Righto. Back to Sev this ch. He gets a reality check, from Mrs Black! Wait and see, ladies & gents. Enjoy!
Chapter 10: Fighting Boys
Somewhat abandoned by the shifting tides of people, Severus let the others go about their business and settled down on the lowest riser of the stairs. Molly and Sirius were stuck like glue to Harry and his friends, and the rest of the Order followed them like a gaggle of geese into the kitchen, clamouring to know what Potter had been up to. Severus, though, was content to let them on, still too shaken by what Potter had inadvertently revealed to the Order. Molly and Poppy had seen the results. Potter had seen the event.
He shuddered. Everything they'd done to him, everything they'd said, all those taunts and humiliations; Potter had seen them all. Potter knew. Everything. Lucius and Voldemort had been quite thorough in bringing his faults and fears to light. His history. And of all the people to reveal them to, the Dark Lord had chosen Potter. How could he ever look the boy in the face again, knowing that? Come to that, how could the boy have borne to look at him? He wished Potter had let him erase it. He wished he had let himself. Some things should never be seen.
"So quiet, dark man. Why so quiet?" Severus looked up in surprise to see Mrs Black gazing down at him, curiousity and ... compassion ... in her face. Black? Compassionate? Even her Gryffindor son hadn't managed that one. What was she after?
"I'm thinking, Ma'am, that's all. Trying to sort things out," he replied courteously, leaning forward to address her properly. He didn't attempt to stand. He doubted his legs would hold him just yet. She nodded graciously at him.
"The red-haired woman, she is your friend. Her family too. You'll be safe enough with that one, her and hers. My son too, for all his antagonism. He's not a patient person, but he always lacked the bone-deep cruelty that marked some of our family. He likes a fair fight, does Sirius. Of course, he's not adverse to a little picking on those weaker, but he likes a challenge better. It seems you give him that, and always have. He used to speak of you, you know. Coming home for holidays."
Severus raised his eyebrows at her, silently urging her to continue. She laughed suddenly, a sharp tinkle of amusement, and he was struck by how beautiful she had actually been. When she wasn't screaming her lungs out and apopolectic with rage, she was really quite charming.
"Oh yes. He was always on about you. His Gryffindor friends too, sometimes, but he seemed to prefer to keep news of them to himself. Didn't want to mix worlds, I suppose. But he'd keep on about you, how you kept at them, how you wouldn't just lay down and take a licking like you deserved, how you'd insult them and defy them and simply refuse to back down. You frustrated him no end, you did. But underneath his bluster, I always got a sense that he admired you, in an odd way. I used to hope that you'd show him the error of his Gryffindor ways, but that was wishful thinking. Besides, from what I've seen here, you could be Gryffindor's poster boy, what with all this risking-yourself-so-no-one-else-has-to business you keep getting into."
He bristled at that, an instinctive reaction left over from his own schooldays, when his fellow Slytherins on occasion would accuse him of just that. Personally, he'd always thought that he was about as Slytherin as they came, with all his layers of deception and misleading. He'd become a spy, for crying out loud. You didn't manage that without some fairly powerful Slytherin tendancies. He said as much.
She laughed again. "Of course, you are Slytherin, no denying it. But I always thought that hat was just a majority vote, picking up on your strongest attribute. I bet you hid all that courage and genius and misplaced loyalty from it, and it picked up that deception. Even though you've strong traits worthy of all houses, you used your Slytherin ones to disguise them, and ended up there. And well placed you were, perhaps, because if you'd ended up anywhere else, these idiots wouldn't have a spy, would they?"
"If I'd ended up somewhere else, maybe I'd still have two hands," he muttered, then started. Now was not the time for self-pity. There was never a time for that. He looked up at her again, to see that same compassionate look as before.
"Maybe. Maybe not," she murmured. "I think you'd have ended up in this war, one way or another. You're too proud and passionate not to become involved." He spluttered, descending into a fit of coughing. What?
"Oh, don't look at me like that, foolish boy! I may be dead, but I'm not blind! You'd never bow your neck to anyone, not by choice, and even if forced your mind would be your own. That's why you're a spy, no? Because He could bend your spine, but not your will. You never believed in him, did you?"
He looked at her in frank astonishment. "Even if I didn't," he began cautiously. "Isn't that a bad thing in your books? The Blacks were staunch supporters of the Dark Lord, weren't they? Weren't you?"
She sniffed haughtily. "That half-blood power freak? Never! It was his opening promise that caught our attention. A return to the glory days of the old families, the pure-bloods given power once more. That was what we wanted. But you must understand, the old families bow to no-one. He wanted our subservience. That, we will never stoop to give, to anyone. We supported him, yes, in his early days. But now, seeing my nieces, my nephew-in-law, scions of the great houses, happily kowtowing to that upstart ... I've never been so ashamed in all my life, or death. At least Sirius, though he defied us, didn't do it so he could bow to someone else! He stayed true, in spirit if not ideals, to our family. So no. Your pride is no bad thing in my books. You are strong enough, perhaps, to start a new family."
"What do you mean, a new family?" Severus was rapidly losing her plot, if she actually had one, and wasn't just displaying that she had a few marbles short of a full set.
"Hah! Shows what these modern pure-bloods know. Back in Salazar's time, pure-blood meant of a noble family, and gifted with magic. The purest of lines stemmed back to Merlin himself. Anyone with magic in their blood stems from the stock of Merlin, or one of the other Dragon-Era Wizards. Latent or Potent, all his scions hold magic. Muggleborns are wizards from two Latent lines awakened in each other. That means they stem from the marriage of two or more magical bloodlines. Therefore, the Muggle or Halfblood family has blood-right to call themselves pure, as there are at least two magical lines involved. The Latent lines are awakened, and a new family is born. You, with your pride and magical skill, if you marry a Potent or Latent line, can start a new family."
He stared. And they thought Voldemort was blood-obsessed! This tracing of lines ... it made humans sound like horses, bred for excellence without a thought for preference or love. He'd known, in part, how the old families were born, and that there had been some newer ones, the most recent having been founded four hundred years ago, and still looked down on as 'newbies'. He could see why Black had rebelled, and Malfoy lapped it up. Malfoy was against free choices for anyone but himself.
"I ... I'm not sure what to say," he murmured uncertainly. This was not something he needed to think about. Potter and the Order and his bloody hand were enough to worry about. More than enough.
"Oh, bother it! You're back to brooding again. Well, I did try to distract you. Not my fault if you're an obsessive worrier." She huffed in annoyance, and he blinked. Distract him? Oh, great! Another bloody woman trying to manipulate him out of his misery. What was it about him that attracted the mother-hen types! And turned other, perfectly sane women into maternal monsters?
"Well, since you ask ..." George grinned from the hallway. "I'd say it's your absolute cuteness. Fred?"
"Yeah," his twin smirked. "And his lost-puppy look."
"Your wit and charm ..."
"Your tendancy to get into trouble ..."
"Your childlike innocence ..."
"Need we go on?"
Severus stood, letting a thunderous expression slide into his 'cuteness'. "Oh please, do," he murmured silkily. "If you're willing to try a Death Eater's patience, do go on." He smirked coldly.
They put on faces of false terror, and held them for a good minute, too, before all three of them collapsed into giggles. Mrs Black looked down on their hunched, breathless forms indulgently, a slight smirk on her own features.Out of the corner of his eye, Severus saw her nod at someone out of his sight, in the kitchen. He sighed mentally. Even with a rake of others to look after, Molly still kept an eye on him. How she'd managed to bribe the hell-fire portrait into helping her, he wasn't sure he wanted to know. It seemed the twins' descriptions of a woman on the warpath hadn't been exaggerations, if she could bully a Black into complying. And this Black!
"Ma'am," he said breathily, still recovering from his fit of the giggles, something he was profoundly ashamed of, and secretly delighted in. "You Slytherin, you! You're complicit with Molly's plans, aren't you? You're out to make a mother's boy of me, just like all the rest of those bloody females!"
She laughed fully, a rich chuckle of amusement. "Oh no, my boy. No indeed. Molly wants to mother you. I want you in fighting shape to ... what's that new phrase? ... kick my son's ass! As it seems only you can. I want you to turn him back into a fighting Black, not this moping creature he's become. I've never yet seen him show more fire than when he talked of beating you. You'll get well, and give me back a son I can be proud of. Or it will go ill for both of you."
"You bloody old hag!" Sirius exclaimed behind them, and Severus realised that they had quite an audience from the kitchen by this stage. "You manipulative, scheming old witch! Can't you do better than threatening a one-armed weakling into taking me on?"
In an instant, Severus swung on him. "One armed weakling? What the hell do you mean by that one, Black? I could take you out if I were paralysed! Now you don't have a gang of three to back you up, a three year old could take you down!"
"Yeah? Care to back that one up, Snivellus?" Black raised a wand, and Severus brought up his right hand, cursing his lack of equipment, and thanking his prudence in mastering wandless magic. Black could rile him up without a second thought, just by existing. And vice-versa, so it seemed.
"Yes! That's my boys! That's what I want to see!" The old woman crowed triumphantly, and by instant agreement both he and Black lowered their weapons and proceeded to haughtily ignore both each other, and her. This apparently delighted her, as she laughed all the harder.
"Oh, my boys. My little spitfire, fighting boys. You'll make it, alright. By sheer dint of annoying each other into succeeding, you'll make it. And well for you, too. My boys. And a fine pair you are!"
Neither himself nor Black knew quite what to say to this.
Well? An odd choice of happenings, I agree, but I couldn't get the image of him on the stairs chatting with this hellion-portrait out of my head. And it worked out rather well, I think, in helping to explain how he and Sirius push off each other to get stronger. I'm pretty sure that's why they do it. And I'll deal with his hand soon, I promise! Anyway. R&R?