Seven: Amsterdam to Berlin

Snape had been on the very brink of sleep, the relief of the slip palpably near, when Albus decided to remind him he wasn't legally allowed rest.

He locked himself in the bathroom and lowered his voice to a whisper: it was nearly midnight and the boy had conked out hours ago. This had been an altogether unfortunate day. He hoped for a quick update and a late morning.

Albus's expression did away with those dreams.

'What happened?' they both asked at the same time. Albus's mouth quirked.

'Shall I go first?' he proposed. 'I am asking you what happened, Severus, because I have just received news that Harry's tracker was triggered, and the Ministry know he is in Amsterdam.'

'Damn it. How did they—how is that possible?'

'You don't know?'

'No, I—do you know what spell it was?'

'I do, in fact,' Albus confirmed. 'It was Obliviate.'

Severus closed his eyes. He swallowed.

'I see your memory has been jogged,' Albus chuckled. 'Are you able to answer my question now?'

'Yes,' he hissed. 'But it's nothing urgent. I have taken care of it, I simply didn't imagine—'

He was going to kill the child.

'Do you know if they've sent anyone after him?'

'I don't,' Albus said. 'Officially, they have little ground to stand on were they to order a pursuit. But I have no current way of knowing what they may do covertly, and with Lucius involved, I would not put it past them to try and capture Harry at the first opportunity.'

'Right.' There went Severus's lazy morning. 'We'll go. Do you need me to report now—'

'You say you have handled it, so I consider it handled. Do please check in with me when you get to Berlin.'

It was rare that Albus didn't want to hear every last detail of what Severus had been up to. He wasn't sure whether to feel pleased at this show of trust or threatened by it.

Potter was wide awake when Severus got out of the bathroom. The little brat had been lying there, pretending to sleep, knowing full well what had happened yet unwilling to share with the class. And how was Severus supposed to handle things like Albus seemingly expected him to if the nightmare child refused to do a single thing he asked?

At least the boy had some survival instinct, because he didn't complain over being pulled out of bed in the middle of the night, or told to pack, or even dragged down streets filled with inebriated partygoers, fast and faster and faster.

They reached the train station at a run more than a walk. Severus scanned the departures board frantically, adding up times and trying to locate cities on the poorly drawn map of Europe he held in his mind.

There were two other trains before it, but the one to Berlin was scheduled only a quarter of an hour after the last one, and Severus came to the executive decision this was not enough of a head-start to be worth ending up somewhere he had never even heard of.

Now that they were still, the chill from the night air began snaking its way through loose threads of clothing and sinking into skin. Next to him, Potter was shaking so hard it was audible; Severus thought of telling him to put on a jumper, but couldn't help but think the boy deserved to suffer a little.

The platform was situated fully outside, and the breeze had grown vicious. The few people that waited around—two young women lugging huge backpacks, a tired businessman, a group of men dressed for clubbing—threw the two of them glance after glance. When the train came, they seemed almost surprised Severus and the boy got on at all, as if they'd presumed them revenants, haunting the quietest platforms of Amsterdam station during summer nights.

The train was perhaps half-full; he found an empty compartment only in the second carriage they'd traversed. Severus had enough trouble falling asleep when he was horizontal, but he couldn't help but imagine how perfectly nice it would be to nod off with his head against the cold windowpane, and he felt a warm yearning settle in his chest.

They swayed a little as the train pulled into motion. Severus pushed Potter inside the compartment, then closed the door and pulled the curtains, sending airborne a cloud of dust.

'So,' he said, turning around with as much menace as he could muster. 'I suppose you have your wish: we are indeed heading to Berlin early. Care to explain to me, Potter, why the bloody hell you thought it a fine idea to follow me earlier this evening, when you were explicitly told to stay put?'

Potter looked at his feet. 'I didn't follow you,' he muttered.

Red flashed before Severus's eyes. He tried to breathe through it. 'I have had a tiring evening, Potter. I will give you fair warning that my patience is wearing extremely thin and it would be in your best interest to abstain from lying to my face.'

'I'm not lying! I went there first and I didn't know you would be there, too. And when you came, I was already there, so I couldn't—I didn't even know it was you, I didn't see or anything, I was under the bed—'

'Fine. Care to explain, then, why on Earth you decided to pay an impromptu visit to the man? Or do you try and make friends with every Death Eater you come across?'

The boy's head snapped up. Of course, Potter wouldn't have recognized the Dark Mark.

'Why were you there?!' he raised his voice, hoping to distract him. It worked, though a little too well: Potter's eyes clouded with tears.

'I was just trying to find out—I was trying to find out who he was, because he—I thought maybe he was dangerous—'

'You thought he was dangerous? And so you decide to go visit him at his hotel? Exactly how stupid are you, Potter? What would have happened had he woken up? If he'd woken up before I got there?'

Potter swallowed around a whimper, then shook his head. For a quiet moment, he seemed to be bracing himself, until at last, he stared Severus right in the eye.

'What did you do to him?' he asked, in a stronger voice than fit his circumstances.

'What did I—I obliviated him.' At the confused look, he explained, 'I cast a spell that modified his memory so he wouldn't remember that he happened upon us. I was sure he would readily betray your location if he saw gain in it, and as you might have forgotten, the point of this exercise is to avoid letting the Ministry know where you are.'

For some reason, this made the boy cry more.

'Well, how was I supposed to know that?' he yelled through the tears. 'You didn't tell me that's why you were leaving!'

'You weren't supposed to know it, you were supposed to do as you were told! Let me make something entirely clear to you, Potter. Identifying hazards and dealing with them, that's my job. Your job is to do as you're told, and I am under no obligation to provide you with my reasons for giving an order.'

'But—but if I don't know the reason, then—' he was fighting so hard against the tears that he could no longer talk around them. Severus felt a stab of pity. '—then how am I supposed to—to do it when I don't even know—because you could be telling me something bad, and I'd just do it without thinking?'

The boy had a point, Severus realised. With how many people would likely try to hurt or manipulate him in the coming years, it might not be wise to encourage blind trust in authority—even if, as now, it would certainly have proven useful to Severus.

'Very well,' he sighed. 'I will make an effort to explain the reasoning behind my decisions where they immediately concern you. But you will not wander off on your own without permission, especially to track down potential threats. I trust you have enough of a brain that you can figure out the reasoning behind that one yourself.'

Potter looked at him like he had never been more shocked in his life. Severus felt a little offended.

'Your answer, Mr Potter.'

The boy sniffled, which did nothing for the snot coming out steadily from his left nostril. 'Yeah, okay,' he said nasally.

'Good. We won't be in Berlin until five. Lie down on the seats there and sleep. And for heaven's sake, blow your nose before you choke.'

Potter took the tissue without argument. 'I don't think you're allowed to lie down on those,' he said seriously between blows.

'Exercising your new power already? How detailed does my showcase of reasoning need to be for you to go to sleep and give me some peace?'

That got a chortle out of him. Children's ability to swing right back from tears was undeniably impressive: Severus felt like he'd been in the same mood for the last ten years.

'Okay, but if someone comes and gets angry, I'll say that you told me to,' Potter warned as he lay down on his side, taking up barely three seats of the four: he really was quite small. He winced, rubbed at his shoulder, then rolled onto his back to take some weight off it.

'What's wrong with your shoulder?'

'Oh, nothing. Just from when you were grabbing me, I think.'

Severus grabbed him again, this time by the other shoulder, and kept him still as he hitched up his sleeve. Through the static that had filled his head, he told himself if he found a bruise, he would not be sick.

There wasn't a bruise. Severus breathed.

'Move it up and down,' he said, mouth dry. 'Roll it.'

He managed both, with only a small wince toward the end.

'Good,' Severus said, though he didn't think it was, actually. 'You'll live.'

'Yeah, like I've told you,' Potter pointed out. He seemed to notice this did nothing to ease Severus's scowl, because after a searching look, he added hastily, 'Sir.'

Severus didn't think he could look at him anymore. He stood, then pulled his coat off and gave it to the boy to use as a duvet, watching only from the corner of his eye as he fussed with it. Then, he reached above the door to where the light switch was, and threw a blanket of darkness over the compartment.

Storage units and the blinking lights of a distant motorway sped past them. Air blew up from beneath the window, and Severus soon had to pull on a second shirt. He was thinking about that time when he and Lily had spoken of what kind of parents they would be. It must have been in their fourth year, he thought, though he did not know really. They'd been old enough to see younger children as essentially different, but young enough that they still spoke as friends, and that it was not yet awkward to mention anything remotely to do with the future.

They were fourteen, so it had been a silly game. Lily had said she would never bathe her children, because she would own a house by the lake and she'd just send them in there to swim. Severus had told her she would be entirely irresponsible and so erratic that by two years of age, her children would be tying her shoes. Lily had agreed that was probably true. Then, she'd told Severus that he would be neurotically overprotective and entirely too easy to manipulate, so his children would be spoiled beasts that walked all over him and then, he was going to be grateful to her that she had some children to lend him that could help with the shoe-tying.

He had judged then she'd been only trying to tease him, ignorant in the moment that fatherhood was a fraught topic for Severus. Now, he thought she'd known exactly what she was doing: she'd extrapolated from his character a prognosis of behaviour in complete disagreement with the models his father had provided, but exaggerated it into obvious flaws so it struck credible still. He remembered it had worked: he had imagined, that day, some distant future in which he did have entirely spoiled and smothered children. He had thought, even, that he would in any case be a better parent than Lily, since he'd be able to remember he had children for more than three minutes at a time.

And now, well. She'd died for her child, and he'd found himself balancing on the tightrope of physical abuse with impressive finesse. Nothing at all in their lives had turned out the way they'd planned it at fourteen. It never did for most people, he knew, but he'd always believed deep-down that he and Lily were not most people.

'What's a Death Eater?' a voice whispered.

Severus cleared his throat. 'A follower of the Dark Lord.'

In the dark, he could see the white in the boy's eyes, blinking up at him. Severus felt all of a sudden like he was looking into the future: like the boy lying opposite him wasn't a boy anymore, but the saviour of the wizarding world, issuing orders or asking Severus for advice or pronouncing him a traitor. There was no way of knowing how he would take to it. No way of predetermining his choices despite what Albus seemed to believe.

He looked out of the window again. The train rattled and leaned left-side as it raced past a spur in the tracks. His stomach churned with some directionless concern. A part of him wanted to speak with Albus again, to tell him about it all, to ask him which choices were the right ones.

'Does the Dark Lord mean Voldemort?'

'Yes, but you're not supposed to say his name. Now go to sleep.'

'Okay.'

Severus closed his eyes. Over countless nights seamed with this strange fear without a name, he'd found it was easier to remember Lily's face when his eyes were all the way shut. It took a while, but eventually, he knew it would carry him off into—

'Good night.'

'Good night, Potter.'

—carry him off into sleep.

I think we can term that progress.

Thank you to everyone reading, reviewing or following the story. All of these make me hugely happy. And an extra thank you to Guest reviewer (Dec 6)!

See you in Berlin on Saturday!