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*Many thanks to Numina for the editing of some of this chapter. They have been extremely helpful and hope to be mentioning more in the last few chapters of this story*
Her fugue, His Lie, and Their Story
Chapter 10: A Friend Called Death
John Pomfrey knew how to act calm in the face of danger. In all his time in the Order, and as an Auror, he had stocked up on so many brushes with death that it sent shivers down his spine to think of all the times he had narrowly slipped its icy grasp. In the end, almost all cheaters feel some sort of guilt.
Still, death had been quite a good friend to him. There was a time in his life, before his injury, when John could command death so seamlessly that his peers and enemies alike had come to fear him in the kind of way a muggle fears his own God.
Not that old John Pomfrey would have hurt a fly if he did not have to.
He had sent his friend death to some of the greatest scum of the earth-the killers of the innocent, the tainters of the virginal, the vilest of the evil, and still, it would often pain him to know that it was they who had been visited and not himself.
It had always been difficult for him to accept that to pay for another's sins, you had to commit your own.
Yes, death had been a friend to him in an omniscient sort of way, because if it hadn't, he certainly wouldn't be standing there at that moment, watching Severus Snape pour over some dusty old book. If John had acquired no such friend, he would have been the one to kill him.
July 1, 1997
Colors were beginning to appear on the horizon – little warm rays of light streaking their way through the pale violet sky. That morning, the sunrise came slowly as if it was fighting desperately not to tower over that new day, in a new month, of a new world. It suddenly seemed mortal, it was screeching up- Albus Dumbledore was dead.
Dead
The more John repeated it to himself, the less it seemed it could possibly be true. He had fled from the Ministry upon hearing the news, sure that he would never return, and taken up a steady pacing in the living room of Poppy's quarters at Hogwarts.
There had never been a silence quite like that in all of his life, where the ticking of the clock sounded so loudly in his ears that he thought they may burst, and yet, he almost wished he could drag the moment out forever- pacing back and forth in his own damning silence, never having to suffer the ugliness to ensue. He had seen enough war to know they had just begun one- curse or no curse, that was a piece of knowledge he would likely never unlearn.
No amount of his wishing would convince time to stop. Poppy appeared in the doorway, the watery light of the morning caught and held fast in her crystal blue eyes, and John just stood there, unable to hide his astonishment at the utter, unkempt nature of her appearance. Her cap and apron had disappeared entirely, her dusty blonde hair fell out of what was usually a ridged bun in tresses, and the first three buttons of her dress had come undone. She looked like a person caught in the middle of deciding which way was up and which was down though not knowing she was doing so. It was unlike her.
"I didn't think you'd be here," said Poppy.
John blinked back more surprise, "Where else would I go?"
She shrugged so offhandedly that he quickly decided it did not suit her at all. "Some sort of - raid, I suppose. You know how you are, always heading off to battle in the heat of it..."
"I doubt the Ministry will have the use for such matters from now on. At any rate, I haven't been cleared- you know that."
"I would never have thought you did." she replied simply and floated away from the doorframe to her chair with the air of utter deflation, "It seems I've run out of calming draughts. I see I'll be making those myself from now on."
John felt an immediate swell in his chest at her mere allusion to the man, almost like a bloodhound when he gets the first scent of his hunt- hungry.
"Snape." He sneered, the name dripping off his tongue like tar, "He can't have gone far. If I start out now-"
"-What are you talking about?" Poppy sat up straight, and then sighed her way back into her limp form "Oh, John, sometimes I think you haven't got a shred of sense in your head- you don't even know your own name sometimes, how do you expect to hunt him down of all people?" she asked softly, her voice void of all callous, "He's just killed Dumbledore." John flinched, " You won't find him and even if you did, you certainly won't arrest him, nobody is likely to…" she shook her head in dismay, "I always knew he was a smart boy, but I would never have put him to this. Well, I thought I knew him."
"Boy?" John scoffed, "Is that what this is about? Let me tell you, that's not a boy, Poppy, that's a criminal, a murderer and he's just taken the greatest weapon we had to fight this war with." He strode over to her and took her by the shoulders. "Aren't you frightened?" Her eyes filled with tears, " Aren't you angry?"
"I can't be angry. My heart is broken."
John's stomach sank, if possible, even further. His mind flashed back to the first time Poppy had mentioned Snape, then just eleven years old, the little boy who had the cruel, bitter-hearted father with the breath of whiskey, and bruised knuckles, and then he thought of all the nights she had cried herself to sleep over him.
They had no children simply because they had never desired to, but she must have felt as every parent does for their child, John thought because that was the first time in their long marriage he did not understand her. His hands were still clasped around her shoulders- her frail, exhausted shoulders, and a thought that pained him more than anything in that ugly world suddenly struck.
"Don't tell me you still love him," he said, "not after tonight, because whatever comes next it would be easier if you didn't."
She wrapped her arms around his neck a sobbed, never saying a word and yet giving him all the answer he had so dreaded to learn. Betrayal was its own sort of evil. There was nothing else in the world that plunged into the soul and killed quite like it.
Severus Snape had broken her heart, and so he might as well have nailed his own coffin shut. That kind of pain was beyond any realm of forgiveness. John swore to himself then and there that he would find him, and he would end it, nothing of mortal design would stop him.
"Light reading?"
Severus momentarily glanced up from the book, taking but a second to hold John's gaze and throw it away. That was something he had always been good at, emitting displeasure without really making an effort to show it. He supposed it was a trait he learned from his mother - he recalled that her facial expression never changed while his father beat her - the only thing painted on was that dead look in her eyes.
"I took that out of the home of Marmaduke Bernard after we arrested him... that had to be twenty years ago now…" John pressed on, obviously willing to suffer through another awkward exchange, "Interesting stuff, isn't it? Poppy likes to collect that sort of thing but I think it's rather spooky to have about the house." He paused. If John thought he was getting a response to that, he had been sorely mistaken. "All kinds of dark magic in that one, isn't there? You begin to wonder how anybody could find a use for half of those spells in a lifetime."
Severus cleared his throat, "I do not wonder, Mr. Pomfrey."
"Well now, I didn't mean-"
"- I know what you meant."
"Do you?" John prompted so coldly that Severus nearly jolted at the sharpness in his voice.
A quick, buzzing realization dawned on him- this was the John Pomfrey of whom many of those in Voldemort's army had been hesitant, even frightened to face.
Severus forced his eyes to stay locked in John's, finding a fire in his gaze that he had heard about only from those who had survived an encounter with the man, and yet, Severus felt it wasn't exactly thrown in his direction, it was lit by something deep inside John that was unseen- it was, perhaps, self-loathing- which was no less terrifying and certainly no less exhilarating.
"Can we speak plainly, Severus?"
"Aren't we just?"
John scoffed, "Don't you think it's about time to drop the facade?"
"It's not a facade."
"It is."
"How do you know?" he drew nonchalantly, "Don't tell me it's because you're still a master at reading us. If you were, you wouldn't be sitting here at this exact moment."
"So why don't you tell me, then? Just where would I be?"
Severus felt his blood run cold- mostly for Poppy's sake- up until just then, he had sort of been enjoying John testing him– after all, it was much better than all those months of infinitesimally small and pointless spurts of words John had strung together into conversation just pretending he didn't really know or care about anything to do with the war, or avoiding it which was rather the same. No, in a way it was nice to feel truly hated again- comfortable. But as pleasant as that was, the feeling had quickly disappeared,
"In the grave," he said shortly, and then all of a sudden a wave of anger rose up from his very core, "You're beginning to remind me of Dumbledore and just when I thought I had finally ridden myself of him. You know so little about what happened, and who exactly you were dealing with, and just how lucky you were to get cursed when you did, that it is almost comical!"
The air stilled around them. For a moment, Severus thought John might leap across the table, wrap his hands around his neck, and strangle him among the bookshelves, but he didn't. He just stood there, the sound of his relent clawing its way out almost audible.
"Oh, I know how lucky I was, Severus." said John at length, "I know that if I was half the man I used to be before the curse, I would have tracked you down and I would have killed you like the animal I thought you were. And I know that this whole damn thing would have been different and Poppy would have never, ever forgiven me, for no matter how much we all wanted you dead, she never once stopped loving you, and I could tolerate a world of Voldemort's before I could tolerate that. So yes, I know I'm lucky and do not wonder how I know you're not such a mean bastard, after all, my wife could never love someone so much that wasn't good inside."
John strode to the doorway, and with the handle in hand, he paused, giving Severus a look of mixed hostility and sympathy.
"I suppose what I'm trying to say is, I'm sorry, for everything, and that I think it's time to be good, Severus because you are."
When the door had closed behind him, Severus lingered lamely behind the desk, trying to avoid the sickly sensation of prickling at his eyes. He hadn't cried since Lily died and had only ever once considered it since, but John was right about it all and he found himself biting back all those quivers of emotion. Severus would have never thought such a simple word could have become so complex, but it had- good- it was all over, it was time to be just that.
Severus knew what he had to do and it didn't involve any further investigation into tall tales and dusty old books, in fact, he thought he had known all along. It all started and moved about her, it had always her. Hermione.
The only thing he could to be good was to give her the absolute truth. She was owed that.
Severus bolted from the study. He knew it was going to be messy and he knew it was going to be exhausting- not exhausting in the pulse-quickening way that Hermione usually exhausted him, but in the way where his hands began to shake and he forgot all the well-worded explanations that sprung to his mind.
In his search, he opened the door to the garden to find her standing right in the middle of it, as though she had been waiting for him all along. She was so pale that without the mess of curly brown hair swaying in the breeze, she could have been mistaken for a lovely ivory sculpture.
"Hermione," he strode forward, her appearance falling on blind eyes, " I must tell you something."
"I knew it."
A/N: Thank you so much for being faithful to this story. I know I've been offline for a long time, but I really want to give you all and this fic the ending deserved. I hope to have the next chapter soon, but no promises- my muse is a fickle thing. I would love to hear any comments you have on this chapter! Anything criticism/praise helps! Thanks again.