Chapter 11
This is here:
Holding the locket by its heavy silver chain Harry watched it spin around slowly, dully reflecting the light from different angles. He snapped his gum lazily.
"That was a bit anticlimactic, don't you think?" he commented to Ron and Hermione.
"Anticlimactic?" Hermione asked archly. "I wouldn't necessarily say so. You nearly blew our cover, we were lucky nobody saw you in Knockturn Alley."
"Did you see Malfoy's face?" Ron asked dreamily, "I'll treasure his expression for years to come. And obliviating the last week out of him and then dumping him into the fountain at the Ministry – pure stroke of genius, that was."
"Malfoy's an arse," Harry said, "In both worlds. So, what now?"
Hermione opened an enormous notebook in front of her and crossed something off a list.
"I think we should contact Remus Lupin," she said, "He can help us to destroy the horcrux – the idea that Ravenclaw's king had to be beaten in an ordinary chess game came from him. And I can concentrate on how to get you back, Harry."
"Remus!" Harry's eyes lit up. "He's always nagging me about something or other, but he's quite nice. I had a terrible crush on him during my third year at Hogwarts."
"Unrequited, I hope," Ron grumbled, but he grinned as he said it.
This isn't:
The next day Quidditch training for Harry was even worse than the day before, if such a thing was possible.
He did not fall off his broom again, but the had to bear the others' good-natured taunts; and Coach Villandry was watching him like a hawk, aware that his seekers's skills were not up to scratch. One of their reserve beaters was called away in the middle of the strategy session: Death Eaters had attacked her parents' house last night, leaving her mother dead and her father tortured to insanity by Cruciatus.
Harry was quite subdued and in a sombre mood as he went to meet Severus later that afternoon, feeling guiltily glad to leave training and his team mates behind. Seeing his supposed lover waiting for him gave him an absurd sense of security for a moment; covertly studying Severus' face, Harry felt the attraction of a regular day-to-day life that he'd never had after school, reassuring in its mundaness.
Stepping into Diagon Alley, Harry smiled: There was a storm coming, surely, and he did have to get back to his world – he wanted to see his friends again. He fiercely missed Hermione's earnest face and Ron's freckled nose scrunching up in concentration. But there was no reason why he couldn't enjoy the brief respite from his duties here. He could accept this gift, this glimpse and taste of an ordinary life and savour it without feeling guilty.
"Do you have anything you want to buy here?" Severus asked him and Harry shook his head. "I've done the grocery shopping but I thought we could eat out after buying the ingredients. I don't feel like cooking with the prospect of spending the rest of the evening bent over a cauldron anyway."
"Sounds fine," Harry said, "Muggle or wizard restaurant?"
"Muggle, I think."
The apothecary in Diagon Alley smelled like old cabbage, a smell that Harry remembered from the few times when he'd had to stock up his potions kit before the start of another school year. Since then he hadn't done anything potions-related except to drink the occasional bottle of Pepper Up. He left Severus to wander around the shelves; quickly growing bored of slimy things in jars, Harry stepped out of the shop and bumped into Molly Weasley – and her daughter, Ginny, who were just about to enter the apothecary.
"Harry!" Molly greeted him, "So nice to meet you here, we missed you on Monday, how are you?"
"Fine, thank you Mrs Weasley," Harry stammered; but all of his attention was taken up by Ginny. He drunk in the sight of her: wearing dark brown robes and her hair tied in a messy bun she looked prettier than ever. Her freckles stood out on her pale skin and she was worrying her bottom lip in a way that was achingly familiar to Harry.
He'd ended things with Ginny in his world when he'd left school after his sixth year, although there had been a heated argument between the two of them a month later, concluding with them spending the following day and night in bed. The intense feeling this memory harboured for Harry still hadn't faded three years later, being kept alive by Ginny's premature death at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange.
The three of them – Ron, Hermione and Harry – had just returned from Albania, flush with finding their first horcrux when Bellatrix had presented them with Ginny's lifeless body in her arms. She had dragged the dead girl through the sitting room in a grotesque waltz that had wakened a deep kind of fury in him that Harry hadn't even know he possessed. The subsequent fight had left Grimmauld Place in shambles and Bellatrix dead. This was also when Harry had chosen to disappear from the wizarding world. He'd rather be presumed dead than endanger any more people who were dear to him.
Bellatrix had been the first and so far only person Harry had killed – but seeing Ginny now, vibrant and full of life he could not, would not, feel any remorse.
He'd do it again in a heartbeat.
"Ginny and I are looking for ingredients for Bill's Wolfsbane Potion," Molly had lowered her tone. "The transformations are always hard for him, but buying the potion costs a fortune and Ginny's got quite good at making it, haven't you, dear?"
Ginny shrugged and grimaced, looking bored and Harry was disconcerted to see her complete disregard for him. But then of course he'd never rescued her from a Basilisk, he wasn't famous nor her brother's best friend – and he wasn't supposed to be interested in girls, anyway.
"Are you here with Severus?" Molly was asking now and Harry, tearing his eyes away from the young with, nodded.
"Just buying some stuff inside," he explained, "To make a, um, potion."
"Well, that's nice to hear," Ginny said suddenly, "But we really should be going, Mum. See you later Harry," she called over her shoulder, dragging her mother into the apothecary.
Harry stared after them, contemplating whether to go back inside so he could watch her for a little while longer. Instead he sat down on the stairs, burying his face in his hands.
Despite his shock at seeing his ex girlfriend, dinner with Severus proved to be a relaxing affair. The Muggle restaurant the other man had chosen was an Italian restaurant, low-key for London, with decent background music and reasonable prices. They didn't talk much but the silence between them wasn't an uncomfortable one. Harry had more or less grown used to this mellow version of Severus Snape; it was only when the light shone oddly on his face, casting long shadows on it that he reminded him of his former teacher and a frisson of helplessness and hate swept through him.
They Apparated home and Severus set out to transform the kitchen into a temporary Potions laboratory.
"What, no hidden dungeons full of bubbling cauldrons?" Harry teased as Severus struggled with transforming the kitchen table into something that would be fire-proof. The other man growled in response and prodded his wand at the table, turning it black in the process.
"Bugger," muttered Severus and gave up. "Are you any good at these spells?"
"Not part of your curriculum, I'm afraid. Just put the cauldron on, I happen to know an excellent watering charm for flowers that'll work just as well if something goes up in flames.
Putting the cauldron over a makeshift fireplace and laying out the ingredients, this Severus should have reminded Harry of his teacher – strangely enough this was not the case. Instead it became clear that the wizard before him was not somebody who dealt with potions on a regular basis; his clumsy movements betrayed his unfamiliarity.
"Bloody potions," Severus was now hissing, "I wish we could have just bought this one."
"Why not?" Harry asked, "What's it do anyway?"
"Once we have narrowed down the time frame of the split to 24 hours we take the potion to determine the exact point in time. And it requires bloods of fresh blood, our blood – if you don't make it fresh it coagulates."
Severus lit the fire and began slicing some roots.
"Pour a litre of water into the cauldron and let it boil, please," he instructed Harry. For a while they worked companionably next to each other, letting their blood drop into the water and cutting up ingredients. The potion didn't look too difficult to Harry's admittedly untrained eyes, except that you had to be extremely careful during the stirring process.
"Why didn't you become a Potions master?" he asked Severus, "Didn't you like the subject at school?"
Severus shrugged and gradually added a whole rat's tail – chopped – to the bubbling mixture. The potion gave a loud burp and turned magenta.
"I liked it, yes, but it was more of a hobby at the time, something to amuse myself with, and I something I could use to impress my peers. Dedicating my whole life to potions had never been one of my plans – and I wanted to leave the wizarding world after school finished, at least for a while."
"Because Voldemort tried to recruit you?" Harry pressed.
Severus flinched, stopped a moment in his stirring, stared.
Harry dived under the table just in time as the potion exploded rather spectacularly from the cauldron, giving off loud burping noises as it did so and covering the whole kitchen in magenta-coloured, sticky goo.
Peering over the rim of the table Harry nearly burst out laughing: there stood Severus, shielding his face with one arm, and still holding the ladle. Apart from that, he was magenta from head to toe. Potion dripped from his arm, landing on the floor in soft plops.
He couldn't help himself: he giggled.
"So you think this is funny?" Snape asked sourly.
"No," Harry denied through snorts of laughter.
"Nevertheless you're laughing at me," the other man pointed out.
"I'm not laughing at you," Harry gasped, the humour of the situation fully catching up with him now, "I'm laughing with you!"
Severus contemplated Harry for a few moments before scooping up a handful of botched potion out of the cauldron, aiming carefully and throwing the whole thing square into Harry's face.
Spluttering, trying to breathe through his suddenly blocked nose Harry wiped at his eyes and clutched at his sides with laughter. Severus joined in and for a moment Harry felt perfectly happy, the feeling untinged by simmering anger or the ever present impatience of getting back home.
The rest of the week passed in a rather peaceful manner, all things considered. Severus made Harry attend Quidditch practise every day and no amount of grumbling or pretending to be fatally ill helped with that. Harry did his best to blend in and raise as little attention as possible to his deplorable skills on a broom. Oliver Wood mock-flirted with him like there was no tomorrow and he learned not to blush when someone made a lewd comment about brooms. He took Coach Villandry's in stride and even managed to catch the Snitch sometimes.
In the evenings Harry watched Severus fail at getting the potion – the Potion Précisante as he'd been informed in a dreadfully accented French – right. There was more than one spectacular explosion until the kitchen resembled a small-scale, purplish battle field and Harry started buying take-away for both of them every day. When they weren't mopping up whatever mess the day had brought they were wracking their brains of when the split in dimensions could have occurred. They needed the exact day for the potion to work, something that proved difficult.
"Did the Sorting Hat put me in Slytherin? I mean, my personal development here is completely different..."
"Contrary to popular belief, being sorted into Slytherin does not make one gay, Harry."
They bickered; they argued. Harry shouted that this was taking too bloody long and that the other Harry could have messed up everything by now. Severus shouted back that there wasn't a lot to muss up if his whole dimension was inhabited by dunderheads like him. Nevertheless, both of them finally agreed that the split must have happened shortly after Severus had left school at the latest. In his dimension Snape had likely become a Death Eater then whereas here Snape had put his wand in a Gringotts vault and left.
"But what about Voldemort choosing Neville instead of me?"
Severus shrugged; he certainly hadn't been a member of the Order of the Phoenix at that time and could only offer to ask Albus Dumbledore at the next meeting.
"But I know nothing about your school time, let alone some small details of what may have happened Merlin-knows-when to split dimensions!"
There was nothing for it however; they had to find the exact day – that was their only hope. Otherwise Harry couldn't use the Time Turner with enough precision and the could only assume that Hermione and Ron were figuring out the same thing because he was stuck here otherwise.
"To think of it, they could need years to figure it out – you could be an old man already, losing years in the transition," Severus remarked snidely one evening.
"Same thing here," Harry shot back without missing a beat, "You should be more friendly to me – you could be stuck with me for the rest of your life!"
On Friday Regulus Black had managed to pester Harry into another meeting, this time in a small wizarding restaurant in Diagon Alley and Harry went, albeit reluctantly. He knew that he should act in a suitably awkward manner, feeling flattered and pissed off at the same time, but the only thing he felt was a sort of vague confusion. Regulus was a stranger to him, certainly a fascinating wizard, but still a stranger
Why is it always me, Harry though gloomily, Last week I was worried about finding horcruxes and not getting myself killed and this week it's all about playing Quidditch and homosexual lovers.
Harry hadn't had any other girlfriends after Ginny, his only company being Ron, Hermione and Remus. After a childhood spent at the Dursleys', an adolescence spent at a boarding school and two years living in hiding his social skills were almost certainly lacking and they left him completely unequipped to deal with former lovers flirting shamelessly with one over the main course.
Because Regulus Black was flirting with him and as soon as Harry realised that he began to grow increasingly uncomfortable, dropping forks and knives and spilling his wine.
"Stop it," he finally hissed over the table, "I know this is necessary for your 'work' and all but You-Know-Who surely didn't tell you to seduce me!"
"Are you so sure of that, Harry?" Regulus whispered back and smiled widely as Harry blushed.
"I really did miss you, you know," he continued, "Leaving you behind wasn't easy for me. I felt your pain; I wasn't unaffected myself."
"You found comfort in Malfoy's bed, it can't have been too bad," Harry snapped back and was appalled to hear that he sounded like a jealous lover. He was even more taken aback by the fact that he really was angry with Regulus, angry at being left by this man.
"Oh, Harry," Regulus' eyes glittered, "It's complicated, more complicated than you might think. On the other hand, what am I to say about your relationship with Severus? Moving in with a former Slytherin nearly my age, one that you knew my brother and I would despise... It gives a man ideas."
"Fuck you!" Harry spat and his voice cracked, "I don't care about this and I don't care about you – go and tell Voldemort that I'm a member of the Order and that he can go stuff himself, I don't care!"
Throwing his napkin on his plate Harry was quite grateful to see the older wizard stunned by his outburst before he stormed out of the restaurant.