Chapter Nine
A thought had been sitting in the back of Severus' mind all through that morning, throughout the morning chores, once he realized what day it was.
I was hexed late on Sunday afternoon, then transported to a place six hours behind Greenwich Time, where it was still late Sunday morning...slept until the next day, Monday morning, woke in time for lunch, did chores, had supper, did more chores, then slept... so today's Tuesday.
The question is – do the Nortons attend any churches on Sundays? And will they want me to go to church with them?
The thought of walking into a church put creases in Severus' gut. He would have almost preferred to be left in the company of Sirius Black.
Centuries ago, the ancestors of the church leaders burned a large number of his mother's people at the stake; contrary to what the wizarding history books implied, the Flame-Freezing Charm hadn't been invented in time to save most of them. The Nortons had to have known about the burnings from their own Muggle histories.
Did they themselves attend any churches? Severus doubted that, as he didn't think, from what little he knew of Muggle church services, that Mr. Norton would have had time to milk the cows by hand, attend a service, and get out in time to get on his tractor and rescue a boy who had fallen from the sky into his bean-field.
But the possibility ate away at him.
Mrs. Norton and Becky had got up about the same time as had Severus and Mr. Norton. They had looked after the chickens and got the eggs, then Mrs. Norton drove them to the nearest large town, Rushford, to do some shopping. While at Rushford, they also planned to drop off some of their cheeses with the local grocers, as well as with an Italian restaurant; the Café de Napoli in Rushford used their ricotta and their butter, and in return gave them fifteen dollars a week, as well as a five-course Italian supper for them to take home.
Having finished milking the cows, Mr. Norton showed Severus how they prepared their cheeses. It was a time-consuming process – skimming the rennet-and-yogurt-inoculated milk culture that was started the night before and all that – which is why Mr. Norton generally only did it a couple of times a week. The one really good thing was that at a certain point everything had to be allowed to sit undisturbed for at least two hours while they did other things like pick berries and tend the truck patch.
But it looked interesting, and Severus took to it, getting a feel (literally, by dipping a well-sanitized finger into the vat) for when the milk would finally set into a proper, cuttable curd, when to get the curds separated from the whey, and just how tightly to set the salted curds into the cheese presses. (And he was looking forward to making ice cream later, with the cream they'd skimmed the night before.)
"We'll turn the whey into ricotta later this week, and what's left over from that becomes feed for the chickens and the cows," Mr. Norton explained as they left the barn to get some lunch. The rain had stopped for the nonce, though it was still somewhat cloudy; the summer sun peeking through the clouds was still strong enough to cause steam to rise up from the grass, making it almost foggy up to near shin level.
"You don't waste anything at all here, do you, sir?" Severus said.
"Nope, son, we don't." Mr. Norton smiled as he opened the screen door. "Everything has a use and a purpose here. Even the funny-looking things."
Mrs. Norton had set out some minced cooked chicken in the refrigerator, and Mr. Norton set about trying to figure out what to do with it. "Hmmm... we're running low on mayonnaise, or else I'd suggest sandwiches," he said as he fossicked about in the fridge. "How about a stir-fry? We've got some soy sauce, and I can pull a couple carrots and onions and a cabbage from the garden."
"Do you go to church on Sundays?"
Mr. Norton stopped his fossicking. "No, son, I can't say that I do." He pulled his head away from the refrigerator to look at Severus, an amused look on his face. "What brings this on?"
"The burnings."
"The burnings – oh." Mr. Norton suddenly looked as serious as Severus had ever seen him. "The whole reason your people had to go underground."
"Yes."
"Well, don't worry, son. I haven't set foot in a church since I was a little bit older that what you are now. I won't be dragging you to church any time soon."
Severus made an audible sigh. "Thank Merlin for that."
Mr. Norton chuckled. "I was raised Catholic, but Sarah was Baptist, and the two churches frown on 'mixed marriages'. So we decided that if they were going to make a Federal case out of it, we'd just skip the whole church business and just get married by a judge. And that's what we did." He closed the refrigerator door behind him and leaned against it. "Once we started to question that whole business, we started questioning a number of other things. We could have joined the Episcopalians – they're the American version of your Anglicans – but there didn't seem to be much of a point to it by then." He grinned at Severus. "But you didn't answer my question."
"Erm... what question, sir?"
"I wanted to know if you'd like a stir-fry."
"What is it?"
"Asian way of cooking – learned about it when I was stationed overseas. Come out to the garden and help me pick out some vegetables, and then I'll show you."
They went back outside, through the steaming grass, back towards the truck patch. Severus happened to be looking in the direction of the neighbor lady's house.
A movement caught his eye. Someone in that house had opened a window and had stuck a head out of it. He felt the wild urge to reach for his wand, but suppressed it.
"Hello, Mr. Norton!" It was a young girl, about Severus' own age. She waved to Mr. Norton, but her eyes were on the young boy in the heavy black woolen clothes.
Mr. Norton stopped and smiled. "Hello, Julie! What brings you here?"
The girl pushed a lock of long dark hair behind an ear as she turned towards Mr. Norton. "Gran's gout's acting up," she said, a slight frown causing her pert nose to crinkle. "I'm looking after her until she gets better." She then looked meaningfully at Severus.
Mr. Norton took the hint. "Julie Halvorson, this is Severus Snape. Severus is staying with us for a little while."
"Hello," Julie said.
Severus couldn't tell exactly what color her eyes were, at the distance he was from her. But they looked to be dark and vivid and pretty, framed by long eyelashes. And they were looking him up and down. He felt his face getting warm, and knew he must be blushing.
"Hullo," Severus said in reply. Her eyebrows perked up.
"You're not a local person, um, Seferus?"
"Severus. Erm, no, I'm from England." That much, at least, was safe to say.
"Wow." Julie looked at him steadily, and their eyes locked. "Wow."
During the previous term, Severus had started on his own to study Legilimency, the art of peering into people's minds. He saw how the Muggle girl was staring at him, and he wondered if it was in disgust or for some other reason. He suspected it was disgust. Pretty girls like her never had much to do with boys like him. Yet part of him couldn't resist holding her gaze as he tried to probe her mind...
Merlin's bloody beard.
She... she likes me! She actually LIKES me!
She just thinks I could do with a good... scrubbing...
"We'll come on over and see you and your grandma later, Julie," Mr. Norton interposed. "Right now we have to get our lunch."
Julie shook herself, as if she had been asleep or in a trance. "Oh... okay, Mr. Norton. See ya later."
"See ya later, Julie." Severus had to will himself not to look at her as he walked away with Mr. Norton towards the truck patch.
"Mr. Norton?" he said, once he was sure they were out of earshot of the Halvorson house.
"Yes?"
"Erm... is it all right if I take a quick bath before we go next door?"
Mr. Norton tried and failed to keep the smile from his face. "Sure, son. You can even take a shower if you prefer."
"A... shower?"
"Yeah. It'll get you cleaner and in less time, because you can wash your hair while you soak the rest of you. I'll show you how it works. And I can rustle up a fresh change of clothes for you, too, and put your dirty clothes in the washing machine."
"Thank you, sir."
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The "stir-fry" turned out to be a variant on the vegetable-heavy Asian take-out meals Severus' father used to bring home, back in the early days before the fighting got to be too bad. The carrots they pulled weren't very big, but they didn't need to be, and it was time for the rows to be thinned a bit anyway. They found a good head of cabbage and an onion ready for the plucking, and then they were back in the house in ten minutes flat.
Mr. Norton set some water to boiling for rice while Severus washed the vegetables in the sink; then he hauled out a big cast-iron skillet. He got the skillet heated up, then added a dash of olive oil. When that was done, the water for the rice was ready, so he put the rice in, put a lid on, and turned the electric heat off.
"So – the coils are heated by electricity?" Severus asked, watching as the red-hot coils under the rice pot started to darken as they cooled.
"Yupper. We live too far out from town for gas hookup, and we like electric heat better anyway. Besides, we can power everything from a backup generator in case the power goes out."
"Ah."
Severus helped with the vegetable chopping; he realized instinctively that the carrots would a) have to be chopped into thin slices, and b) need to go into the skillet even before the chicken meat, which in any event was already cooked and chopped. The onion could done a little more coarsely, and the cabbage he merely shredded, as that would be going in last of all.
Severus was waiting, as he had yesterday, for Mr. Norton to ask him some embarrassing questions. But Mr. Norton, aside from some simple cooking instructions and some vague reminiscences about the food in Korea, didn't say anything.
The stir-fry was pretty tasty, though Severus thought the soy sauce made things a bit too salty. He ate his portion in a hurry, biding the time waiting for Mr. Norton to finish by starting on the washing-up. Mr. Norton chuckled as he ate.
Once Mr. Norton was done and the washed dishes were drying on the rack, Severus fairly flew up the stairs to the bathroom, Mr. Norton following.
"See that doohickey on the wall, son?" Mr. Norton said, pointing to a metal fixture set high in one of the tiled walls surrounding the bathtub. "That's called a shower head..."
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Having explained the workings of a shower to Severus, Mr. Norton then mercifully left the bathroom, but not before setting out a bathrobe by the side of the tub.
Severus made it through the showering without incident – well, aside from getting a little shampoo in his eyes, but the water that fell in torrents from the shower took care of that. And Mr. Norton was right: it certainly was quicker and more efficient than a tub bath, if you were in a hurry. Once he was done, he threw a quick Drying Spell on himself, slipped into the bathrobe, and made his way to his bedroom.
While Severus was safely behind the shower curtain, Mr. Norton had gone back into the bathroom to retrieve the boy's robe and other clothing, presumably to be placed in the washing machine. In exchange, he had laid out a pair of nearly-new jeans and a rather smart-looking powder-blue long-sleeved cotton shirt on the bed in Severus' room, along with a fresh set of socks and smalls.
It was a stroke of luck that Severus and Mr. Norton happened to be much of a size; aside from his having to roll up the cuffs on the jeans, everything fit as if Madam Malkin had made it to order. There was one small problem: He wasn't sure he could stow his wand in the sleeves of the shirt. He agonized over this for a good five minutes before deciding that he really didn't need his wand to hand if he was just going to pay a brief call on a Muggle girl and her grandmother.
Before going downstairs, he paused to look at his reflection in the mirror attached to the dressing table in his room. What he saw surprised him.
I... I look good.
And he did.
The Muggle shampoo that stung his eyes had also stripped out every trace of grease and dirt in his hair. Where before it had been lank and dull, it now was full and lustrous, framing his high-cheekboned face nicely as it fell in a soft fall to his shoulders, its rich blackness complementing the intense, serious blackness of his eyes. The nose was what it was and would always be, but it looked a little less prominent and objectionable now that the hair was clean.
Severus did something he hadn't done since he was a toddler. He grinned at his own reflection in a mirror.
He took the stairs two at a time in his haste to get to the house next door.
Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley sat together on the couch in the Gryffindor common room, staring at nothing in particular.
It had taken about one and a half cups of tea each, plus a quick Silencing Spell cast around the area, for Harry to explain to Ginny what had happened, and what Harry suggested be done to remedy it.
"Oh, Harry," she said, "but what if it doesn't work?"
"We have to try it, Gin," Harry replied. "Poppy herself said that the longer someone's in a state of this sort, the less likely it is that they'll ever come out of it."
Ginny was silent for a long time after that.
"I just hope it works, Harry," she said finally.