Chapter Five

There was a large scroll sitting half-unrolled on a table in Professor Dumbledore's office. On the scroll was sketched, in two different shades of ink by two different hands, the dateable portions of the two-month timeline for Professor Snape's recovered memories. Dumbledore's Pensieve sat next to it, the liquid shimmering within as the late-afternoon sunlight touched the basin.

Between the two of them, Harry and Dumbledore had managed to come up with a basic outline of those two months, though they would be filling in the details for some time to come. The nature of the way they received Snape's freed memories meant that the memories were disorganized and piecemeal, like shards from a glass vase. Putting everything in the proper sequence was difficult, even with the Pensieve as an aid. It had taken them the better part of three evenings to get this far, and they were about to embark on a fourth.

At the moment, Dumbledore and Harry were examining what must have been one of the very last of the suppressed memories, occurring just before the Obliviate was applied. To his own surprise, Harry noted that one of the two Ministry officials in the memory was very familiar-looking.

"I've seen that person before," he told Dumbledore, pointing to the watery image of a red-haired, apple-cheeked woman in her mid-twenties standing next to Snape's Aunt Lobelia. "I know I have, though I can't remember where or how."

The headmaster bent over to look at the image. He was silent for half a moment, but then he blew a sudden puff of air through his nose, making the image ripple and distort. His snowy-white brows drew close together.

"Indeed you have, Harry. That's Molly Weasley."

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Molly Weasley sat rigidly on a chair in Dumbledore's office. She looked pale and drawn, and clutched the arms of the chair as she faced Dumbledore, Poppy and Harry.

"This is something I've spent the past twenty-odd years trying to forget," she said, her eyes wet with as-yet unshed tears. "Arthur and I – we'd been married only a few years and Bill and Charlie were still small, and I was working for the Ministry on a part-time basis to get some extra money." She blinked and swallowed. "They put me on the Rescue Squad – I wasn't trained for it, but capable and loyal wizards were a bit thin on the ground at the time."

"Yes, I remember," Dumbledore nodded. "Voldemort was entering his most powerful phase."

"Yes." Molly blinked back a tear. "He'd already got Gideon and Fabian by then." She paused, taking in a deep breath. "And... that was when we found Severus..."

Molly Weasley's plump frame shook and quivered. The emotions she'd been holding back burst forth as she put her face in her hands.

"I should never have done it!" she wailed, the hands muffling her voice almost into unintelligibility. "He was better off where he was, he was happy... he never would have joined the Dark Lord in the first place..."

And that was all she could say before the tears overtook her entirely.

Dumbledore, Poppy and Harry all waited silently, letting Molly work her way through her grief. They sat like that for some time, each of them not moving, quietly watching the sobbing woman in their midst.

So that's why she's always made allowances for him, Harry thought, watching Mrs. Weasley's shoulders shake as she cried. This explains a lot...

It took a little while, but Molly's emotions did eventually subside. She raised up her head, looking at the the headmaster, who in turn regarded her quietly.

"Is there anything I can do for him now, Professor?" she said, her eyes and face bloated and nearly as red as her hair. "Anything at all?"

Dumbledore gave her a calm, controlled smile. "As a matter of fact, Molly," he said, leaning forward from his seat at his desk, "there is..."

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The Nortons and their houseguest came slowly down the narrow interior stairs of the old farmhouse. Mrs. Norton took Severus by the hand to steady him, and he did not refuse the help, both because he didn't want to anger her and because the effects of not having eaten in twenty-four hours were starting to tell. They moved through the ground-floor parlor, then into the back of the house to the kitchen, and were all soon seated at the small, square kitchen table.

Severus' father had been estranged from his own Muggle family long before he married Severus' mother, and neither of Severus' parents associated much with their neighbors in Spinner's End. Therefore, Severus found himself sitting down to an all-Muggle meal for the very first time in his life.

He found himself, strangely enough, quite prepared to enjoy it.

Mind you, it would never be confused with what came from the Hogwarts kitchens – the Hogwarts house-elves were nearly unparalleled in their ability to turn out first-class cuisine. And some of it he'd never eaten before, at least not in that form. But it wasn't half bad, not at all. It certainly beat Aunt Lobelia's best efforts, though that was not especially difficult, as Aunt Lobelia firmly held that if something wasn't or couldn't be boiled to a gray mush, it wasn't worth eating.

As for his dinner companions, well... Becky was a bit of an irritant, but even she was better than either Aunt Lobelia or his father, so he tolerated her for her parents' sake – or rather, for the sake of Severus' maintaining their cheerful goodwill, which he had, much to his astonishment, seemed to have acquired without any effort on his part.

"Would you like to try some fried green tomatoes, Severus?" Mrs. Norton asked, indicating the contents of a plate in the middle of the table.

"Erm... all right," he said. He'd had no idea what those breaded green things were, and hadn't wanted to embarrass himself by asking. They smelled good, at any rate. He cautiously scooped three of them onto his plate, pushing aside the pork chop and mashed potatoes to make room.

"Sarah comes from the South," Mr. Norton said.

"Yes, I do," said Mrs. Norton, in a sort of long-drawn-out drawl that was subtly different from how her husband spoke, or how she had spoken upstairs in the bedroom. Her face was suddenly lit up by a smile a good deal firmer than the one she'd had earlier.

"The Southern part of the United States?"

"You got it," replied Mr. Norton, beaming. "Fried green tomatoes are right up there with pork barbecue and fried chicken as far as Southern people are concerned."

Severus nodded knowingly; he'd never heard of pork barbecue, but fried chicken made regular appearances on the Hogwarts tables, and it was one of his favorite foods. He steeled himself and prodded one of the slices with his fork.

"You best eat it while it's still hot, honey," urged Mrs. Norton, seeing Severus looking somewhat dubiously at the tomatoes on his plate. "Tastes best that way. Here, like this." She used the side of her fork to cut one of her own tomato slices into bite-size pieces, then popped one of the pieces into her mouth.

Severus imitated her – and found out that he liked fried green tomatoes.

"They are good," he said, once he'd finished swallowing the first piece. He soon polished off the rest of the tomatoes on his plate, and even went back for seconds.

Mr. and Mrs. Norton smiled. Becky made a scowl that was all but audible.

"So, Severus," Mr. Norton said after he'd consumed his pork chop, "what kind of a cover story do we need to come up with for you?"

Severus paused in mid-chew. "Cover story?" he replied, once he'd finished swallowing his piece of tomato.

"To explain you to the neighbors, son." Mr. Norton grinned. "Be a pain in the patootie for you to run around Memory Charming them every time you went out the door."

"How do you know about – oh."

"Yupper, it's on page fourteen of the Handbook. 'Memory Charms – The Last Line of Defence'. We can't be doing that to Mrs. Halvorson," Mr. Norton said, indicating her house next door with a jerk of his head, "her memory's bad enough as it is."

Severus sat silently for a few moments. He looked out the kitchen window in the direction Mr. Norton had motioned. A small, trim white house could be seen through the framing of the apple trees in the Nortons' back yard. He thought he could see the shadow of a moving form inside.

"What do you suggest, sir?" he said quietly.

Mr. Norton leaned back in his chair, its wooden limbs protesting softly as he did so. The grin was still on his face.

"Well, son, we just happen to be in luck. See, about a couple of miles up the road, pert' near up until about two weeks ago, there was a commune, the 'Celestial Fields' commune I think it was called. Full to the brim with hippies. Know what 'hippies' are, Severus?"

"Erm... no, sir."

"Hippies are young city kids who think they're mystical and magical when for the most part they're just lazy, though some of them are good enough people and they have some good ideas about farming. Mean well, anyway. Folks who call themselves names like 'Moonchild' and 'Earth Daughter' and 'Rainbow', and who don't dress or act too much different from you, at least at first glance. They were trying the back-to-the-land lifestyle but they could only stick it out about six months before they left for parts unknown."

Severus anticipated what Mr. Norton was going to say next. "You're thinking that I could pass for one of these 'hippies', sir?"

"You got it, son. If anyone asks, you were one of the commune members that got left behind, and you're just waiting here for someone to come get you. That should take care of about eighty percent of the questions you get."

"Ah." Severus thought a moment. "You say that they dressed somewhat like me? Do you think they were really witches and wizards?"

Mr. Norton burst out in a hearty chuckle. "Doubt it, son. If they could do magic, they'd have been able to do a better job at living off the land. No, they just confused pot smoke with fairy dust, is all."

Severus had no idea what 'pot smoke' was – were these 'hippies' perhaps Potions brewers? – but he didn't feel like asking at the moment.

"It would work out really well, Severus," chimed in Mrs. Norton, in her rather pleasingly hoarse drawl. "You could even keep your name – people would assume it was a hippie name."

"It's stupid enough to be one," muttered Becky in a voice so low Severus almost didn't hear what she'd said.

"Behave yourself, Becky, " Mr. Norton said, though without any real bite. "One thing, son: though they did wear flowing garments like yours, I don't think you'd want to be wearing those heavy wool robes during summer."

"I can cast Cooling Charms," Severus replied.

"What about Un-Stinky Charms?" Becky giggled maliciously, in her high-pitched eight-year-old's voice. "That robe reeks."

Severus slowly turned to face Becky. He wanted to give her one hell of a tongue-lashing, but he did not say a word. Instead, he just looked at her silently until the smirk she was wearing vanished and she looked away.

"Does anyone want some raspberry pie?" Mrs. Norton asked, in a somewhat strained voice.

"I do!" replied Mr. Norton and Becky as one.

"So do I," said Severus; he'd had raspberry jam, and the idea of raspberry pie was too enticing to resist. In addition, he approved of anything that would stop up Becky's mouth, even if only for a little while.

The relief in Mrs. Norton's voice was palpable. "Oh, good. Then I'll go cut some up for us."

She got up from her chair and moved to the counter where a pie was cooling under a mesh netting of some sort. Five minutes later, Severus found out that he really liked raspberry pie, too.