Author's Note:

My lovely betta is currently unavailable, but I wanted to go ahead and post this anyway because I'm impatient that way. I'll come back and make corrections once Amanda has a look. In the meantime, I apologize for any glaringly obvious errors.

Out of The Dead Land

Two

"Get up, Potter. You're wasting time."

That was odd, wasn't it? Harry blinked a question at his knees. When did you hit the ground, Knees?

"What are we late for, Snape?" His voice sounded strange to him, and he'd seen the look that Snape was giving him before. Harry bequeathed it often on Luna Lovegood. Instead of addressing it as he probably should have, Harry leaned back on one hand made a lazy sweeping gesture with his other. "There's no place to be." And it was true. A line of bleak-looking hills broke up the horizon line, but they didn't hold much promise. The landscape was eerily devoid of life, even of the sparse, tenacious organisms that couldn't be driven from normal deserts. This place was bare of all things but the hardened, thirsty earth beneath them, which was crumbling to pieces for want of water. It's parched fissures unfurled like a web belonging to an alcoholic spider, and the hills that hemmed them in were red and burnt-looking.

"Pull yourself together, Potter. The insanity look doesn't become you." Severus occupied himself with the business of observation, his eyes sharp and calculating. It reminded Harry of a tiger he'd seen at the zoo when he went for his cousin's birthday, pacing its cage and waiting for someone to make a mistake. He looked very calm to Harry, and he wondered if Snape was in shock too. "You may be accustomed to getting your way at Hogwarts, but this place, wherever it is, doesn't appear to be in awe of your dubious heroism."

Harry's face darkened, but he turned away, pressing his lips into a thin line to keep the messy words from spilling out. It should have been difficult, had always been difficult. But he was reeling then, wavering uncertainly between the things he knew and the things he saw, unable to reconcile them. There was something corrosive about The Wasteland that worked beyond the obvious and the physical. It picked away at the spirit on some fundamental level and left a brittle ache behind as a reminder of its passing. It occurred to Harry that it might be intentional, that the landscape was more carefully constructed than they thought, but he didn't say anything to Snape about it because he wasn't sure what words to use.

Looking up made him feel like he was sitting on the bottom of a deep lake, watching light play off the surface above. He swore that he could feel the weight of that dead atmosphere and all it's dead atoms condensing around him like gallons on gallons of water. Water is heavier than you might expect, you know. Harry filled his lungs and held the air in them, just to be sure that he still could—then he realized that Snape was still there and peeked over at him to make sure he hadn't seen Harry being stupid. The last thing he needed was for Snape to think he was looney on top of everything else.

But he hadn't seen.

Snape was gathering data, being useful, first by delicately touching his tongue to a finger and holding it out, then by kneeling to press that finger into the ground at his feet. Whatever he saw elicited a frown—a familiar line of concentration pinned between tensed brows. He gathered a handful of dust as though he meant to inspect that too, but he froze with a closed fist hanging in the air. Looking confused for the first time Harry had ever known, he turned his hand over and opened it, releasing ... Nothing. Harry forgot to be morose in favor of staring, and allowed his eyes to catch on the professor's when the man sought them out.

"I'm afraid I can't explain this." Snape was staring at his empty hand as though he couldn't bear to look away, and his voice had gone distant like Harry's. Harry wondered if shock could be contagious like the wizard's flu, and whether one could innoculate. It seemed worth looking into anyway. "I'm not sure this world entirely exists. There are too many details missing."

"Professor ..." Harry spoke slowly, fishing around in his brain for the words he needed even as he spoke them. "If a place doesn't exist, how is it possible for people who do exist be there?" His voice was low and pleading because he wanted to stop thinking. The more he thought about it the more unpleasant it was, and his brain already felt rubbery and delicate ... like taffy stretched too thin.

Severus regarded him with a put-upon sigh, wondering what the likelihood was of making his explanation idiot-proof. "I said this place doesn't entirely exist, not that it doesn't exist at all. Even with magic, you can not create something from nothing, so she had to pull the elements of this place together from pre-existing sources. Those elements do very much exist. However, the final product is static. There is no life here, and certainly no ecosystem. The sun is probably absent because this world isn't large enough to contain one, not even a small replica." He imitated Harry and raised his head to examine the sky, his eyebrows high on his forehead in a position that looked an awful lot like concern. Harry looked away quickly, not wanting to see it.

"If The Wasteland doesn't completely exist, shouldn't there be some kind of," Harry made a small helpless gesture, "out?"

"A place doesn't have to fully exist to serve as a container. Our captor said herself that the purpose of this construction is to keep us here. However it was made, this locatiom is equipped with the bare minimum—the illusion of oxygen, of gravity, of scenery. Perhaps we are lucky we aren't floating in a void. As it is, if the sole purpose of The Wasteland's existence is to serve as a prison I see no reason why we would be able to find an 'out' … as you so eloquently dubbed it, especially since the rules we are accustomed to clearly don't exist here."

"So all that we can do is play her game and hope we're entertaining? You know as well as I do that there's no answer to that question, so we'd better start finding some other way home because that isn't it." Harry could feel the anger trying to rise beneath his skin, trying to shield that helpless feeling that threatened to swallow him. He was teetering on the edge of hysteria and the only thing that kept him from succumbing entirely was the knowledge that Snape would be there to witness it.

The man in question only looked at him for a moment down his generous nose, then turned on his heel and headed for the hills in the distance. They looked flat and unreal, like they'd been clipped from a magazine and pasted to the horizon. They also looked very far away. Harry turned his attention to the place where Snape's boots had been firmly planted, certain there should be some kind of mark in the dust from where his heel made its famous pivot. But there was no indication that anyone ever stood there at all. Possessed by the notion, Harry bent his fingers into a claw-like shape and dug them into the earth, bearing down hard enough to make his hand quiver—enough to make five brand new fissures. But there was nothing. Not even a grain of dust caught beneath his fingernail.

Harry wondered if they'd gone mad.

His dread was the sort that slinks across the heart and settles there, establishing itself with such painstaking care that it overwhelms almost gently. Tenderly. But Snape was striding away with that single-minded tread he used in school corridors when he spat discipline at unsuspecting students and something in Harry's stomach jolted as it occurred to him that he was being left behind. He scrambled hastily to his feet and set off at a sprint, not wanting to be alone in this miserable place—even if by doing so he was choosing Snape's company instead. With the part of his brain that wasn't angry, terrified, confused, or otherwise occupied with less pleasant emotions, he noted that his footfalls weren't making any sound. He could hear his pulse as it adjusted, could feel his heart throw off the cobwebs of inactivity and rally for him, but the counterpoint of pounding feet was missing. He had the strangest suspicion (which he hastily thrust away) that he could fall right through the bottom of that crazy world, that there was nothing at all beneath his feet really, and he was torn between watching Snape—afraid he would vanish—and the ground—afraid it would vanish.

"Damn it, Snape, where are you going?" He asked because talking made the silence less unnerving, not because it wasn't perfectly obvious.

"Don't think I'm not keeping track of your language, Potter. When we get back to Hogwarts I'll see to it that points are deducted accordingly. So far that's ten. I have no intention of sleeping out in the open, so I am going to investigate the nature of those rock formations." Snape's voice was mild, approaching business-like pleasantry, and Harry narrowed hie eyes at the space between his pointy shoulder blades, instantly suspicious. Veiled or unveiled, he wished he could see his companion's (or whatever he was) expression, but there was no way to go about it casually and Snape would undoubtedly see right through any attempt at subtlety.

There was something he knew, a line or two of verse that he couldn't place and a writer whose name he couldn't recall. It came from one of Dudley's discarded books—one with a cracked spine and a missing cover, with pages crumpled and stained from various abuses (and not the kind that came with being well-loved). It tickled the back of his mind like an itch that wouldn't go away. The Wasteland, April, winter. The Wasteland. The Wasteland—

"Professor … I dunno if it's something you need to know, but there's a muggle poem—"

"I'm not unaware of it, Potter." His tone hadn't changed much, unless growing more bored-sounding could count as a change. The wrongness of the entire thing had Harry on edge, and he didn't realize how tense he was until one of the muscles in his shoulder spasmed a protest. Harry could only wait for the other shoe to drop, for the ulterior motive to be revealed. For something. Anything. From this man, Harry knew anger. He knew shouting and unpleasantry and if he closed his eyes he could clearly see the details of his face twisted up in irritation or scorn or sometimes disgust. Bitterness. Bias. Harry's lips twisted into a humorless smile at the realization that he was more uncomfortable with a companionable Snape than a hateful one.

"So … you've heard of that one then?" Wasn't that cute? Harry was as timid as a first year Hufflepuff on his first day of potions class. He winced at the back of Snape's skull, wondering how it was possible to be so intimidating with your back turned.

"I'm rather more surprised that you have." In that dead tone, it wasn't clear whether it was an insult or a merely statement of fact.

"Well, um … if you were thinking about it too, then maybe there's something important—a clue—and it's just that I've been trying to remember the words."

"Trying to get me to recite poetry to you, Potter?" Still nothing. Harry gritted his teeth against the agitation, thinking that clearly Snape would have to act out of character on the one occasion that Harry least wanted him to. The circumstances they found themselves in were unusual enough without adding more to them. And wasn't that just like Snape? He would be as difficult as possible, even when he didn't necessarily intend to be.

Harry made a frustrated-sounding noise. "It may help us get out."

"It won't. The only lines that are anything like our situation are descriptive, and those don't match up closely enough to be anything more than coincidence."

"But can't you still—"

"It won't, Boy." The reprimand was a little on the sharp side, but still duller than it could have been. Harry's sigh was heavy, and the silence was heavier, so thick that it pressed against the eardrums. Harry was reminded of his lake, and risked a quick peek at the sky. He hadn't been swimming in a while, but the last time his head was beneath the water it was a lot like this, with the unearthly stillness and pressure on the ears. Red iron hills inched closer, and Harry mostly kept his eyes down because otherwise he would start to imagine a bottomless world. In his periphery, Harry saw that Snape kept his eyes rigidly forward and only spared a glance every so often for his feet (so quickly it was almost like it never happened), almost as if he too were discomfited by the half-formed ground.

In the end, it was probably the disturbing silence more than Harry's persuasiveness that prompted a recitation. One didn't notice the little sounds of everyday life—of reality—until they were conspicuously absent.

"April is the cruelest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers."

"Those are the pertinent lines. Yes, the poem is called 'The Wasteland,' but this particular wasteland could share the same name because that's just what this is."

"Or it could be a hint."

Snape rolled his eyes, but his manner was that of a person making a calm, logical argument. "I would call this place Hell, but I doubt it's related in any way to 'Dante's Inferno.'"

"It might be if she chose that poem instead," said Harry peevishly. He was getting tired of this artificially toned-down Snape. "Don't dismiss it just because it was my idea."

"As you wish. What parallels are there between the poem and this Wasteland?"

"I—er," Harry looked around quickly, feeling very much like an unprepared student being placed on the chopping block. "I'd hoped you would help. I just thought it might mean something." When he heard a soft snort from in front of him, he scowled, defensive. "I don't know some of the references. Like … what do lilacs symbolize, for example?"

"Nothing that has anything to do with us." Snape sounded unaccountably amused by that.

"You aren't going to tell me?"

"If you don't know … then no."

There was no conversation for a long time after that.

"I'd forgotten about the lilacs," Harry admitted quietly—almost to himself—when the silence grew uncomfortable again. "It's almost too bad the crazy bint wasn't working off the poem, or this place might be a little less—AGH!"

Severus jumped, turning a tight circle with a spell already on his lips and a hand half-way up his sleeve for a wand that wasn't there. He froze like that, his wide eyes scanning the scene before him with disbelief adding a touch of interest to his shock. Potter's hands were clamped protectively over his nose so the only visible part of his face were his glaring eyes. He faced a large, tree-like shrub that hadn't been there before, with a narrow, but sturdy-looking trunk and branches heavily laden with purple flowers. One didn't have to be a master of logical deduction (which Severus was, conveniently enough) to conclude that the tree must have sprung up in Potter's path just in time for a direct collision—a painful one, judging by the words that were spewing indiscriminately from his mouth.

Severus found a smirk in him somewhere and hid behind it. "That's sixty points from Gryffindor now, Potter, and I'll take another five for that word you just made up."

Harry ignored him. "I don't understand. What the hell is this?"

"Seventy-five. It appears to be a flowering representative of the kingdom Plantae, Potter. Lilac if I'm not mistaken."

"I can see that it's a plant, Snape," Harry snapped. In another reality he might have worried about the tone he took, but in this one he was nearly cross-eyed with pain and flushed with humiliation and so very, very clearly not in the mood that Snape almost had it coming to him, authoritative figure or not. "I meant to ask what in the seven bloody hells it thinks it's doing leaping out of the ground and assaulting my face!"

But on some level Snape must have been as distracted as he, for he only offered a bland "Ninety-five" and set about inspecting the lilacs, which didn't move an inch, not to leap or otherwise. Except for the fact that it didn't seem to have a scent and stood as unmoving as a statue the thing actually looked quite innocent. "Our friend seems to have a sense of humor."

"Well ha bloody ha." Potter delivered a swift kick to the trunk of the tree and sidestepped it neatly, moving cautiously towards Snape as though he expected another to spring up and give him a black eye or two to compliment his nose if he walked too fast.

"One hundred and five. I don't see why you're so upset." There was a bit of a warning behind his words which even Harry heard clearly. "You're lucky it's humor she has and not malice. She could have speared you with it. Get over here and show me your nose."

Harry took one step closer and let his hand fall, looking as though he dreaded the pronouncement of his condition.

"There isn't even any blood. You should be grateful that your nose is just as consistently hard as the rest of your head." He was looking up, reaching to feel one of the individual petals in a gesture that almost looked tender—that is, until he plucked the bloom with an efficient twitch of his wrist. The entire thing collapsed into dust in his hand and he let it fall, looking mildly disgusted. Harry saw him toss organs into cauldrons on a regular enough basis to assume that the disgust was aimed at some inward conclusion or another and he didn't ask what it was for fear that Snape might actually tell him.

"It isn't real." Harry didn't sound surprised. Actually, he didn't sound anything at all, but Snape wasn't keeping track. He just made an it figures noise and gestured for them to move on.

They did move on, but not really. It was much quieter after Harry's run-in with the lilacs and both minds dwelled on them. Harry's half of the silence was part of his effort to ignore how wrong this world was, as though it might stop bothering him if he could pretend for long enough that it didn't. And Snape's silence? He didn't know about Snape's, but didn't think the man would be inclined to conversation unless Harry initiated it. If Harry spoke first, he could pretend just like Harry was pretending. And anyway, Snape's expression was gradually growing darker, like a gathering storm, so it was probably a bad idea to talk just then anyway. The closer they came to the hills the deeper into his brooding he fell, until his dark eyes were burning hot enough to scald. Harry flinched when they turned on him.

"What, Potter?" But the voice was the same, as though he spoke from behind himself.

"Huh?"

"You've been staring at me for the past several minutes."

I've been waiting for you to erupt into a fountain of lava and pyroclastic debris. "Oh. Erm … I was just thinking … Maybe we should have marked our starting point somehow … To see if we're even going anywhere, I mean."

"I know what you mean, Potter." Snape shot him a withering look. "What item of clothing were you willing to part with then? Hm?" His eyes scrolled pointedly down the length of Harry's body, from neck to toe, until Harry squirmed awkwardly under his scrutiny. "Because we don't have anything else, and I won't be prancing around half-naked, especially in the company of a lady. And by that I do not mean you."

"She's a sadistic weirdo!"

"And yet she still has a uterus."

"As far as you know," Harry grumbled.

"Stop being a fool." And if Snape's voice was a little colder Harry didn't think much of it, as he always measured that voice in varying degrees of frigid. "If she sends something nastier than a plant after you I won't stand in her way. Humor aside, she obviously didn't appreciate being called a 'bint,' and aspersions against her gender and sexual normalcy probably won't make her any fonder of you. In all honesty I admit that I may find it difficult to blame her as such if she did resort to maiming you—but then, you never did think much of those who could crush you like a pill bug, did you?"

Harry could have left it there, had he wanted. He was too depleted to be angry, and he didn't care much for talk of maiming anyway. But he didn't want to leave it. If he backed down there would be silence again, and pushing Snape's buttons was infinitely preferable to such discomfort. And maybe if he got angry he would stop being so freakishly agreeable. He could go back to being caustic, predictable, dependably undependable Snape.

The idea really shouldn't have pleased him like it did.

And so he chose his next words specifically for their explosive potential, figuring there must be a special place in hell reserved for people who enjoyed getting Snape frothing mad. "Well, Voldemort has mostly disappointed me so far." Harry saw him flinch and wondered if he could work the name 'Voldemort' into a few more sentences without being obvious about it. "Yeah, Voldemort likes sending all these crazy people after me too. First there's Voldemort himself, then there's Voldemort's favorite ex-member of the Black family and baby Crouch, then there's this bitch, who says she doesn't work for Voldemort, but really there's no way to know—"

With terrifying, inhuman speed, Severus snatched two bunches of tatty, oversized shirt in his hands and jerked Harry towards him, a low growl trying to form somewhere in the back of his throat. He'd gone very pale—as pale as a face like his could go anyway—except for the twin blotches of color on his cheekbones. The product of his rage. Harry, who had never seen Snape so flustered that his face started changing colors, figured that he must be more furious than normal and he was surprised (and maybe a little disappointed) that he was so easily needled. "Shut up, you brainless little urchin! You have no idea what you're playing with and I don't intend to let your thoughtlessness damn me right along with you. Do you comprehend what I'm saying?"

Something in Harry felt loose and giddy and maybe a little drunk, pulse too quick, chin too high, gazing at Snape with something like grim satisfaction. He patted the man's hand in what he hoped was an infuriating fashion. "She is a bitch. She yanked us out of our own lives without so much as a by-your-leave and basically told us that we could never go home again. Don't you want to go home, Snape, or does this trump your dungeons?"

Snape leaned in, so close that Harry could feel the tickle of warm breath on his forehead when he spoke, and their gazes met like a collision. Where Snape's eyes were practically incendiary, Harry's were wet and he didn't know why, couldn't guess why. Harry, don't you know yourself? "I can't imagine what you think you know about me, but I do wish to return home, and if you prevent me in any way from doing so I will make your eternity here as miserable as I can manage." He delivered a single shake—brief, but vicious—and thrust Harry away, sneering when he staggered. "Do not. Follow me." He said it needlessly, because Harry was making no effort to follow. He stood blankly, tears he had no explanation for gathering at the corners of his eyes. But they never fell. In its own abstract way, The Wasteland rejected even that tiny offering of moisture.

Severus didn't intend to leave the boy entirely. Too much was riding on his ability to answer that thrice-damned riddle, and he wasn't keen on wandering The Wasteland alone for all eternity simply because he couldn't abide one obnoxious presence for a little while longer. No, he knew that he would either circle around or allow the boy to come to him—he just didn't plan on making it easy for him to do so. He turned to the left of their original route, keeping the red hills parallel to him on the right. Severus could still feel the brat's eyes boring into the space between his shoulder blades and forced himself not to look back, not even to glare. It was difficult. Potter always got under his skin, had always been under his skin—elder and younger, it didn't make much difference. Though their techniques were different, the Potters never knew how to leave him well enough alone, even this one who seemed to know by instinct how to draw a reaction from him.

Severus ground his teeth together and firmly resolved not to behave in such away again. Such things were counter-productive, he reasoned. He'd been making an effort at toleration, hoping Potter might follow his example and try to make this whole ordeal less traumatic than it had to be. Severus fisted his hands in his robes to prevent his fingernails from biting into his skin and looked determinedly at that wretched sky, trying to think of other things. He needed to understand The Wasteland before he could decide if they were truly stuck or not—though without magic at their disposal their options were frightfully limited. He hadn't told Potter so, but he'd attempted wandless magic—an accio. Not only did his wand not come, but he also didn't feel his magic respond, didn't feel anything at all. She had taken their wands, but really it didn't matter, did it, when they were in a magical dead zone? His eyes narrowed determinedly in thought, prepared to think it over all day if he had to.

And then the ground dropped out from under him.

- to be continued -