CHAPTER 19

OF ALL THE PLACES IN THE WORLD…

Sirius locked the door behind Remus, wishing for nothing but to gulp down his Yarrow potion and kiss his pillow goodnight.

He bumped into Moody and Shacklebolt as they walked out of the kitchen and was relieved to find a sort of unspoken consensus had materialised, acknowledging they were all too tired to exchange any more pleasantries.

Moody grabbed his coat with a terse nod and was out of the door in under a minute; Shacklebolt arranged the many layers of his attire to do the same. And Sirius, true to his word, popped his head inside the kitchen, to — oh well — to check on Snape.

"Did some bonding with Mad-Eye, huh?" Sirius asked, leaning against the doorframe, judging it was as good an icebreaker as any.

Still seated at the table, Snape glanced up at him. He did look like hell. For a second he was hesitant, and it seemed as though he was about to say something. But then he gazed past Sirius to the hallway, where Shacklebolt was still draping a purple shawl around his neck, and frowned annoyed and pursed his lips tight, and that was that.

Well, so much for breaking the ice with Snape.

"Look," Sirius said, rubbing his face, trying to figure out what to say. "Snape, it's late." He glanced at the clock across the room. It was late. "You can stay here for the night."

Oh, Remus would be proud of him, courteously inviting his childhood nemesis for a sleepover.

"Unless you're keen on your two-mile walk to Hogwarts," Sirius added, taking in the prodding of Shacklebolt's footsteps down the hallway. "They haven't moved the Apparition barrier any closer, have they?"

Snape watched him in silence, tired eyes glistening hazily as he studied Sirius' face. Most likely, he was brooding some half-witty retort to turn down the offer of a truce.

Well, at least Sirius had tried.

"I appreciate that," Snape said quietly, and Sirius, a bit surprised, found he would have much prefered the snarky refusal and a dramatic exit.

The metal lock on the entrance door clinked, announcing Shacklebolt had left and the two of them, Sirius and Snape, were now alone in the house, apparently for the rest of the night.

Oh, cheery.

"Upstairs," Sirius said. "Pick whichever bedroom. Just not the one across the stairs, that one's mine. And not the one next to it — that's Harry's."

He turned round and walked for the cabinet, keen on his Yarrow potion and the tranquil solitude of his bedroom.

Some minutes later, Sirius was back in the kitchen, armed with Yarrow potion, an empty glass and shabby resolve to ignore the irrigating presence temporarily residing there.

He turned on the tap and filled his glass and — Honestly, was Snape planning to sleep at the table?

"I hope you're not expecting late-night small talk," Sirius said, leaning over his end of the table to mix the Yarrow potion into his glass. "Courtesy was never our thing, you know?"

What had gotten into him inviting Snape to spend the night? He had only promised Remus he would check on him. 'You alright, Snape?' 'Yes, Black, sod off.' It could have been that simple. He never committed to hosting a slumber party.

Remus' contagious kindness must have rubbed off on Sirius. Or maybe it was the ache in his ribs and the disagreeable sleep deprivation that were causing him to act beside himself, making him feel — what was the word — empathetic with Snape.

The thought alone made him twitch. At least it didn't make Sirius choke on the content of his glass as he gulped it down.

Revulsion aside, Snape, having finally stood up at the far end of the table, looked anything but peachy.

He was leaning against the table heavily enough for Sirius to suspect he must have been somewhat unsteady on his feet. And sure enough, Snape, eyeing the door as though trying to figure out how many steps it would take to reach it, must have been sharing Sirius' suspicion.

"You're unwell?" Sirius said.

It hadn't been a question. Not really. More of a negation of disbelief.

Snape watched him guardedly.

He looked pale and truly tired, and his gaze burned shockingly intense. It made Sirius think he was pulling up the courage to do something really risky or really stupid or —

"Black, please," Snape said in a voice measured and a little uncertain, "would you help me?"

Sirius frowned.

That had been off. He must have misunderstood, or maybe there was something he was missing. Sure enough, he'd missed to notice until now that Snape was hugging his abdomen with one arm as though he was nauseated or in pain, or maybe both.

Maybe Snape was attempting some uninspired jest, Sirius figured, as he searched for a scowl or a snarl or anything to give away the hoax. He found nothing — only feverish eyes staring into his — and Sirius could only stare back stupidly, trying to piece it all together.

There must have been too much of the senseless staring at some point because Snape frowned, annoyed with Sirius and bitterly resigned, and averted his attention to the kitchen door and his solitary plans of reaching it.

"Of course." Sirius jolted out of his bemusing and strode around the table to reach Snape. "Yeah, of course."

The git had taken the hesitation as a refusal to help, not as dumb astoundment to hear him plead like that.

For another second or two, Sirius stood clumsily before Snape, sizing him up, weighing his options.

"Right."

He had no dignifying options. If anything, from up close, Snape looked even wobblier.

"If I hear you complain, Snape, I'll leave you to sleep in the kitchen, I swear."

Sirius slid one arm behind Snape's back to support him and pulled one of Snape's arms over his shoulder, adamant about ignoring the screaming protest of his own broken ribs.

"All right," he mumbled through gritted teeth. "Let's get you upstairs in a bed. We'll see from there."

Snape didn't complain, and they advanced slowly towards the kitchen door, with Sirius quickly learning that the sharp pain in his ribcage was making his steps viciously unsteady.

He would have believed that being about an inch or two taller than Snape and rather broader in every direction would give him some sort of an advantage in this awkward struggle. It didn't. Neither did Snape's lack of contribution to their supposedly common effort.

Was Snape mocking him?

Sirius tried to adjust his grip on Snape, but, not in his best form, he ended up tripping gawkily, almost stumbled and barely managed to keep both of them from crumpling on the floor.

"This won't work," Sirius muttered, dragging Snape along with him until they reached the wall but not the door. He lowered Snape on the ground, none too gently, and pushed himself to his knees, blinking away the white spots splashing across his dizzy vision.

This was more than Sirius had bargained for.

The pain was cutting his breaths achingly short, and the analgesic had yet to kick in. And what on earth was wrong with Snape? Sirius should have sent him home.

Never listening to your bright ideas again, Remus. Never!

His vision finally settling, Sirius took a moment to assess Snape: breathing strained in obvious discomfort and slouching on the floor like he had emptied the barrels of Firewhisky at the Three Broomsticks. Sure enough, the scene was absurde enough for Sirius to consider it could have all been some funky fabrication of his fatigued mind.

"Can you stand?" Sirius asked.

He was halfway hoping Snape would berate him for the insolent assumption that he probably could not stand and was more than halfway disappointed when, instead, Snape blinked up at him, looking curiously puzzled, as though trying to figure out the correct answer to that.

Eventually, Snape clenched his jaw, pushed against the floor with weak arms, struggled to get up, failed miserably and ended up where his graceless efforts had started: sitting on the kitchen floor.

He leaned back against the wall, breathing strained, and answered with considerable delay, "No, not really."

"Yes, I believe we've established that."

This was unamusing. A simple 'no', without the drama to prove the point, would have sufficed. Sirius did not enjoy seeing people hurting, not even Snape, it turned out.

Pity.

Sirius sighed, admitting defeat.

"The kitchen floor it is, then," he adjudged, trying to keep the annoyance from his voice.

Try as he might, he couldn't. This was preposterous and ridiculous and beyond any trace of common sense.

"Of all the places in the world, Snape, it had to be my kitchen floor!"

Snape frowned at that but said nothing, and Sirius resigned himself to surveying him for the commotion in his late mother's home.

It wouldn't have hurt for Snape to be a tad more considerate and say upfront what his problem was. Though, granted, considerateness had never been Snape's strength, and he did look as if he still needed to catch his breath before articulating his thoughts in an eloquent manner.

"Honestly, Snape, if you were down with an upset stomach, you could have called in sick." Sirius leaned in and reached for Snape's hand, which in the meantime had found its way back to clutching his midsection protectively. "There was no need for theatrics, you know?"

The lack of protest, as Sirius took Snape's hand carefully in his, was a bit disconcerting. But a bit more so was the red wetness on Snape's palm: blood. The side of his dark jacket was stained in blood, Sirius realised.

"What the hell did you get yourself into?"

Still quiet, Snape shot Sirius a glare that left no room for interpretation. Snape wanted him dead. Stabbed, strangled, burned and dead.

Unintimidated by the menacing glare, Sirius unbuttoned Snape's jacket and opened it to find the only thing that could be expected under a blood-stained jacket: a blood-soaked shirt.

Surely, Snape hadn't — No. No, he couldn't have.

Pure coincidence. Lucky stroke.

Perhaps not that lucky, judging by the splendid view on Snape's attire.

Pretending his own hands weren't getting a bit jittery, Sirius proceeded to unbutton Snape's once-white shirt to uncover his midsection, neatly dressed in bandages, impressively drenched red.

He peeled the bandage away to reveal bloodied, bruised skin and what seemed to be a stab wound below the ribs.

One dashing coincidence.

The raw flesh around the incision looked as if it had scarred at some point, only to be ripped open again, and the injury, oozing blood slowly, steadily, must have bled for quite some time to have caused such a mess.

Strange as it was, Sirius' mind must have frozen still for the moment and Realisation was unwinding swifter than he could register. Snape had been in the ambush — a backstabbing traitor, roguely trying to kill Sirius. Or the one who had warned him.

Either one of the two. Nothing in between.

Sirius glanced up at Snape — quiet, inscrutable, staring him down coldly — and hoped Snape was the traitor. Because if he was anything other than that and Sirius had—

Standing to his feet, Sirius hastened out of the kitchen.

The hallway was dim and his mind clouded with thoughts he didn't want to think.

Snape was the traitor, and Remus had not been right. And Sirius had not been absolutely imbecilic.

That seemed solid enough a reasoning.

He trudged up the stairs and into his bedroom, surveyed the room in search of the first-aid case, remembered handing the potions to Bill in the cabinet, then he remembered he had magic.

"Accio medical case!"

There was a crash downstairs, but the suitcase failed to appear. He tried again, another crash, again no suitcase. And then he remembered he took Yarrow.

Damn that Yarrow!

Sirius ran back downstairs and found the leather suitcase tossed in the hallway, courtesy of his magic now intoxicated by the analgesic — at least the ache in his ribs had vanished. He grabbed the suitcase, hurried back into the kitchen, and slumped ungainly to his knees by Snape's side.

He pulled out clean cloths, folded them together and pressed them over the bleeding wound. Snape, for his part, hadn't said a word this whole time, and by now, Sirius was genuinely thankful for the silence.

It wasn't until Snape had clutched the bandage to keep it in place, following Sirius' unusually gentle indication to "keep pressure," that Sirius finally gathered the courage to lift his gaze and look Snape in the eyes.

"I did that?" Sirius said quietly, unsure whether it was a question at all.

In case it had been a question, Snape's silence quite answered it.

"I didn't know. I don't care what petty fights we have behind us… " Sirius stammered. "Or what you — Even if you were trying to — I would never have…"

Snape looked at him, expression never changing. He didn't blink once as he waited for Sirius to finish his babbling.

Not once.

"Even if I was trying to what ?" Snape said and would have perhaps sounded menacing if his voice wasn't a bit unsteady. "Go on — Finish your sentence, Black — Even if I was trying to…"

Sirius couldn't.

For the first time that night, he understood, with jarring clarity, what Snape's anger was about: Snape had warned him.

And Sirius had —

"You're an imbecile. Through and through," Snape said, sounding achingly resigned. "You only had to get out. That was all."

Sirius found he couldn't dig up his words, if there were any.

It was Snape who broke the silence some moments later.

"Can you… ?" He nudged his head towards Sirius' wand.

"No… I took Yarrow. I can't heal a scratch on a finger."

"Yes — I doubt you could, even on your good days." At least, having recovered from their failed attempt at leaving the kitchen, Snape seemed to have found again his words and a bit of his obnoxious wit. "Potions?"

"I gave them to Bill for Peru."

Snape leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. "Brilliant."

"You're going to Saint Mungo's."

"I can't go there."

"Right," Sirius glanced him over and stood up. "Of course you can't. I'm taking you there."

He was met with a very long and very scrupulous glare from Snape.

"You would go to Saint Mungo's?"

"What would you expect?" Sirius asked, grabbing his sweater from the back of a chair and pulling it over his head. "You're a darling, Snape, and it's dreamy — the two of us, hanging out at my place. But that's quite messy what you've got there, and I love my kitchen tiles too much to let you soil them."

He crouched down before Snape. "Can you cast a side-along Apparition for the two of us?"

"You're serious about this?"

"Can you cast the Apparition?"

"That's very noble of you, Black." Yes, the sardonic edge had been there in Snape's tone, unmistakably. "But that's not why I can't go. Shacklebolt's plan — you see, I'd rather avoid the inconvenience of the Dementor's tender touch. Though I reckon I never thought I'd see you longing for your Kiss. Isolation really got to you, hasn't it?"

Sirius laughed grimly.

"Like you've seen much kissing lately, Snape. Look, I'll tell them what truly happened, Dumbledore will, and they will believe him."

"You really are obtuse, aren't you?"

Truth be told, he was beginning to feel like it. Sirius rubbed the bridge of his nose and his brow, trying to piece it all together.

"No one outside the Order knew of Longmoon Forest," Snape continued. "Maybe it was an accidental slip of the tongue, maybe it wasn't. Would you like to place your bet?"

"You don't trust the members…"

"If word gets to the Dark Lord that I arranged your escape — well… you're not that obtuse."

"It's why you came to the meeting like this and acted unscathed?"

Snape leaned his head back for another moment, looking exhausted.

"If you were me, Black... would you take the risk?"

The risk of being delivered to Voldemort as the one who betrayed him?

"No," Sirius said quietly.

Put in perspective, between the Dementor's Kiss and Voldemort's wrath, bleeding on the kitchen floor was beginning to look like holiday.

It would turn out, gambling on two fronts wasn't as comfortable as Sirius had liked to imagine. It was anything but a coward's game… and guess who was playing it, straight at the top.

What was wrong with the world?

"How'd you even—?" Sirius inclined his head in the direction of the unsightly wound, unsure what he wanted to ask. "You know..."

"It was healed, mostly. Make no mistake; this is nowhere nearly as impressive as the fresh thing when you'd—" Snape shook his head, annoyed. "It was soundly stitched up, but the Apparition was unkind , and the meeting wouldn't-wouldn't end, and then Moody just—"

"He was an asshole. Wouldn't back down, would he?"

Snape blinked, slightly surprised, and answered tiredly, "He bloody wouldn't."

"I know," Sirius said. "Though granted, he wasn't the biggest asshole tonight."

"No. No, he wasn't. You still have that going for you."

"I'll find a way out," Sirius said, standing back up. Was he acting a bit too nervous? Getting up and down, up and down? "Look, I'll say we had a brawl after the meeting and I did that to you."

Snape scoffed at the idea.

"You're more courteous by the minute. What happened to you, Black? In Mungo, it won't matter what stories you tell."

"I'll be convincing." Sirius flashed his madman grin, only to realise a second later what Snape had implied.

The grin blanked out.

"The conversation's turning ridiculous," Snape said flatly, not getting the cue of Sirius' abruptly vanishing grin. "You're stupid, but you're not that stupid, so I imagine you already figured this out… you're just slow to extrapolate. Otherwise, I wouldn't be breaking the news to you." Snape's tone, monotonous in the beginning, remained just as even as he went on, to the point of sounding flippant. "Let's just say, my night didn't end as early as yours, and it certainly didn't end with Molly's soup. That's why I can't set foot in Mungo. And that's all there is to it. And there will be no more discussing that. Ever."

Just in case Sirius hadn't yet extrapolated, there he had it. Robert. Marcan.

Feeling a tad unsteady, Sirius crouched down before Snape and rubbed his forehead, as if that could scrape off his thoughts of the Order meeting and everything that had been said in it.

'By the time the Dark Lord was finished with him—'

The rubbing certainly didn't help.

"I'll find a way," Sirius said. "I'll get help."

He thought of everyone he knew where to reach, Dumbledore was away, Rem — Arthur — Bill — the Weasleys — all of them, all the same, away.

"Can you contact anyone?" Sirius asked.

Snape considered the question, for three or four seconds, and concluded with a shake of the head.

Sirius blinked, surprised. Snape had never been popular, but really?

"Really?"

"I waltz with the Dark Lord at dinner parties," Snape said. "Most people would rather not trust me with their home address. What's your excuse?"

Hoping it would lighten Snape's mood, Sirius granted him the coup de grace. After all, he owed him that much.

"I don't need to know addresses," he answered. "I'm grounded in my mother's house."

Snape looked mildly pleased.

"Anyone from… the other camp?" Sirius tried.

Another shake of the head.

"Really?"

"Really, Black, really. It's hardly inconspicuous to show up like this from your house. It shows that you learned I tried capturing you in Longmoon, and, learning that, you wouldn't let me walk away — unless you had proof of the contrary."

For a moment, Snape was quiet, as though weighing options, making choices. When he finally spoke, his voice was quieter than before, and he sounded rather uncertain.

"It would be suspicious, to say the least. It could bring me under scrutiny, possibly… likely. I don't know…" he hesitated. "I can't — I don't want that. Not for now. I really do not."

Sirius nodded.

He had a slight impression that had been Snape's way of saying he was bloody terrified by the prospect of coming under scrutiny.

Sirius wished he weren't grasping what he meant by that.

"And the other camp, " Snape continued, "supposing their friendship to me outweighed their loyalty to the Dark Lord — supposing — it would endanger everyone in the family."

It was probably Malfoy, Sirius reckoned, finding the thought rather chilling. Quite everything about Snape was, as of late, disturbingly chilling.

"Self Healing?" It was rare and tricky, but maybe —

Snape disagreed. "It has no effect a second time on the same injury."

Still crouched, Sirius buried his face in his palms, exasperated and only in the slightest concerned. They were a hopeless lot, the two of them.

He felt as if he was trapped in a muggle comedy film like the one Arthur had insisted he sees. A classic ploy, Arthur had explained, where two idiots were stuck together in a hopeless situation, with the only progression of the plot being that the idiots, one by one, took turns in proving that they're yet more idiotically useless than was initially believed. Whether the idiots in the film had escaped their predicament, Sirius didn't know. He had fallen asleep.

He blinked up at Snape.

"I'll try Remus' place. Maybe he's back. Maybe I'll find something there. He has medicine," Sirius said, eyeing the cloth that Snape held pressed over the wound.

The blood hadn't soaked through. The haemorrhage was slow. They still had time, quite enough of it, Sirius told himself.

"Listen," Sirius said, a bit uncertain, "the Yarrow kicked in, and I'm feeling as fit as a fiddle. I can help you get in bed upstairs. Would you want that?"

Snape considered the offer and declined. "I'd rather avoid the commotion."

"Are you sure? I'm quite fond of my kitchen floor too, but this hardly looks restful. I'll give you a hand — No more tripping on my shoelaces, I promise."

"I'm good," Snape answered. "And I'm certain your beds are lovely. It's just — moving feels… somewhat uncomfortable at the moment."

Sirius nodded, a bit uneasy.

"It won't take long. I'm going to Rem's," he said. "Just wait here."

"I couldn't go anywhere if I wanted."

Right.