Your Trust The Most Gorgeously Stupid Thing I Ever Cut In The World
I.
A full recovery takes two more days of bed rest and hot soup. Snape and Arienette are busy working while I'm recuperating, packing their unique vaccination into crates and vials and loading it into the car. Narcissa drifts idly in and out of my bedroom, her grey eyes narrowed for any sign of danger. It doesn't make any difference.
Finally I'm well enough to walk downstairs and eat in dining room. Arienette is seated on one side of me, Snape across, Narcissa on my right at the head of the table.
"We'll be leaving soon," Snape informs her. "We have to get to Nice."
"How much time do you have?" she asks.
"All in all I'd say about a week and a half. Maybe a day more or less." He shrugs his shoulders in an irritated and determined way. "We'll be needing you soon, Harry."
I nod. It's been so long since I questioned what it is he wants from me or what it is we're doing that it just seems futile to start again now. I felt so proud at having disclosed what petty secrets I found, but in the end I know just as little now as I ever did.
"We're leaving in the morning," he says, but I'm not sure whom he's addressing. "And driving south."
"Take anything you want," she says. "Take everything, if you like. I'll have the house elves prepare food for you." She rises, regal in her long white dress, her blond hair carefully pinned and styled, her eyes slit grey and shining onto the walls and doorways. "I'm going to bed, and I plan to sleep till noon. When I wake up, you will all be gone, and this will all have been a dream."
Her heels click down the hall.
* * *
The atmosphere in the car is less oppressive now. I find the silences almost soothing, Snape's erratic cigarettes and frequent need to change the radio station comforting. Sitting in the back seat, staring at the countryside, I can almost pretend that I'm enjoying myself.
"When we get to Nice," Snape says after an hour of silence. "We'll have to find Avery's old house. He has at least three of the remaining prototypes. It shouldn't take me more than a day to destroy them."
"That only accounts for five out of six, darling," Arienette says, smiling as she makes a sharp turn that sends Snape and I crashing into the door. "What happens if the sixth becomes active?"
"Avery kept close tabs on everything that went on in Death Eater business," Snape replies, unperturbed. "If I can locate his journals I can locate the sixth embryo."
"Hold on a moment," I interject. "Why would it become active?"
"Why do you think we're on this little joy ride, Harry?" Snape turns around in his chair and fixes me with a bemused and condescending stare. "Why do you think that, after all these years, I'm just now getting around to fixing this little problem?"
I almost mention that I don't know since no one tells me anything, but that will probably make him stop talking so I say, "I don't know. Why?"
"Because, my bright child, they are only now becoming a real threat." He pinches the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "Lucius and I put time locks on them prohibiting them from becoming active before a certain date unless they were released from stasis. The jars were remarkably hard to unfasten and, except for the one in my collection, seal magically to prohibit the creatures' release. However, when the time locks expire in a week and a half, the embryos will come to life regardless of the jars and will, eventually, find a way out. It will also make them rather more difficult to kill. All things considered, I think it's a fairly good reason for going after them now, don't you?"
"Well, if you hadn't procrastinated," I begin, but stop when I see the withering glare he's shooting at me. "Fine. What am I supposed to do?"
"You stay out of the way. After I finish with the embryos and locate the final one you call your Aurors and have them rush in and investigate the situation. There's probably something there they'll want." He shrugs. "They never did find all the old Death Eater hide outs, and this one was particularly important. Avery's ledgers are all there, as well as a few pieces of dark magic. Nothing beyond their dubious capabilities, once I've disposed of the embryos. It would be a good idea to have them clean the place out."
"Why do you need the vaccination to kill them? Why not just use whatever you did on that one that attacked me seventh year?" I feel like arguing just for the sake of being contrary now.
"The spell I used to defeat that one was such that it completely erased the existence of the being. It was incredibly tiring and the nature of the spell dictates that it becomes more and more difficult to perform every time it is cast. Most wizards wouldn't have been able to cast it once," he sniffs haughtily. "But then, I've always been above average."
I say nothing, and we lapse back into silence, Snape's hand on the dial, switching frequently between jazz and rock and roll, news radio and easy listening, all in French so I don't understand a word. After another hour he switches off the sound and lights another cigarette, cracking a window despite the cold. I get the feeling this little act of courtesy is more for Arienette than for me.
* * *
We're lost. Of course, it would have to happen. Snape and Arienette argue in French for several minutes before she pulls off the road and drives in bitter silence to the first building we come across; a funeral parlour.
Hilarious, I think, and follow them out of the car for the excuse to stretch my legs. The building is white, almost disgustingly so. Inside it is dark and the carpet is so thick that even the sound of Snape's boots is lost. I cough at the dust hanging in the air, and wonder if some of it isn't ash.
Arienette rings a bell and Snape moves outside to smoke a disgruntled cigarette. I drift restlessly through the lobby, picking up pamphlets with French titles and English written underneath in italics. "Picking the Right Coffin," one says. Another reads, "Overcoming the grief."
The man that comes to help us is tall and lean, so pale he might have just gotten up and walked off the embalming table. I snicker and duck outside, tired of the stifling air inside. Snape is leaning on one of the columns, grimacing like a rockstar, cigarette in his gloved hand. He gives me a cool, calculating glance before turning his glare back to the impassive car.
"Why do you really need me along?" I ask, kicking the base of the column. "I mean, you could call the Aurors yourself, and you don't really need them there anyway. You could handle it if you wanted to, and you're not one to just go for the easiest option available. So why am I really here?"
"You are here," he says, examining his cigarette without emotion, "because you managed to survive not only my class, but a war with the Dark Lord. You are here because your fool parents took it into their heads to produce an idiotic offspring."
"I've got a right to know," I mutter, glaring at my shoes. "You'll tell me eventually, you know."
"Bravo, Harry." He drops the fag and grinds it out with the heel of his boot. Arienette comes gliding out of the funeral parlour at just that moment, speaking in rapid French to him, clearly oblivious to my presence as she makes her way back to the car. I follow them, dragging my heels.
It's still a half hour to Nice. I spend the time trying to guess at where Snape might have hidden my wand. Once I get it back I fully intend to disembowel Arienette. Oh, I know she's not really that bad. Hell, she kept me sane a lot of the time during the past week. She's pleasant enough. Pretty, intelligent, kind. I can even overlook the fact that she's French, ha, ha. No. It's plain old jealousy that's got me going now. And goddamn I wish I had my wand.
She said they aren't lovers, but that doesn't excuse the way he acts around her. He hangs on her every word, values her opinions, doesn't mock her the way he does me. In fact, he's never taken anything less than an attentive and gracious tone with her that I can remember. He treats her like his sacred little Muggle doll. The thoughts are pulling my mouth into an unpleasant sneer. I shouldn't hate her, but I do.
Since I recovered from his goddamned cure he's hardly touched me. It makes me wonder if the whole thing wasn't an act. He knew he'd need someone willing to risk their life for him, and there I go like an idiot believing that…what? What had I believed, exactly? That he meant anything he said? Ever?
And what would have happened last spring, if I'd gone with him at Godric's Hollow? He'd have brought me back to Arienette and I'd be right where I am now. I don't want him if I have to share him with her. I shouldn't want him at all, but I do.
There's a sudden flash of light and I yelp, my hands rising to my face as I blink. Snape snickers behind his camera and I hear Arienette laugh. "How adorable," he drawls. "You looked just like me for a moment."
* * *
Avery's house is decidedly less impressive than Malfoy Manor. It was probably very modern when he bought it in the early seventies, but the only word for it now is tacky. I'm driven up the scratchy walls, going out of my mind with boredom. Arienette and I are supposed to be looking for Avery's journals while Snape works in a boarded up back room. However, she fell asleep as soon as we got here, and I'm just looking for things to break to get attention.
Honestly, there is nothing to do in this house. Everything is placed in perfect order. I have the feeling that, were I looking for the journals, I'd have found them by now. Everything is so neatly organized, even after his death, that I'm amazed. My flat looks like hell and I clean once a week. Or once every two weeks. Call it once a month. It's not the issue here. The issue is what can I do that will amuse me for the rest of the day?
I consider shaving Arienette's eyebrows off, but that strikes me as painfully juvenile. I'm not yet as bad as Snape, grasping at a lost youth. I sneer.
When I finally start searching for the journals it's nearly midnight. I'm having a grand time pulling out drawers and creating havoc in Avery's bedroom when I hear Snape from the doorway. "What the hell are you doing?"
Suddenly I'm embarrassed. By my actions, my jealousy, my petty self-serving behaviour when the whole world could fall apart. I'm embarrassed because I have been imitating him, hiding behind a mask of whom he is, pretending with everyone I know and being a general fuck up.
I sit back on my heels on the floor and look up at him. "Looking for the journals?" I offer. He raises an eyebrow in annoyance and saunters in, throwing himself onto the bed with a sigh. I get up and move to sit beside him. "How'd it go?"
"Oh, as well as can be expected," he sighs. "Anyway, it's finished now. We just need those journals and we can get out of here and put this all behind us."
My heart skips a beat. Put this all behind us. Of course, that's what I've been waiting for, to go back home. It seems ludicrous though, that he'd just let me go like that. I suddenly feel hopeless, helpless, out of control.
I want to say something. I want to say that I won't leave him, that I'll go with him. But there's something between us, stretching out like a river of ashes, struck up to float high on the wind amid us like a wall of all dead things. Words like "betrayal" and "used" fill up my mind. The silences that grew are preventing words now, and I feel like he's breaking me in half.
He is breaking me in half.
His hand traces my jaw and I don't look, my eyes focused straight ahead, staring into the air. There is nothing there. There is nothing keeping us going. There is nothing keeping me together anymore.
"Harry?" He sounds like a voice from my dreams and I want to keep him here with me. I want to go back in time. I want to move away because the more we touch the harder it is to pull back. It's already like pulling off skin.
There are sacrifices you make for relationships, but some things go too far. Remus and Sirius, McGonagall and Dumbledore, Narcissa and Lucius…there are sacrifices we all make. He would sacrifice her, and I would sacrifice my job. We'd keep on making compromises, building a relationship of sacrifices; a relationship of losses, until we'd lose each other.
He says, "We are working with borrowed time." His fingers smell like tobacco and formaldehyde and lemon soap. I want to curl up inside him and forget who I am, but I know he'd push me away at that. He says, "I want to love you in the time we've been given."
He says, "love," like he's throwing off airs, like he's just mentioning the weather. Like I want to lie down and die. I will never be complete. I throw my arms around his neck and pretend we never have to part.
His voice in my ear: "Our time is sweeter because it is finite."
No. No, we are infinite, I tell him without speaking. My lips move over his and breathe the thought into his mind. Infinite. This is never ending. I will not be tossed aside and I will not let him go again. No. I will hold onto this forever. Sacrifices. There will be sacrifices and I will throw them to the wind, watch them drift like dust away from my life. Away from me, from us. No.
His tongue pushes into my mouth and his hands move, gripping my arms as I lean over him, braced with one hand on either side of his face. I will never pull away, I tell myself, not so long as I am still alive. But he's pushing me away, trying to speak against my mouth. I reluctantly let him pull back and sit up to face me, sliding his arms onto my shoulders.
"I do love you," he says softly. "I trust you."
Merlin let that trust be warranted.
II.
Dreaming in his arms. Words and images spill through my mind.
I will never let you go. We are infinite and we will remain together, parallels of one another, light and dark. Wrapped in your arms I am safe. I am protected. If the door opens you will spring up and save me. Nothing can hurt me when I am in your arms. The world is just a place we pretend to live in. I am you and you are me and I am safe.
Safe.
I will never be complete. I will never be complete outside of you.
(Harry, Harry…) I won't ever let you go. If I can wrap my fingers tight enough around the image of us together, hold onto this night, then it won't be like everything else in my life and it will never go. There will be a million more nights just like this. We will never say good-bye. We will never part…
(Harry.) I see you like a reverse Seraph, dark hair over dark eyes, purple black wings arching out behind your back. Bigger than life. I want to compare you to something romantic.
You remind me of a flower…
(Wake up, Harry.)
You remind me of…
(Harry, wake up.)
Have you ever heard about tulips? Their insides are the most beautiful purple and red and yellow around a black center. As they get old they open wider to catch the sun, until they can't close up again, until they fall apart and die.
(Harry.)
You remind me….
"Wake up."
* * *
I don't want to get up. Snape is already dressed and showered, sitting on his side of the bed shaking my shoulders. I open lazy eyes and smile up at him. For a second I fancy I see him smile back. Then his face is glossed over once more and he says, "We have to find those journals today."
I scoot closer to him, lying on my side and facing him. I thread my fingers with his, smiling at the gesture. "I want to be you," I say. "I want to be the same person as you. One person." I look up from under my eyelashes, my smile faltering at his expression. "What is it?"
He snatches his hand away quickly and stands up stiffly. "Get dressed. We've got work to do." He starts to walk away.
"What the fuck?" I yell at his back. He stops walking, clearly waiting to hear what I have to say. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought that far ahead, and I brush a hand back through my hair in exasperation. "I mean, you drag me out of my flat on Christmas, take my wand, treat me like a child, and force me to hang around with Narcissa Malfoy and some crazy Muggle bint you picked up God only knows where! Then you fuck me, or make love to me, or whatever, and poison me with some stupid cure you've created. You promptly ignore my existence. Then we get here and you're all about love and making the most of our time, only to turn around and act like such a Goddamned prick the next morning when I finally thought I had you!"
My face feels hot and wet, my teeth rattling with the volume of my words. Everything I say, I know, cannot be taken back. I'm screaming at him trying to understand, and his fucking back is all I have to go by as he starts walking again.
"No!" I shriek, my voice ragged and hoarse. "No."
The door shuts behind him and I'm left alone. Broken. Split. Unraveled and out of control. I draw my knees up and bury my face in my arms, taken over by erratic shaking sobs I'd normally try to hide. Right now, however, it hardly seems to matter. I'm crying so hard, my face pressed so tight into my arms that I don't realise he's back in the room until his hand touches my bare shoulder.
My head snaps up, my vision blurred as I try to focus on him. He sighs, sitting down next to me and handing me a handkerchief. "Dry your face," he says, but he doesn't say stop crying, so I don't. "I'm sorry."
I blink. He sounds sincere. Even last night he hadn't sounded this sincere, I realise. He vacillates between sounding angry or sarcastic and sounding like he's joking, mocking, lying to my face. But not now. I've let myself be led around by the nose by him, and now he sounds really apologetic.
I realise I haven't said anything in response, and that there's another awkward pause lengthening between us. "Why'd you do it?" I ask. "Not the murders. I don't care about that anymore. Why did you sleep with me? Why did you bring me here? Really. I want to know the real reason, none of your needing help business." I sniff discretely. "Why did you get so mad just now? I don't understand anything you do."
"Harry," he reaches out for me but I move back, shaking my head. I want answers and I want them now. He sighs again. "Alright. Alright. You've probably realised that Arienette isn't exactly an everyday Muggle girl by now." I nod. That much is obvious. "Well, I realised it too, when I met her. She was working as a fortune teller, and she was very well suited to the job." He gives a wry grin. "She's a low grade telepath. She can't always sense words or exact thoughts, but she can find ideas, impressions, emotions. She can tell when someone is lying, what someone is feeling, whom someone is thinking of, things like that.
"Well, that was just the sort of person I needed with me. I was lonely, wandering the world on my own in this borrowed appearance. I hadn't thought I could get lonely, but I did. And then she appeared. She was perfect," he pauses. "Stop grinding your teeth or you'll give yourself a head ache. I'm not in love with her and I never was. She knows that and I know, and if you'd get your head out of your arse you'd know it too.
"Moving right along, I decided to take her with me. She's not exactly a stable person. Telepaths rarely are. They are constantly bombarded by images, sounds, emotions that are not their own, and it would drive the strongest person mad. Thankfully, Arienette is, as I said, not an advanced telepath, and her telepathy is not sufficient to send her raving into the night. It is, however, enough to unbalance her to the point that she accepts things like magic and wizards more readily than the average person.
"It wasn't long before I realised that, apart from having no inhibitions about my magical abilities she was also completely devoid of morals. Something about the chaos caused by the constant stream of emotions and senses must have unhinged her, or else she was just born with her morality in tatters. Either way, it was rather fortunate for me since, as you know, I have the nasty habit of killing folks now and then." He smirks at me. "And it made for some wonderful parties.
"We took the world by storm. Side by side we traveled everywhere, did everything, a traveling circus of sin and debauchery, magic and death. We played some excellent mind games using her powers of perception and mine of deception, but I don't have time to go into that now. I had her keep track of you as well. I always felt wretched about leaving you without an explanation, and I wanted to make sure you were getting on well enough. I suppose I imagined that if you were in danger I could rush in and save you again, as idiotic as that sounds.
"When we were Belfast she caught the impression that you were coming, so I sent her off to stay elsewhere. She's important to me. I'm not in love with her, as I said, and she's just not capable of that sort of emotional attachment. I didn't want you fucking with her, and I didn't want to even consider what she might do to you. So I told you she was gone in an attempt to keep the both of you safe.
"I resolved not to see you again, after last spring. I didn't want to mess you up or let you down. I knew you could never give yourself to me the way I wanted you to. You proved that quite plainly, to my utter disappointment. But I had her keep her eye on you, always sensing out your feelings and emotions, keeping track. What she saw was your decent into darkness, into something that was not yourself.
"You've been play acting for months. You've been pretending to be someone you're not. Your friends have pointed it out to you, I've no doubt. You're just imitating me. I really don't know why. Well, I couldn't let you become me, couldn't let you end up the way I am. I may advocate detachment from petty sentimentality, from foolishness and the fool hardy Gryffindor spirit, but not when it comes to you." He smiles softly, raising one hand and reaching out to touch my cheek. "There was never anything so beautiful to me as you are. You were so full of life once, so amazing. And to see you give up all your battles, to treat the life you've been given as a chore…I couldn't stay away.
"That's why we brought you with us. I wanted to leave Arienette out of it, but she wanted to meet you and I knew her gift would come in handy. That's why I've purposely provoked you. That's why I hate it when you say you want to be me, because you don't know what you're saying. I want you to wake up, Harry, be alive." He sighs, dropping his hand and holding my gaze.
There's a long silence then, and we both drop our eyes at once, looking anywhere but at each other. I believe him, I think. He's sounded sincere before, and it's all been lies. He's lied under Veritaserum. For some reason this just feels different though. He hasn't told me everything, but he's told me enough, and he's told me what was important. Snape was never one to bear his soul at the drop of a hat. I feel lucky to have even this much.
Finally, for lack of anything better to say, I tell him that I think I saw Avery's journal yesterday in my mad chaotic search, shoved at the back of a book case between two volumes of encyclopedias, Hippo-Ingot and Ingrate-Jellyfish, to be exact.
* * *
"Mexi-sodding-co." Snape shuts the leather bound journal with a snap and drops it onto the kitchen table. Arienette, standing by the fridge holding a glass of tap water, looks up at him in puzzlement. "Good old Avery kept good track of all his trades. Our virus foe is in Puerto Viarta, in the home of a Mister Santiago Cabron." He sits back, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation. "Wonderful."
"I'll book a flight," Arienette says, setting her water down in a swift, business like fashion. Her body language is saying, "no worries here. A-okay."
"No, there's no time," Snape shakes his head, standing up. "We have to act now. We need a plan of attack. Harry," he turns to me. "I need you to contact the Aurors as soon as I'm finished. Tell them you were kidnapped by me, but don't mention Arienette. Explain that you've discovered a definite Death Eater head quarters and tell them to show up in exactly five hours. Tell them you'll be waiting for them.
"Arienette, as soon as Harry's finished you take the car and drive north. I'll meet you in Paris once this is over."
"I'm not leaving."
"Yes, you are. Not only would be at risk of contracting the virus, but you would be no help to us. We can't delay our plans with a plane. We have to apparate. You go to Paris and lie low. Harry and I will apparate to Mexico and track down Cabron." He claps his hands together. "Everyone set?"
"Wait," I say. "What happens after we destroy the embryo?"
"We live happily ever after. Really, Harry, can't we discuss that later?
Go make your contact. We can't tarry here for very much longer."
III.
She's lingering at the door, her face tilted down, hair tumbling in curls across her pale skin, her pale eyes. He's standing there in front of her, leaning down to talk to her, explaining that everything will be all right. I don't know why he bothers, if she can read more easily than I that he certainly does not believe himself. I wonder what he's saying. I'll find you; I'll come and find you someday.
No it does not do to dwell on this. I clear my throat and she glances up, her eyes full of loathing that I would dare interrupt their moment with something so trivial as saving the world.
When at last the door is shut behind her Snape walks toward me with his shoulders slightly slumped, his walk a little slower than I remember it being. "Ready to go?" he asks, and his voice sounds as old as time.
I nod. "Isn't it too far to apparate?"
He shrugs. "We'll just have to try harder, or combine our resources."
And he grabs my hand and pulls me close, and the next thing I know I'm
being disassembled.
