damnatio memoriae : two


Students' curiosity did not supersede self-preservation, so commentary was limited to whispers of speculation that seemed to chase the hem of his robes: Professor Snape was walking with a noticeable limp. In a school with no secrets, the truth was slightly less profane. He had pried the two-inch fragment of his former television screen out of his foot with a penknife, and bled for forty-five minutes.

In a school with no secrets, he knew when to hold his tongue. He also knew when to bite it so deeply that his dogteeth came away tipped in red.

It caught him late on Thursday afternoon, in those warm hours before dusk when the sun touched the deep end of the school and laid strong lines across the stone. The light softened where their paths dragged holes through the smoke; that day the air in room two hundred smelled of burnt hair and confederate jasmine as the last bell drained the room of footsteps, failures and rumors. And so it came to be that the Professor was nursing his favorite grudge against human reproduction in a fit of waspish muttering as he mopped up a puddle of something that was not gilding potion but something that hissed like hot oil when the summoning came out of the great above like God's own wrath and brought him to his knees.

And after, he would remember breathing smoke that also smelled of smoldering cotton and think himself fortunate.

If there was a degree of indignity to sinking into dust and ground, he ignored it because he was seeing in turns of white. He panted; he might be confusing clutching with covering one's arm. Under his palm familiar lines lit with a feverish heat, searing their image into his sleeve--a morbid relic, this personal Turin--and he knew the Dark Mark had surfaced in melting black.

Voldemort's invitations came in no uncertain terms, although Snape had a suspicion that His Darkness' propensity for the dramatic overrode his common sense. Wizards had pissed themselves at the sight of a fresh Mark, but the truth of the matter was that summoning had a nasty history of bodily injuring the summoned. Years ago, Malfoy suffered a concussion when an inopportune call to duty arrived as he was spurring his horse into a canter. And Caracalla St. France--one of the most inept of their numbers, despite the promise of his name--had nearly drowned in a Scottish pay-toilet when a summoning knocked him unconscious while taking a leak.

So it was with great relief and only mild chagrin that Snape found himself safely crouched under the thick underside of the long work table like an atomic-age elementary student awaiting the end of the world. Little hitches and gasps loosened into deeper breaths. And then, quite unexpected unto himself, he fell back, dust and robe parting under his weight like the Red Sea. The smoke was thinner down here. Sunlight cut him down the center, drawing a corner at his waist; one eye laid in shadow. But his right hand did not relax, and the tendons quivered under skin. He was going to murder a man tonight.

And yet, if someone happened to walk into his classroom at that moment, if someone predisposed to asking the right questions were to eclipse all that sun drifting through smoke--he would have no answer. It was most unlike him to not know why.

He would be a hero, or in the very least, a martyr. Neither was terribly appealing. Nor was the notion that his actions might be regarded as goodwill towards his fellow man. There should be no mistake: Severus Snape misliked his fellow man. He was apathetic, misanthropic, in no capacity selfless, and wished sincerely that there was money to be had in the endeavor, as greed was much easily understandable than vague concepts of restitution. It would simply be an unfortunate byproduct of his success that a great many people would be a great deal happier. His ideas of success, for the time being, were slightly more utilitarian. Living through the night, for one.

The afternoon was waning.

Professor Snape stood up, shaking the ashes from his hair. If one knew his office very well, one might discover an unlocked cabinet; a goblet that had gone missing from the kitchens seventeen years ago had indeed, gone missing. No one knew about the small silver ring with even smaller square ruby. He left the door open and no letter of his intents. And if one happened to look up, if one knew all the right places, one might see a figure on a broom streaking over the Forbidden Forest, foot dangling gingerly against the darkening sky as if testing the water.

His nature was not that of an optimist. Merely--a procrastinator.

---

If nothing else, it could never be said that Voldemort lacked a sense of humor.

To say he came out of thin air would be misleading; that night the air was heavy with fog and the sky's cotton white belly hung low on the asphalt, smelling of rain and intuition. Marginally more accurate would be to say he came out of nothing, he came out of one of the nameless soft places between Apparations, and his robes carried gently on the wake of his arrival. Disapparation always struck him as a deus ex machina of minor descent.

His free hand dipped into a pocket, fingers coiling around the wand. Snape conjured on one breath: the mask formed on a lacing armature of spell and afterglow, casting his eyes into shadow but in the end--the smooth color all things turn when left in the sun. His mind was not on ornamentals, nor the consequences of his actions--not that it was possible to foresee a deep place off the coast of California, a whale's gravity slipping through a mayday flare of bubbles, or open eyes silvering with sunlight as the tide carried her home, where the sand would not hide her missing pelvis. Magic made them all thieves, though very few wizards were familiar with the concept of finite matter.

Physics agreed with Professor Snape, but even he could not induce magic to violate its most sacred laws. He ducked under the hood a Death Eater proper, and the movement of wool was a sound like the Pacific breaking from very far away. The sea was salt-sharp in his nostrils. And then everything faded behind the low, flickering whine of neon, 24 HOURS OPEN.

His breath condensed, rolled away. He stood alone on the border of an empty parking lot, breeze drifting with the hush, hush of distant traffic. The contents of the goblet trembled against the pocks and dents of hammered iron. Snape felt steel in himself crack, trickling a kind of cold into his belly that was not apprehension--but he did not move, either.

Perhaps they were charmed to recognize his robes or his reticence, perhaps his weight shifted in such a fundamental manner that the dull Muggle gears and motors finally took notice of his presence. The glass doors retracted, hissing on their automatic tracks. Florescent light rushed to the tips of his boots; doubts simultaneously blossomed and fell away like withered petals. It would seem he preferred the relative dark to regard the corpse in his path.

However, he was admittedly ill-prepared for the corpse to reciprocate the interest.

It was face down on the printed linoleum, all odd angles, undisturbed gray hair and not a single viable cause of death save its radical departure from proper human skeletal structure. Snape had arrived at the rationalization that it was like a throw rug with bones, really, when just as suddenly it was sitting upright. The dead man with 'Walt' and several smiling yellow buttons pinned to his blue apron was grinning magnanimously. His eyes spun listlessly in their sockets.

Snape's reaction was young in a system of old defenses, the sum of thousands of small internal retreats met by obstinacy--he swayed but did not recoil. Steadied by a most characteristic sneer, he thought: and this is only a parlor trick, considering the company.

"Fashionably late is it, Professor?" Recently Dead Walt said in a pinched voice remarkably similar to Lucius Malfoy's. His index finger grazed the corner of one eye, the next attempt buried it to hilt in his nose. Somewhere a clot tore and thin, oily fluid ran down his lips and chin unnoticed.

"My apologies. I paused to kill a few sick orphans on my way over," he replied dryly, nudging Walt's body with one toe, but refraining from an otherwise pressing urge to poke it with his wand.

"And let me be the first to remark that we've regretted the absence of your sparkling wit." At this, Recently Dead Walt made an awkward commiserating bow, finger still firmly rooted in the nether passages of one airway. One nostril ripped free of its mooring. "Now stop mooning about the goddamn Muggle corpse and get to the back of this place before He fancies subjecting you to wildly archaic forms of punishment."

Lucius spoke with the sullen disinterest of one examining the whites of his nails, the absurdity of his threat lost in the distance between them. A grimace added weight to the professor's frown, choosing to linger briefly in inhospitable conditions. Indifference was safer.

"...Only if you promise there will be drawing and quartering." It was the most appropriate nonchalance he might offer, Caesar at the Rubicon, casting his die between the living, dead, and remote. Recently Dead Walt's eyes came 'round in concert, soured around the iris, but inside--a shallow-water blue, seeing enough for both men.

"And refreshments!" Recently Dead Walt amended cheerily before the line was cut and he imploded with little fanfare, an old man sinking boneslessly into his own pressed slacks and clean linoleum flooring. With a little further toe prodding he was lying on his back, arms stretched at his sides, arranged in ecstasy but utterly devoid of insight.

He sighed softly.

Snape crossed the corpse at the door, robes flaring across the empty aisles, clothes and toys and electronics falling behind a trailing corona of black and an increasingly agitated stride. Of all the Dark Lords, of all the megalomaniac assholes in the world, he had to be playing turncoat with the kind of sociopath who thought it cheeky to hold his staff meeting in Wal-Mart's lawn and garden department.

He slipped the ring on his middle finger. He was familiar with its American significance.

---

"Welcome, old friend."

Severus Snape looked at the assembled Death Eaters, looked at the dappled glass of the patio table; the heels resting in the center and the man whose queer red eyes went unmitigated by mask or hood. He bowed formally.

"My Lord."

Voldemort observed that fear and love smell nothing alike, actually.

---

The poison ring was an institution of the court, a product of the age of alchemy, a weapon of high intrigue and little practical use; it appealed to Snape for many of the same reasons. Silver acanthus leaves were the setting for a wine colored stone of French vintage, their curling metalwork concealing a small hinge, the delicate parody of a locket. Like everything in clan Snape, it came with a rather dubious pedigree: the lady's petticoats were scattered across the snowbank, her warmth steaming gently through the eyelets when his forefather nicked it. She was bereft of her head and in little position to argue. Hemlock had filled the tiny box, then.

He tipped his hand, thumb snapping the lid back. Palm up, he offered, he poisoned. The powder fell without odor or disturbance.

Across the table, Voldemort raised an eyebrow. His hands were arranged in sharp peaks, nose resting on the tips of his forefingers. Death Eaters sat in green striped lawn chairs, two to a quaint cast iron bistro set--here, stiff discomfort to be easily mistaken for disdain--or stood flanking his shoulders. St. France wore a ridiculous sequined Mardi Gras mask.

They were all killers. He had no pretentious of originality.

"Alchemist's Reagent, Master." The goblet's base provided punctuation, closing the statement as it touched the glass, bouncing slick reflections--a tremor in his jaw. Albus Dumbledore was reputed to carry a vial of the potion on his person at all times, and Snape judged that any of the Dark Lord's misgivings about his own infidelity would be readily compromised by simple human greed. Pride goeth before the fall, et al; his retribution was formed of a predilection for classical tragedies.

...But retribution was a hardening word, motivations were failing as he withdrew hands that had lately become untrustworthy into his sleeves. He saw Malfoy behind a mask of ivory, and the carefully drilled hollows were an abstraction of Persian interests. Brightly dyed feathers brushed St. France's chin.

Snape's eyes widened just a little--dark into dark.

He would kill because he knew no other way to live, and no quicker way to die.

"...My absences are inexcusable, but I trust my Lord's generosity might permit him to accept a humble reparation?" he said when Voldemort did not reach for the cup, no, in fact, this was quite the opposite of reaching, leaning back so deeply the forelegs of the chair came free of earth. Snape found himself remembering a cobra's vertical strike is directly proportionate to how tall it has drawn itself from dirt, remembering how easy it seemed to charm a coiled snake. Voldemort was favoring him with a terse smile. He said:

"Victors declare reparations, Severus. Now sit down."

He did. A Crabbe--or perhaps it was a Goyle?--surrendered a quarter of a beach recliner. His foot began to throb again, lancing pains that traced his inseam from heel to knee. But logic was detached and ticking along amiably through none of his own interference, counting implications by words, reducing organic matters to quantifiers all and none.

Voldemort rocked forward, landing on his feet in a counter-surge of robes. He watched as the Dark Lord's palms came down hard on the table, every Death Eater shaken to rigid silence in the chattering aftermath of glass against metal ribbing. And abruptly, the flickering trails of variables and constants went dull.

Some claimed Artistotle's fallacy was that he assumed his variables existed. His error was more fundamental: magic had never been rational.

"Since Professor Snape has deigned to grace us with his presence," Voldemort intoned, the soft clay lines of his profile impassive, "I believe celebrations are in order. Wormtail?"

A small figure at Voldemort's side murmured acquiescence. Snape absently noted the man was a splintered collection of movements, distinct from one moment to the next and uneven in cooperation. But any recognition stalled when the man abruptly dropped from sight; Snape was on the verge of declaring imminent death a wholly unconvincing distraction when a spinning something arced, and fell out of air.

One hand caught the can. He blinked stupidly. The aluminum fairly shimmered with condensation, a tentative finger drawing away wet from the pale printed label. Lemonade.

It was inexplicable, really. He felt numb and fucked, but mostly just fucked.

---

In the end, seventeen years of composure wasn't enough. Voldemort's knuckles tapped the Hogwarts' coat of arms, the Professor's potion idle and unrippling under the rim. He watched. Severus remembered deference too late, the convenience of a sideways glance--his expression had been surprisingly direct. Questioning and curiosity. Maybe even desperation.

"Cheers," the Dark Lord said quietly, tipping the lip of the goblet. His face held no malice. "To old loyalties."

He drank to that, and his face held nothing at all.


dm:two:part one end.