Snape staggered through the fireplace and retched. He spat bitter saliva and bile behind him as the walls pulsed in time to his heart, and he wondered how he was going to get upstairs again. He gripped the edge of the shelf behind him and fantasized, briefly, about burning it all down. Bring back the Fiendfyre and burn the whole house. Wilkes had gotten a particular thrill, he remembered, from watching it eat its way down an entire terrace full of screaming muggles. He even smelled burning, the memory was so strong, until he looked down and realized his hands were smoking.
Up the stairs, right. He still stood, that helped. He put his weight on one leg but clutched back to the smoking hot shelf when it nearly buckled.
Fine. Fine. This was fine. He took a deep breath and summoned a feeling of lightness, convinced himself that gravity had no power over him, and was gratified by the sensation of lifting off the ground-just a little, but enough to push himself off and toward the stair.
He blinked. He was not there for a little while, and found himself curled up in the tub, in the hottest water he could stand, a trail of clothes behind him, half wishing he could just cook himself but willing to settle for overwhelming every other sensation from his body.
He rolled back in his head what had happened. How it went so wrong. Should've let Rabastan bleed out. Should have just killed him outright. No, lost your temper, hit him, hit him, hit him, again and again, and only then did you nail him with the Cruciatus and then finally the Killing Curse.
He had had no idea what Potter was thinking, for once, before parting. He told himself he didn't care. But it stung. How quickly he, like everyone else, seemed to immediately assume the worst of him.
Not Gawain, though, his mind supplied. He'd find out in the morning if Shacklebolt, a former auror himself, would overrule him. How he'd balance his own drive for justice-vengeance, really-with his efforts to clean up the ministry. Surely he should have some kind of hearing before the Wizenmagot, for this if not for everything else he's done.
Hard to beat a man like that, even when you have the will to. He looked down at his hand. Split knuckle. The back of his palm almost purple, fingers swollen. Cold would be better, he thought, and submerged it in the hot water anyway. Such a muggle thing to do, hitting. The whole point of having a signature spell in duels was balancing the drawback of being predictable with being able to cast it dead on your feet exhausted, wandless, in desperation. You get the wand back and it's a quick execution or escape from there.
He sunk deeper in the water. He tried to still his mind, to exist only in the present, in the heat, the tap tap tap of the dripping faucet, but it didn't work. All he saw was a tide of blood, colder than the water.
In the end he could only sprawl in the claw-foot tub and endure it.
He dutifully reported to the Ministry at 7:50am the next morning. He had addressed his knees, his broken hand, at least enough to be functional. He passed over his wand for weighing and congratulated himself for showing up so early, sleep be damned, as only a few heads pivoted to stare when the attendant announced his name.
He found himself back in the office of Gawain Robards, with a frowning Conrad Williamson (class of '89, another damn Gryffindor) lurking in the background. Shacklebolt was apparently too busy. He supposed that meant he was off the hook-if they were going to arrest a former headmaster of Hogwarts surely there'd be more Aurors involved.
They both let him speak without interruption. They did not pry into his relationship with Potter-they let it stand, let the autonomous quill roll.
Finally, Williamson handed him the parchment. Just as he'd thought, it balanced what he'd actually said with the official stance Robards had presented last night. It portrayed him just shy of vigilante, perhaps, but he had still done something they likely wished they could. He supposed this was a good thing. It would not be the first time he found himself doing something terrible that no one else could.
"Seem about right?" the head auror asked, handing him a regular quill.
He signed.
"You're lucky we're all trying to move on from the war. The further we get from it, the harder it's going to be to turn a blind eye to casting Unforgiveables on the streets of London. Even on Death Eaters as foul as Lestrange."
"It was quite unplanned, I assure you," he deadpanned.
"Yes, well. Please let us know if you do happen to plan the next one. I believe we're done here. Let us know if you have any plans to relocate. And-congratulations on the retirement?
"Conrad, would you escort Mr. Snape back to the atrium? And Mr. Snape, please consider stopping by St. Mungo's. I can even call ahead and have them set aside a room for you."
He felt his lip curl. "Fine," he said. If it gets you off my back, he thought.
Williamson had apparently cultivated some patience since he'd graduated. They were actually out of earshot of the office before he turned to Snape and hissed, "What were you thinking? Bringing Harry into that scene. Let alone doing it in the first place. He's not even eighteen."
He stopped in the middle of the hall and fixed Conrad with a glare. "I did not have a surfeit of choices at the time, Mr Williamson. I would remind you that Potter has likely faced down Voldemort more times than any other living wizard and you would be remiss to underestimate his capabilities."
He shook his head. "I don't doubt him. But he didn't need to see what you'd done. For some bloody reason you mean something to him."
Severus turned his wince into a sneer and kept on toward the atrium.
A nurse came for him at the fireplace into the hospital, just as Gawain had said. He thought he could get used to this kind of service, if it weren't for the cost.
He wished he was surprised to see Petra, dressed in her everyday robes, in the small exam room where the nurse left him.
"I heard your name while I was on my way out and my gut told me to turn right back around," she said without preamble. "Was on a twelve hour shift and it ran a little long. If your goal has been to look worse every time I see you, Severus, well. Congratulations."
"Lovely to see you again too."
"I'm sure it is but flattery won't get you out of this," she grinned. "Well. What's the matter now?"
"Hand," he said, raising it. "And knees. Broke my fall very effectively."
"Unfortunate. Robe off, then. Trousers too. You can keep everything else on." She twisted a dial on the wall behind her and the room immediately got a little warmer.
He raised an eyebrow but did as she said, rolling up the sleeve of the affected arm to boot. She touched his hand gently, finger by finger, then prodded at his knees as well.
"Well, you definitely broke your fifth metacarpal. Can't tell on the kneecaps but you may have fractured them as well. Skele-Gro will fix you right up, but I'd like to administer it here so I can make sure everything sets correctly. Let me go get some from the cart."
She slipped out but came right back. He choked the potion down, as requested, and she made a satisfied little noise when the slight distortion in his palm and fingers corrected itself. He endured the ghastly feeling of her wiggling his kneecaps around for the welcome reward of being able to put his trousers back on. A general healing potion would take care of the swelling.
She dropped her chin and asked, "Anything else?"
He tilted his head and frowned at her, heart pounding. Did she know…?
But before he could incriminate himself, she prompted him: "The bite?"
He let out a sigh and loosened his collar. A frisson went down his spine at her fingertips exploring his throat. He grimaced and fought the impulse to twitch and draw back.
"Did that hurt?" she asked absently, shifting to her wand.
"No."
"Hm. Good. You have a lot of scar tissue here. Tickle in your throat?"
"Yes."
"And are you still hyping yourself up with an Invigoration Draught in the mornings?"
He startled and she laughed.
"You won't be the first. I don't recommend it, though; as you've likely found, the energy doesn't come for free. Don't go cold turkey but you should think about weaning yourself off. I think we can do something about the internal scarring-I imagine you've noticed the tightness? But before that, you need to rest. You're a powerful wizard but you have limits, and you very nearly reached them when you came back from the brink of death. I'm not exaggerating when I say that. We can do without you next month."
"I'll keep that in mind."
He found the rum behind the vodka he saved for making pie dough. Severus couldn't remember at first where it had come from-it was muggle, from the labeling. But his father's taste ran more toward cheap gin, and his father hadn't been in the house for a long time. Perhaps rum balls.
He wrapped his dough in waxed cloth and set it to chill and retrieved a lowball glass. It didn't matter, in the end, where it had come from or when he had bought it.
It was too early in the day. But it burned down his throat and settled with a happy purr into his joints all the same. He had the feeling that he was welcoming in an old friend. One from adolescence that you know is no good for you but you remember fondly all the same. That'd been most of the people he would call 'friend', come to think of it, though he would now hesitate to call them even that.
The pie would wait, he decided. He had all the time in the world to kill. He tried to read. First a muggle novel, then a collection of short stories. Finally he only continued to drink and craned his neck up at the ceiling again. Did he know a spell to paint ceilings? Perhaps he could tell McGonagall he changed his mind about the house elf, if the elf wasn't too traumatized. He should owl her to tell her not to worry. He should owl Petra to let her know his plans for July.
He put this thought aside.
He abandoned the pretense of the glass and brought the whole bottle down to the basement, where his portrait had been waiting in the damp dark. He could barely make it out in just the light spilling down the stairs.
He sat before it anyway, in the old wooden chair he kept for when he was waiting for potions to simmer. He didn't particularly want to see it, had regretted unwrapping it from the brown paper as soon as he'd done it, because he'd sat for it as a Death Eater, been painted as a Death Eater. He didn't need to see the sneer on his face, the pushed-up sleeves showing off the grinning skull with its snake tongue.
He wished he'd had more time with it. Circumstances had not allowed, of course. He'd had to wait until the dead of night, or else he'd have to speak to it like a good little Death Eater. He needed to be relatively sure of privacy as he explained his own teaching methodology, his perspective as a wartime headmaster. The difficulty of allowing for the greater good to be served. Watching Muggleborns vanish and saying nothing.
But some things he had not even allowed himself to think in the dead of night.
"A red flag," he began, "is a family history. Deaths in the family. Not wanting to go home for break. Any sudden change in grades. If they are reckless, insist on throwing themselves into danger. Giving away belongings, particularly those that are precious to them. Do not just send them to the infirmary overnight and tell them to buck up in the morning, and explain to them why they are being irrational.
"Consider child-proofing the castle. Err more on the side of caution. So many ways to die. Crushed by a moving staircase. Merlin, everything about the Forbidden Forest. All the bloody towers. There has to be a better solution. Not a problem for me, of course. I can fly.
"Definitely don't do another Triwizard, what rot that was. Bloody miracle Diggory was the only one who croaked and that it took Voldemort to happen, though with all the bloody cheating what can you expect."
He stopped. Swirled the rum in the bottle-had he gone through three quarters already? Damn. Well. Easier when one starts early. Best thing would be to finish it, keep it from spoiling, yes?
"Remember that they are only children."
He lapsed into silence. The bottle thumped to the floor and slid away. He slept for a while, a shallow, useless sleep as it always was when he was drunk, but he did not dream, and that was a mercy.
He woke to pitch-black, an aching neck, and an aching head. Still half-drunk. He lit his wand-surely not too much magic-and burrowed in his cupboard for a bottle of hangover cure. He had made a big batch after a particularly brutal Yule party at the Malfoy's, back when things had been calm enough that Yule parties were still something people cared about.
Then he pulled out the lockbox from the back.
He sat in the kitchen. The waning moon was close enough yet to full that he didn't need to turn on the lights, magic or electric. He rolled a green and silver swirled marble in his hand.
This one was just a marble. His mother had given him a set as a small child, when losing a gobstones match likely would have sparked a tantrum. A shooter embedded with a Hogwarts crest; eight with the house animals, two per house; the rest plain in house colors. He'd come home after fifth year and figured out how to grind the lions and the scarlet and gold ones to dust.
She'd given him a set of Bernie Bott's Anniversary Gobstones, too, when he'd turned eleven. It shot out a different scented liquid every time you lost a point. Like the candy, sometimes it was pleasant and sometimes you'd smell like rotten cat food for a bit. But it turned out that he didn't need to give his classmates another reason to make fun of him, Gobstones being what it was, so it had stayed in the bottom of his school trunk. Likely it was up in the attic still.
Whichever, she'd always been enthusiastic at first. Eager to share something from her own childhood with her son. But then the shine would fade, and she would fade with it, and he'd be begging her for a game. For any attention at all. But she was tired. Always tired. Too tired to cook, often, to his father's frustration. Too tired for laundry.
He was just being maudlin. Perhaps the last of the rum leaving his system.
He found he didn't much care about the rest of his belongings. He'd registered a will with Gringott's ages ago bequeathing anything worthwhile to Hogwarts, and his library was adequately organized already. And Potter wasn't due for a few days, if he even showed at all.
There were only two potions on the counter. Petra had been right, he didn't need a whole pharmacy.
Before, corralling the Carrow twins, guarding his thoughts, guarding his back against his former allies in the Order, that had demanded enough of his attention. No rest for the wicked. But now? For the first time since he'd been a much younger man, he faced an endless summer, with nothing to go back to in the fall.
He could occupy himself with baking, over and over again, the same recipe, until he'd gotten it just right, taking a sample and then Vanishing the rest. With reading, when he wasn't sloshed. With this little project at St. Mungo's, and, if he was honest, with Potter. Fixing what he could. But it wasn't enough, was it? To distract from the itch under his skin, the way his mind begged for mercy from itself.
One bottle was a Draught of Peace. One was a cough potion.
He knew how to brew each of them perfectly. Had done so, over and over again, until he'd gotten it just right. But these two were not right.
The Draught was supposed to be a lovely, soft turquoise, wafting silvery smoke. It was stoppered, but he knew the smoke would be oily and black, the color a deep muddy green. He wouldn't expect to wake up. The cough potion looked correct but smelled off, like mildewed winter hay. His diaphragm would first spasm, and then still, unless he took the antidote.
He did not have the antidote. For either. It was not an oversight.
He was tired. He felt more respect for his mother now. He hadn't understood. He'd been angry. But she'd made it all the way to forty-eight. He couldn't imagine ten more years of this.
He heard a thump from the basement. A series of them. He sighed, then went down one step at a time. So tired.
"What?" he snapped, raising his lit wand.
His portrait glared back at him and settled against the wall. How had he looked so well-rested a year ago?
"You god-damned coward, I know what you're doing up there."
"Oh?"
"I'm enough of you to know you were up there looking at those bloody potions, and I have an idea of that they are because you got them out of the lockbox where we keep the nasty stuff."
"Where I keep the nasty stuff," he said evenly. "You are an object."
"And that makes it worse. I am a soulless artifact that you have fed only scraps of yourself and even I know this is a cowardly, selfish decision."
The portrait held up a marble. "You know what this could do to him. What kind of example you would set. You know this could destabilize him."
His eyes burned. "And what if I don't care?"
"I'm just a portrait," it parroted back to him. "I am what you feed me. I can hear you down here, talking to him. I wouldn't have this in the first place if you did not care."
"You're wrong," he choked out, and knocked the painting flat on its face.
There were two bottles up on his kitchen counter. Either one of them would likely kill him. It wouldn't take long for both of them together. And it would be a far easier death than he deserved.
He went back up. He pulled both stoppers.