Thirteen: Zakopane (IV)

As he walked down the stairs, the screech of the wood under his feet drilled into Severus's skull.

He'd been having an entirely pleasant night snug full of sleep, until just before dawn he was woken up by the certainty that the boy was dead.

In the dream, Albus told him he should have known never to trust Severus with a life. 'You always kill them eventually, dear Severus,' he'd said, shaking his head in utter dejection, before telling him he had called the Ministry and that the Aurors were on their way to fetch him. Betrayed and enraged, Severus then killed him too, not with a hex, but with his own hands.

He woke bathed in sweat, tiptoed across the room, and when he heard the whistle of the boy's breath, he sagged onto the floor, knees gone liquid with relief.

Four people, he had killed. First, his father, when he'd left him alone and uncared for after mother's death until he'd drunk himself into nonexistence. Second, a muggle whose name he'd never learnt, stinking of piss and terror; he had repulsed Severus entirely in that moment and he could think of nothing but that repulsion and Lucius's promise to tell the Dark Lord what he'd done, nothing but the thrill of knowing he would be able to tell the story at Lamotte's next dinner party. He'd never gone to the party in the end: he'd fallen ill the day after, and for days felt too weak to get out of bed.

Lily and James Potter, third and fourth. Albus had once told him that he felt it a shame, that Lily should have died before Severus could tell her what had happened with the Prophecy and all that followed; perhaps then, at her voiced understanding and forgiveness, he would accept too that he bore only as much responsibility as any of them in their varied and unintended failures. Severus hadn't answered him, but in his mind, he'd laughed: Dumbledore did not know her after all, if he thought for a moment that she would have forgiven Severus for hurting, intentionally or not, someone she loved.

He couldn't sleep again after that and rose in the morning in a poor mood. Potter seemed to sense this and kept to himself, limiting communication to short statements of compliance, which served only to heighten Severus's frustration. He'd sent him to the garden, with a warning not to go anywhere else or return until lunch, voiced in a way that rendered futile Potter's infernal question. Yes, Severus was angry. It wasn't entirely clear to him what it was he was angry about, but he knew he was it.

He examined now the various doors downstairs, trying to remember which one he'd seen the landlady emerge from last afternoon. They needed to get a move on, his anger dictated. They'd wasted enough time already on his uselessness.

Still unsure if he had the right one, he knocked. No answer came, but the lock clicked free of the frame, and he eased the door open with only a gentle push. Inside, the curtains were pulled, and only a ribbon of sunlight just made out the corners of the room. He had thought this her office, but saw now it was also a bedroom, with a narrow bed pushed to the wall and an old sink stained yellow with hard water.

He had meant to ask her to find out the times of trains to Warsaw within the next few days; snooping hadn't been on the agenda. Yet there'd been something enthrallingly other about her ever since he'd first stepped into the house: he'd thought it her English, at first, spoken confidently if jerkily at a place and age incongruous with the skill; he'd thought then her eyes were oddly blue, or her manner culturally foreign to him, or her physical strength uncanny for a woman her age. He still did not know, and he found himself unable to help the curiosity.

He looked at the books on her shelf, at the cosmetics in the cabinet over the sink. A half-knit jumper lay abandoned on the simple wooden chair by the window. The air smelled of grey soap and dog food.

The desk was in a state, overcrowded with trinkets and notebooks and loose change. A heavy oil lamp stood at the corner, used perhaps during the power cuts she'd told him happened often during the summer storm season. And, tucked beneath that, was a copy of a newspaper that Severus recognized at once.

Harry Potter: The Boy Who Lived to Be Dark Lord? shouted the front page. There were quotes from Lucius and from Potter's primary school teacher—how on Earth did they manage to dig that up? The Prophet was dated to a week ago: would they have heard about Berlin by then? And what was this insane theory—

Perplexed and fevered, Severus realised entirely too late that he was no longer alone.

'My sister was murdered by one of you, you know,' Agata said lightly from behind him. 'She was going to come back from England, she didn't want anything with the war. But she died. The body was so horrible, they didn't let me see it.'

Severus dropped the paper. He was reaching for his wand.

Then, something fell on him.

It wasn't so much that the weight on top of him was invisible: it was entirely intangible, a concept rather than a physical thing, a force without mass. Gravity itself pulled at his every bone, compelling him to the ground, and above, the weight of the atmosphere crushed against his lungs. He found himself prostrate on the floor, breath wheezing in and out through tightened airways; he was drowning on nothing, the pressure in his ears deafening, the press on his eyes smelling of blood.

Agata's hands were clamped onto his shoulders. Hunched above him, she looked mad yet entirely focused, the distortions of her face making him suspect that she, too, felt some of the force he'd been pierced with.

'I don't know what you're trying to do with Harry Potter,' she said, her voice barely audible to Severus through the ringing ache in his ears. His tongue was made of lead and each and every one of his teeth hurt. 'Are you trying to make him into your new Dark Lord? I was thinking that. But I'm not so sure I care. You all deserve to die; I'm not wasting time wondering what's in your head.'

Her mouth twitched, her fingers tightened. When her eyes met his, he felt a breeze of wind, carrying with it the scent of conifers and fresh mud.

Severus's body screamed. He was going to break in half, he thought. His spine was going to snap under the pressure, and every bone in his body was eventually going to shatter into dozens of fragments, driven with momentum through his liver and kidneys and lungs.

Then, he heard a distant door opening, and following that, the awful screech of the stairs as someone rushed up them.

He had no way of knowing if it was the boy, but took a moment now to pray that he'd listened for once and stayed in the garden. Severus didn't think Potter was Agata's next intended target, but for as little as he was a magical theorist, he knew unstable magic when it was slowly crushing him into dust: the floor was shaking with it already, and should Agata lose concentration for even a flicker, she might well bring down the house.

An exclamation of pain in his jaw: one of his teeth must have cracked. He fought to keep himself from swallowing the shattered fragments, and they stuck wetly to his tongue. He didn't even have the power in him to wrench his mouth open and scream.

The footsteps screeched on their way back down. Please go, Severus thought fervently. Whoever you are, please go.

The sound grew fainter. The throb in Severus's ears increased.

And then, the push on his body shimmered and snapped as Agata rocked forward, thrown out of balance when Potter jumped on her back.

His fingers jammed into her eyes, feet pushed just above her hips for purchase, he was a blur of desperate energy. Severus tried to call out to him, order him to run, but the wild magic Agata had harnessed was pulling at the lead rope, and the pressure now crested and fell in rhythm with his breath, letting his lungs expand a fraction and then punching the air out of him—

In his left arm, a bone snapped. The weight let up long enough for Severus to scream.

And then, swelling and bulging, it shifted off Severus's chest. As if fingers pried one-by-one from a tight hold, the magic gradually released feeling back into his body—and with every full breath and every twitch of muscle, something else in the room took on the weight for him: the floor cracked by his left ear, the window shattered and the desk sank to the ground, bringing with it the deafening clutter of bent and deformed objects. The tap in the sink was wrenched free of the wall, spraying water. The mountain breeze was back, blowing papers and notebooks into whirls; the forest scent cloyed in his throat, so thick Severus was sure that he could eat a bowl of sauerkraut now and still taste only pine.

Among this all stood Potter, eyes wild and cheeks red. Before him, Agata had been brought to her knees, struggling against the indeterminate shadow of horrific weight.

Severus clambered to his feet, trembling violently. His eyes met Potter's. He saw in them only mountains and the summer sky.

Then, Agata breathed and lunged forward, gripping the boy, the floor fracturing beneath her every step, the scales in the tug of war tipped again in her favour as Potter sank—

Without thinking, Severus grabbed the oil lamp and broke it on Agata's skull.

She fell on top of Potter, blood mixing with intercranial fluid. The metal at the bottom of the lamp had bent into the curved shape of a human head.

One-handed, Severus rolled the body off the boy and pulled him up to sit, his brain a static of shock and pain. Potter's lip quivered and his breaths were coming in all wrong, but he seemed uninjured besides, which helped clear up a tiny section of Severus's mind, enough to operate.

'Are you hurt?' he asked to make sure, and when the boy shook his head, he rose quickly and rushed to the desk, where from among the mess, he rescued the Daily Prophet issue, and the notebook he'd seen Agata use to keep track of her houseguests.

'I'm s-sorry, I didn't think about—the lamp, I should have used that instead of magic, but—are they going to find us now?'

'No,' Severus said, sounding more confident than he felt. 'That was some of the wildest natural magic I've ever seen, they should never be able to trace it. But someone will find the body eventually and then we'll have the muggle authorities to contend with. Go upstairs, pack your clothes, meet me by the front door in five minutes. Do you understand?'

'Is—is she dead?'

'Yes,' Severus said; if she wasn't yet, she certainly would be in a few minutes' time. 'Her control was tentative at best, she was going to kill not only myself, but you as well. Go.'

The kitchen was deserted when he came in, the help gone out on their midday break. Severus smelled eggs and last night's dinner. He snagged a glass bottle of cloudy apple juice and a few of those blueberry buns Potter preferred, then wrapped a piece of chequered cloth into a makeshift sling, spit his tooth into the rubbish bin, and went to meet the boy by the door.

'What's wrong with your arm?'

'It's broken,' Severus said. He wasn't yet in very much pain, the adrenaline thrumming hot in his veins, but he could tell already that he would be soon. 'Have you got everything? Let's go.'

They walked to the train station in silence, white-faced and shaking. The next train to Warsaw departed at one-fifteen and it was barely eleven. Eyes followed them wherever they went: they were strange for their foreignness, for their lack of luggage and their sallow faces.

Potter had cranial fluid stuck to his hair. Severus pulled him into the men's room, tangy-smelling, away from curious looks.

The boy was quiet and pliable when Severus pried the crust out of his hair, and did not complain even when he pulled on a strand with enough force to yank his entire body off-axis. He would have questions, and soon, and Severus did not want to answer a single one.

Five people, Severus had killed.

Another Potter had saved his life in turn. How on Earth had he done it? How could he wield such unique magic with such utter ease?

'I wasn't coming back inside,' the boy said apropos of nothing. 'I just forgot my jumper and it was getting kind of chilly.'

Severus swallowed. He looked above Potter's head to meet his own eye in the mirror. 'If you hadn't come in, I would likely be dead.'

Potter wrapped his arms around his own chest, wrinkling the fabric of the jumper. 'Why was she trying to kill you?'

'I—' It felt as if someone else was speaking through him: Severus watched helplessly as the truth uncurled from his own tongue. 'Death Eaters murdered her sister and she wanted revenge. I used to be a Death Eater.'

'Oh,' Potter said, entirely unconvincing. 'Uh—really?'

Severus closed his eyes briefly. 'Who told you? Dumbledore?'

'No! No, I figured it out, kind of—because when I was playing you'd kidnapped me, I—that doesn't matter. But you're not really a Death Eater, right? You have the tattoo and all, but you're only pretending?' he broke, suddenly uncertain. 'Right?'

He could lie, he thought. 'I am pretending now,' he said. 'But for some time, I was truly loyal to the Dark Lord. I changed sides shortly after you were born.'

The boy tightened his arms around his chest, like he was trying to squeeze all feeling out through his own ears. 'So, you used to work for him for real? You used to want me dead, too?'

'I never wanted you dead,' Severus said, because it was true.

They sat on the wooden bench in front of the station for two hours, eating blueberry buns and sharing the bottle of apple juice. The boy nearly spilled it twice, his hands shook so badly. Severus felt as though he should say something else, or try to comfort the child somehow, but each aborted attempt made him realise more that he had no idea how to do such a thing, and that his arm hurt, and that he'd just killed for the fifth time.


Thank you for all the lovely comments on the last few chapters! I'm still a little busy with Christmas at the moment, so I haven't had the time to reply to them all, but will get round to it soon ;)

And thank you to two guest reviewers from Dec 23rd: (1) I suppose you didn't get your wish, but if we didn't make more trouble for Severus, how would we ensure he continues to have a hard time?! ;) (2) I hope you've been having a great Christmas, too!

We've spent entirely too long in Zakopane by now, and we'll be getting on the train again on Wednesday. Until then, thank you for reading!