"If I let you lead, what happens?"
"I can promise that the latent homicidal impulses are definitely—mostly—gone. Ravaged, as it were, by the sentinels of your past sacrifices. You have given a lot of crows to the ritual magicks. These things are like stray cats. They gather wherever there is food. Actually," she moved around the tree and indicated a ruin on the other hill. The place was buried in cawing, feasting birds.
One crow flew overhead and dropped its prize. A lidless eyeball bounced in the grass. Severus kicked it down the hill and watched three more birds dive after it. Only two birds left the skirmish with a piece of carrion for themselves. The last crow lie harassed and broken in the aftermath.
"I think I'd rather wait for them to finish," Severus said, staring. "Wouldn't you?"
Marion gave her agreement and found them a seat on the oak's gnarled roots. The flock continued to pick at its offerings.
Severus squinted at the other hill, suppressing his revulsion at the open fact of its hosted carnage. For time that felt like hours, he thought nothing about the frenzy of crows except that they never seemed to stop eating. He had supposed that the term "ravenous" was by some measure an apt descriptor.
Then, as he reclined in the shade, he noticed oddness punctuating the overall spectacle. While Marion looked the other way, toward the town, Severus examined the flurry.
Firstly, he found that the more disgusted he became with the cawing, the flapping, the stench of burning, and the occasional rain of meat, the further away they were. It was as if his own recoiling was mimicked by the space around him. This he eventually accepted, over the many minutes spent watching in gross fascination.
He decided that if he were indeed trapped in his own headspace, then of course it would reflect his thoughts.
A sense of misplacement curtailed this acceptance. Being a whole consciousness unto himself, within himself, witnessing himself, was simply too many degrees of separation from reality. And such was his second observation. The town he stood in, with weather he rarely saw once awake, was like a dream.
The Cokeworth of his subconscious looked more or less how it did in real life. Fetter Crown House was missing, of course, and the place was infested with crows. However, a stream worked its way up to a river as it bended past the town, same as always.
Except an investor bought that land in '82, he recalled. The year after he began teaching at Hogwarts, the river had disappeared. Drained by a developer commissioned to build houses on the swampy ground.
Of course, all the cement foundations laid had sank into the mud. A site of abandoned machinery and chain-link fencing now made Cokeworth uglier in that spot. The river he was now seeing had not existed for sixteen years.
Still, the river ballooned from the parting of reeds like a leech grown fat on the land's hairy belly. It was high tide. Its unreal quality lent to it by the virulent sky turned to blood on the water. This cut of land seemed raw where, as children, he and Lily used to play and let the day pass over them.
Severus continued to be taken aback by the parts of him that retained their meaning. Marion, his cousin's pet name—an alias he used when fleeing the country briefly and an episode of drunken play. And the river, where his mother used to warn him from. Hags, she said, wait for stupid children and drag them into the water. This was the place where he had taken Lily to fantasize about their future.
He remembered now that he did it hoping to be taken away.
"They're still eating."
Severus turned toward Marion, but the woman was staring down the other side of the hill. One could hear the murder carrying on overhead. She did not need to look to know the crows were no closer to calming down. Still, she spoke disbelievingly, almost under her breath.
"Yes," Severus agreed, watching her reaction. Her face was unchanged, but her knee bounced anxiously. He paused before going on, "Why are you here?"
The girl—because she couldn't be much older than twenty—frowned, confused. Something down the hill still distracted her. "How do you mean? Why am I in this town, r why am I in you?"
"Probably both, but," he tried to decide his meaning. He did not feel rushed to find it, as he usually did. Severus' life was such that he needed to be understood immediately. The sedative effect of his own mind made him think slower, to struggle with his minute emotions. He then said, "Why aren't there others like you?"
"Like me," she asked, glancing aside to him.
"You are…well, I can see that you are a way in which I experience myself. There should be others—many others. Or none at all."
He looked over her short hair, unfinished tattoos, dirty sundress, and curiously bare feet. The fact that she was a woman did not surprise him as much as the fact that she was young. If he asked Cousin Vespers, Marion would be as old as him. They were one person, as far as Nanny cared.
But in himself, his alter ego stopped growing. She looked underfed and underdeveloped, despite her eyes being as sharp as a skinning knife.
Severus did not like to think of himself often, but if he had to, she would not appear. His teenage self, the Half-Blood Prince, came to mind, if in association with Potter. His self as a professor or brewer came next, and then of course his self as a spy—and a murderer.
Marion, now scrutinizing him with her arms around her waist, was more…human than he expected to see in himself. Certainly more ambiguous: she did not seem to have an occupation or purpose beyond existing.
She made him uneasy. Along with the emptiness of the place besides her and the pieces of the poor bastard being eaten by the crows.
Marion opened her mouth—which looked pale and dry on the inside, like she was dehydrated. Severus blinked, uncomfortable by her frailness, while she answered.
"When Harry Potter first came here," began the thin woman. He hunched, feeling too exposed while shirtless in the wind—and for other reasons Potter could suffer for later. "That boy saw more of us than he could make sense of. In fact, he seemed to want you—altogether, apparently—over any of us. He made us feel like fragments. And when he left," and here Marion lowered her voice, "there were strangers left behind."
She pointed down to where she had been watching. With a disorienting jolt, the hill tilted and expanded to show the two tiny figures rolling down its slope.
Severus balked at the sight, unable to grow truly furious for the strangeness of it all. A couple of children frolicked in the dry grass of the park, one in a man's work shirt and one in what appeared to be a striped, cotton tent. The tumbling brats had to lift the hems of their shirts to run, showing their skinny legs and scraped knees.
The smaller of the two tripped and slid on his face. The other pointed and laughed. Severus and Marion scoffed in unison, and the laughing child, as if hearing them, jumped and waved. He grunted, shocked, when an arm cut across his view. Marion had huffed and waved back.
The two of them watched the kids return to their playing. A crow squawked close to their heads. He started and looked away.
"That…is not what I expected," he grumbled. Seeing the children play disturbed him more than seeing the crows devour some nameless corpse. Especially when, in response, the world brought the boys closer instead of farther away.
"I know the feeling," the woman commiserated.
Severus peeked at her, watching as blankly as before, except left by the jitters. Her knees calmly supported her arms and chin without distress.
"Potter woke this place up to them," she went on. "From what I can tell. First came the little prick there, with the loud laugh. I tend to call him Michael since we found the second one. He goes by Harry James."
Severus didn't ask, and could readily deny that he was interested. He crossed his legs underneath himself and tried to swallow the feeling welling in his chest. It was warm and might have been vomit, so he kept his lips tightly sealed. When a child shouted at another, "Oi, you trash, that wasn't fair!" Severus held himself and frowned.
"You're right, of course. There are others—other memories."
"Then where are they," he snapped. He wanted to change the subject. He felt a gaze sweep over the side of his face and bit down on a shout.
Marion didn't answer immediately. Instead, she hummed with a tone of suspicion and muttered mostly to herself.
"What have we here," she said. Severus caught himself looking before he knew it. He thought perhaps a crow had snatched one of the children and stolen them away.
In fact, the opposite of this proved to be happening. As Marion asked, "Now where did he find her," the louder of the two boys could be seen hauling another child from the nowhere. It seemed that, as hard as Severus tried to avoid thinking on those kids, another one appeared.
The child named Michael rather insistently pulled along a young girl by the sleeve. If one ignored her extravagant dress and ridiculous air of wealth, she and the brat could be twins.
She looked a comparable age to the other two, being short and slightly awkward in her energy. Her dark hair sprung from her head in a curly bob, with lace frills and purple ribbons all over her, down to her shiny, buckled shoes. Both he and his counterpart laughed incredulously when the little girl tucked a fuzzy, white bear to her side and pointed out its matching, silk ribbons and ruff.
The boy on her arm laughed uproariously, while the other child nodded seriously and tucked his hands into his armpits. Clearly, he wanted to touch the bear but knew he wouldn't be allowed. He was covered in dirt, while the little girl looked immaculate. She even stuck up her puggish nose at them. Severus' opinion of the Michael boy skyrocketed when he shouted and shoved the girl to the grass.
"Another one," mumbled Marion. He nodded, while the girl cried and the quiet boy went to help her. He didn't need to know their names, although he suspected Marion did. The woman looked on in amused confusion—and some measure of dread. For once, he felt ahead of his own mind.
"She postures a fair bit, but she is relatively well-behaved," he offered. He did not turn to her again while he spoke. He preferred, for some reason, to watch the children tussle. "The girl will try to impress you, because she was raised to think she was inferior. When she fails—and she will, because she is lazy and spoiled—she will gravitate first towards your perceived favorite, Michael."
"But he isn't my favorite?" The woman asked with a smirk in her voice, he knew.
"No. You don't have one, since they are all equally irritating." He shifted into a more comfortable spot, with his head against the tree trunk and his cheek on his fist. "I loathe children," he said, watching the girl get her revenge with a clod of dirt. Then he looked to the smallest boy, holding the bear and scowling. "But you worry about that one constantly. He is your least favorite."
"Because he makes me worry."
"Because he's rude and arrogant and the definition of reckless," Severus hissed, clenching his fist. "Because he is so used to referring only to his own wisdom that he fails to realize he has none where certain dangers are concerned. Because so very worried about his social life and his friends and his morals, that he forgets how when people die—even by accident—they don't come back!"
"He did," Marion pointed out.
"With my help! Because I promised his mother to let no harm come to him, because I put myself on the line to drag his fool self back from the grave, since the one time he does what he's told, it means killing himself!" He motioned angrily over his shoulder at the storm of birds tearing the hill apart. "That was for him!"
"There are too many there for just him, Severus."
"It's for all of them, then!" He was on his feet before he knew it, pacing around the oak. A crow landed on his shoulder with a beak full of finger bone. Severus shooed it away. He railed on, counting the crows on his fingers.
"Early December of last year," he relayed. "Michael Corner steps between Amycus Carrow and a first year Ravenclaw when the child is about to be punished. He shoves Carrow, a professor, a Death Eater, and vanishes from the library that afternoon. I have to be told this by Pansy Parkinson, who didn't even know his name—she called him Martin! She says that a student has been taken into the dungeons for torture, so what do I do?"
"You fetch him."
"I have to carry him from the dungeons in my arms because the fool can't even walk. They—the Carrows used my spell on him. Mine! Until his ears were hanging on by skin! That was, what, two crows, one for each ear? Because Poppy cannot heal him when I know the counter curse, but I cannot heal him since he is a half-blood and rebel at that. I have to do something untraceable, in the forest, at three in the goddamn morning when I won't be seen.
"Two crows for his ears. Another three for his fingers. One for his nose, five for his legs or else he will spend his life—if he lives—crippled. Another for his tongue, in a dish on a surgeon's tray. I am piecing a teenage boy back together because he could not keep his heroic impulse to himself, but then—thank Merlin he didn't, or else I might have been delivering some family a dead child."
He stopped to see the boy, Michael, running with one of the girl's shoes, cackling. Michael dropped it and fell when he was struck by the other shoe, but kept smiling.
"It was easily the worst night of my life," said Severus. When the little girl ran up to assault her tormentor further—now with handfuls of grass—he continues.
"Not a week later, I have a young woman in the hallway, on fire. Parkinson had come to me, shaking, to help someone who could easily have seen her set upon for blood treason. Then some enterprising little Gryffindor thinks to hex her until her skirts are aflame and she's a holiday roast. She should not have even been by herself, when I told Draco that times were different. He should have been watching her!
"But the boy is a coward, and his girlfriend was overconfident, thinking because she confided in me that somehow I was her protector."
More birds called until the racket of them forced him to grow quiet. Eventually, whatever excited them had passed, and he resumed.
"I should have left her to Pomfrey," he sighed. "If I had, she might have been scarred, yes, but wiser. Meeker. Her parents might have taken her home if I impressed upon them the urgency. But Draco begged me, and she had done nothing wrong, and I had meant to protect her in some way but was what? Busy.
"Two crows for her face. Six for her legs and feet. Rolling on the floor led to infections, cloth in the burns, pain. They were all surface wounds that Poppy could, did, heal up to a point, but the shock? The girl was mad with terror! She couldn't leave her rooms! Her crying kept the dorms up until she had to be isolated, and then what she did to herself when she was alone? Eleven for that, and one for fortitude—one half for Parkinson, the crier, and one half for Corner, the mute.
"Next thing, they're close as thieves by January. And Potter returns in May to expire at the hands of an irreversible capital curse. Lord knows how he survived."
"Thirty-three crows for the dying," said Marion.
Severus looked at her, and she looked back. They were both standing, with arms identically at their sides, in the shadow of the oak tree. She blew away a hair that the wind pushed onto her nose. He raised his hands to hook his hair behind his ears and dropped them slowly.
"One crow for his skull," he finished for her.
He did the math. Fifty-six crows didn't seem so much as what was on the hill across from them. And he had paid his debts: a favor for a life. Equivalent life for the larger favors, exchanging time for time.
They turned to see the cawing tornado, hundreds deep, scream for more to eat. How many rituals had he performed? He did none for himself, that he knew of—but then he remembered Fred Weasley, Nymphadora Tonks, Lupin.
"We followed you, Snape. Call it dark magic all you want, but the rest of us followed after you."
He had a vivid memory of the thick, whispering dark. There was so little light that he could not possibly account for other faces or bodies in the pit. Once Lily's voice spoke to him, a vibrant lure came into the dark and anchored itself in his being. Then it pulled him through a screen of haze and out into the noise of living. If that screen had been the Veil, and had he torn a hole in it, others might have trailed after.
"Am I being held responsible for this?," he wondered aloud. The furious storm still showed no intentions of stopping.
"It won't leave until it is paid," Marion replied. He heard her shuffling behind him and turned to see she had retaken her seat on the ground. "There were others here when I was last here, but the further I went from this place, the less of us I saw. I saw memories but not the impressions of them, the emotions had since then, the experiences—as you say—like me. I expect they might be hiding, now that they know they can be killed and eaten."
Severus backed away from the view of the frenzy. "What has it destroyed already," he asked.
Marion let him stand by her and told what he knew. "Cokeworth has—had—five people. By the river," she pointed, "is a child, about ten. I think of him as Hope, or maybe Ambition. Years ago, when we heard the Sorting Hat talk down to us, it spoke to him."
"You were here since I was Sorted?"
"Since you were six, Severus," then she lectured as if he hadn't said anything. "In the town, in the library, there is the archivist. I thought of him as the Memory, but when Potter interacted with him, I started to understand that he was closer to Insecurity. He catalogues everything but his method of sharing it is distorted. He is about fourteen."
Marion said this while looking at him meaningfully, but he let the look slide. He was not going to relive his adolescence again, after his journey through his own past revealed them as even more awkward than he remembered. He waved for her to continue, at which point she gestured to the tree and shook her head.
"I don't care for the boy who lives here," she explained. "He is a sloppy, self-pitying liar. Simply sits in this tree, drinking, terrified of the house across the way but refusing to move away from it. Honestly, I think he is an idiot, and am glad he wasn't here to greet you."
Severus shrugged, wondering what part of himself stewed in alcohol and regret. He reckoned it was a significant part that he avoided on most evenings alone—and so, most evenings—at certain times of the year.
He had already relived being seventeen and being confused by what he wanted. Lucius' attention, but for Lucius or the attention? To be in his society, but for the society or because it was his? Money, or power, or were they the same thing?
To want Evan when he had Lucius, then Narcissa when he had Evan, then Bellatrix to want him, then for himself to want no one—because he was only eighteen, feeling used and angry and hungry and terrified. What could this person be that Marion hated so much? And who really was Marion?
"This person," she said, "I decided must be Shame. He only ever wants to escape himself and so does and says terrible things to those around him." She paused a beat, thinking. "That part I don't care about so much. If he chooses to be miserable, then so be it. But he insulted me, and watched me rot in that house, and so I could care less if the crows take him as payment."
Severus, still standing, considered the top of her head, speechless. He tried to imagine himself without shame and shivered. Then he recalled himself with shame and sighed, frustrated. There was nothing like winning in his own head: always more questions than answers.
"And what was the house?" he asked. What could a house possible represent? Shelter? A need for belonging? The structure of his own mental health?
"The house is just part of the scene here, honestly. Houses are only ever where things happen. Nothing important on its own."
"…Lovely. And what 'things' happened in there?"
"Violence, mostly. And solitude."
Severus rubbed his temples with a grimace. He had grown accustomed to the weather, no longer uncomfortably cold, but the conflicting sounds of children playing and crows screaming were torturing him. More than ever, he wanted to break from this extended psychic vivisection. He wanted to open his eyes and be awake again.
"But you lived there," he said, since talking was all he had to do. He was also curious. "Are you violence or solitude?"
"I doubt I'm either. The beast in that house was both. Potter thought of it as a grudge. I called it spiteful. Rage. Wrath." Marion's tone changed as she slipped into her recollection.
"But while I fought it, and had it pinned under me wriggling to get away, I realize that violence was not a character. It is inherent in the creation and destruction of all of us, maybe because we are violent memories or because you lead a violent life. Or because life is violent, until it isn't."
She watched down her side of the hill in silence for a while. Severus lifted his head and realized that, for most of the talk, she did not look toward the crows feasting. She looked at him or the children, not pointedly but rather preferentially. While he was sure, on some level, that Marion was no stranger to violence—given the dried blood on her skirt—and would not flinch to see it, she simply didn't. See it. She had no reason to look.
For Marion, it seemed she had simply found something else to occupy her attention. And she made it seem so easy, it was quick for him to see that she was fearless.
Her voice never raised above a reasonable level. It arrived with its message, steady and uninterrupted. "This place did not require Rage to be violent. And now rage isn't a character anymore, either. It can't just exist without reason." She glared at him. "I am tired of seeing it."
He held her gaze, while her eyes flashed like metal in the dark. She had a way of being angry that was always with him and not at him. Like there was something he could do to change it, to answer her grievance, instead of being the butt of her displeasure.
Albus had that way about him, he thought. It was not quite anger, so much as disappointment. Like anger went aside as a secondary emotion, while the old wizard chose to deal with the primary hurt. To think that some hidden part of himself was capable of that.
"Who are you," he asked, frightfully curious now. He was beginning to see why Potter has asked after Marion as if he was a different person altogether.
The woman raised an eyebrow before honestly pondering the ask. "That would be the sting of perspective," she said. She scratched at her collarbone. "Placing others is easier than placing myself. Right now, I'm just," she spread her arms to encompass the bottom of the hill, "the only one out. The one with all the kids."
Her saying that drew his eyes to the children. They made use of the park as kids were meant to—making a mess of themselves and each other. The tiny girl, whom he had chosen to dub Pansy, had torn her white tights at the knees and didn't seem to care. She ran, dragging her rabbit behind her by its neck ribbon, while the boys chased behind. Potter, with his giant eyes and missing front teeth, even barked like a dog chasing prey through the bush. Michael managed to run on all fours.
Severus prepared to express his exasperation when he noticed the girl stop. Pansy, hair now a mess, was crouched down and bobbing her head, like she was talking to something. He stared, and the hill brought them closer, as Potter, then his play friend, crouched and huddled as well.
Marion made a noise, and then got to her feet, when she saw what the children were talking to. He took off running, looking back to see the unkindness were floating over, hearing but not seeing Marion shout to the children just ahead of them.
The three kids looked up to see Severus approaching. Between them cawed a large and bloody crow.
Without speaking, he shepherded the children back from the bird, out of range of its vicious beak. It screamed and took flight, joining the swarm that now roosted and watched them from the tree. They were gathering to mob.
He tried to find cover, but only saw the rest of the town almost a mile away. The ten minutes it would take him to sprint there would easily turn into half an hour or an hour with three kids in tow. He looked to them and they gaped at the birds—except for Potter. The green-eyed child had stared at Severus, then at the birds, and maneuvered to be against his leg.
"Where's the lady at?" asked the cackler, Michael, now grave with a pale concern.
Severus saw then that Marion had gone. She was not on the ground, or seemingly under the tree, as no birds were flocked and picking. The woman seemed to vanish when Severus took off running.
Unsure of himself, he held a hand over Michael's head. When the boy looked up at him, he dropped his palm into his hair and kept it there. He felt tiny arms wrap around one leg and knew to expect Pansy. A small body stayed pressed against his other leg, and Potter, from what he could feel, was shaking.
"Quiet," Severus said. He thought on what the dark magic eyeing them might want instead of the children. The nearest crow clacked its beak. He would have to think long and hard. "Stay close to me."
Poppy departed from Minerva's quarters at fifteen to eight, to give her friend time to get ready. Neither of them had very much family within a day's travel. So, to commemorate Hogwart's impromptu family day, they spent the afternoon together, snacking and drinking lightly.
Near the time of the Headmistress' secret meeting, Poppy was relaxed and in a relatively good mood. Compared to her last few days in the castle, she felt able to stroll casually, detouring to the kitchens to order a meal and listen to the elves chatter.
She tickled the pear in the painting and stepped through the portrait hole. Almost immediately, she heard crying.
"No, no, don't do that, please! I only meant that you should go to the Infirmary!"
"Noooo," howled the distraught house elf. She grabbed her bat ears and bemoaned her fate. "Gret is sorry! Gret doesn't mean to offend! Please forgive Gret!"
"Gret," called Poppy, standing in the entrance with her hands on her chest. "What is this I'm walking in on? Are you hurt?"
"No!" shouted Gret, tears in her tennis ball eyes.
"Yes!" piped up the attended student, one Hannah Abbott. The Hufflepuff girl had a stained dishrag in one hand and her wand in the other. Poppy started at the color of the rag, and searched to see who had been hurt.
A handful of house elves held the sobbing Gret up by her arms, as the elf had tried unsuccessful to sink to the floor. Her one, wrinkly hand was still dripping with pink suds, and a thin stream of blood escaped her wrist. Poppy rushed forward, but the elves only backed away. Meanwhile, Miss Abbott stuttered to explain what had happened.
"Madam Pomfrey, thank goodness," the girl sighed with relief. "I'm so glad to see you! This poor elf cut herself on a broken glass, rather badly you see, but refuses to go see you! I told her you would help but she started crying!"
Poppy bounced her surprised look between the girl and the elves. The former clutched her dirty rag, flushed in the face, while the latter stood trembling and ashen, awaiting her judgment.
The mediwitch knew that the house elves were not always fans of her. They were prone to self-harm—some of them—and when she became too passionate about it, they tended to shy away. Still, they had never seemed unable to heal one of their own. And rarely, if ever, did they seem hesitant to see her over something that was most likely an accident.
She bent down to be at eye level with Gret. Gret was a young elf, a girl just hired from the families who fled Britain last year. A great deal of such elves had come to Hogwarts under Albus. This one wasn't to know that Poppy could be trusted.
"Excuse me, Gret," she said. Her tone was open. "Are you afraid to me? I am a healer, you understand? And that cut does look poorly."
Gret shook her head, as if fighting an admission. Then she blurted out, "No poison!"
Poppy blinked, and then looked over her shoulder to Hannah. "Poison?"
The Hufflepuff grew more flustered, now waving the dishcloth around like a flag for surrender. "I said no such thing! I'm sorry if it sounds like I did, but I promise I didn't—I would never at all!"
"Calm down, Miss Abbott," Poppy instructed. The girl took several deep breaths and calmed. "What did you say? Verbatim, if you please."
"I came down to ask for a bit of mint syrup," she said in measured beats. "My little brother—well, he and my parents are staying the night—and he drinks cocoa with mint syrup to go to sleep. When I asked, I heard a glass shatter and saw an elf, Gret, with a cut, so I said, 'Oh no, you should go to the infirmary. She can give you a bandage and Blood Replenisher for the cut.'"
The surrounding elves gasped in horror and gathered more around Gret. One elf used a cutting board to fan their injured friend, who had fainted.
Hannah continued. "She started crying then. I didn't mean to scare her!"
Poppy tsked and waved her off. The mediwitch asked the attending elves if they had somebody to stitch and wheatgrass on hand for after. The group of them nodded yes and began carrying young Gret to the back of the kitchens. Poppy then motioned for the confused Hannah to follow her from the place.
Once the portrait closed behind them, she patted the girl's shoulder reassuringly. Poppy felt that Hannah had always had good instincts for helping, and an excellent bedside manner, but her knowledge of herbs did not always extend to the nonmagical. As they walked, she let the Hufflepuff process what she had seen.
"But I don't understand," she said, her hand to her chest. She still had the bloody rag. Poppy pulled it from her grip and banished it.
"It is never a good idea," explained Poppy, "to recommend Blood Replenishing potion to nonhuman patients. They will think you mean them harm."
"Madam?" Poppy smiled at her—for she really was a good, caring girl—and guided her toward the Hospital Wing. Poppy promised to let her borrow the mint syrup in her cupboard if she listened closely.
"Most magical creatures and beings simply cannot process the potion. It is well known among them that going to human healers, even ones who promise to help them, could results in getting ill. We Healers see it as malpractice, and really it is a lack of training. Blood building potions, to an elf, would be like poison."
"Is it the recipe of the potion? I'm sure there are other ways to brew it," said Hannah eagerly. They turned a corner and talked on.
"Yes, dear, I'm sure there are. However, a fatal flaw of the potion is that it replicates human blood in those who take it." The girl waited and then gasped her understanding. Poppy nodded.
"Once nonhuman bodies—largely fae folk, really, like house elves and their relatives—are given the potion, it begins to promote human blood production. Then there is rejection of the foreign blood, and the body goes into shock. There is some organ failure. It is a painful way to die, I'm afraid. And so you'll find most nonhuman persons will tend to their own."
The girl stayed silent for a while, thinking. Poppy left her to her thoughts outside of her door, while she went in to fetch the syrup. When she returned, bottle in hand, Hannah asked another question.
"Have I made a mistake?" she said, concerned.
"Excuse me? Are you referring to the reaction?"
Miss Abbott nodded furiously, enough to upset her hair. She stopped, red-cheeked and bright-eyed, wondering. "I know I've given some Replenisher to Prof—Mister Lupin earlier yesterday and today. There was also Lavender Brown, and then I wonder about Mister Lupin's baby, or Professor Hagrid, or Professor Flitwick. I've helped all of them since I started volunteering for you—especially Hagrid. He gets hurt a lot, with the animals." She looked increasingly worried, almost on the edge of tears. "I didn't know I was hurting them…"
"Oh, no, I would have told you if," Poppy cut herself off, concerned. This was her biggest pet peeve of working in wizarding medicine. The facts and the politics became so intermeshed; she could barely do her job without finding toes to step on.
The mediwitch handed her volunteer the bottle of syrup. Then she held the girl's hands around the bottle and looked into her face.
"Miss Abbott, allow me to share with you a little secret," she said. Hannah paused and then slowly acquiesced. "Every potion for wizarding bodies—whether it makes blood or regrows skin and bones—plans a margin of error for the presence of nonhuman lineage."
The student's eyes widened, then she looked around to see if they were being overheard. The Infirmary had been emptied, with all of its patients returned home to their families. There was no one to hear Poppy impart the medical world's tiny apocalypse.
"Ma'am," gaped Hannah, disbelieving. Poppy grinned and let go of her hands.
"It is absolutely true. Any brewer or healer will tell you that—not just in Britain, either—most potions are inclusive of a little bit of creature blood in all of us," Poppy then sobered up and told the whole truth. "The difference, of course, is in if the wizard has a little or a lot of creaturehood to account for."
"But Professor Hagrid is half-giant! And Professor Flitwick—!"
"Half-goblin, if I remember correctly," Poppy was unperturbed by these facts. "Medically, halves are only a little. Hardly any difference at all, except for appearances."
"Professor Lupin, though? And Lavender?" This second named was whispered. Poppy understood her concern and shook her head.
"A werewolf is a human being for twenty-seven days out of twenty-eight. One night a month isn't enough."
Poppy did not want to get in to the unscientific bias laws, just then, though she had her part to say. Still, she could see that what she had shared had removed Hannah's worries. In fact, she seemed to have blown them away.
"So…only a complete nonhuman could be affected by the potion, negatively," summarized Hannah, but Poppy waggled her finger. That hadn't been what she meant to say.
"But what is a 'complete human'? Some persons whom we healers treat as persons are more affected by this potion than others, that is all. Some house elves have no reaction to Blood Replenisher, but a major reaction to, say, Skelegro. Some to both, and some to neither. But the consequence of a mistake is too great for any of those whom we call creatures for them to knowingly take the chance. And that chance is seemingly less for human wizards, half-humans and so on.
"My point is: it isn't the potion's job to decide who is human and who isn't. It isn't the Healer's, either. However, it is our job to assess the risk of doing more harm than good. And if a person says that they do not want a potion, we try not to give it to them. Now, back to your parents. They will worry."
Hannah smiled for the first time in their conversation. She bid her mentor a good evening and left, spelling the lights dim on her way out.
She shook her head again, finding the apparent revelation of fact to be tedious. Why was it not common knowledge that the distinctions between humans and creatures were arbitrary? More than arbitrary, they were scientifically unsupported.
Lineage had meant so much in the last few decades—and even more, the last few years. She could not blame students for their curiosity of these things, as they were matters that included themselves. For teenagers discovering their interests and identities, of course lineage would be of interest to them. But now, in these recent times, it had become a dirty word. A hot button issue. And far too many people were persecuted for titles that meant essentially nothing.
As a social creature, Poppy understood the impulse to categorize. In fact, in her mind, the categories were not entirely the problem. It was what those in power had decided to do with them that caused strife.
Albus would have loved this little talk, she thought, thinking herself a bit of a maverick. No Healer would admit what she had done to someone outside of the profession. It was not something one taught so much as realized. Which, in her mind, was a cycle of wasted effort. Slap a sticker on the textbooks, "Wizards and creatures are not
Poppy flicked her wand, closing the massive hospital doors for night. At firmly past eight, the sun had set, leaving on cool air and a few early spring bugs to crawl through the open windows. She spelled those closed as well, but with the curtains open enough for the lamps to shine to the grounds. This way, anyone approaching the castle needing help could see where they might find it.
Finally, the mediwitch turned and faced the dividing curtain. The wall she had erected months ago, expecting it to be temporary, could finally come down. There was no more use for an emergency ward and a general ward. It was all just the Infirmary.
With a happy flourish, she brought down the divider. It reverted to a used, fitted sheet and fluttered to the floor. Now, she could see her entire hospital, from the doorway to her office, unobstructed.
The difference between the general and emergency wards were now in plain sight. Behind the curtain had been several, private cells. With all the curtains closed, no one patient was able to see the other.
Moving clockwise toward her, the ward became abruptly cluttered, with the benches for visitors pushed right up against the divide. The individual sections became open beds and nets of blankets that had already been cleared. Equipment the general ward had never seen—intravenous drips and wheelchairs and restraints—were tucked alongside the shuttered beds that required them.
For the night, she could store those in her backroom. They were no longer needed.
Swinging her wand this way and that, she rearranged her area. The floors were visible, the beds were seen and straightened, and the uniform readiness of the ward finally pushed back the chaos. The tile still needed to be swept, washed, and waxed. The bedframes, disinfected. The cabinets, restocked. But the space was hers again: organized and under control.
Once she enjoyed the peace of this, Poppy returned to her office to a short project. That afternoon, before visiting with Minerva, she had collected the charts of the patients she currently had, as well as pulled the files of those she previously treated. She hoped to prepare for the reopening of St. Mungo's specialized units—burns, poisonings, curses, and charm mishaps, to name a few.
She stacked the files of patients seen since the closing announcement, which numbered at roughly a couple hundred. Due to her safe space gamble, around two-thirds of the cases were falsified. She forged and filed those documents in case of surprise inspection. Now, she had to sort them back out, and label them accordingly.
Poppy stepped into her space, and poured herself a drink to rally herself. Two hundred patient files composed four stacks on her desk, each about chest-high to her in her nursing shoes. They were in no particular order. So, stretching her back and hunkering down, she pulled out three colored inkwells from her drawer and began flipping through.
Names of the patients did not necessarily help her decide who was and wasn't truly ill. She made each fake case seem as real as possible given what she had to work with—student acting skills and some Weasley pranks. She knew that she had begun faking illnesses sometime mid-October. So, any convincing patients she had from around October to May were set aside as suspect.
The rest, about forty files, were set aside and marked with a green checkmark, for "legitimate/resolved." The remaining ones were searched for long recommended stays of at least one period.
With this, she recalled her second gambit, the "dragonpox epidemic" of early November. After the Defense demonstration of Halloween day, students came in droves claiming to be ill during their Defense class period. She had glamoured the lot of them and toyed with the protocol for quarantine. Knowing she had no real outbreaks of dragonpox helped sort out another sixty students from all years.
She labeled these cases with a red checkmark, for "illegitimate/also resolved." With regular speed, by nine-thirty that evening her workload was cut in half.
Her remaining hundred cases asked that she use another color ink. Poppy then pulled every file of a patient she saw in this first week of May. This was almost the entire pile, save a handful of cases from December through March that she marked green and put in their stack. Then she paused and returned to those few.
Those winter months had been the most frightening. Few students had run afoul of danger, but those that did were permanently scarred. This had been when she established her private ward, even if only a couple truly needed it. Poppy slid the top files aside and found two: Michael Corner and Pansy Parkinson. Next to their green checks, she put another mark—a black 'x.'
This second mark meant, firstly, that she had not seen to them herself. Although Parkinson's case was one of mixed effort, she knew to whom she owed the majority of the recognition. The 'x' meant, then, that these persons were recommended to see a curse specialist in St. Mungo's. She watched the parchment drink the black ink until it slowed, and then turned to the rest of her pile.
By ten o' clock, there were upwards of ninety files in front of her. Her cup was empty of its honey bourbon, and so she refilled it a finger less and pushed on.
With her black-tipped quill, she sped through all of the cases that she had seen in the Great Hall. These were patients that she had quickly made report to her in the hospital and, one after another, she gave full physicals. This process had taxed the use of her volunteers, because for nearly two days, she rotated shifts of a dozen patients or more.
They were all seen for their minor injuries—mostly crushing and scrapes from falling debris. But the curses that had struck them were reversed, like magic sleep.
There was nothing she could do for it but scratch 'x' on their files after the fact.
This left her with a few living patients with ongoing ailments. A few speedily mended bones, sealed skulls, and lingering effects of curses created tics and limps and episodes of sobbing. And although he thought he had escaped her notice, this made one Harry Potter newly and unfashionably plumed. These were things that Poppy, loath as she was to admit it, could not see to beyond a superficial level.
Besides, these were patients that wanted, more than anything, to go home. And so, with her poppy orange quill, she cleared them for discharge, provided that they visited St. Mungo's when possible.
Orange meant, "non-lethal, but unresolved." After a minute, she stuck Potter's file with a black 'x' for good measure.
She whittled down the last of her load to a dozen or so files. Poppy alternated green checks and orange circles for the never-dead, slightly-injured, possibly traumatized set of students and one Auror. When she broke to sip from her cup of melted ice and diluted bourbon, her office exploded in silver glow.
A mist parted through her office air in the shape of a blustering stag. It walked with its chest puffed out, stamping on the carpet in agitation.
"Snape. Help. Headquarters," it said in Harry Potter's voice. Then it gazed at her with milky almond eyes and dissipated.
Poppy looked at her desk. One file still sat in the middle of it, largely unsorted. It toted a green check, which had been scribbled out with black. Then it had an orange circle, blocked under more black. The next space was blank.
She snatched the file and threw it in a drawer to deal with when she got back. Then she considered the time—ten past ten—and made use of some neglected knowledge. Grabbing her medical bag, she counted its potions, salves, and one sack of donated blood under a cooling charm. She grabbed the appropriate needles and tubing, and a flask of broth she received from Michael "for emergencies."
Lastly, Poppy dug in her bosom for the key to her lockbox that she kept on a chain. Pulling the box from its carriage under her desk, she unlocked it with a heavy clunk of falling security charms. Inside it was a piece of paper in Albus' spaced script. She read, memorized, and put the paper in her pocket to bring with her. Then she cast a feather-light charm on her bag and hurried from her office.
She locked her doors and hurried from her hospital. Winding from the corridors, out the castle, through the gates, and towards Hosmeade, Poppy spun and Apparated to where she was needed.
She disappeared so swiftly, she missed the body that ducked out of her path. As she vanished into her cloak, a cat meowed and was quickly hushed by its owner.
"Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place," was not the grand mansion Poppy expected. A London townhouse was never the idea of wealth she reserved for rich purebloods and their airs. Hers had been a family of middling means, not impressive but enough to get by. Still, at least hers was not a home of horrors.
She considered the stories about the Blacks for all of a minute. Standing in the chill, with her bag making her uneven, she wondered if she regretted Albus' confidence. Being an unofficial member of the Order of the Phoenix was so much about not letting on to what she knew. It was a bit worrisome to use secrets. After all, it had led her here.
As soon as she stepped into the light of the streetlamp, the front door of Grimmauld Place swung open. She jumped and made to step back into the street, when she recognized Remus Lupin. He did not shout for her, like she expected, but more solemnly waved her in. Hesitating, Poppy flexed her feet in her snug, lace-less flats and passed through the gate.
Her feet on the steps were quiet, and when she approached Remus, he whispered.
"Thank you for coming so quickly," he said. She inclined her chin towards the inside, catching his quietude. The man nodded tiredly and moved to let her in.
"Only point me in the right direction," Poppy murmured. When she did, she heard a ruffle, like breath moving fabric. She turned to her side and found a portrait hanging in the hallway with a curtain over its face.
"Yes, quietly," Remus smiled, offering to take her bag.
His manner soothed a bit of her panic. They practically tiptoed through the foyer, which felt ridiculous at her age. When they reached a flight of stairs, he climbed it first and told jokes about painting of the harassing old mistress. Poppy wobbled her head, as if to say, "Silly me, of course we can't upset her." Remus then beamed and helped her to the door.
Poppy returned to her determined, professional mind more so as she relaxed. Whatever discomfort Remus felt in the walls of the gloomy house, he laughed off with subtle self-deprecation. It set her at ease. When he pointed out the correct bedroom and wished her luck, she succumbed to the urge to pat his cheek. Even as a boy, Remus Lupin was a friendly face. She often caught herself thinking that his mother must be proud.
Despite his comforting, Poppy waited for him to descend the stairs again before entering. It was clear that he did not want to enter the room. She promised to send his wife out as soon as she didn't need her, so that the couple might return to their son. She frowned at his tight shoulders, but let him go on his way.
With her bag back in her grip, she raised her fist and knocked lightly.
She did not know what to expect when Mister Potter opened the door. Poppy knew he would be involved, from his laconic distress call. What she had failed to imagine was that he would look positively sick with worry.
There was enough changed about him from his release that morning to cause concern. His head was bandaged and his glasses, which she knew he needed, were off hi face. And yet, free of either concussion or near-sightedness, Harry saw her and sagged with obvious relief. His reflexes were quick as he opened the door and showed her around to Severus' side. He annunciated his words and spoke rapidly. She even attributed his dappling of sweat to the humidity in the windowless room.
"I'm sorry, you found him where?" she asked.
"The shower," returned Harry. "When, erm, the bathtub, but the shower was on."
"Was there any water in his lungs?"
The boy stuttered and handed the question off to Nymphadora Tonks. The Auror looked up from her seat on the bed, facing another woman. Poppy almost cried the woman's name in shock—because how had Miss Vespers found this apparently so-secret location? Then Tonks answered with a clear, "No water in his lungs, but there is sludge in his stomach. And burns from the hot shower."
The mediwitch thought well on this information while she placed her bag beside her. She put her shock away to deal with later.
Her medical bag opened, wedged between Severus's foot and the footboard. She pulled from it a jar of burn salve, the flask of broth, and a rag. While she turned down the covers and began examining and treating burns, she ordered Potter to prepare the cloth. She would have to improvise spoon-feeding the man whatever wash Corner had cooked to service him.
There was not much that Poppy knew about the broth. It came from the mysterious journals, written in Severus' distinct handwriting. It was a stimulant, in some form or fashion, and it had no certifiable equal. If she were to posit a guess, the ingredients of the concoction were not something she would enjoy knowing. But when she asked, she was given the name, "Bane of the Enemy."
She also knew, as Potter unstopped the flask that it smelled irrepressibly of lemons.
Poppy finished applying the salve to Severus' arms and torso, and part of his face. While it settled, she removed his long underwear and looked at his legs. The skin was flushed, enough for her to slather a layer of salve from his thighs to his ankles to be safe. She wanted to lift him to apply to his back, but when she turned him, he was fine. So, decided she was done with this step, she eased him back into place and moved on.
"Has there been anything besides vomiting?" she asked. She suggested symptoms, in case they were unsure. "Seizures, labored breathing, anything? Has he woken at all?"
The answers to all her questions were no. Eventually, she suggested that Tonks wish Harry good night. The woman did so hurriedly, almost painfully, as if some trust had been betrayed. Her plucky nature was sapped and she marched from the room like she was thrown out. Poppy had no idea what to think, except that goodbyes were sounding like a tender topic.
Once the younger woman left, Poppy greeted Miss Vespers and turned to the youngest in the room.
"You should rest."
"No." Poppy huffed and told him again, but was soundly ignored. She asked about his bandages but was ignored about those, as well. Unamused, she looked to Severus' family for assistance.
"Are you alright with this, Miss Vespers? It's my opinion that Harry has seen enough stress and should lie down."
She received no help from the woman. Anya Vespers only raised her head, ever so slowly, and spoke just loud enough to be heard.
"There is another half to the bed," the woman said. "And a settee at that. Let him stay."
Grousing, but having nothing to say, she asked to be handed the rag. Poppy motioned for the Gryffindor to sit somewhere, to not strain himself a single bit, while she fed Severus the soup.
However, unlike what she had expected, Severus did not react to the smell of the broth. The lemony, briny scent suffused the warm from better than t could in her Infirmary and yet, unlike what had been described to her, Severus failed to budge. She opened his eyes and saw they were completely black, sclera to boot. When she reared back and saw all of him, she saw more things she could not account for.
His nails, now turned black from the cuticles out, were growing. His hair had grown as well, graying as it left his scalp like he was aging before her eyes. And yet, his face and body did not change. It was almost as if he had embodied the corpse myth: in "death," only his hair and nails continued to grow.
"It has him," said Miss Vespers. Poppy looked to the tiny woman and saw Potter by her side.
He seemed red with aggravation, but lost for what to do about it. Behind them, the bathroom door slammed shut on its own, hard enough to rattle its hinges. At first Poppy believed this to be the "it" that had claimed the room's attention, but the force proved to be wide magic. Harry Potter's hair danced to stand on end. Glass and perfume bottles on the vanity tinkled and toppled over.
Then there was Miss Vespers' hum of concern and the soft 'pap' of her hand on his around her shoulder. The air lost its charge, and Harry, his temper reigned, stormed from the room. The bedroom door also slammed and clicked with a lock without him touching it.
Poppy sat on the edge of settee with a hand on her pounding heart. Her other hand held the wet rag. She had forgotten Potter's renowned temper. He was so polite to her, on most of his visits, that she only barely believed he had one. Minerva was the only person she knew who could convince her otherwise. And now, that!
"What," she said, but her voice warbled. Poppy calmed herself. She took the minute to straighten her face, look Miss Vespers in the eye, and speak as did one adult to another. "
"What precisely is in control of Severus?" She asked feeling, within herself, that the man looked quite possessed.
Miss Vespers replied as quietly as ever. Her manner seemed stiff—an odd thing to be said of her, who was already so still, but true. She only relaxed when she saw Poppy waiting patiently.
"Are you still afraid of this magic?"
Poppy took the time to answer honestly. "It is fearsomely capable magic. I will accept, however, if there is nothing I can do."
Miss Vespers did not say anything for a while. The two older women just folded their hands and turned to Severus. He was the reason either of them was there. This balanced the space of their conversation, as compared the tension of Hogwarts and its rules.
Again, Poppy felt how much she disliked politics. Miss Vespers was a great deal less mysterious in Grimmauld Place. It was the people she had known for years that stopped making sense. It was strange to heal a classroom scrape on a child one day and then see them as adults. Poppy felt very old, suddenly. She waited for Miss Vespers to speak, never thinking that she wouldn't.
"There is…nothing you can do," she had said, devoid of emotion, like a recording and not a person. She said it once more, more harshly. "There is nothing any of us can do."
Miss Vespers took a deep, shuttering breath. Poppy put down her rag and wiped her hands on her robes. She then scooted to the far end of the settee to sit within arm's length of Severus' cousin. She had not expected this depth of emotion, but really she should stop expecting things of people she didn't fully know.
"He," Miss Vespers shared, "learned this magic from watching me. An ancestor of ours, Aunt Jenny, was mythologized as a monster but—she helps children. Takes them away from rotten homes. Cures them with healing waters…or will punish them. Drown them in mud." She smiled ruefully, showing all her teeth. "Hags can be very fickle. It's the fairy in us."
"You seem closer to Severus than I initially thought," Poppy admitted. "He never struck me as a family man." Miss Vespers made a noise of curiosity before addressing the point.
"When he was a child, his mother came to England with my mother's endorsement. He lived with us when I was a teenager—I loved him like he was my own child."
Poppy knew this part of grief. Families in mourning tended to open up about what they felt they had lost. If it was a case of long illness, sometimes they did this before the person was truly gone. She let the story wash over her, and immersed herself in the strange history.
"Since Eileen had married a Muggle, her parents disowned her and the child. But Mama, she wanted to meet this baby. Because hags breed true, is the idea, so he was already one of us. He was a hag through Eileen and Eileen's mother, although they didn't want to admit it. So, when she wanted to come home from abroad, Mama paid and offered her our house.
"She did not stay with us, but she gave us M—Severus. He was young, and so serious, but smart. We took good care of him. And since he did not get along with the other boys, he stayed with me and Mama and the girls. He loved it, he learned so much. He saw me doing my work at the Coffin House, before I worked with children, and became interested in the art. So I am the one who taught him how to give offerings to the old demons for power and insight.
"He liked Greenteeth the best, and then Babayaga, Malodora, and Cordelia, in that order. And he wasn't afraid of the birds, like some children are. Mama wanted to raise him as her own. He was almost my younger sibling."
Poppy wowed and admitted that she never would have guessed. But in her mind, the Custody Conflict of 1971 became much clearer. She felt bad for gossiping about it with Minerva all those years ago. She supposed that sometimes, when one only witnessed, they could forget that it was people's lives playing out in front of them.
"And did he end up staying with you?" She asked knowing the answer. She could see that it helped Miss Vespers to vent.
"Eileen came back for him after almost a year. She came to ask for more money and left with him, said we mistreated him.
"Except then she used our money to buy a house and refused to invite us in. This is more than rudeness for us, you understand. This is bad luck. She raised him in a cursed house, and then threatened to enroll him in a school where he would learn nothing about himself. So Mama fought for him through Family Services, and then argued for the headmaster not to admit him. All sorts of things, but nothing worked.
"He grew up in a rotten house, and you can see it's twisted him. Either staying abroad or with us would have been better. That house was toxic. And the wizards, they didn't understand him. The Muggles didn't understand him. Because he is not a wizard, and is not a Muggle, he is a hag."
"I have to say, though, Miss Vespers," defended Poppy. It had to be said that, "Severus makes a fine wizard—one of the most skilled of his generation. Hogwarts was lucky to have him." She might have conditioned that statement with, "as a researcher," but felt it might harm her point.
"Then where are his riches? His awards? His friends," she challenged, "on his sick bed, where are they? He is a skilled wizard, but is he a happy one?"
The woman finally rose from her chair and neared the bed. She reached over and tried to brush Severus' forearm with her fingers. She stopped short when the lamplight caught the rippling gel of the healing salve. Eventually, she sat sideways on the edge of the bed and sighed.
"The Hag's Feast is an old ritual," Vespers said, "that invites our relatives into this world to perform magic outside of the common laws. When the Hag is owed, it has to be offered a sacrifice of something to satisfy its hunger. This magic will always turn on the user if it is not carefully and sparingly used.
"Severus has been foolish."
Poppy paused, waited, but heard no condition that required Severus' death. "Is the thing he must give in exchange his life?"
"It seems he owes a great deal," the woman said instead. Poppy did not accept just that.
"But does he owe his life."
"He will give his life, whether he owes it or not. I have seen how stubborn he is in just the day I've been here. I've seen what this world has made him."
Suicidal, questioned Poppy, but she kept this to herself.
Instead, she expressed that she held out hope for Severus' decision. Miss Vesper said nothing, but turned her face up and away. Looking at his sleeping body did not fan her hope much. Nor did it fuel Poppy's.
But it was something to fill the quiet with. Watching and hoping. Seeing what happened next.
A/N: Alright! A week late but I'm pushing it! Trying to edit on a smart phone is not fun, but I will prevail! This a long chapter that might be broken up later, but I'll leave out as is for now. ONE MORE CHAPTER TO GO.
Reminder that Dragonfish is the first story of a series. After this, I will begin posting for the next story, Goatstone. So look out for that in the fall! See you next chapter!