snape was in the worst mood, takeaway or not. He glared as if the world and the weather and the state of his robes and the cold and rainy drippiness of his hair were all Harry's fault, but the food was warm and better than something Harry could make out of the preserves and stale grains stored in the kitchen cupboards, even with the ladle's instructions. And if Snape didn't talk and didn't move, it was easier to ignore him altogether and then Harry could pretend that he'd finished at Hogwarts long ago and just turned forty and had lived alone at Grimmauld for years, sitting at the rickety kitchen table and eating Chinese takeaway all his life. He could pretend that everything else – like Voldemort or Snape or Dark Curses or Horcruxes – simply hadn't happened.
Somewhere far away someone was calling him. "Potter!" He swatted at the sound like at the fly.
"S'OK. I dunno," he grumbled. "Do you?" he asked the ladle.
"How ssweet," it hissed, coiling around his wrist. "Losst ssoul, like the Missstress."
Snape grabbed the ladle and took it away before Harry could ask it what it meant.
oOo
The blanket covering him was all wrong; Harry wanted the tapestry back. It was heavy and he liked the dusty smell of it and the feel of embroidered names under his fingertips. He ran his palm over the blanket and pretended it had the names of family on it. It worked a bit and he burrowed further into its warmth.
The voice coming from the bottom of the stairway wasn't Snape's. It was feminine, soft and pleasant. Harry poked his head up over the arm of the downstairs sofa. It was Mrs. Black and she wasn't cursing or yelling at all. She just sounded sad.
"Perhaps it's time to step out of the shadows and live. Eighteen years is enough to mourn one man. Even my son," she said.
"Mourn? I never did." Snape grumbled.
"Perhaps you should," the portrait said.
"Did you?"
"No." Mrs. Black said. "But my Regulus is still with me. Bothering me rather often I should say, all thanks to your efforts in pointing him to my canvas."
They chatted softly, back and forth. Harry couldn't hear well but he didn't want to lift his head any higher for fear of being discovered. If Snape saw, he'd take the pretend-tapestry away from Harry too.
Eighteen years. I used to think Snape was a monster, a murderer, a Death Eater. But now, I don't know what he is. He's not a sick bastard like Voldemort's Death Eaters, not quite. He's almost normal. He talks to portraits and he looks at them like he's lost something or someone very precious, and they're the ghosts of it staring back at him. Monsters aren't scared of portraits, and they don't grieve for portraits either. Maybe he's just like everyone else. Like me. If I'd spent eighteen years mourning someone, like the portrait said, would that make me a lonely bitter sod too?
Snape pulled a thin, loosely braided tress of white hair out of his pocket, carefully extracted a single strand from it and fed that into the mouth of his hip flask. Then he raised the flask to Mrs. Black's portrait as if toasting it, before he took a sip. Seconds later, 'Mrs. Malfoy' took his place. Harry wondered what the portrait really thought about seeing Snape turn into her niece. Snape cast a charm that Harry'd never heard before, "Vestimorphus!" and Harry watched as his drab black robes shrank and brightened and became an elaborate dress.
'Mrs. Malfoy' took a few steps. The way she moved reminded Harry of Ron at the Yule Ball in his formal robes.
"Mind your walk! Stop striding like a man!" the portrait noted dryly. "Your shoes ought to have a bit of a heel to them. Your buttons are on the wrong side and you ought to carry a handbag."
"Blast!" 'Mrs. Malfoy' jabbed Snape's ebony wand irritably at herself, "Sartoreversus! …How's this?" she asked in a calmer voice, pacing to and fro in the portrait's field of view. One white hand held her skirts up so the hem wouldn't trail on the floor; she was walking with a caution that suggested she was trying very hard not to trip over the newly grown heels.
"Better, but stop swearing. Tsk. Those shoes even sound transfigured. My new dragonhide shoes ought to be upstairs. Resize them to fit."
'Mrs. Malfoy' left, Harry could hear the steady beat of footsteps rising up the stairs and fading, and then a few minutes later he heard a more uneven tread coming back down.
'Mrs. Malfoy' almost made it to the bottom of the stairs before catching the toe of one shoe on the lacy hem of her dress. Only a hasty grab at the banister kept her balance. "Bugger!"
The portrait chuckled. So did Harry.
'Mrs. Malfoy' spun around and staggered. "Not a word!" she declared in a tone that would've been much more threatening with Snape's voice. She eyed the sofa menacingly and before Harry could even begin to pretend snoring, added, "Both of you."
Harry clapped his hands over his mouth and fought the urge to slide off the sofa and laugh himself legless.
'Mrs. Malfoy' pulled her hair back in a modest bun, like McGonagall's, and strode for the door.
"Remember, small steps!" the portrait called after her.
The front door slammed.
"So stubborn, that boy," Walburga sighed. "Once he makes up his mind, neither a whip nor a wizard would sway it. Reminds me of myself, only younger, before I married. But that one's a true bachelor." She pursed her lips. "It must be nice to lead a single life, and not be obliged to keep a husband just to secure a family fortune."
Harry nodded, for want of anything polite to say. He didn't know whether marriage had improved Mrs. Black's temper or spoiled it even further. Either way, it was good that some poor witch wasn't subjected to Snape's even more horrid temper. Imagine being married to Snape! What a nightmare that'd be!
Then he sat and watched a spidery silver instrument sneak out of a gap in the skirting board and skitter between the table legs toward the drawing room. The thing was carrying something round and golden on its back.
oOo
Harry stood up and walked around, and then he couldn't find the sofa again. But that was all right as long as he didn't trip over and wake up the yeti skin snoring in the middle of the hall. The creaking stairway's steps leading from the main hall to the upper floors were wide enough to be comfortable: even more comfortable than the library chairs which Harry suspected had some sort of hex on them, 'cause no chair could've been so uncomfortable on its own. But the stairway had a thick Persian rug spread over it and if Harry picked exactly the right step and stretched out his legs it felt just like his bed, especially with the Prince's book for a pillow. He spent so much time upstairs anyway he needed a change of scenery, yet he simply wasn't interested in walking outside. That's it, I'm just out for a walk, only inside Grimmauld instead of outside, and I'm definitely not waiting for someone – no, not Sirius: that's impossible, a lost boy's wish and a crazy dream from two summers ago – and not Snape: Merlin's balls, definitely not Snape! – to come through that door. Not for all the Chinese takeaway in the world! If I never see him again it'll be too soon. Though I wouldn't mind if the Prince visited.
He dozed off at the foot of the stairs after eleven; the Persian rug smelled like a desert made of all the sand that'd ever escaped from smashed hourglasses.
In his dream Mrs. Malfoy made her way across Knockturn Alley, her long hair breaking out of the bun and streaming down her back. She was quite beautiful, and it was wrong – so wrong – to think that way about Malfoy's mum, but she was and he couldn't help it. Maybe cause she wasn't really a Malfoy. That was just a shell, Polyjuice. She could be anyone underneath. Why of all people would Snape choose her to turn into? Why would Snape go to Knockturn Alley this late, Polyjuiced into a pretty woman? The idea of Snape in a Polyjuice brothel was completely mental, but by the time Harry tried to convince himself why, the idea had spawned ten thousand variations of itself in his head.
Harry followed Snape, taking a leaf out of his own book and chasing him under the cover of Polyjuice. Only the trouble was, he couldn't quite see who he'd turned into, he just knew that he'd changed, and it drove him spare until he caught a glimpse of himself in a grimy shop window and Snape's hook-nosed face stared back.
I should run and hide somewhere, the thought struck him, 'cause it can't be safe to be seen with Snape's face, what with wanted posters of him all over the Wizarding world. But it was really quite ironic to be in Snape's shoes, to try and beat the bastard at his own game as he came face to face with the actual Snape on the street, and so he did, approaching 'Mrs. Malfoy'.
Pale grey eyes widened as Snape caught Harry's eye in the crowd. One white eyebrow arched, but she didn't have time to say anything else.
"Look," someone in the crowd between them cried out, "It's the traitor!"
Apparation pops sounded, rapid as gunfire, and Harry was soon held at multiple sharp wandpoints. 'Wait!' he tried to say, 'It's not me! It's him! Catch him!' But it was as if he hadn't said a word: no one listened, they all just glared at him, getting ready to attack.
Then, slowly, Harry felt himself reverting back as the Polyjuice stopped working, and it was as if an invisibility cloak was lowered over him. The Aurors turned away. The crowds in the streets started walking around him, not paying any attention to Harry standing there.
Only the real Snape still stared straight at Harry, not even blinking, as Polyjuice-pale eyes and hair darkened and delicate features turned gaunt and sharp. He was the only one who saw Harry. The only one who even knew he existed.
But Snape turned his back on Harry and disappeared into the crowd in a billow of black robes. Leaving Harry alone. Forever. Just like he'd always wanted.
"Stop!" Harry sprinted after him, his heart pounding desperately. "Wait for me!" But he was just a second too late.
oOo
A pop of Apparation outside roused Harry from his sleep. Seconds later 'Mrs. Malfoy's slender form slid through the front door and made her way to the portrait. Her hair wasn't gathered in a bun anymore: instead it spilled all the way down her back, long and tangled, just like in Harry's dream. Her cloak was all askew as if someone has been chasing her.
"Severus! What happened?" the portrait exclaimed in shock. Apparently Snape looked even worse up close.
Snape arched an aristocratic, thin eyebrow. "You did tell me to live my life to the fullest," he rasped, in a voice that wasn't quite his or Mrs. Malfoy's. It sounded like he'd caught a cold. "Excuse me. I'd rather be out of your shoes before I change back. Potter," he turned and marched right up to Harry, putting something cold and horrible to his lips. "Drink."
Harry gulped, first something bitter, then the air. His brain seemed to clear just a bit and he remembered things better. 'Mrs. Malfoy' stumbling on the stairs in her high heels, then walking out the door. He made some more wild guesses about how Snape spent his evening as Mrs. Malfoy, and finally decided that he didn't want to know. Then all of a sudden another thought dawned, just as he felt the running, feathery warmth of the potion spreading down his chest. Where's the real Mrs. Malfoy?
He thought of fake Moody. But Snape really didn't seem the type to keep shrunken people locked away for a semester like Crouch Junior.
There was only one other explanation. How could I be this thick? Idon'tbelieveit! "Y'murdered her!" Harry cried, spitting at the aftertaste of bitter muck. Hot Pepper-up steam tickled his ears and purged the last of the fuzz from his mind. It all makes sense now!
'Mrs. Malfoy' stared at him, just like Snape had when Harry had started talking Parseltongue back in second year. "What?"
"You cut her hair, and now you're whoring around in her body!" Oh wow! Harry's face heated at that thought. Some conspiracy! Through all the shock and confusion there was one stray thought that spun in his head: Wonder how much he charges? Is that how he makes a living?
The Polyjuiced impostor's lips twisted into a smirk. "It's nice to see Pepper-up still has an effect on you. And for your information, I didn't 'murder' her, I 'saved' her."
Harry didn't listen. Mrs. Malfoy mightn't've been a very nice person, but Harry didn't want to see her dead! "Sick fuck! I almost trusted you!" What with your Patronus'n'all, and that talk about spying for the bloody Order! I should've known better!
'Mrs. Malfoy' was completely silent for a second, then she hmphed: it might've been a sound of ironic amusement. "There are no words, Potter," she muttered in Snapeish tones. "No. Words. Quite a few curses, however. When you're better."
Harry couldn't really explain why his face was so warm. His ears had long ago stopped steaming. But his face had been that way ever since he'd thought of Snape in Mrs. Malfoy's body, in the seediest alleys of Knockturn, naming his price to a stranger, that tight bun of white hair unravelling slowly all the way to cover her shoulders and bodice. Then manicured fingers were unlacing that bodice, as deftly as ever they'd wielded a stirring rod in class…. NO! Mrs. Malfoy's not attractive. Not attractive attractive. She's Malfoy's mum, what's wrong with me? It all sounded so wrongdirtywicked, but that would've been too easy to leave it at that. Harry didn't like danger or rule breaking in that way, honestly; even though that would've been the most obvious explanation, it wasn't so.
"I assure you, Narcissa is quite safe in Durmstrang, with her son. More safe than she would've been in this country."
There was an odd, ungraceful grace in the way 'Mrs. Malfoy' moved, despite Mrs. Black's loaned shoes: it was a predatory stalk, every step as smooth as the swooping folds of a cloak. Snape might've looked like Mrs. Malfoy: lips soft and delicate instead of thin and cruel, long hair soft and light instead of dark and greasy and uncared-for. But her softer woman's voice had his quiet, familiar sarcasm resonating through every word.
"Oh," Harry said, staring at 'Mrs. Malfoy's modestly covered cleavage, then let his forehead thump against it, finally putting the two and two together. "Y'mean she asked you to wh- wear her body 'round like that?"
"Potter," that strange half-and-half voice croaked, as fingers closed on his shoulders and pushed him upright with a firm shake, "How the bloody hell you survive without thinking once in a while is beyond me."
Harry stared. It was really quite fascinating. Mrs. Malfoy was supposed to act snobbish. All grace and high-society style and Pureblood to the core: to the point it made Harry gag. But then Snape spoke to Harry, clawing her white hair back harshly and glaring down her nose and it all turned into a huge contradiction between behaviour and appearance. And Harry just watched and watched and couldn't get enough it was so bizarre. There were Mrs. Malfoy's soft features, but Snape's sarcastic twist of lip, Snape's tilt of the head and furious glare. Even the manicured talon-nails tapping impatiently against the handle of the black wand were oddly Snapeish.
It's all so… wow! But not the parts that belonged to Mrs. Malfoy, although that was what logically should've affected Harry. It was everything that didn't belong to her: mannerisms, carriage, gait. And that confused Harry the most. Enough for him to keep watching Snape out of the corner of his eye, waiting for those un-Malfoy-like glimpses, so he could tally them in his head.
Even when Snape turned back to his normal greasy git self, and pushed him through the front door, outside, and took him somewhere falling and spinning, Harry still kept watching those hands on his shoulders, checking for manicured talons.
oOo
Potter didn't make a sound, just stared: first at Snape, then at the cover of Snape's sixth year Potions book, tracing its title, quietly fixated on the 'o's in Potion-Making as if they were snitches. As they Apparated to Spinner's End, where Snape could brew in more familiar surroundings, Potter had pressed the book to his chest like a toddler holding a teddy bear, and he hadn't let go of it since. Candlelight was the only other thing that managed to hold his attention for more than a second. As Snape looked for other stimuli while waiting for the brew to reach its next stage, Potter sat in the very corner of the sofa, his feet pulled up, as if he expected Snape's threadbare and tatty (and extremely non-magical) rugs to nibble his toes.
An hour later, he began flipping through the pages, mumbling to himself. Snape just managed to make out, "Wonder what the Prince'd do?"
"He'd tell you that you need to drink this," he grumbled after the fifth time Harry swatted the phial of finished brew away as if it was a bug buzzing around his face, "and eat more than a mouthful, and get some sleep."
Potter looked up at him, and for the first time in many days, those eyes weren't empty. Comprehension spread over that upturned face, brightening his expression until Snape fancied he could almost see the lightbulb going on over Potter's head. "Yeah." The grin that dawned then was as wide as if he'd just discovered the world. "He would. You would. How come I didn't think of that?"
Half an hour later, Snape had finally managed to get enough Draught in his patient to put him to sleep.
This isn't good. Snape sat wearily beside the bed and stared down into that familiar face, relaxed at last in sleep. He studied Harry as intently as if he could read the turmoil in his mind by the tiny flickerings of his expression, the minuscule frowns or smiles. Carefully he reached out and tucked back a lock of hair that threatened to flop against those closed eyelids. Whatever curse is affecting his consciousness has clearly focused at Grimmauld Place. Grimmauld is driving him mad – all right, madder – but outside it, he isn't much better. It's almost as if the curse has bound him to the Place, and if that's the case then he can't stay here for long.
He tucked the blanket more securely around the sleeper's body, and headed silently for the door. He had a lot of research to do, and only one place still open to him where he could do it.
oOo
Snape wasn't officially introduced to the Grimmauld grimoires until he'd already spent years studying them.
"Here, boy, take a look at this," Mr. Black said, leading Severus to a secluded shelf. "The only piece of Muggle filth that will ever find its way into this Library. They sugarcoat it nowadays, feed you stories about Wendelin the Weird and her burning fetish, but this here, this is history. A memory of our ancestors: weakened, proclaimed unnatural, hunted and killed. This is the true story."
Severus looked at the old book: stored under preservative charms that kept it looking less worn than many of the well-thumbed spellbooks he'd seen. Malleus Maleficarum, the cover read. The Hammer of Witches, Severus translated. Meant to crush us all from the world.
He remembered the verse from his father's Bible, Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. "Everyone'd be better off if the Muggles were gone," he muttered.
Mr. Black's beady stare focused on him as if he were a particularly fascinating insect. "Really?" he drawled. "Rather strong sentiments for a half-blood. Your own father's one of them."
"My father," Severus' voice was low and deadly, "is scum. When he learned my mother was a witch, he feared and hated her so much that her powers withered to nothing. For as long as I can remember, she was little more than a squib. And it wasn't enough that he hated her magic: he had to drink as well. Had to take out his hatred on us when he was drunk." Severus' eyes were slitted and distant, lost in memories. Gradually his voice had lost all intonation until he spoke the next words as flatly as if he were describing a play. "One night, he beat her to death, with his fists, on the kitchen floor. Told the police she must've interrupted a burglar, while he was still down at the pub." He added in a murmur so soft it was completely toneless, "Her face was …unrecognisable."
Mr. Black stepped back; his eyes and mind showed surprise at hearing the story told so rationally by a surly seventh-year.
Severus snarled, unable to stop himself from throwing all of his anger against this man who'd been willing to judge Severus' beliefs just by his last name. Suddenly it seemed so important to prove him wrong. "The Ministry refused to step in and punish that murdering Muggle bastard, and it still refuses to prevent more tragedies by banning contact with the Muggle world!" He growled "How could I not want them gone?"
"Indeed." Mrs. Black stepped out of the shadows, sliding her hand over Mr. Black's shoulder. "Your poor, poor mother," she breathed. "Such a tragic lesson in the fact that mingling with Muggles will never lead to anything good. Just think of the wizard Severus could've become, if only he had a proper father. Which is not to say that he isn't a bright boy," she added. "Orion, perhaps it's time."
"Do you think so? Perhaps…" Mr. Black murmured. "Severus, a good friend of mine from school is taking on a group of new apprentices. He is very interested in true Defence Against the Dark Arts, and I don't mean the kind taught at Hogwarts. He only takes in Purebloods of course, but perhaps in your case, if we put in a good word, he'd overlook your unfortunate heritage. If you're interested in studying with Regulus after Hogwarts, then…"
Mr. Black was going to say more, but all Severus heard was 'Regulus' and 'after Hogwarts': the very things that had been the focus of mingled anticipation and dread all year. Returning to his Muggle town, a gulf of miles – and worse, a gulf in class – would separate him from Regulus, instead of living just one dorm away.
Severus would've said yes to anything. He was ready to jump up and hug Mr. and Mrs. Black right this instant. "Yes," he said. "I'm willing to try. Anything."
"Well," Mr. Black stroked his moustache. "That's settled then. Where bloodlines have failed, my associate will make a true wizard out of you, boy."
Now, Snape had lived through enough to know that there was no such thing as 'true' wizards, only men whose desperation – not pedigree – made them capable of achieving the impossible.
Snape sat at the escritoire, volumes from all over the Library in ever-growing piles at his feet and all around him. He rubbed his stinging eyes and leaned his chin on his elbow, staring down at the book currently lying open on the desk before him. The hush of the long aisles was broken by a rustling, restless and constant as the surge of the sea. On the floor-to-ceiling shelves stretching away into the darkness on all sides, the grimoires flickered their pages and shouldered each other out of the way in their hurry to press their opened pages under his hand and offer him their knowledge.
Beside the ever-changing parade of books, the only other thing on the desk was the broken key that he'd taken off from round Harry's neck.
"Yes," he sighed at a woodcut illustration of a graveyard, "I know the curse will kill Harry, if it's not broken. In fact," he added as he set that book aside, "I'm surprised it didn't kill him instantly: it'd certainly do its damnedest straight off. First time I've been grateful for that stubbornness of his," he added in a mutter, before lifting his head to address the library as a whole, "What I want to know is, how does this curse work, and above all, how can it be broken?"
A Herbarium Blackwellianum nudged him shyly in the ankle; he scooped it up and it fell open to a delicate engraving of a flower. Lilium convallium, the caption read.
Snape arched his eyebrow. "Lily? Harry's mother?" The book flopped even further open, as if its spine had gone limp with relief.
"The protection of his mother's sacrifice? It took that from him?"
The book flipped its page corners at him with an impatient zipping sound, echoed by the solid 'hear-hear' thumps of heavier volumes still on their shelves.
"Right, then," Snape replied to the books' show of cheek with a challenging cry, "see what you lot make of it."
He Leviosa-ed the key onto the floor a short distance away, and let the grimoires pile themselves into a rustling, crackling huddle over it. Some of the bolder ones examined it: holding it between their pages, curling bookmarks of silk ribbon around the broken end, as if feeling the exact contours of the jagged metal. A few pairs of leathery old tomes acted together, pressing the key between their covers as if literally forming an impression of it. The rustlemutterhiss swelled like the tide, washing out to the farthest shelves and echoing back, as the entire Library held council with itself. The centuries-old mind of Grimmauld Place consulted its stores of learning and wisdom, every volume in it conferring among themselves. Then, at last, the susurrus fell completely still: the silence felt to Snape as though he'd been hit with a Deafness Curse.
THUD! Snape startled badly; a heavy ironbound volume had abruptly fallen from a high shelf and landed on the desk in front of him. It was followed by a smaller book bound in basilisk hide, and a third whose fine leather bindings Snape could've sworn were human skin.
He didn't even need to glance at their titles: he could feel the emanations of Dark magic from them, making his throat dry with sick anticipation.
The iron lock on the largest book fell open with a dull clang and it flung its pages wide, to a section on the Tarot. A tinted image of The Hermit stared up from the age-spotted parchment, beside descriptions of the retreat from the world into the solitude of monasticism. Then the basilisk-skin book slithered impatiently on top of the first one and opened itself to reveal a treatise on Oubliette Curses: a category of curses which killed by driving their victims slowly away from the realities of their own five senses, and into deepening wells of insanity within their own minds.
Snape's first question had been 'How does this curse work?' He nodded grimly as the two books showed him their secrets; his sharp eyes flicked whiplash-fast along the rows of print. The curse must be a variant on the Eremitical Seal: forcing the victim to renounce the world, and fade from it, and be forgotten. Presumably Riddle modified it to add madness and death to the punishment of exile. Ironic – and predictable – that someone as egomaniacal as he was, should've crafted a curse like that to protect one of his Horcruxes.
"Help me stop it!" Snape lifted his head, calling out again to the Library as a whole. "I know you're strong enough." It surely doesn't wish to see another owner wasting away, talking to house elf heads and eating cobwebs. Snape's last visit to Grimmauld before Walburga Black had died was memorable for its unpleasantness, even by Snape's high standards for unpleasant memories. She'd screamed, and stared at him with such horror, Snape had wondered whether the half-blood mark Macnair had cut into his shoulder had begun seeping fresh gore through his shirt.
"Do you want another owner to go the way Walburga went? You can't have found her madness pleasant," he shouted at the top shelves.
Above the ceiling, thunder rumbled. The smaller books huddled silently about his feet, as if seeking his warmth to drive away the chill of that thought.
"Then how can I keep Harry alive and sane?" With an incongruous flitter-flutter another, much smaller book flapped down like a particularly eccentric butterfly, landing right on top of the larger, more menacing stack of three. Its brightly coloured cover declared it to be "Little Olden Books: My First Jinxes". A rainbow blur of pages flickered before the flighty little book settled on one verse in large, bouncing letters.
Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Had a wife but couldn't keep her.
Above the verse, a florid-faced wizard – with enough freckles and red hair to be a Weasley – sat surrounded by jugs of pumpkin juice, amid a flourishing pumpkin patch. Green grass snakes twirled amid the pumpkin vines and nibbled playfully at the hem of his orange robes. A short, miserable-looking witch stood in the distance, her bun of grey hair bristling with knitting needles, wand, and an occasional twig.
He put her in a pumpkin shell,
And there he kept her very well.
said the second page, along with a detailed illustration of a house transfigured out of a single giant pumpkin, complete with a merrily smoking chimneystack carved out of the pumpkin's woody stalk. The same witch's face was framed in a round barred window: all in all, she looked surprisingly cheerful for someone who'd just been imprisoned in her own home. The red-headed wizard, looking just as cheerful, was standing by the front door, padlocking it shut.
"You want me to keep him here?" Snape's voice was sharp with protest, "But that's exactly what the curse wants: for him to retreat from the world!" The book rustled the page with the pumpkin house at him, as if emphasising "kept her very well." Snape didn't miss the X-shaped bars on the window, nor the giant padlock on the door: it was very shiny, and was shaped like a heart.
"Very well." Which it wasn't, of course, but it was the best option currently on offer. "But how long will he need to stay here? How can the curse be broken, once and for all?"
The books rustled enthusiastically among themselves, several of them tumbling over his boots, wrestling each other like energetic pups. At first Snape took heart in the swell of sound, but then the encouraging cracklerustlemutter of the volumes' consultation began to dwindle. Slowly it ebbed, and Snape's hopes faded with it, until at last all sound died and a terrible silence loomed. The volumes lay inert, seeming as dead and drained of magic as their Muggle counterparts.
"How do I break it?" Snape's cry had the raw sound of a man at the ragged edge of his wits.
No answer followed. Only the single candle that had sat all this time at the escritoire, flickered in response.
Please, Snape didn't know who he was asking, if anyone. Please. Let this work. Severus carefully picked up the candle, stepped over the books still piled about his chair, and stalked out of the library. In his wake, flocks of books scattered back to their shelves, like autumn leaves blown by the black gale of his passing.
Only one book remained behind. The last of the three that had originally been chosen to commune with Snape; the one that had been pre-empted by the children's book and had never had its chance to share with him what it knew. The grimoire with that disturbingly fine skin binding sat up alertly, then took off with a flap of winglike covers, patrolling the shelves like a guard before swooping up to the ceiling. As if in response, or in warning, thunder rumbled just beyond the ceiling's vault, and the book swooped down and away. It dropped into a gap on one shelf, then on another, nudging this volume, rubbing covers with that. But none of the others showed the slightest sign of activity; none returned its overtures. They'd had enough of consultation with each other for one night: indeed, the Library hadn't seen activity like this for decades.
There would be no further discussion. The books – and hence, the whole Place – knew that, if it intervened in its Master's curse, the house itself might take on a trace of his trials, in penance for that intervention. It might be rendered unliveable, disappearing from memory: like a malign version of the Fidelius it had already endured for so long. If it acted to save its Master, its destiny was to be forgotten… until a year of Sundays had passed. The page on which those fateful words were printed crackled restlessly as the last grimoire finally slid back into its own place on the shelves.
No further deliberation was needed. The decision had been made. As one, the books hunkered down, shuffling back to the very rear of their shelves, huddling against each other like wild things settling down for hibernation, in the grim knowledge of a long, harsh winter ahead.
oOo
"How good of you to bring him back." Walburga yawned, woken up by the slam of the front door. "He brings a bit of life to the Place. It's all been so quiet, ever since Regulus… left us, and since you sent Orion to hell where he deserved to go."
"I didn't," Snape interrupted, manoeuvring Potter the Puppet up the stairs.
Walburga shook her head. "Don't you worry about it. If I hadn't discovered his bootlaces in the library, I'd've put arsenic in the bastard's tea myself. How could I have been so blind, sheltering an asp in my bosom all these years without even knowing that the weak-spined coward would betray the house of my fathers. His heir, his only son," she insisted, as if she had truly never borne more than one boy, "sacrificed to greed and fear."
"I did not murder your husband!" Snape repeated, almost desperately.
"Now, now, Severus, no need to play coy."
"Stop it. He said he didn't." Potter's glare was lucid. It was the first conscious word from him today. "You oughtta believe him."
Snape was just as shocked as Walburga by this sudden response; he stood mute as the portrait focused her scrutinising glare on Potter. "Well, you certainly do," she murmured, eyeing him for the first time like someone who talked back instead of a piece of furniture (even though Potter in his delusional and starved state could've easily passed for a coat rack). "You trust his word?" she questioned. "On something that happened before you were born?"
Potter held his head high and hung on to the portrait niche's curtains, taking a step forward, for once without Snape nudging him to move in the right direction or holding him upright. "If Snape had killed someone, he wouldn't lie 'bout it. Not to a portrait," he argued, sticking his nose against Walburga's painted one.
"How curious," she muttered to herself.
"What?" Harry blinked.
"Seeing Severus with such a spirited protector at his side. There are still" – she eyed him from top to bottom – "small miracles in this world."
"Small? Hang about! Are you calling me titchy or something?" Potter demanded angrily. But Walburga had already left the frame.
oOo
The candles flocked to them and tagged along behind, lighting the corridors, and the bedroom. As soon as Potter's body hit the covers, he frowned. "S'not my bed."
Snape nudged him to lie down and covered him with a heavy blanket before the brat decided he'd rather be wandering about. Regulus' room was closer. "Sleep."
It is Regulus' room. It's his bed, and I didn't even think of that till now. The accumulated weariness was starting to slow him down. But I can't waste too much time now. Plenty of time to sleep when I'm dead, which with my luck will be entirely too soon.
"Yeah, s'pose I ought to, m'beat," Potter mumbled into the pillow. "Ask Ron t'wake me f'r dinner. Twins said it's stew. I like stew."
Then the Sleeping Draught worked, and Potter didn't say anything else.
In the light of the candles that had snuck into the room like visitors at a sick bed, Snape looked down at Potter. With his messy hair and drawn, pale face, without the glasses and with his eyes closed, Potter reminded him not of his father for once, but of Regulus. Especially sprawled in Regulus' bed like this, his dark, grown-out mane spilt all over Reg's old pillow.
The resemblance should've been even more startling when Potter's eyes were open: they'd been fading gradually, until now they were almost grey. But it just makes him look blind. Snape squared bony shoulders. I don't want him to look like Reg. I want the colour back in his eyes. I want him to look like himself again.
"'Bring him back here', you said. You'd better know exactly what you're doing," Snape grumbled at the high ceiling. The house responded only with a creaky sigh, all four walls of the room contracting in a breath like a ribcage.
