Sirius squirmed in his hard, wooden chair, trying not to be distracted by the pickled potions ingredients and bioalchemical curiosities floating in bottles on the shelves around him, or the cold stone and dim, bluish light of a starfire charm and the accompanying hint of dark magic on the air, or the way the fire burned silently off to his left, buried under charms to prevent its warmth ruining the pervasive chill in the room, casting ominous, flickering shadows across the walls.
Had Snivellus actually tried to make this office as uncomfortable as possible? When Slughorn had been here, it had been carpeted, and, well...cozy. He was pretty sure that was the same heavy, mahogany desk the old head of the Potions department had used, but in Slughorn's time it had been covered with little souvenirs and thank-you gifts from friends and former students, and...he was pretty sure there'd been a lamp, its shade a mosaic of multi-coloured glass, casting shifting patches of gold and green and blue on the walls and ceiling. Now it was covered in papers and quills and abandoned, half-used ink bottles, baskets of scrolls and ancient tomes with cracking covers — as though some kind of work actually got done here.
He couldn't help but wonder if Snivels always took parent–teacher meetings here and, if so, whether he knew how...weird it was, hosting such meetings in what was obviously a working space like this. Almost as weird as just...sitting there, staring at him. It might have been a while since Sirius had done this whole polite interaction thing, aside from Wizengamot dragonshite — Little Bella was right, he was quite ready to be done with the whole thing, and Emma Granger probably did know more about the whole political situation than he did already, he really just didn't want to admit that she was right, so he was determined to stick it out for a few more weeks, at least.
Wait, what was he... Right, he hadn't done this for a while, but he was pretty sure that after you got through the introductions and sat down and everything, there was supposed to be some offer of hospitality, not a two-minute long staring contest. Going on three. Seriously, what the hell! It wasn't like he was even trying to legilimise Sirius — he might not be able to stop him, but he was pretty sure he was good enough at occlumency to know when someone was poking around the edges of his mind. Even someone as sneaky as Snivels. At least, he was when he wasn't completely hung over and therefore half-asleep and nursing a massive headache.
Which he wasn't. He was slightly flat — Soma was kind of like Dreamless Sleep, made everything feel distant and unimportant, they'd called it the Chill Pill Potion back in the Seventies. He kind of hated it (in a distant, unimportant way), but being numb was better than actively hating himself (in a much more visceral, immediate way). Everything about it felt fake, like it was just kind of covering up the lingering black mood he'd been in for weeks, and not very well at that, but it was enough to let him remember that he thought this was important, because...reasons. Harry-related reasons. Anyway, he was pretty sure it didn't affect his ability to notice mind magic being used on him, and Snivels wasn't. Which was kind of weird, really.
"Why are you here, Black?"
Finally! Though...that wasn't exactly a question Sirius could answer. "You don't know?"
"What don't I know?" the greasy git asked, getting all tetchy with him.
"No, I wasn't implying— I mean, I know I wrote you because you mentioned it in your reply, but I was really drunk and kind of...out of it at the time..." He'd been having one of those nights where everything seemed completely hopeless and miserable and just complete shite, and honestly he'd rather not have to deal with existing, even when there were no dementors around. The last two weeks or so had been generally bad — he didn't do well alone (never had), and with the kids at school and Mira busy... He tried not to drink on really bad nights, because he knew it only ever made it worse, but he must have been feeling especially keen on punishing himself for being the worst person ever, because he'd gone ahead and decided to do it anyway. "...so, I don't know why."
Snivels raised an eyebrow at him in one of those classic, did someone drop you on your head as a child, Black looks (which he'd probably copied from Evans). "If you hope to convince me that you are anything other than a raving lunatic—"
"Oh, no, I'm definitely a raving lunatic, just— Look, do you still have the letter?" Sirius gave him a smile that felt as fake as his interest in being here. He was pretty good at acting like he wasn't completely dead inside, though, so maybe he'd pulled it off.
In any case, Snape passed a scroll to him with a flick of his fingers and a wandless banishing charm — show-off. He unrolled it warily, there was really no telling what he might've...
Oh.
Okay, that wasn't so bad. At least, not in the actual shite he'd said. Kind of embarrassing, but on a scale of embarrassing shite he'd done over the years, drunkenly rambling at Snivels about how Harry never told him anything, and Sirius was just a complete failure as anything resembling an adult, was...not that bad, really. Like...maybe a three? It probably wasn't even anything Snivellus hadn't already known, just, you know, confirming it.
"Wow. I'm kind of shocked that you actually responded to this."
"Curiosity will undoubtedly be the end of me, eventually."
Right, so he wasn't going to tell Sirius why he wanted to see him. He had to have a reason to want to see him — if he didn't, he would've just burnt this piece of trash, or maybe framed it as proof of Sirius's general patheticness or something, but he wouldn't have written back, demanding to speak to him in person. Which he apparently now had no intention of doing. Speaking to him. Or at least, not until Sirius told him whatever he'd been working up to in the letter. Reading between the lines, trying to figure out the underlying logic of his rambling (which did exist...most of the time, even when he was completely pissed)... "I'm...pretty sure I wanted to apologise to you," he concluded.
Snivels's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "Why?"
"Ah, because I'm an incomparable arse and almost got you mauled by Moony back when we were teenagers? I mean, that is the big one, isn't it? Pretty sure you got me back for everything else."
"You're also an incomparable idiot. Why did you suddenly decide that I deserve an apology for an act that occurred nearly two decades ago, one I am well aware you aren't actually sorry for, and what does that have to do with...any of your drunken ramblings?"
"Er... Right."
That was kind of complicated. Or, well...he had been thinking he ought to apologise in the first place because there were a couple of things he wanted from Snivels. Well, mostly just information on a couple of things, but that was worth more than gold when you already had more gold than you could ever use. Which was simple enough. But then there was...
Okay, in the right light (a drunken, self-loathing light), they were practically family. Which didn't, of course, mean that Snivels couldn't still hate him — after all, Sirius had hated pretty much all the family he'd ever had — but it was really hard to completely ignore all the shite he'd grown up with, and even if family hated each other (even if they occasionally threw Unforgivables at each other), they should still be on speaking terms. Yes, he had stopped speaking to the Blacks after he broke the Family Magic, but that was because he'd been trying to make it clear that they weren't his family anymore.
And he was kind of thinking that he and Snivels didn't really have a choice in the matter.
Harry obviously trusted him — more than he trusted Sirius, which was just...endlessly galling — and Meda's daughter was shagging him apparently, when she wasn't chasing Bella all over the continent (because that was going to go well), and...much as he hated to admit it, Sirius was well aware that Evans would have named Snape as Harry's other godparent if he hadn't been a Death Eater at the time. (She'd actually suggested it even though he was — mostly as a joke, Jamie would never have agreed, even if Snivels wasn't a Death Eater.) And since Snivelly seemed to be determined to look out for Harry for the sake of her memory, and Sirius actually was his godfather, he had, he recalled rather hazily, concluded that they were basically co-parents. Really, really estranged, House-of-Black-level dysfunctional co-parents. (And he couldn't really argue with his drunken past self about it now, he realised. By the sober, less-self-loathing light of day, it was even clearer that Snivels was a more responsible, functional adult than Sirius was — plus he had about twelve more years experience dealing with teenagers, and Harry still trusted him more, anyway.) And if they were going to be effectively sharing a kid, they probably should be able to be civil to each other.
He probably shouldn't try to explain that, though. Contrary to popular belief, he did try to avoid saying things that sounded completely mad most of the time. He also probably shouldn't open with a low-key freak out over Harry's ongoing Voldemort, er...vision/nightmare things, whatever. Because that was what had prompted him to start thinking about Snivels in the first place. Harry had talked to the greasy dungeon bat about it when they first started, and he'd supposedly told Harry and Blaise that the nightmares were nothing to worry about and he should start practising lucid dreaming to get them to stop — supposedly, because Sirius was pretty fucking sure someone was lying about the nothing to worry about part. (He wasn't certain whether Snivels had lied to Harry or Harry was lying to Sirius...and he honestly suspected the latter.) But again, that would be one of those things that if he just started talking about it, he'd probably end up ranting incoherently about Evans fucking about with soul magic, sounding entirely insane and insulting Snivels's One True Love.
That was the sort of thing one needed to work up to.
Fortunately, there was one other thing he also needed to talk to Snivellus about, he could use that to establish some kind of interaction beyond the constant attempts to curse each other which had defined their relationship for the ten years between meeting each other on the train to Hogwarts and Sirius going to Azkaban. Cooperative might have been the word he was looking for. "Little Bella says she's delegated the planning aspect of her plan to murder one Not-Professor Riddle to you. I want in."
He'd tried to get other people to tell him what the fuck was going on with the whole de Mort's Not Dead thing, but Bella hated repeating herself — even when she was 'repeating' herself to someone who definitely hadn't already heard it — and so did a terrible job filling people in on any given situation. Meda was all respectable now, so didn't want to have anything to do with Dark Lords, undead or otherwise, and Cissy seemed to think the whole thing was stupid and doomed to failure, so obviously Bella hadn't told her anything.
Though, come to think of it, that might have been more because Cissy had dismissed the project on the grounds that Bella was just a kid and had no business trying to kill even a completely washed up Dark Lord, and Bella hated being treated like a child or told that she had no business killing anyone she damn well pleased. (Which, okay, neither of them had really known Bella when she was Little Bella's age, but Sirius was pretty sure that should be obvious.) And in any case, she had more urgent problems, like the fact that she'd fabricated an Imperius Defense which was now under fire because her idiot husband had gotten himself captured at the World Cup, wearing his bloody stupid lieutenant's mask and all. Bella said he'd done so on Cissy's orders, but Cissy wouldn't tell either of them why...probably because she (correctly) suspected that he would fuck up her plot, because fuck Lucius Malfoy, seriously. (That and it was always funny to watch Cissy get caught in a lie.)
Focus, Sirius! You're talking about killing de Mort! The planning thereof!
Zee, unlike Narcissa, fully supported the execution of Thom de Mort — because he had fucked Bella over such that she'd chosen to abandon Zee and go sit in Azkaban for twelve years (apparently there were childhood compulsions involved) — but had relatively little to offer to said project, and so also wasn't really in the loop.
Snivellus raised an eyebrow at him — this one, Sirius was fairly certain, meant to indicate that this was an unexpected response, but that Snivels was far too cool to actually be surprised. "I wasn't aware that you were...in the know."
"Is that your way of asking me whether I know that she's actually Bella, not just coincidentally uncannily similar to the original? Because yes, she did finally admit that. Gotta say, her old universe sounds kind of lame." (There was de Mort being an embarrassingly nerdy schoolteacher instead of the most evil bastard to ever exist, so they had that going for them, but other than that...)
So far as Sirius had gathered, Bella had had a minor freak-out over Harry getting between her and the Quidditch World Cup riot and Cissy trying to calm her down by reminding her of her duty to the House, which had led to Bella very nearly blasting her across the tent, because, well... Sirius didn't want to sound like he was endorsing teenage temper tantrums — according to Zee, she'd gotten all glowy-eyed and everything — but Cissy definitely should've known better. She knew exactly who Little Bella was, and where she'd come from, had done since before Yule, and Sirius refused to believe that she thought Little Bella should have any better control over herself than their Bella, and...
To be fair, he didn't really think Narcissa understood needing to be a part of the chaos and violence the way Bella did — and Sirius, though he tried not to admit it — but Sirius didn't think he'd ever seen Bella actually happy anywhere other than on a battlefield. Cissy had to have known that getting between her and the first actual, proper battle she'd been anywhere near was a terrible idea.
But he was rambling again. Zee had managed to defuse the situation by reminding Bella that all the shite that was driving her insane (and not in a fun way) — spending all summer trying (and mostly failing) to act (relatively) normal, keeping big secrets from as many people as possible, dealing with politics and shite — was all self-imposed. Which meant if she decided they weren't worth it, she could just decide not to bother. And there were reasons she had adopted those habits in the first place, obviously, but giving herself a little slack wouldn't compromise the goals she'd prioritised over maintaining...what passed for sanity, for her. So when Sirius had asked her after the riot why the fuck she'd decided to help capture the instigators instead of letting them go to fight another day, she'd ended up telling him...
...pretty much everything, he thought. "I also know that she's a Black Mage dedicated to Eris; she and Eris re-wrote Bellatrix's personality over Walpurgis to get rid of de Mort's compulsions; Bella is running around with Greyback in France — apparently Greyback's wife owns one of our vinyards, now — and has no intention of coming back to Britain; and Little Bella accidentally killed a horcrux last month, after which you two went and killed all of de Mort's inferi without me, because you're both selfish, inconsiderate twats like that."
He also knew that Little Bella had been intending to re-write the past of her own universe when she'd left it, go back thirty years and start a bloody war — Grindelwald's war, to be precise. As far as he could tell, that goal hadn't really changed, though obviously the specifics would have to. He was pretty sure he ought to be more conflicted about that than he was, but looking around at how little the world had changed while he was in Azkaban (in some ways it had even gotten worse), he couldn't help but think that it was only a matter of time until Zee's ceasefire fell apart and they were right back where they'd been in the Sixties and Seventies, but with a lot more blood feuds to hash out.
"Also, Little Bella may have accidentally started a prank war with the original Bella by trapping her in the Dark a couple of weeks ago. Not actually sure if Bellatrix is going to retaliate, presumably she did something first, so they might be even, or, you know, close enough — I'm sure they both think their excessive approach to retaliation is entirely reasonable — but you may still want to keep an eye out for that, anyway. Just, you know, a heads-up."
Snivellus's left eye twitched, just a bit.
After another too-long silence, he apparently decided that he had absolutely nothing to say on that issue. Which was kind of odd — Sirius thought it might be interesting, seeing what the two of them came up with to do to each other, and there would almost certainly be some kind of collateral damage, assuming Bella actually decided to retaliate. You'd think he'd appreciate the warning.
But no, after a long pause he simply dragged the conversation back on topic. "So...you've decided to apologise for attempting to murder me because you need something from me. I'm sure you can imagine my shock."
"Er...basically, yes. Though I think it's worth noting that I wasn't trying to murder you. If I was trying to murder you, I wouldn't have used one of my best mates as the murder weapon — I'm not that stupid!" Not to mention, you know, if he had been trying to actually kill Snivels, he'd be dead. Granted, Sirius would probably have gotten caught, but Snivels definitely wouldn't be here to whinge about attempted murder. (Yes, he had failed to kill the Traitor, but that was entirely because he had underestimated the rat — Snivels hadn't exactly been shy about using his full range of skills in their little feud and he was definitely more dangerous than the Traitor, but Sirius would have taken that into account if he were actually trying to kill the slimy snake.) "I was trying to get you expelled for trying to break into the Shack. It wasn't my fault Jamie and Remus finally got Jamie's stupid ward-gate working that month. And yes, I will admit that I was totally okay with you dying when I found out about it, but I'm pretty sure you would've let me walk into mortal danger just as easily. And in my defense, I was kind of mad, and possibly in the middle of a psychotic break, so—"
"I hope you realise that claiming familial insanity exempts you from any responsibility for your actions in order to avoid apologising is, in fact, not apologising."
...Well, no, it wasn't. Sirius just really hated making apologies, especially when he meant them. "I'm sorry I tried to get you expelled, and I'm sorry that my entirely non-lethal plan accidentally placed you in mortal danger, and that I did consider your death a potentially satisfactory solution to the problem I managed to convince myself needed to be solved in order to get back into Jamie's good graces. If it's any consolation, it didn't work."
Snivel's eyes narrowed, just a hint of confusion, there, maybe. "What do you mean it didn't work? As I recall, you and Potter reconciled in the wake of your foray into...negligent homicide. I suppose I will give you that you wouldn't have wanted your werewolf executed."
Well, at least he was willing to give him that much. Sirius winced slightly, thinking back on the sequence of events that had unfolded over the first two months of his sixth year at Hogwarts. "Well, yeah, Jamie forgave me, but only because he thought I was insane when I screwed Evans." He hadn't been, though he'd had the sense not to correct that misconception. It wasn't as though he'd really been in his right mind, anyway — he had been really drunk, and really, really high, and she had deliberately seduced him in an attempt to sabotage his and James's friendship in retaliation for stripping Snivels out by the lake after their Defence OWL, one that had almost actually worked. (She had totally admitted it, clearly hadn't been able to resist the opportunity to gloat a little, though not to James, of course — manipulative, unfeeling bitch had just let him twist.) "And only then because I spent every Saturday for the next three months with a mind healer, trying to get my head back on straight."
"They actually made you get professional help?" A hint of a smirk tugged at the corner of Snivels's lips — a promising sign, Sirius thought.
"Er, even I couldn't get away with apparently attempting to kill someone without any consequences at all. I mean, sure, Dumbledore liked me, but people tend to get concerned when little Blacks start trying to kill people...even when they're not really trying to kill people, just— You know what I mean. The done thing is normally to discourage us from doing anything that involves even the possibility of a body count, can't imagine why."
He said it sarcastically, but he actually did kind of mean it — it wasn't as though most of them actually enjoyed killing for the sake of killing, like they were going to start killing everyone they could the moment they got their first taste of it. (Which was a silly assumption, but then, he supposed most people didn't know that they were involved in sacrificial subsumption rituals at the age of seven.) They just had a tendency to pit themselves against the most dangerous enemies they could find, at the highest stakes they could find, and... Actually, in hindsight, that might explain a lot of the antagonism between himself and the frankly terrifying Evans–Snape duo back in school. Completely aside from the thing with Jamie, they were practically the only members of his class who could hold their own in a proper feud — especially when Cassie noticed what was going on around her long enough to help — so, when he thought about it... Huh.
"Black!" Snivels snapped, jolting him out of his mental tangent.
Er. Right. Yes. Apologising. "Anyway, I'm sorry. I promise I won't do it again. And if there's anything I can do to prove my sincerity to you, I would you name it." There. Done. An actual apology. (Sirius honestly couldn't remember the last time he'd made one, including an offer to make amends and all.)
Snivels just stared again. It seemed longer, this time. "I will...consider it," he said, eventually, when Sirius was nearly on the verge of dying of suspense.
"Good. Thank you. So...about that plot to kill the Dark Wanker once and for all?"
Snivellus sighed. "There is no plot, as such. This is the first I've heard of my having been appointed to design one. So far as I am aware, we are at the gathering resources stage of the campaign — money and influence, information, allies, and so on. Aside from the Zabinis and myself, she has recruited young Ginevra Weasley and Theo Nott, the former because of the intelligence she holds, and the latter apparently by accident, being pathologically incapable of remembering who she's already brought in on any given secret. Mister Potter is aware, to some extent, of her activities — I understand he witnessed the aftermath of the destruction of the second horcrux, and Zabini has explained to him the fact that the Dark Lord used multiple horcruxes to survive Samhain of Eighty-One, but I don't believe that he fully understands that the junior Bellatrix intends to finish him off, nor has he been officially recruited to help.
"The senior Bellatrix is apparently uninterested in killing him herself, and the junior Bellatrix refuses to ask for her help in gathering information on the specifics of her former master's soul anchors. She almost certainly knows what they are, and where — and could probably finish the job herself in a few hours, if suitably motivated — but I gather she believes that Mister Riddle would find it more intolerable to be immortal and powerless than simply dead."
"Yes, well, that and Riddle's a British problem, isn't he. She's moved on. What intelligence could little Ginny Weasley possibly have that makes it worth recruiting a twelve-year-old kid into this fight? She can't have much more experience than Harry." Most families, after all, were not the Blacks, training their children to fight from the age of three. Molly hadn't even been entirely comfortable with Alice and Sirius giving little Bill one of Alice's old wands and teaching him a few basic self-defence charms back in Seventy-Nine. She hadn't stopped them — they had been in the middle of a bloody war, after all — but she clearly hadn't been comfortable with it.
"She was possessed by one of Riddle's horcruxes for the better part of her first year here at the school, giving her a unique perspective on the man — as well as access to memories of a part of his life even Bellatrix was not witness to, should she manage to organise them into something coherent despite her lack of formal occlumency training and resistance to external assistance in the matter."
"If that's your way of saying she doesn't want anyone else using legilimency to poke around in her head after being fucking possessed for an entire year, yeah, I don't blame her! Wait, does that mean she hasn't talked to a mind-healer about it? Like, at all?"
Snivels raised an eyebrow at him. "Not so far as I am aware."
"Not even to, you know, just talk?" Because not all mind-healers insisted on using legilimency in their treatment. McKinnon, the one Sirius had been forced to see after almost accidentally killing Snivels and ruining Remy's life forever, hadn't. Snivellus just held that same expression. Obviously not. "Shite. What the fuck was she thinking?"
"Bellatrix? I doubt it has occurred to her that exploiting traumatised children in pursuit of information on an undead Dark Lord could be considered problematic."
What? No, if anything, Little Bella probably thought she was being helpful, giving Ginny a chance to fight back against the monster who'd so thoroughly violated her. That was probably what she would have wanted, if it had been her — it wasn't really a secret that Bellatrix had killed Cygnus, or why. He honestly wouldn't have expected her to do anything else for Ginny, especially when it could win her crucial information and required little to no effort on her part. "No, Cassie."
"Lovegood?"
"Yes, Lovegood. You know, the incredibly hot, incredibly intimidating one who used to run around the Forest shagging Evans and riding unicorns and totally not being dedicated to Artemis? now kills Dark Lords and takes on cursed teaching posts for fun? Yes, that Cassie."
"I suspect I know her a good deal better than you ever did, Black," Snivels said drily, though a smirk was pulling at his lips. Probably at Sirius's description of her, which hadn't really been funny on purpose, but he'd take it. "What about her?"
"She invited me to tea," Sirius explained, scowling at a pile of mouldering potions texts, currently in use as a make-shift display plinth for an open scroll, held in place by a handful of crystal inkbottle stoppers. "Wanted to catch up, apparently. Incredibly awkward. Worse than this, even. At least you weren't off having grand adventures while I was sitting in Azkaban surrounded by dementors and wallowing in my own misery."
Snivels scowled at him. "No, I was sitting here, surrounded by idiot children, charged with the sisyphean task of actually teaching them something. What does this have to do with...anything else?"
"Oh, right. Cassie suggested that I...I don't know, offer to teach the Weasley girl a few things. Auror things. Or, well, however much proper light battle magic a thirteen-year-old is actually capable of learning."
Sirius didn't really have the experience to guess how much that might be. Obviously he knew what he and Narcissa had been capable of at that age, but all of the Blacks tended to be a bit more powerful than the average mage, and starting at such a young age helped as well. Harry wasn't a good guideline, either — Sirius might not know how much a thirteen-year-old was normally capable of, but he was pretty sure they couldn't all cast a fucking patronus. But then again, Molly's brothers had been two of the strongest fighters on either side of the war — not quite sorcerer-league, but the two of them had been able to hold their own against anyone short of Bella or Riddle himself — and Little Bella had had her 'minion' practising dueling with Theo Nott for the better part of a year now. She had actually described Nott as probably better than me if I weren't a huge bloody cheater, so Sirius had no idea what the Weasley kid might be able to handle at this point.
"Apparently she's been trying to learn how to fight, almost got herself killed at the World Cup. Cass went off on some tangent about potential and how hardly anyone does that sort of magic anymore, and the kid has potential, but Cassie doesn't really have the time to teach her anything outside of class, and really it shouldn't be her, anyway, because...reasons — she had reasons, I just don't remember what they were — and, you know, it would be a great idea if I did it instead, we could use more proper warriors for the Light... You know, one of those long, rambly, Lovegood-ish monologues where you find yourself agreeing with her every step of the way, and then not knowing how you got suckered into agreeing to offer dueling lessons to a thirteen-year-old kid who apparently has serious mental trauma issues and thinks she's going to help Little Bella kill a goddamned Dark Lord. She didn't mention any of that.
"She has to know, though, at least about the possession thing — that's the sort of thing that leaves a mark on your soul, you know, and if Cassie evaluated the kids' natural alignments—" Which she had, part of her reforming the Defense curriculum — sounded brilliant, Sirius wished someone had done that when they were in school. "—you can bet your arse she's felt it. I just can't figure out what the hell she was thinking, suggesting I should volunteer to mentor her! If I was going to teach her proper light magic, I'd have to help her work through all that, and I'm about the last person anyone should be looking to for advice on, I don't know... It's just a terrible idea, that's all."
He looked up, expecting Snivellus to nod, or say something, agree with him that he was the last person who should be giving people advice on dealing with mental trauma. As far as he was concerned, it should be beyond obvious that he hardly had his own shite together, mentally speaking. No one, least of all Snivels, had ever accused him of being sane. But he wasn't nodding, or giving any sort of expression that suggested he might think Cassie had lost her own mind, suggesting something as completely daft as this.
Quite to the contrary, a cruel smirk was slowly spreading across his features, a calculating look in his eye. "Oh, I don't know, possibly that you have...let's call it a unique perspective on overcoming a certain degree of inherent darkness to serve the light. Or that you might know a thing or two about dealing with mental and emotional trauma, given that you haven't offed yourself yet despite your entire life being one long succession of painful failures." That was...quite possibly the most complimentary thing Snivels had ever said to him. So backhanded Cissy would be impressed, but still. "Or possibly that you could stand to deal with a little responsibility for the first time in your life."
"You can't possibly be serious."
"Oh, but I am. Yes, the first step in the plan to dispose of Riddle now requires that you take on the duty of—"
"Knock it off, Sni– Snape. This isn't funny."
"Who's having fun, Black? If you wish to prove to me the sincerity of your resolution to make up for the incident of your childish negligence which so very nearly resulted in my death, you will take on this responsibility and acquit yourself as an adult, helping Miss Weasley work through the trauma of having been possessed by Tom Riddle, and in the process work through your own childhood issues, perhaps even developing a degree of maturity along the way."
That was just...
Okay, maybe that did kind of make sense, but Sirius was positive Snivels was just using his apology as an excuse to force him to do this because he was a cruel bastard who didn't give a single flying fuck about Miss Weasley's general wellbeing, if it meant Sirius was going to have to suffer through feelings, for however long this farce ended up taking. Quite possibly years — taking on what amounted to an unofficial apprentice was not a small task.
"I hate you, Snivels."
"No more than I, you, Black. Bellatrix, my office, now!"
"What the hell was that?" Little Bella asked, materialising out of thin air, rubbing at her left ear.
"And here I thought you were our resident expert on shadow magic," Snivels said smugly.
"Oh, shut up, what do you—"
"What are you, a fucking house elf, now?" Sirius blurted out, cutting her off.
"House elves don't use shadow magic. Also, no, I haven't thought I was an elf since I was, like, three. Keep up, Siri."
"Wait, you actually... Is that why you don't let anyone call you Trixie?" Because Trixie was, he had just realised, totally a house elf name. And since the only person who was allowed to call her Trixie was Zee, who was also the only person she really ever listened to, that kind of put their entire relationship into a whole new light, didn't it.
Bella glared at him, ignoring the question in a way that made him almost certain he was right. (He wondered if Zee knew.) "Why are you here? I thought you two hated each other."
"We do," they said, coincidentally in unison, before glaring at each other...also coincidentally in unison.
"Uh huh. Well, whatever you're meeting about, I didn't do it."
"What did you do, Bellatrix?" Snivellus asked, overly exaggerating his tone of exasperated resignation.
"Nothing. It's just, normally when the Head of Slytherin is meeting with the person nominally responsible for me, it's because he thinks I've done something. I mean, Professor Riddle was about as likely to have Ciardha over for tea as you are to want to see Siri, so. I didn't do it."
"Actually you did, unless I was hallucinating you telling me to go bug Snape about killing Not-Professor Riddle, because you can't plan anything for shite."
Little Bella just blinked at him for about half a second. "Okay, fine, then I did do it, but the whole point was I wouldn't have to do the whole talking about things everyone already knows thing, so why am I here?"
"You are here to fetch a certain Weasley for us."
"You're going to have to be more specific, Your Honor. Also, the fun Weasley went back to Egypt, so if it's that one you're going to have to send him a bloody owl or something."
Snivels directed a look of pure scorn at Little Bella, who gave him her most innocent smile in response. "Your idiot cousin has something to discuss with Miss Weasley. Please bring her here."
"You know, you could have asked an actual house elf to do that instead of screaming in my bloody ear. Or even asked me to bring her with me instead of going back for her."
"She might have been engaged in activities best kept from the elves' attention, mightn't she. And you doubtless would have brought her through the Shadows with you had I not brought you here first to remind you that dragging humans under the Dark is existentially terrifying, and Miss Weasley would almost certainly be in no state to discuss anything afterward — so bring her here via the stairs."
"But Sev, there are just so many stairs!"
"Go, and you may stay and contribute to the remainder of the conversation, rather than spending the next twenty minutes eavesdropping and being terribly frustrated by your inability to say anything without admitting that you're spying on us."
She glared at him for another moment before muttering, "Fine," followed by a bit of Elvish Sirius thought might have been something along the lines of, "but I'm not an elf," possibly with a couple of explicatives in there somewhere. (His Elvish was very rusty, and he'd never spoken it very well, anyway — Walburga hadn't left him and Reg alone with the elves nearly as much as Auntie Dru had the girls.) Then she vanished into nothingness again.
"Okay, how the fuck did you do that?"
"Do what?"
"Get her to do what you wanted her to do! She never listens to me."
"That would be because she has no respect for you. And here I thought you grew up with house elves."
Sirius snorted, almost certain that was a joke. If Bella's psychology was more elf-like than human — which did make kind of a lot of sense, he couldn't shake it now — he could see her having sort of attached herself to Zee, using her as a guideline for acceptable behavior in much the same way elves attached themselves to humans to limit their own magic, purely for reasons of self-preservation. She didn't have that kind of respect for Snivels, either, though, to just do things because he said she ought to or not. "Not like she did. I mean, I knew she and Meda were practically raised by the elves, but... How did you do it, really?"
"How did you spend your entire childhood living with Narcissa and not learn how to manipulate people?"
How the hell did Snape know anything about his childhood? Oh, wait, Cissy had probably told him, back in school. Or Reg, they'd been close, hadn't they? Never mind. "Oh, I can manipulate people just fine. Bella's not people. Cissy can't get her to listen to her, either."
"Don't be an idiot, Black, of course she's a person."
"Maybe it was a fluke," he suggested, goading the Slytherin just a bit. (Snivels, unlike Bella, was 'people', and relatively easy to manipulate at that. He had always hated the implication that he'd just gotten lucky at anything.)
"It wasn't a fluke." Ha, I win. "Her priorities and motivations are admittedly rather different than the average human's, but they do exist, and they're hardly complex. If you find a way to link the behavior you wish her to perform with an outcome she finds preferable to the alternative — or conversely, find a way to make any other alternative less appealing — she will do as you ask. As would anyone. Participating in our conversation is far more entertaining than simply spying on us, and that conversation simply cannot take place without Miss Weasley's presence. It is possible that she only relayed the message before walking back down here, but— Expecto patronum," he snapped, cutting himself off.
A silver doe erupted from the tip of his wand, drawn so suddenly Sirius wouldn't have had time to react if he'd been casting an offensive spell. It bounded into a shadowy corner, whereupon Bella stumbled out of it, scrambling away from the light construct more clumsily than Sirius had ever seen her do anything.
"Aah! Fuck you, Your Honor!"
It herded her toward the centre of the room as Snape continued to speak, deliberately ignoring the fact that he'd caught her out. "I've already informed her that if I have reason to suspect she is spying on me, I will begin casting a patronus along with my other anti-eavesdropping spells. Being so caught out would be both painful and embarrassing, and she can hardly imagine I wouldn't follow through on said threat." He turned to look at her as the patronus advanced yet nearer, raising an eyebrow as though to say do we understand each other, now?
"Very fucking funny, Your Honor — put it out!" she practically snarled at him, her wand in her hand, but took another step back, pinning herself against a bookcase.
"After all, it was her counterpart who so thoroughly demonstrated the importance of following through on one's threats, lest one's authority be continually flouted."
"Yes, fine! No spying on sadistic bastards! Got it!"
Snape allowed the construct to advance far enough to prod her shoulder with its snout, drawing a pained yelp from her even as he dismissed it. "If you forget, I shall be only too pleased to repeat this little demonstration."
"Wait, that's it? You just threaten to cast a bloody patronus at her if she doesn't do as you tell her?" Sirius cackled. "Brilliant!"
Little Bella scowled, rubbing her shoulder. "No, normally we reach a rational, mutually beneficial agreement. Believe me, if he tried to use that thing as coercion, I would find some way to make it just as unpleasant for him as it is for me."
"Uh huh. And if I were to call that bluff?"
"I'm pretty sure you have to be a special kind of fucked in the head to use a Patronus Charm to torture a child, Sirius. Especially one who you have a responsibility to protect. Unless you think you can maintain the proper state of mind to keep that thing going while using it to do the exact opposite of what it's meant to do, I'm gonna say you've got nothing. I did tell Gin to come down here, though, so—"
"You're not a child, though, Trixie. And protecting the kids is your job, not mine."
She shrugged. "Still don't think you can do it. And if you call me Trixie again, I'll curse you so you can't get it up for a month."
Well someone was in a shite mood. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me. See, that's how this works. One person sets out a consequence for certain actions on the part of the other person — consequences they're actually capable of enacting, obviously — and then the second person has to decide if it's worth it to do the thing anyway. Though I didn't actually think Sev would go and start throwing patroni around — don't imagine Lovegood will be very happy with you if you accidentally burn her pet vampire half to death."
Snivels, apparently, was unconcerned. "Anastasia knows better than to lurk in the shadows of my office uninvited. Unlike some people I could name."
Little Bella rolled her eyes, an awkward silence settling over the three of them. Or at least, it felt awkward to Sirius. After a few seconds he asked, "Vampire?"
"She could hardly take on apprentices to help cover her classes," Snivels pointed out. "I understand she specifically chose a teaching assistant who could demonstrate the dark half of her curriculum."
"Well, no, I get that, that makes sense." Also, since Anastasia was a female name, they were probably shagging. "But, does Dumbledore know? I mean, he hasn't changed that much while I was gone. Er, has he?"
"If you mean has our esteemed Headmaster taken up the cause of Vampire Equality along with his asinine Werewolf Rights banner, no. However, Cassie hasn't changed much either, so I can't imagine she's terribly concerned about his opinion on the matter."
"Also, they're shagging," Bella added, spinning one of the guest chairs around to sit on it backwards. (Called it.) "And she's one of the vampires who were born, not made. Dumbles may not like it, her being here, but even he has to admit Castalia Lovegood isn't exactly likely to invite someone into the school who might be a threat to the little kiddies — and Miss Stacey is almost as soft as Professor Wolf Wolf, anyway. If I were him, I'd be way more worried about Lovegood going nuts trying to do the same thing every day for ten months." Yeah, Sirius could see that. "I did manage to think of an appropriate thanks for saving my stupid arse even though I probably wouldn't actually have died gesture, by the way. I'm sharing my acromantulae with her," she declared magnanimously.
"How kind of you," Snivels noted.
Before Sirius could point out that the giant, sentient, man-eating spiders didn't actually belong to Bella — or that Cassie would probably have found them pretty quickly herself, given that she'd spent approximately all of her free time out in the Forest when they'd been students — there was an impatient knock on the door of Snivellus's inappropriately practical and inhospitable office.
Snivels opened it with a wandless charm, because he hadn't become any less of a show-off in the past twenty minutes. "Miss Weasley. Come in."
She did, shivering slightly as the aura of dark magic that accompanied that stupid starfire charm surrounded her. The dungeon bat apparently noticed that too — not terribly surprising, he was a legilimens. What was surprising was that he actually seemed to care, replacing the dark pinpricks of light with several perfectly neutral (and much brighter) globes. That was...much more decent of him than Sirius might have expected.
"Er...Professor Snape? Lyra said you wanted to talk to me? Is this about my essay...?" She sounded uncertain, but somehow deliberately so, Sirius thought, her confident posture at odds with the hesitance in her voice. In fact, she looked much the same as she had when he'd seen her at the World Cup, in muggle jeans and a plain black tee-shirt, fiery hair falling over her shoulders in striking contrast. Her head was cocked to one side in apparent confusion, but her eyes were hard, guarded, her body tense as though prepared to go for her wand at the slightest provocation.
"No, I have been fortunate enough not to be tasked with marking the pathetic attempts at research your class has submitted for evaluation," Snivels said smoothly, as though he wasn't the one who coordinated said tasking.
"Haven't been tasked in this case meaning he fobbed it off on Éanna. You can tell by the way the marginalia are actually constructive criticism, rather than calling you a stupid twat for not already having a mastery in the subject."
Sirius sniggered, earning him a dark glare. It was still endlessly hilarious that Dumbledore had thought Severus Snape would make a good Potions professor. If it wasn't undoubtedly as torturous for the students as it was for Snivels, he might have thought the Old Goat had intended it as a punishment for the greasy Death Eater — he'd been rather notorious, back in school, for his hatred of tutoring.
"In fact I believe Lord Black has something he would like to ask you about," Snivels said, choosing not to address what was likely a perfectly accurate characterisation of his marking.
The girl turned smoothly to fix him with an impassive, slightly curious look. "What is it?"
Oh.
Shite.
Now he actually had to find some way to invite her to become his student — in a subject he'd never taught, even if he was more than capable of practising it — without sounding like a complete creep, inviting a third-year girl to come over to his house and practise dueling, which— He didn't know if it still was, but in his day, that had definitely been a euphemism.
Okay, judging by the way Bella smirked as she said, "He wants you to come over and practise dueling with him," it probably was. "I'd take him up on it, he's really very good."
"I— Not like that!" he blurted out, only to have the Weasley girl look at him as though he'd lost his mind. So either it wasn't still a euphemism, Bella just thought it was because she was from Nineteen Sixty-Three (he still forgot that, sometimes), or Ginevra hadn't caught it despite Bella's insinuating tone. Fabulous.
Sirius briefly wondered whether he ought to tell Bella that it wasn't nearly as normal to go around implying that they were sleeping together as he and Mira made it seem. People who didn't know them might get the wrong idea. And it was the wrong idea, because attractive as he might find her, he was enough of an adult to realise that screwing his mad, fourteen-year-old cousin was a terrible idea — and actually say 'no', even during the post-battle crash that had followed the World Cup Riot. (James and Remus would be so proud of him.) Anyway, it wouldn't be nearly as funny if people didn't at least wonder whether there was something going on, but if they started taking it too seriously some of them (Harry came to mind) might actually try to do something about it, and that would be awkward as hell.
No, Sirius, focus, damn it! And not on the look on Harry's face if (when) he realises that Black Incest Jokes aren't really entirely jokes when they're made by Blacks...
(It looked like Snivels was filling her in on that particular fact, anyway, throwing up unidirectional anti-eavesdropping charms between them and smirking at Bella, saying something that made her flip Sirius off before deliberately turning her back to him to chat with Snivellus.)
"Um. Cassie— Ah, Professor Lovegood, I mean, mentioned that you were interested in studying light battle magic. And, ah...that I might be a good person to teach you. If you are. Interested, I mean."
Snivellus smirked at him over Bella's shoulder, pushing a thought at him smoothly enough that Sirius had second thoughts about whether he would have noticed him legilimising him earlier. Oh, how the mighty have fallen... along with a memory of him chatting up some girl whose name he didn't remember.
SHUT UP SNIVELS, and GET OUT OF MY HEAD, he thought, as loudly and pointedly as he could. The slimeball winced slightly. Ha.
He did kind of have a point, though, Sirius wasn't sure he'd managed to make that awkward an offer to anyone about anything since he was about twelve. "What I mean to say is, I heard about the trouble you got into at the World Cup. Bella says that you're serious about learning to fight, but the guy she has teaching you now is a dark mage, so you're going to need a different teacher when you move past the basics, and Cassie mentioned the other day that you've got the potential to be a really good light battlemage." The girl's eyes went wide at that. Obviously she knew the difference between being a duelist and being a real fighter, but just to be clear, "I'm not talking like hit wizard shite — when Cassie says battlemage she means someone like herself, the kind of witch who can hold her own against an actual dark sorcerer if she has to."
"But..." the girl said — objecting, Sirius thought, entirely out of reflex, simply because the idea of someone as awe-inspiring as Cassie saying that you can and should follow in her footsteps seemed a bit absurd. She didn't seem to have an actual objection, anyway. (Who wouldn't want to be Cassie fucking Lovegood when they grew up?) "...Are you serious? She actually said that?"
Sirius literally bit his tongue to avoid a knee-jerk yes, Sirius Black, we've met, just nodding instead. "She also said that since there are only about a dozen people in Britain who use primarily or exclusively light magic and actually have any practical field experience to speak of, and her plate's already full teaching at Hogwarts, I might offer to teach you some more advanced light combat spells. You know, the sort of thing that would give you an edge if you're planning on running off looking for trouble," he added, smirking as he recalled Mira's description of the girl when they'd found her in the riot — running on stubborn determination and not much else after coming to the aid of a young mother and her children, almost getting herself killed in the process, absolutely exhausted and still trying to help. Reminded him of Alice. "So, I just thought I'd make the offer. No need to—"
"Yes," she said, cutting him off with determined excitement that reminded him even more of Alice. Specifically, on their first day of Auror training, right before he'd given her a wry smirk and pointed out that this was probably going to be the hardest thing she'd ever done, and she, still grinning with excitement, had told him to go fuck himself, she wasn't backing out now.
"Er, I was going to say you don't have to decide right now, take some time and think about it—"
"I don't need time," she insisted, slightly too quickly, bouncing slightly on her toes despite obviously trying not to look like Christmas had just come early. "Or to think about it, or whatever. Yes. Let's do it. I want to learn."
Well...okay, then.
"Great!" he exclaimed, with an enthusiasm he wouldn't even really feel if he wasn't currently slightly drugged. In fact, if he wasn't totally chill at the moment, he'd probably be freaking out, because he had no idea what he was doing and, unlike most of the time when he didn't know what he was doing, he wasn't the only one who would suffer if flying by the seat of his pants ended with him crash landing in a whomping willow or something. (Harry, for all he tried to deny it, had had a few very Marauder-esque adventures in his first few years at Hogwarts.) Sirius was the last person who should be helping anyone deal with having been possessed by a fucking horcrux, okay, and the closest he'd ever gotten to teaching was helping his fellow Auror recruits back when they were in Academy together. Which really wasn't very close at all. He'd be the first to admit that he'd been a head case before spending a dozen years in fucking Azkaban, and the whole reason he was here in the first place was that stupid, drunken ramble about how he wasn't anything resembling a competent, responsible adult-like person!
Granted, it wasn't entirely unexpected that Snivels would give him some impossible task, set him up to fail, but this whole thing had been Cassie's idea! And much as Cassie might enjoy rubbing his nose in his own shortcomings, he'd been under the impression she, you know, gave a shite, when it came to the safety and wellbeing of children. And quite frankly, Ginevra would be lucky if she didn't end up even more fucked in the head, taking his advice on trying to deal with emotional shite.
Case in point, he was still incapable of being the bigger man and telling Severus Snape to fuck off instead of accepting this ridiculous compensatory challenge which he knew could not possibly end well. That, in and of itself, should be proof that he was not qualified to do the fucking job.
And he definitely couldn't back out now, not with her looking at him like that, like this was the best thing that had happened to her in who knew how long. (She even looked a little like Alice, but, she was her niece...) "You know this is probably going to be the hardest thing you've ever done, right? Learning this sort of shite was no picnic at eighteen, with the constant threat of death looming over us."
She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at him in a way that said she knew exactly what he was trying to do, and she was having none of it. "I think I heard somewhere that nothing worth doing is easy."
Fuck you, Cassie.
Okay, this is the last one in our buffer. From now on, we'll be posting scene-by scene as we finish them. No promises on how often that'll be, I've been having insomnia problems again. —Lysandra