Disclaimer: Don't I wish.
Chapter 7: Weasley House for the Criminally Insane
Severus sat on the edge of the bed in the guest room of the Weasley House for the Criminally Insane. Unused to any form of comfort, he had thought that he'd be asleep within seconds of laying down. Instead, he found himself completely unable to sleep. Had he been a lesser man, he would have tossed and turned and counted sheep. As it was, he had laid on the bed perfectly still, staring at the ceiling. His head was swimming at the moment, filled with questions gone unanswered.
Twenty-four hours ago, he had been destined for the Kiss. He had almost anticipated it, hoped for it. After all, anything was better than the feelings of hopelessness he'd been experiencing for seventeen years. He'd known that there were charms and spells to prevent the high-security prisoners from seeing sunlight, and to kill all time perception in the cells. But how had seventeen years gone by without him realizing it? The pain of everything was still so sharp, and yet he could believe that it had been fifty years since he'd been locked up.
And yet, it felt like yesterday that he'd been forced to kill Dumbledore. The one man in the world who trusted him completely. And that man had betrayed his trust by asking him to kill. And he could still feel the blood on his hands, marring the skin there and staining. Now, in the silence of the guest room of the Weasley House, he could smell the blood, clinging to his skin. How could they not smell it?
He shook his head, realizing that any sleep he got now would be plagued with nightmares. The chances of finding a potions lab to brew a Dreamless Sleep Potion were slim to none, and he didn't look forward to reliving, again, the death of his mentor in his sleep.
Standing up, he walked slowly down the hallway, taking in the darkness of the rooms around him. Next to his room was a closed door with a large sign reading Do Not Enter. He could only assume that was Weasley's room. He walked down, turning the corner. When he did, the soft light of a wand hit his eyes.
Disregarding all advice he'd ever heard in muggle entertainment, he went toward the light, only to find the room that he'd listened to Potter and his daughter fight in. The door was open and the small glowing light came from the corner, where he could see the outline of a girl, hunched over her desk. He cleared his throat, and the girl jumped, and flicked her wand so that dozens of vials flew into her closet, and the door slammed shut. Then she looked at Severus with her eyebrows raised.
"S-Snape. Do you need something?"Her voice was calm and collected, and her gaze was gentle, and it unnerved Severus in a way that he couldn't remember being unnerved a very, very long time.
He glanced toward the closet. "Are those the vials that seem to have caused you and Miss Weasley such a large amount of problems?" She nodded, and Severus looked back at her, focusing on the pensieve on her desk.
"Who's memories are they, Miss Potter?" She looked away from him, and he continued. "You seem obsessed with memories and the past. The past from long before you were born, in fact."
She blushed. "If you don't know your past, you don't know where you're going."
Severus froze. He'd heard that somewhere before. The voice was different, but the tone,the words. They echoed through his head, and the answer was just out of his reach. Where had he heard the before?
Potter seemed to sense his hesitation, because she turned back to her desk. "I just mean that it's important to understand human nature if you want to avoid making the same mistakes, and..." she trailed off and looked back at Severus.
"What are you?" Severus asked with unusual bluntness. Must be from spending so much time in the Lion's Den.
She seemed surprised by his question, and she thought it over for a moment. "I honestly don't know anymore." She sighed and lifted up the pensieve, and placed it in a drawer in the desk. "I guess I could say I'm a teenager."
"Are you?"
She looked up at him sharply. "Excuse me?"
"Are you a teenager?"
"What do you mean?"
"It's not a difficult question, Miss Potter. Are you a teenager?"
She crossed her arms over her chest and raised her eyebrows at Severus. "Of course I'm a teenager, Snape. What else would I be?"
"Why don't you tell me, Miss Potter? You don't act like a teenager. You're moody, yes, but somehow I doubt that it's hormones. I think you're uncomfortable. Also, that's twice now you've reminded me of someone. I've known you for less than a day."
"With no disrespect of course, you did teach both of my parents, and knew both sets of my grandparents. It's not like I'm a complete stranger to you."
"That's the logical answer, isn't it Miss Potter?"
"Sometimes logic is all you have, Snape." She stared at him evenly, her eyes giving away nothing.
Severus returned her gaze, silently saying the spell and reaching into her mind. He wasn't a master of wandless magic, but Legilimency was one of the few spells he could do well.
Out of practice, it took a lot for him to slip through her barriers. More than it should have, in fact, even with seventeen years without practice. "I thought you weren't skilled in Occlumency, Miss Potter."
"Where would you get that idea, Severus?" She asked softly.
"What are you two doing up?" A voice from the doorway startled them both out of their conversation, whipping their heads around to face the doorway, where Potter stood, staring at his former teacher and daughter. He leaned against the doorway, squinting against the soft light. "It's late and you guys are going to have a lot to do tomorrow. Go to bed."
He gestured for Severus to follow behind him, and as a testament to how tired he was between it all, he followed after Potter wordlessly, turning around and giving one last deep look at the girl at the desk. She waved her hand at him dismissively, and gave him a look that clearly warned him to stay in bed all night.
He followed after Potter as he walked past the guest room into the master bedroom at the end of the hallway. He paused in the doorway and said, "Snape, be careful."
"Excuse me?"
"Don't occupy your thoughts with Linnea. She's not herself at the moment, and for you to spend your time trying to figure her out would be a waste. Concentrate on getting into the headquarters tomorrow and getting those two in with you. After that, well, keep them alive for you to puzzle over her."
"Potter, you are aware that the chances of any of us making it out of this alive are pretty slim, right? The likely situation here is that the Dark Lord going to take one look at me, realize what I'm up to and use my dead body to smother both of them after the Death Eaters have a go at me. Are you really willing to let these two girls go into their deaths?"
"Don't back out on us now, Snape. Dumbledore trusted you with his life. He gave you his life. I trusted Dumbledore, and I trust his judgment."
"You didn't at Hogwarts."
"I was a teenager, Snape. You can't judge a guy on what he used to be."
"These girls are teenagers as well, Potter. Neither of them are even of age yet. You're giving these two a great deal of independence that I'm not so sure they can handle."
"They have to. There's no guarantee that I'm not going to get killed just walking out of this house. What's going to happen to them then? There are more fifth years living on their own than there were seventh years when I was in school. 'Of age' has begun to mean very little. I'll do anything to change that, and I know that those two girls are the exact same."
Potter didn't seem interested in anything else Severus had to say on the matter, as he turned and went back into his own room, leaving Severus to think on the matter.
LINEBREAKAGAINYEAHI'MCOOL
By morning, Severus was still conflicted, but somehow had realized the lack of choice he was given in the situation. It wasn't something he was proud of, but he had very little position in the war other than as a spy. Being a triple agent had been his entire life for so long before Azkaban, he wasn't quite sure that he could adjust to life without it now that he was free. The only way for him to get back in the good graces of the Dark Lord would be to bring him something that he desperately wanted. And how could he not want the two girls?
Severus fingered the robe that had somehow made it's way into his room during the night. If he was honest with himself, something he preferred not to practice, he had to admire Weasley's spirit. Not many girls her age could take on Draco Malfoy and live to tell the tale. The fact that she managed to get away with his robes and, presumably, the mask he saw by the door, told him that she was capable of holding her own. But that did nothing to comfort him. To bring a teenage girl into the Dark Lord's quarters was a behavior more akin to Lucius Malfoy or possibly even his spawn, but not something that bode well in the stomach of Severus Snape.
When he turned, something managed to catch his eye. On a shelf, next to the mask, sat a vial. Having had his fill of vials in the past few days, he automatically turned to ignore it. But for some reason, as if the object itself was capable of legilimency, he couldn't focus on anything but. He tried closing his eyes, looking at something else, and focusing on his own thoughts. Either his self control had diminished during his time in imprisonment, or the that was no ordinary vial.
Accepting that he would simply not be allowed to ignore the urge, he stood up and walked over to the shelf, grabbing the troublesome object. As he did so, a scrap of parchment fell out from underneath it. This, too, he found unable to resist, and growled as he reached down to pick it up with an unnecessary force.
The parchment was folded in half, and the outside simply said, Read.
Sighing to himself, sat back on the edge of the bed and scanned the parchment.
Master Snape,
I trust you slept well. However, today is going to be a hard day, and I don't foresee it getting any easier any time soon. I figure it's been a long time since you've eaten a semi-decent meal, barring the quickly made stew last night. This is a mixture of potions (safely, mind you. A mixture of my mum's.). It's akin to a blood replenishing potion, except it provides more nutrients than blood. It will also help replenish your strength. Drink it quickly and put on the robes. Come to the living room as soon as you can. Please refrain from putting on the mask, however. We wouldn't want our wards to mistake you for a Death Eater, now would we?
A.G.W.
P.S. Did you like my charm? I figured you would ignore the potion otherwise. And no. It will not go away until you drink the potion. Bottom's up!
Cursing the girl, he uncorked the vial and took a quick sniff of the potion. Deciding that it didn't appear to be harmful, he tipped his head back and swallowed it all in one gulp. The taste was particularly disgusting, something that often happened when one mixed potions. In fact, it was when the taste was pleasant that one knew to be cautious around the potion.
Feeling unusually obedient, Severus stood up and stripped off the robes he was wearing, tattered and dirty as they were. He dropped them into the corner, finding no other way to discard of them. The room held no laundry basket, and without a wand, he couldn't vanish them.
Severus suddenly felt as if someone had dumped ice water into his veins. Wand. Bloody wand. There was no way he was going to stand a chance in the Dark Lord's circle without his wand. He, as well as the two fool hearty teenagers, would be nothing but sitting ducks next to an extremely appetizing glaze. How he hadn't realized his lack of wand before, he couldn't say. It wasn't comforting, however. This wasn't the time to be forgetting things as basic as a wand, now.
Raising one hand to the bridge of his nose, he pinched it soundly before picking up the damnable robes and shoving them onto his skeletal, pale body. Years without sunlight would do that to anymore, he supposed, but somehow it still made him angry. The entire situation did in fact, although he would refuse to admit it should anyone ask. The sheer lack of control he was suddenly forced to experience... it was going to kill him.
He felt the pull again, and glared at the bloody vial and parchment. Had she charmed it to continue until he came downstairs too? Another pull told him that yes, she had. When given the chance, he decided, that girl needed someone to choke some sense into her. At this point, he would be more than happy to volunteer for it.
He grabbed the mask before opening the door to leave, shutting it again behind him. The pull lessened a little, and he felt like growling again. He refrained upon hearing voices floating in from the living room. It seemed as though the only way to obtain information in this house was to listen in for it.
"You can't keep this up. What are you going to do if he asks again about his daughter? It's sure that he's going to want to know! I told you to keep that little tidbit to yourself, not to tell him about her. It's going to make things sticky later."
"Oh, and your late-night pensieve treks aren't? Linnea, you're risking more than I am."
Severus could hear the sounds of someone pacing the living room. "Are you sure he's going to drink the potion? He's stubborn. Chances are he'll decide that he doesn't need healing."
"I told you. I put the Attraction Charm on it. There is no chance of him deciding not to drink it. Unless he cares to have a pull toward a vial for the rest of his life. And the pull will spread too. If he ignores it for more than an hour, he will physically be pulled toward the stupid potion, rather than just a small tugging feeling in his leg, or stomach, or wherever the bloody thing originated on him."
"And you used Aunt Hermione's potion?"
"Yes, for Merlin's sake! I followed the directions exactly, down to using a 13.5 cm spoon to stir it with! The spoon even had the right markings on the handle. The potion I gave him was the Replenishing Potion. Lin, why are you so worried about him?"
There was a groan of springs, and he could only assume that whomever had been pacing had sat down. "I'm not worried about him, I'm worried about the plan. If he backs out—"
"He won't back down. He had no choice! He has to go through with the bloody plan, and if not, we'll go to Draco Malfoy."
"Who will completely tear us apart, Aradia! I don't know about you, but I quite enjoy having my virginity right where it is."
"And are you telling me that you're not willing to give your virginity for the wizarding world? Think about it. Even if we do have to go to Draco Malfoy, he's a competent occlumens. I'll break through and he'll unknowingly hide me from Voldemort. It's perfect, either way."
"You'd let yourself be beaten and raped just to get an idea of the headquarters?"
"I would do anything to end this bloody war. And if that means letting Draco Malfoy use my body to get an idea of what they're planning and maybe save some lives, I'll damn well do it!"
"And how are you going to get the message to anyone? You'll be locked up!"
"I have my ways, Linnea. Now go see if he's coming."
A loud sigh came from the living room, and the sound of feet began again. Severus adjusted his robes and walked down the rest of the stairs with a grace he didn't feel, looking down at the young girl that had just appeared in the doorway to the stairwell. "Hello, Miss Potter."
"Good Morning, Snape. I trust you slept well?" She didn't seem to expect an answer, as she gave him an almost unreadable look and turned around, heading toward the living room without looking back at him.
He felt the pull move to his arm, and he growled and walked into the horribly colored living room, sitting on the couch that had changed colors since last night. Who enchanted their furniture to change colors?
As the couch shifted to a sherbet orange beneath him, he held back a sigh. Apparently, someone in this house did. "I believe we have some things to discuss." He began, looking at the two girls in the living room with him. "You two seem so prepared to do this, but do you even know what the Dark Lord is capable of?"
"I think we know Voldemort pretty well, Master Snape. We've been dealing with him all our lives." Weasley crossed her arms over her chest and stared at him, as if daring him to tell her any different. The Potter girl just shot her a look, then nodded at Severus.
"I'm under the impression, however, that you have yet to deal with him as a prisoner."
The look on Weasley's face plainly told him that he was right and she hated him for it. Potter's face, however, was harder to interpret. She looked vaguely guilty and distant, as if remembering something she knew she couldn't- and didn't want to- share. He stared at her for a moment, questioningly, before Weasley coughed to bring his attention back to the conversation at hand.
"Yes, well, as such, I don't think either of you have any idea what to expect from this experience." He stared at the two of them, watching as Potter's face closed off again.
"My mother was captured once, when I was young. She told me about it," Weasley's voice was quieter and softer than he'd heard it yet, and he raised and eyebrow at her.
"Granger was captured?"
"Weasley. And yes. During a raid, while I was about four or five... she said it was hell."
"And yet you still agree to do this?" Severus was vaguely surprised in multiple ways, but refused to show it. He had to get back into the habit of hiding his emotions if he wanted to even begin to survive this ordeal.
"I have to. I'm going to find a way to bring this bloody bastard down if it's the last thing I do." Severus was shocked to the bone by the intensity in her eyes.
"I understand." He said quietly, and looked away from both of them.
A/N: PHEW! There's like, twice as many words in this chapter as in the last one! And it took me about the same amount of time to write. Things are cooking now!
Thank ALL OF YOU for the reviews. I got five in like, a day. And since this chapter's so much longer, I'd like a few more reviews for the next one. Especially since they came so bloody fast. I wish my life revolved around fanfiction. I have so many plot bunnies attacking me it's not even funny.
Let's try for ten reviews this time? Sounds good. Ten reviews before you get your next chapter. ::Grins evilly::
