Sixteen: Warsaw to Tallinn

The same rocking that had lulled Harry to sleep stirred him awake now, in gentle waves of awareness. The dark had receded to make room for the first flutters of dawn, slipping in through the cracks between the trees outside the window. The digital clockface above the first row of seats read 05:34.

Harry yawned and squirmed, his butt not agreeing with the seat anymore. His legs crawled with ants. They'd only been on the bus for five hours and he'd slept through most of them, yet already he wanted out.

Snape was still asleep, his mouth slightly open. It would feel awfully dry when he woke up, especially with all the painkillers he'd taken, and Harry wondered how that might affect his mood. You would expect that if nearly dying and then killing someone hadn't tipped him into a full rage, a bit of dry mouth wouldn't either, but people were weird like that.

Just before six, the bus slowed and then pivoted to a stop by the side of the road. The driver announced something in Polish and everyone at once started to stand and fuss as the engine drew dead. Harry touched Snape's arm with his finger, which did nothing, so he tried it again a little harder, and Snape jumped, startling them both.

'Everyone's getting out,' Harry said, eyeing him with extra care.

Snape looked distinctly unhappy about it, but he nodded. 'Yes, well, let's.'

They followed the trail of passengers out onto the forest floor, wet with dew and morning chill. Snape stayed to show the driver his roadmap of Europe and find out how close to the border they were. He'd told Harry to go 'use the facilities,' which was his funny way of saying Harry should make do like the rest of the people and pee in the grass. Which was disgusting. Harry tried to find a bush that would shield him fully from view, but they were sparse so close to the road; in the end, he had to walk a good distance away from the bus until voices faded and the trees grew thick and dark.

When he was sure no one could possibly see him, he peed. Then, he took out his wand. It felt good just to hold it; he hadn't realised he'd been missing it until now.

His stomach was bruised purple from where the wand had been digging into his belly fat for hours, but he knew he couldn't possibly hope to keep it hidden from Snape if he only jammed it into a pocket. Last night was a dreamlike blur to Harry and he didn't think he could trust very much of it, but neither did he want Snape to know he didn't trust him: it might be another dry mouth situation.

'There you are,' a voice exclaimed behind him. Harry shoved the wand back under the hem of his trousers, heart beating so fast it hurt. 'What on Earth are you doing?'

It would be embarrassing to say out loud to a teacher that he'd been peeing in the forest, but neither did Harry wish to repeat Snape's lame joke about using the facilities. 'Uh, what you told me.'

'And you needed to go to the opposite end of the forest for that?'

Harry didn't really know what to say.

'Well?' Snape insisted. 'Explain yourself.'

He honestly hadn't realised he was doing anything wrong, but that was never going to work as an argument, so he tried for an apology. 'I'm sorry.'

'I swear to—do not wander off again,' Snape took him by the shoulder and began steering him back in the direction of the road, as if Harry couldn't find the way himself. 'Merlin, it is too early for this.'

They did not get back on the bus again. Instead, they covered themselves with the cloak and watched from the bushes as it departed, and then headed for the Lithuanian border on foot, the asphalt growing warmer and more brilliant with each passing minute, until Harry couldn't look at it anymore because it hurt his eyes.

The border was just a single security booth and some barbed wire. On the opposite side was a lake, barely visible from behind the wall of reed, and then a petrol station on the horizon where their bus had stopped for breakfast.

A woman in a red headscarf sat on a fruit crate by the side of the road, selling fresh berries out of a plastic container. Snape bought them one of the smaller baskets of blueberries, which he gave to Harry to hold. From a distance, they saw the passengers boarding the bus again, and had to run to make it on time, the berries shifting precariously back and forth with Harry's every leap over a hole in the road. But he only dropped a few.

They ate the berries straight from the basket, powdered with sugar from little packets Snape had taken from their hotel in Amsterdam. 'That's stealing,' Harry pointed out, though didn't pause in his eating even as the bus jostled him this way and that. Snape didn't bother denying the accusation, but he didn't seem particularly repentant about it either. His mouth had dyed purple at the corners, and Harry's tongue, when he stuck it out to check in the windowpane, was a bold ultramarine.

Once the berries were gone, they drove and drove and nothing much happened. Harry grew bored, but he was good at boredom. Snape read through the rest of the Daily Prophet, which Harry tried very hard not to look at, then folded it and stilled, first blinking rapidly and finally closing his eyes fully, a moue of discomfort on his lips.

'They have these pills at petrol stations sometimes,' Harry told him. 'Or if they have ginger ale, that works for motion sickness, too.'

Snape looked at him like he wanted to say something, but then shook that off. He'd been looking at Harry more altogether, today.

'I think the pills are ginger, too,' he added, feeling awkward. 'Ginger just works for motion sickness for some reason.'

'It does,' Snape agreed. 'What does it work for more generally?'

'Uh, I don't know—feeling bad?'

Snape looked to the ceiling. 'Tell me, are you ever actually awake in my classroom, or have you mastered the ability to sleep with your eyes open? We have used ginger in several potions this year, and I have explained every time—'

'We have?'

Snape stared at him like he couldn't decide whether to yell or laugh. 'Do you know what ginger looks like, Potter?'

'Uh—' Harry remembered ginger ale. 'It's kind of yellow?'

'Merlin, and I didn't fail you? Ginger works against nausea. It is added to many potions, especially in healing, to make the combination of potent ingredients easier on the digestive system.'

Harry thought that feeling bad and nausea were basically the same thing, so he didn't really understand Snape's outrage, nor did he appreciate being told he was so stupid he should have failed a class. He was reminded suddenly of all the more mundane reasons why he hated Snape. He crossed his arms over his chest and stared past him at the window, to keep the anger inside.

'I'm putting you in first row next year,' Snape vowed, apparently unaware that Harry was done with the conversation. 'That way, at least I can spot the moment your eyes glaze over.'

'I'm not sitting in first row,' Harry huffed.

'Yes, you are.'

'I am not,' he straightened, now worried that Snape was genuinely considering this mad plan. 'Only people who just care about school and have no friends sit in first row. I can't sit there.'

'Your Miss Granger sat in first row throughout autumn term,' Snape stated calmly.

'Yeah, back when she had no friends, and then we rescued her—don't you know anything?'

He'd gone a step too far. Snape's face changed. 'I know you're not allowed to take that tone with me,' he said sharply.

Harry slumped back on his seat, face burning with embarrassment. He hadn't meant to say it, and felt bad now for another reason, too: if Snape grew up to be a teacher, it was entirely possible he'd sat in first row when he was at school, and Harry had been very harsh in his judgment.

'You know a lot of things,' he told him stupidly, cringing at it but wanting to make Snape feel better somehow. 'Like, about Potions. And other things. You're really smart, smarter than Hermione, even.'

Snape looked him in the eye again. Harry quickly stared down into his lap.

'Smarter than a twelve-year-old? Why, thank you, Potter, that is all I have ever wanted to hear.'

After that, Snape abandoned his newspaper and fixed his eyes on the road ahead to ease the motion sickness, and they played twenty questions until they got to Vilnius. It wasn't the best game of twenty questions Harry had played, since Snape insisted on setting him potions ingredients to guess, but it was more interesting than staring outside the window for hours on end, so he glowered a little but didn't argue.

The driver changed then, and this new one played the radio at full volume constantly, which made afternoon napping entirely impossible. The same six songs came on looped, and the signal would cut off when they crossed swathes of forest, only to return with hissing and humming and the guitar riff that Harry could now hear even during the ad breaks. Life is a highway, the singer repeated over and over again. It definitely seemed like it was, Harry thought, the longer they stayed on this stupid coach. If you're going my way, I want to ride it all night long.

Here, Harry and the singer were in disagreement.

They got off again at the Latvian border and found a roadside restaurant where they waited for the next bus. The tables were cut out of massive slabs of dark wood, and the flickering lamps bathed everything in a shimmering glow that made Harry sleepy. Cats ambled under their feet, curious or maybe hoping for scraps. A fat tabby took a particular liking to Harry and clambered onto the bench to sniff at his hands and get her ears petted.

'Can you turn into a cat?' Harry asked Snape.

Snape was busy perusing the menu, which seemed pointless to Harry since it was all in Latvian. 'Professor McGonagall is an Animagus, I am not.'

'Is that when you can change into a cat?'

'Every Animagus has their own unique animal form, not necessarily a cat. But it takes significant time and dedication to become one, and few wizards attempt it.'

Harry thought if Snape were an Animagus, he would probably be a bat. That was a good animal to be, he supposed, because you were able to fly; but bats slept in dark, dank caves, which didn't sound appealing to Harry. He wouldn't want to be a house cat like McGonagall, either, that was hopelessly boring. He could be a lion, perhaps, or a jaguar; or maybe a bird of prey, so that he could fly, too.

The waitress got annoyed with them soon enough, and when all attempts at communication failed, she brought them two plates of food they hadn't ordered, with a glare that made it clear she would not hear arguments. Snape got some deep dish with mushrooms and meat, and Harry a pork schnitzel and boiled potatoes swaddled in dill, so he ended up the clear winner. His tabby friend was largely uninterested in the main dish, but she liked the herb butter that came with their basket of rye bread, so Harry put little licks of it on his finger and passed it to her under the table when Snape didn't look, trying not to squirm as she tickled him with her sharp tongue.

'Do you realise the amount of disease stray cats carry?'

Harry jerked his hand back into his lap. His elbow knocked into the edge of the table, sending a pierce of pain all the way up to his neck. 'Sorry,' he muttered, although he wasn't really. He also thought the tabby cat was too fat for a stray.

'Don't apologise to me, go and wash your hands before you touch your own food.'

Harry did go. He looked strange in the bathroom mirror. More tan than he got usually. His cheeks had more colour to them and his mouth lay different against his chin. Maybe he looked older? Taller? He couldn't tell.

He looked at his hands as he dried them on the little pink towel. They seemed very small to him somehow. Had they always been that small?

Breath knotted in his chest. He hitched his shirt up to look at the wand and the bruise. Snape had some bruise-healing potion in his coat—he'd seen him rub it into his broken arm. But Harry couldn't steal another thing from him, and even if he could hide the wand and invent an excuse, he couldn't show Snape his bare stomach: the thought alone made him heat up with embarrassment.

Sometimes when he became embarrassed, even about something that hadn't happened yet, it pulled on a thread in him until he was reliving another embarrassment and another, the associations coming in fast and loose. The bruise made him remember the way he'd spoken to Snape earlier on the bus, and then that made him think of how a teacher in his primary school once told him off in front of everyone for not knowing what an adverb was. And that, for some reason, made him think of Snape promising to tell Dumbledore about the Dursleys.

He couldn't decide which would be more horrible: if Snape actually told him, because then Dumbledore would know; or if he never did, because then Harry would have been lied to and fallen for it. Fallen for it a little. He wasn't committed to believing or disbelieving, actually. None of it felt real at all, like maybe it was happening to someone else. He had imagined sometimes that someone might try to take him away, and in his fantasies, he was alight with hope and joy and terror and a thousand different emotions. In reality, he felt nothing at all.

When he got back to the table, the tabby cat was sprawled on the bench next to Snape and he was petting her tummy, which felt pretty risky to Harry for reasons less to do with disease and more to do with tiny claws.

'Yes, I will go and wash my hands, too,' Snape said when he saw him watching.

When Harry didn't sit down immediately, his eyebrows knitted, and the hand on the cat's tummy stilled. 'Are you alright?'

Harry didn't know. He felt oddly nervous, and so shy he couldn't bear to move, let alone answer.

Snape reached out with his good arm and tugged on Harry's wrist, so he could lower his voice when he asked, 'What's wrong?'

Nothing, Harry thought. He couldn't think of anything that might be wrong except that his hands had looked too small in the bathroom, and yet he felt like something truly horrible was about to befall him, right here in the middle of this tiny roadside restaurant.

When he opened his mouth to tell Snape so, no sound came out. He tried again, and once more, and gripped his throat and then his chest, unsure where the voice had got stuck exactly but desperate to fish it out. That song from the bus kept playing in his head, the middle verse of the chorus disjointed from the rest, I want to drive it all night long—all night long—I want to drive it all night long—

'Sit down,' Snape was telling him. Harry started to move. 'No, sit down here. Did anything happen while you were in the bathroom?'

Harry shook his head as he sank obediently to the bench by Snape's side. He felt like he was never going to be able to speak again, and it scared him so much he wanted to die. He was sure that the water Snape had given him would get stuck in his throat, too, and spill back out through clenched lips; but nothing like that happened, which was somehow even scarier.

He saw his hand move, though he didn't feel it, as if it weren't his own, or like it had been cut off from his body without him noticing. The image of a bloody stump flashed through his mind just as the guitar riff came back.

Snape was moving the hand, he realised, until it was flat against the cat's warm fur. It took terrible effort to jerk his fingers awake, and he had to focus his entire being on consciously edging them back and forth in an uncoordinated imitation of scratching. Snape's hand was right next to his, the motion of his fingers smooth and steady. Harry tried to copy it best he could but failed to stop the minute tremble of his whole arm.

'I think cats are my favourite animal,' Snape told him. 'It used to be very common for Potions Masters to have cats, you know. They caught the rats and mice that ran aplenty in townhouses, and those could then be used for many brews. Today, most people buy them straight from the Apothecary, but I wonder sometimes whether it might be more cost-efficient to get myself a cat for the Hogwarts laboratory. The dungeons are full of rodents, not to mention the grounds—but I'm not sure how you're meant to train a cat to bring you their prey instead of eating it.'

Harry's fingers were hurting. He only now realised it was because he'd been holding them so tight. When he loosened them, the scratching became much easier, and soon, he felt the vibrations of the cat's purring under his palm.

'You have to give them treats in exchange,' he said. He sounded like a stranger to his own ears. 'I've read that about owls. You can train them to hunt, too.'

'Hm. Are owls your favourite animal, then?'

Harry shrugged. It shifted some of the tension off his shoulders. 'I guess. But I like cats, too. And tortoises.'

'Of course.'

If he ever became an Animagus, Harry thought, maybe he would turn into a cat after all. He was too tired from the talking he'd already done to say so to Snape, though he wasn't sure he would want to anyway.

They boarded the bus again just as dusk broke and a sheen of rain flittered down from the silky clouds. Snape kept up a steady stream of perfectly neutral conversation, which was unlike him and should have contributed to how surreal everything felt, but did the opposite. He asked Harry about Hedwig, and about Mrs Figg's cats, and about what he would name a tortoise if he had one; he wanted to know if Harry liked all colours equally and if preferred summer to winter. He didn't sound like he particularly cared about any of his answers, but even the briefest one Harry managed to give was a tenterhook: a source of easy proof that he had a mouth and lungs and a tongue that all worked, that he could talk and that he could breathe.

Just before midnight, they stopped for a bathroom break. Harry had started dozing off a little by then, and now everything he saw was blurrier and sadder than normally. The yellow light panels outside the petrol station seemed like they wished they could go to sleep. The gloss of rain on the asphalt made him feel cold even though the night was warm and there was little breeze.

They picked up two water bottles from the humming fridge inside the shop and stood to wait in the winding queue of exhausted passengers. A mosquito buzzed past Harry's ear. Snape nudged him a little and told him to keep his eyes open, but it was easier said than done. At the next turn of the queue, they stepped into the chocolate aisle, where Harry tried to pick out from the blur of colours the brands he recognized. Snape let him choose a bar to try later, so he got a red one that he'd never seen before. It looked like it would have had caramel inside.

The bus rocked him into sleep, then out of it and back under. Every time he read the digital clockface over the driver's booth, he was surprised at how much time had passed. Darkness eddied into his field of vision, then eased off for long enough that he could yawn and shift and understand he was uncomfortable. His saliva tasted of petrol and sleep.

Just after four, he woke and couldn't sleep again. He tried position after position, rearranging his legs and even leaning forward against the back of the seat in front of him, but all of it merely made him more lucid. He gave up eventually and settled for watching the darkness sweep past the window.

Snape was awake, too, but didn't say anything to Harry. He looked over to him and smiled though, which would have made Harry self-conscious during the day, but now in the dead of night, it made him brave.

'What was your favourite subject when you were at school?' he asked, because Snape hadn't done that one.

'I enjoyed Potions and Defence Against the Dark Arts,' Snape said, which made Harry feel a little bad for not really liking either of those.

'What was my mum's?'

'She liked Potions, too. And Charms. She was very good at Charms.'

Harry was okay at Charms, he thought.

'And what is yours?' Snape had leant his head back against the seat and shut his eyes, so it was easier for Harry to look at him. The orange from the road lights they passed flitted across his face. Someone snored. Even though their voices were soft murmurs, they sounded large in the humming silence of the bus.

'Flying, I guess,' whispered Harry. The words were coming in easier now than before, as if the sleep had cleared off some of the strangeness in his head. 'But that's not really a proper subject. Uh, I like Charms, too.'

Snape's eyes were still closed. Harry began to wonder if he'd even been listening, he was silent for so long. He shuffled lower on the seat, stretching his legs until his butt rose off the cushion and cool air flowed into the tiny tunnel underneath, chilling the sweaty skin on his lower back.

'If you'd said Potions,' Snape told him, 'I would have given you an Outstanding on your summer assignment. But now, I'm afraid the best you can hope for is an Acceptable.'

Harry stared at him, which Snape obviously didn't see.

'Politics, Mr Potter. Clearly, you still have much to learn in that area.'

Harry thought about it. 'I want to change my answer,' he decided.

'Oh, you do?'

'Yes,' his voice hitched louder. 'I forgot before, Potions is my favourite. It's the best subject, better than stupid Charms or Flying or anything, and the best teacher in the whole school—'

Snape laughed. 'Liar,' he told Harry. 'Go to sleep.'

Harry felt like maybe he could, now, and was about to close his eyes—when suddenly, the radio came alive, and Life Is a Highway blasted through the bus at full volume.

'Bloody hell,' Snape groaned, then slammed his hand into the seat in front of him like it was the upholstery's fault. That startled Harry, but the misery on Snape's face was too funny, and try as he might, he couldn't quite hold in the laugh.

'Oh, this is amusing to you?' Snape didn't sound angry. 'I've been unable to fall asleep all night, and now that I'm finally—it's four in the morning, do we really need to hear this blasted song for the thousandth time right now, can it not wait till bloody dawn?'

'No,' Harry choked, laughter peeling out of him more and more with each breath. 'No, we have to listen to it now because it's the best song in the whole world!'

'I am so glad you're enjoying this.'

Harry didn't mean to ask, but the giggles plucked the question out of him so suddenly, he hadn't realised until he'd already said it. 'Can we try that chocolate bar now?'

Snape felt around his coat for a while before finally producing it. The foil crinkled under his fingers. He broke the bar roughly in half and gave Harry his piece alongside the wrapper, which was probably best since Harry had every intention of taking his time with it and otherwise the chocolate would have melted and stained his fingers. He'd tried a lot of sweets this past year, and many of them had moved or glowed or spoken; but this one tasted nicer, because they were having it in the middle of the night when they were supposed to be trying to sleep.

As Harry ate, a woman walked up the aisle to the driver's booth and told him to turn down the music, and Snape finished his half and drifted off to sleep. His coat lay strewn haphazardly across his lap, sliding there and back with the motion of the bus. By the time he'd swallowed the last traces of caramel from his tongue, Harry's eyes were falling shut, too.

But before he slept, he carefully lifted his shirt, pried his wand out from under the hem of his trousers, and slipped it back into the pocket of Snape's coat.


I've promised someone in the comments a largely drama-free chapter for the new year, and here we are! I hope you've enjoyed this breather, and that your 2021 is shaping up nicely.

I also want to let you know that I have recently started a fic-focused tumblr. I don't expect to post on there much, but if you'd like to drop by for a chat, definitely do. You can find me on tumblr at gzdacz-writes-fic.

And a thank you to guest reviewer Kathleen, I'm really glad you're enjoying the story! To be fair, all I do is imagine a bunch of scenes, and then just stand there looking at them for a while until I figure out how the hell to get from point A to point B ;)