Chapter 3 – Mountain Madness
-----------
St. Mungo's Hospital
Children's Psychiatric Center
London
Confidential Communication
Dear Professor Dumbledore,
Hello, and how are you? I was happy to receive your owl post late last night, and wanted to start my day by responding to you.
Most children who experience psychological breaks – to borrow a term from the Muggles – experience wide mood swings for an extended period of time after treatment. They have been forced to look – and some at the very first time – at issues and memories that may well terrify them beyond their emotional capacities. At the Center, we try our hardest to nurture and protect the healing child in order to minimize this impact. For many of our little patients, it is their first experience with unconditional love and attention from a caring adult. While soothing and reassuring, it can sometimes be confusing as well. When the child is reintroduced into the world outside our walls, he or she is aware that the world is different because he or she is different. Sometimes this is good – and sometimes it is not. This is why we like to keep in close contact with our young ones in the months following discharge.
Severus is so fortunate to have you as his champion. What he experienced late yesterday afternoon sounds entirely appropriate for his stage of recovery. Your response to him was – as usual – right on target. You are such a wealth of goodness and intuitive wisdom that I wish I had gone to Hogwarts to have felt your positive influence earlier in my life. Mind you – Beauxbatons was fine, but it did not have A. Dumbledore as the jewel in its crown!
The Obliviation Ceremonies did Severus a world of good, of course. However, he remains one of the most severely damaged children to have passed through our doors. As one who loves him and wants him to become a productive adult, I am sure that you realize that it may be impossible for Sev to live in the world on a totally self-sustaining basis. You will no doubt wish to keep a close watch on him even after his graduation from Hogwarts. If I might state it more emphatically than intended, I apologize in advance, but – you may be his only hope, Albus.
I was also heartened to hear that two of the friends who took the time and care to visit him here have reconnected with him. Severus desperately needs to be a real child – one who has pals and laughter and good times – before adulthood is upon him. It is my hope that your two Gryffindor youngsters might help him to enjoy a greater measure of well-deserved happiness in his life.
I look forward to seeing the two of you once again when you bring Sev to his appointment on the sixteenth. Know that you both have my love and best wishes until then.
Yours,
Asphora LaChance
Healer/Therapist
-------------
Severus Snape, Lily Evans, and James Potter had become a fixture at the front table of the Hogwarts library for at least an hour each day. While two were Gryffindor and one was Slytherin and nothing would change that, the three of them came to look forward to their time together. James brought his jokes; Lily her compliments; and Severus his candy stashes (courtesy of his now mostly-absent mother) even though eating in the library was strictly forbidden.
James and Sev had made their murmured apologies for their respective behaviors in the hasty and embarrassed manner so familiar to fifteen-year-old boys. Perfunctory as it was, it was sufficient to place their feet back on the path of friendship. Lily, of course, had the spontaneity and freedom to hug either boy around the neck at will, proclaiming him a valued friend. Such highly enjoyable but scarce encounters usually left them nearly breathless, transfixed with the beauty and power of Woman, desperately trying to hide their awe behind hastily-opened textbooks or spontaneous discussions about which House had the best chance at the Quidditch Cup this year.
Lily and Severus' latest passion was mountaineering. There was no particular reason for it other than it was something grand and bold and totally beyond their experience. They had yet to ask their Magickal World professor, Frey Azaki, about trying one of the local summits. They still joked about ascending Mt. Cotopaxi, of course, a topic that James found utterly incomprehensible. Why would anyone want to risk his or her life and limb to go to the top of some stupid mountain?
"As the Muggle George Mallory said about summiting Mt. Everest," Severus replied, wrinkling his nose with feigned disdain, "'because it's there'."
"Huh?" James gaped. Lily promptly swatted him with a rolled-up parchment.
"Mt. Everest is the Muggle World's highest summit," Sev continued. "Twenty-nine thousand twenty-eight feet. Roughly the cruising speed of a Muggle jet liner. Of course, our World's summit is five hundred feet higher."
"Sounds like a fun trip," James remarked. He was trying to be a smartarse, but with little success. His two compatriots were Serious about such things, after all.
"On the contrary," Snape whispered, lowering his head. "There is so little oxygen to breathe that a person can neither digest food nor sleep. His or her body begins to cannibalize itself."
"Wick-ed!" James breathed, lowering his own head.
"Not only that," Sev continued in his dry but dramatic style, "but the brain also begins to shut down, giving the climber the mental capacity of a very slow child. Which is about your speed at sea level, Potter." James snatched up Lily's parchment and cracked him on the head with it. Both boys laughed, earning them a Look from Madame Pince.
"That's right," Lily added in a quieter tone, trying to mollify the riled librarian. "The climber's brain is so hypoxic that he or she can actually forget where they are. This can be really, really bad."
James raised his eyebrows.
"For example," the Slytherin boy added, "you have to climb on the edge of an arête, a glacial formation that is like a knife blade. If you fall off one way – you fall for over a mile and splatter yourself all over Tibet. Fall the other – and you plummet for over a mile before you make a mess all over Nepal."
"Crikey," Potter breathed, genuinely intrigued by "gooshy stuff" like this, as did most boys his age. "Is there anything else creepy about it?"
At this, Lily and Sev almost simultaneously turned to face one another, their arms resting on the other's sleeve. "Creepy?" Lily replied in a knowing voice.
"Shall we tell him about the – bodies?"
"Oh, by all means!"
"You or me?"
"You, Sev. I finished breakfast later than you."
James grinned, sliding his glasses down his nose to stare at Snape eyeball-to-eyeball in rapt attention. "Oh, do tell!"
"Well," said Snape, "if you die up there, nobody else has the energy to bring you back down. In – other – words – "He hesitated, darting a sideways glance at Lily.
"Oh, stop fooling around and tell me, Snape!" James hissed, fists balled in mock anger.
"– The route to the summit is marked – by – CORPSES."
"NO SIR!" James yelped.
"Sir! As you climb, you see people to your right and left who may have died five – ten – twenty – even thirty or forty years ago. They're still there – frozen to the mountainside!"
"Urg!"
"Hush!" shrilled Madame Pince.
"They found George Mallory in 1999," Lily added.
"That dumb Muggle git who said that twaddle about the mountain being there, or summat? So what?"
"He fell to his death in 1924."
"TOO COOL!" James shouted. All three children began to laugh in spite of themselves.
"THAT IS ENOUGH!" Madame Pince shrieked, slamming down the book she was holding. "OUT! NOW!"
Desperately scrabbling to gather their belongings, the trio moved as one toward the doors, hoots of laughter bouncing off the library walls, and then spilled out into the corridor where they laughed until they collapsed.
"Having fun, kids?" Professor Azaki said, a droll smirk on his face. "Class in ten minutes." He strode down the hallway.
Severus broke into another fit of laughter.
"Why were you just laughing at our teacher?" Lily asked.
"I wasn't. I was just picturing how Madame Pince would look frozen to the side of Mt. Everest."
------------
"The Muggle World has its Seven Summits," the Magickal World professor said, beginning his lecture promptly on time. "The highest is Mt. Everest, of course. I have collected your parchments and will see how you all did in ranking the Magickal World's highest peaks. Mr. Snape. What is the highest mountain in our World?"
"Mt. Cotopaxi, sir."
"That is correct. Now, is this identical to the Muggle peak by the same name?"
"No, sir. That Mt. Cotopaxi is a rather ordinary volcano in Ecuador. Our summit was discovered and climbed by the wizard mountaineer Eduardo de Cacahuete in 1877. To differentiate the two, he called ours "Cotopaxi Major".
"Is that why they call you 'Greaseball Major'?" hissed Sirius Black, seated two rows behind Severus.
Lily kicked him in the kneecap.
"Ouch, Evans!"
"Mr. Black?" Professor Azaki intoned, folding his arms. "Kindly recite the seven highest summits in our World."
"Um – "Sirius grinned. "Well, the highest is Cotopaxi!"
"You great witless lump of bat dung," Snape hissed.
"Shut up, Psycho Boy."
Severus whipped his wand out of his sleeve and rounded, his dark eyes cold as chips of black ice.
"That will be all, gentlemen! Mr. Snape, kindly put your wand away. Mr. Black, kindly turn in a parchment at least two feet in length telling me in detail why you were not prepared for today's class. On my desk by eight o'clock tomorrow morning, please. Now. As you know, both the incantation and effect of spells changes at altitude, sometimes in unexplained ways. For example – "
-----------
Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew lay in wait for Severus as he came down from Slytherin Tower later that day. Waylaying him in the deserted corridor and dragging him into a vacant classroom, Pettigrew pinned him while Black poked at him with his wand.
"Getting a bit uppity, aren't ya, Snivelly?" the handsome youth growled. "Think you're on the same level as we Gryffindors! In fact, you've been bothering my friends Evans and Potter lately, and I want it to stop."
"I'm – not – bothering – them – "Snape snarled back. Pettigrew grabbed his face and squeezed it hard. "Get – off – me!"
"Or what, Snivellus? Will you cut your wrists and bleed on us? Or maybe drink a bottle of aconite and barf your guts on us? You worthless disgusting git! They only feel sorry for you, you know. Frankly, I wish you had smoked yourself. One less filthy piece of Dark wizard trash to look at every day!"
Severus promptly spat in Black's face.
Black promptly beat him up.
---------
"None of this matters, Sillyass Black," Snape moaned, getting up off the floor. "They're my friends and there's nothing you can do about it. Go piss up a rope."
"What is this, gentlemen?" yelped Professor McGonagall, rounding the corner. "Been fighting again? Disgraceful! Mr. Black and Mr. Pettigrew! To my office! Mr. Snape! To the Hospital Wing! At once!" Digging her forefingers into the shoulders of the two Gryffindors (which hurt quite a bit, actually), she steered them out and away.
Severus snuffled up blood. There was no way he was going back to the Hospital Wing. He had been at St. Mungo's, after all. "I don't need all that fussing," he growled to no one in particular.
"It's lit-tle Snivelly Snape drip-drip-dripping blood all over the place!" wailed Peeves, sailing upside-down toward the Slytherin student. "Because Big Bad Black smacked him right in his ug-ly lit-tle face!"
"Piss up a rope, Peeves," Severus replied coldly. Disgusted, he shouldered his book bag and stomped down the corridor, trying not to be late to his Defense Against the Dark Arts class.
-----------
St. Mungo's Hospital
Children's Psychiatric Center
London
Confidential Communication
Dear Professor Dumbledore,
Hello, and how are you? I was happy to receive your owl post late last night, and wanted to start my day by responding to you.
Most children who experience psychological breaks – to borrow a term from the Muggles – experience wide mood swings for an extended period of time after treatment. They have been forced to look – and some at the very first time – at issues and memories that may well terrify them beyond their emotional capacities. At the Center, we try our hardest to nurture and protect the healing child in order to minimize this impact. For many of our little patients, it is their first experience with unconditional love and attention from a caring adult. While soothing and reassuring, it can sometimes be confusing as well. When the child is reintroduced into the world outside our walls, he or she is aware that the world is different because he or she is different. Sometimes this is good – and sometimes it is not. This is why we like to keep in close contact with our young ones in the months following discharge.
Severus is so fortunate to have you as his champion. What he experienced late yesterday afternoon sounds entirely appropriate for his stage of recovery. Your response to him was – as usual – right on target. You are such a wealth of goodness and intuitive wisdom that I wish I had gone to Hogwarts to have felt your positive influence earlier in my life. Mind you – Beauxbatons was fine, but it did not have A. Dumbledore as the jewel in its crown!
The Obliviation Ceremonies did Severus a world of good, of course. However, he remains one of the most severely damaged children to have passed through our doors. As one who loves him and wants him to become a productive adult, I am sure that you realize that it may be impossible for Sev to live in the world on a totally self-sustaining basis. You will no doubt wish to keep a close watch on him even after his graduation from Hogwarts. If I might state it more emphatically than intended, I apologize in advance, but – you may be his only hope, Albus.
I was also heartened to hear that two of the friends who took the time and care to visit him here have reconnected with him. Severus desperately needs to be a real child – one who has pals and laughter and good times – before adulthood is upon him. It is my hope that your two Gryffindor youngsters might help him to enjoy a greater measure of well-deserved happiness in his life.
I look forward to seeing the two of you once again when you bring Sev to his appointment on the sixteenth. Know that you both have my love and best wishes until then.
Yours,
Asphora LaChance
Healer/Therapist
-------------
Severus Snape, Lily Evans, and James Potter had become a fixture at the front table of the Hogwarts library for at least an hour each day. While two were Gryffindor and one was Slytherin and nothing would change that, the three of them came to look forward to their time together. James brought his jokes; Lily her compliments; and Severus his candy stashes (courtesy of his now mostly-absent mother) even though eating in the library was strictly forbidden.
James and Sev had made their murmured apologies for their respective behaviors in the hasty and embarrassed manner so familiar to fifteen-year-old boys. Perfunctory as it was, it was sufficient to place their feet back on the path of friendship. Lily, of course, had the spontaneity and freedom to hug either boy around the neck at will, proclaiming him a valued friend. Such highly enjoyable but scarce encounters usually left them nearly breathless, transfixed with the beauty and power of Woman, desperately trying to hide their awe behind hastily-opened textbooks or spontaneous discussions about which House had the best chance at the Quidditch Cup this year.
Lily and Severus' latest passion was mountaineering. There was no particular reason for it other than it was something grand and bold and totally beyond their experience. They had yet to ask their Magickal World professor, Frey Azaki, about trying one of the local summits. They still joked about ascending Mt. Cotopaxi, of course, a topic that James found utterly incomprehensible. Why would anyone want to risk his or her life and limb to go to the top of some stupid mountain?
"As the Muggle George Mallory said about summiting Mt. Everest," Severus replied, wrinkling his nose with feigned disdain, "'because it's there'."
"Huh?" James gaped. Lily promptly swatted him with a rolled-up parchment.
"Mt. Everest is the Muggle World's highest summit," Sev continued. "Twenty-nine thousand twenty-eight feet. Roughly the cruising speed of a Muggle jet liner. Of course, our World's summit is five hundred feet higher."
"Sounds like a fun trip," James remarked. He was trying to be a smartarse, but with little success. His two compatriots were Serious about such things, after all.
"On the contrary," Snape whispered, lowering his head. "There is so little oxygen to breathe that a person can neither digest food nor sleep. His or her body begins to cannibalize itself."
"Wick-ed!" James breathed, lowering his own head.
"Not only that," Sev continued in his dry but dramatic style, "but the brain also begins to shut down, giving the climber the mental capacity of a very slow child. Which is about your speed at sea level, Potter." James snatched up Lily's parchment and cracked him on the head with it. Both boys laughed, earning them a Look from Madame Pince.
"That's right," Lily added in a quieter tone, trying to mollify the riled librarian. "The climber's brain is so hypoxic that he or she can actually forget where they are. This can be really, really bad."
James raised his eyebrows.
"For example," the Slytherin boy added, "you have to climb on the edge of an arête, a glacial formation that is like a knife blade. If you fall off one way – you fall for over a mile and splatter yourself all over Tibet. Fall the other – and you plummet for over a mile before you make a mess all over Nepal."
"Crikey," Potter breathed, genuinely intrigued by "gooshy stuff" like this, as did most boys his age. "Is there anything else creepy about it?"
At this, Lily and Sev almost simultaneously turned to face one another, their arms resting on the other's sleeve. "Creepy?" Lily replied in a knowing voice.
"Shall we tell him about the – bodies?"
"Oh, by all means!"
"You or me?"
"You, Sev. I finished breakfast later than you."
James grinned, sliding his glasses down his nose to stare at Snape eyeball-to-eyeball in rapt attention. "Oh, do tell!"
"Well," said Snape, "if you die up there, nobody else has the energy to bring you back down. In – other – words – "He hesitated, darting a sideways glance at Lily.
"Oh, stop fooling around and tell me, Snape!" James hissed, fists balled in mock anger.
"– The route to the summit is marked – by – CORPSES."
"NO SIR!" James yelped.
"Sir! As you climb, you see people to your right and left who may have died five – ten – twenty – even thirty or forty years ago. They're still there – frozen to the mountainside!"
"Urg!"
"Hush!" shrilled Madame Pince.
"They found George Mallory in 1999," Lily added.
"That dumb Muggle git who said that twaddle about the mountain being there, or summat? So what?"
"He fell to his death in 1924."
"TOO COOL!" James shouted. All three children began to laugh in spite of themselves.
"THAT IS ENOUGH!" Madame Pince shrieked, slamming down the book she was holding. "OUT! NOW!"
Desperately scrabbling to gather their belongings, the trio moved as one toward the doors, hoots of laughter bouncing off the library walls, and then spilled out into the corridor where they laughed until they collapsed.
"Having fun, kids?" Professor Azaki said, a droll smirk on his face. "Class in ten minutes." He strode down the hallway.
Severus broke into another fit of laughter.
"Why were you just laughing at our teacher?" Lily asked.
"I wasn't. I was just picturing how Madame Pince would look frozen to the side of Mt. Everest."
------------
"The Muggle World has its Seven Summits," the Magickal World professor said, beginning his lecture promptly on time. "The highest is Mt. Everest, of course. I have collected your parchments and will see how you all did in ranking the Magickal World's highest peaks. Mr. Snape. What is the highest mountain in our World?"
"Mt. Cotopaxi, sir."
"That is correct. Now, is this identical to the Muggle peak by the same name?"
"No, sir. That Mt. Cotopaxi is a rather ordinary volcano in Ecuador. Our summit was discovered and climbed by the wizard mountaineer Eduardo de Cacahuete in 1877. To differentiate the two, he called ours "Cotopaxi Major".
"Is that why they call you 'Greaseball Major'?" hissed Sirius Black, seated two rows behind Severus.
Lily kicked him in the kneecap.
"Ouch, Evans!"
"Mr. Black?" Professor Azaki intoned, folding his arms. "Kindly recite the seven highest summits in our World."
"Um – "Sirius grinned. "Well, the highest is Cotopaxi!"
"You great witless lump of bat dung," Snape hissed.
"Shut up, Psycho Boy."
Severus whipped his wand out of his sleeve and rounded, his dark eyes cold as chips of black ice.
"That will be all, gentlemen! Mr. Snape, kindly put your wand away. Mr. Black, kindly turn in a parchment at least two feet in length telling me in detail why you were not prepared for today's class. On my desk by eight o'clock tomorrow morning, please. Now. As you know, both the incantation and effect of spells changes at altitude, sometimes in unexplained ways. For example – "
-----------
Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew lay in wait for Severus as he came down from Slytherin Tower later that day. Waylaying him in the deserted corridor and dragging him into a vacant classroom, Pettigrew pinned him while Black poked at him with his wand.
"Getting a bit uppity, aren't ya, Snivelly?" the handsome youth growled. "Think you're on the same level as we Gryffindors! In fact, you've been bothering my friends Evans and Potter lately, and I want it to stop."
"I'm – not – bothering – them – "Snape snarled back. Pettigrew grabbed his face and squeezed it hard. "Get – off – me!"
"Or what, Snivellus? Will you cut your wrists and bleed on us? Or maybe drink a bottle of aconite and barf your guts on us? You worthless disgusting git! They only feel sorry for you, you know. Frankly, I wish you had smoked yourself. One less filthy piece of Dark wizard trash to look at every day!"
Severus promptly spat in Black's face.
Black promptly beat him up.
---------
"None of this matters, Sillyass Black," Snape moaned, getting up off the floor. "They're my friends and there's nothing you can do about it. Go piss up a rope."
"What is this, gentlemen?" yelped Professor McGonagall, rounding the corner. "Been fighting again? Disgraceful! Mr. Black and Mr. Pettigrew! To my office! Mr. Snape! To the Hospital Wing! At once!" Digging her forefingers into the shoulders of the two Gryffindors (which hurt quite a bit, actually), she steered them out and away.
Severus snuffled up blood. There was no way he was going back to the Hospital Wing. He had been at St. Mungo's, after all. "I don't need all that fussing," he growled to no one in particular.
"It's lit-tle Snivelly Snape drip-drip-dripping blood all over the place!" wailed Peeves, sailing upside-down toward the Slytherin student. "Because Big Bad Black smacked him right in his ug-ly lit-tle face!"
"Piss up a rope, Peeves," Severus replied coldly. Disgusted, he shouldered his book bag and stomped down the corridor, trying not to be late to his Defense Against the Dark Arts class.