Chapter 28: Rising
We crowded around the jar. The steady slow clockwise spin of the water was mesmerizing. Pomona gripped my shoulder. "Is that it? Is it fixed?"
"Well, it appears to have reversed," said Filius. "Considering its previous destructive course, I can only hope that it indicates a more constructive outlook."
"In any case," said Minerva, "we won't know until we check."
"Well, we'd best leave the elements here," said Filius.
God, were we going back up now? The weariness from brewing all night was dragging at me, and Bulstrode sleeping in the corner looked like she had the better idea. But of course, we wouldn't know until we checked.
It was decided that Dick should remain and keep an eye on the elements and the stasis ring. Poppy would come along as before in case of emergencies. We stepped out of the greenhouse.
"Remember now, all together," said Pomona cheerfully.
The dawn light just touching the top branches didn't reach into the blue depths of the understory. The trees were packed thickly, with moss-covered bark and wide-splayed roots as though they had here for centuries. Minerva raised a Lumos and began to lead the way.
We straggled along in single-file, struggling over logs that sometimes gave way with a squishy sigh into their own decay. Ahead, Pomona was chuckling as she tried to untangle her hair from a low-hanging branch.
There was a flash of pale movement off to my right between the trunks. I stiffened, thinking of 'Darlin.' There it was again – much too small to be that great hound, and running upright. It was a boy, a young boy in some kind of pale shirt. He stumbled and hauled himself up against a tree, looking around wildly. His eyes locked on mine, staring at me in mute terror. He turned and darted away through the trees.
Dear lord, a student? But what on earth would a first-year be doing here now?
"Poppy –" I began. But she wasn't next to me any longer. I hurried ahead around the next trees. She was nowhere to be seen, none of them were.
"Poppy –" I began to call out, but I cut myself short, letting the sound die out in the muffled tangle of the trees. I held myself still, listening. Far overhead, some of the branches moved in a breeze. There was no sound of the others ahead, no Pomona laughing, no dawn chorus of birds. They weren't here.
Somewhere deep in the trees behind me I could hear steps. Irregular, but coming closer. I moved. I went as quickly as I could without breaking into a run. Running would be worse than useless if it was that hound behind me, and it would only feed my fear. I was able to move faster now; the going was getting easier. I had stumbled on something that almost seemed like a path. The trees were thinning, and the way dipped across a small stream on some flat rocks, then began to climb again.
It should have been lighter by now, but everything seemed suspended. There wasn't any dawn light on the trees. I was coming out onto the lip of a wide hollow, mostly in shadow from the rocky hillside behind. I strained to see. There was a figure below near a scrap of reflected sky; it must be a flat surface of water.
I couldn't see the figure properly, it flickered like it was a reflection itself, blurring as when the wind ruffles the surface of water. The figure cleared again, kneeling now, then flickered and blurred.
No, no, I thought vaguely. I tried to take a step into the hollow. An aching cold passed over me and I could barely move. It was like trying to wade through treacle on a cold day. I pushed myself in. My chest strained.
Of course, I was a bloody fool. The part may stand for the whole and the whole for the part, and we had our sample of the pool sitting in Zosimos' stasis ring slowed to a crawl. I forced another step. I had told Emmeline that I could finally recognize a bad idea when I saw it, but recognizing it and not doing it were two entirely different things.
I got a breath and dragged myself closer to the pool. The kneeling man had flickered out. Another figure shimmered into view: a man holding a goblet. He dipped it towards the surface of the water, then blurred and faded. Apparently I wasn't the only bloody fool. And what the hell was I going to do anyway? Shout at it to stop?
The man had come back into view on his knees, lifting the cup. I heaved myself forward and gripped his shoulder –
I was in another place. Again. I was suspended, drifting slowly down, or was it up? The wavering dancing shape in the light was beyond. It was wonderful and terrible, just like everything in the world. I wanted to see it, to watch it, but it was obscured, somehow, I couldn't see it properly. There were dark angular shapes in front of it. It was crowded here. I wondered if I'd ever really left this place. As Dick had said, it had been just the blink of an eye.
As I came closer, I could see the shapes were figures with their backs to me, eddying and jostling slightly around the light. It was hard to see a pattern to their movement. The light was rising beautifully, but I couldn't see it clearly between the figures. The hunger was stronger here, drawing me like a current. The light was mesmerizing. I let myself be pulled in, a relief. There was a small gap between the two figures ahead of me. If I fit myself in there, perhaps I could get a bit closer, between the withered hand and –
No, no.
I had been moving forward without much conscious thought, but now I shoved myself back. If I fit myself in there I would never come out again, I knew that with a deep certainty. I backed away as far as I could from the crowd, we were a whole bloody fool reunion, but I couldn't bring myself to stray too far from the light.
What on earth could I do? It was so hard to think with it pulling and drawing on me. I sidled closer to the gap. He was here, after all, and if he could just tell me what we might do…
I caught the withered hand in both of mine and pulled. He moved slightly from the shoulder, bending at an awkward angle. I could see part of his face, eyes fixed on the shape in the light, expression drained and gaunt. Listen to me, I wanted to say. I had a hard time keeping my grip. My hands were slick with the blood that was now coming slowly and steadily from my left arm. Please listen to me, there has to be another way.
He didn't seem to be listening. His eyes were fixed on the one thing and all the debts between us had been paid the last time I was in this place. He didn't move. I pulled again. The figure on the other side of the gap turned and looked at me. I wouldn't have recognized his face, he looked so young, but his eyes; those I recognized. His gaze burned into me with absolute malevolence.
Mine.
I dropped the hand and staggered back. No use, no use trying that at all, I'd better leave him. I was shaking from the mine as I backed away. I moved away from the gap, around the outside of the circle. I just wanted to get away from them both. I didn't know if the mine meant me, or Albus, or the Source. Perhaps it didn't matter. By the first principle, if the part stood the whole, we were all part of it now.
Now… but perhaps I had been part of the pool for a long time. When had I been given to it? At my sorting? Or was it the first time I had almost died in the shack? Maybe given wasn't quite right. After all, I had consented, hadn't I? I played that role, and more. I had agreed to Albus' plans, and then of course played another part in giving Albus over to it in turn. I had been a very good friend to it over the years. And now I had chosen to drink it, like a fool, and surely I belonged to it more than ever now, part to the whole.
I moved along the wall of figures, jostling together, shifting in and out. I wasn't sure if I would recognize anyone else in the bloody fool reunion. I didn't think I wanted to. I still couldn't bring myself to move very far from the rest of them and the light. I saw two women standing together, an older and a younger, clasping hands like sisters. There was a young man staring down at his own hands in horror. I turned away.
There were a few glints of light separate from the group, moving along hesitantly below us. They were hard to focus on. I went after one, sinking down until I could see it properly. It was tricky at first, but I finally managed to get my hands on it. It was a light dry scrap of something like skin or thin parchment. It was hard to make it out, shifting between light and dark. Some kind of writing in another alphabet. No, it was in English, but reversed. I strained to read it, picking out the words one by one.
by calling on his promise, he induced him to sacrifice
I let the scrap fall. It drifted away into the darkness, words fading. There was another, swirling slowly clockwise. I grasped at it.
began to arrange events
There were more I could see from the corners of my eyes. They might only be nonsense, but they distracted me a bit from the pull of the shape and the light. The words were drifting around to the right. I followed them. They eddied in a little swirl and clustered below a figure standing a bit back from the rest. As I neared, I could see a brief flash as some scrap of words left its hands and drifted down. It was making them somehow.
I directed myself to the figure, the only one not clustered to the center like the rest. It was a man. I could barely make out the planes of his face. He wasn't actively writing, but a scrap drifted free of his hand. How?
Manifest, he responded.
Whatever that meant. Some quality of concentration, perhaps. But it was hard to think at all with that steady dragging pull behind me, and what was the bloody use?
He must have caught that last; I could feel the irritation in his use of anything? We belong to it.
He was right, we were just little parts of a whole. Of course, He didn't agree, I remembered his vicious mine. But what if he was right for once in his miserable existence? After all, by the first principle…
I tried to focus and that pull behind me… no, by the principles, I was pulling it. I directed myself at him.
No, it belongs to us. First, the whole is the part. Second, we are its source, and it is ours. Third, we can affect it.
No words drifted from his hands. How?
Heal it.
There was a long pause. How can you heal anything? I could feel the scorn in it. Blood was still flowing from my arm. 'Physician, heal thyself,' was it?
It was a decent question. How could I when I had stopped trying? When the memories rose up and it was all I could do to push them away again? When all I had been able to do for so many years was just bury everything and keep going? When it had been taking me apart from inside? And now it wasn't just my own destruction I was faced with.
The idea of healing was awful and exhausting. It would have been easier to lie down and bleed out as I had been doing an eyeblink ago. It would be so much worse than that peaceful fate, it would mean working on it every day for the rest of my life. Damn it all, but I would probably agree to that too, the worst plan of all. I had told Minerva I didn't want to wreck everything for once. If I wanted to change…
One by one.
He gave something like a nod. There really wasn't any other way, there never was. Where in the world did I even start? Probably with the ones I was responsible for. I headed further around the outside of the circle, looking for my place again. I could see the writer approaching one of the other shapes: The young man looking at his hands. The note writer was reaching over his shoulder to clasp the hands. I went along.
Finally, I came full circle. My gap was waiting for me, of course. I didn't want to approach. Those eyes of his were a problem for me, and that mine. Well, if I was his, then by the first principle, he was surely mine.
Of course he was mine. Just an arrogant asshole who thought he was superior, who thought he could control everything, who thought the way to protect himself was to destroy himself, bit by bit.
I touched his shoulder. It felt light and dry, like a bit of shed skin. There probably wasn't much of him left now. No, not a skin, he was like a sweets-wrapper that gets discarded on the shore. Something that tasted wonderful at first, but turned out to be awful for you in the long run.
He was turning to me, with those eyes. Mine.
Yes, of course you're mine.
I folded the head down. It went easily, he was very light. Just a stupid, mean little boy. I folded him again lengthwise. I had seen that he was destroying himself for a very long time. I hadn't said anything to him about it, such a good follower. I was too afraid too, of course. He had told me in a dream a few years ago that a real friend would be honest with him. I had let him down there, just like so many of my friends. And perhaps it had been the Source talking in my dream.
I took several quick folds to bring him to a more manageable size. I should clean up my litter, after all. Left here, he would just poison the place. He did tend to wreck everything he touched. He wouldn't be so hard to dispose of now.
The way to the withered hand was clear now. I picked it up. Albus was still looking in at the light. I hadn't made much progress healing that hand while he was alive. Perhaps he had already been too attached to the idea of dying.
That hand… he had been responsible for so much, so many terrible plans. And I had agreed and placed myself into that hand, his willing tool. How much easier it had been for me to place myself into the hands of another master than to than to fully face my devastating responsibility to try to fix things myself.
And by the first principle, if I was his willing tool, then he was mine. He let me put the responsibility off myself, to externalize the self-loathing and self-destruction I liked to carry around as a badge of honor. He carried his own self-loathing, I thought I could recognize the signs.
It was a kind of self-indulgence, I saw, to carry around that pain like a withered hand and refuse to heal. It had prevented me from ever being close to anyone, from being a proper advocate for my students, it saved me from being honest with them or myself. It had allowed me to agree to Albus' plans for martyrdom, the ultimate abdication of responsibility. Of course I agreed and carried it out, because I had wanted that too, in a way. It was so much easier than having to do the real work of healing oneself and rebuilding the world.
We don't get out of it that easily, I told him. We'll have to do it bit by bit.
I pulled him down to sit next to me so I could work on the hand. It had been very hard to forgive him, because that would mean acknowledging how much we were the same. The hand was responding, slowly. I could see it a bit better as well, the light spilling over us without obstruction. I looked up; nothing stood between us and the light now, it…
Pomona gripped my shoulder. We were in the Source room, looking at the pool. It was welling up slowly from the center. A breeze was making the torchlight play on the walls. The others were with us, watching it. I wiped my eyes.
I didn't see the changes at first. I went back out to the greenhouse in a bit of a daze. I made my excuses that I needed to start immediately brewing several rounds of Wolfsbane for testing. I didn't leave again for several days. I wanted to be very sure that there would be no chance of my running into 'Darlin' in the dense stretch of forest that now stood between the greenhouse and the castle.
Pomona let it slip four days later, as she delivered another armload of ingredients for my latest batch. "Poor Hagrid, he's inconsolable."
"About what?" I asked hopefully.
"Darling took off last night. He said he heard her baying far off into the mountains."
I had heard the baying myself as I was brewing, and doubled the wards on the greenhouse doors. I let out a sigh and sank into a chair.
"Where do you want these?" She hefted the ingredients.
"I don't. I have enough batches for testing." I'd probably had enough days ago.
"Of all the –"
"Where's Dick? I want to get these to the lab."
"He's in the woods gathering specimens, which is where I would be if I weren't harvesting ingredients that you don't want."
"Fine. If you would tell him –"
"Oh, yes, yes," she said disgustedly.
I took the path through the woods that Hagrid had been clearing for the past few days, still rough with fresh stumps and stray logs. The debris reminded me unpleasantly of the clearcut I had visited a few months ago. The verdant woods around did soften the impression. Despite the enormous size of the trees, heavily hung with moss, it seemed fresh and new. I didn't recognize some of the trees and plants along the trail. Dick and Pomona had samples of them all, no doubt.
Birdsong drifted in the air. An obsick bird flew clumsily through the trees, landed swaying on a sapling, then took off again with a squawk.
I had dreamed of my death the night before. Perhaps it was that deep baying in the woods that triggered it. I was on the floor of the shack, watching the pool of my blood stretch and grow around me until I was in a dark pool. There were shadowy figures standing just out of my view, watching. My consciousness left my body, in the way of dreams, and sank slowly through the warped floorboards, following the turning passages of my blood. At length I was through the floor, floating near the top of a vast dark space. I could see the pool below me, shining and welling. It was still beautiful. I was a drop falling through that vast space. No, not falling, rising. A drop leaving the surface of the pool up through that vast space, working its way up through the floorboards like sap rising through a tree in the spring. My consciousness returned to myself. From my vantage point on the floor I could see the figures standing around, all those who had been lost…
The trail wound into a bright glade of young birches and ferns. I stopped short. This place seemed familiar somehow, but of course that was impossible, this part of the woods was all new. But I remembered some place like it – what was it? It must have been my fourth year. Avery and I were playing the hunt and looking for a place to set up a ambush for Walden when we came across an open glade. Of course, that had been in the springtime, there were tall foxgloves bobbing among drowsy bees… but that was a long time ago now.
The trees thinned as I ascended towards the castle and ended at a small swampy pool lined with willow-shrubs and reeds. A grey horse head submerged itself in the dark water as I followed the path around the edge and out onto the field.
The castle itself didn't look any different from the outside, at least. I came through the entrance hall to the main stairs. I had to step back quickly as a flight of stairs came spinning slowly up through the air. It ground into place at the west wing third-story cross-passage above. The portraits shied away from the impact.
The portraits were alive again, but they weren't quite how I remembered. In place of Ortaire d'Pinchemont was a dog-headed man in an Elizabethan collar. Genevieve Cadwallader was now sprouting flowers from her head. The group portrait of the 'York Guild of Barber-Surgeons of Wizardly Lineage, 1754' was now a dinner party of crows. Madame Molyneux was much herself, but was now on a wild seashore instead of her usual stuffy drawing room. There were others that seemed mostly unchanged, but for some indefinable shift in their expressions.
As no more staircases were flying at me, I leaned over cautiously into the stairwell and looked below. Filius and Hooch were in the base of the stairwell in a warded circle. Filius' jar of air and Pomona's piece of the foundation stone were in the circle with them. They must be resetting the charms. Hooch gave me an expansive wave. The staircase above bucked.
"Careful, Rolanda!" said Filius.
"Oi, Snape!" Hooch called up. "I hear you've been bleeding into buckets! Awfully sorry I missed it!"
"Filius," I said, "Where's Minerva?"
"Up in her office, I think."
"You'll have to go round the back," said Hooch. "Oh, and if you ever come up with a repeating potion to treat cramps, I'm all ears."
Filius' wand wavered and the stairs jolted askew. "Rolanda, please!"
I left them to their repairs. It wasn't a terrible suggestion; there could be quite a lucrative market for that sort of potion.
'Round the back' meant the Great Hall again. I paused before the large double doors. There was no seal on them now, so it was probably quite safe. And if not, well, I had been through several times when it wasn't so safe at all. I opened the doors.
The hall was quiet, peaceful again. Benches upended on tables, everything in order. The ceiling sky was a mixture of blue and scattered clouds, moving slowly across, pushed by a distant steady wind.
About three-quarters across was a cordoned-off area. There was a small clear pool about a meter across between the tables. It was still, reflecting the sky above. Perhaps that was contentment.
I went out into the service corridor, and up the back stairs. On the fifth floor landing, I met a house elf bustling past with a pitcher of water. She took no notice of me. I thought I saw a glimpse of tail peeking from below her pillowcase as she disappeared into the east service corridor.
Minerva was up in her office, as Filius had said. Bulstrode was standing by her desk as she signed letters. She was reading them carefully, I noticed.
"Come in, Severus." She handed the completed stack of letters to Bulstrode. "Do you think you can send those off without sabotaging anything?"
"We'll see, ma'am." Bulstrode gave me a nod as she headed out the door. I took the seat in front of the desk. Albus' portrait was not in his usual pleasant slumber. He was looking down at us. It had also changed in a way, I saw. A faint cast of sorrow clouded his face. Maybe that was better, in a way.
"I'm glad you've finally come up. Done brewing?"
"I have enough for the first round of testing. And enough of the water for quite a bit more. Further testing should go through the lab; I'll be going there to set up the protocol as soon as possible."
"And the water is stable?"
"It appears so."
She sighed. "It's all we have to go on. Have you been in the Great Hall?"
I nodded.
"Certainly there have been profound changes in the school. It's so… indefinite, but nothing seems negative or malevolent, at least. I went back to the Source room again yesterday. And again, nothing definite, but it feels so much clearer than before. I'm not sure it's enough to go on for opening for term as usual, to be honest. Filius at least is very encouraged. He thinks we may be safe enough if we watch carefully for symptoms. Or nightmares. Maybe it will be well enough, for now."
And by the Third Principle, the caster may affect the spell and the spell the caster. If my dream was any indication, we would be working on affecting the Source for a long time, day by day. Working on affecting ourselves too, if it came to that, even if it was just a personal decision to heal, rather than destroy. We were part of it, after all, and every little part could stand for the whole. We all had to have that determination to heal, now.
Minerva went on. "There is still so much work to do! I do wish Horace would get off his rear and answer my letters! We will need him on board now more than ever."
If I knew Sluggy, he would evade Minerva's letters as long as humanly possible.
"Now, I wanted to talk to you, Severus. Minister Shacklebolt Floo-called me yesterday. He said he had word you were here."
I sighed. "Aberforth."
"Very likely. Minister Shacklebolt wanted to make sure that the school was secure, now that your survival is public knowledge. He was, well, a bit alarming. He said that there might be attempts on your life. I, I think I do owe you an apology. You had good reasons to cut off contact, however it may have felt personally.
I wasn't sure what to say to that.
"In any case, he wanted to make sure that you didn't have any unsecured personal effects here that could be used in tracking or location charms. The only things I could think of were your contract and some of your old papers. I'm afraid Horace has completely overhauled your old quarters."
She turned and opened Albus' portrait. There was a thin stack of papers, my old contract on top, with the signature in blood. Of course, such a signature could be used in a tracking charm. She picked up the stack. A small folded note was left in the cavity. She paused, and reached to close the portrait. I put my hand out to stop her.
She looked at me. "Severus?"
"Might we go somewhere else?"
We went to the same arithmancy classroom as before. No portraits. We sat on either side of the teacher's desk with the note between us. I looked at it, feeling hollowed out.
"Severus." Her voice sounded strange in the long silence. "You don't have to… I can keep it in a secure location."
Perhaps she could, and perhaps it would gnaw at me from afar as the Source had been doing all these years. But still, I couldn't quite move to pick it up.
"I remember when the news came," Minerva said. "It was your seventh year, wasn't it? It was horrible. As a teacher, you always remember. You know; you've had to give news like that to your own students."
And here it was, more than twenty years later and I still couldn't face it or talk about it. All that silence. And what good had it ever done me?
"I stopped speaking to her. I hadn't spoken to her for months. Ever since Dad walked out on us that summer. I was furious with her."
Minerva didn't say anything.
"For him walking out. For her being the sort of person who gets walked out on. For her staying with him for so long. For, for the fact that I hated him and I missed him. For her not being good enough to keep him. I saw myself the same way, and I blamed her for that. I sent her letters back unopened all autumn. Until that came."
We looked at it. I didn't move to pick it up.
"She had been isolated for a long time. I don't know exactly what happened with her family, but they cut us off when I was very young. She never got on with the neighbors. They could tell we were different. To them, she must have seemed like she thought herself above them. So it was only me and dad. And then he left and I stopped speaking to her and she had nobody. I knew she was…"
"What?" Minerva asked gently. Managing me, but the thought didn't come with the usual irritation.
"She was ill." If that was the word. I wasn't sure what else to call that special mix of depression, isolation, and anger festering into self-destruction. "We all were, the whole family. Sometimes, what she would say or do, it wasn't her, it was the illness. It got worse over time. There was less and less of her left."
I moved my hand towards the note and stopped. "I have some good memories of her. Before the illness completely took over. Those are the ones I want to keep. If I read that, what if there wasn't anything of her left, just the illness talking? Then the last words I would have to remember her wouldn't even be her. Or if she offered some excuse, would try to tell me I would be better off. Or if she did what I was already doing and blamed me. Then forever, that last memory…"
We were both silent for a while.
"I don't blame you; I wouldn't want to read that either," Minerva finally said.
"Listen, Severus, what if I… Let me read it for you," she said.
I didn't refuse. She picked up the note and opened it.
I wished I couldn't read the look on her face as she read. For a long moment she didn't do anything. Then she tore a strip off the bottom of the note, and touched her wand to the rest. The light of the Incendio burned my eyes. I turned away.
Minerva was pushing the scrap of paper across the desk towards me, past the small pile of ash. "But you knew that already," she said.
I love you always.
Mum
We sat for a long time.
A/N:
There will be one more chapter, an epilogue. I will be posting it more quickly than usual, in a few days, as soon as typing and editing allows. I'll post an update on my profile as soon as I know what day it will be up. Thank you all for reading!
