Phoenix Fire, Chapter 20: Inference
DISCLAIMER: The characters described in this story are the property of the incomparable J.K. Rowling. I make no money from this story, which exists as a work of tribute.
A/N: Hi! I'm back, again! I did miss you guys, heaps. :)
I got so many comments on the last chapter asking why a Muggle abortion wasn't an option, that I thought I'd address it here: do you remember when Arthur Weasley got bitten by Nagini and the Healer-in-Training experimented with some Muggle treatments (namely, stitches)? It's a canon fact that magical bodies don't always respond well to Muggle medicine, so you're just going to have to take my word for it that a Muggle abortion wasn't going to do the trick here. Even if we can imagine that a pureblood witch, such as Lavender, would have had the necessary paperwork to get access to the NHS. BESIDES, it's my story . . . you gotta go where I take you . . . at my own slow slow slow pace ;)
Now, talking of slow, where was I?
In the privacy of his own rooms, Severus relived the light-hearted exchange he'd observed between Granger and Weasley. It hurt just as much the second time as it had the first. No matter how he tried to rationalise it—reiterating that she was his student and it wasn't his place to care, or protesting that the gesture surely meant nothing in regard to the immediate present—he was shaken.
They couldn't possibly be trying for a baby while still at school, he told himself. Just because Lily got herself knocked up before most of their peers had managed to recover from their graduation hangovers didn't mean Granger had similarly poor judgement. The Weasleys were fertile, though, and Snape couldn't imagine that Ronald would put a premium on Granger's career. Behind his eyelids, he saw Granger's face superimposed onto Molly's body.
That night, he didn't sleep, and not unusually, he turned to brewing as a solace. The potion he began to brew was labyrinthine in its complexity and so elaborate that it took him three further evenings work just to get it finished. The final product was both priceless and worthless—because only one individual could ever use it. To the right buyer, it might have been worth a fortune.
Severus Snape had made Hermione Granger the safest, most sophisticated, completely and utterly failsafe contraceptive potion known to wizardingkind. One dose was all it took, and the effects would last until the antidote (much cheaper and more easily made) was swallowed.
Once it was done, he put it into his pocket and carried it around, unable to give it to her. He couldn't broach the topic of her sex life without being completely inappropriate; he couldn't give her the potion without revealing his hand. So it stayed where it was, completely and utterly useless despite its potency.
One evening, not long after Granger left from a Wolfsbane meeting, Severus found Draco skulking about outside his office. There was something about the set of his mouth that made Severus wonder how long he'd been there.
"If you want to talk to me, Draco, you've got five minutes until curfew."
"If you're not busy . . ." he replied diffidently, letting the phrase trail off.
Severus held the door open and gestured him in with a jerk of his head.
"Thanks," said Draco, settling himself into the visitor's chair.
Severus sat down and waited for Draco to begin. It took him a full minute to find the right words.
"My father," he said at last, "thinks I should take a wife."
What a ridiculous, outmoded phrase.
Severus raised one eyebrow. "Are you considering Ginevra Weasley?"
Draco sighed. "Not really, although I implied to Lucius that it was a genuine possibility." Draco shifted in his chair, crossing his legs and then uncrossing them immediately afterwards. "She's very much in love with Harry Potter. I'm just a means to make him realise what an idiot he's being. And it helps to get Lucius off my back."
Severus steepled his fingers against his lower lip and considered the young man before him carefully.
"She and I have what you might call a mutually beneficial arrangement."
Severus almost asked, Are you in danger of having your heart broken? but instead he took a different tack.
"Do you actually desire a wife?"
Draco expelled a noisy breath. "No."
"No, not in general, or no, not in particular?"
"Right now? Neither. But Lucius thinks that a wedding would be good for the Malfoy image. Particularly if I marry someone untainted by Death-Eater associations."
"I'm sure it would be." Severus searched for the right words. "You need not put the Malfoy image ahead of your personal happiness, Draco. You and Jocelyn are at liberty to recreate what it means to be a Malfoy."
Draco did not look cheered.
"I fear that I'm a terrible disappointment to Jocelyn," he said.
Severus stifled an urge to smack the maudlin boy upside the head. "Has she ever said so?" he asked.
"No." Draco shook his head. "But she doesn't understand why I can't move through life with the same explosive energy that she has."
"Few people could." Severus didn't mean the comment as an absolution. The boy would do well to show some backbone and stand up to Lucius, but he'd have to do it his own way, not spitting honesty as Jocelyn would. "Draco," he asked, "what do you want from your life?"
Draco hesitated. "I guess," he said eventually, "I guess I just want to feel something real." He met Severus' eye, and Severus saw a desperation there that worried him. "I want to love someone so deeply that I'd be willing to lose everything, or do anything. But I just feel empty. Everything is surfaces and politics."
"Draco—" Severus broke off, at loss for words. He could tell him exactly how uncomfortable that kind of love was. He could tell him how lucky he was that he didn't feel that way about Ginevra Weasley, or anyone else who was going to leave him. He could tell him that he needed to let himself get over the war before leaping into his future.
"It's okay." Draco stood up abruptly. "Thanks for listening, I feel a little better just having told someone."
"Don't be afraid to make your own decisions, Draco."
Draco had stepped behind the chair he'd been seated in. "That's what Jocelyn says, too—although her exact words were, 'Let Lucius go fuck himself'." He gave Severus a smile that didn't warm his eyes.
"The girl has a way with words."
"Yes." Draco ducked his head. "Goodnight, sir," he said. Then he was gone.
Evidently, Severus had failed both his Malfoy charges since the end of the war. He'd have to do better, one Malfoy at a time.
It took Severus longer than expected to put the finishing touches to the Spinner's End renovations. From start to finish, the elves took six weeks to replace the bathroom, re-do the plumbing in the kitchen, and to stick an extra loo into a once-tiny closet behind the laundry.
With Hagrid's help, Severus transported a spare Hogwarts' bed from one of the lower dungeons of the castle into the small bedroom upstairs. Minerva, who had authorised the "loan," gifted him with some rather hideous tartan bed hangings. Without hesitation, Severus passed them on to Hagrid, to thank him for his assistance. It seemed like a genius idea in the moment, although Hagrid's effusive thanks and loudly expressed intention to turn the fabric into a kilt left Severus pondering the wisdom of his decision.
By mid-February, everything was done. Uncharacteristically nervous, Severus sent Jocelyn a letter using one of the school owls, inviting her to spend Saturday afternoon with him. He received her acceptance by return mail, and two days later, she was standing in his office, ready to go.
"I hope," he said, his words feeling stiff in his mouth, "that I have not derailed your Valentine's day plans."
Jocelyn laughed. "No, sir," she replied. "Even if the visit to Hogsmeade hadn't been cancelled I wouldn't have had 'Valentine's day' plans."
"Very well. We will be leaving from the Disapparation point," he said.
He saw the question in her eyes, though she merely nodded and stood aside so that he could exit ahead of her. They walked up through the castle in silence. At the Apparation point, Jocelyn took his arm without comment. He pulled her close against his body and tightened his grip on her elbow. Then he twisted them both back into nothingness, and with a sharp crack, they disappeared.
On their reappearance, Jocelyn stumbled slightly, and Severus held her up until she found her footing.
"Bleugh," she said. "Can't say that I'm a big fan of Apparation."
"Come in," he said in reply.
Jocelyn followed him obediently. "It looks different in here," she said, pausing on the threshold.
"Yes."
Jocelyn had visited the house during his post-war convalescence and now she wandered over towards the bookshelves and cast a thoughtful glance over the room as a whole. "It looks cleaner," she commented.
Severus considered delaying until after lunch, but then plunged on regardless.
"Come upstairs," he said. His words came out brusquer than he'd intended.
Severus shifted the copy of Machiavelli just enough to spring open the hidden staircase and gestured Jocelyn up the stairs ahead of him with a jerk of his head. She went without a word, though she shot him a calculating look up under her lashes as she stepped past. At the landing, Severus reached past her and opened the door to the smaller bedroom. Again he sent her before him with a jerk of his head.
"It is definitely cleaner," said Jocelyn. Downstairs she'd struck a nonchalant note that made it clear she'd been teasing him; now her voice was unbalanced by wariness. She crossed her arms and turned her back on the window, but didn't look at Severus. Instead she scrutinised the room, her eyes flickering back and forth along she shelves, and then across to the battered table and chair.
Severus propped himself on the edge of the desk. "Sit," he said, gesturing at the chair.
Jocelyn gave it a long look, and then sat, instead, on the bed. She pulled her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs.
"Jocelyn," said Snape heavily, searching for the right words. "I owe you an apology."
Her eyes lifted immediately to his face. "What for?"
"I have acted like a fool, Jocelyn." A sad, selfish fuckup, he wanted to add. She was staring at him with an unreadable, almost furious expression. "To begin with, I never should have let your mother disown you. It was completely and utterly inappropriate—"
"Shut up!" she said loudly, interrupting him. Her legs shot out and she leant forwards with the force of her anger. Severus flinched. If she'd had something in her hands, she might have thrown it. "SHUT UP!" Moving just as violently, Jocelyn covered her own ears with her hands. Her eyes were screwed shut.
Severus was at a loss. He gripped the edge of the table so hard that his hands hurt. His breath came in quick short breaths. They sounded loud in his ears.
Her reaction was unexpected.
An age passed, and neither one of them moved.
"Go away," said Jocelyn, finally breaking the silence.
Severus closed his eyes. "Okay," he said. He pushed up from the table and took the few short steps necessary to leave the room. He shut the door behind him.
In the corridor, he stood without moving. Then he turned around and sat on the hard wooden floor, his back against the wall opposite the bedroom door. There he waited.
Half an hour or so later, when Jocelyn opened the door, he was still there. She looked miserable, and a bit uncertain, though it didn't look as if she'd been crying.
"Can we talk about it?" he asked.
"Yeah." Jocelyn pulled the door shut behind her and then slid down it, so they were facing each other on the floor. Her small feet sat between his two large ones.
"Tell me what I did wrong," he said.
Jocelyn tilted her head back until it touched against the door behind her and cast her eyes up towards the ceiling.
"That day," she said, "when you came to get me from my mother's place, was quite possibly the happiest day of my life."
"Jocelyn . . ." Severus trailed off. His heart pushed painfully against the wall of his chest.
Jocelyn lowered her gaze to his and pulled a wry face. She shrugged one shoulder. "I'm sorry for yelling at you," she said. "I overreacted."
"I wish I could take you away from Lucius," said Severus suddenly, the words escaping in a rush. His hands sat on the floor beside him and gripped tight fists full of his robes.
"Me, too."
They stared at each other for a long moment.
"As your guardian," said Severus, "I could sue for custody, but Lucius were to win . . . then . . ."
"He always wins."
Severus nodded his head once in agreement. His mouth tasted of failure.
"Even when he loses," added Jocelyn. "So what do we do?"
"We have a couple of options." The use of the first person plural felt terrifying and precious. "Firstly, the room—your room, if you want it—is here, it's clean, and you can use it whenever you need to during the holidays; you should never feel trapped at Malfoy Manor."
Jocelyn swallowed. "What if I wanted to stay here all the time? And never go back?"
"I think Lucius is less likely to interfere regarding your whereabouts if you spend the occasional night under his roof." Severus ran both hands back through his hair and tucked it away behind his ears. "I suggest that you make that call on an ongoing basis."
"How would I get here if I needed to come in a hurry? Floo? A Portkey button?"
"This house has been disconnected from the Floo network for a long time. A Portkey would work, but I do have another suggestion that might be better."
Jocelyn looked at him, her head tilted slightly to one side.
"Fawkes," he said. "I have spoken to him about the situation, and, with your agreement, he would be willing to go with you to Malfoy Manor whenever you needed to be there. He would watch over you and, if necessary, he could bring you here—or back to Hogwarts."
Jocelyn's eyebrows moved slowly up her forehead as he spoke. Severus could sense her surprise like a palpable force. "That," she answered with conviction, "would be amazing. Plus it would piss Lucius off."
That it would. Lucius had once been among the small group of people Severus called friends, but the balance had shifted. Severus wasn't likely to forget the treatment that Hermione Granger had met in Lucius' house.
"What else?" asked Jocelyn, with something approaching her old enthusiasm.
"I do still owe you an apology," said Severus. Jocelyn moved as if to expostulate, but he held up one finger and she subsided. "Hear me out," he added. "That day was . . . a gift."
Dumbledore's death had hung over him like a dark shadow. Guilt and shame had clawed at his stomach, and he had been hard pressed to know what was more terrifying: the Dark Lord's potential achievements or Potter's potential failures. The only person who had known the truth of what he had done was Hermione Granger, and she was gone. Jocelyn had made him feel real, true to himself, visible. It had been intoxicating and deeply restorative.
"Because of a selfish desire to keep you close, Jocelyn, I acted recklessly." Severus could tell how hard Jocelyn was listening by the still, held quality of her pose. "I was a fool to think you safely hidden in plain sight. I should have sent you to Bulgaria the moment you left your mother's house. And it wasn't my place to permanently sever the ties between you and your mother. No, listen, Jocelyn. I have a whole childhood of rescue fantasies stored up, and—in that moment—I wanted only to rescue you, and to hell with the consequences. I lost sight of the fact that in doing so, I permanently altered your familial structure, without your consent."
"You asked me!"
"I did." Severus bowed his head in agreement. "But you didn't know the long-term ramifications of what I intended, nor were you old enough give legal consent on such a contentious issue."
Jocelyn dropped her head back against the wall behind her and blew out a loud breath, heavy with frustration. "I'm still not old enough," she retorted, "but doesn't my opinion count for something?"
"It counts for a great deal—more, even, than would your opinion under Muggle legislation—"
"I went to see her, you know," said Jocelyn, interrupting his attempt to clarify the finer points of magical law.
Severus was momentarily lost. "Who? Your mother?"
"Yeah." Jocelyn pulled a face. "On Boxing Day."
"And?"
Jocelyn shrugged. "She wasn't very happy to see me. She's got some new guy, and didn't want him to know I existed." Jocelyn ran the edge of her thumbnail along a floorboard. "She's pregnant," she added, slightly too offhand.
Severus' eyebrows rose, but he said nothing. He couldn't think of anything that wasn't fatuous. After a few seconds, Jocelyn sighed loudly and continued.
"Even at Lucius' house, I'm better off than I would have been there. It was only a matter of time before something truly dreadful happened."
"I'm not saying that I would have left you there, just that I shouldn't have—"
"I get it," snapped Jocelyn, interrupting him once again. "But I wouldn't change a single second of that day, no matter what anybody says."
Severus looked at Jocelyn. Her hands were balled into fists and her mouth turned sharply down at the corners. "Jocelyn," he said, as gently as he could.
She dropped her head to her knees and wrapped her arms tightly around her upper body. "I'm not crying," she said fiercely, but she clearly was.
Severus reached forwards and grabbed hold of her ankles. He pulled her slight body across the wooden floor of the corridor until she was pressed up against his chest. He put his arms around her, one hand against the back of her head, the other cradling an elbow; he let her cry.
It was a good ten minutes later that her sobs subsided.
"I think mum's happy about the baby," she said, scrubbing at her cheeks with the heel of her hand. "As long as it's not a freak like me."
"You're not a freak." The words came out harshly.
"To her I am. And to the Purebloods. And—"
"You're not a freak," interrupted Severus, no less harshly.
"It's okay." She sniffed. "I don't really think I am. And I don't really want to be just like everyone else, either." Jocelyn scooted away slightly so that they sat at a more natural distance. "Most of them are too stupid to notice what's happening right in front of their noses."
Severus gave her a long look, his eyebrows pulled sharply together over the bridge of his nose. "Is there anything else you want to talk about?"
Jocelyn laughed—a short, abrupt noise. "What? Apart from the fact that I hate my father, my mother disowned me, and I'm kind of relieved about both of those things?"
"Precisely." Though he'd meant to sound severe, the corner of Severus' mouth twitched up, for underlying Jocelyn's mocking words was the steel with which she usually cut through life, and he knew that things were back on an even keel.
"Yeah, actually. I'd like to say thank you for the room." Jocelyn put one hand on her chest, right above her heart. "I love it," she added, "and it means more to me than I could possibly express."
"You're welcome," said Severus. "What do you want to do about your parents?" he asked after a short moment.
Jocelyn shrugged. "I wish there were some way to keep in touch with my mum, but at the same time, I don't particularly want to see her again."
"You could write her letters."
"Oh, sure." Jocelyn rolled her eyes. "I don't want to think about what might happen to the poor owl who tries delivering to that address!"
"There is a Muggle mailbox at Hogsmeade," noted Severus dryly. "You could use it yourself during Hogsmeade weekends, assuming that the students are ever allowed out of the castle. Certainly I could manage to post something for you if necessary."
Jocelyn pulled her knees in closer to her body. "Huh. Maybe I could get Granger to show me how to knit. Then I could send something for the baby."
Severus raised both eyebrows. "I'm sure you could find a more qualified teacher."
"Come on, Snape, she's not that bad! She made all of those hats and scarves and gloves she's always wearing whenever the weather gets even slightly cold."
Jocelyn's colour was slightly raised, and her eyes skipped away from Severus'. He narrowed his gaze and deliberately stared at her, willing her to meet his eye.
"Fine!" Jocelyn caved. "I kind of like her!" She threw both hands up in the air in a theatrical parody of defeat. "She's smart, and nice, and open-minded, and she smells really good!"
Severus was tempted to throw back his head and laugh.
"I know," she sighed melodramatically, catching something of his mood despite his silence. "She's also undeniably heterosexual, six years older than me, and practically engaged to be married to a very sweet, easy-going, moderately dull, sometimes funny, intellectually dumb-as-dog-shit, Quidditch-playing war hero."
"That was quite a mouthful," noted Snape.
"Well, I'm not blind."
"No," he agreed.
"Aren't you going to say something cutting about my taste in women?"
Severus raised one eyebrow and then pushed himself up off the floor. "You could do a lot worse than Hermione Granger," he said and held out a hand to help Jocelyn up.
She took the proffered hand and pulled on his arm until she was upright.
"There's a pub around the corner that does a great lunch," he said, gesturing down the hall towards the stairs.
"Do they do fish and chips?"
"Indeed, they do."
Severus watched Jocelyn walk ahead of him down the corridor, his eyes on the back of her cropped blond hair. As she reached the top of the stairs, she turned and caught his eye. She smiled, and uncharacteristically, Severus smiled back—not a huge, face-splitting grin by any means, just a small quirk of the corners of his mouth, but a smile nonetheless. The conversation hadn't gone as smoothly, or as terribly, as the various possibilities he'd worried over in advance, but he'd managed it, and Jocelyn was smiling. And the pub did make great fish and chips.
After his conversation with Jocelyn, Severus felt lighter. Even the students seemed less annoying.
Not infrequently, he found himself thinking about Hooch's words on the tower at Christmas: "You need to think seriously about whether, a year from now, you want Granger to be a part of your life, or not."
At the time, it had seemed like a warning, but now, oddly, it seemed like a promise. He could make plans about his future because he had a future. And having talked with Jocelyn, he felt confident that his future could be better than his past. He didn't need to repeat all the same mistakes. He didn't need to keep himself from others like a toxic ingredient, isolated for the safety of everything else. The realisation was liberating.
Yet, that Thursday, only hours before he was due to meet with Granger in his office, Severus made a discovery that pulled the rug out from beneath his metaphorical feet.
Someone had taken Tansy root from the Moste Potente Products cupboard. Not the common tanacetum vulgare, but the larger, lumpy tanacetum perditium—grown next to Mugglewort and harvested in the dark of the moon. The only known abortifacient that could—under the right conditions—safely separate the magical signatures of mother and magical foetus.
Logically there was only one person it could have been. Resistant to the obvious culprit, Severus ran every diagnostic he could think of—hoping against all evidence that someone had managed to break the wards or slip through without him noticing—but there were only two magical signatures to be found: his own and Granger's.
Severus sank onto the closest stool. He felt dizzy, and for close to a minute he leant forwards to rest his forehead against the edge of the potions bench.
It had to have been Granger. He forced himself to face up to the fact of what she'd stolen, not just that she'd stolen, and his wand hand clutched automatically for the small bottle of contraceptive tucked inside his breast pocket. Severus pulled out the phial and stared at the dark purple highlights in the liquid inside. He placed it, moving slowly and carefully, on the desk before him.
Four nights of his time, now effectively useless.
But it wasn't that which bothered him: it was the hours and days and years of Granger's life that she seemed determined to waste. It was the perfect, shimmering whole of her soul itself, which she was ready to fracture down the centre. How much was she willing to throw away for a quick fuck with her dumb-as-dog-shit, Quidditch playing boyfriend?
Still moving slowly, every muscle in his body tense with barely controlled fury, Severus drew back his hand and deliberately knocked the potion phial off the bench. It fell to the stone floor and shattered. The potion splattered out over the floor.
Severus rose from his seat and stalked out of his office and through into his living quarters. He needed a drink.
A/N: *dusts hands* My work here is done, right? You don't need to know what happens next, do you?