Rest with Your Dream in My Dream Chapter 5, a harry potter fanfic

DONE A BUNK

1 May 1998; 23:45

She had no more time to think about Severus. He was no longer one of her problems, and there were quite enough of them to be getting on with.

After mustering the other staff, challenging Horace to pick a side at last, animating the castle's suits of armour, giving Argus something to do to get him out of the way, sending Potter and Lovegood to fetch the students marooned in the Room of Requirement, rousing the sleeping Gryffindors, planning the evacuation of hundreds of children, and battle-strategising with the Order members who had finally turned up, Minerva found herself in the Great Hall staring out at an ocean of faces, scared, excited, or just confused, looking up at her, expecting her to tell them what to do.

From the dais, Minerva could almost make herself believe it was a normal evening. Stars winked down at them from the enchanted ceiling, and the four House tables sat in their usual places, banners waving proudly above them, students milling about as if about to settle in for a meal.

Some of them wouldn't survive the night. Maybe most of them. Maybe all of them.

"I am sorry to tell you that our school is about to come under attack," she said.

A panicked roar rose from the crowd, and from the group of staff lined up behind her, gasps came from those who were not yet aware that their place of employment was about to become a battlefield and they soldiers.

Minerva waved her hands to quiet them and calmly outlined the evacuation plan. Her heart seized when one of the Hufflepuffs asked, "And what if we want to stay and fight?"

A mixture of pride and terrible sadness filled her at the notion of these children wanting to fight for the Light. Her eyes skittered to the Slytherin table. Some of them would likely join the other side. Not many, though, she thought. Few of them had shown any enthusiasm for the current regime, and several had endured the Carrows' harshest punishments when they'd stood up for other students. Only Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, easily the most thuggish of the group to begin with, had been active participants in the cruelties inflicted on their fellow students. Even Theo Nott, whose father was known to be higher in the Death Eater ranks than either Crabbe's or Goyle's, had been reluctant to engage in the Carrows' games.

How many others would have parents among the castle's attackers that evening?

She silently counted in her head: there were eleven Slytherin students who were seventeen or older. Tonight, they would have to make their choice as to which path they would follow.

"If you are of age, you may stay," she said.

One of the third-years — remarkably thick for a Ravenclaw, Minerva thought — asked about their trunks, and when Minerva replied that there was no time to collect belongings, no one else objected.

Another question came from the Slytherin table.

"Where's Professor Snape?"

An image of him sailing through the air over the Black Lake passed through Minerva's mind.

Where indeed?

Was he now with his master? Planning the invasion of the castle he had just left? The murder of his students and colleagues?

Something deep within her resisted the idea, despite the past months' evidence that Severus Snape was a traitor and a murderer.

A voice in her head spoke. This isn't his destiny.

It wasn't still or small, the voice, but she had no doubt it spoke the truth.

She told the assembly, "He has, to use the common phrase, done a bunk."

18 December 1998; 13:24

Snow had piled up against the whitewashed stone wall of the cottage, blocking the door and part of the window.

After looking around to ensure no Muggles were around — unlikely, given the remoteness of the house's location, but best to be sure — Minerva used her wand to clear away the largest drift.

Steeling herself, she raised her hand to the rough-hewn door.

It opened before she could knock, and a familiar figure appeared in its frame.

"What are you doing here?" Severus asked, although there was no malice in either his voice or his face.

"Am I to be invited in, or shall I drink your Christmas present out here on the step?"

She held up the bottle of Balvenie she'd brought. It wasn't as good as a wizarding single-malt, but it was peaty, and the two wizarding distilleries in Scotland had been ransacked by the Death Eaters in the war and hadn't yet reopened.

Severus stepped back and let her in.

She sized him up as she removed her cloak and muffler and he hung them on a peg near the door.

He looked much better since she'd last seen him, but that was no surprise. He'd been in hospital and still recovering, both from the snake's bite and from the year that had preceded it.

Under his heavy grey fisherman's jumper, a black turtleneck hid his scars, and he seemed heavier, not just his weight, but his presence. He'd been so diminished when she visited him at St Mungo's that the following week, when they'd told her he'd disappeared, she'd almost thought they meant it literally.

But a note had appeared on her desk three months later. It bore only an address in the village of Laxey in the Isle of Man. The handwriting wasn't his, but the terseness was.

It had taken another four months for the school — and the wizarding world at large — to be in enough order for her to turn her attention to matters other than crumbling castles or orphaned children.

She looked around the room. It was small and certainly not luxurious, but neither was it the cell of a man who was punishing himself for sins both real and perceived. Dark timbers crisscrossed the low ceiling. A blue cloth sofa and a worn club chair sat in front of the fireplace, which burned lowly but merrily in the grate. In the corner, a pair of spindle-backed chairs flanked a small wood table that looked as if someone (though probably not Severus) had made it by hand. Ivory curtains were drawn across the windows at the front and side of the room, but they were sheer enough to allow some of the pale winter light in. A single bookshelf sat against one wall, and Minerva thought she recognised the spines of some of the books that filled it. Surprisingly, a row of Muggle paperbacks crowded the top shelf. She recognised one of the titles as a best-selling western that her father had enjoyed shortly before his death.

Severus poked at the fire and gestured for her to sit, which she did.

He went into kitchen and returned with a pair of glasses. She opened the bottle and poured them each a generous dram.

She took a sip and let the liquor warm her belly before speaking.

"Are you well?" she asked.

He looked at her as if she'd sprouted Tentacula spines from the middle of her forehead. "Is that what you've come to find out?"

"Partly."

"I'm fine, as you see."

"That's good."

He snorted. "That remains to be seen."

He seemed to be very much himself — the Severus she'd known before he'd been forced to kill Albus — but she sensed a tension in him that was different from the unease that had always permeated him in the past. Of course, she was tense too. A great deal of water sat under their respective bridges, and much of it was brackish.

"Who else knows you're here?" she asked.

"No one."

"Why did you tell me?"

She thought he wasn't going to answer. He took a sip of his drink and closed his eyes, and she wasn't sure if he was savouring the whisky or shutting her out. Then he opened his eyes and cocked a crooked smile.

"Someone needed to know where to send my last pay packet." He touched his neck. "I also believe I'm entitled to an insurance payment."

His willingness to joke about his injury told her where things stood, which was to say, on almost-familiar territory, and she felt some of the murky water recede.

"As I recall," she said, "your injury wasn't incurred on school grounds, and I haven't checked your contract recently, but I'm not sure 'being attacked by a giant, possessed snake at the whim of a maniacal Dark wizard' counts as 'injury in the line of duty to the school', so I doubt the Board of Governors will sanction an insurance payment."

"I would think other services rendered might sway them."

"Given that Molly Weasley is now the chairwitch, you may have a point. Although she's still upset about the business of George's ear. That could weigh against you."

That was pushing it, but Minerva wanted to see how much she could poke the badger — or rather, the snake — before he bit or burrowed in.

"As could so many other things," he said.

She put a hand on his arm. "Severus, I —"

"Don't!" he said, standing.

She put down her glass and stood too.

He paced in front of the fireplace, suddenly agitated.

"I don't want any apologies, Minerva. And I'm not going to make any. We both did what we had to do, and Potter got it done in the end, so we don't need to talk about it."

He looked at her then, and his expression reminded her of the night he'd received the Dark Mark — afraid and hopeful mixed into one sallow, scowling, beak-nosed face.

"All right, we shan't," she said. "What do you want to talk about?"

"Football," he said firmly.

Minerva's brow wrinkled. "What?"

"It's a Muggle game."

"I know that, Severus, my father played goalie for the parish team when I was growing up."

"Good. Then you won't have any trouble following it."

She felt as if she'd been dropped into the middle of a play for which she'd never attended a single rehearsal.

"I don't know what —"

"Bundle up, it's cold out, and the stands aren't covered." He pulled his cloak from the peg and wrapped a red-and-black muffler around his neck.

"Here." He handed her her cloak and muffler. When she'd put them on, he drew his wand and changed the muffler from green-and-blue tartan to black with yellow stripes. It was the first magic she'd seen from him since she'd arrived.

She looked down at the fringed ends of the muffler dangling from her neck. "Why, exactly, am I wearing Hufflepuff colours?"

"They aren't Hufflepuff colours, they're Rocester colours. Five quid says Isle of Man routs them."

She wound the muffler around her neck and tucked the ends into her cloak. "I'm afraid I haven't any Muggle money, so I'll have to owe you if they lose."

"They will," Severus said smugly.

"Should we bring this?" Minerva gestured to the whisky bottle.

"Only if you want to Splinch on the way back. The match is in Staffordshire today, so we have to Apparate. But if you need something to warm you up, I can do a flask of tea."

"No, I'll be fine."

They arrived only ten minutes into the match, and by fifteen minutes after they'd taken their seats, Minerva remembered what she'd once known about football. She found it almost as engaging as a Quidditch match. The fact that no one was in danger of falling several hundred feet from a broom and that, no matter who won, she wouldn't have to break up any late-night celebrations made it all the easier to enjoy. Severus was fully engaged, shouting at the players and making low, tart remarks about their intelligence or lack thereof. He didn't even seem to mind the small boy sitting behind them kicking the back of their bench with his booted feet, although before the beginning of the second period, Severus turned around and gave the child his best Snapian glare, making the boy's eyes go wide and his feet still.

After the match — which Isle of Man won, four goals to two — and they'd broken away from the small crowd leaving the ground, Severus offered her his arm. She took it, and he Apparated them back to the cottage. Neither of them mentioned the fact that he'd never asked if she wanted to accompany him.

Minerva thumbed through a three-month-old issue of Dreadful Draughts and Esoteric Elixirs while Severus prepared a passable cock-a-leekie soup. They ate it in front of the fire with a loaf of rustic, crusty bread he said he'd got that morning from a bakery in the village.

After dinner, Minerva uncorked the whisky, and they enjoyed another dram. They were on the sofa, and she was wondering what, if anything, she should do now, when his arm snaked around her shoulder.

They sat watching the fire and sipping the whisky. When she finished hers, she turned to him, took his face between her hands, and kissed him gently. His mouth was warm, and the liquor on his lips made them sweeter than she had imagined on those nights when she'd lain awake, mind running over her what-ifs, her body taut with a longing she could never quench.

They climbed the narrow stairway to his bedroom, where they fumbled, laughed, panted, moaned, and finally sighed their way through a coming together that she tried not to think had been predestined to happen. She far preferred to believe it was fully their choice, Severus's and hers, and no one else's will, not even God's, came into the matter.

Later, as they lay quietly in his bed listening to the wind whistling outside, he asked, "When do you have to go back?"

"Trying to get rid of me so soon?" she asked, afraid it was true.

He pulled her closer and kissed her hair.

"No."

"Good. Because I'm not going back. At least, not to Hogwarts."

He shifted under the bedclothes. "You're —"

"I've resigned. Filius will be the acting headmaster for the spring term, and after that . . ." She shrugged.

"I can't believe it."

"Neither could the governors. But it's true." She smiled in the darkness. "I've done a bunk."

She waited as he digested the news.

"What will you do?" he asked.

"Rest. Read. Write. Hopefully, a bit of shagging, if you're game."

When he didn't answer, she said, "Severus, I don't expect —"

"Be quiet. I'm trying to think."

Her heart galloped in her chest as she wondered if she'd pushed him too far. He was still young, and she wasn't, and perhaps she was too great a reminder of his past, perhaps she was —

"We could manage a small addition to the cottage without the Muggles noticing," he said.

"An addition?" she said faintly.

"Of course. You don't expect me to share my study, do you? Not with all the foolish wand-waving your discipline requires."

"Oh."

He pulled her tighter to him, as if afraid she might leap from the bed and disappear.

"I'll need to do some brewing to keep the money coming in, now that you've done your bunk. My Order of Merlin award won't keep us afloat forever, even here. I hope your pension is better than mine, if you expect to keep lapping up the single-malt."

"Severus . . .?"

"What?"

She could feel his body tense like a bow with its string being drawn.

"Do you always talk this much after sex?"

He let out a breath.

"I guess you'll just have to wait and find out."

Copyright

This work of fiction is based on characters and settings created by J. K. Rowling. All recognisable characters, settings, and plot elements are copyright J. K. Rowling.

The author believes this work falls within the scope of the Fair Use Doctrine as a itransformative work. /iFor more information, see the Organization for Transformative Works.

All original characters, settings, and plot elements are copyright Squibstress.

This work of fiction is available for use under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

The works quoted in the story are in the public domain, with the following exceptions: