Giving Hostages to Fortune
By tearsofphoenix
Standard disclaimer applies – it's all JKR's
Many thanks to my kind previewer Lady Memory and to my wonderful editor Whitehound, who suggested this continuation by giving me some ideas for the plot and corrected it with special care, as ever.
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"They don't want to be wizards anymore! They're fed up with the magical world! The oldest in my pack is even thinking of turning himself into a werewolf at will, like Greyback did… and to hell with everything else! I feel like a traitor to both worlds, but I can't do that… and I don't know what to do anymore!" the boy cried.
Till that moment, Snape had been able to stay calm, despite the way in which Hermione and her companion had entered unexpectedly some minutes earlier.
He had initially felt surprise at seeing them – she, so early in the morning, and he, whom Severus hadn't seen for three years and for whom he had searched so much. But surprise had instantly turned into alarm: the boy seemed ill and on the verge of breaking down, while Hermione, frozen on the threshold, was looking at him through worried, frightened eyes.
"You did well, coming to me," Snape commented, his voice impossibly controlled and low. "I told your mother that I would be glad to give my help, if needed."
"I didn't know that," the boy went on, whimpering. "I don't go home anymore. I was terrified… my last transformation was even worse than the previous ones, the hunger seemed to be increasing and I was scared I could kill my whole family!"
"But then rumours reached the pack about your interest in us, about your visits to the Ministry and to Hogwarts… my mates didn't trust you or believe it was possible you could help us, but, well, I did, and hearing the news, I felt that I had to come here, and that you were my last chance," he ended, lowering his head in shame.
Regretful for the way in which he had approached her, the boy then shot a quick glance at Hermione, and his eyes widened, seeing how she was fighting back the tears that threatened to trickle.
Snape noticed the brief exchange too and, in a flurry, relived the many times in which he had been presented with a chance that seemed the last one available to him. He knew all too well how those chances had ended by turning against him, making a cruel difference to his destiny. And since wrong choices and forced ones had outnumbered the chances he had been offered to really start again, a deep empathy enfolded him.
It wasn't easy but he had to speak and to find the right words, though he was overwhelmed by his own emotion, by his old and new anguishes… but he had to give the boy at least a faint hope, along with the commitment he had already offered.
So, without even remarking, as he had it on the tip of his tongue to do, that the boy's behaviour - direct, harsh and lacking in subtlety as it had been - had been unworthy of the Slytherin he still was, Snape responded to that pleawith the same calm with which he had earlier greeted the boy.
"Yes, Malcolm," he started. "There is always a chance, and, actually, there are magical means that can help you live in a better way. Wolfsbane, above all. I suppose you haven't forgotten your studies completely, have you? So you need to try the effect on you of this potion, and more than once. And you'll need to take it, if you don't want to suffer dementia sooner than you can guess," he warned.
The boy nodded, still trembling and looking miserable.
"You must also owl your family: they'll surely be worried sick, not having heard from you for so long. We'll find you a place to stay, preferably one not far from here, so that we can monitor your progress. When you feel better, and only then, we'll search for your companions, and I guarantee that they will be convinced by the changes they'll see in you, no matter how dark their thoughts are at the moment."
"Yes, Sir," Baddock answered and, for the first time, his voice didn't quaver. To Hermione, who had been listening with deep concentration, his tone was reminiscent of the obedient attitude that students always used to keep in the classroom; it implied the conviction that doing something different from what Snape had asked wasn't even to be considered.
She looked at both wizards and, finally, a smile opened on her face.
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"We need to find a better way to administer the potion, something more long-lasting than the current one: maybe some charmed device that could release its power slowly and make it effective over a longer period, without the necessity of drinking it so many times and with the capacity to work even when the wizard isn't able to activate it himself," Snape explained.
Two months had passed, and although Wolfsbane had started to make some difference for the werewolves who had accepted and received it, some further events had made him even more determined to improve their situation.
"Since Damocles Belby's invention," Horace Slughorn answered, "no further improvements have been made to cure lycanthropy. It would be capital to do something like this! Order of Merlin, it would be worth, First Class and no less, Severus!"
No matter how often Horace seemed to consider only the advantages that one's actions would bring, or perhaps exactly because of that unconcealed cunning trait in his character, his old Head of House was still the person with whom Snape found it easiest to communicate or to evaluate what future steps needed to be taken.
"Of course I've got all my information from Baddock, who is the one whose situation I'm directly monitoring… he's staying in London, now, but he is still in touch with his pack, you know. The incident that happened to the youngest of them wouldn't have occurred if we had had such a device…"
Snape had just finished the tale of horror in which, after one of the wretched creatures had forgotten to take the potion – he was just a boy, he hadn't even started Hogwarts when he had been bitten! – the poor child had wandered madly through woods and fields, until the Aurors had been alerted by a frightened old witch who had become concerned after repeatedly hearing him in the area, and had made his capture possible.
Only his very young age had spared him from being executed… but such a possibility had ignited the fury of some of the elders in the pack, and reinforced the repressive policies at the Ministry, of course.
"We could ask Filius," Slughorn suggested. "I'll talk with him. He isn't new to charmed devices…"
"Good idea, Horace, even if we have still to decide what kind of device could be charmed… But we must go on trying. By making this improvement we'd give a major incentive to the still unregistered werewolves to come back to our world, since they wouldn't have to suffer the humiliation of submitting to controls nearly as often as at present," Snape acknowledged, accepting the goblet that the other man had offered to him.
"I've finally learned the circumstances in which Baddock was bitten, by the way," he added, and for a moment, he lost himself in his memories.
The confidence had actually been given to Hermione, and not to him. Nevertheless, it had been important for him to know the story of another hopeless, romantic Slytherin, and to hear it from her…
… That day, Snape had entered the house later than usual, and had seen Malcolm and Hermione immersed in deep conversation, so engrossed by the object of their talk that, at first, they hadn't even noticed him.
Hermione's curls shone under the light of a sunray coming through the window; but her head, so near to the boy's, looked inevitably darker compared to his blond hair, as light as to resemble a soft white fur.
Knowing everything of the boy's stages and times of transformation, Snape wasn't fearful of that closeness and, in fact, the similitude that had come his mind was an evidence of how much he had changed his point of view, away from the a sort of disgusted reaction he would once have had… he still felt afraid of the beast inside the man, as he couldn't help but do after the terrorising experience of his youth, but now it was a shared feeling, that included the other being's horror, not just his.
And, in the same way, he hadn't felt jealous while looking at them, as the maternal attitude in which Hermione was behaving had raised utterly different feelings inside him. Instead, he had remembered the sight of that fur, the powerful semblance of the beast that had been revealed to him when he had observed the effects of the potion on Malcolm. Hidden in a safe place, Severus had been protected from a lethal attack, but not from the pain that such monstrous transformation carried in itself: the agonizing changes in the limbs, the growth of the claws and fangs that horrendously distorted Malcolm's features and, above all, that last, desperate spark of rationality dimming in the boy's eyes and showing his intense suffering.
Hermione had been the first to notice Snape's arrival, and her cheerful greeting and smile warmed him as always, renewing his sense of hope that he could succeed in his task, and giving him the will to go on with it.
The boy stood up, slightly embarrassed: after his first visit, he had made it a point of honour to be less emotional in front of his former Professor and Headmaster, and to resume the old habits of self-control learnt during the moments shared at school.
Understanding the boy's uneasiness, Snape had greeted the youngsters in a composed manner and exchanged some words with the boy. Reassured, Malcolm had left a few moments later.
As soon as they were alone, and after a soft welcoming kiss, Hermione had repeated to Severus what she had just heard: the story of a boy who, a step before safety, had waited too long before leaving the battlefield, unable to leave until he had looked for the last time at the young Ravenclaw girl who had captured his heart.
The motherly way in which Hermione had comforted the boy moved Severus, as well as the tears he had noticed in her eyes. Being a Slytherin hadn't spared Malcolm from the cruel attack of Voldemort's beastly followers, and the girl was evidently sympathising with him.
She had always had such an attitude in her heart, and he knew it since the days in which she was going around with the two dunderheads she had chosen as her best friends… Amazed, he had just discovered though, that he could feel a similar kind of care and that perhaps he had always had it in himself, too… in spite of his long-time solitary existence, he had cared for, and protected, and helped his students.
Acting for the sake of his Slytherins, he had felt ready to move on with his own life, throwing away old worries of inadequacy and feeling, for the first time in an age, less afflicted by his family's story, by the memories of those days in which he had suffered for the lack of caring parents… finally acknowledging the possibility to fulfil all of his expectations.
"Yes, we have to try harder until we succeed in making the cure permanent," Snape concluded, awakening from his reverie. "Then the next thing to be done will be to enable all of them to complete their studies. All of them, Horace," he repeated, looking firmly at his old friend.
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A/N: Thanks to all those who are going on reading this story. The final part of it is already written, and will be posted once it has been beta'ed.
Until then…reviews are most welcome!
The section breaks are borrowed, as in the previous stories that form this little series, from: www. whitehound. co. uk/Fanfic/ffn_how-to. htm (remember to remove the spaces after the dots).