Chapter 6
This is here:
Harry Potter was not the most talented seeker in a century for nothing; he was good at finding things and location spells were pretty much all that he had really excelled in at school – except Quidditch, of course. Once he knew a witch or wizard – knew the type of wand they used, knew their personality, their magical signature – he could find them anywhere.
That was why he was now standing in front of a rundown terraced house somewhere in Northern England.
Even though this Severus Snape here was apparently a back-stabbing, murdering Death Eater there had to be something of Harry's Severus in him – otherwise his charm would have failed.
Harry took a deep breath and knocked on the front door.
This isn't:
"Merlin, that was awful," Snape groaned as he dropped into a chair and lit the lights in the kitchen with a flick of his wand.
Harry couldn't agree more with that particular statement. If he'd thought that the Order meeting itself had gone badly, the subsequent dinner had been even worse. He'd been ignored by most people except for Remus who'd chatted animatedly with everybody around him. He'd tried drawing Harry into the conversation, but had only got short and rather monosyllabic answers.
Harry had been fully occupied with watching Molly Weasly fuss over Neville and his father. The food on his plate had apparently been transfigured into something resembling cardboard while Sirius and his mother had sat close together and ignored him completely. Snape had been of little help as Arthur Weasley had taken the opportunity to quiz him extensively about "that horrid Muggle war" by which he meant World War II.
"Why doesn't anybody like me?" Harry asked plaintively, "Do I smell? Did I bully people at school? What's wrong with my mum and Sirius?"
Severus sighed.
"I can't explain this without the help of copious amounts of alcohol I fear," he said and summoned a bottle filled with a golden liquid.
"Firewhisky?"
Harry nodded; getting hammered started to sound appealing at this point of the day.
"Perhaps it would help it you could show me your list first," Snape said.
Digging in his pockets, Harry retrieved it and smoothed out the crumpled piece of parchment.
"It's all I could find. Oh, and Sirius is dead, while here, he's not…"
"No, here he's just a nasty prick who doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut."
Harry felt that he should jump to his godfather's defence, but there wasn't really much he could say and he felt tired, drained now. Getting into an argument about Sirius with the only person who could help him get back was probably not a very smart idea.
Severus read through the list and didn't speak after that for a long time.
"Am I right in the assumption," he said at last, "that you are the boy who lived? That your own mother, Lily Potter, gave her life to save you, thus protecting you from the Killing Curse?"
"Yeah."
"Well." Severus reflected on that for a while. "So it didn't matter who Voldemort was trying to kill and he chose a child at random."
"No, no, you've got that wrong," Harry explained, "Don't you know what the Order is trying to guard in the Department of Mysteries? It's a prophecy made by Sybill Trelawney to Albus Dumbledore about the both of us, Neville and me. It said that Voldemort would either mark him or me as his equal."
And as Harry explained everything, from the prophecy to Snape being the spy and Petter Pettigrew the traitor, to his parents' betrayed Fidelius Charm and him being raised by the Dursleys, Snape grew more and more quiet, interrupting only for the occasional clarification.
When Harry had finished, he downed the tumbler of Firewhisky before him in one long gulp. The liquid burned down his throat and seemed to light a small fire in the pit of his stomach.
Severus took a sip of his own glass and made a face. "I know it sounds ridiculous and rather egoistical in light of more important revelations, but the thought of me joining the Death Eaters and then becoming a teacher of Potions – Potions! – does not fail to elicit a slight shudder of disgust in me. Teaching children, at Hogwarts!" He laughed shortly, but it was not a happy laugh.
"So what did you do after finishing school?" Harry asked him.
"I told you, I went to a Muggle university and read Physics with Philosophy, which I did solely to annoy my dying father. I only returned to the wizarding world when Voldemort was first defeated by Neville."
Harry tried picturing Severus Snape taking notes in a Muggle lecture hall and failed. The mere thought of Snape in a Muggle setting – any Muggle setting – was enough to boggle the mind.
"As to your earlier questions: You neither smell nor did you bully your fellow students at school, quite unlike your father I might add. As far as I've gathered you spent most of your time playing Quidditch and chasing after every remotely homosexual boy, with some success. You had a terrible and unsuccessful crush on Draco Malfoy and have on repeated occasions begged me to obliviate this rather embarrassing episode from your mind."
"Yuck!" Harry exclaimed, "Draco Malfoy? That vicious little Death Eater spawn?"
"There's no accounting for taste, Harry," Severus said sardonically, "Concerning your mother and Sirius… Getting over James' death was hard for you. Shortly after his death you came out and Sirius and Lily… They didn't take it well, but things got worse when Sirius moved into the cottage at Godric's Hollow to, ah, comfort your mother."
"Do I want to know just what comforting her involved?" Harry asked.
"I think you can imagine. Perhaps everything would have been fine eventually, but Sirius nigh well went ballistic when you told them that you were in a relationship with me. You see, you couldn't have made a worse choice: having a relationship with a man was bad enough, but falling in love with a man twice your age, old enough to be your father, a man your godfather had derided and bullied at school for being a greasy queer and an expert on nasty curses… That was a bit much, the killing blow to an already fragile relationship."
"Wonderful," Harry sighed, "So I am… So this other Harrry is a Quidditch obsessed, gay wizard who failed all his NEWTs and who has a crappy relationship with his family."
"You didn't fail your NEWTs – in fact you passed them all, much to everbody's surprise. How you managed such a feat is a mystery even to you. Nevertheless, you bested poor Neville in Defence against the Dark Arts, even though you never showed up for any of the classes – hence his slur against your Patronus tonight."
"Um, about that. Slytherin's tomb – his supposed tomb – is swarming with Dementors and I'll go and investigate?"
"Yes. Try not to get yourself killed, please," Severus said, "Fascinating as this all is, I'd quite like to get my lover back."
"Feeling's entirely mutual, Sn – Severus."
Harry slept in the guestroom again that night. Snape stayed up late after he had gone upstairs, researching the origin of the bowl and trying to find a clue as to where the original documents – if there were any – might be.
Harry heard him climb up the stairs and softly open the door to the room where he slept. He didn't know whether he was dreaming or not as he felt a gentle hand slowly stroke his hair, brushing it back from his forehead. The warm press of lips breathing a kiss on his skin felt like coming home to Hogwarts after an endless summer, like seeing Ron and Hermione again, like riding his broom in the golden morning dawn.
Harry didn't remember any of this when he came down the next morning; this time he found Snape sprawling in an armchair and poking his wand at a small scroll.
"Hey," he said distractedly, "When's your meeting with Black?"
"I have to go soon," Harry replied and went to the kitchen in search of breakfast.
"There's toast and eggs if you want some!" Severus called after him and for one horrible moment Harry felt as if he'd stepped through a broken, distorted mirror right into an everyday, Muggle household scene.
After drinking a cup of coffee to wake up properly he approached the other man with some trepidation.
"Say, is there any way that I could, um, get you to lend me your wand?"
Severus lowered the scroll he was squinting at. His face was perfectly blank as he answered, "Sexual favours, Harry."
Harry spluttered and was sure that he blushed six ways to Sunday, but thankfully Snape smiled and shook his head.
"Never mind. Why d'you need my wand?"
"Mine doesn't work," Harry replied and to prove it he muttered "Lumos!" with his wand pointing towards the ceiling. The tip began to glow slightly but the light wasn't even as strong as an ordinary Muggle match. There was no way that he could Apparate by himself, let alone conjure a corporeal Patronus.
"Interesting," Severus commented, "It seems that unicorn hair doesn't fit your personality at all. My wand has a core of dragon heartstring; is that more to your taste?"
"It worked fine for me when I healed… you know," Harry tapped his nose.
"I guess I won't need it today anyway," Severus said, "I originally planned on going to Germany, to see if I can find some more decent sources, but those blasted wizards over there have adapted to the Muggle lifestyle insofar as that shops and libraries are closed on Sundays. And do you know why? So people can go to church! Ridiculous, utterly ridiculuos."
He shook his head before handing Harry his wand.
"Ta," Harry muttered and then he remembered something. "Where are we, by the way? I can't Apparate if I don't know the rough distance."
"North Yorkshire, near a small village called Goathland," Severus said.
"Good luck!" he called after him as Harry vanished with a soft pop.
Arriving in Godric's Hollow in front of his mother's – and now apparently also Sirius' – house, Harry was rather glad that he hadn't got splinched. Knocking on the front door he heard a female voice call out, "Come in, it's open! We're in the kitchen."
The scene that greeted him was the very picture of domestic bliss: a table with the remains of a large breakfast, his mother reading the Sunday Prophet and Sirius idly watching her turn the pages.
"Good morning," Harry said awkwardly, "I've, er, come to fetch you."
"You don't say," Sirius retorted, "And here I thought this was a social call."
"Sirius!" his mother lowered the newspaper and glared at her lover? – companion? – whatever, not sounding unlike Hermione when she was berating Ron or Harry. Until now Harry had thought that he'd adapted to the whole situation rather well, all things considered. Nevertheless, seeing both his mother and his godfather alive in a setting that seemed so strange and surreal, almost innately wrong to him… He desperately wished that he had his friends with him now.
"I suppose it won't take that long," Sirius was saying now, "Take care while I'm gone."
"Don't I always?"
Sirius grinned, glanced at Harry and then leaned down for a long kiss with Lily who was returning it rather enthusiastically. Harry blushed and looked away.
"Let's go then."
Once outside he grabbed Sirius' arm for Side-Along Apparition because he didn't actually know where Slytherin's tomb was. A moment later their surroundings were compressed and faded away and a green and brown landscape appeared before them. This time there was no Severus to keep him from falling and Harry landed on his butt. Sirius grinned.
"Thanks anyway," Harry grumbled.
The countryside around them was rather flat and had a greyish tinge to it. It was a cold, dreary day with an overcast sky and the ground beneath Harry's fingers was moist. A short distance away there a mound, barely high enough to qualify as a small hill.
"Is that it?" he asked.
The other wizard nodded. "Rather unspectacular, isn't it? But at least we didn't Apparate right into a nest of Dementors and that's got to count for something. Let's go up, see if we find anything. Tonks reported a suspiciously high concentration of Dementors in this area. Muggles have always avoided it but now they positively hate this place. They say it's sucking the happiness right out of them."
"Okay," Harry said, getting up, "Anything else of importance?"
"Nobody's ever been able to enter old Salazar's grave, but in there is probably the reason why Dementors are interested in it. Alternatively there's a remote possibility that Voldemort actually sent those buggers to guard the tomb or something that's in it – you would know this if you hadn't been busy with Snivellus during the Order meeting yesterday."
"I wasn't –" Harry began hotly but then a sudden idea occurred to him – could it be that Voldemort was actually hiding one of his horcruxes in this grave and had sent Dementors to keep it safe? It would make sense, after all: Salazar Slytherin's tomb surely held some significance for his heir and if anybody was able to enter it then that person was surely Lord Voldemort, the most powerful wizard of their age.
His godfather had already begun climbing the hill and Harry followed him quickly. Once they'd arrived at the top Sirius pointed towards the ground.
"Look."
Harry looked down and made out a large, rectangular slab of polished black stone. It was bare except for an exquisitely carved snake in the lower right corner. Leanding down, Harry examined it more closely. The body of the serpent was only chiselled into the stone but its head was reared and worked out like a small sculpture; it was flicking its tongue. Its eyes were made of green stones and he got the prickling feeling that the snake was watching him.
He drew Severus' wand.
"Alohomora!" he tried. The stone didn't so much as twitch and Sirius snorted.
"Believe me, better wizards and witches than you have tried moving that thing and nobody's succeeded yet. Removing it by force doesn't work either… Bombarda!"
Harry jumped back quickly as the shock wave of the other wizard's spell hit the stone and – vanished without any effect.
"Bloody hell," he said. He touched the snake with his fingertips and almost felt the warmth pulse deeply within. Asking himself if he could still speak Parseltongue without his scar he concentrated on the snake's forked tongue and whispered, "Can you hear me?" It came out as a soft hiss and he felt the snake move beneath his fingers; he quickly snatched his hand back and wiped it on his robe.
"Sirius," he said, "Perhaps Neville could, er, try to open the tomb? It could be that it responds to Parseltongue."
But the older man wasn't listening; he was staring into the distance and now Harry felt it, too: a sense of coldness, dark dreariness that surrounded him. He scrambled for his wand; the already grey sky overhead had turned completely dark and he called out "Lumos!"
"Sirius!" he yelled, "Let's go! There's too many of them!"
The Dementors – for it was indeed Dementors surrounding them – were now approaching rapidly, and there were at least twenty of them, enclosing them from all sides.
"SIRIUS!"
But his godfather seemed to be frozen. He didn't move when Harry shook him and Harry took his hand and tried Apparating them both to safety. He closed his eyes but this proved to be a mistake: In the darkness he heard a voice screaming, begging.
"Fuck!"
Harry swore; he'd splinch them both if he tried Apparating while listening to his mother being murdered. The Dementors were only a few yards away now and he could hear their rattling breath and his own harsh panting. Everything else seemed to have gone completely quiet.
"Expecto Patronum!" he yelled and a silvery vapour emerged from the wand; he'd either not been able to find a happy enough memory or Snape's wand didn't work for him either.
One of the Dementors was now reaching out to him; Harry stepped back, stumbled and landed butt first right on top of Slytherin's grave. He took Sirius down with him. Finding himself lying in a patch of muddy grass and having scraped both hands bloody on the edge of the stone snapped the other man out of his stupor as he cast wild looks about him and drew his own wand.
"Expecto Patronum!" he bellowed.
His Patronus wasn't any more powerful than Harry's however, barely enough to drive their attackers back.
"Protego!" Sirius shouted and Harry wondered what use a Shield Charm for hexes could have against Dementors when suddenly one of them began pulling down his hood. Harry's whole word narrowed down to loud, laboured breaths – his own, he realized dimly – and that black hood.
Gripping his wand more firmly he thought of Ron and Hermione playing chess against each other, of racing through the sky on his broom, of waking up next to Ginny, sleepily kissing the freckles on her shoulders.
"Expecto Patronum!"
He didn't even realise that he'd cast the spell wordlessly, nearly subconsciously until a large silvery stag errupted from his wand. It cantered towards the Dementors, driving them back one by one and Harry only lowered his wand when all that remained on the mound were Sirius and himself.
"Come," he said gently, hoisting the other man's arm over his shoulder and Apparating away, leaving behind them a small space of vacuum that was filled with a soft whoosh of air just a moment later.