This Chapter is very short, just as is the Largo movement in the Fantasie. Ironically, though the development has been governed by this length and is, therefore, very fast, Largo means slow. The next chapter, the Scherzo, is by far the longest.
Severus Snape. Had he heard correctly? This man could not be the slimy, greasy, nosey git from school days — he just couldn't. Apart from the fact that the voice wasn't quite right, he was meant to be dead, wasn't he? And anyway, there's no way an idiot like that would be able to play what he'd just heard, was there? How and where would he have learned?
'Don't … believe,' Black managed to spit back as the man approached. 'Don't … believe … you … at … all. Not … Snape.'
The other man made to clench his fists before a fresh thought struck home. Of course he wouldn't believe him. The Snape he knew couldn't play the piano, and he probably sounded different. Black couldn't see him, after all. This shocked him all over again. All right, Severus, he girded his loins. Time, for once in your life, to be the adult.
'It is I, nevertheless,' he reiterated as he edged closer.
'Nonononononono.' Black merely shook his head.
This husky-sounding, perfumed, piano-playing wonder did not compute with Snivellus Snape. But what possible reason could this man have to lie to him? That stopped the run of his thoughts like a rock on a railway line. He took a deep breath.
'Prove it!' he challenged.
Snape sighed. How could he possibly do that? Ah, but of course. There was only one way, wasn't there?
'Shall I tell you a story, Black?' he began, trying — and failing — to keep the bitterness from his voice. 'It's the story of how I was almost murdered by a schoolmate who deliberately put me in the path of danger, just to protect his pet werewolf. Do you need to hear more?'
Black shook his head again.
What did that mean — that Black did believe him or that he still did not? This was already becoming tiresome.
'If this boy's best friend had not saved all our skins I would most certainly have been killed,' he continued in a blander tone 'Not that any of you would have considered that much of a loss.'
Black shook his head once more, and Snape grew exasperated.
'Black, you infernal idiot, please desist from shaking your head and tell me what in Merlin's name you are thinking. I am capable of many things — even of playing Liszt with some degree of competence — but I have never mastered the skill of reading minds, no matter how good a Legilimens I may be.'
Sirius Black could not martial his thoughts. Snivellus Snape is a pianist. Snivellus Snape is here, talking to me. He played that Liszt transcription. I've never heard anything so beautiful. His voice sounds all wrong, and yet … the tone is so right, and the story — oh, that story! Would he ever be allowed to move on from that?
He hadn't actually set out to kill him in cold blood; he'd just wanted to get him off Moony's trail, and he'd lured him down to the Shrieking Shack because … well, because it seemed like a good idea at the time. It had been only after James/ — and Dumbledore's — intervention that the full horror of his actions had hit home. He'd been so ashamed that he hadn't even tried to apologise to Snape; he'd just covered it over and gone on as best he could.
Now all the emotions of the past hour built up inside him and he opened his mouth, hoping against hope that something would emerge (he certainly could not have assembled enough words if his life had depended on it) and an abject, inarticulate sound on the wings of a single syllable arose from the depths of his despair and frustration.
'Caaaaaan't!'
Snape was horrified. He had not known what to expect, though it surely was not what emerged from Black's mouth. That one, solitary syllable carried with it all the loss, grief, frustration and despair of his heart. It found its echo in Snape's own battered soul and awoke something there which he had considered dead. Tears sprang into his own eyes as he took one resolute step forward and clasped the wrists of the rocking man on the piano bench
'Sirius, please do not make that sound anymore.'
The voice was gentle, almost pleading — almost. It spoke of comfort, regret and infinite sadness. Sirius Black pitched forward and would have fallen on his face had Severus not caught him in his arms.
After some time, with which we need not concern ourselves, Sirius raised his head from Severus' shoulder.
'You … played.'
'Yes.'
'It was — was — …' But he could not assemble a coherent conclusion.
'Thank you,' replied Severus, divining his meaning. 'Now, I do not suppose anyone knows you are here.'
Sirius clung to him but did not reply.
'We have much time to catch up,' reassured Severus. 'I, too, am a patient – and will be for some weeks yet.'
For the first time in many months, Sirius smiled.
Over the ensuing weeks, Severus made it his business to learn all he could about Sirius' situation. The more he learned, the more appalled he became. Had he, Severus, thought himself a pariah? Some days it almost made him laugh. This man had been all but abandoned. The healers of the wizarding world had simply placed him in the too-hard basket — especially following the involvement of the muggle specialists — and now he just languished from day to day in this purgatorial existence.
All who claimed friendship had given up on him — all but Harry, whose visits had now become so infrequent as to be almost non-existent. The man had been given some basic blindness skills (Braille, white cane) and simply left to his own devices with neither follow-up nor support. Severus reasoned that it had only been the man's prodigious strength of will and intelligence which had prevented him from going completely insane. He'd devoured both braille literature and music, for Merlin's sake. Why hadn't anyone thought to take him to the piano room?
Severus, of all people, knew all too well the disadvantages faced by those who found verbal communication difficult. You couldn't complain if something wasn't to your liking, or if someone was taking advantage; you couldn't tell anyone your troubles, or ask to have needs met, or even have the pleasure of a stimulating conversation — and that went double for someone who could no longer write in a form others could read. Severus made himself a solemn vow that this situation would not continue.
Every day, he and Sirius met in the piano room for one or two hours. They played, argued, talked and discussed all manner of things. For both of them, this was somewhat torturous as Sirius took a long time to say what he needed to say and, like all the staff, Severus had at first been tempted to finish Sirius' sentences so that their conversation could at least have some flow. However, he soon changed tack and let Sirius take as long as was necessary — even encouraging and badgering him to verbalise thoughts and feelings.
'You find it hard to talk with people; and they find it hard to listen,' he had once declared. 'That has made you lazy. I shall not reply to you until I know you have concluded a sentence, even if we have to sit here until Domesday.'
Severus had been as good as his word, even if their conversation was sometimes reduced to minutes of silence.
Meantime, he also tutored Sirius in piano. He quickly found the other man to be as naturally talented as he, though woefully out of practice. Using the Hanon drills, Severus soon had Sirius emptying the contents of his head into his fingers, resulting in progress which was both rapid and rewarding for each of them.
'Will you visit?' asked Sirius one day as they took a break from the little Beethoven sonata they were working on.
'I'm already here, idiot,' chided Severus gently. He was determined not to give the reply to the question he knew Sirius was really asking.
Sirius sighed wearily. It had been a pretty little sonata — no. 24 in F sharp major — but still, it had been work and he was ready for a nap.
'When … you … leave …here, will you … um … still visit me?'
'I — I was hoping I would not need to,' replied Severus. He knew that had come out wrongly as soon as it had left his mouth, confirmed by the look on Sirius' face. 'What I meant was,' he hesitated. Severus Snape never stumbled over his words. Yet, he felt as nervous as a schoolboy. 'Well, er, I was thinking — no, I was hoping — that we might, er, leave together.'
'Can't do that.' The words came out in that now familiar rush which told Severus that Sirius was struggling.
'Why not?' persisted Severus.
'Nowhere to go … sold … sold the … didn't like … didn't want.'
'Me too.' For some reason, Severus felt almost jubilant. 'Great minds and all that. Leave the past in the past.'
Sirius beamed. 'What?'
Severus let him off this time. 'You mean, what will we do?'
Sirius nodded.
'I believe, much as it pains me to admit, that we will require assistance,' sighed Severus.
'Harry!' Sirius cried, as though he had only been waiting for the opportunity.
This time Severus groaned. 'Oh please, Sirius. Must we?'
'No one else,' his companion pointed out.
He was right, of course. Severus had done his level best to burn all his bridges, but Harry was Sirius' godson and the "Saviour of the Wizarding World". If he couldn't help them (discreetly of course), no one could. So, it was with frosty resignation that Severus met with Sirius and Harry in the piano room to discuss their future.
Sirius had instructed Gringotts that Harry be given joint control of both his and the Black family's vaults when it became clear that he would never recover. Under Sirius' orders, Grimmauld Place had been sold and the vaults combined into a trust which would more than comfortably provide for his needs for the rest of his life without recourse to the principal. It appeared, after consultation, that the purchase of a reasonably sized home was well within its capacity.
With the addition of the proceeds from Severus' home at Spinners End, and the help of a muggle real estate agent who'd been an old primary school friend of Hermione's, they settled on a capacious, comfortable Georgian home near the muggle village of Rustington, West Sussex. It boasted a large walled garden for Severus' herbs, vegetables and fruits, with room on the property for a spacious potions lab, a music room and a Braille library. Severus had baulked at that last until he had seen the size of Sirius' Braille music scores, to say nothing of his reading material. He accepted the addition of an Oxford English dictionary, but firmly vetoed the idea of an encyclopaedia when he found it comprised more than 150 large, double-sided volumes and required an entire library shelving unit all to itself.
Severus was also pleased to find that the space would accommodate a large enough office for the two of them, even with the addition of two PCs and two printers — one of them an obscenely-loud contraption for embossing Braille, which had required its own acoustic cabinet to try to mitigate the racket. Harry had insisted that with the dawn of a new millennium, wizards and muggles alike should buckle up and join the information highway, particularly as Severus had planned to run a wholesale potions supply from their home, and a PC would make cataloguing and stock keeping so much easier.
A visit from Sirius' Vision Rehab specialist had also taught them that the internet would likely prove a communication and information boon to Sirius, who found his words far easier to assemble when he knew there was no pressure to speak. The computers were therefore augmented by a refreshable Braille display and a screen reading package called JAWS, which Sirius could learn with the help of cassette tapes until he became proficient enough to seek additional online support. This gave him both touch and speech access to the PC and the internet.
Inside the main house, though, Severus held sway. From the décor to the appliances, he ensured that everything was to his taste. His only concession — and it was a huge one as far as he was concerned — was the reluctant furnishing of the guest wing. After a deal of wrangling, much of it inside his own head, he had come to realise that Sirius was a committed godfather whose godson would soon marry and, in all likelihood, have children. As Harry had no family of his own, this would make them surrogate grandparents — a situation he was not relishing by any means, though he and Harry were developing a carefully cultivated truce which both knew would eventually bloom given the proper care.
All this went on as the two played, learned and recovered. St Mungo's was happy enough to accommodate them both, since they would be moving too far away for simple apparition should that ever be necessary. Any ongoing medical needs would have to be accommodated, in the first instance, by the muggle world, but such was the price of a peaceful life.
Sirius and Severus eventually left St Mungo's on a warm September day, just as a brand-new crop of young witches and wizards wended their way towards Hogwarts — and the beginning of a new life.