Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by J.K. Rowling; various publishers including, but not limited to, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
A/N: Wowzer. This fic is getting far more attention than I'd figured on. Thankee kindly, everyone, an' I hope y'all keep reading!
Shades of Gray
Chapter Six: Life is Complicated
Severus wasn't sure what the boy was after, but decided to humor him; he hadn't forgotten the incident in the kitchens and had no desire to repeat that encounter. Entering the house, he paused for a moment for his eyes to adjust to the dim light of the interior. He was standing in a spotless kitchen. It didn't have much in the way of personality, merely a couple of mass-produced prints on the walls, a formica breakfast table, and some cast-iron skillets of varying sizes hanging on a wall rack over the hob. The refrigerator hummed noisily in its corner, sporting a handful of plastic butterfly magnets and a hand cloth buttoned to the handle. From where he stood, he could see the dining room through an open archway; it promised to be just as dull, just as mass-produced as the kitchen, so he ignored it.
"Get your things, Potter. We don't have all day," he said, stepping lightly across the linoleum.
Harry sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. "I told you already, there's nothing here for me." When that statement resulted is a sole arched eyebrow aimed in his direction, Harry felt a surge of annoyance. "Fine. Whatever. I'll just go upstairs, then."
"Be back within five minutes," was all Snape had to say to that.
Harry quickly removed himself from the kitchen. Severus waited until the sound of footsteps disappeared before allowing himself a chance to poke around. His suspicions about the dining room were proved true and he bypassed it without lingering very long. The living room was similarly lacking in any sort of true character. It reminded him of nothing so much as the set dressing to a play. He was honestly surprised to find that the small set of shelves built into the wall to one side of the fireplace actually housed real books – though he'd eat his own cloak if they'd ever actually been read. The only intriguing aspect of the horribly tacky room was that all the framed photographs on the walls were of a family of three when not of solely the lumbering fat boy he'd seen most recently in Potter's memories. There was no sign whatsoever that a second boy had lived in the house for the last fourteen years and some-odd months.
Realizing that he'd lingered quite some time and that the taxi wasn't going to wait forever, he headed for the stairs. He noticed a door with several locks on it at one end of the hall and figured it was storage – though the cat-flap was puzzling – and turned the other direction. The first door he tried proved to be the bathroom. The second was an extraordinarily messy bedroom that smelled of feet, rancid food, and feral teenage boy. He could only hope that it wasn't Potter's room.
Harry was in the hall when Snape removed himself from Dudley's first bedroom, a large pair of black-handled scissors in hand and a light smirk on his face. I know it's petty, but I actually had fun cutting holes into all of Aunt Petunia's prize linens. And I can just see the frustrated confusion on ol' Dudder's face when he goes to try to turn on his computer when they get back. If I had the time, I'd catch a bunch of cockroaches and turn them loose in his room, too. Maybe then he'd learn to pick up after himself.
His thoughts stilled when he noticed the potions professor staring at him. "I trust," Snape said, "that this," he nodded towards Dudley's room, "is not yours."
"No," Harry replied, keeping his voice somewhat civil by force of will alone, "it's not." He pointed at each door as he named their purpose, "That's Dudley's first bedroom. That one is the guest room, though the only guest they ever have is Uncle Vernon's sister, Marge. That one is Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon's room. The bathroom is there. And that last one at the end of the hall is Dudley's second bedroom, where they have oh-so-graciously allowed me to sleep during the summers since starting at Hogwarts. Before Hogwarts, I slept in the cupboard under the stairs." Harry was pretty sure that all this would come back to haunt him when school resumed, but just then he couldn't care less. In all honesty, he was getting used to being the center of attention while at school; with his luck, though, everyone would pass this information off as just another rumor. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got one thing left to do and then we can leave." Before Snape could reply, Harry hurried down the stairs.
Severus allowed himself to take a quick look into the room with the door sporting the numerous locks and the cat-flap. A small bed, the frame of which was held up with a stack of books on one end, was wedged into the far corner of the room between a rickety-looking old wooden desk and the wall. The rest of the room's floor space was crammed with haphazardly stacked piles of junk. He spotted a bent BB gun, numerous broken toys, and cartons of comic books among the detritus. The bed and desk were the only areas of the room which were even remotely presentable. The bed was made up as best as could be with a single moth-eaten blanket and no sheets or pillows. The desk, close enough to the bed so that a chair wasn't needed, had a few worn-looking books on one corner – a dictionary, a thesaurus, and a book on writing essays – and an empty jar of ink on the other. A forgotten quill rested on top the stack of books.
A loud crashing sound came from the vicinity of the dining room, startling Snape into leaving the crowded room as quickly as he was able. When he arrived in the dining room, he saw Potter standing in the doorway to the kitchen, clutching something small and grinning at the now-overturned china hutch. The hutch had landed so that the upper edge of it had hit the table, allowing the contents of its shelves to slide out and shatter on the floor. Potter's gaze tore itself from the mess and looked up to Snape. "We can go now."
Frowning, but not scowling, Snape looked from the mess of shattered china to Potter's face. "Why?" was all he asked.
A twisted smirk surfaced on the teen's face. "Because I was never good enough to eat from the heirloom china, yet always had to wash it for them. If I thought I could get away with it, I'd blow out the pilot lights on the stove and turn the gas on high before we go. Leave it up to fate to decide whether or not the house is still standing when they get back from Fiji."
"And what is that you're carrying?"
"The only thing from this whole house that I know for a fact belonged to my mother," he replied. He opened his hand to display a tiny angel statuette. It was no childish cherub knickknack and Snape recognized it immediately. He'd given it to Lily for her thirteenth birthday – he'd sold essays all year long in order to afford it. The statuette was only about three or four inches high, carved from alabaster, and depicted the savage beauty of one of God's warriors, with sword raised high. Potter's hand closed gently around the statue at the sound of the taxicab's horn. "Can we go now?"
Snape nodded and motioned for the teen to precede him. His mind was racing, but still had enough leftover computing power to recognize a good idea when he heard it. He paused in the kitchen long enough to douse the pilot lights on the gas stove, crank all the dials up to 'high', and unplug the refrigerator on his way by. If the house didn't explode, whatever was left in the icebox was sure to be only one short generation from sentience by the time the Dursleys returned from their trip.
Potter was waiting by the cab. "Where to now?" he asked.
"Heathrow," Snape replied, sliding back into the taxi. He repeated the instruction to the cabbie once Potter had joined him.
Though he could tell the teen wanted to ask why they were going to the airport, he thankfully refrained from speaking. Severus had much to mull over.
Unlike the vast majority of people, Snape didn't think in words. He never had. It always took him a moment to 'translate', so-to-speak, from the images and impressions which comprised his thoughts to spoken or written communication. This was the main contributing factor to his success as a master occlumens; after all, how can someone read one's thoughts when those thoughts only truly made sense to their thinker? For example, his mental image for a word so simple as 'at' was a black circle on a white background. 'The' was very similar, only it was filled-in – a dot, rather than an 'o'. The more complicated the word, the more complicated the image. And these images weren't strictly visual, they encompassed all senses. Unless the thoughts were such that he dearly wished to say them aloud, most of what he thought didn't even reach sub-vocalization.
During the silent and relatively long – rush hour traffic had picked up – ride to the airport, the vast majority of Severus' thoughts were not translatable to words. Impressions and observations of the Dursleys' house ricocheted off of what he'd seen in Potter's mind over the year and their interaction in the school kitchen. Conclusions were beginning to form, like the thin panes of ice on October puddles, and he didn't much care for what they were saying.
Is it possible? Could I have been wrong about the Gryffindor Golden Boy?
Unaware of the uncomfortable nature of his professor's thoughts, Harry simply watched the scenery flow by the window. He wanted to ask where they were going and why they were going by muggle means, but he refrained. The last thing he wanted was Snape to start in on him again. He'd had enough of that to last the rest of his life, thank you very much! Instead, he chewed over the issue of the obliviate he was carrying. If I'm right, and it is a copy of Voldemort's memories that it's blocking, I have to wonder if there's a way to… Not remove it. Neville's right, I don't think this world could handle two Dark Lords. So, not remove it, but… Lift the veil a little. Let me see what it contains without having it affect me. At least, not so much that I'm not still me when all is said and done. Maybe I can figure out a way to, I don't know, drain it off into a journal or diary like the one that took over Ginny, only with some sort of safeguard in place to keep it from being able to do that again.
Further musings by either of the taxi's passengers was interrupted by their arrival at the airport. Snape paid the cabbie and motioned for Potter to stick close. They bypassed the main terminal and went in through a door off to the side that most of the crowd of travelers simply didn't notice. It was a branch office of the Department of Magical Transportation, staffed by a pale, tweedy guy in his mid-twenties. "Destination?" he asked, without looking up from the forms he was filling in.
"Radcliffe, outside Manchester," Snape replied. "Radcliffe Station will do, if you've a ready-made portkey available."
The man shuffled a few papers around and nodded. "Aye, one-way, single use. Three galleons, two sickles, eight knuts, please."
Snape rummaged in his pockets for a moment before coming up with the required coins. On handing them over, the man behind the counter ducked out of sight and came up with a mustard-stained paper napkin. "Activation phrase is on your receipt," he said, handing over a hand-written slip of parchment. Presumably it was the receipt.
Severus glanced at the parchment before tucking it away. "Come along, then," he said, holding the napkin out to Harry. Harry sighed and juggled his trunk and Hedwig's cage so that he could grab a corner of the bit of trash, too. He had time to reflect on how much he despised portkeys before Snape uttered the activation phrase.
Harry landed, as always, in a rather useless heap on a cold tile floor. A smirking woman, a good deal older than Snape, greeted the professor. "Good e'en, Master Snape. You're later than your usual."
"Evening, Annabeth. Slow day?"
The witch gestured to the echoingly empty train station. "Bustling as ever, Severus, can't you tell?" The portkey arrival point was protected from casual muggle observation by an obfuscation charm, but was otherwise open to the station. "Most folks these days tend to drive themselves. Only a few morning and evening commuters still take the train. I'm sure, sometime in the next few years, the train'll stop coming here altogether."
Harry had to do a double-take when his professor actually smiled at the woman. "I'm certain you are correct, Annabeth. However, I do need to get home. Good night."
"And to you as well, Severus," the woman replied, returning her attention to the crossword puzzle from that morning's Daily Prophet.
The napkin was tossed in a rubbish bin and before Harry could even begin to formulate any questions, Snape's hand landed on his shoulder and suddenly he couldn't breathe as he was forced through an infinitely tiny tube of magic. Only the distinctive pop of the world snapping back into being around them in an entirely new configuration told Harry that he'd just been apparated to their next stop.
Since he hadn't wound up on his ass, he figured it was his second-favorite method of magical transportation. Brooms were still number one on that list. "Where are we?" he asked, staring at a rather run-down two-story house in a slightly overgrown lot, bordered by a crumbling rock wall.
"About eight miles north of Manchester," Snape replied, opening the rusty gate set into the wall. A flagstone path wound its way among the weeds to a porch which looked like it was one heavy footstep from collapsing entirely. "We will be staying here tonight and possibly tomorrow night as well."
Severus strode up the path to the front door. He rapped on a dark discoloration in the doorframe with his wand before reaching for a tarnished brass knob. Harry took care to walk lightly on the aged wood of the porch and grimaced a little when it squeaked ominously under his feet. The door squealed open, and Snape flicked his wand into the shadows of the house. A cobwebby chandelier containing a half-dozen candles lit itself, revealing a shabby, dust-covered sitting room, furnished with a threadbare sofa and armchair, a rickety-looking coffee table, and more books than Harry could count. A spindly staircase stood off to Harry's left. This is an Order safe-house? No wonder they use Grimmauld Place for their meetings! Harry thought while following Snape inside. He gingerly sat his trunk down next to the door and placed Hedwig's cage on top of it, then watched as the professor aimed his wand at the sofa, followed by the armchair. The dust disappeared. I wasn't aware that you could cast spells without saying the words. The scourgify spells were followed by a silent incendio that set the brick fireplace blazing.
Next, Snape strode over to one object that Harry hadn't been expecting to see. An old rotary telephone hung on the wall, next to an archway which lead into shadows. He picked up the receiver and dialed a number from memory, causing Potter to once again wonder just how it was that his professor knew how to work the bit of muggle gadgetry. It had surprised him enough that Snape had finished his call before Harry realized the man had ordered delivery for their dinner.
"Quit gawping, Potter," Snape scolded. "Surely even you know how to use a telephone."
"Yeah," Harry shook his head. "Sorry, but I wasn't expecting there to be one here."
One of the professor's eyebrows crept higher than the other. "And, pray tell, why not?"
Harry shrugged. "Didn't figure that an Order safe-house would have anything muggle is all."
The eyebrow inched even higher. "Who said this was an Order safe-house?"
Harry's mouth snapped shut with a click of teeth. Oh. This is Snape's place. Explains all the dust, since he lives at Hogwarts ten months out of the year. "No one. I just assumed. Sorry."
Snape inclined his head in the barest of nods in Harry's direction. "I do not possess a 'guest room', Potter. You will have to make do with the couch. The headmaster will be by at his earliest convenience to provide us with a portkey to take us to the safe-house. He was not specific as to when we would expect him, hence the uncertainty of whether it shall be one night or two that we remain here."
"May I let Hedwig out?" Harry asked.
"So long as she returns before we need to leave. I would suggest moving her cage to the back stoop." Snape ducked into the archway and before long another ceiling-mounted candle holder blazed into life, revealing a stout butcher-block table and two slightly-rusted metal folding chairs. The corner of a counter could barely be seen from Harry's position, and so he felt safe in assuming that it lead to the house's kitchen.
Harry carefully walked over to the archway, still not quite trusting of the stability of the house's floor boards. He poked his head around the arch and saw his assumptions were correct. A screen door stood next to the icebox on the far side of the room. Snape was poking his wand into an old-fashioned wood-burning stove, presumably to get it to light. A shiny teakettle sat on the stove's surface. Why doesn't he simply use magic to heat the tea? It's not like he can't use magic on hols.
Hermione's voice chose that moment to speak up inside Harry's mind. Come on, Harry, use your brain! Honestly! Warming charms wear off after an hour or two, and the forecast for tonight from the taxi's radio said it was going to get down to sixteen degrees. Harry frowned at the imagined voice. Can't I have a single day's peace? He shook his head to chase away the uncomfortable feeling that, not only was he arguing with himself, but he was losing said argument. Instead of chasing thoughts around inside his head, he decided to let Hedwig out for the night.
He picked up the cage and ducked around both the archway and Snape without earning any glares, then exited the shabby house by the kitchen door. The back yard proved to be just as overgrown and neglected as the front. He opened Hedwig's cage and the snowy barked at him in approval – or perhaps it was chastisement for having waited so long – before winging off into the gathering gloom of evening.
Having a figment of his imagination take on Hermione's voice turned his thoughts towards his best female friend. Defigo Veritas… I can tell that it's got something to do with the truth. It was set in place… Hmm… That's interesting. Pretty sure if I did the arithmetic on it, it would have been set in place on the first day of our first year at Hogwarts. Harry slid his backpack off his shoulders and sat on the stairs that lead down from the house's back door. He was far happier about these stairs than any of the others he'd seen on the property; they were built out of cinderblocks. He opened the small, padded pocket which contained his computer and pulled the bit of magical electronica out. It booted quickly as always. Employing the search feature, he typed in 'Defigo Veritas' and patiently waited for results to come back.
There were nearly a dozen books housed within the computer's endless memory which referenced the phrase. Three of them looked more promising than the others, so Harry opened the file titled Mental Magics, Maladies, Curses, and Treatments. The program opened to chapter seventeen of the book: Rare Maladies of Unbalanced Minds. Harry couldn't help but feel that the title was rather ominous.
Having covered thus far the average wizard's mental stability in conjunction with the disciplines of Occlumency, Legilimency, and whilst under such curses as the Imperius, Confundus, and other such mind-altering spells, we now turn our attention to a handful of known maladies which mimic many of the curses discussed previously.
It should be noted that none of the maladies discussed in this chapter are, in and of themselves, solely rooted to the magical world – should this topic be of particular interest, muggle literature can be found which discusses these issues at length. Appendix D19 contains a thorough, though not all-inclusive, list of recommended reading.
Harry skimmed through the chapter until his eyes lit on 'Defigo Veritas'. He then back-tracked until he found the start of its subsection of the chapter. He felt gooseflesh creep down his spine at the section's header, and the feeling expanded until he felt he was dunked in ice water by the time he was finished reading it.
Schizophrenia
Much like the other maladies discussed in this chapter, schizophrenia was not known as anything other than 'madness' until the advent of psychiatric medicine and its wizarding counterpart of mind healing in the early 1900s. The term itself was first coined in 1908, by squib Eugen Bleuler (1). He originally utilized the term (from Greek roots skhizein – 'to split' and phren – 'mind') to describe a symptomatic separation of the functionality of memory, perception, personality, and thinking. Unfortunately, due to the terminology he coined, this malady is often confused with Multiple Personality Disorder (also known as Dissociative Identity Disorder). Please do not fall into the trap of taking the root meaning of this illness at face value; it is wholly different, both in function and form, from its close-cousin.
To this day, schizophrenia remains a little-understood mental malady. The reason behind this is due to its case-by-case presentation of symptoms. Most commonly, it affects men between the ages of 18 and 24, though extensive research shows it by no means 'avoids' women, children, older adults, or the elderly. Its causes seem to likewise be as diverse as the people it affects; in some cases, the malady appears to run along family bloodlines, in other cases, it stems from recreational drug usage. There have even been cases wherein symptoms of this illness have been triggered by some sort of physical damage to the brain (see appendix D24 for three case-studies of individuals with this illness wherein the root cause was known).
If this disease is so unique to each of its victims, how then are healers able to spot it? Despite the individual and the root cause in each case, schizophrenia's character shines through. It encompasses a breakdown of thought processes and poor emotional responsiveness, which most commonly manifests as hallucinations, delusions, disorganized speech or thinking, and is nearly always accompanied by significant social dysfunction.
Harry blinked at that. He simply couldn't see Hermione, of all people, exhibiting any of the symptoms which the book discussed. He skimmed through the rest of the discussion on what schizophrenia was and how to spot it. Eventually, he reached the segment on treating it.
Treatment of this illness within the muggle world relies heavily on usage of antipsychotic medications (read: potions), but within the wizarding world potions have had little to no effect. Instead, Master Healer Gideon Armsmythe created a breakthrough charm known as Defigo Veritas (more commonly referred to as the 'reality anchor'; the wand motion, incantation, and a full list of conditionals can be found within appendix ZXR27) in 1976. The charm mitigates many of the symptoms of the disease, forcing the patient's mind to ignore any stimulus that is not traceable to actual sensory input. The only negative side-effect currently known is that it reverses so completely the symptom of disorganization that it often leads to nearly obsessive behavior on the part of the patient.
Harry had to blink at the text once more. Yeah, I can definitely see 'obsessive'. Color-coded study schedules are not normal. He finished the chapter's subsection at about the same time that he heard the back door open behind him. "Dinner is here," Snape said, his voice nearly toneless.
Harry nodded. "Be in in a moment," he said, closing the program he had open. He made a mental note to come back to it and see what the other books had to offer before assuming that Hermione was nuts.
A/N2: The information regarding schizophrenia is paraphrased from Wikipedia sources, so if any of it isn't right, y'all know why (discounting, of course, it's application in the wizarding world).
1. Eugen Bleuler is a real person, and I ought to mention that I've used him somewhat fictitiously (without permission, of course) in this chapter – I made him a squib. Sorry.
Sixteen degrees centigrade is slightly less than sixty degrees fahrenheit.
Thanks to everyone who takes the time to read the odd ramblings of my rather odd brain.