Twelve: Zakopane (III).

It might have seemed like Harry was scoping out the social room for new games or books to alleviate boredom because he'd been left alone and told explicitly to stay inside the house, even though the weather was great and Rex always wanted to play more catch—but no, that wasn't it at all, because Harry was on a mission.

Yesterday, he had tried pretending again that Snape had kidnapped him, and though he was soon distracted with dinner, it had got him thinking. It was, after all, exceedingly easy to convince himself, even just in play, that Snape might have taken him hostage, just as it had been very easy to believe Snape had wanted to kill Harry: he spoke like a villain and looked like a villain, and didn't ever do anything to try and not seem that way. So, if he was actually a completely decent person, why would he act like that—unless he wanted people to think that he was the villain?

Harry's thought journey was this: Quirrell had done his best to appear as meek and unthreatening as he could manage to lure everyone into thinking he wasn't the sort of person who would ever work for Voldemort. If Snape was dressing and acting evil, what was he trying to hide? Why would it be profitable for anyone to hide the fact that you were good?

Well, it had helped them in Amsterdam. The Valerian man had thought that Snape was his friend and let his guard down so Snape was able to easily find out where he lived, and come back and erase his memory after. Was it possible that Snape was pretending to be a Death Eater to try and get information from real Death Eaters? If so, then it made sense why Dumbledore seemed to trust him so much: he was his spy, his double agent, his secret weapon.

Harry thought that would be cool. So now, he was trying to determine if anything in this room could help him trick Snape into pulling up his left sleeve, or taking his shirt off altogether, so he might check for the tattoo. So far, he hadn't had any luck: the board games could all be played while fully dressed, and though the large fish tank by the door had given him the idea of swimming pools, he was not brave enough to ever suggest to Snape that they go to one.

If he got injured, maybe Snape would have to pull off his shirt and use it to stop the bleeding. Harry had seen it on TV. He wasn't entirely certain his dedication to this plan went that far, but he still went into the garden to examine the broken fence and the wooden boards with the nails sticking out. He supposed this was more so he'd have something to do, though; he lacked any real inclination to impale himself on rusty wire.

Going out into the garden was already pushing the definition of stay inside the house and Harry had not intended to take it further. But on the other side of the fencing was a luscious meadow, buzzing with bees and mosquitoes and scattered over with butterflies, and something in Harry was pulling him toward it. At a particularly insistent yank, he stepped over the fallen wire. It felt like the same tether as the one that had driven him to lie in the garden and flatten his palms against the ground until every inch of his body pressed down on that warm tingle, on the energy and the hum that he felt in his bones.

There didn't seem to be any destination that the elusive call wanted him to reach. It was merely about putting one foot in front of the other, and again, about the crunch of tall grass under his shoes.

'Human.'

The voice had come from the grass.

He hunched. Among the stalks, the snake was tiny and frozen still, its pupils two black diamonds trained on Harry's face.

'Hello,' Harry said. 'Don't worry, I won't hurt you.'

'Don't come any closer,' the snake warned. 'I will put my teeth in you and you will be paralysed and dead long before you can touch my nest.'

'I'm not going to touch your nest. I'm a wizard, see? I can talk to snakes, so now I know you have a nest, and I won't touch it.'

The snake's next hiss wasn't a word, but it sounded to Harry like reluctance. This must be the adder that Snape had warned him about. Harry had always thought adders would be larger. He couldn't imagine that such a small thing could do him much harm at all.

'Humans don't speak our language. You are strange and I don't like you.'

'That's not a very nice thing to say,' Harry pointed out. Feeling precarious on the balls of his feet, he placed a hand down in the grass for balance.

The snake lunged.

Harry jumped to his feet, easily shaking off the little body—but immediately, he found himself doubling over from the pain that erupted in his hand, spreading fast to his wrist and his forearm. Hadn't they told them at school you needed to tie something around the limb, to stop the spread of venom? This would be a great time for Snape to whip his shirt off; even as he trembled with shock and fear, Harry chuckled at the idea.

He leaped back over the fence, ran into the garden where he ignored Rex's beseeching bark, and thundered up the porch steps into the house. What should he do? Snape could probably fix him, but if he had to use magic for that, it would alert the Aurors again; and anyway, Snape wasn't here. Could Harry afford to wait when he wasn't sure how long he would be waiting for?

'Harry?' the landlady, Agata, peered out from the door to the canteen. 'You are okay?'

Harry knew he shouldn't involve her. She would only insist on taking him to the hospital, and if Snape couldn't find him when he got back, he would hit the roof. And at the hospital, of course, they would want to take Harry's name, and what if that was bad, what if they could be tracked that way, too?

But his hand had swollen, bruised now and tender like a ripe plum, and Agata had been bringing him cheese braids and extra blueberry buns, and Harry didn't want to die.

'A snake bit me,' he said, showing her the hand. 'I think it was an adder.'

He didn't think she knew what the word adder meant, but she'd understood snake and saw the state of his hand, and her eyes widened in alarmed realisation. 'It's okay,' she told him. 'You are okay.'

'I don't think I can go to the hospital. I mean, I—I'm not allowed to go alone, and, uh—' he racked his brain for a reasonable excuse, until he remembered something Uncle Vernon had been complaining about when he'd taken Aunt Petunia and Dudley to Greece, '—we don't have travel insurance.'

'You don't go to hospital,' Agata assured him, before pulling him into the canteen. The tables had been set up for dinner already: forks and knives glistened on fresh napkins, ceramic bowls awaited soup. The smell of meat and mushrooms drifted in from the open door to the kitchen, so thick that Harry could taste it; and laid over that, the tangy stench of sauerkraut.

Agata examined the bite on Harry's hand, pressing her fingers into the tight skin ever so lightly, but the shockwaves of pain travelled up his arm and down to his stomach, making him nauseous—sauerkraut, he thought quickly. He didn't like it much either, but Snape normally liked everything, and he was an adult: it was much funnier when he stared at it like it was the most repulsive thing he could imagine.

Another wave of pain rose in Harry, up to his ears and then overflowing, and then—then the pain was gone.

He felt instead that pull, that call, but with an intensity unrivalled by previous experience: the warmth pushed against his skin from the inside, tickling nerve endings and raising hairs, and then within his body, he felt it grazing organs: his liver, his lungs now breathing light, his heart beating faster and surer to the rhythm percussed by this mad thing, this energy in him.

He looked at Agata. It seemed to him that instead of his own reflection, he could see in her eyes mountains; and that he no longer smelled meat or mushrooms, but pine and wet earth and the wind.

He lifted his hand. The swell was gone. Only a partial redness lingered around the bite, fading quickly into his new tan.

Agata let out her breath.

The table broke in half.

Harry stumbled back, looking wildly between the two halves of solid wood. Agata did not acknowledge it at all, just took him by the shoulder to stop him running.

The last of the energy dissipated. Fear took its place.

'What did you do?' Harry's voice shook. 'How did you heal me?'

'Mountain magic,' she said uncertainly, then added something else in a language Harry didn't know. 'That's how we say it. I don't know it in English.'

'How do you know English?' he asked, thinking of the Auror lady in Amsterdam.

'My sister lived in England. Many, many years ago.'

'Is your sister a witch, too?'

'Yes. Not good with this, with mountain magic. She went to Cracow to learn about other magic, magic—wand magic, you say, and after she lived in England. So, I know you are magic, but it's secret, yes? Don't worry.'

'Okay,' Harry hesitated. 'But you can do wand magic, too? Or just mountain magic?'

'Just mountain.'

'But you have a wand?'

Agata shook her head. She seemed amused with Harry's insistence. 'No, no wand.'

Harry's terror dipped. Snape had said only spells cast with a wand could be tracked and natural magic could not. Whatever mountain magic was, it certainly sounded natural. Mountains were nature, weren't they?

Somewhere, a door opened. Harry and Agata turned as one toward the corridor, just in time to spot Snape's figure going up the stairs.

'Don't tell him,' Harry asked. 'Don't tell him about the snake or the magic, okay? Please.'

Agata examined him for a beat so long, Harry was sure she was going to say no. But then she nodded and smiled at him, with a smile that indicated she wasn't happy, but had a bunch of complex feelings she didn't want to say, so she'd gone for a smile instead. Harry didn't have the time or inclination to unravel them.

By the time he and Snape came back to the canteen at dinner time, the broken table had disappeared. Snape said something about how it was missing, and Harry pretended not to hear, which probably made it seem like he was being rude. He had greater worries though: he was positive Snape would completely lose it were he to find out what had happened, and even though Agata didn't even have a wand, they would have to leave immediately. Harry understood they couldn't stay forever, but even if all he could gain was an extra day or two, it seemed worth it. He didn't want to travel again, he didn't want to eat and sleep in an entirely new house; he wanted Rex and table tennis and cheese braids and sauerkraut for dinner every night.

The room filled up quickly, packed tighter now that one table was out of commission. Harry liked to watch the children especially: there were maybe fifteen guests staying at any one time, but nearly all the families came with kids, and he amused himself by imagining what it must be like, to come on holiday with your parents and siblings.

'Do you want soup?' Snape was ladling thick, white liquid out of the large soup bowl set in the middle of their table. 'Potatoes and sausage.'

'Uh, I don't know,' Harry said. Snape asked him too many questions these days. Harry had much preferred it when he'd just made all the decisions for him.

'It's a simple question, Potter. You either want to try it or you want to skip it and wait for the second course.'

'I really don't mind,' Harry tried softly. 'I can have some, but I can wait, too.'

'I understand as much, Potter, I am asking for your preference—'

'I don't have a preference! Or I prefer that you just tell me, so I don't pick the wrong thing.'

'There is no wrong thing—'

'Yes, there is,' Harry interrupted, because it was true. 'If I say I don't want it, then you'll get upset that I'm being fussy and when the second course isn't good, you'll tell me off for not having the soup. And if I say I'll have some and it's horrible, then you'll say I shouldn't have said yes when I didn't want it in the first place.'

'I see. Either choice results in calamity.'

'Right,' he nodded, satisfied that he was making him understand. 'So, it's best if you decide, because then at least it's not really my fault.'

Snape smiled at him. It was another one of those smiles: the not happy but feeling lots of other things besides smile. Harry could tell that some of Snape's complexity of emotion was simple frustration, but beyond that, he had no idea.

'Very well,' Snape said, putting the lid back on the soup bowl. 'No further attempts at giving the child agency. You will now do exclusively as told. First order of business, have one sip of the compote. Just a single one, mind: I wouldn't want you deliberating on whether one or two sips is best.'

'It's not funny,' Harry said, even as he took a single sip of the compote. It tasted of strawberry and apple.

'I never said it was. What's wrong with your hand?'

Harry froze. 'Nothing,' he lied quickly. 'Why?'

'You keep scratching at it.'

He hadn't even realised. The spot where the adder had bit was bright red again, scraped raw with Harry's fingernails. 'I think a mosquito bit me,' he shrugged, avoiding Snape's eye.

After dinner, they went to the social room to play table tennis. It was unusually crowded: Agata was by the low kiddie table, helping two little boys draw dinosaurs, and their mum sat on the carpet with her legs thrown wide, reading a crime novel and looking exhausted. Harry had never played table tennis before Snape had showed him, but his reflexes were good from Quidditch, so he'd picked it up quickly. He still had trouble estimating the power behind his serve though, and the ball flew across the room a few times, landing on the kiddie table or in the flowerpots and once, to the little boys' delight, pinging off their mother's head. Harry had thought then that Snape would cut the game short and tell him off, but he only asked Agata how to say sorry in Polish.

He didn't appear at all suspicious of Harry, and Agata was acting perfectly normal, and it did seem like Harry was going to get away with it. He even felt at ease enough to play he was kidnapped again when Snape went to the bathroom, and this time he pretended that there was no hope at all of his friends or Dumbledore finding him, and that he was destitute: he would never be able to go back home or see his friends, he would be forced to slave his life away under Snape's watchful eye and subsist entirely on sauerkraut and compote, until finally Snape died of old age and Harry was too broken and traumatised to ever rejoin society.

'What's wrong with you?' Snape asked him when he got back. Harry couldn't very well tell him he'd been pretending Snape had kidnapped him and it had been deeply tragic, so he shrugged and served quickly to distract him.

The serve had gone exactly right and the back-and-forth went on for quite a while, and even once Harry finally missed and had to chase after the ball as it rolled on the floor, he felt a swell of victory.

'That was a new record!' he shouted at Snape.

Snape didn't comment on how loud Harry had been, but he winced slightly, which pierced and deflated Harry's joyous swell. He resisted the impulse to ask him if he was angry, because he knew Snape hated when he did that. Instead, he served with a little too much force, and the ball pinged off the wall above Snape's head and followed a graceful arch to the other wall, where it struck against the little calendar affixed with tape, which then slid down and fell straight into the fish tank.

Water splashed onto the carpet. The fish scattered in all directions. The little boys hooted.

'Heavens, Potter, have some finesse! It's a tiny ball filled with air, not a Bludger!'

'Sorry,' Harry told his shoes. Everyone was staring at him.

Snape was already on his way to the fish tank, apologising to Agata as he went. Harry hurried to retrieve the ball, but when he brought it back to the table, Snape shot him a dark look and said,

'I think you're wrought enough destruction for one night,' which wasn't fair at all, because Harry had already guessed they wouldn't be playing anymore and was just returning the ball to its rightful place. It was hardly his fault, either, that the calendar was stuck onto the wall with some cheap tape rather than mounted on a nail or something like that.

But these thoughts evaporated from his mind when Snape carelessly hitched up his sleeves to reach into the tank for the calendar. Harry could not have planned it better: for a single moment, before Snape realised and pulled his hands back out to wrench the sleeve back to his wrist, Harry saw very clearly that same tattoo, with the skull and the serpent and the bad feeling.

Wanting to act as if he hadn't noticed, he looked over to the kiddie table, pretending to be mighty interested in the crayon dinosaurs. As he did, he saw that Agata's eyes were trained on Snape's arms.

Perhaps sensing Harry's gaze, she looked over to him.

She had seen it, too.


They've had enough rest I think, time for drama!

Thank you to all those reading. If you celebrate Christmas, I hope you find a way to make it lovely despite the, uh, ongoing state of global emergency and all. And if you wanted to add to my gift pile, please do leave a comment - though Dumbledore might disagree, I think they're nicer than socks.

A special thank you to guest reviewers from Dec 18th and Dec 19th. I'm glad you're enjoying the story, we've got quite a bit of excitement coming!

See you Saturday :)