Author's note: Just thought I should mention that, if you haven't read SNAPE'S CONFESSION, this chapter will make no sense whatsoever...

LOST PERSPECTIVE III : REPERCUSSIONS

By Bellegeste

CHAPTER 9 : AT SNAPE MANOR

Snape Manor was a large, imposing, red-brick, late Elizabethan manor house. Harry, whose knowledge of the subject was minimal, would have dated it in some architectural dreamtime somewhere between Tudor black and white and Classical Renaissance, but that was as near as he could get. The old, bonded brickwork façade presented three shaped gables, their bay windows topped at first floor level by low balconies. The fading twines of Virginia Creeper and ivy entangled the stone balustrades, the shaggy fringe of their dangling stems flopping across the windows below. The dark panes squinted blankly through, like the dulled and sightless eyes of a dozen dead crows.

At each end of the building there was a square tower, the corners picked out decoratively with pale sandstone quoining, and their lead domes rising to sharp pinnacles that flashed in the weak autumn sunlight. A central stone turret supported an ornamental bell-tower, its rounded cupola standing tall above the ranks of paired brick chimneys.

On the left, towards the back of the house, Harry could make out the shape of the round tower that he had seen from the hilltop, its grey stonework and conical roof slates forming an incongruous contrast of both style and material with the rest of the building.

Harry's conscience had put up a good struggle, but had finally lost the fight and retired, dizzy and bloodied, about half way down the hillside. Snape had not, after all, expressly forbidden him to look at the house.

Family property, to Harry, had never meant anything beyond the confines of No. 4 Privet Drive - an open prison from which he was allowed time out to attend Hogwarts. It was only now occurring to Harry that he too had a stake in the Snape estate, that the stately, abandoned shell before him was a part of his life and his true heritage.

He stopped at the edge of the driveway that divided the overgrown parterre. The untended formal gardens had long since opted for a more casual look: horticultural hobos, dressing-down with each passing season. Harry glanced back over his shoulder at the way he had just come, and in both directions, left and right. There was no one in sight. Then he tramped forwards, heading for the house itself.

At close quarters the signs of neglect were all too apparent. Plantains and thistles pushed up through the cracked flagstones, and in between the greening cobbles, grass and nettles grew in straggly tufts, competing with the sorrels, dandelions and clumps of cushion moss. Nature had stormed the building too: strings of speedwell trailed from leaf-clogged gutters; a cluster of wind-seeded fescues nested in the chimney stacks.

Cautiously, Harry approached the porte cochère. Years without oiling, polish or paint had left the massive, wooden door leeched, the grain coarse and open. The lock, however, was not similarly weathered: the door was firmly shut. Harry had only tried it on the off-chance; up until that point he had no serious thought of going inside. But then he caught the scent of secrets on the breeze and he was drawn on instinctively: a Thestral lured by the smell of fresh blood.

Ropes of rampant ivy and the whippy, leafless cords of Wisteria bound the ground floor windows. Harry dragged aside a twiggy armful and peered through the glass, but he could see nothing. The next window was the same, and the next. He was working his way systematically round the building, with no success. The Manor defied prying eyes; it had closed its curtains on the world.

Walking along the west elevation brought him to the foot of the round tower. Its sheer walls were of a bluish grey dressed stone, not the local sandstone, its windows mere arrow slits. It rose, monumental and aged, like the cylindrical keep from a medieval chateau. A small, solid oak door deep set in the wall at the base of the tower was as tightly shut as everything else. It seemed to Harry, though, that the nettle stems were bent here and there, the thistles bowed aside, as though someone had brushed through them recently on their way to the doorway. He looked more closely and saw a couple of broken grass stalks, a leaf crushed underfoot...

"Alohamora!" he tried. Nope. Oh, cut to the chase, he thought, recalling his previous attempts with the door to the laboratory. "Ouvrez la porte!" Yep, he heard the bolt slide back - he'd have to tell Snape he was getting predictable. Inside, a spiral staircase wound upwards around the solid central newel. Harry began to mount the stairs.

The tower room was circular, with two recessed windows that each allowed a slice of light to score the gloom. Richly coloured tapestries depicting historical and mythological scenes covered the walls from oak beamed ceiling to boarded floor. Harry did not examine them closely; his attention was transfixed by the shadowy figure standing with her back to him on the far side of the room.

It was a woman, of above average height, slim and elegant in bearing, straight-backed but not stiff; even from behind she had an air of aristocracy: her posture and deportment dignified and proud. Her most striking feature was her hair, which fell in natural ringlets, cascading to her tiny waist in an ebony waterfall, black but with the indigo sheen of a raven's wing. She was gazing through the arrow-slit window, and did not look round when Harry entered, breathing heavily and warm from the climb.

"Severus? C'est toi? Tu es en retard, mon cher. Tu as mes médicaments?" Her voice was low and crooning, smooth but with a hint of huskiness that Harry found hypnotic. Very quickly, however, it slewed into an unexpectedly whining, childlike tone, "Severus? Mon fils, je t'en prie, donne les moi; j'en ai besoin..."

Moving with svelte grace she turned to face Harry. In the soft light she was agonisingly beautiful: high cheekbones, well-defined but delicate features, fine arched brows, clear, porcelain skin and dark, dark eyes that flashed just like her son's...

She thinks I'm Snape. She thinks I'm her son. Oh Merlin! Harry could well believe that she was still a Veela, even if she was a ghost. A mad, potion-crazed ghost. Seeing Harry, her face transformed, narrowing and sharpening with fury and alarm.

"Qui êtes vous? Que faites-vous ici? Où est Severus?"

She took a step towards him, her lips curling away from her perfect teeth in a vicious snarl. Harry wanted to move, to run, but his feet had fused into the floor. He was entranced; he could not take his eyes off that distorted, manic face, twisted with disappointment and dependence.

She was dressed entirely in black but, as he watched, her fitted, peplum jacket, her long, full skirt, her velvet cloak, her hair itself began to crepitate and shimmer with an eerie olive under-glow; arcs of emerald fire sizzled through the beading on the bust, meeting braid and jet buttons in a crackle of shooting turquoise sparks. Ripples of green light washed over her in scalding waves of teal and jade and celadon until her whole body was ablaze with liquid flame.

"Aie! Je meure! Sauvez-moi! Ca brûle! Ce cochon-là me brûle!" she screeched, clawing at her clothing in terror. Whirling round in a frenzy of pain, with a wailing scream she extended both arms out wide, brought them up above her head and then straight in front of her, out-stretched, all ten fingers splayed and rigid, pointing directly at Harry.

"Laissez-moi tranquille! Avada Kadavra!" she shrieked.

The curse ripped from her body in ten focussed beams of lethal energy, hitting Harry like bullets of lime green light, fired at point blank range.

X X X

He was floating in a sea, in a dream, in space, in a hazy almond mist... floating in a world without light or dark, without sensation, without pain; in a place without form, a void without dimension, infinity... Floating, drifting, turning, tumbling, rotating... weightless, directionless, without purpose or intent; floating in emptiness, without grief or sorrow, joy or love... floating in eternity, divorced from linear time; floating in a vacuum of absence...

There was a voice. A voice that he might have heard before or since, in another lifetime; a voice that mouthed words without meaning: low, distorted thunder rumbles of sound, warping into shrill cartoon babble; a voice that fiddled with the dial of awareness to find a frequency in the endless flux of non-existence.

A voice that shifted focus, now far away, so far, and now inside him, speaking from within, in his ears, and then away again from the farthest, immeasurable distance. A voice he recognised, at last, as sound and sense came together in a verbal pattern, emerging from the chaos of white noise and nothingness.

"Go back, Harry. Go back. It is not time yet. Now is not your time.

I must take you back."

It was like an old, blunt, underpowered Portkey, wrenching him from that place behind his navel, pulling back and back and back... ...until he knew he was lying on something solid and cold, something tangible and real.

He couldn't move. He couldn't breathe - he felt as though he had the deadweight of ten Crookshanks pressing on his chest with their paws kneading his windpipe - he couldn't speak; he couldn't see. He was paralysed in a suffocating, pea-soup fog that muffled his hearing, blindfolded his vision...

Harry could hear voices. A maudlin, petulant, girlish whine that froze his blood and, later - how much later? Time had lost all meaning - another, male voice, raised in anger, racked with anguish.

"Bon Dieu! Qu' est ce qui se passe? Que fais-tu, Maman? Tu es complètement folle? C'est mon fils là! Tu as tué mon fils! Tu as perdu le raison? Tu dérailles? Merde! Non! Tais-toi! Va t'en! Va t'en, Maman!"

Harry felt a gentle pressure on his neck as Snape felt for a pulse. He wanted to smile and tell him, 'It's alright. I'm OK, just winded', but his lips would not respond. His eyes were straining to see but the lids remained closed.

Something warm and soft was being draped over him - something that smelled reassuringly of anise and wormwood, smoky and sour, herbal and musky: Snape's cloak. Snape tucked it carefully round the boy and took his hand, re-checking the wrist for the faint pulse, the only sign of life.

"Harry! Non! Pas toi aussi, fiston," he whispered. "Ne me quitte pas, mon gars. Pas maintenant. Je n'aurais pas pu supporter de te perdre..."

The words themselves made no sense to Harry, but he understood the raw pain in Snape's voice. He forced his eyes open, blinking away the fog.

"Harry? Où est-ce que ça te fait mal?" Snape bent over him, attentive and anxious. "Where does it hurt?"

"All over. My chest mainly; my shoulders." Harry could breathe now. "She... she used A.K."

Snape nodded as though he had expected as much.

"It is my mother's penance to relive, as it were, the moment of her death. She has learned how to channel the destructive force with a power unusual for one of the spirit world. You took a huge risk in coming here. She is not rational... You should not expose yourself to such dangers."

In the half-light Harry read a chapter of conflicting emotions in Snape's bleak expression. Meeting Harry's eyes, Snape suddenly became aware that he was still crouching beside the supine boy, still holding his hand. Self-consciously brusque, he stood up.

"It is fortunate for you that my mother is dead and therefore, theoretically, unable to cast a lethal curse," he said dryly. Now that the immediate danger was past, his English reserve was regaining control, suppressing the Gallic alter ego. Propriety was replacing passion. Harry could have done with the French Snape for a little longer; he felt wobbly - a hug would not have gone amiss.

"There will be severe bruising, but no internal damage," Snape said, objectively. "Can you get up?"

Harry struggled to roll over onto his side and from there into a sitting position. Every movement was agony; his lungs burned; his chest, blasted by that magical mitrailleuse, ached like one massive contusion. Snape steadied him as he climbed painfully to his feet, but there was no comforting warmth in his touch.

"What in Merlin's name did you think you were doing, Harry? Why did you come here? Here, of all places!" Anger, the understudy of shock and fear, was taking centre stage. "You knew the Manor to be out of bounds...Whatever possessed you...? However, we will not discuss this now. Alors, sortons d'ici."

The walk back to the cottage was a silent ordeal. Harry could concentrate only on putting one foot in front of the other, fighting down the pains in his chest - the crushing ache of guilt as much as the physical discomfort. He knew he had let Snape down, disobeyed him, disappointed him, forfeited his trust, frightened him into that whispered admission.

Snape matched Harry's pace, walking at his side, supporting him when he flagged, but saying nothing to him; his expression was set, cold and unforgiving.

"Espèce d'idiot!" he muttered once under his breath, rebuking himself for his vulnerability.

At the cottage, Snape instructed Harry to sit by the fire while he fetched a phial of Painless Potion. Harry waited, dreading his father's return; he didn't feel well enough to cope with Snape's rage. But Snape's reaction was more hurt than wrathful - and that was far worse.

"How can I ever trust you, Harry, when you ignore my instructions and flout my wishes at every opportunity? You deliberately disobey me! I see that my expectations have been unrealistic. I shall not be repeating that mistake. Now, go to bed. We shall defer discussion of your punishment until the morning."

But in the morning Snape had been gone, and Harry had come down to find that note on the kitchen table.

END OF CHAPTER. OK, you've read enough of my stuff by now to know that Snape would never have hurt Harry... (Hope it wasn't an anti-climax after all that build-up.)

Next Chapter: WAR REPORTS. Back to the main story. The therapist, Draco and Hermione are all causing Harry more grief, and where is Snape when Harry needs him?

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