I don't think this is my best work, but it is my best effort. Thanks to everyone who has read this far. I always feel like I don't say it often enough.
A Series of Events
Chapter Twenty-nine
There was a soothing familiarity in working during the small hours of the morning, with only the steady beat of his heart measuring the time. Potentiality weighed down the shadows. Tranquility filled his mind and lightened his hand. In the silence of the dungeons, cocooned by ancient stone and deep water, Severus could almost believe he was the last living man on earth.
St Mungo's did not contain that same ephemeral quality. The glow of yellow street lights seeped in from the windows, cutting the shadows into unfamiliar shapes. The curtains around his bed did not muffle the snores and soft cries of the other patients, nor the squeak and shuffle of the Healer's rubber-soled shoes as she meandered in the dark. Potentiality and tranquility had been usurped by half-remembered nightmares and a throbbing disquiet in the back of his mind, biding its time.
Severus charmed his ruined robes out of the box of possessions tucked underneath his bed. With a flap and a snap, they flew up and draped themselves over his lap. He slipped his hand through the hole torn out of the shoulder, the thick, black fabric stiff with dried blood.
The damage was not as irreparable as Severus had imagined. A bit of Transfiguration, a few twisted and pulled threads, and a blast of cleaning charms should be enough to render his robes wearable once more. As he worked, however, some of the tattered fibers under his wand crumbled to nothing. His spellwork might hold for a day, perhaps two, but the snake's venom clung to the wool threads, slowly eating away at the fibers.
Severus huffed, examining his handiwork in the candlelight. Better these disintegrating rags than staggering home in a hospital gown.
He tossed the robes over to the chair Minerva had left behind, his shoulder stiffening at the last moment. He hissed as a jolt of pain rushed down his arm. The robes fell out of his hand and onto the floor. He clutched at his arm, pulling the useless limb close to his body.
"Mr. Snape, it's four in the morning," the Healer hissed from the opening between the curtains. "And you're not supposed to be doing magic."
He straightened his back, his hand sliding away from his aching shoulder. He made no move to hide the wand. "Am I interrupting your beauty sleep, Miss Fetteridge?"
"For the last time, it's Healer—"
"Since you are here," Severus said with a sniff, "you can inform Healer Smethwyck as soon as he arrives that I will be going home first thing today." Severus charmed the robes back onto the bed, flicking his wand with a steady hand even as his shoulder screamed.
"And what gives you the authority to discharge yourself?" Smethwyck said as he stormed to Severus's bedside some hours later, his green Healer robes flapping around his body as he gesticulated.
"You yourself said my wounds have healed," Severus said as he finished getting dressed. His fingers trembled as they fumbled the buttons into their buttonholes. Charms and spells kept his body upright and his shoulder numb, but they never last long. He patted his pockets in search of his silver cigarette case, forgetting for a moment it was not in his possession. "I shall continue my convalescence in the comfort of my own home."
"Is that right?" Smethwyck said. "Well then, I hope you have someone at home to scrape you off the ground when you get there, because those charms you cast on yourself are going to give out as soon as you try Apparating or Flooing out of here."
Severus tugged at his collar and his sleeves, slowly blinking as even those casual, inconsequential movements ran spikes of pain up and down his arm. "Any other fine words of advice, Healer?"
"Yes, get back into that bed."
Pain sharpened Severus's sneer. "Thank you, but my own bed is already beckoning. Ah, Miss Fetteridge, thank you." He snatched the small satchel out of the young Healer's hands. The bottles and phials inside clinked together as he tucked the lot into his robes.
"It's Healer Fetteridge," she muttered under her breath, glaring at Severus. "You—" Smethwyck lifted his hand, silencing her.
Severus gave the bed one last cursory glance. "You may keep the chair," he said as he sidestepped the Healers and strode out of the ward.
"We don't want the gaudy thing," Healer Smethwyck shouted after Severus, the words drowned out by stomping of Severus's feet.
On a chair by the stairwell doors was an abandoned copy of the Daily Prophet. Severus grabbed the paper and stuffed it into his robes without stopping and strode out of the ward.
The stairwell was empty. As the doors slid shut behind him, Severus collapsed against the railing, his body beginning to tremble. The effort it took to flounce out of the ward was perhaps more than the charms holding him up could support.
Slumped over the rail, he took one shallow breath, and then another. He wiped the fine sheen of sweat on his brow with the back of his hand. What little bile his empty stomach contained gathered at the back of his throat.
He groped for his wand, nearly letting it slip out of his shaking hand. A few whispered spells, and false energy surged once more through his veins, driving back the tremulous fatigue for a while longer. Severus straightened his spine and staggered back from the railing. He took another fortifying breath and squared his shoulders.
Spinner's End was only a turn and a twist away. He had survived death; he could make it that far.
Severus Apparated into his home's fenced-in yard and promptly fell face-first onto the hard, rocky ground. He lay there for a time, a blade of scraggly grass in his eye and sharp-edged pebbles digging into his cheek. The stench of Cokeworth filled his nostrils, and a grossly unexpected pang of sentimentality pierced through the exhaustion and pain.
He lurched to his feet with the grace of a battered prizefighter, digging his feet and knees and fingers into the cold dirt. His eyes watered from the brightness of the early morning sun. A bird cawed overhead as he staggered to the kitchen door, his dirt-covered hand fumbling with the handle.
The house reeked of dust, mold, and neglect. His good shoulder scraped against the wall as he dragged himself forward. He hadn't been here in over a year. Two? He could practically hear the mice and the doxies eating away at his books.
He fell into his armchair, sending up a gray cloud of dust into the air. He coughed, then groaned as the coughing jolted his shoulder. His bed beckoned, a familiar respite only a thousand steps away.
Severus settled deeper into the chair cushions, closed his eyes, and waited for his body to prepare for the long trudge upstairs. The house creaked around him, perhaps surprised by his return.
Perhaps he was projecting.
The day slipped away on half-formed dreams as he drifted in and out of sleep. The shadows lengthened in the afternoon light and the house grew colder. A distant bell tolled, nudging Severus out of his stupor.
He rolled his neck, crying out as he pulled at his wound. Covering the aching wound with one hand and dropping his head back, he searched blindly for the hospital satchel and the subpar potions inside. He could still taste the bitter, ashy remnants of the last concoction they had forced down his throat—
Severus pulled out the pilfered copy of the Prophet. He stared long and hard at the paper, the memory of taking it during his escape not immediately coming to mind.
Potter's face peered out at Severus from the photograph taking up most of the front page, his green eyes muted into somber shades of newspaper ink. The boy lifted his head higher, his nose nearly over the fold, as if to take a better look at the walking ruin his professor had become.
Severus unfolded the paper, scowling as he took a better look at the photograph of Potter, dressed in a dark suit and surrounded by Miss Granger and a boogle of Weasleys. A single white rose was pinned to the boy's lapel. The Lupin funeral, he wondered as he caught sight of Minerva, lingering behind the sea of redheads. Fred Weasley's, the caption underneath the photograph corrected.
Potter's image settled back onto its heels, its face unreadable as it glanced down at the bottom of the page before looking back up at Severus.
There, tucked away between "You-Know-Who's Last Days - page 4-5" and "Hogwarts Repairs Continue", was a tiny dark headline: "Hogwarts Headmaster Exonerated, 'Act of LOVE' - page 2."
Severus threw the paper at the cold fireplace. The sheets of newsprint separated and fluttered onto the floor.
He stared at the mess and waited for his heart to stop racing. He had spent nearly a week in hospital, and not once did Potter show his face. Instead, he had the gall to traipse about and sell Severus's secrets to the Prophet of all places, to expose every shameful piece of Severus's life to all and sundry. Potter's photograph looked up from where it had landed on the floor. The ink facsimile pleaded, its expression soft and open, for Severus's understanding.
Severus snatched the page off the floor and scanned the damning article, anxiety squeezing his insides. If there was anything about Lily Potter—
…Sources say that Snape was working undermine You-Know-Who on the direct orders of the late Albus Dumbledore, the article said. Potter, who, according to his schoolmates, has clashed with his former professor several times, provided the evidence to Ministry officials, vehemently defending Snape, calling him 'the bravest man [Potter] had ever known'.
…Snape is currently at St Mungo's, recovering from injuries sustained during the clash at Hogwarts earlier this week. One source close to the matter confirmed that Potter himself had taken Snape to hospital the morning of You-Know-Who's defeat, and had reportedly visited the professor no less than two times.
Severus turned the page over, slapping it down onto his lap. The Weasleys in the photograph scrambled from underneath his palm, their mouths hanging open with surprise and indignation. Potter stared at him from the gap between Severus's ring and middle fingers.
"Were you under that infernal Cloak of yours?" His hand slid off Potter's monochromatic image. "Too much of a coward to show your face?"
The photograph had no answers for him.
A sigh escaped Severus. He crumbled the paper into a ball and tossed it into the fireplace, sending the rest of it into the fireplace with a flick of his wand. The Prophet's habitual lies aside, what did it matter to him if Potter had visited? Only mutual dislike bound them now—
"You need to live," Potter whispered against his skin, his racing heartbeat thrumming against Severus's lips—
"Incendio!" The newsprint burst into white-hot flames, momentarily blinding Severus with its intensity. He swore, blinking away the tears.
As he rubbed the moisture and flash blindness out of his eyes, a letter squeezed through the gap underneath the front door. It floated up into the air, flipped once, twice, and glided back down to the floor.
Severus rose to his feet, one hand on the chair for support and the other on his wand. Another letter slipped inside, its dark parchment sealed shut by a dollop of acid yellow wax, and flopped on top of the first, followed by another and another.
The letters pushed through the cracks, from the sides, from the top. They piled up by the door, wax-sealed beige parchment and machine-pressed bleach white envelopes and a dozen Howlers, smoke seeping out the edges.
He barely managed snapping a shield around the pile when one of the Howlers exploded. "YOU MURDERER!" a voice boomed.
"Silencio!" Severus dropped back into the chair, his own ragged breathing loud in his ears as Howler after Howler silently burst open. The spells around the letters buckled but did not shatter from the pressure of a dozen rage-filled missives. The flooring quaked from the screams until, one by one, the Howlers, spent of the senders' ire, tumbled back onto the pile and crumbled into ashes.
The shield spell fell apart with a pop. Acrid smoke curled up to the ceiling. Bits of parchment smoldered, the blackened ends curling as tiny embers burned the paper away. A wave of his wand gathered the letters and whisked them into the fireplace onto the Prophet's still-smoking remains. A flick freshened the air, filling the room with the cloying scent of gardenias in full bloom. He stared at the glowing embers as they ate away at ink and wax and paper for much too long before dousing the embers with a muttered "Aguamenti" and dragging himself to bed.
In that shabby, old house, it was easy to forget the rest of the world existed. The terraces, left behind and forgotten by the world, their entrances boarded up in grey, sheltered nothing but rats and vandals. No children screamed and tussled in the back streets. No neighbors banged against the walls. The air carried the smell of decay through the streets, from the river to the long-forgotten mill.
Spinner's End was a wasteland of crumbling ruins, a refuge built on atrophy and neglect.
The outside world, however, kept intruding on Severus's solitude. Owls flew into his kitchen in the morning to drop Howlers onto his breakfast of toast and leftover curry. Letters slipped in from under the door while he scraped together something more effective than the potions those dunderheads at St Mungo's forced upon him. On top of the book he was reading, into the cup of tea in his hand, beside his pillow as he slept, the letters came at all hours of the day. Severus barely spared a glance at the names scrawled on the envelopes before tossing each and every one into the fire.
Not one had been from someone he trusted not to curse him through the post.
Not one had been from—
Severus returned from the corner shop Saturday afternoon to find a school owl perched on the back of his armchair, a cream-colored envelope trapped underneath its claws. The tawny owl turned its head, hooted once, and shook out its feathers.
"Am I keeping you?" He dropped his shopping on the couch.
The owl hooted again. It snapped its beak at him as he drew closer.
Severus yanked the letter away from the bird, tearing the parchment on the bird's claws and knocking the owl off its perch. It squawked, falling backwards before wilding flapping its wings and flying up to the mantle, far from Severus's reach. It glared at Severus and regurgitated a pellet, dropping it out onto his floor.
"Enlightening." He sat down on the couch, nudging the bag away with this elbow. He sneered at the tawdry Gryffindor lion stamped into the red wax seal, dug his fingernails underneath the seal, and pulled the envelope apart.
The message inside was shorter than he had expected.
Severus,
You have not responded to the letter I sent on Thursday—
Severus glanced at the ashes in the fireplace. "Hm."
—but if you are enduring a deluge of letters as we are here, you may have thrown it out sight unseen.
You need to return to Hogwarts as soon as you can. If you don't, I will visit you myself and drag you back, by the ear if need be.
The school needs its Headmaster.
- Minerva
He stared at the note before tossing it onto the armchair. He blindly rummaged through his shopping bag and pulled out a packet of Mayfairs. The owl hooted.
"You don't have to stay," he said. He fiddled with the plastic wrapping. "And I don't have any message for you to take back."
The owl started properly squawking and flapping its wings. Severus threw the blue packet of cigarettes at it. The owl flew out of the way at the last moment. It swooped down towards Severus's head, nearly grazing him with its claws, before flying out the room and to the kitchen.
Severus sank into the cushions, tense irritation giving way to resignation. He let out a long, audible sigh. "Damn it," he said, covering his face with his hand.
In the waning sunlight, Hogwarts stood seemingly unchanged. The shadows hid the broken gaps in the masonry. The lights in the windows beckoned to empty grounds. The light, late spring breeze rippled the lake waters and teased the strands of his hair.
Tattered wards, invisible to the eye, swayed through the air. They brushed against Severus as he walked towards the school gates. He curled a finger around a strand, a thousand of years of magic vibrating painfully against his skin before slipping away into the ether.
The gates sprung open at the sight of him. The very ground seemed to hum. "Don't be so eager," he muttered even as a smile began to form on his face, almost against his will. He grazed his fingertips against the metal gate.
The white tomb shone in the growing darkness, the last rays of the sun burnishing the marble gold. Severus drew closer, a shiver running down his spine. In his absence, the tomb had been restored.
The marble was still warm from the sun. Did Potter do this, he wondered as he drew his hand away. Did the chosen one purify what the Dark Lord defiled?
Severus must be exhausted, if his mind could conjure up nothing but trite nonsense.
The hum under his feet grew stronger as he reached the main doors. He could hear the castle sing, its pain and anxiety and joy vibrating through him. He gritted his teeth against the sensation.
"Welcome back, Headmaster," a broken statue said from where it lay by the door.
Severus pressed his hand against the stone. "Hush," he said. The hum grew quieter. "Where is everyone?"
"The Great Hall," the statue said, its voice dropping to a whisper. "Now that you're here, maybe these dolts can get around to fixing me."
As Severus stole close to the Great Hall, he could hear the clinking of utensils and snippets of subdued voices. Twenty or so people huddled together at the far end of the Gryffindor table, the decimated remains of their meals still in front of them.
Potter sat among them, his face sharp and clean. The warm candlelight softened the hard edges the past year had carved into his face. A corner of his mouth twitched unexpectedly as he listened to his dining companions speak and Severus could feel his heart lurch.
He knew Potter lived. He saw the proof three days before, printed in ink that smeared at the touch. And yet, seeing his face in the newspaper did not fill Severus with the urge to grab Potter, to wrap his arms around him. To proof to himself that yes, Potter was alive and real and—
He slunk back, a shiver running through him, and pressed his fingers against his lips. His heart pounded against his chest, frightened and overwhelmed.
It was relief, Severus told himself as he drank in the sight of him. Relief that Potter's inestimable luck had seen him through even death. Nothing else.
The portraits whispered greeetings as Severus passed them. A helmetless suit of armor waved its only arm. Hogwarts hummed in a melancholic minor chord as he strode deeper into the bowels of the castle. The silence of the dungeons enveloped him, but Potter's face lingered in his thoughts, driving back what tranquility he had hoped to find.
Next time: Harry.
