Chapter 9
Disclaimer: Last time I checked they were still JKR's… Just borrowing them for a while, promise to put them back. I'm not making a knut from this.
Archive: Sure, just ask. I'm sure I won't say no.
A/N My gratitude to Fara for her beta. All the mistakes are mine.
Chapter 9
Muggle trains are not that different from our own. There's just more noise, more stops and they jerk a lot. Opposite me Severus looks rather uncomfortable but what can he say? It was his choice after all.
I'd suggested Apparating but he's too paranoid for that. He doesn't believe Ministry reassurances that Apparition tracking has ceased since the War ended. His magical signature was keyed in, as was mine, and this is a mission that the Ministry need not know about. Flooing and portkeying there were also ruled out by the fact that the area we will be going to is predominantly Muggle.
A more private and less uncomfortable Muggle means of transportation would have been a rented car but neither of us can drive, or rather Severus thought he could until he got in the car we had wanted to rent and realised he didn't even remember how to start it. We had left the frowning Hertz woman with my reassurances that there was nothing wrong with the automobile but we needed to think about it some more. I'd had my arm around Severus' shoulders as I led him away and we had nearly gotten out of the office before he finally shook off my arm and hissed at me to leave him alone, in a tone more weary than angry.
My next suggestion had earned me his derisive laugh. My motorcycle. I can stick to the ground like a Muggle if I have to. There's nothing funny about my rusty old companion, sure, being ridden by a half-giant for more than a decade hasn't done it any favours but it still rolls. He would have been behind me, holding on to me, like two knights starting on our mission riding on the same horse. Out of necessity we'd ridden on the same broom before. Back when the War was still raging but I had been too stuck on my old hatred to appreciate the closeness. Or perhaps… perhaps on some level I had appreciated it. I'd hated myself for the warm feeling I'd gotten when he'd put one arm around my waist to steady himself and when his breath had hit my ear even though it had been to hiss "Turn left, you idiot," or something to that extent.
A train it had been. So here I am sitting opposite him in our carriage. His eyes close as he leans against the window for a moment giving out a sigh. His skin looks white. Too white, chalky almost and smooth. It's blurry around the edges, quite grotesque if you look at him for too long. It is a rather bad glamour but then again he'd never been particularly good at wandwork. I can't believe Albus let him leave like that but then I realise that Albus hadn't seen him. Severus had cast the glamour because he hadn't wanted me to see him yet. He could have asked for help but it would have been unthinkable for him, I know it. The glamour was a bit of an extreme measure, Pomfrey assured me that his new skin wasn't that pink. It would have been preferable to this deathly paleness, this taut mask. If I don't look too closely it's as though he's a child again, the sullen boy that I remember.
Wizards use their wands, Mr Snape. We cannot wait for you to brew a potion to transfigure your mouse. McGonagall's voice comes back to me with perfect clarity but doesn't make me laugh anymore. Not with the way she'd ridicule the boy's impotent rage. The tears that would sometimes flow from his eyes as his transfiguration attempts would go horribly wrong and McGonagall would take points from his House. I don't think he controlled his reaction, perhaps he wasn't even aware of the tears. A tiny black form shaking with anger while Gryffindors and some Slytherins alike laughed at him. The tightening in my chest and the sympathy come 30 years too late.
I've asked Harry about McGonagall. She used to be my favourite Professor and I was well-loved by her as well, perhaps too loved when I'd started my seventh year, though she never crossed the boundaries of propriety, never acted in any way that would be misunderstood. A motherly pat on the head, eyes shining in mischief as she would cover for me or for James, her beloved embodiments of Gryffindor spirit. Harry says she is fair and hasn't heard anything about her being sarcastic to any of her students, even the Slytherins. I wonder how Severus can take it, being her colleague now, seeing her every day and remembering. Having stayed at the school all these years has not been good for him. His grudges are old yet still hurt him.
I remember Severus had been a similar disaster at Charms but Flitwick had been kind and encouraging. There is a reason that children below 11 years of age are not allowed a wand. Their magic is primitive and difficult to control. Did McGonagall know that Severus' dismal performance at Transfiguration was not really his fault? Must everything I knew and loved and idealised about my past come crashing down? The Marauders had come first. Peter a traitor and Remus believing for all these years that I had been the one to hand James, Lily and the baby to Voldemort. The old pain cuts me open and I quickly brush away a tear that the dark eyes opposite me had not failed to notice.
He stares at me questioningly.
"Did McGonagall know that you'd started at Hogwarts two years early?" I blurt out as though it has any relevance.
He frowns, probably trying to reconcile my question with the tear. "Albus had told all of them."
You asked for it. I'm not young and innocent anymore (was I ever?) to need to respect and love my Head of House yet it hurts me to know McGonagall's cruelty.
"Hasn't it been difficult for you to have to see her every day as a professor at Hogwarts?"
"Ask her Gryffindors about it."
I laugh. Revenge is sweet they say. He's definitely taken his revenge on me though I don't think my crimes should have awarded me so hard a punishment. Nor are McGonagall's Gryffindors deserving of his treatment, Harry least of all.
His lips twitch as though he is about to join me in laughter but catches himself.
I try to recall something from the past, to see if I can see it from his perspective. I remember… it must have been our second year. James and I hadn't really taken to teasing him yet. We were waiting for a professor so that class would start… McGonagall I think and I noticed that he had something in his hands, a small pink ribbon. He set it on the desk for a moment and I managed to pinch it and put it in my hair. It was just for a laugh, I'd give it back right away. He didn't notice me at first, he was too busy digging into his book-bag… I remember that bag had seemed larger than him then.
"Give that back!" he yelled when he'd finally noticed me. I mimicked his high-pitched squeak. Unlike everyone else in our year his voice had not started to break yet… how could it have? I realise he was only 10 years old and we were 12… The feeling is like a punch in the gut yet I continue to explore the memory as though I'm probing a loose tooth. Loose and rotten.
I threw back my hair and pointed at the ribbon.
"Come and get it," I challenged him.
He stalked at me, his wand at the ready, head bowed, his oily hair obscuring his face. My hand went to the ribbon. "Come on, it was only a joke," did not have a chance to leave my lips. He never had any problem with hexes and curses. To cast them one taps into very basic magic. The desire to harm someone is much stronger than the desire to turn a toad into a lampshade, and my ability to do the latter could not help me in the least when a blast from his wand sent me to the Infirmary for a week. Not much remained from the ribbon nor from my beautiful mane of hair. In fact, the need to stay in the Infirmary had arisen mainly from my unwillingness to be seen bald as a billiard ball. Luckily, I'd escaped the fate of having Lily calling me Kojack – after some bald Muggle I presume – forever. She had not been very sympathetic when she'd come to see me. And I'd noticed that in her hair she'd had only one pink ribbon. It had been a token of affection, I realise in retrospect. She had always been kind to the little boy in a rather motherly way. To me he looked ugly as sin but to her I guess he had appeared helpless and sweet. I could never understand how females think.
I cover my face with my hands and give out a chuckle at the memory. Severus observes my internal dialogue with a frown. He seems about to say something when the compartment door slides open and we're suddenly surrounded by youthful long limbs, laughter, rosy cheeks and bright eyes. The girls cannot be much older than twenty, two attractive, skinny blondes carrying bags on their back, bags in which they could quite possibly fit should they try, I think.
They are Americans, bumbling with excitement, and they apologise for crowding us, offer us their hands and their names and ask our own. Severus fixes them with his deadliest glare but they don't seem to notice. They love England, everything is so old and so beautiful and this and that… I make conversation with them while Severus answers their incessant questions curtly, his upper lip curling up in distaste at their rather peculiar use of English.
They seem to take their pick from us. I get the one with the large white teeth and well-rounded breasts and Severus the shy one with the doe eyes and the pigtails. There's an innocence about them even though they seem to be flirting with us, paying no attention to the fact that we are both almost old enough to be their fathers. The shy one stares at Severus curiously and I can see why. To a Muggle, the clumsy glamour must look like he has caked his face with makeup. Skin too white, blood red lips and his naturally thick eyelashes dark enough to make it appear as though he's painted his eyelids. And the clothes… A black sweater and black close-fitting jeans that I seem to remember him wearing under his robes back when we were students. I'm surprised that they still fit him.
I'm more surprised by the fact that I remember perfectly what that boy I hated had been wearing under his robes during our seventh year. When he'd stopped speaking to anyone from other Houses, when he'd taken to wearing long sleeved shirts even when it was boiling hot outside, when he'd sneak out at night to go Merlin knows where. Padfoot had discovered that last bit of information one night when he'd been out and about without his companions. The boy had beckoned him close and had patted his head. Padfoot's human counterpart had urged Padfoot to growl and even bite the hand but the touch had been gentle and dog part hadn't minded it all that much. He'd escorted the tired boy back to the school. The boy had smelt of alcohol, and wet leaves and most of all, sex.
I'd told James about it, leaving out the part when my traitorous dog-half had accepted the pat on the head and wagged his tail, and he'd stared at me oddly. He'd had his theories about Snape and the other Slytherins in our year but said I should just forget about him, he was not worth getting expelled over. His voice had held an edge he'd seldom take with me.
"I wonder who the slimy git is shagging," I'd said with a forced laugh.
"Well, not Moony anymore, you made sure of that."
I'd given a start. James had never blamed me for nearly making Remus a murderer, judging Remus' anger to be enough punishment. But that day I'd seen a warning glint in his eyes behind his spectacles. I was to stay away from Snape and I did, focussing all of my energy into winning back Remus.
The girl's concern brings me back to the here and now. I apologise for my inattention and she wonders whether she has tired us staring pointedly at Severus who is hiding behind a Muggle newspaper. I assure her that my companion is always antisocial and it has nothing to do with them. He snorts and murmurs that it has everything to do with them.
