Severus Snape stood in the deepest patch of shade he could find, twenty discreet yards from the Hogwarts' Hogsmeade Gate. Out of the thin October sunlight, the day was cold, but Snape did not deign to shiver.
He glanced again at the distance the shadow had moved across the ground. Late. As usual. It might be unfair to Potter to resent the delay — Snape knew very well from his own experience that finding a discreet Apparition point in a strange location could be a time consuming process — but an opportunity to find fault with the Boy Who Lived was not one to be passed up. Late, as he so often was to class.
It was not apprehension that made the waiting minutes crawl so slowly, of course. He was not apprehensive about what lay ahead. Why would he be? Why would the prospect of seeing Charity Burbage's bereaved sister and then plundering her mind for Potter's purposes raise apprehension? Why would he dread the moment when she recognised him, knowing what he'd —
No. He was not apprehensive. He was irritated at Potter for keeping him waiting, and he was a little irritated with himself for agreeing to the expedition, that was all.
And in truth, I had little choice.
Ultimately, and as much as it galled him, Snape had to admit that Potter was right. The sickly evil he could feel from the curse seething against the restrictions he renewed daily spoke of someone skilled at the Dark Arts, far more skilled than could be permitted in someone guarding Death Eaters. Having given everything, up to and including my soul, to stop the Dark Lord and his followers, Snape could have resigned himself to the intrusion and indignity of a trial before the Wizengamot, even to imprisonment himself if they found him guilty. Except …
Except that would leave the breaking of that other curse, the one that Hermione Granger bore, to the dubious skills of Ministry experts. And that I cannot permit.
So, here he was, refusing to shiver, being kept waiting once more by Harry Potter.
It was another five long minutes before the Boy Who Lived Apparated in with an ostentatious crack. He stood looking around for a moment, and Snape sneered. As if he expects me to be waiting in plain view. He shifted his weight slightly, allowing the cloak to billow enough for his feet to be seen, and Potter's gaze sharpened. The boy — the man, I suppose — loped over towards him.
"Sorry to keep you waiting," he said quietly. "I had a first year with a thousand and one questions about Boggarts, on a Saturday of all things, and I was late starting. Ready?"
In answer, Snape freed one hand from the cloak's confines and grasped Potter's arm.
Apparition was as unpleasant as ever, made worse by the lack of control inherent in being taken Side-Along. Snape couldn't help staggering slightly on landing, swallowing bile. He looked around. They stood in a nondescript alley, not one in a large city from the lack of graffiti and petrol fumes.
"Ottery St Catchpole," Harry said, as if to himself. "They moved here after the war ended. It's this way."
He started off down the alley and Snape followed.
They had to walk for several minutes to reach the Monkshod residence, but Snape was relieved to realise that Potter had the good sense to have chosen a sparsely-populated route. He found it easy enough to avoid the few pedestrians they encountered. Of course, the boy no doubt remembers the difficulty in being invisible from his own reckless teenage escapades.
Finally they stopped before a small townhouse, unobtrusively nestled among others of its kind. The only indication that a witch or wizard might live there was the exceptionally extravagant garden, a riot of flowers blooming well out of season, and the weather-vane on the roof. A young woman sat on the garden wall, her head bent over a book. She seemed indefinably familiar for a moment, and then she stood up and with a brief flourish of a wand and a muttered Finite, became Hermione Granger.
"Hello, Harry," she said. "Are we ready?"
"We are," Snape said, too quietly to be heard by anyone else.
Invisible, he followed the two of them up the garden path and stood silently as Potter knocked on the door. After a moment it was opened by a woman who could only be Patience Monkshod — she had Charity's wide-set, blue eyes, Charity's jaw — she had her wand ready and Snape wondered how long it would be before Charity's sister could open her own front door without fearing Charity's fate.
"Thank you very much," Potter said, and Snape realised he had lost several sentences of the conversation.
Patience stepped back, holding the door wider. Potter and Granger managed to engineer their entry into the house so that Snape, unseen, could go inside between them, Potter enthusiastically shaking Patience's hand so she had to let go of the door and leave it to Granger to close.
"Come through," Patience said, leading the way down the hall. "Would you like tea? I can't say how pleased I am you've come. I thought about writing to you, right after — but I thought that you must be absolutely drowning in congratulatory owls —"
Potter interrupted the flow of chatter, so like Charity's, in a voice so like Charity's. "We should have come sooner, I'm sorry."
They were in the sitting room now, a bright, sunny space with vases of varicoloured flowers on every possible surface. "This is beautiful," Granger said with evident sincerity. "Herbology must have been your best subject."
Patience laughed. "It was. And my favourite. Those things do tend to go together, don't they?" She glanced down at the wand in her hand, and self-consciously placed it carefully on the mantelpiece before moving a step away from it. "Sorry about that. You can't be too careful, I suppose."
"We've actually come with a piece of news," Potter's said. "You might want to sit down."
Patience's eyes widened and Snape cursed Potter for the ignorance of youth. No parent can hear that sentence without terror. "Matthew?"
"He's fine," said Granger, mercifully quicker on the uptake than Potter. As usual. "It's nothing to do with Matthew."
"Oh, thank goodness." Patience sat down suddenly on the floral-print couch. "Merlin's breath, you gave me a start!"
Snape gauged the distance between her and her wand. Sufficient. There was little that Potter or Granger could do to cushion the shock of his appearance, and after all, it would be better to take Patience sufficiently by surprise to delay her justified attempt to hex him into oblivion.
He shrugged off the Invisibility Cloak in one smooth movement and stood revealed before Charity's sister. "I apologise for the subterfuge. And for this. Legilimens!"
She had no Occlumency at all. Snape found himself immersed in her mind with almost no effort on his part. It was as brightly-coloured and haphazard as her obnoxiously cheerful sitting room and for an unguarded instant Snape wondered if Charity's mind had been the same —
Concentrate. Seek the name of the Auror. That memory would be tinged with distinctive emotions — the intrigue of conspiracy, the desire for vengeance, perhaps the fear of discovery. He sensed none of those, which was unexpected. The shock of seeing me should have made her think immediately of how much she wants me dead. Instead, the surface of her mind was occupied with a swirl of thoughts suffused with nostalgia, memories coloured by bitter-sweet happiness, and similar sentimental emotions.
He moved deeper, trying to pry as little as he could. There. Fear, vivid and stark.
He stands in a different room, yet one that has much in common with the one he'd left — flowers everywhere, a child's paintings pinned to the walls — Patience Monkshod sits on the same floral-patterned couch, her head in her hands. Molly Weasley is beside her, her arms around the other woman.
"Will they come for me?" Patience whispers. "For Matthew?"
"I'm going to take you somewhere safe," Molly says firmly. "Both of you. No-one will hurt your boy, Patience. You have my word."
No, not what he sought. He followed the thread of fear to another memory, this one Platform 9 3/4, the Hogwarts Express pulling away, Patience standing with her hands pressed to her mouth, eyes full of unshed tears.
"He'll be fine," a woman Snape didn't recognise says to her. "I know it's awful to say goodbye for the first time, but I promise you, he'll be fine."
Not that, either, and not the next one about the time her boy fell off his Muggle bike and knocked himself silly, and not the one after that when he'd run a fever of mammoth proportions … not any of them, Snape was forced to conclude. What frightened Patience Monkshod was the thought of something happening to Michael, not conspiring to murder.
Which is unexpectedly cold-blooded of her. Considering the problem, he slipped back to the surface of her mind again. There. The most recent, the most vivid — he watches himself fling off the Invisibility Cloak and Patience's gasp of shock, waiting for the thread of hatred he can follow to other memories of how she felt about him.
It did not come. In the instant before memory-Snape raised his wand, there was instead only utter shock, disbelief, and then the beginning of a wave of relief. Not possible. He sought other memories of himself, more ruthlessly now, searching them for the disgust Patience must surely feel for the man who had watched her sister die and done nothing.
He follows two women along the path that led from Hogsmeade to Hogwarts. From behind, it's hard to tell them apart — hair the same indeterminate shade between fair and brown, firm and determined strides. Far ahead, Snape sees himself, stalking along, black cape swirling.
"Come on," Charity says. "If we hurry, we can catch up with Severus."
Patience laughs. "As if that's something to hope for."
"He's an acquired taste, I'll give you that." Charity lengthens her stride, forcing her sister hurry as well. "Bloody hilarious when he wants to be, though."
Snape pulled away. Useless. A kaleidescope of moments at Hogwarts, Patience visiting her sister on weekends, himself in the background, in the distance, a minor figure in Patience's memories … one or two conversations that he himself barely remembered except that he'd sought to restrain his sharp tongue for Charity's sake … there. Something more recent.
Charity in the same room as the first memory, trimming the stalks of a bunch of flowers with unnecessary violence. "Shut up, Patience."
"I just meant, you're not the only one. If he took in Albus Dumbledore, you can't possibly blame yourself for —"
Charity whirls, scissors held up like a weapon. "I said shut up! I don't believe it, I won'tbelieve it. Not of Severus. There's something we don't understand, that's all. Maybe Albus was in league with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Maybe that's why Severus … did what he did."
"Murdered him," Patience says flatly. "Why Severus murdered him."
"He must have had a reason!" Charity insists. "I know him, Pat. He's my friend!"
Snape recoiled, and found himself in a dingy bedsit. A boy plays on the floor, pushing a wooden car repeatedly into the radiator and laughing at the irritating clang each time. The sound puts Snape's teeth on edge, but Patience Monkshod doesn't seem to even hear it. She sits utterly motionless, staring at the front page of a newspaper.
Moving closer, Snape sees it is The Quibbler. He winces at the headline. Severus Snape, Secret Spy and Saviour! it screams in the largest possible font.
"Oh, Chas," Patience whispers. "Oh, Chas, I'm so sorry. I should have listened. I wish —"
She begins to cry, a few tears quickly giving way to gulping sobs.
"Ma?" the boy — Matthew — says, abandoning his car and coming to stand next to her. "Ma? Has someone died again?"
Patience shakes her head and puts her arm around him. "No, my love. I'm just sad, because —" She holds the paper so he can see it. "You see this man? He was your auntie Charity's very good friend. She liked him very much. This story is about what a hero he was, and thinking about it made me sad."
Matthew studies the picture on the front page with interest. "Can we go and see him? I'd like to hear what he says about Aunt Chas."
"No, I'm sorry, we can't." She draws him close and kisses the top of his head. "He died, as well. Like Chas did. Fighting Voldemort."
And he was standing in Patience Monkshod's sitting room, wand still raised.
He lowered it. "Madam Monkshod …"
"You could just ask, Severus," she said. "I'd be happy to let you see my memories of Charity in a Pensieve."
He gave a stiff nod, and said to Potter, "She is not the one."
"The one what?" Patience asked.
"Well, you see," Granger began, and then paused.
Oh, Merlin's beard. "We were under the impression that you had learnt of my survival, and sought revenge on me for Charity's death," Snape said bluntly.
Potter muttered something about tact. "There were some coincidental factors that made it seem possible," he said.
Patience opened her mouth, and then closed it again. "Tea," she said at last. "I think tea is called for." She stood, and started out of the room.
"I'll help you make it," Granger offered.
Snape reached out and took her wrist before she could follow Patience. "Do not," he hissed as menacingly as he could, "Obliviate her."
"But —"
"No, Granger."
She gave a small nod of acquiescence and Snape released her to follow Patience into the kitchen.
Potter was regarding him with a small frown. "Never mind the inconvenience of a trial that ends in a acquittal," he said. "If she makes a complaint to the Ministry about your Legilimency …"
"Then I will spend the rest of my days in Azkaban, yes," Snape sneered. "Fortunately, they will not be very many. It would be one thing if she were part of a conspiracy to undermine the security of Azkaban, but she is innocent. Do you really want to add to my crime by allowing Professor Granger to commit another?"
"I suppose not," Potter said. "What did you see?"
"Nothing relevant, and therefore nothing that is any of your business."
"I'm afraid I have to insist on being the one to decide what's relevant," Potter said steadily.
"She was astonished to see me alive. She regrets ever believing I was a traitor. Her sister —" He turned his back on Potter's damnably inquisitive gaze. "Her sister never did. Does that satisfy you, Auror Potter?"
"I'm —"
"If you tell me you're sorry for the intrusion, Potter, I will hex you," Snape snarled.
"Don't do that, Severus," Patience said as she carried in the tea-tray. "I've just had the carpets done."
Which was exactly what Charity would have said, even down to the intonation — Snape swung away from them all and stared out the window, feeling the curse seethe within its containment, sending an ache deep into the bone. Behind him, china chimed, tea poured, voices murmured in explanation.
Eventually the sounds came clear enough for Snape to hear Potter telling Patience that Matthew was a diligent student, if a talkative one.
He turned, and moved to the chair they'd left empty for him. "He has steady hands," he told Patience, "and has yet to cause any serious explosions."
"How long —" Patience started, and then gave a small laugh. "I was about to say, 'how long have you been alive'. Which is not really a very sensible question, is it?"
"It seemed wise to avoid attention."
Granger added three lumps to a cup of tea, stirred it, and handed it him on its saucer. "That's why —"
Snape took the cup, grateful his hands didn't shake. "Why I haven't been to see you, earlier, to express my condolences."
Patience tilted her head to the side a little. "I doubt that's entirely it, since you were apparently convinced I wanted to kill you."
"I was there," Snape told his tea-cup. "When —"
"Harry, let's go and have a chat to Molly," Granger said, putting down her teacup and standing. "Professor, you can Apparate to the Hogwarts Gates from here?"
"I believe I can manage a task most seventeen-year-olds have mastered," Snape said acidly, but Granger only smiled.
"Thank you for the tea, Patience," she said, and hustled Potter from the room.
A moment later the front door opened and closed.
"So," Patience said. "When did you start taking sugar in your tea?"
And now his hands decided to shake. "Recently," Snape said, putting the teacup down on the table before its rattling on the saucer became too obvious.
"Are you ill?" Patience paused, and then, before he could answer, "I mean, is someone poisoning you? Someone you thought was me?"
Snape shook his head slightly. "I assure you, I retain sufficient of my skills to avoid such obvious methods of assassination."
"But they found you, didn't they?" Her eyes were very wide, her face pale. "Does that mean they'll find me? Matthew?"
"No. There is no-one at large with any motivation to hurt you, or Matthew. That possibility has been categorically ruled out." He leaned back in his chair, elbows on the arms, and rested his fingertips together. "Someone has learnt that I live, but the inescapable conclusion is that it's someone unpersuaded by Potter's account." He gave her a small, thin smile. "I did kill Dumbledore, after all. That sort of thing tends to make a lasting impression."
"What are you going to do?"
Snape studied his hands, to avoid looking past them at Charity's eyes in someone else's face. "It appears," he said at last, "that I am going to stand trial."