Six: Amsterdam

Harry had never watched this much TV in his life.

They'd arrived in Amsterdam late last night, and Harry had fallen asleep the moment he'd laid down. But after breakfast the next morning, it became clear Snape didn't really know what to do with him, especially since they'd been packed together into a single room, with twin beds and a tiny bathroom where the shower door got stuck against the wall if you tried to open it all the way. It wasn't as fancy as Ms Hetzel's place, but it felt more like the sort of room one stayed in when travelling, and Harry enjoyed that. He'd spent much of the morning making up dialogue in his head for the Dutch shows he scanned through, but he'd got bored of that now, switched to the sports channel—Uncle Vernon watched football sometimes, so Harry knew a little about it—and began to imagine things about his own life instead.

In order to do so, he lay back on the bed, so he could see the ceiling when he looked up, and when he looked to his right, Snape sitting by the window-side table. Back in Ghent, Snape had sat out on the balcony most days, and now he kept to that little table; Harry thought maybe he was watching the street, to make sure no one was pursuing them. He knew if that were true, Snape would have been watching for the wizard police who might come take Harry to some sort of wizarding prison for what he'd done, but that wasn't a thing he liked to think about; so instead, he imagined he was Snape's captive, and that Dumbledore and the Ministry of Magic and Harry's friends had all teamed up to try and find him, only Snape kept outsmarting them. Harry couldn't escape, because Snape had taken away his wand when he'd kidnapped him and told Harry he would break it in half if he tried to run away. And without his wand, Harry couldn't go to Hogwarts anymore or be a wizard—he'd have to go back to the Dursleys and never see Ron or Hermione again.

But Harry wasn't about to sit around doing nothing, either. In every place they visited, he carved little messages into the wooden bedframes, like breadcrumbs that would eventually lead his friends back to him—he didn't actually do it, of course, he wasn't a vandal—and then one night, he would get Snape drunk and steal his wand from out of his coat as he slept.

He wasn't planning on doing that either, but it was a fun thing to imagine.

'Am I really more interesting than the television?'

Harry quickly looked back at the ceiling. 'No, sir.'

He heard Snape sigh. 'Merlin save me from bored children. Go on then, up. I would give you some cauldrons to scrub instead, but I suppose I shall have to take you out on a walk or you'll start getting into your usual mischief.'

'I won't!' Harry said, because it was true, and all he'd been doing was just sitting there yet Snape was already getting on his case.

'I don't believe you. Get up.'

Harry wouldn't be surprised if Snape had actually kidnapped him: he had the character for it. He was probably going to sell him off to a human trafficker. Maybe Snape went around and talked to the parents of all his pupils, pretending like it was about their grades or behaviour or some such thing, and then instead he would find out if they were any good with chores. And if he'd asked the Dursleys, he would have found out Harry could do lots around the house, and immediately thought, ah yes, the perfect little slave to sell on the black market.

He thought about that as they walked, and crossed little bridges and dodged cyclists and crowds of tourists, and as the skies grew darker and darker with the sweat gathered over days of heat. Amsterdam seemed to be half water already, the canals cut into street after street after street, and Harry thought maybe it had made the ground wet and precarious, because some of the prettiest houses stood tilted toward one another.

About an hour in, Harry's feet began to ache. He had never walked quite as much with Ms Hetzel, or at such relentlessly quick pace, and he was thinking now that Snape was probably trying to tire him out.

He felt relief when they came across a square covered entirely in booths and stalls and people, and were forced to slow down significantly.

'Stay close,' Snape ordered, sounding distinctly displeased.

Harry had never seen a market this big. He followed Snape closely past stalls bursting with bags, with antique clockfaces, with jewellery and books and vinyl records and caricatures of celebrities. The smells on their own were overwhelming: sweat and storm and beer and grease, rushing at him from all directions until he wrinkled his nose trying to keep them out.

A man at one of the food stalls yelled something at them that Harry didn't understand, and then yelled it again in English, 'Fresh herring! You want fresh herring? Come try, Amsterdam delicacy!'

The fresh herring was probably the worst of all the smells: strong and salty and covered in onion and pickles, and—

'It's raw,' Harry said out loud, because it felt important that Snape should be made aware.

'Lovely,' Snape said. 'We'll take one for the boy.'

Harry looked up to him in horror. But when the man handed Snape the atrocity on a tiny paper tray, he didn't try and force it on Harry.

'I wouldn't waste this on a child's tastebuds,' he said, then took Harry by the shoulder and steered him toward a different stall, which held a deep pan drowned in grease, and a stack of small, oval-shaped doughnuts covered in powdered sugar. 'These would be better suited, I imagine.'

Harry's doughnuts came hot from the pan and not tasting much like doughnuts, but he thought they were probably one of the best things he'd ever eaten, even as they burnt the tips of his fingers and covered his collar in white dust. He didn't understand Snape at all, sometimes: he was extra careful to always try and be the scariest, meanest person around, but then he'd been surprisingly nice to Harry a few times during this trip. Maybe he was just stressed out at school, Harry thought, and summer helped him relax a little; or maybe he was fattening Harry up because the human trafficker preferred chubby children.

'Are you really going to eat that, sir?' he asked Snape. He wouldn't have put it past him to have purchased the herring only to give Harry a scare.

'Yes, Potter, I am really going to eat that.'

Harry rose on his toes a little to see the fish again. Oh God. He instantly felt bad for Snape.

'Well, you can have some of my doughnuts after if you like,' he told him. 'To get rid of the taste.'

Snape smiled at that, with the very corner of his mouth. Harry didn't know whether to be pleased that Snape thought he was funny or embarrassed by it.

Once they'd left the market area, he could step to the side and put more distance between himself and the smelly fish. He felt a burst of cold on the tip of his head and looked up at the skies: it would begin pouring down any minute.

Maybe Snape wouldn't have kidnapped him to sell on as a child slave. He imagined it differently, now: what if Snape was going to keep him for himself, because for some reason he wanted to have a child, but he was scary and unpleasant so of course no one would ever want to have one with him? He would have gone to an adoption agency or something like that first, and had to answer all these questions, and then the people there would have said, sir, we can't in good faith give you a child, you would be a truly horrible father, and so he'd have to kidnap himself one instead. He was going to bring Harry to his house and keep him chained in a dungeon, feeding him raw fish for every meal and having him scrub cauldrons to stop him getting up to mischief, and if he scrubbed a thousand cauldrons, he would get a baggie of tiny Dutch doughnuts as a reward.

'We need to find a place to hide,' Snape said, looking at the sky like it had just asked a stupid question in Potions.

'There's a coffeeshop there,' Harry pointed to a yellow-striped storefront. It looked like some sort of exotic shop, because it had palm leaves or something like that set in a neon light next to a banner that read, Mellow Yellow Coffeeshop. It gave Harry the impression it would be nice and warm inside, which he could really use right now.

The corner of Snape's mouth smiled again. 'I don't imagine the Headmaster would be happy to hear I was partaking in this particular type of coffee while I'm meant to be watching you.'

Harry wasn't sure what that was about. Aunt Petunia sometimes made Irish coffee for her friends when they came over and it smelled strongly of alcohol, so he guessed maybe Snape had meant something like that.

Before he could suggest Snape just order a non-alcoholic coffee, or maybe a tea, the door to the shop blew open and a man erupted from inside, large and broad-shouldered and entirely intimidating, especially as he shouted,

'Severus!'

Snape stiffened.

The man crossed the road, stumbling a little with a chortle all to himself, and then he was right next to them and clapping Snape on the back like they were old friends.

'Fancy seeing you here! What, ten years now? Bloody Merlin but you look the same! On holiday, are you?'

'Valerian,' Snape said curtly. He was, Harry noticed, trying to subtly edge forward until he'd placed himself between Harry and the Valerian man.

'Valerian, please. No one calls me that anymore—we were just trying to sound all serious, weren't we? As fancy as purebloods, with our Valerians and Severuses. Some sick sense of humour our mothers had, punching above their weight—it's just Val now, dear old Sev—years on, and you still can't relax? Come, join me—'

'I am fine, thank you. As you can see, I have company.'

'Oh, right, right,' Valerian seemed like he'd only just noticed Harry standing there. 'They're not letting him in, that's for sure! Is he yours, the little elf?'

If Harry weren't so concerned about this whole circumstance and Snape's reaction to it, he would have told the man that he took offense at being called an elf, and at being denied entry to the coffeeshop just because he wasn't an adult—he didn't think they should be allowed to discriminate against children this way, but maybe that was normal in the Netherlands. He glared at the man instead, determined to show him he wasn't going to be cowed in any case.

Then, the man's eyes widened.

'He's not yours, is he? That's—'

'Valerian.'

'The Boy Who Lived, as I live and breathe. What are you doing with him?'

'I suggest you drop this matter entirely, Valerian, if you do not wish for things to get ugly.'

Valerian laughed loud enough that Harry's ears rang with it. 'This is splendid! Severus Snape, dearest, most loyal, an inspiration to all—and he's licking little baby Potter's boots the moment the wind changes! Fantastic.'

Harry caught a sliver of Snape's glare. It made him shudder. He really wanted for the man to go away, so Snape could stop looking like that, so they could go and forget about the entire thing—

'Look, don't worry,' Valerian patted Snape on his chest. 'Not young and stupid anymore. I'm too old for this shit, all of that effort—I can't be bothered. You want to be Potter's lapdog now, go be Potter's lapdog, what do I care? Hey, baby Potter, listen. I'm going to give you some advice now.'

He leaned forward, until his face was roughly level with Harry's—Snape pulled him back—

'Don't. Bother,' Valerian said, too loud for how close he was standing. 'Seriously, don't bother. They told us we would change the world, didn't they, Severus? And look at that, everything's the same. Same assholes in power, same vermin on the streets—do you know, I can go in there and I can get all the blasted buzz I want. But if I do this—'

He pulled out his wand.

Snape grabbed him by the shirt.

'—relax, relax! Not gonna try anything in front of your little elf. I'm just saying, I pull this out here, in the street, like a free man in this country, and they can bloody charge me—half the bloody Malfoy fortune, they can fine me. What can you do? We tried to change things round, and when we get smack for it, well, the Dark Lord's conveniently in the ground by then—'

'Won't you shut up—'

'Hey, you alright there?'

A green-haired girl who'd just exited the coffeeshop was walking their direction, followed by a pack of friends all bearing the same puzzled looks. Harry felt a burst of hope.

'Hey, man, you need to cool down, alright?' she said to Valerian, then called something out to her friends in Dutch. She looked at Harry, then at Snape. 'You're bothering them. Come sit down inside, okay?'

'I think what he needs is a long rest,' Snape hissed. Harry took a step closer to the green-haired girl. 'Where are you staying, Valerian?'

'Just there,' Valerian pointed, nearly hitting Snape in the face. 'Ha! Just there, there's a street up there, and then it's left and Bob's your uncle, as they say—'

'I'll take him back to his hotel,' Snape told the girl. 'He's an old friend.'

'Okay,' she seemed unconvinced. She threw another glance at Harry. 'Are you sure you're going to be alright?'

Harry wanted to tell her no, he wasn't sure of that at all, but Snape was already yanking Valerian along, and every instinct in Harry was telling him that trying to disobey right now would be a bad idea.

'Arrivederci,' Valerian saluted the girl, and as he did, Harry spotted a black shape on the skin of his forearm: something fine and detailed that didn't look like hair.

'Arrivederci,' the girl said. 'Cool tattoo by the way.'

Valerian glanced down at his forearm, then back up at her, and finally doubled in half, laughing maniacally.

Snape looked livid.

They trudged along to Valerian's hotel, and up in the lift and then into his room, all in perfect silence safe for Valerian's jarringly truncated monologues. Snape bodily pushed him onto the lush bed, and then before Harry had had the time to try and take another look at that mysterious tattoo, he was grabbed by the arm and dragged back out into the corridor, and down the stairs and the street, and Snape didn't let him go until they'd reached their own hotel.

Harry was too afraid to ask. He focused instead on memorising each turn, each storefront passed and each street name that wasn't too long or complicated to repeat.

'I need to go take care of some business,' Snape told him. His eyes shone in a way Harry didn't like. 'You will stay in the room and you will not move. Is that clear?'

'Are you going to see Dumbledore?'

'It is none of your concern who I am going to see,' Snape said, but his hand tightened briefly on the pocket where Harry knew he kept the magic mirror, the one he'd use to talk to Dumbledore when he thought Harry was asleep. 'I have asked you if my instructions were clear. Are they clear?'

'Yes, sir.'

Snape left without another word.

For a moment, Harry just sat and breathed.

He tried to sort through the tangle that was his mind. First, there was something going on that Snape didn't want Harry knowing, but was likely on his way to tell Dumbledore about. Second, the creepy man from the coffee shop had spoken of some dark lord, which sounded like it could have been about Voldemort, and he had known Snape when they were young. It seemed like they'd been pretty tight, too, so there was no guarantee Snape wasn't secretly in cahoots with him, and no guarantee he would tell Dumbledore the actual truth. And Harry wouldn't be able to determine that until he knew the full story, and he wouldn't get the full story by sitting in his hotel room, watching TV as if he were a regular boy on a regular holiday.

He didn't have a lot to go on at all, but he knew at least the tattoo was important, or else Snape wouldn't have been so furious about it. And Valerian had seemed like he would be falling asleep right away, which meant that the tattoo along with any further clues were exactly where they'd left them, guarded only by one slumbering drunk.

He remembered the way well, but still he felt a nasty thrill in his stomach every time he turned a corner, bred from nothing other than the alienness of the city, the dusky darkness, the fact that he again wasn't sure whether he was safe with Snape, the fact that he really wished he had Ron and Hermione here with him.

The portier remembered Harry from when they'd brought Valerian, and he let him in with only a nod. Harry wrung his hands together as he traversed corridors and corridors of orange lights, his shadow on the carpeted floor as fluttery as breath.

The door to Valerian's room wasn't locked. Inside, the curtains had been pulled over the window, the darkness deep and all-consuming, punctured only by the red digits of the alarm. Valerian lay much as Harry had seen him last, limbs tossed in all directions, visible only in the stream of light from the corridor—until Harry closed the door, and then saw nothing at all.

He made his way forward blind, feeling around the floor with his foot. By the time he'd caught a leg of the bed on the tip of his shoe, his eyed had adjusted some to the darkness, and he made out the man's face, calm and smooth in sleep.

Harry drew in a breath, held it, then turned on the bedside lamp.

Valerian did not move.

He leaned over the bed, trying to reach where the man's hand lay thrown over his chest, but he fell a few inches short. He would need to climb on the mattress. It was stupid, but he felt more afraid now than he had when getting past Fluffy, and Fluffy hadn't even been asleep at first. He reminded himself Valerian only had the one head, and that his wand lay on the bedside table where he wouldn't be able to immediately reach it; after a moment of consideration, Harry even picked it up and hid it in the drawer.

He put one knee on the mattress. It caved a little but didn't shift. Like a gymnast balanced on a rope, he edged forward until his other knee sat on the bed—the mattress squeaked under his weight—

Valerian's head rolled to the side.

Harry startled back, nearly falling off, before he realised the man's eyes were closed. His breathing hadn't changed. He was still asleep. Harry was safe. Harry was maybe safe even if the man had woken up: that was, perhaps, why he was so afraid in the first place. There was no way of telling if and how much he was risking.

He took Valerian's hand, turned it over and found the tattoo.

It was a black skull, with a snake coming out of its mouth.

He didn't know what it was the green-haired girl had liked about it. He didn't know why it had made Snape so angry, either. All he felt at seeing it was a peculiar sense of unease, like something in Harry was telling him not to look anymore.

He reached out to trace it with his finger. But the moment he made contact with skin, his head howled.

Harry's scar seemed to agree with Snape. The tattoo was bad news.

It had to be Voldemort. The tattoo must have had something to do with Voldemort, because nothing else ever made Harry's scar hurt; and that meant the man had worked for Voldemort, or been friends with him or something, years ago, and all of that had something to do with Snape, too, which would need to wait until later because if Valerian had ever been Voldemort's man, then this was not a good place for Harry to be, not for another minute—

He had just managed to crawl halfway down the bed when he heard footsteps.

Without thinking, Harry leapt, until his knees hit the floor, until he was pushing himself under the bed on his stomach, pulling his feet in just in time, because the door had now opened—

He watched the approach from his poor vantage point, unable to tell anything about the person but that they had a pair of feet that looked like a man's.

The man stood over the bed in perfect silence, for what felt to Harry a lifetime.

Then, a burst of green light struck the room.

Harry's breath stopped.

'Well, that's done,' came a murmur. It was Snape's voice.

This was bad.

Harry waited, with jolted breaths that didn't want to be exhaled properly, until Snape left the room, until the door closed behind him, and a little after that. Then, he crawled out from under the bed, ran across the room, fighting against everything in him calling to turn around and look. He raced down the corridors, down the stairway and the lobby and then up streets and turns, the same way he'd come, the sound of his shoes on the pavement a strange rhythm that made him feel like he was going mad.

This was bad. Had Snape killed that man? Yes, Harry had seen green light in his dreams before, and he'd come to associate it with bad, evil things, and with Voldemort; but even as his instinct shouted a resounding yes, his brain supplied that Harry hadn't heard the incantation, and didn't even know the incantation for killing people, and there were probably many spells that looked green.

Harry needed to get back to their hotel first. He needed to get back before Snape. He needed to—

Even if Snape hadn't killed the man, though, he had done something to him and Harry had been right there, which meant the Ministry would be alerted. Dumbledore had explained it all to Harry before they'd left: how they tracked all underage wizards to make sure they didn't use magic outside of school, but couldn't tell it apart if the child had cast a spell or if someone very close had done it, so kids like Ron would have probably got away with it since they lived with other wizards and triggered their tracker all the time, while kids like Harry or Hermione would be caught straight away. And that meant the police might be after Harry now. And that meant—

What if Snape had killed Valerian? Would someone at the Ministry find out about which spell was used, too, and then think that Harry had done it? That Harry had done it again?

He needed to be back before Snape.

He burst into the hotel, startling the man at reception into spilling some of his coffee, and then raced upstairs and into the room.

He was back before Snape.

He locked himself in the bathroom. While he was splashing water over his face—over his face and his shirt and everywhere—he heard the door open.

They needed to get out of here, he realised. They couldn't stay if the Ministry knew where they were, that was what Dumbledore had said, and Harry didn't want to go to prison for murder, and he definitely didn't want to go to prison for double murder. Going anywhere with Snape didn't sound that great to Harry right now, but the man hadn't killed him so far, had he, and Harry had no idea where to go or how to get there—he needed Snape. He was all alone in a foreign country with a man he didn't know at all, with a man that might have just murdered someone, a man that might have been friends with Voldemort's followers. And he couldn't even run.

He got out of the bathroom.

Snape was facing away from him, readying his pyjamas for the night. It suddenly occurred to Harry that Snape always wore long sleeves.

'Have you showered?' he asked. 'If so, get into bed.'

'No, but—' every muscle in Harry's body tightened. 'Shouldn't we get going, sir? You know, to where we're going next?'

'We're going to Berlin on Monday.'

Monday. That was two days from now. By Monday, Harry would be cosying up to his pet rat in a prison cell.

'But that's ages away.'

Snape turned around. 'Excuse me, have I not provided enough entertainment for you? Has life on the lam not diverted you enough, Potter?'

'No, but—'

'But nothing. The last time we tried to travel at more than a snail's pace, you were immediately ill. Our schedule has been adjusted appropriately.'

'I feel better now though,' Harry tried, growing desperate. How was he supposed to convince Snape without telling him what had happened? Without telling him he'd maybe witnessed Snape murder someone? 'Really. We can go right now—'

'Right now?' Snape scoffed. 'Right now, you're going to bed. I'm really not in the mood to debate this with you tonight, Potter, so I suggest you do as you're told.'

Harry went to bed.

For hours, he lay in the darkness, listening to the sounds of cars outside and to Snape's breathing in the bed next to him. He counted every minute as it passed, knowing he was missing the chance to do something—to get up, tell Snape what had happened, convince him some other way, try to sneak out and run away, anything—and that each inaction brought him closer to some horrible fate he couldn't conceptualise, because he didn't actually know what would happen: would the Ministry find him and send him to prison? Would Snape find out what had happened and get really mad, or would he hurt Harry to keep him quiet, or would he not care at all because it had been his plan all along to never let him return to Britain? Fact, conjecture and fantasy blurred together; he wasn't sure what he was afraid of and that made it all the more terrifying.

And then, something lit up golden on the nightstand by Snape's bed. The mirror.

Snape got up. He took the mirror to the bathroom. Harry thought he heard whispers, but he couldn't make out a single word.

And then, Snape was coming back out, staring Harry in the eye with a horrifying expression of urgent fury, and he was clutching him under the armpits and dragging him out of bed—and Harry wanted to scream for help but knew none would come.

If anyone is wondering how Snape managed to arrive so late after Harry, he definitely got lost on the way. Please do assume he's getting lost constantly even when it is not mentioned directly; that's what I do.

Thank you for reading - and an extra thank you to guest reviewer (Dec 2nd), I'm glad you're enjoying it :)