Disclaimer: I'm not muscling in on JK's turf - just gambolling on it, like a spring lamb, having fun working out the literary and psychological puzzles which she is having fun setting us.
This chapter is so phenomenally long that I've had to break it into two parts, otherwise it takes too long to load: but the two parts should be read as one chapter, since there isn't a natural story-break anywhere except at the end of part b).
18a: NOT RAVING, BUT DROWNING
[In which trouble is afoot, and matters come to a head.]
He had still something careful in his gait which made her contemplate the word "footsore", but when she tried to ask him about it he flinched away from the question and claimed an unlucky hex to the hip during combat training, which she amused herself by kissing better.
He was working hard at relaxing (a contradiction in terms, if ever there was one) into sex, into being touched: even if he still always needed her to make the first move, and clung to her with what felt more like desperation than joy. He still couldn't bring himself to sleep naked, and he still half expected, at least on a subconscious level, that being seen to be aroused would mean being jeered at and humiliated: but giving and getting affectionate touch shored up his shaky sense of self-worth, and at least sex was a good way of drugging him into sleep without resorting to bottles of purple potions.
Staying asleep, however, was another matter, and it was rare for him to sleep more than a few hours without scaring himself awake. The combined strains of sleeplessness and of his responsibilities to and for the Order were wearing him almost to transparency, and he had taken to putting a Muffliato spell on the bedroom every night, so that neither their love-making nor his sometimes howling nightmares would disturb the couple upstairs.
He hadn't had any more waking flashbacks so severe as to cause him to lose awareness of where he was, but his nights were still an assault-course of horrors which often left him shaking and clawing at himself as if he would tear his own skin off, and even by day any random event - an item in the newspaper, the heated rings on the cooker, a drunken yell in the street - might start up some horrible reminiscence which according to mood he would either choke off and refuse to finish, or state flatly in a voice whose hollow calm was almost worse than shaking and clawing.
Her efforts to comfort him through his twisting, sweating night-time terrors brought closeness deeper than sex and Lynsey knew that she relished that closeness, even as she fretted over its cause: but she was haunted by layer on layer of too-vivid mental images of his suffering. On days when she couldn't stop seeing what had been done to him she had her own ways to distract herself, and she felt the professor's ironic, considering gaze rest on her as she jerked her head to the side, shaking off the vision of his desperate pain, and sought for numbness by listening to bracing music, or singing it over under her breath; by losing herself on the complex paths of coding; by pigging out on curry or by crawling into bed and crashing out until the next time his troubled sleep would wake her.
At least she had managed to persuade him that Nestor and Starbuck weren't going to attack him at a moment of sexual crisis, and the busy little centaurs were always there, pumping and sliding together in the corner, a constant source of inspiration and encouragement. And if, sometimes, he called out another name than hers without even realising it, she held him closer and wished that his love for the sainted Lily could have been reciprocated.
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"We still have to find the Hufflepuff Cup, unfortunately, because even if Eleusinia was right about a Horcrux being used up when the bastard undied, we don't know whether it was this Horcrux or another bloody one we don't know about." He prodded the silver device irritably with his finger, and it made an "Eeep!" noise and shuffled sideways on little metal feet. It looked, Lynsey thought, like the bastard offspring of a Victorian teapot and a robotic, steampunk chihuahua. "This thing is meant to be an 'enhanced divination machine', according to Dumbledore's portrait - at least Creevey's photographic version of the portrait is one thing which is working - but the answers it gives are so bloody obscure..."
"What did you prime it with?"
"Jasmine tea - none of your supermarket rubbish, either. Out of it, you," he added to Starbuck, who was watching the silver device with glass-eyed concentration, and the brown-and-white cat turned his back in frozen dignity, and pretended to wash. "I believe the cup may be with the Lestranges - sodding Bellatrix told me herself that our Lord had entrusted her with 'his most precious' unspecified something, at any rate - but where she would have hidden it..."
"I remember you said," Lynsey said, and indeed she could hardly forget it: it had been one of the snippets of potential clues about Horcruxes which Severus had pasted into her mind with an indelible Memory Charm to make it stick, when they had been roaming the woods and he had been afraid that he would die without passing on what he knew to the Order. "Maybe we could get answers out of that thing like with the Tarot - I mean, asking progressive layers of questions and going for a positive or a negative. Try 'Is the Hufflepuff Cup in Britain or not?'"
"All right." Severus repeated the question, and then watched as the instrument clinked and rattled and issued a puff of green smoke from the spout in its lid. "Looks like... a rosebud. In view of the question I'd take that to mean 'In England', would you think?"
"Mmm - seems likely, doesn't it?"
"All right... in the wizarding or the Muggle world?" Clank. Puff. "Hmm." He sat back, frowning.
"What is it?"
"A wand - that's clear enough. But surrounded by... no, crossing a circle. It looks vaguely familiar, but -" As he spoke, Starbuck sidled up to the floating sign and sniffed at it warily.
"It looks to me," Lynsey said, "like a London Underground sign, only with a wand as the crossbar."
"A wizard place surrounded by - or on top of - a Muggle one, then, and something indicating London specifically. The Ministry, St Mungo's, the Leaky, Diagon Alley, Knockturn Alley..." It was a rumination-out-loud rather than a question, but the silver whatnot shuffled its feet, binged again and spat out a stream of smoke which reassorted itself into a straight, slanting line. The cat jumped back, hissing.
"Bloody hell." Severus stared wide-eyed at the diagonal streak of green. "No wonder Dumbledore always bloody-well knew what was going on. The patent for this -"
"Wouldn't want the Ministry to get it, though, would you? If they'd known what we were planning at Azkaban..."
"Bloody hell." The instrument gave a definite boiinnngg and spat out a stream of green-smoke roundels in an assortment of sizes. Severus gave a slightly hysterical laugh. "Looks like we hit the jackpot."
"Coins, you reckon?"
"Gringotts." The mechanism belched loudly, gave off a final puff of smoke and fell silent.
"In a bank vault? That's a bit, well, obvious, isn't it?"
"Obvious, yes." He tapped his nails irritably against the table top. "Arguably, however, it doesn't matter if a hiding-place is obvious, if it is also inaccessibly secure. We know where the Crown Jewels of England are - but it doesn't make them that much easier to half-inch."
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"It's called a Sequel," she said, nodding towards the lines of code on the laptop's screen, "I mean that's esS Queue elL, Structured Query Language, but it's pronounced 'sequel'. Most of them are - well, pre-digested pap, they come with easy controls but they only do a limited range of pre-set tasks, but this is Foxpro which is like, deeply user-hostile, but so much more powerful and intelligent..."
Severus pursed his lips and made a slight but definite self-preening movement of the head.
"Yes, all right," Lynsey muttered, "we know it's not the only thing which is user-hostile but highly intelligent and powerful..."
"I wasn't going to say it."
"Yer were thinking it, though." She looked at him, so calm and able by the light of day; no longer the torn and ragged shadow which was burned into the back of her eyes although his own eyes were hollow with exhaustion. "You are good at this, though: I thought you would be."
He nodded thoughtfully, not bothering with false modesty. "I always did prefer to invent my own spells rather than taking my magic all pre-fabricated and pre-digested, and this isn't that unlike doing your own spell-work."
"Arts and Crafts movement, wizard-style?"
"Mm." He leaned back in the chair, turning his neck from side to side to get the cricks out. "Especially as my own work was usually better..."
"It's a thing most people don't understand," Lynsey said, "especially the press: that programming is just as much an art and a craft as making a copper bangle, or a blanket chest."
"I can see that it is, it's very - individual. And isn't The Craft a Muggle term for magic?"
"Yup. Did I show you my latest toy?" She fished out the solid plastic weight, which rested comfortably in her palm.
"Looks like the remote for t' telly, but I take it it isn't?"
"It's a Nokia 5110 - the latest mobile 'phone."
"Oh! Like something out of Star Trek - oh, I want."
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"I'll make a deal with you. You wash your hair every day, and I'll stop eating raw onion sandwiches at bedtime, OK?"
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"I thought about saying your name was Doreen," Lynsey said, "but that's a bit obvious."
"Nah." Tonks flexed her shoulders, altering the size of her bust as she did so. "You told me one of these bods we're meant to be meeting for lunch was called May, so I'm going to be April. What do you think?"
"Very nice," Severus said shortly, rather obviously trying not to be caught looking.
The shape-shifter had added about twelve years of apparent age over her base state, swapped her trademark punk hair for a slightly mannish mid-brown crop, and gained several inches around the chest. "I don't know what you two did to Remus," she said happily, "but whatever it was, thanks!"
"Following you around like a lovelorn spaniel, is he?"
"I thought that was more your style," Tonks said sharply, and Severus winced. Lynsey wondered how she knew - but she had already gathered in conversation with the professor that Tonks's mother had been at school with him and Lily for two years, and had been a Slytherin prefect - a prefect who had scandalised the school by sitting her NEWTs while seven months pregnant, and who had been in the same academic year as her younger sister, born only eight months after her and named for the narcissi which were in bloom at the time. "But, yeah," the younger woman said, relenting, "I mean he's got a lot more confidence in the you-know, the, uh, bedroom department - and he actually let me see him being a wolf this time, and didn't go all 'Oh woe is me that ever I was born' about it."
'I'm glad" Severus muttered, then gave her an eldritch smirk. "Since he's my dog now, I have to see to his well-being..."
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"So, Gordon," May said, leaning forward over the pasta salad and fixing him with a gimlet eye, and Lynsey noted with approval that Severus responded smoothly to the strange name, glancing up without hesitation and with just enough reaction to seem natural; "Lynsey tells us that you and she are...?"
"Oh, absolutely," he said with delicacy, blotting fastidiously at the corner of his mouth with his napkin. "I couldn't have put it better myself." Tonks snorted lager down her nose, and then tried to look as if she hadn't.
Lynsey was amazed to find that the prof seemed to be enjoying himself, both the edgily flirtatious undercurrent to the conversation, and the exercise in deceit. "Ever since we met," he murmured, meeting May's eyes with innocent candour, "in a small side-room during the Yule moot, our involvement has been very... intense." He allowed his Adam's apple to bob suggestively, causing Eck, who was gay, to go quite misty-eyed. "Almost frighteningly so." Lynsey kicked him under the table, and the corners of his mouth quirked.
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"Longbottom," he said abruptly, sinking back into the sofa's soft embrace and taking the weight off his feet, "has asked to be accepted as a full member of the Order of the Phoenix with active duties, instead of just an observer, and that Lovegood and the Weasley girl should be at least allowed to attend meetings. I was surprised that he asked me, frankly - he used to damn' near wet himself if I even looked at him - but I suppose I look like something pathetic to them all now, instead of fearsome."
Lynsey clicked her tongue at him. "He must still see you as an authority figure, or he wouldn't have asked you. Will you accept them?" She offered him a revivifying glass of real ale; he relieved her of it with a languid, black-clad arm and then frowned at her over the rim of it.
"I don't know. Ginny Weasley is not of age yet but it might be easier having her inside where I can at least keep an eye on her and pull rank, than outside doing God knows what without supervision." He took a hearty swig at the glass. "Lovegood - Lovegood is peculiar to the nth degree but she has no nerves to speak of, she sails through life in a state of serene unconcern and her spellwork is excellent. And she is of age, so I suppose... God."
"What?"
"It makes me appreciate more why Dumbledore made some of the strange recruitment choices he did. With Black in particular, he was never going to stay neutral and I suspect Dumbledore just preferred to have him on the inside pissing out than on the outside pissing in. And I'm glad I have some authority over Mundungus, even though the little shit tried to lift my wallet last week."
"And Neville?" She sat down carefully beside him, placing her own half-emptied glass on the coffee table.
"Amazing as it may seem - not least to myself - I asked Potter for his honest opinion of his combat work. His assessment was - remarkably professional and unbiased, and tallied with my own recent observations."
"What did Harry say?"
"That Longbottom has, potentially, a great deal of magical force but he has little focus and less confidence, in part caused by some sort of disability of memory. That his defensive spellwork is 'nothing to write home about' but given patience and encouragement it's not hopeless either, and that in an actual combat situation he has nerves of steel, keeps his head and thinks on his feet - which I may say conjured up a very peculiar image." He set his own glass down and steepled his fingers. "Apparently when they had the fight with Lucius and his Merry Men at the Department of Mysteries, Longbottom was unable to spell-cast due to a combination of a broken nose and not having been taught non-verbal casting by any of the useless twats that Dumbledore hired to teach Defence over the years, so he saved Potter's life and overcame Macnair - Macnair!" he exclaimed sharply, almost gagging as a sudden deathly whiteness chased across his skin, before his composure closed down again like a smooth armour "- by poking him in the eye with the proverbial sharp stick" he finished glibly.
Lynsey coughed, almost choking. "Impressive!"
Severus gave the ghost of a grin. "I thought so, I must say - and that was despite his having been Cruciated by Bellatrix-Sodding-Lestrange only moments previously. Also... ironic. Or something. Macnair apparently was trying to throttle Potter and Longbottom saved him - when only a few hours earlier I myself had intervened to save Longbottom himself from a similar fate."
"In - in battle?"
"No - but in the face of Dolores Umbridge, besides whom the face of battle would look almost charming." He turned to look at Lynsey directly, and she saw his own face was suddenly drawn and skull-like. "You tell me" he said rather wildly, "how I can recruit a seventeen-year-old who has made a personal enemy of Walden Macnair? Yet, if this fight isn't Longbottom's, then whose is it?"
"If Macnair is already his enemy, wouldn't he be - well, safer on active duty than not? Make him look less of a soft target?"
"On one level, but - it will also put him in harm's way... but he is of age, and he knows the risks. In fact he's closer to eighteen than seventeen, and comparatively mature - not that he's up against much competition." He pulled a wry face. "As a spell-caster he's clumsy and heavy-handed - you may remember he tried to Stupefy my hip instead of my head, although I suppose making me limp for a week was a result of sorts - but any pure-blood who has the tenacity and sheer bloody imagination to go on fighting after being deprived of magic, and who's prepared to use his hands against somebody like Macnair, is going to have surprise behind him if nothing else..."
Lynsey bit her lip. "I remember you said that Macnair - that he was the one who... who damaged your feet."
"Yes" Severus said tightly, and shuddered violently. "Why?"
"It's just - I don't believe you, about your hip being the only reason you're limping I mean. You're still having trouble - "
"It's nothing I can't handle."
"If you're sure..."
"Yes. Not that - I don't want to - presume on your care." He held up his hand as she opened her mouth to protest. "The strain on you is beginning to tell, I can see it. I ought to - to remove myself, except I can't bring myself to" Thank the gods for that Lynsey muttered under her breath "but that aside I don't want to - to deal with it right now. The..." He made a vague gesture towards his feet. "It's..."
Too much, she understood. "OK - but -" Severus frowned at her, and she spread her hands. "Honestly, you don't have to feel you're making unreasonable demands on me. This is part of what I do, part of being my sort of a witch - it's just making appropriate use of my skills, the same as when you brew migraine potion for me. And you're allowed to expect that people will care about you and want to help you."
"This is not just - a little assistance in passing, though, is it? Why so much care, such - effort put into repairing a, a sour, ill-tempered middle-aged man with a questionable past?"
"Well - it's a witch thing, isn't it - that idea of manipulating people better? And it's a service to the gods and an act of worship - putting right what evil people have damaged. Especially - um, Herne, the Great One, the Horned One, he's a god of male sexuality, so anything which warps that or spoils it for someone is, um, specifically sacrilegious, so putting it right is pleasing to Herne. And it's a way of sticking two fingers up at Lucius and showing that I'm stronger than him."
He jerked his chin up. "Hah - I'm with you on that one, certainly!"
"Short of killing or serious brain-damage, there's nothing he can break so completely that I can't put it right - right?"
"Not even if I were -" she heard his breath catch - "broken beyond sanity, beyond knowing who I was or where I was or what was happening to me?"
"That would have taken longer - about six months longer, probably - but I'm nothing if not persistent and you, my lad, are nothing if not resilient. And, and - one does what one can with what the gods send one. If they set you a task, and you're a witch, you do it: you don't wimp out or, or pretend it was for someone else to do. And there's pleasure in feeling useful, and in exercising skill and knowing that you're doing a good job - you know that at least as well as I do."
"Well - all right. Yes. I can be a job of work..."
"More enjoyable and less mundane than that. There's an almost sculptural element - the same way there is when a surgeon fixes a complex fracture - that sense of stroking all the fragments back into order." As she spoke, her hands mimed the action, smoothing and ordering. "It's a work of art - or of Craft - and you don't stop making a work of art until it's finished. And it's what I do, and - 'I love you without measure', as the song says and, and people should spend time on these things. There's too many people out there who think that when someone has been - traumatized they should be able to just get over it like that, and if it takes more than a few weeks to put right they get bored and wander off."
Severus snorted. "I could name you several Order members who think I must be some sort of feeble, whining weakling because I haven't managed to brush - all that - off yet as if it had never happened, even though they all heard how they - how I -"
"Filius understands though, and Minerva, Harry - it takes months, years, even decades to fix serious trauma, in oneself or in others, but it can be done. It just takes patience and a steady nerve."
Severus nodded mutely, gazing into the middle distance, and then sighed. "Patience - defined as 'a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue'."
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As sensitized as she was, now, to the rhythms of his pain, she woke to find him sprawled on his back beside her, his mouth twisted in distress and his eyes flickering sightlessly behind closed lids, cringing and whimpering softly "Oh please, oh please, no..." When she tried to wake him he opened his eyes and looked straight at her but his breath continued to catch and break in terrified despair. She grabbed his hand, dug her nails in hard enough to get his attention and snapped "Say it with me! Say it!"
"That civilisation may not sink,
Its great battle lost,
Quiet the dog, tether the pony
To a distant post;"
Hypnotized, his lips began to move silently in time with hers.
"Our master Caesar is in the tent
Where the maps are spread,
His eyes fixed upon nothing,
A hand upon his head."
"Say it - come on - I know you know it - "
"Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence.
"That the topless towers be burnt
And men recall that face,
Move most gently if move you must
In this lonely place.
She thinks, part woman, three parts a child,
That nobody looks; her feet
Practise a tinker shuffle
Picked up on a street.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
Her mind moves upon silence.
"That girls at puberty may find
The first Adam in their thought,
Shut the door of the Pope's chapel,
Keep those children out.
There on that scaffolding resides
Michael Angelo.
With no more sound than the mice make
His hand moves to and fro.
Like a long-legged fly upon the stream
His mind moves upon silence."
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The Order meeting went on so long that Lynsey was beginning to worry when she saw through the kitchen window the professor's long legs descending the area steps. Drawing the door wide he blew in on a breath of dark air and mist and she could see the excitement humming through his lean frame.
"Whassup?" she said, stepping out into the hall to greet him. "Good meeting?"
"Lovegood - I agreed to Longbottom's suggestion, to let her attend a few meetings and see how well she did, and he was bloody-well right - she had a brilliant idea. She suggested that - well, I can't remember if I told you this but Myrtle Higgins, the ghost in the girls' lavvie where the access-point to the tunnels is, she was killed by the basilisk in the nineteen-forties and Riddle used her death to make a Horcrux. His second, I think - as far as I know he killed his own father earlier than that."
"Uhuh..."
"Anyway..." He shrugged out of his long Muggle-safe coat, hung it up and went to sit at the small breakfast-table in the kitchen. "Lovegood pointed out that so far as we know Higgins's death was an accident, Riddle didn't set out with the intention of killing her she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, so there's a good chance he performed the whole of the Horcrux ritual after her death instead of -" He flinched visibly and bared his teeth. "Instead of preparing it in advance all but the single, final gesture of release which I saw, half saw him make after he killed Lily, and which, even if I can reconstruct it properly, may be too generic to be used to identify Horcrux creation specifically."
"You mean, you think that what you saw may have been a sort of general 'Run' command which could be used to start any pre-prepared spell?"
"Mmm. I've been looking at -" he flinched again. "Looking at it in Dumbledore's Pensieve, what I saw, after Lils was killed and before the side of the house blew out and I managed to get it clear enough to see that it doesn't seem to tie in with any of the descriptions of Horcrux-preparation in the grimoires we retrieved from the Merchieftainess. Filius thinks that the - Riddle - may have perfected a way of stalling any spell just on the point of completion and then setting it in motion later with a single gesture which is - which is a tremendously useful idea, if true, and I'm furious that I didn't think of it myself, actually."
"Aye, well, I suppose just because he's a deranged megalomaniac doesn't mean he's actually stupid - not in technical matters, anyway."
"Our task would be so much easier if he were, but unfortunately he is, or has been, a very great and very innovative wizard."
"Well, then - it's no reflection on you that he managed to have at least one good idea you didn't - especially as he has, what, about a thirty year head start on you?"
"Uh - thirty-three years, I think. I suppose so. But at any rate, Lovegood suggested that if Higgins became conscious as a ghost more or less immediately following her death, which is fairly common, and given that she is... 'very inquisitive' was how Lovegood put it... well, there's a good chance that she might actually have watched Riddle do it especially as - well, 'ogles any half-decent-looking boy any chance she gets' was the way Potter put it, and Riddle was very good-looking, if you like that sort of thing. Are we cooking?"
"There's still a bit of lamb curry left from last night."
"Good - I'm too tired to be very constructive right now."
"So," Lynsey said, deftly wielding her chopsticks to scoop up a wodge of reheated rice and raisins, "does this mean you have to go back to the school to speak to, mm whatsername, Myrtle or is it possible to bring her here to you? I could set up a sance, if you think it would help."
"Ghosts are usually bound quite closely to one location, either the site of their death or to somewhere - or someone - which has great meaning for them... but I can't see the Ministry letting us into Hogwarts again so easily. But aren't sances - well, for contacting those who have truly passed over?"
"Yeah, in general, but you can sometimes use them to contact ghosts who are in the vicinity - not that that helps a whole lot, I guess."
"Well, it might if..." He pushed his plate aside and rubbed wearily at his eyes, flicking back the long skeins of lank hair. "I already sent the doe Patronus to Aberforth, asking him to look into ways of getting Higgins to manifest at the Hog's Head. Apparently she has something of a crush, God help us, on Potter, so if we tell her he's going to be there..."
"Now if he had a 'phone, you could talk to him in real time, discuss it, instead of waiting for him to send a message back."
"Yes - a telephone is less messy and inconvenient than fire-calling and more flexible than a talking-glass, especially that - mobile thingy: one of the many ways in which Muggles outstrip us, though not many wizards would admit it. But a Patronus at least will make sure the message is delivered whenever the recipient is there to receive it, like email or a letter, and unlike email or a letter it can't be faked or falsified, you know it comes from who it seems to come from, and it can obey simple commands such as 'Find this named person at this named location, and if they're not at that location then go to the next nearest Order member'." He made a wry face. "That was how I once got a message intended for Hagrid, from a Patronus which - well, which took the form of Remus Lupin in his fur coat."
"You don't use the warhorse as a messenger?"
Severus shook his head. "The doe is the one Aberforth will recognise as mine, and the Death Eaters, should they intercept her, won't, whereas some of them did see the horse. They never knew -" Without apparently realising it, he started to rub at his left forearm, where a palm-sized patch of shiny new skin marked Lynsey's foray into emergency field surgery. "The Mark - it sets up a connection to the - to Him, which interferes with the ability to cast a Patronus. If any of them had ever realised that I still could, that would have landed me on the torture-slab a lot sooner than - than actually happened, because they would have known that I was using Occlumency to shut out His influence."
Lynsey jerked her head, shaking off the too-vivid images of what his landing on the torture-slab had entailed, and put her hand over his where it rested on the kitchen table. "If it was going to happen, then thank the gods it happened when there was an ally there to help you to escape."
Severus nodded once, tightly. "I don't know whether it says something typical about me, or about - about His influence over the Marked, that I ended up with a Patronus who represented my most catastrophic failure and my greatest guilt." He looked up at her then, his eyes dark fire within the deep shadows of his brows. "I love the doe, but she tastes of pain."
"What does the horse taste of, then?"
He smirked his flicker of a smirk. "Pride."
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That night he dreamed, she thought, of Lily's death, tangled up with fragments of his own ghastly protracted punishment. After the churning despair and rage, after the frantic clawing and clutching which left Lynsey nearly as battered as if she'd been wrestling with a pony and the blinded, dazed dislocation from the present as she talked and sung him back into his own skin, he ended up lying on his stomach on the bed, propped up on his elbows with his head hanging and his limp, sweat-soaked hair curtaining his face. Lynsey fetched him a glass of water, and he stared at her sideways through the black strands.
"I don't know," he said; "- don't know how much longer I can go on with this. It would be so much easier just to die, and not have to live through this any more."
"But it would be such a waste of a good man," she said softly.
"But what fucking good am I to anybody in this state anyway? I'm just a burden, to myself most of all."
"Quite apart from your utility to the Order, that's just - please pet, don't. Please."
"You're - begging me? Why?"
Still half asleep herself, Lynsey laid her hand along his sharp, stubble-roughened jaw and stared into his eyes with all the will she could muster. "I'm begging you not to take away the dearest thing I have."
He put his hand up to cover hers and stared back, wonderingly - and then half fell, half lunged forwards with a groan and began to kiss her with an edge of desperation, pressing his long body against hers as if trying to fuse himself with her, until she could feel his heartbeat hammering against his ribs.
Kisses aside it was, she realized afterwards, the first time he had actually initiated sex. As he lay collapsed limply half on top of her, still wrapped around and inside her, Lynsey stirred under him, her whole skin alive with the pleasurable contact and her arms around his still-sharp ribs. She felt a surge of affection like a great swinging rise of the sea, deep and wide enough to drown in, and in her sated, dreaming state she stroked his back and murmured:
"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you
Till China and Africa meet,
And the river jumps over the mountain
And the salmon sing in the street..."
But he turned his head and gazed back at her, from the fastness of his dark intelligence, and answered softly:
"O let not Time deceive you,
You cannot conquer Time.
"In the burrows of the Nightmare
Where Justice naked is,
Time watches from the shadow
And coughs when you would kiss."
His silky voice purred through the catalogue of loss which the poem unfolded, and Lynsey remembered unhappily that there was a distinct possibility that if he survived the war he would outlive her by sixty or seventy years, bereaved by his love for a short-lived Muggle as surely as Muggles were by loving a dog.
"Into many a green valley"
the sad, lovely voice continued like the unfolding history of loss,
" Drifts the appalling snow;
Time breaks the threaded dances
And the diver's brilliant bow."
But she put her hand up and ran it through his heavy hair, and answered:
"Life remains a blessing
Although you cannot bless.
"O stand, stand at the window
As the tears scald and start;
You shall love your crooked neighbour
With your crooked heart."
And they were both, in their own ways, a little crooked and out of shape. A crisis must come, she felt, like a fever breaking, before he could properly begin to recover: but that was a worrying metaphor, because not all patients lasted until their fever broke.
She was beginning to have bad dreams of her own, just to complicate matters, although not ones which woke her sobbing and clawing. She in fact dreamed very seldom, or if she did she didn't remember it: but several times lately she had woken with a blurred, confused memory of seeing Severus dragged from his bed by Aurors or, worse, of trying frantically to save him, either in the caves or in Azkaban, and knowing that he would suffer until he died if she should fail.
Not that she ever did fail, even in nightmare. She always awoke still running madly after some new solution, through a maze of shifting tunnels which led somewhere else on alternate Tuesdays.
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Severus had left his copy of the photographic portrait of Dumbledore in the flat, and after he had gone to his work in Diagon Alley and she had cleared up the breakfast things, Lynsey propped it up on the table. The picture was still, a mere photo' of a painting, gilded frame and all, but she cleared her throat and said "Headmaster...?" and after a few seconds the blue eyes twinkled and the austere expression lifted into a smile.
"Miss O'Connor," the scratchy, tinny whisper of a voice said. "To what do I owe this pleasure?"
"Headmaster - sir. Um, hello. I just wanted to ask you if - if the situation were to become... critical, would I be able to use you, this portrait, as a way of summoning help?"
"By 'the situation', do you mean some form of attack, or Severus's condition?"
"Well, both, either, but - mainly Severus. You know that he...?"
"I am aware that - that the strain of all that he has suffered is telling on him heavily, yes."
"Yes. I suppose that if I had to I could find whatever Order member is watching the house, and get them to summon Poppy, but that would take time and, and risk embarrassing him by making the matter more public than it needs to be. The same goes for 'phoning the Weasleys, quite apart from - well, it's a big house, at four a.m. they might not hear the 'phone."
"You are afraid that he might - take some irreversible step?"
"Not that, so much, but - but if it came to it that I couldn't snap him out of it he could have a stroke, or a psychotic breakdown."
The painting of the old man nodded sombrely. "I can certainly ask Poppy - the next time I encounter her - to carry a copy of this photograph with her at all times. There are certainly potions and spells which can be used to enforce calm in an hysterical subject, although whether that would be effective in the case of - traumatic flashback, is it? - I am uncertain."
"Me, too, but - it would be insurance. Some kind of crisis is coming..."
"Yes; I fear matters are coming to a head. Poor Severus... but I may say that you seem to be assisting him very ably. Getting him to recite poetry was especially ingenious: his own pedantry and love of performing will compel him to concentrate on the lines instead of on his emotional disturbance."
"How do you... have you been watching -?"
"On occasion - when the opportunity presented itself. I was - concerned." The blue eyes glittered. "You need not fear that I have been - as it were - spying on the secrets of the bedroom. My own interests in that line lie... elsewhere."
"I remember you said," Lynsey replied, whilst privately vowing to make sure the photograph stayed outside in the sitting-room. "Can I ask you something?"
"Certainly - although I reserve the right to not answer."
"I was thinking," she muttered, "of having a portrait - I mean a moving one - made of Severus..."
"So that if he should, ah, become a casualty you can still have a means of contacting him?"
"Well - that too, but mainly because - well, he's made a lot of enemies, and I would hate to think that somebody might trap part of his soul into a portrait in order to hurt him there. Having a pleasant portrait left in - in safe hands would ensure he had a bolt-hole, as I understand it."
"Admirably reasoned, I feel," said the old man in that faraway whisper, almost at the cusp of hearing; "both the problem and its solution."
Lynsey felt sick, realising that he thought her fear for Severus was justified. "Yes. But then - well, then I'll be trapping him, won't I, the portrait will - he'll be stuck in it for centuries. And he'll have you for company I suppose, and Minerva since she's Headmistress, assuming his portrait is hung somewhere you have access to, but even so he - I wondered if it would be possible for me to be in a moving painting as well, being a Muggle I mean, so I can keep him company. Assuming we haven't split up or anything, and he still wants me there."
Dumbledore looked at her over the rim of his spectacles, and for the first time the portrait looked discommoded. "That," he said, "is an interesting question, and one I will have to give some thought to. But, ah, offhand I know of at least four horses, two dogs and a parrot who have a fully-developed presence in the portrait realm, so it cannot be only wizards who can exist here - although in each case a witch or wizard was also present in the same picture."
Later, she lit a candle in front of the bronze hare on the mantelpiece, and prayed: "Changer, Trickster; world-turner, law-spurner: break down and build up."
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"I thought we might have this week's meeting here in St Andrew's if - if that's all right."
"Oh, yes, you know I like to see them - if you're sure it's safe. I don't want to risk you - or me either, come to that."
Severus sighed in frustration, and swiped his hair back with his hands, rubbing at his face as he did so. "I wish I could keep you out of it altogether, but once you've become an item of potential interest for Lucius and that bloody shower, you're safer with the Order than without it. I can't see the bastard forgiving a Muggle for breaking his nose..."
"It was worth it though..." Lynsey said, with a reminiscent smile.
Her lover flashed her a sudden, ferocious grin. "It was a moment I shall treasure till my dying day, whenever that will be; but be that as it may, having Order members here to protect us both may attract attention in itself. I've booked a function room for tomorrow in a pub in South Street: I thought that if we held a meeting here in the town, then if they're spying on the Order it would make them think St Andrew's was just a place where we met, not a - a home. And at least here they can wear robes and no-one will remark on it."
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"If you're right," Moody said, glowering into the depths of his beer and refusing to look at Severus, "what about Weasley, here?" He gestured to indicate a rather louche-looking, red-haired young man with an earring and a series of raw-looking ribbed scars across his cheek. Lynsey - whose task this evening was to fetch more beer from the bar and feed sheets of paper to the self-propelling quill-pen which was taking the minutes - surmised that this must be Ron's brother Bill.
"I can certainly find out where the Lestrange vault is, but I would prefer not to deceive my employers," the redhead said seriously, giving the lie to his rough appearance. "They may not be particularly likeable, but they've always dealt honestly with me, after their lights. I also have no desire to be served in a pie - and I'm not sure breaking in is even possible. We can hardly impersonate a Lestrange, since they're all liable to be arrested on sight."
"Are there any rules governing what kind of artefacts customers are allowed to store?" asked Remus, who had possibly never had a bank account in his life before this year.
"No objects liable to damage the bank itself or its employees, or to breach its security - so no unstable explosives, for example." Bill rubbed his chin, absentmindedly trailing his fingers across the scars, which were starred with irregular ginger stubble. "I suppose a case could be made for a Horcrux being a danger to the bank's employees, since we know He-Who can use them to attempt to subvert or possess anyone who gets too close to them." He inclined his head to indicate his sister, who scowled ferociously.
"Could we -" Neville's voice ended on a nervous squeak when he realised everyone was looking at him, but when no-one shushed him he swallowed and went on: "Could we g-get the goblins to denature the Horcrux for us - to remove a danger to the bank, like?"
"Theoretically, no," Bill said. "In practice, possibly yes, if we dressed it up so it didn't look as if they were breaking their word, and offered them something in exchange."
"And what is it that they would want, and that we could give them?" Severus said in his smooth, dark voice. He was leaning with his elbow on the arm of the settle, looking relaxed, commanding and - to Lynsey's eyes at least - very slightly less than perfectly sober. But a little lubrication probably helped him to deal with Moody's combined guilt and suspicion and Filius's loving concern.
[Nevertheless, the shadows under his eyes were evident, and Lynsey saw Harry's green gaze rest on him, measuring and considering...]
"Ownership of the sword of Gryffindor," Bill said flatly. There was an immediate outcry which refused to subside even after he held up the palm of his hand for silence, until Severus rapped on the table with his wand and said sharply "Settle down!
"Explain," he continued, looking at Bill, and the redhead nodded and went into a kind of lecturing mode.
"Goblins," he said, "have always had a very different idea of ownership from we wizards. With the more traditional amongst them, it is their belief that craftsmen - craftsgoblins - retain title to everything they produce, even after a sale, and the object reverts to the maker's family on the purchaser's death. They believe that by willing his sword to his own heirs Godric Gryffindor effectively stole it."
"Godric was no thief!" Minerva protested, as Tonks cut across her: "Did Godric know about this when he bought the sword, or was it an, um, cultural misunderstanding?"
"Thank you, Nymphadora," Severus said smoothly, his eyes fixed on Minerva. "That is the question, is it not? Was Godric Gryffindor a thief, a dupe or merely... ill-informed?"
"Nobody now knows," said the faint, tinny voice of the portrait of Albus Dumbledore. "I have always assumed that Godric bought and bequeathed the sword in good faith, but even that is not to say whether he was misled by the vendor or simply assumed, in his ignorance and arrogance, that a creature as different as a goblin would have the same concept of ownership as himself."
"But it isn't really an alien concept though, is it?" said Hermione in her precise voice. "It's just retaining copyright, isn't it, only over a craftwork instead of a text: just because you let one publisher market your work, that doesn't mean that they can hand it on to another firm without paying you again for it, unless that was specified in the original contract."
"If that's right," Harry said, "could we hang on to the sword but offer to pay royalties for it so long as they promised to let us keep it? So honour is satisfied on all sides, and all that?"
"I don't know," Bill said, frowning. "I don't think that would satisfy the Underminers, the really extremist faction, but most goblins... most of them just want wizards to show some respect for their culture so, yes, a formal acknowledgement of their continued claim to the sword would probably be sufficient."
"We could pay them a chaplet of roses at midsummer..." Luna Lovegood said dreamily. Several people snorted, but Minerva nodded thoughtfully.
"Or any kind of ceremonial token, I imagine, so long as it recognised their continuing claim in a, a significant way."
"Like Professor Snape," Luna interjected, nodding. "He's much better-tempered when people listen to him." Severus opened his mouth and then shut it again, and Minerva glanced distractedly at the blond girl and then continued as if she hadn't heard her.
"Very well: I would have to pass it with the Board of Governors but that should be possible to arrange. But what precisely is it we are asking them to do?"
"To remove the Horcrux from the Hufflepuff Cup," Severus replied; "or permit us to do so, preferably without damaging the cup. Apart from its intrinsic historical value, I imagine the goblins will be more willing to intervene if they can do so without injuring the object entrusted to their care."
Bill nodded. "Then they can claim that they assumed the Horcrux was some kind of magical parasite, like a Boggart, which was infesting the Lestrange vault - or simply deny all knowledge."
Harry grinned at that. "Yeah: they can hardly go to the goblins and complain 'We left a piece of Voldemort in here: where is it?'"
Lynsey noticed that several of those present winced at the name: including Severus, though he responded calmly enough.
"The problem," he said, "is that the grimoires which I acquired from Dumbledore -" he inclined his head to the portrait "- are in agreement that in order to destroy a Horcrux, the object holding it must be put beyond magical repair." This time it was Harry's turn to flinch, slightly but definitely.
Ron held up his hand, a restrained and slightly awkward gesture which seemed designed not to look as if he was raising it in class. "I've been wondering, Sn - sir, what'd happen if we fed a Horcrux object to a Dementor?"
"That is -" Severus gave Ron a sudden, rather beery grin which left the boy looking faintly appalled. "Not bad, actually. I wonder..."
"Well," Bill said, "the goblins probably would allow it access, since it couldn't steal any physical object and probably couldn't harm them..."
"Would the Dementor actually destroy the Horcrux, though, or cause it to die in a way that put it beyond use?" asked Filius in his high voice. "Nobody is entirely sure what Dementors do with the souls they take..."
"If it even peeled the thing away from the cup, that would be an advance," Severus said; "it might give us a clear shot at it without destroying the host object. But we also have to ask whether a Dementor would act against - Him - or not. I will have to consider... But the first step is for William to persuade his employers that the Horcrux, if it is indeed present, is a dangerous intruder which they can get rid of without breaching their contract with the Lestranges." Bill nodded, looking rather grim.
At this point, Lynsey went down to the bar for more drinks, which required three trips with a tray. By the time she had finished they were discussing the infiltration of the Floo network by suspected Death Eater supporters.
"... could be watching every damned route," she heard Moody growl, and Severus nodded soberly.
"The fact that theyve been able to tap into the network and add new destinations without Ministry authorisation does imply that they are..." He smiled at Lynsey as she bent over him to set the glasses on the table. "... 'logged on as root', that is to say, that they have infiltrated the Ministry's control system. Or duplicated it, possibly."
Kingsley, who had managed to make his wizarding robes approximate to the kind of African tribal dress which would pass without comment on the streets of London, replaced his lurid cocktail on the table with a click. "I have been cultivating Percy Weasley -" he began in his resonant voice, and there was an immediate outcry from Ginny and Ron although Bill, Lynsey noticed, stayed out of it.
"That wanker!" Ginny cried, and glared defiantly back at Severus when he raised an eyebrow at her.
Ron and Harry shouted together in an overlapping tangle: "You can't!" "He's Scrimgeour's stool-pigeon!" "... pretended he wanted to be reconciled and it was a lie just to get Scrimgeour into the house -!"
"To the best of my knowledge," Kingsley said in his slow, deep voice, "it was the Minister who deceived Weasley about the purpose of their visit to The Burrow, not Weasley who deceived his family."
"Then why hasn't he been back in touch?" Ron demanded, and Kingsley curled his lip at him.
"Because he was extremely angry that his family assumed that he was the one at fault, without giving him a chance to explain himself."
"If Fred and George were here - " Ginny began hotly, and Severus cut across her: "But they are not."
"Why aren't they? You know they're brilliant -"
"Despite their undoubted intelligence," Severus replied smoothly, "I excluded them from these particular discussions for the same reason that I excluded Mundungus Fletcher. We of the Order must sometimes behave illegally of necessity - but members who behave illegally, even brutally for amusement or personal gain are too much of a liability, other than as mere cannon-fodder: and I prefer not to waste lives unnecessarily."
"James and Sirius -" Remus began but Moody, surprisingly, cut him off, his optional eye spinning alarmingly.
"James and Sirius were brave" the old Auror said roughly, "but they were careless; they thought they were untouchable, they let their guard down and it killed them. A secret army needs brave men who are careful, vigilant; not reckless and cocksure."
Severus inclined his head. "Precisely - and offensive as I may find your twin brothers, Miss Weasley, I don't actually wish them dead. Not often, anyway."
Neville raised his hand nervously; when Severus nodded to him he said rather breathlessly "It's, um, more likely that the Minister tricked Percy than that Percy tricked anybody else, isn't it? I remember when he was prefect, he was always a bit - a bit gullible. People were always playing tricks on him," he added apologetically. "Lee and the Twins used to run a book on what they could get him to believe."
"I'd like to think we could get Perce on-side," Bill said, "for - well, for several reasons. Apart from the family issue, he has better contacts than Dad or Kingsley and Tonks, when it comes to getting access to the Taboo protocols, although Kingsley's probably best-placed to look into this business with the Floos. Have you heard back from Aberforth?"
Severus shook his head. "Not yet: but I still think that Miss Lovegood's idea is a sound one. Minerva has brought me Dumbledore's Pensieve so that I can respond rapidly if - when Aberforth manages to establish contact with Myrtle Higgins. If you think, Kingsley, that involving Percy Weasley is the best way forward at the Ministry..."
"But," said Ron, "we know what an arse-licker Perce is: would he actually go against Scrimgeour's wishes?"
His older brother grimaced. "That's a serious point - more's the pity."
"I know I'm not going to be popular for saying this," Tonks said, absent-mindedly allowing her hair to twiddle into gaudy spikes which twisted and writhed together like Medusa's snakes, "but have you thought of actually involving old Scrimmage? It might be less trouble than working round him," she added over the top of a confused outcry from the rest although Severus, Lynsey noted, was silent, his posture become suddenly rigid.
"How can you say that," Harry's voice cut across the hubbub, "after what that bastard tried to do to Professor Snape -" His outflung hand indicated Severus, who glowered.
"Oh," said Tonks, smiling a V-shaped smile, "but I'm sure Sevvie would be much safer if he and the Minister were to be seen to be working together: that way Scrim couldn't do the dirty on him again without losing face."
"She does have a point, Severus," Minerva said thoughtfully, and Kingsley nodded.
"The Minister," he said, "is manipulative, unscrupulous, vengeful, careless of the actual guilt or innocence of suspects if he can spin a good story around them - but he is perfectly sincere in his desire to protect our world from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Additionally, he seems rather... preoccupied at the moment, and a lot less certain of his own unshakeable rightness."
"I shall lean on him," Horace Slughorn said smugly, linking his hands across his ample belly.
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"Are you tempted to use the Pensieve to - well, to stop the nightmares...?"
Severus hunched his shoulders and looked away from the carved basin. "I told you - no. It's too painful, putting them back. I'd be too tempted not to," he added quietly, "and that way lies madness. And besides - I never know in advance what I'm going to dream about, do I? I'd have to take out half my mind... And I'm damned," he said, lifting his head and straightening his back in pride, "if I'm going to be a coward and back down."
That night, he dreamed of Azkaban and woke whimpering and licking frantically, like a dog, at the scar which still braceletted his right wrist.
Author's note:
The rose is the heraldic state plant of England, along with the thistle for Scotland, shamrock for Ireland and leek or daffodil for Wales.
"Half-inch" = pinch = steal.
Arts and Crafts Movement - a Victorian British cultural movement dedicated to promoting the value of the hand-crafted and individual product over the machine-made and mass-produced.
"A poke in the eye with a sharp stick" is proverbial in Britain as a thing which other, mediocre things are at least better than, along with "a slap in the face with a wet dishcloth". E.g. "How was your steak pie?" "Better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick." means that the pie wasn't really very good, but it wasn't awful either and it filled you up.
According to Terry Pratchett a true witch says "Someone should do something about this, and that someone is me." But I can't have Lynsey actually quoting that, because its from Wee Free Men and that hadnt yet come out at this point.
"'I love you without measure', as the song says" - the song in question being Sweetheart Come by Nick Cave.
"Patience - A minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue": from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce.
Dumbledore says that Tom Riddle killed his own father "In the summer of his sixteenth year". I suspect JK Rowling is mixing up "his sixteenth year" with "the year he was sixteen" but it's unlikely Dumbledore would make such an error, so this amounts to a definite statement that the patricide - and therefore probably the creation of the ring Horcrux - happened when Tom was fifteen, during the summer between his fourth and fifth years, before he opened the Chamber of Secrets and many months before Myrtle was killed.
In GoF, Myrtle says that Olive Hornby "went to the Ministry of Magic to stop me stalking her, so I had to come back here and live in my toilet." but there seems no reason why the Ministry should have actually bound her to a toilet, as opposed to binding her to Hogwarts or simply forbidding her to approach Olive, and in any case we know she has a range of probably some hundreds of yards, since she can go into the lake or to the Prefects' bathroom. I assume, therefore, that she only had two options - to haunt the vicinity of the place where she died, or to haunt a person to whom she had formed a violent psychic connection - and the Ministry removed one, rather than chaining her to her toilet as such.
"I'll love you, dear, I'll love you" from As I Walked Out One Evening by WH Auden. You can see the complete poem here: www. poets viewmedia. php/prmMID/15551 .
A chaplet of roses: there are cases on record from the Middle Ages of tenants paying a purely ceremonial rent of this kind - a crown made of roses, a single basket of fish or similar - to a landlord or patron, who had granted them their land effectively rent-free in return for continuing formal acknowledgement of their overlordship.
"Logged on as root" - 1990s expression for a person whose password gives them access to modify the "root directory" C: where a computer's operating system is stored.
Cannon-fodder: unskilled, expendable soldiers whose use in warfare is to be thrown against the enemy's guns and killed or wounded, in order to exhaust the enemy's ammunition before more skilled soldiers move in to the attack.
To "run a book" is to accept and pay out bets.