Beer Garden
Inus and Severus dressed in causal muggle clothes, i.e. jeans and tee shirts - Severus's shirt was long sleeved to hide his mark. Inus wondered if it was the first time that he saw Severus in anything less stiff than his school robes outside of his quarters. Inus and he apparated to outside of the beer garden. Inus didn't have his license yet, but it was a matter of taking the test since he remembered the charm perfectly; he was relieved that his wheelchair came with him. He should have practiced apparating with a wheelchair before. Inus and Severus had argued about using crutches or a wheelchair, but Severus insisted that sympathy card was the one to play.
Inus's father was at a table. Severus pushed his wheelchair to a man in an out of date shirt and trousers. Inus had very few memories of his father when he was a boy. His father had a job at the Ministry and seemed to be at meetings most nights after work, so he spent not many nights at home with his family, but they had Sunday afternoons together.
The man had greying dark blond hair and was slightly taller than himself. He looked almost distinguished in muggle clothes.
"Dad, this is my fellow professor, Severus Snape," Inus said as Severus removed a chair from the table to make space for the wheelchair. Inus scanned the man's thoughts, not caring about his father's privacy. His outer most thoughts were was Inus permanently crippled or would he heal from his injury.
"You don't trust that I would be who I said I was." Frank Quirrell would only know that if he had scan Inus's or Severus's thoughts.
"So legilimency comes from your side of the family," Inus said.
Severus took a seat across from Inus's wheelchair.
"No point in hiding it. You're scanning me," Frank Quirrell stated.
"That was my first question. We can continue to the next one," Inus kept his mental shields down; he naturally put them up when another legilimens tried to enter his mind. He needed to concentrate to keep them down for Severus at first. "I can block you just as easily as you can block me." Inus felt his father drop his mental shields.
"I always had them up in prison," Frank stated.
"I just wanted to confirm that you are who you say you are." Inus didn't mean to be defensive.
"Same here. Permanent injury?"
"It appears. Poppy is hopeful that I'll regain mobility. I use crutches most of the time. It hurts to put any weight on my weak leg. Poppy wants me to use a walker around the house so I strengthen the leg," Inus explained.
The waiter came to the table. Frank told the man in German to bring more mugs and pitcher.
"Severus, I recall when you joined our cause," Frank said not much above a whisper.
"I was too young to know what I wanted," Severus said.
"I was excruciated to Germany for crimes committed during my misspent youth." Frank downed his beer and looked at Inus. "Your mum says that you remember your childhood."
"Bits and pieces. I remembered the first time we flew a kite. It was spring and I couldn't run fast enough to get it into the air. You tied it to a tree and it seemed to soar without either of us touching it." Inus remembered when he learned to fly a broom in class and wanted to show his father, but his father had been arrested before winter holidays.
"Your shields kept me out your Christmas visit," Frank said.
"I didn't know I had them in place." Inus sipped his beer. "Dad, I warn you I'm a teetotaller."
"Germans drink beer like it's water," Frank said.
"Like mother's milk." Severus drank his beer and refilled it from the pitcher.
"Why didn't you tell Mum that you could read minds?" Inus asked.
"She would take it the wrong way," Frank said. "People that can't are suspicious of ones that can. It gives us an incredible advantage."
"If you think hearing teenage thoughts of depression, angst, and self-involvement gives you an advantage," Severus stated.
Inus laughed; if he didn't keep his barriers up, he would hear the same things come autumn.
"The Dark Lord saw so much potential in you," Frank said, obviously to Severus since Quirinus was only a first year student at Hogwarts at the time of the Senior Quirrell's arrest.
"I've wasted my potential." Severus had his shields up, so Inus could only guess what he meant by that comment.
"He saw me as a vessel; I was his arms and legs. I wasn't a person in his eyes." Inus sipped more beer. He should slow down because he didn't want get drunk in front of his father.
"We can go to a restaurant and you can order low alcoholic beer," Frank said. "We wouldn't want you to pass out."
"Thanks, Dad."
Frank yelled for a waiter and ordered a low alcohol beer for his son. Frank had said much more than the brand name.
"Dad, you have me at a disadvantage. I don't think in German," Inus said.
"I can't help it. I've been living here for eighteen years," Frank said. "I just told the man that you were taking medication for an injury."
"I was honoured to serve him, but he always wanted more than I could provide. I felt like I failed him and when he moved into Potter; my heart failed." Inus touched Severus's foot under the table with his good leg.
"You did your best," Frank's voice wasn't kind.
"I felt I wasn't worthy of him. I believed in his promises that he didn't keep. I believed that he would heal me." Inus shed a few silent tears. Inus could read that his father thoughts that he should have been honoured to give their lord his life. "And he left me to die."
"He was a sociopath. He treated all of us like objects," Severus said.
Inus said, "How can you hear into people's minds and not hear what is said?"
"You get numb to it," said Frank. "If I heard the thoughts of the other prisoners, I would have gone mad."
"Lord Voldemort told me my sense of right and wrong didn't matter," said Inus.
Frank shivered at the name.
"He was in my head. I can't address him in an impersonal manner. I'll try to remember to address him as the Dark Lord in respect for you and Severus," Inus said. "Why did you treat me so coldly when I visited?"
"I didn't understand why you were writing," Frank said.
"I now remember that I didn't write more than once a year and only because my mum insisted. However, I was dead for a half hour; it gives you a different perspective on the world. Dad, do you think another Dark Lord is on the rise?" Inus asked.
The waiter arrived with a bottle of low alcoholic beer.
"Our organisation has been around for hundreds of years. Someone will try to seize power," Frank said.
"Malfoy will be a force if he ever matures," Severus said.
"Draco mature?" Inus held in a laugh.
"His father dabbles in the Dark Arts, but he sees it as a hobby," Severus said. "Lucius's ignorance scares me more than his knowledge."
"Severus, you could do it," Frank said.
"Heavens, no," Severus said.
"I don't have the emotion strength," Inus admitted. "I'm better off teaching the Dark Arts to students."
"No shame in that," Frank said.
"Mum wants you to owl her if you want her to live with you in Germany," Inus said.
"I should send her a legal separation," Frank said. "My life with her is ancient history."
"She waited so many years for you," Inus said.
"She doesn't know who I am," Frank said. "I kept so much from her."
"Dad, those things don't matter to her," Inus said.
"You can't tell someone that you have been reading their mind for decades and you simply forgot to mention it," said Frank.
"I taught him legilimency at the start of our relationship," Severus said. "I knew he had the gift since his mental shields were so strong. It was like breaking down stone walls."
"Dad, we're sharing a flat." Inus poured his bottle of low-alcohol beer into his empty mug and took a good chug.
"My English isn't what it used to be," Frank said. That was an excuse. Since he read minds, he must have known by this point that Severus was more than an acquaintance.
"You're doing fine," Inus said. Quirinus never learned more than a few German words from his father. Mrs. Quirrell always spoke English. "My American pen pal teases me that I should learn a living language."
"I'll take you boys out for dinner. I can show you the campus," Frank said.
"I thought it was a well guarded secret," said Severus.
"We'll portkey, so the location will remain a secret," said Frank.
"The chair will stay here and I'll fall on my bum," Inus said.
"I'll hold onto it with one hand as I touch the portkey with the other," Severus promised.
Inus drank the rest of his low alcohol beer.
"I have to warn you. The campus has a translation charm covering it. You'll hear everyone's thoughts and words in your native language. This can be rather disorienting at first," Frank explained before finishing off his beer.
"Dad, I'm sorry that I failed him," Inus said.
"I know that," Frank said.
"If I had given him the Stone, he would have taken my body," Inus said in a voice only a tab above a whisper. "I would have never been more than a vessel for him."
"With all the bodies available, why yours?" Frank asked.
"With Philosopher's Stone, my weak heart wouldn't have mattered," Inus explained.
"He's a legilimens and his mind learns new material very quickly. That would discounted any disadvantages," said Severus.
"He left my body for Potter's," said Inus. "Potter's mind doesn't work as fast as mine, but he stays on task better. He also has Lord Voldemort's magic through his scar."
"Also the Dark Lord was able to push Potter all the way out," said Severus.
"Soon after taking Potter's body, a wild animal mauled him to death," said Inus.
Severus continued, "Sibyll said a boy born to people who thrice defied the Dark Lord on the end of the seventh month had the power to vanquish the Dark Lord, and they must die at the other's hand."
"Sibyll?" asked Frank.
"The divination professor," said Severus. "She's an odd lady. She taught Inus how to dance and accompanied him to the Yule Ball."
"Potter's destiny was to vanquish the Dark Lord," said Inus. "I threw my runes. The gods see me as Inus Quirrell. I have a path, again."
