Author's note: To answer a couple of things: I felt that Ron's 'technobabble' might start wearing a bit thin, especially for non ST:TNG fans... As for Harry's injuries, well, who knows what Snape is capable of? You'll have to wait and see...

LOST PERSPECTIVE III : REPERCUSSIONS

By Bellegeste

CHAPTER 3 DIVIDED LOYALTIES

"Forget it!"

The door slammed so violently that the dungeon reverberated, shock waves ricocheting round the solid walls like Snitches in a shoebox; the vibration caused the very lichen to shudder and gather in militant huddles to protest, circular green clots on the surface of the ancient stone.

Professor Dumbledore stroked his long, silvery beard.

"Perhaps a soupçon more - er - diplomacy, might have been in order there, Severus," he commented.

"Diplomacy! Harry is no longer a child; I refuse to treat him as such. I am not here to negotiate with him. The Ministry's stipulations are perfectly clear. I merely presented him with the facts. How was I supposed to know that he would explode like a wild Erumpent in 'must'?"

"He is a teenager, Severus. I find a drop of jocularity, a dash of forgetfulness and an inexhaustible supply of lemon Fizz-bees is a fairly foolproof recipe for dealing with that age group. Allows them to feel intellectually superior while replenishing their blood sugar. In the past, in the case of Harry, I have also found it handy to have a readily accessible stock of breakable objects..."

Snape snorted. He had no intention of sacrificing his dignity or his possessions to one of Harry's temper tantrums.

"You can see what I have to put up with. The boy is out of control. His disobedience tests my patience to the absolute limit. The Ministry's treatment is long overdue."

A batch of floating eyeballs, marinating in an oily, gamboge solution, made the mistake of winking at him. He lasered them with an acute, acid glare until the noxious, yellow ooze began to bubble and, one by one, the eyeballs poached, turning opaquely grey and sinking blindly into the murky sediment at the bottom of the jar.

"Forgive an old man's impertinence, Severus, but may I ask if Harry behaved like this all last week? I was under the impression that the two of you had made some progress. It is evident to me that you are taking your new responsibility seriously, but perhaps Harry is still in some doubt... You have, at least, made an effort to speak to the boy?"

"Of course I have!" Snape snapped. "We spoke at some length. Or rather," he corrected himself, a stickler for accuracy, "I spoke at length. In fact, I think I said too much. I was indiscreet." He castigated himself. "I was tired; I was unwell - I confided more than I should have," he admitted.

He began rearranging the bottles on the already scrupulously tidy shelf, avoiding the Headmaster's kindly gaze.

"I see." Dumbledore could picture the scene: Snape, for whatever reason, had let down his drawbridge for Harry to cross, and was now regretting it and over-compensating - cranking the bridge back up again, preparing the boiling oil... No wonder Harry felt angry and rejected.

"You don't think you might try making yourself a little more - er - accessible, Severus? ...being a trifle more demonstrative? ...try letting him know how you feel?"

The cohorts of glass bottles were now standing to attention with military precision. Snape's shoulders stiffened slightly, but he gave no other indication of having heard.

Overnight there had been two more examples of spontaneous human combustion, no longer confined to the South Wales region, as well as several untoward accidents amongst the Muggle population. The fall-out from the anti-Muggle atrocities was already dropping its sinister ash on Hogwarts: two pupils from Muggle families had been withdrawn from the school. More would inevitably follow.

"I do not believe the Dark Lord to be strictly rational," Snape said, his attention once more openly engaged now that the subject was not Harry. "During our 'encounter' he displayed distinct signs of megalomania. He was behaving like a caricature of himself. And that was before Harry's use of the Killing Curse. His powers were already depleted..."

"Why do you say that?" Estimating the strength of the opposition could be crucial.

"Had they not been, I should be dead," Snape said bluntly. "The Avada Kadavra will have further compromised his abilities. Though I do not think Harry was sufficiently focussed at the time to have produced a curse powerful enough to be lethal against a wizard of the calibre of the Dark Lord. It is possible, though," he mused. "I was hardly in a position to judge."

Dumbledore mulled this over, wishing, as he did so, that his Potions master would speak in shorter sentences. But Severus had always been prolix: even when he was a student his meticulously researched essays had been a verbose nightmare to read.

"We are assuming that the Death Eaters are carrying out the attacks in accordance with Voldemort's instructions. What's your view on this, Severus? Why would they be confining themselves to such petty crimes?" asked Dumbledore. "Not, of course, that I consider any Muggle death to be 'petty', but, surely, he could do so much worse..."

Snape sifted his thoughts carefully before answering, leaving his prejudices trapped in the fine mesh:
"Three possible explanations: first, the Dark Lord might be deranged - the indiscriminate, apparently pointless nature of the killings would lend credence to this view. Or, if we accord him a residual vestige of reason, we should not underestimate the extent to which he relishes his supremacy. He would resent any manifestation of abilities greater than those he himself currently possesses. The Death Eaters will be showing deliberate restraint – for the time-being. Thirdly, these incidents may be merely a teaser, a warning..."

Suddenly he became aware of the time. Break had finished five minutes ago.

"You must excuse me, Headmaster. I have to teach the third years: 'Pimple, Pox and Pustule' Potion. Makes the vapid creatures even more repulsive than they already are, until they master the antidote."

Snape glided out of the damp dungeon. Dumbledore was left standing alone, careworn and, he realised as he wrapped his beard twice round his neck, tucking the ends into his cloak-collar, extremely cold.

"At ease," he murmured to the saluting glass bottles as he exited the room.

x x x x x

Harry just kept on walking. Up the steps away from the dungeons, along the gloomy corridor, out through a service door into the cloistered courtyard, through the archway, down the cobbled path, across the grass, onto the track, towards the Forbidden Forest... ..he kept walking. His fists were clenched tightly, balled in his cloak pockets; his breathing a series of angry, white puffs, that matched time with his ferocious stride. He could hear a voice behind him calling his name; he quickened his pace. He heard running footsteps coming closer, catching up with him.

"Harry? Harry, stop! Harry, wait!" That was not Snape's voice. Harry stopped and turned, almost straight into the arms of Remus Lupin, flushed and panting from the effort of chasing him up the hill. The werewolf looked even more scraggy than usual: his clothes, heavily patched and darned at the best of times, bore a number of recent rents, scuffs and snags; his lined face was blotched with mangy tufts of greyish fur, his hair a mass of shaggy, sandy-coloured knots ; his gait, as he walked beside Harry, was round-shouldered and stooped.

"Sorry about this, Harry," Remus apologised. "It's been a 'difficult' weekend. You know. I'm pretty much clear of it now, but I shouldn't really be out and about yet. Just had to get some fresh air after being stuck inside for two whole days. Still, it's nothing you haven't seen before. Hope I didn't startle you. Thought you were running away from me for a while back there, old boy! Sorry I couldn't be there to welcome you back. How are you doing?"

He put his arm round Harry's shoulder in brotherly affection. The weight made Harry's bruises twinge, but it was a price worth paying. 'It's ironic,' he thought, 'it's because Snape was busy brewing Lupin's 'Wolfsbane' potion, that I went exploring the Manor on my own in the first place...'

"Shall we go in?" suggested Lupin, shivering. "I always forget how cold it's going to be."

They clambered back across the rough ground towards the castle, content with each other's company, but saying little. Memories of the break-time meeting recurred and rebounded in time with Harry's footfalls on the springy heather. He was bouncing on a barbed-wire trampoline - with every step he left behind a gouge of flesh, but he could not climb off it. He could not put the meeting out of his mind.

"Something bothering you, Harry? Let's go to my study, get the tea going - don't laugh; you know me and my tea! – and we can have a chat. Or should you be in lessons? Oh, never mind; you've missed so many, another couple won't make much difference."

Harry reflected that their last chat had ended in harsh recriminations and, since then, he had been the cause of a great deal of trouble to the staff, Lupin included. But Remus had not alluded to it once. Nor had he given him a hard time about Snape. He really was the most easy-going, forgiving, kind-hearted man.

"...so I'd thought, that as it was our last day, that we'd have one last try at sorting things out, that maybe we'd 've done something, sort of, together. I dunno. Nothing special, just... Anyway, when I woke up, there was this note saying he'd be gone all day..."

Once Harry unscrewed the lid, the grievances that he had been shaking up all week started to gush out in an unstoppable foam. Even when the slighter niggles had settled, the events of the morning remained, a thick, creamy head of annoyance at the top of the tankard.

"...and then when he told me to see him in his office at break, I, kind of, thought we were going to talk about it. That he might explain or apologise. Well, no, not apologise - " Harry couldn't imagine Snape ever apologising to anyone about anything, "...but when I arrived, Dumbledore was there too..."

"Professor Dumbledore."

"Yeah, whatever. And they were going on about all this crap from the Ministry. For starters, I've been banned from playing Quidditch..."

"Not a permanent ban, surely?" Lupin was sympathetic.

"They said they'd review it next term after my behaviour had 'undergone reassessment'. They said 'withdrawal of privileges' was the only punishment that seemed to have any impact. Don't suppose I'll be allowed to go to Hogsmeade at Halloween, either.

"And my wand - I'm only supposed to use that in lessons 'for educational purposes'. The Ministry letter said something about the teacher issuing me with my wand at the 'commencement of each study period', but Dumb - Professor Dumbledore said he was prepared to trust me on this one..."

Lupin grinned at this; he clearly thought Dumbledore ingenuously over-optimistic about Harry's self-control where magic was concerned.

"...and then there's all this sodding garbage about 'corrective therapy'. 'Bereavement Counselling' and 'Anger Management' - I ask you! Remus - do I look as though I need therapy? That's Muggle stuff! Snape's getting to sound like my bogging Uncle Vernon! He'll be signing me up for St. Brutus' next! What a load of cobblers! There must be some potion that would do the same thing. Hasn't the Ministry got better things to do? But Snape seems to think..."

"Professor Snape," murmured Remus, thinking that a spot of 'Anger Management' might not be such a bad idea.

"Professor Snape seems to think I should be grateful to him for arranging it. He says I've got to go ahead with it, so I suppose I don't have much choice..."

Lupin was a good listener. Apart from correcting the Professors' titles, which seemed to be a reflex response instilled into all members of staff the second they signed their Hogwarts' contract, he had not tried to interrupt Harry's narrative. He sat with his feet pulled up onto the chair seat, hugging his knees - Harry had once tried to visualise Snape sitting in a position like that, and his brain had crashed, unable to process the image - sipping his tea and observing Harry thoughtfully.

"Is this 'treatment' connected in some way with your Occlumency?" he asked.

Harry shook his head.

"Then there's something I'm missing here, Harry, old man," Remus said, confused. "I should have thought Dumbledore would have had the final say about anything that affects his students' welfare. Why should it be up to Snape to make the decision?"

"Well, he is my father," Harry pointed out, thinking Remus a bit slow on the uptake, that his verbal reasoning might still be a bit wolfy.

Lupin spluttered into his tea with a very doggy snort indeed, then leapt up with a yelp as a slosh of scalding liquid slopped down onto his crotch. Harry couldn't help smiling at the sight of him bent double, jigging in discomfort, pulling out a handkerchief and not knowing whether to wipe the tears of pain smarting from his eyes, or mop the brown rivulets of tea trickling down his face from his flaring nostrils.

"Oh hell, Remus. I'm sorry. I thought you knew. Dumbledore said he had informed all the members of the Order."

Lupin, who had almost stopped choking, gasped out,

"They called a special meeting at Grimmauld Place yesterday - but, obviously, I wasn't able to go. Snape would have been there, of course - that's probably why he had to leave you on your own - and, from what you've said, it sounds as though he spent the rest of the day at the Ministry. Gosh, what wouldn't I have given to be a Doxy in the curtain at that meeting! So, Snape is your father, is he? That puts the Dugbog in the Mandrakes! And you're fine with this, are you Harry? Everybody's fine with this? Everything's just fine and dandy! Good, good. Severus Snape is your father, and everybody's happy about it? Harry, for Merlin's sake, WHAT IS GOING ON?"

He slumped into the tatty leather Oxford, and put his head in his hands, running his fingers distractedly through his unkempt hair, dragging at the knots. A low, sobbing growl rumbled in his throat, and, when he looked up, his teeth were bared in a snarl, the whites of his eyes flashing.

"Snape? Snape? How can this be?"

As the immediate shock of the news wore off, and he began to piece together the implications, Remus took on a glazed, hurt expression. A sombre film of sadness started to envelop him, like a Lethifold creeping up to smother him under cover of darkness.

"James. James and Lily," he mumbled, close to tears. "My dear, dearest old friends..."

x x x x x

"Can you see if you can find out who this belongs to, and give it back?" said Remus, handing Harry a shapeless, tunic-like garment made of a coarse, woven fabric dyed unevenly scarlet; the cuffs, collar and hems of which bore a wide band of multi-coloured, peasant-naïve embroidery. "I found it stuffed inside my Boggart cupboard. Someone must have been hoping that it would come out wearing it - everybody's worst nightmare, so to speak."

He was trying to sound cheerful, but Harry could see that Remus was still shaken and distraught beneath the levity. He had listened, for the most part in stolid silence, as Harry told him the whole story, going right back to the beginning with the arrival of James' poisoned letter. Harry could repeat that bit verbatim: it was indelibly quilled on his heart. At the description of Lily, Remus' grief welled over – he made no attempt to brush away the tears that rolled a zig-zag path through the bristly obstacle course of his cheeks, dripping off his chin onto the threadbare rug at his feet.

"All that suffering! All that terrible misery, and they never said a word to me. They were my best friends - I might have been able to help, but they kept their secret to the end. Oh Harry, that is very sad," he lamented, aching with retrospective empathy.

Harry was more reticent about his subsequent dealings with Snape and, luckily, Lupin didn't press him for details. He was still too absorbed in the pain of James' deception. He looked so woebegone and weary that Harry seriously wondered whether he should try putting him to bed, but Remus rallied and insisted that he'd be fine after another strong cup of tea. Harry thought he should eat something too - he assumed that the werewolf would be OK with normal, human food again now, and that the house elves would not be expected to rustle up a live goat.

"I'm so sorry, Harry," Lupin sniffed. "I get rather 'hormonal' just after the full moon. This has all been such a shock.."

After the emotionally vacuum-packed week with Snape, it was actually a relief for Harry to be with someone who could give vent to their feelings unashamedly and without restraint.

When Harry eventually rose to go, several pots of tea later, Lupin tried to put some distance between himself and the mirage of deceitful memories, and to concentrate on the current dilemma:

"You know you don't have to stay with him, Harry. You've passed the Age of Attainment - you're a free agent. He's not the easiest man to get on with - he may make life difficult for you."

Tell me about it, thought Harry.

"Off you go then." Remus clasped Harry in a bear-hug of commiseration, causing Harry to gasp out loud as his bruises protested.

"Harry? Harry, what is it?" asked Remus, suddenly anxious as the boy winced and shrank from his embrace. "Is it your scar?"

"No."

Lupin dropped his hands from Harry's shoulders and stood, with arms folded, hackles raised, studying him intently. Eons elapsed as, in his mind, hypotheses evolved from the slime of suspicion, only to be condemned by common-sense to extinction. Finally Lupin spoke:

"Harry, unbutton your shirt."

There was a note of firm, unrelenting authority in his voice; it was impossible not to obey.

The bruises were mostly still at the 'liver and bacon' stage, though a few had ripened to a mottled, mature Sage Derby. They dappled Harry's entire torso, arms and shoulders: target circles in concentric tattoos of purple, brown and green, dotted with yellow bulls-eyes. Whiplash strokes cut across his body in red weals which broke the skin, like spreading vapour trails grazing a line across a bloodshot sky.

"Harry! Who has done this to you?" Lupin demanded, anger atoms splitting.

"I'm OK." Harry was covering up, fastening his shirt.

"Look at me, Harry! These are new bruises. Who did this? You can tell me. You don't need to be embarrassed. Harry? Was it Snape? Has he been hitting you?"

"I've got to go."

"Why are you defending him, Harry? Has he threatened you?"

"I've got to go," Harry repeated, more urgently. Friendship and duty tugged at opposite ends of the rope, dragging Harry first in one direction, then the other. His loyalties were divided like a serpent's tongue. Pushing his way roughly past Professor Lupin, he escaped into the corridor.

END OF CHAPTER. Sorry, you've got to wait a bit longer to find out what happened to Harry. Next chapter: HERMIONE'S REVENGE. What was that spell she cast on Ron? ( It doesn't matter, except that it's essential for the plot... [Ed] ). What has she been saying to Draco? What does Luna's enigmatic comment mean?

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