THIRTEEN.
The knife whispered against the cutting board. The potion simmered, inch-wide bubbles lifting to the surface and exploding in sighs. When the bubbles started to expand in size, Severus would need to add the wolfsbane, already measured out in a bowl at his side. Brewing simple potions required little enough focus that he often found his thoughts straying, but advanced brews demanded full and complete attention, and as a result became meditative: there was no room for reminiscing or planning, no room for anything beside the sound of the knife, the tick of the clock and the shifting shades of colour on the bubbling surface.
'Is it really going to take the whole day?'
Harry had brought over the chopped flybane. The cubes weren't as even as Severus would have preferred, but he stopped himself from pointing this out. He was apparently criticising the boy too much. He had taken it upon himself to prove otherwise, if only out of spite.
'No. I was playing a hilarious joke when I said so to you ten minutes ago,' said Severus. 'If you wish to join me for supper, it will have to be a late one.'
'That's okay.' Harry leaned over the cauldron, sniffing curiously. He was rubbing his hands on his uniform, leaving invisible smears of flybane juices. 'I've already said I'll eat with some people tonight.'
How careful he was not to say Viktor Krum's name. Severus decided he'd do them both the favour of pretending he hadn't noticed.
'You won't be having any supper at all if you poison yourself with flybane,' he said instead. 'Stop smearing it everywhere and go wash your hands properly.'
Harry went to the sink without argument, throwing over his shoulder, 'What potion is it anyway?'
'Wolfsbane,' said Severus sourly. 'When ingested by a werewolf before a full moon, it allows them to better control themselves during the transformation and prevents attacks.'
'A werewolf?' Harry repeated with delight. How predictable. 'Who are you brewing it for? Wait—you're not a werewolf, are you?'
'No, Potter, I'm not a werewolf,' Severus snapped at him. 'And I do not appreciate that you would even suggest it.'
'Why?' The open confusion in the boy's voice softened Severus a little. 'You become a werewolf if you get bitten by one, right? It wouldn't be your fault or anything.'
Severus knew then he couldn't tell him about Lupin. Not only would he by necessity reveal he was spineless enough not to be able to refuse Albus's order, but worse yet, it might lead to the boy sympathising with the beast.
'It's none of your business,' he told him sharply. 'It was requested by the Headmaster. And before you start making wild assumptions again, no, it isn't meant for him, either.'
Harry snorted. 'That would be so funny,' he said idiotically. 'I bet he'd still have the beard when he transformed. Can you imagine?'
It made for an admittedly funny picture, but Severus wasn't allayed. It was easy enough to laugh when you were ignorant; but after coming within an inch of death from the spit-dripping teeth, from the gaping jaws breathing hot breath, from the certainty of a screeching, agonising end—well, it was a little hard to laugh after that, wasn't it?
And to owe his life to James Potter as a result. To owe his life to someone who had saved him not out of compassion, not out of any real desire to see Severus alive or well, but only because his death would further taint the already tortured soul of James Potter's pet. What use would Lupin have been to Potter and Black behind bars—or free, but too riddled with guilt to supply them with entertainment? To lend them notes? To laugh at their disgusting little jokes?
After James Potter had saved Severus's life, he did not look at Severus any differently. For a horrible, shameful moment Severus had hoped—so desperate was he for attention, so unable to refuse any offered—but no. Nothing had changed for James Potter, because to him Severus's life or death were only a collateral of rescuing his friends from their own stupidity. But everything had changed for Severus: he had seen for the first time with complete certainty that there were those whose lives mattered to boys like James Potter and Sirius Black—to boys like Lucius Malfoy and Quentin Lamotte, too—and there were those who mattered only when they were useful or entertaining, and others still that would never matter, be they dead or alive.
Harry left a little while later, off to see his new friends. Did he ever wonder whether they would choose his life over their own convenience? Most likely he did not. No one ever did, thought Severus, until they were forced to confront reality.
The clock struck nine-thirty by the time the potion was done. Severus bottled it off and stumbled out into the snow to post it immediately. Watching the ptarmigan carrying it disappear into the starry sky, Severus stood trembling in the dovecote and despised himself for doing as he was told. He'd only ever been able to tell Albus no when it concerned Harry, and the strength he'd felt then would dissipate quickly the moment the focus shifted off the boy. Perhaps Harry was right, and Severus should seek out his father after all. If he found him and confronted him and watched him cry over intestines spilling out from his eviscerated stomach, perhaps he would be able to stop looking for validation from every power-hungry old fool he came across.
He didn't have supper. He didn't see the point. He went to bed early, fingers stiff from wandwork and from stirring, neck stiff from peering into the cauldron. When he closed his eyes, he saw the brew again, spinning and flashing purple then silvery, then purple again. In his mind, he went through each step, verifying them for perfection. Part of him wanted to have found a mistake; part of him wanted Lupin to discover the trust Albus had placed in Severus on his behalf was misplaced. He wanted Lupin to choke on it.
He had worried the isolation and the culture of Durmstrang would have a poor influence on Harry. It seemed as though Severus should have worried first of all about himself. He had never needed much company nor much appreciation, starved for it and grateful for any scrap; but even for him this was unbearable, even he felt himself increasing in bitterness with every day he spoke to Harry and Harry alone, if that. He was growing more anxious, more defensive, more suspicious, more spiteful—he was falling into old habits.
The next few days were busy with tutoring sessions and they were clear-skied, so he did not see much of the boy. Consequently, he did not speak to anyone. When Ludvig came on Thursday morning to remind him class today had been cancelled and everyone was already gathering in the courtyard for the celebration, it was the first Severus's gaze had been met in nearly a week. He had the distinct impression Ludvig would not have dared had Severus been anyone else.
'Today is the Return of the Sun,' the squib explained, in a tone used for explaining obvious things to scatter-minded academics, not half-blooded recluses no one had thought to include. 'We watch it rise and set for the first time in months. It is an important day for Durmstrang.'
'Yes,' Severus said. 'Of course.'
He did not want to go, but it would have been worse still to stay. He dressed in warm clothes, cast a heating charm over his hands and feet, and followed the crowd into the courtyard, where under a lessening dark the whole of the school had gathered, glinting gold and silver and emerald stone. Everyone was wearing their best, Severus noticed, with additions to the traditional uniform that would not have been allowed any other day. Female students had let their hair fall loose over their shoulders and lost the heavy fur caps; many boys had opened the collars of their coats or even discarded them entirely. The air buzzed with anticipation, warming bodies and breaths. Tables dressed yellow and golden stooped heavy beneath feasts of foolish abundance, sitting untouched. Only chalices were passed around, ghosting over lips: a toast readied for the raising.
At the front of the courtyard stood Karkaroff, golden chalice in hand and a solemn expression. When his eyes happened to land upon Severus, he diverted them quickly. He could only force himself to accept Severus's presence here if he need not ever see him, Severus understood; he was a stain on the values of the school, living proof of a past cowardice Karkaroff did not want to remember, evidence of the power that Albus Dumbledore could wield over him when he pleased.
Behind Karkaroff were rows of students in yellow robes, oozing soft light into the dim. A choir, Severus realised, and just as he'd done so they started singing: a low hum first that rose gradually in pitch and volume, then fractured into individual tones and voices. Words appeared. Severus did not understand them, but they hardly needed understanding: the voices were so many, the figures blooming light so uniform, that it was as though the sun itself had risen from the courtyard's snow-dusted floor, and after months of nothing but night Severus's heart stirred in his chest, the bones in him resonating at once with the music, as did the bones of everyone else who stood transfixed, unable to speak or look away from the promise of dawn.
And then, after five minutes of this or five hours, the voices took on a rushed, urgent quality, the music swelled and twirled and soared, louder and brighter and near-panicked—and from behind the tall defence wall beyond them struck the first golden glint of sun.
The courtyard broke open, erupted, caved in with noise—they were shrieking, bellowing, whooping and laughing and singing—and even Severus found himself gasping aloud, the sound lost in the frenzy, because the golden choir had been nothing like the sun after all, because he had forgotten the glow of it, the strength, the way it felt on his cheeks and his eyelids when he shut them briefly, blinded—
'A welcome to the light!' Karkaroff had raised his chalice high above his head. He repeated the same in Russian and Norwegian, voice amplified magically to cut through the joy and the choir.
Hundreds of chalices rose into the air, the sun reflecting and scattering between them. The students and staff were each of them exclaiming the words after Karkaroff in whatever language suited them best, and once they'd started drinking they did not stop until all of the mead had gone, some of it spilling down chins when they lost breath or laughed, staining the beautiful ceremonial trappings and dripping gold on the snow. He saw students embracing each other, heaving each other into the air, spinning and dancing, and it seemed for a moment as though they were all feeling and thinking the same, as though they were all one no matter the face or language or age—all except Severus, who drank the same mead from the same glinting chalice, yet drank it alone.
In the crowd, he saw Harry. He was being hefted over the back of the broad-shouldered keeper, screaming his refusal and trying to bat off Bogdanova and Harkusha, who were having none of it and continued pulling and shoving until he was secured like a monkey on the back of its mother. Now that he was higher up, his face caught the sun. It illuminated on him a smile, all glistening white teeth and shining eyes—like Lily had sometimes smiled, Severus thought, back when they were only little, back when she was still naïve, unguarded and full of hope.
One of the squibs, a young girl with a heavy snake-like braid down her back, approached them with a plate of some treat Severus could not make out. Bogdanova was saying something to her, all wild gestures and wheezing laughter, and Harry was trying to reach far enough down to snatch the sweet from the plate without tumbling to the ground in the process. Krum and Harkusha were drinking another toast, quieter and more solemn than the first.
Though Severus had been left out of the communion of food and joy, the image failed to provoke the rise of bile and resentment he had expected. As he watched, he did not despise or distrust Krum and the others, not in this moment—he felt only a mirrored happiness in him, an abstract gratitude aimed at no one in particular. A gratitude for the simple hope that, even if these days spent at Durmstrang were for him dark and bitter, they might not all be so for Harry.
Severus finished his drink, snagged a piece of apple strudel and retreated from the crowd, wishing for air. The moment the pie had left its platter it started to cool. The brown sugar grated unpleasantly between his teeth. It would be much better enjoyed with a cup of tea by the warmth of the fire, but Severus was sick of fires. He was damned if he was losing sight of the sun before it fell back into the horizon and lost sight of him.
As he strolled by the defence walls, he discovered a set of stairs built around a gatepost. He climbed to the very top, where through the crenels of the battlement he could see the sun sliding on the ice plane, glinting off the glacier's edge, pinking the large sky.
He leaned on the parapet, breathing in the fresh frost and allowing himself to forget, just for a moment, how much he despised this wondrous place and its wondrous sights—and then he heard laughter coming from the open window of the gatehouse.
He approached the window, expecting the grilles to be slicing into eighths the picture of a wayward group of students who had come here to drink themselves to stupor. Instead, he saw a strange little group of another denomination, though apparently sharing the same purpose.
Sensing opportunity, Severus went around the second flight of stairs and opened the door.
When the stream of cold air invaded the circular room, Ludvig lifted his head first. He froze mid-motion, bottle of mead held aloft with a droplet of golden liquid suspended from its neck. Professor Nutt, who Severus knew only because they had communicated once on the matter of some flowers he needed from the herbology hibernation gardens deep in the bowels of the castle, was the second to notice him. She urged him in with an insistent hand, face pink from alcohol and warmth.
'You're letting out my whole spell,' she complained. 'Close the door or get out!'
Severus closed the door. As he did, from the back of the room came an explosive sigh. On the transfigured cushions and pelts, backdropped by the dark stone of the bare and dirty walls, sat Lisa Vernyhora—the only reason Severus had forced himself to join this company in the first place—fur robes flung haphazardly open and a pair of dimmed eyes that spoke clearly to a fast-progressing drunkenness.
'He's found me,' she said in a stage whisper. 'Hide me!'
As no one knew what she could have possibly been talking about, the appeal went unanswered. Severus accepted the mug that Ludvig pressed into his hand and made a show of drinking from it, though he made sure very little went down his throat.
'You know who's even worse?' Vernyhora picked up an earlier thread, apparently having dismissed Severus's intrusion from mind. 'Bogdanova.'
'Don't get me started on that one.' Nutt shook her head, grinning ugly.
'Do you know she brought me an essay written in Harkusha's hand? She does not even try anymore. I told her I'd write her father—she laughed in my face!'
'We are complaining about students,' Ludvig told Severus. He appeared the least intoxicated of the group, though even his face had grown less taut and imposing than usual.
'I wonder what her family would have to say if they knew how much time she spends in the kitchens.' Nutt barked a laugh. 'Perfect little heiress.'
'She's visiting her brother, isn't she?'
'Is that what you call it in English?' said Ludvig, straight-faced. 'We have a different word in Norwegian.'
This made them all break into hysterical laughter. Severus watched with fascination the guilt-ridden enjoyment in Vernyhora's face and thought about how much clarity contempt offered. Lisa Vernyhora saw through the little secrets of the students she despised, and Severus saw through her: saw her need to belong, to share in the others' poor humour, to pretend to fit into a life that did not suit her. Strange. Severus would often look at students and see in them a youth and inexperience now alien to him, but this was the first time he had looked at an adult and thought, how young you are.
It struck him that she might have been a similar age to what Lily was when she died. Same age as James Potter was the last time he drew a breath—a little older, maybe. It upset him to think that if the two of them were to emerge from the world of ghosts and visit on him in a dream, he would see them differently now than he did then—that they would be young, naïve, distant. That they would be little more than children.
Several other students were spoken of. Severus learnt a great deal of gossip that interested him very little. He drank more mead than he had planned on. He would never have been able to stick it out if he were completely sober.
Finally, the conversation moved onto new ground. From students, they had moved onto staff, and now onto—
'Karkaroff.' Vernyhora expelled the name like it was a curse. 'No.'
'No,' agreed Nutt. 'I know. Do you know what he said to me last week?'
Severus did not, and neither did he care. He tuned out some of the story, glancing out the window at the long-disappeared sun and feeling rather sorry for himself, when Vernyhora made a mockery of a sound again and said,
'Thank Merlin he is dumb as a nail. This morning, I had a good fright when he demanded to read my thesis—I thought sure, this is it, I am done, out of this school, Merlin knows who'll fund me after that—but he said it was very good! Good points, he said to me, the dumb bastard—no idea what he was reading, clearly, if he can even read at all—'
'And why did you worry he would terminate your contract?' Severus asked. 'Is it such poor work?'
Vernyhora laughed. It was ear-splitting. 'Poor work? If my theory is correct—if it's supported by—then it will be hailed as the greatest discovery in modern wizardry! Then I'll win every grant, every award—and then I'll be assassinated probably!'
She was half-hysterical. Severus wanted to know more, but a cold certainty gripped him that this was neither the time nor place to dig deeper.
'She needs water,' he barked at Ludvig, hoping to get rid of him. 'It's still cold here and the woman's half your size—how much bloody mead do you think you can give her before she loses the plot?'
'What's this discovery, then?' Nutt was asking eagerly. 'You have to tell us now, don't you?'
No, she did not have to tell them, Severus wanted to say—
Vernyhora took a breath. She fixed her eyes to the ceiling, breathed again, laughed. 'Oh, fine. What does it even—well, wild magic, yes? A gift from our long-dead magical ancestors, too wild and too changeable to wield in a civilised time—only what if it doesn't come from our magical ancestors at all? I have found sources—never mind now—but the propensity existed, perhaps exists still, in muggle communities from around the world, and it was through their use of wild magic—their overuse, perhaps, back then, that some children became, uh, infected—stained with the magic, that it perverted something in them and remained in their blood—'
'That's nonsense,' Nutt laughed. 'Muggles wielding wild magic?'
'Well, yes.'
'Muggles bearing the first wizarding children? What, is that what you're trying to tell me? That muggles bore muggle children who were subjected to their muggle magicks and turned magical instead?'
Vernyhora blinked. 'Yes,' she said again, this time without laughter. 'That is my thesis.'
It was as though a new arrival had flung open the door again. The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.
For a moment, there was silence. Nutt was staring at Vernyhora, shock and suspicion warring for dominance on her face. Vernyhora was looking between them, some of the hot intoxication melting away at the realisation she had revealed more than she'd meant to.
Ludvig's eyes were trained on neither of the women but on Severus instead, as though some part of him, cultivated over years of navigating the dangers of the ice planes with nothing to defend himself but his dogs and his gun, knew to recognise real threat without needing to be told.
Severus gave himself ten seconds to think about it. Then, he pulled out his wand.
Both Vernyhora and Nutt went to grab at their wands in turn, but they were too late. 'Confundus,' he incanted aloud for Vernyhora's benefit. 'Somnus Paratus. Obliviate.'
Nutt folded over herself like a paper harmonica. Vernyhora made to catch her mid-fall but hesitated too long and missed her moment. The woman's head thunked against the cool stone. It would add pleasantly to the picture of drunken adventure that Severus was painting, though he could admit the sound as it echoed in the stone chamber was grating on the ears.
Severus turned to Ludvig. The squib had his arms lifted above his head, as though he thought he needed to appear less threatening.
He was no threat, really. It was unlikely anyone would listen to him. Still, rather than risk it, Severus could alter his memory ever so slightly, or cast a Confundus for good measure—
Without meaning to, he met Ludvig's gaze. It was odd to see fear in the cold eyes. He had paled with adrenaline, and his scars now disappeared into the white of his face.
Severus thought of Harry trying to conjure Ludvig's likeness for him without mentioning the scars.
'Go,' he said roughly.
Ludvig dropped his hands. He went.
Severus pocketed his wand again.
'Well,' he said as he turned to face Vernyhora again. She was breathing fast, frozen in place between Severus and Nutt's unconscious body. 'I see now your insistence on living your life in the world of books and letters was simple denial. If you think that you can hide behind your books any longer, you are a fool—and surely no one would accuse a scholar as precocious and accomplished as yourself of low intellect. Are you sober enough for big words, Miss Vernyhora?'
She looked to the body, then back to Severus, face sour. 'That's sobered me plenty enough, I think,' she muttered.
'Good. Then let me tell you this: should the Dark Lord ever return to even a fraction of his former power and get wind of your little theories, you will wish for an assassination. It might have been the case once that you could choose sides. I believe the circumstances have chosen for you. I can extend my protection and I can vouch for Albus Dumbledore doing the same when I ask him. But—'
She wrapped her arms around her chest. She managed somehow to look highly irritated despite the horrible shaking. 'But you won't ask if I don't teach the boy.'
Severus looked at her. She glared back. And he saw that she knew then that he would do it: that he would awaken Nutt, let her run to Karkaroff, that he would see Vernyhora cast out without the assurance of alliance if she failed to provide him with the thing he wanted from her.
Such clarity there was in contempt. It was what Severus had hated about James Potter most of all—more than his fame, more than his arrogance, more than his friends and his Lily and his happiness, more even than his cruelty. He had hated the way James Potter had looked at him, because sometimes he had looked at him as if he could see past everything Severus pretended and into the truth of who Severus was. In his repulsion, James Potter had looked at Severus and known him for who he was better than anyone had known him since, known instinctively a part of him that Severus worked hard every day to conceal.
He would not—could not—allow James Potter's son to look at him the same way. And he didn't know how to stop it, he didn't know what to do to prevent even the shadow of such a horrible possibility—so he might as well start here.
'Teach him or not, I don't care,' he said, though he obviously did care. 'For Merlin's sake, I'm not signing a blood contract with you. But if you don't teach him, I believe you will regret it.'
She looked away. She swayed a little, then caught herself in balance.
'I need water, like you said,' she said roughly. 'And fine, I'll teach him, though I really don't see what good it will do.'
Severus summoned snow from the thick cover on the gatehouse roof and melted it for her in the mug. The remnants of mead at the bottom coloured the water a weak golden.
'Well.' Vernyhora swallowed, staring at the mug's contents with distaste. 'Happy Return of the Sun to me.'
She drank.
