28
Al, pale as window glass, was sitting on the couch between his mother and father. Across from them was a white-haired DCI named Finch.
After the initial shock, Al had expected to be grilled mercilessly by his parents. But they seemed to accept his story with no problems. Harry had offered to call the police himself, but Al did it instead, his voice cracking through the phone as it had done when he was fourteen.
Now, he finished his recital. It didn't take long. He spoke with a mechanical colourlessness that scared Ginny. He was eighteen, true enough, but still a boy in so many ways. This would scar him forever. Snape! She still couldn't believe it herself.
"I read him &… I don't know. Tom Jones, The magnificent Ambersons, Jude the Obscure. We started some stuff by Dickens, but he said Dickens could only be funny when he was being serious and the other way round. We both liked Tom Jones, though."
"And that was three years ago?"
"Yeah. I stopped by to see him from time to time, but after third year I got busy. There was too much homework &… and we had the intercity Cricket League &… things just came up."
"You had less time."
"Yeah, that's right. Making the grades to get into University. I just &… got busy."
"Al finished second in class," Ginny said. "We were so proud."
"I bet you were," Finch said with a warm smile. "I got two kids, both at Greaves Secondary, and they're just about able to maintain their sports eligibility. So you didn't read him any books after you started fourth year?"
"No. Once in a while I'd drop by and read him the paper. He was always interested in the headlines. And the stock pages&… The print on those pages used to drive him bugs hit—sorry, Mum."
Ginny patted his hand.
"I don't know why he was so interested in the stocks, but he was."
"That's how he was getting along," Finch said. "He had a few stocks laid by and he was living off the dividends. He also had five sets of ID stashed around the house. He was a cagey one, all right."
"I suppose he kept his stocks in a safe deposit box somewhere," Al remarked.
"Pardon?" Finch raised his eyebrows. His father also looked confused.
"His stocks, what few were left, were stashed in a lockbox under his bed," Finch answered. "The photo in the paper as Craven was also in there. Why? Did he say he had a safety deposit box somewhere, son?"
"No &… I just thought that was where you kept your stocks." He shook his head in a dazed way that was perfectly genuine. "I don't know &… this whole thing has just blown my wheels."
He really was dazed. Yet little by little, his instinct for self-preservation was resurfacing, and with it a growing confidence. If Snape really had a safety deposit box to store his insurance document, wouldn't he also have transferred his remaining stock certificates there? And that photograph?
"We're working with the MBO on this," Finch said. "Very informal right now, but I'd appreciate it if you'd keep that bit to yourself if you decide to see any press people, from either side."
"I sort of expected an agent to be here with you," Harry said, speaking for the first time.
"They're all tied up in London right now, trying to bring things to a close," Finch said smoothly. "One of them will probably drop by and talk to you tomorrow, Al. They're real professionals, and it will be a low-pressure situation. Is that okay?"
"I guess so,' Al said, but felt an atavistic dread at the thought of being sniffed over by the same hellhounds that had chased Snape for the last half of his life. Snape had a healthy respect for them, and Al himself had heard stories growing up. Quite impossible not to.
"Mr and Mrs Potter? Do you have any objection to Al talking to an MBO agent or two?"
"Not if Al doesn't," Harry said. "I know a few of them and I know they won't badger him too much. But I'm going to insist that they remember that Al was trying to help that old man. He was flying under false colours, but Al didn't know that."
"I don't think you have anything to worry about. Like I said, these people are real professionals. Al was just an innocent bystander and they'll keep that in mind."
"It's okay, Dad. I'll do my part."
"Well, I've finished my own questions, so I'll break a little ground by telling you what the MBO is most interested in. Al was with Snape the night he had his heart attack."
"Yes. He got a letter and he called me up to come over and read it to him."
"We know." Finch leaned forward. "The MBO wants to know about that letter. Snape was the last actual Death Eater, but there are plenty of sympathisers still around, and some of them might be rallying to start a new cause. They might think using Snape as a figurehead would lend them legitimacy. The MBO wants to know if the letter he got was from any of those sympathisers."
Al, who had gone back to Snape's house and burned the letter, said: "I'd like to help you if I could, Inspector Finch, but I can't remember a thing about it. I think it was spelled to make me forget it as soon as I read it. I do remember that Mr Craven &… Snape, I mean &… kept getting excited and once he said something like "yes, that is what you'd do isn't it?" This was like three minutes before he had the heart attack." He put an uncertain look on his face as he faced Finch, inwardly quite pleased with this lie.
Finch looked at Harry, eyebrows raised.
"Yes," Harry said, "I can see that happening. It is possible to spell documents like that. It was how we kept magic books out of the hands of non-magicals for so many years. They would read the book and instantly forget about it, or it would translate into something else in their minds."
Finch nodded. "I can see that. But we have a problem. The letter itself, Al—do you remember what happened to it?"
"No," Al said slowly. "As far as I know it's still on the table. I didn't think about it after, you know, the heart attack."
"Yes, I saw a letter on the table when I was there," Harry said. "I didn't do more than glance at it before the ambulance came. Airmail stationary with an American postmark, that's all I remember."
"Then it should still be there," Al said, shrugging.
"That's the problem," Finch said. "It isn't."
"It isn't?" Al asked, pretending to be puzzled.
"Maybe somebody broke in," Ginny suggested.
"There was no need for that. The door was never locked in the hurry to get Snape to the hospital. His latchkey was still in his pocket.
"Well, there you go then," Harry said.
"No, I see what's bugging Inspector Finch," Al said. Yes, indeed, he could see it very well. "Why would a burglar steal nothing but a letter, especially one he couldn't read? It doesn't &… listen, Mr Craven—Snape, I mean &… geez—didn't have much to steal, but a housebreaker could find something more interesting than a letter."
"You got it, all right. Not bad at all, son."
"Al used to want to be a detective or an Auror when he grew up," Ginny said, and ruffled Al's hair. Since he had gotten big he started objecting to that, but now it didn't seem to bother him at all. She hated to see him so pale. "I guess he's changed his field to anthropology these days."
"That's a good field to get into. See lots of far-flung tribes and things. I just wish my own boys had ambitions higher than seeing who would win against United this year."
Al offered a smile but said nothing.
"Anyway," Finch said, serious again, "I'll tell you the theory we're working on. We think someone around here knew the truth about Snape. Someone right here in one of the three towns, or up in Bristol. And that Mr X just scooted right over to Snape's house and stole that letter."
"That doesn't make much sense either, though."
"Why not, Al?"
"If &… if someone knew the truth and wanted to communicate with him, why bother writing a letter at all? Why not just show up at the house?"
"A good point. Except maybe this Mr X was just a go-between or something, or he was in a wheelchair or otherwise disabled."
Al shrugged to show his scepticism about the idea. Finch had progressed into the land of farfetched melodrama. And it didn't really matter, did it? What mattered was that he was sniffing around &… and the damn Mudbloods were sniffing around too. That god damn letter &… Snape's stupid god damn idea!
And suddenly he was thinking about his wand, snug in his front pocket, its handle nicely wrapped in imitation leather.
He pulled his mind away from it quickly. The palms of his hands had gone damp.
"Did Snape have any friends that you knew of?" Finch was asking.
"Friends? Not that I knew. There used to be a cleaning lady, but she moved. Exeter, I think. And there were a few lawn boys, but he hasn't hired one this year. Lawn is rather shaggy, isn't it?"
"Yes, it sure is. We knocked on doors up and down the street and it doesn't look as if he's hired anyone. Did he get phone calls?"
"Sure," Al said, with the perfect note of offhand casualness. "He got a couple calls a week." Here was an escape hatch that was somewhat safe. Snape's phone had actually only rung a few times during the years Al knew him—telemarketers, a polling organisation asking about television shows and of course, the ubiquitous wrong number. Snape really only had gotten the phone in case he got sick, which he finally had &… may his black, stinking soul rot in hell.
"Do you remember anything about those calls?" Finch asked quickly. He seemed excited by something, and suddenly Al was cautious again. There was something wrong about Finch's excitement &… something dangerous. Al had to work hard to keep from breaking into a nervous sweat.
"No. He didn't talk much at all. I remember once he said something like 'I can't talk much. The boy who reads to me is here'."
"I bet that's it!" Finch exclaimed, slapping his hands on his thighs. "I bet two weeks' pay that was the blighter!" He snapped his note book shut (so far as Al had seen, all he'd done was doodle in it) and looked at Harry. "I just have one question. I'm given to understand you knew the man, Mr Potter. Do you know why you didn't recognise him?"
Harry closed his eyes and ran his hands tiredly over his face. "I keep asking myself the same question. I was in classes with him for four years, I fought him a couple of different times, and I even saw him as he was leaving the Brecon camp. And I didn't recognise him, even as old as he got, living without magic. I guess the only reason why is I wasn't expecting to see him here &… not here in these quiet little towns. One usually sees what he expects to see, Inspector. When you are walking down a road and hear hoof beats around the bend, your first thought is usually horses. But it could be zebras or wildebeests, right? I wasn't expecting to see zebras or wildebeests &… and that's why I guess I didn't recognise him."
Finch nodded; his manner sympathetic. "I understand, Mr Potter. Believe me." He stood up. "I want to thank all of you for taking the time to talk to me. You especially, Al. I know this has come as one hell of a shock, but it will all be over soon. We're going back tomorrow with all the special teams from London, and we're going to turn that house upside down from attic to cellar and back again. We might find a trace of Snape's mysterious caller yet."
"I sure hope so," Al said.
Finch shook hands all around and left. Then there was a brief silence in the Potter house.
"I still can't believe it," Harry muttered. "We had the fucker right here at our kitchen table and none of us had a clue."
Ginny did not reprimand him for his language; a real indicator of how shocking the whole thing was.
"I was at his house reading to him &… he could've done anything."
"I don't blame you, Al. You have no history at all with him. Listen &… why don't we go out back and hit some tennis balls around? Kind of a distraction before lunch. What do you say?"
Al sighed, said he didn't feel much like tennis or lunch, and headed up the stairs, head down and shoulders slumped. His parents exchanged troubled glances. How could they help him?
When he got upstairs, Lily was standing in the hall by the bathroom.
"Al, are you all right?"
"Sure, sis, why do you ask?"
"Gee, I don't know," she said, a little sarcastic. "We find out that the old man you used to read to was one of the worst Death Eaters, and that you used to spend hours and hours in his house. Why wouldn't I ask?"
"He wasn't a Death Eater. Just a broken down old man who needed help with the paper," Al said. "I keep that in mind and I'll be okay."
She gave him a troubled glance. "Still &… You don't look good."
Says the girl who let that arsehole Scorpius fuck her in a god damn field and got knocked up and now has to make Jackson Pollock in the loo every fucking morning, Al thought. She and Maggy Thomas ought to get together. Exchange tips. Couple of little sluts, that's all they were.
He restrained with an almost Herculean effort an urge to grab his sister and scream into her face: "Just leave me the fuck alone!"
"I'll be okay. Don't worry."
She gave him a last, troubled look and headed downstairs. She didn't quite believe him, but her stomach was a misery and she wanted some ginger tea and crackers.
Al lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling. Downstairs he could hear his parents murmured voices coming in through the air vents. James was still asleep; he had worked the night shift.
He found himself thinking of his wand, which was now on his desk. He could see it very clearly in his mind's eye. He thought of shoving the polished thirteen inches into Maggy Thomas's slimy, half-breed cooze—just what she needed; a prick that never went soft. He heard himself asking her: How do you like that, Maggy? You just tell me when you've had enough, okay? He heard her screams. You just tell me, you bitch. Okay? Okay?
# # #
Hermione Granger had not acquitted herself—at least by her more mature way of thinking—very well in the war. After it had ended, though, she had thought she was top of the world. Nothing was going to be closed to her now. She was a heroic Muggle-born who had fought against terrible injustice with her two friends and had triumphed, against all odds.
She had first applied for a position working for the Department of Mysteries. She loved research; both she and her friends thought it was the perfect job for her. Custom fitted, as it were.
The rude wake-up call had come during the interview process. The interviewer had torn her academic career to shreds, telling her that she was incapable of original thought, that she wasn't at all suited for innovative thinking befitting a researcher. In third year she had been given a tool if incalculable value—the time turner—and the only thing she had used it for was to go to classes. The Unspeakables had authorised her use of it for select students whom they thought had potential, and the only thing she did with it was school work. No extra time to research. No analysing the time turner to see how it worked and could be improved. No unauthorised trips to Hogsmeade. Therefore, she was incapable of breaking out of a mould and doing anything on her own.
In fourth year, she had jumped headlong into a campaign to free house-elves, without bothering to ask their opinion on the matter, or to see if it could even be done. Yet when it came to the one free house-elf she knew who was not adjusting well to her new state—Winky—she had done absolutely nothing.
During her attempts to help Harry Potter with the Triwizard Tournament, she restricted herself to information found in non-restricted books in the Hogwarts library. No inventing spells or altering them, when she had been studying Arithmancy to do just that. No attempts to get into the Restricted Section, despite the certain knowledge that the other champions, being at least two years older than Potter, had access to that information. And as a result, Potter won the tournament by sheer blind luck and the assistance of the fake Mad-Eye Moody.
During the war, she had not come up with new ways to combat Death Eaters. When she, Weasley and Potter had been captured, her only way of disguising them was stinging hexes to the face, despite the possibility that it might have caused more problems than it would help and would've served to call even more attention to them.
"And you want us to take you on? I don't think so, Miss Granger. Get out of my office."
At first she had gone home and cried. She was the brightest witch of her age. How dare they do that to her?
Then, she got herself together and realised they were correct. She had really accomplished nothing except getting high test scores. She made a vow to herself that she would make her mark on the world, and that she would henceforth be something other than a Know-it-all bookworm.
She got together a number of other Muggle-borns and started her own organisation, the Muggle-borns against Oppression (MBO), whose main mission in life was to see that the purebloods never got so out of control again. She listened to their opinions instead of making decisions unanimously and without input. She asked around and found out what the other Muggle-borns wanted to see happen, what reforms they wanted pushed through. And then she and the organisation saw to it that it was done. They rounded up all the Death Eaters and sent them through the veil, because an example needed to be made. People did not deserve to be penalised for a crime of birth.
Now, as she sat at a sidewalk cafe not far from Harry's house waiting for Inspector Finch to finish interviewing them, she reflected on the total surprise of finding Severus Snape in this impossibly bucolic West Country setting. That Harry's son had apparently read to the man in his dotage was also a shock. The irony was almost funny. Snape, one of the most vicious Death Eaters&… being read to by the grandson of his most hated enemy. Ha, ha! Who woulda thunk it?
Hermione finished her coffee just as the battered old Citroen pulled up. She got in, and Finch took off again.
"Well, what do you think?" she asked.
"I think the kid's involved in it somehow," Finch said, without any preamble.
Hermione almost dropped her purse. "What?" She had helped change Al when he was a baby, had bounced him on her knee, and introduced him to books and movies from her own childhood. And he was involved in this &… this mess? No way.
"Oh yeah &… Somehow, someway, he's involved. But is he cool? Man, if I poured water in his mouth he'd spit out ice cubes. I tripped him up a few times, but it isn't anything that would stand up in court. I didn't dare push much harder because some smart-arse lawyer might get him off on entrapment further down the line. Since he got involved with the old fellow before he turned eighteen, they'd insist he be tried as a juvenile. But I'd guess this kid hasn't been a juvenile since he was eight or so. He's creepy."
Hermione wanted to bridle at this smug little DCI for calling one of her favourite kids creepy, but she bit her tongue. The guy had no agenda here. He didn't know that Hermione was a family friend. As far as he knew, she was here because, as head of the MBO, she wanted to be around when they captured the last Death Eater.
"What slips did he make?"
"Phone calls. That was the big thing. When I slipped him that idea, his eyes lit up like a damn Christmas tree." Finch wheeled the nondescript car onto the motorway. Two hundred yards to their right was the slope where Al had pretended to fire on motorists on a Saturday not long ago.
"So he's thinking to himself, 'this copper's off his rocker if he thinks Snape has a Death Eater sympathiser here in town. Having one already here is stretching the limits of credibility. But if he thinks that, it takes me off the hook.' So he says yeah, Snape got one or two phone calls a week. Can't talk much, somebody's here, blah, blah. Very mysterious. Except it's bullshit. We pulled his phone records, and the phone probably only rang a few times over the past seven years. Guy wasn't getting one or two calls a week at any point."
"What else?"
"He immediately jumped to the conclusion that the letter was gone and nothing else. And the only way he could jump to that conclusion was because he was the one who went back and stole it."
Hermione wanted to argue, but the man's logic was inexorable. And suddenly, she wasn't sure she wanted to know any more. Had she been privy to Reginald Cattermole's run of thoughts about the old story of the monkey's paw, she would've agreed wholeheartedly and wished to end this little adventure without digging any further. But she had a duty, both to herself and to the organisation, to see this thing through. There was no hiding from it. No matter what slimy things might crawl out from the stones they overturned, she must continue.
"We think the letter was just a prop," Finch was saying, now puffing a shitty smelling Turkish cigarette. Hermione wanted to gag. "We think Snape had the heart attack while he was trying to bury the body &… the freshest body, I mean. That means he called the kid after, not before, the heart attack. There was dirt on his shoes and pants cuffs, so it's a pretty reasonable assumption.
"So he crawls up the stairs and calls the kid. The kid flips out—as much as he ever does, anyway—and cooks up the letter story off the cuff. It's not a great story, but pretty good, considering. He goes over there and cleans up Snape's mess for him. Now he's in overdrive. The ambulance is coming, his father's coming, and he needs to set the stage. He goes upstairs and breaks open that box—"
"You got confirmation on that?"
"Oh yeah. Confirmation right up the line. His fingerprints are all over it. Of course, his fingerprints are all over the house, so that won't mean much in court."
"Maybe if you confronted him with that, you could get the real story."
"Oh hey, when I say this kid is cool, I mean it. He'd say Snape asked him to fetch the box once or twice to take something or put something in it. If we confronted him with his prints on the shovel, he'd say Snape asked him to plant a rose bush in the back garden. He's one cool customer."
Hermione sighed. She knew that was true. Al was a bright boy. And she suspected sometimes that he had hidden depths. But she had no idea&…
"I know the family," Hermione said. "I grew up with both Harry and Ginny and I have known all three of their kids since they were babies and I find it hard to believe &… Al is by far the most normal of them, you know? He's clean cut and he did well in school and&…"
"You knew them? Did you ever have any indication that any of this was going on?"
"Not a one. I wasn't around a lot in the past few years dealing with organisation business, but as far as I knew, they were all okay &… Especially Al. His brother had his own troubles with the law, but nothing involving this."
"Yes, I saw those files before coming out here. They do say it's always the quiet ones, don't they?"
"What I'd like to know is why Al got himself mixed up with a man like Snape, knowing his own family's history. I mean, he was just thirteen when all of this started. I have tried and tried to understand it and still I can't."
"I'd settle for how," Finch said, and threw his cigarette out the window.
"Maybe it was just coincidence &… a kind of black serendipity," Hermione said, now toying with her fingers restlessly in her lap. "I think that sometimes does happen, bad turns of fate as well as good. I'm usually an optimist but&…""
"I don't know," Finch said. "All I know is—and I'm sorry for saying this—but that kid is as creepy as a bug under a rock. Really."
"Well. Maybe you're right. I certainly had no idea. Al, probably by sheer dumb luck, penetrates Snape's cover. And any other kid when faced with such a situation, he would go to his parents and the police, right? Today, I recognised a wanted man. He is living at this address. Then the authorities would take over."
"Any other kid, but not this one," Finch agreed. "He'd probably get a school award for good citizenship. Get his picture in the paper. Any other kid would love that."
"Yes indeed. But instead he goes to Snape. Why? You say you don't care, but I think you do. I think it haunts you just as it does me."
"Not for blackmail," Finch said. "That kid has everything a kid could want. He's the son of a famous and rich war hero, well-liked by everybody, the whole world in front of him. And even if he decided to squeeze Snape just for the hell of it, Snape was practically unsqueezeable. Aside from those few stocks, the man barely had a pot to piss in."
"You're sure Al doesn't know you've found the bodies?"
"Pretty sure. Maybe I'll go back in a while and hit him with that. Tomorrow, after the big forensic team gets here." Finch hit the steering wheel lightly. "I just wish all of this had come out a day sooner. Then I could've tried for a search warrant."
"The clothes he was wearing that night?"
"Yeah. Except they've probably been washed six times by then."
"Or he could've just spelled them clean."
"That too &… I keep forgetting about that."
Finally, Hermione brought out what she had been wondering about. No use hiding from it.
"What about the other derelicts, the ones your department have been finding around here?"
"Those belong to David Grant. I don't think there's a connection. Snape wasn't that strong &… and more to the point, He already had a neat little racket worked out. Probably he did something like offer them a meal and a bed and bring them home on the city bus—the city bus!—and wasted them right there in his kitchen."
With great reluctance and feeling chills up and down her spine, Hermione said: "It wasn't Snape I was thinking of."
"What do you mean by th—" then Finch's mouth snapped closed.
There was a beat of unbelieving silence, broken only by the sound of the traffic all around them. Then Finch said, in a slow, incredulous voice: "Hey &… hey now, you can't mean—"
"As an agent of my organisation," Hermione said, "I am only interested in Al insofar as he might have information he might have on Snape's ties with dark sympathisers underground. But as a human being and friend of the family, I am becoming very interested in the boy himself. I wonder what makes him tick. Because the boy I thought I knew bears no resemblance to the boy we are considering before us. And as I try to answer that question to my own satisfaction, I begin to wonder what else."
"But—"
"Suppose," Hermione said, now speaking as though with a great effort, "Suppose, the very atrocities in which Snape took part formed some kind of attraction between them? That's a bit of an unholy idea, I know, but what if it happened that way? The things that went on in those camps still has the power to turn my stomach. I was there when they liberated Brecon, and I still see those terrible things in my dreams, even though I only was there after everything happened. But maybe there is something about what those Death Eaters and the Nazis before them did that exercises a kind of deadly fascination over us. Maybe part of our dread and horror stems from the dim realisation that, under the right—or wrong—set of circumstances, we ourselves could be called upon to build and staff such places. Black serendipity&… And what do you think those hypothetical builders and staffers would look like?"
Finch was watching Hermione with a kind of hypnotised fascination, but Hermione wasn't really aware; she was gazing off into the near distance, her face set. "I don't know," Finch said.
"I don't think they would look much like mad dark lords with snake-like faces and red eyes. No, I think not. They would probably look like ordinary accountants, ready with calculator minds to start maximising the kill ratios so that next time they could kill twenty million instead of sixty thousand. And, as I think of Al, I think some of them might look a lot like him." Hermione felt her arms prickle with gooseflesh.
"You're damn near as creepy as he is," Finch said, looking at Hermione askance. She was clutching her arms tightly across her breasts, as if for protection.
"It's a creepy subject," she said. "Finding those dead men and animals in Snape's cellar &… that was creepy, yes? I think maybe Al went to Snape with a normal boy's fascination with such things, like any boy fascinated with reading about American cowboys, or coin collecting, or trading cards &… Just ordinary morbid little boy curiosity at first. So he went to Snape to get his information straight from the horse's mouth."
"At this point, I could believe anything," Finch said, shaking his head.
"Maybe," Hermione muttered, almost drowned out by a passing cargo truck. "And maybe it isn't possible to stand close to murder piled upon murder and not be touched by it."
