Chapter Two
It takes every trick at his disposal to make his way through the gates and into the castle. Disillusionment charms, Notice-Me-Nots, a glamour for good measure. He bolsters them all with his gift of stealth. Severus can't count the number of times he'd likely be dead if not for his ability to move in silence—what the Gryffindors call sneaking. As if their beloved Boy Who Couldn't Be Buggered to Obey the Bloody Rules weren't this generation's all-time champion of skulking about. As much as it plagued him that Potter was forever roaming the halls making a target of himself, he suspects it was good practise for the brat as well.
At first, having set foot on the grounds from which he'd flown—literally flown, the shrill starburst of glass like a shower of sparks on his face—he hovers in the shadows, freezing in his tracks whenever he senses a presence nearby. He sees Aurors around every corner, and the weary, shellshocked faces of students. His breath roughens. Odd, that hope should feel so much like gasping in pain. But they wouldn't be stumbling over the grounds and through the halls so freely, weeping and embracing, conferring in loud, satisfied voices, if their side had lost. It's over. This must be the aftermath. Hadn't Potter gone forth, in Albus's words, to "finish it"?
For God's sake—no, for everyone's sake, let it be finished.
Severus hesitates before actually entering the castle. Being inside means blocking out the stars. He's not sure he can bear their absence, that he can face these allies who'd cry him enemy and curse him to his knees, face this home that has also been his prison, without their clear, dark fire to guide him. They signify more to him than life. They're like a promise that life isn't the only thing that matters.
Disgusted with himself, he spits on the ground, furls his robe tightly, and hugs his (breathing, unbloodied) chest. Nerves taut, he waits, shrouded and impatient, until he sees two students limping for the entrance. He melts out of the darkness to follow them. Bold as you please, he tails them inside, past two Aurors whose glances linger on him without challenging the glamour. Fully expecting to be knocked off his feet, Severus berates them furiously in his mind when he walks free.
Having gained entry to the winning side, he maintains an expression of grim satisfaction, not needing to fake the grimness but feeling more peculiar by the minute as he parades half-smiling through the halls. The two students glance back at him, tired faces grimy and soot-stained. One sports the blue-green knob of a bruise on her forehead. (Chaffink and Sinbourne, his mind supplies. Hufflepuff. Gryffindor.) Perturbed by his heavily charmed presence, they hurry on ahead. He waits as they take turns helping each other up the stairs before he fades back into an alcove, away from the flicker of torchlight.
His back collides with the unyielding wall, and he's surprised to find he needs its support. He spreads his shaking hands to either side, rubbing the cold stone, the rough, unbroken grain of it, over and over. He's shivering from head to toe, and it's a moment before he recognizes his weakness as gratitude.
Well, doesn't that just take the fucking cake. But he can't move on yet, he's so sodding glad that the castle's still standing. That the monsters responsible are all captive or dead.
Except for himself, of course. Even he's not sure what he is anymore.
Calmer at last, Severus pries himself away from the wall and starts searching. His task is to find Potter. After that, only Albus knows. He ducks out of sight as often as he can, but when he must, he strides along in full view, wand out, head high, trusting to his muffling spells, his distraction spells, and his practice at sustaining multiple and contradictory façades. He passes scorch marks on the walls, paintings blasted with their canvases hanging in shreds, the great hourglasses of the four houses shattered, jewelled points glittering across the floor, the stone lion sprawled out, the snake beheaded.
It's so quiet in the corridors and classrooms that a single raised voice bounces in the distance like a cry for help. Echoes flitter around him, swift as bats, and resolve into clattering footsteps. Groups of students pass him in their battlestained robes, followed by pairs of Aurors, twitchy with unsated violence. Each time, Severus nods, and his stomach muscles clench. Each time that he's not stopped or hexed, he marvels.
Between one corner and the next he's distracted by his hands, and almost trips because he can't stop turning them over and back, his bone-thin, bone-pale fingers. He's alive. These hands are his. He has to force himself to stop staring.
He'll run mad if he keeps this up.
Belatedly he remembers to stay alert for the people who know him best, and barely has time to backtrack beneath a staircase as he spots Minerva rounding a corner. Cobwebs wander his cheeks, too much like Albus's fingers coaxing him back from the darkness. He murmurs a spell to weave their gossamer clots into his Disillusionment charm, then wraps it around himself like some dark twin of Potter's cloak, pure shadow instead of transparency.
As Minerva rustles by, goldleaf from the torchlight dabs at her face. Severus frowns. Her eyes are deeply socketed, unshed tears seaming her cheeks and pinching her chin. But she's alive, and another silent tremor makes its watery way through him. Had it been in his power, she's one of those he would have chosen to save.
Good, then. That's another one off his conscience. He watches her straight back continue down the hall until she turns, hikes up the hem of her robe, and slowly begins taking the stairs. The massive structure above him rumbles and wheels sideways, and he's left standing there, exposed, covered in grimy, spidery veils.
Heart thumping, beginning to wonder if he actually exists, he makes his silent, unseen way to the Great Hall.
One of the huge wooden doors is skewed off its hinges. Beyond, people mill about, far too many for Severus' liking. He smells blood, fear, the chalky odour of pulverized stone, the stink of smothered fires. He's found the place of mourning.
Merlin, he doesn't want to go in there.
The fragrance of piping-hot meat and oven-baked crusts—mutton pasties, he thinks—sorts oddly with the sharp whiff of spent curses. He can hear the high voices of children, the deep, gasping sobs of grown wizards who sound as if they're being punched in the stomach over and over. The air is frail with weeping. Rows of floating candles hang in wistful arches, casting a burnished glimmer over the room. It's hushed, desolate, in very deep perspective and mostly in darkness.
The hall is vast. He remembers his first sight of it as a child, how frightened and out of place he'd felt, confronting such splendour. Back then, in the beginning, it had been the enchanted light, the blaze of glory as much as the sheer size of it that dazzled him.
Here and now, no victory hums under the skin. There's none of the laughter he'd heard in the halls, no terrible relief at a job well done. Those not gathered to grieve are holding conference. They sit at the House tables, whisper and point, shake their heads, scribble notes on parchment. Plates of half-eaten food are scattered in semi-circles around them.
Severus flattens himself in the doorway, sidles around it and stands apart, with a swift eye marking exits and mapping out the location of the people he must avoid at all costs. He's ironically thankful that the Hogwarts stones don't erupt beneath his feet or otherwise betray his presence.
All right, nothing for it. Now, for no reason except that he tastes grief with the very air he breathes, he remembers Lily's hand raised in farewell. He swallows and—fuck, there's blood.
He almost spits, but when he touches his lips they're dry. False alarm. He mustn't lose his head. He must find Potter. He promised—well, what isn't exactly clear. But he'll worry about it later.
Careful to meet no one's eye, Severus picks his way across the room. He navigates the tables at an unsteady clip, convinced that everything about him screams who he is, black boots, lank hair, the smell of blood on his long black robes. Yes, there, that's where he sat as headmaster, and before that, for more years than he cares to remember, professor. That was his life: isolated, nervewracking, absurd, tracking bitterness and futility like basilisk venom all over the castle.
Really, the only word for the kind of life he'd led is 'maudlin,' and he'd scorn it if—well, if they'd lost. If it had all been in vain.
It wasn't, and the evidence is plain for Severus to see, even if he still doesn't trust it. Despite the devastation of lives—"children's lives," Albus whispers in memory—most of the world is still here, most of the students did survive and can go on despite their loss of innocence.
Severus wishes that were enough, but it's not. He looks up, praying, aching for stars, but no. The ceiling's choked and swirled, in defiance of the cloudless night outside.
He lowers his head, already knowing what he'll see. Lined up on their backs, with their feet sticking toward him. Lopsided. Reproachful.
Horrifying that feet alone can be so expressive.
Feeling sweat gather under his robes, he strengthens his glamour, glares down at his pale hands, concentrates on his heartbeat until his head is booming with it, tells himself he's alive. Alive. For what purpose doesn't matter now. He takes a step, then another, and by this simple expedient gets his arse over to where the dead are laid out. He's unable to control his telltale scowl, as if threatening detention to anyone who'd dare prevent him paying his respects.
With every fibre of his being he hates having to do this. He generally hates what his life demands of him, and this is no exception. But look he must, and look he will.
A Weasley's down. That's the only explanation for the huddled mass of ginger hair further up the row. He counts six bent heads, then risks a glance at the fallen figure. He knows in his bones who it has to be, if only because of the boy sitting with one hand wrapped around the stiff claw of his brother, the other clenched in his hair as if to keep his sanity from escaping. From this angle it's impossible to tell whether the grieving boy or the dead twin is missing an ear, and if he stares too long people will start to wonder.
One of the six has bushy brown hair, and he realises that the Weasley chit isn't with her family. This gives him an inkling of where Potter might be. The pride of Gryffindor isn't amongst the bodies, and neither is the girl. Again—he's beginning to hate this—that unwelcome relief shudders through him. He wishes Albus were here so he could point out how deplorably obvious it is that the kindest thing would have been to let Severus stay dead and leave the Potter brat to go on about his business.
Irked, he twitches this thought off, as if dislodging the bite of a Cornish pixie. The slightest breath of self-pity makes him gag.
As he paces up the row, pausing here and there for a closer look at the stark faces, at the dead students he'd done his best to bully and protect, he flicks a wary eye at the antechamber where two Aurors stand guard. They pay him no mind.
Just inside the partly-open doorway, a shrouded figure lies concealed under a full-length robe.
Nothing in his view identifies the corpse, but Severus's head sings with sudden high-pitched fury, his teeth clench, and the tension in his left arm nearly wrings a cry out of him. For one dangerous second he lurches between the urge to sink to his knees, arms clamped to his aching chest, bellowing, no, braying with deranged laughter, and the incandescent rage that wants to whirl him across the room, knock the guards aside, and stand over Tom Riddle's body, blasting and pulverising and burning without mercy, until not even a handful of ashes remains for the house elves to sweep off the floor.
Shuddering with the effort of self-control, he swallows bile and forces himself to look away.
Right into the dead face of Remus Lupin.
The shock is so unexpected that Severus almost drops his wand. He stands paralysed, utterly taken aback, listening to the faint throbbing in his ears as his revived heart pumps blood through his body.
Lupin dead. The last Marauder, dead. How is this possible? Severus wipes the corners of his mouth. The touch of his own calloused fingers on his fevered skin is repellent. He can discern nothing of the werewolf's final moments in the rigid, gaping face, no clue to his emotions before violent death locked and stiffened his limbs.
He edges closer, his mind swimming between past and present. Potter. Black. Pettigrew. Now the last hold-out amongst his erstwhile tormentors lies before him, ready for burial, trousers rumpled and coat unevenly buttoned, face sandpapery, as if to say See what this leads to? See what you've done?
Fucking hell.
Feeling that some response is called for, he reaches out and curls one hand around Lupin's left foot. It's like fondling a block of wood. Faint, disoriented tremors pass like rainfall down his robes. Whatever this is, it isn't triumph or contempt. It's more like nausea.
Serves you right. The old, vicious gloating is the barest wisp of smoke.
To have sacrificed everything and still feel so disgraced, the unloved stepchild sent forth on false pretences into the dark forest—no, more like the boy sent home over the hols when that's the last place he wants to go—home to bloody nothing—when even his childhood enemies are giving up the ghost—
It doesn't add up. It never will. He's not cut out for forgiveness. His darkest desires are too centrifugal to his soul, obsessively pulling at him. Albus floats beyond reach, Lily spurns him as a monster—a convenient one, but a monster nonetheless—and here he stands, gripping the foot—the untransformed paw—of a dead werewolf, who would have done them all a favour in their fifth year if he'd just gone ahead and ripped out the throat of one weedy, grievance-riddled Slytherin. Imagine, Severus thinks, how much might have been prevented if he'd only died then.
Eyes intent on the greyish face, he pinches Lupin's big toe through the worn shoe leather, as if spite might startle a response out of him. No such luck. He yanks his hand away and wipes it on his robes.
To still his ridiculous trembling, he gouges two fingers along the patch of scar tissue at his throat. It works; his body goes rigid. He scowls down at Lupin, at the ragdoll figure of Nymphadora Tonks arranged beside him, at their hands placed in simulated peace upon their breasts. Wedding rings glint below their bent and swollen knuckles.
How fucking unreal this all is.
Because it's over. Taking a deep breath, Severus glances around, seeing former students, former classmates, Order members, Ministry underlings. He envies the centaur sleeping in the corner, where the shadows lie thick and dusty as curtains. Petty quarrels, deep hatreds, everything he's gnawed at for years in a feverish attempt to free himself. All over. The squandered love. Everything that's kept him trapped.
He's chewed the bone through. The consequences of his hideous, unfixable mistake are ranked before him, and his only way out is to walk over the bodies.
The problem being that he has no idea where to go.
The knowledge empties through him in a stomach-turning descent: he doesn't belong here anymore.
Severus waits for the sudden impact, the bone-jarring crunch. Nothing. His mouth goes dry, but that's it. Stiff-backed, he approaches the far end of the nearest table, summons a pitcher, gives the contents a hasty sniff, then transfigures a broken tallow into a goblet. He pours himself a splash of pumpkin juice and tosses it back in full view of the entire room. No one even looks up.
Damn it. He thunks the goblet down and transfigures it back, but the wax ends up melted all over the wooden surface. If Dumbledore were here, Severus would already be doing something. It doesn't matter what, but something. Most likely snarling under his breath, but he'd be taking care of whatever Albus decreed was immediate, important, in dire need of his expertise.
There's no Dumbledore—no one, anymore, to tell him what to do.
Fuming at this exasperating recurrence of self-pity and wishing he had someone else to take it out on, Severus sweeps his gaze up and down the bridge of bodies. His past and his future are connected here, and he hasn't the first clue where they're leading.
Bugger this. He's like a vulture picking at his own liver. It's evident Potter's not in the room, so he's free to go. Anywhere at all would be better than here, with weeping Weasleys and the rigour mortis-afflicted corpses of children and monsters all mixed up together and—
It hits him. The impact. Fuck. Fuck. Two steps from the bier, Severus whirls around again, brought up short by the realisation slamming through him.
I'm not there.
It's bone-rattling, a totally lunatic thought. He can't help it. They didn't—he's not—they didn't even bloody fucking honour him enough to fetch his body from the Shack and lay it to rest with the other casualties of war. There was time, surely. Before Fawkes arrived. Time enough to find and recover every other dead witch, wizard, mangled lifeless child—
Ignoring how mad and obsessed he sounds even in his own head, Severus shoots an appalled look at those nearest him. For Merlin's sake. Perhaps he deserved to die, he's not disputing that. Yes, of course, his crimes speak desperately against him. But is that any reason to leave him to rot, when even the Dark Lord lies decently concealed under a shroud?
The room blurs, as if the mist he saw in death has leaked into the mortal world. For an instant, hatred strips his veins. Like venom from the serpent, it fills him body and soul. Only this time he's not dying. On the contrary, he shakes with grotesque power. The desolate, bewildering rage is exactly like waking up in the Shack, soaked in blood and screaming at the blaze of phoenix feathers.
Because it fucking hurts, and in self-defence he indulges in hating everything and everyone who doesn't give a crup's arse about his fate.
No one came for him. It's that simple. He doesn't even rank being carted out with the rubbish.
Glowering out over the tables, he draws his wand from his pocket and smoothes it between his fingers. He's mimicking the Dark Lord's mannerism, the restless, sadistic toying with his wand that was a sign of Voldemort in the mood to play, to tease and torture and not let up until his victim's body lay twitching at his feet.
Severus has been on the receiving end of that masturbation by proxy and is sorely tempted to commit the same sin. He knows how much agony a complete disdain for one's fellow creatures can breed. All he has to do is drop his disguise and take down five or six of the self-absorbed wretches before they can gather their wits to retaliate. If he's lucky, the mere sight of him, not to mention the horror of a surprise attack, will bypass their scruples and scare an Avada Kedavra out of one of their pathetic lot.
All it takes is one. A suicidal gesture emphatic enough to prove, even to the greatest fucking wizard of the age, that redemption is a waste of time. Wasted on him. Certainly everyone else seems to think so.
Fuck this. Pressure drums in his head, and he tamps a lid down on the irrational urge to go out in a bloodbath of hurt feelings. It helps that he's still gazing at Lupin, at Tonks, at the body of the diminutive Muggleborn boy who used to harass Potter all over the castle, waving his camera like a mute declaration of love. He didn't save them, and in a sense it's their blood that now flows through his veins. Why else would it burn so? He remembers the splash of phoenix tears, and in the midst of his rage thinks with dry, distant clarity: The phoenix egg. I must search the ashes before anybody else finds it.
He's not reasoning, not lucid, not really himself. He should cut his losses and run.
Betrayal festering inside him, he puts his tantrum under wraps and tucks away his wand. It doesn't escape his notice that several people to either side remove their hands from their sleeves. Still, no one recognises him. He's not even sure he recognises himself. He swivels on a boot heel and bestows one final, blistering glare upon the antechamber, just to reassure himself that not a muscle of the Dark Lord's swaddled corpse has moved. He still believes complete and merciless immolation would be safest, not even random molecules left behind to silt the cracks in the pavingstones.
On the way out, he ricochets with uncouth clumsiness off the corner of a table, chagrined that his hard-won grace has chosen this moment to desert him. It took him years to overcome his adolescent slouch, years to learn the fine art of terrorising students through body language alone.
Not particularly caring if he's spotted or bespelled, Severus stalks out the door.
Stairs. Here we go. Climb past the shattered masonry. Gaping holes puncture the balustrades, yawning over a drop that gets steeper with each change of staircase. Ah, yes, just as he expected, a series of sticky red stains. He won't tolerate the drip of blood on the risers. Scourgify. Look, there's more. Vanish them and pass on. Search the classrooms, the dormitories. Given the youngest Weasley's coincidental disappearance, pay extra attention to the unmade beds.
Just keep going. Get to the end of this. Potter's friends are still in the castle; he's not bloody likely to have ditched them, is he? Little arsehole's bound to be somewhere about.
Paranoid to a fault, Severus has schooled himself to use self-sustaining spells to compensate for momentary lapses of control. He's erred in the past and will err again. Thus his concealment charms continue to deflect startled glances even as he swoops by, muttering under his breath. They don't like it, they can kiss his raggedy white arse. Making the reckless jump from the south-wing staircase to one wheeling in the direction he needs to go, he lands hard, catches his infirm balance on the steps, and wonders what gutter that last thought crawled out of. The abuse-strewn streets of his childhood, most like. His arse had been raggedy, the wages of mismatched parents and charity-shop togs.
The damaged staircase swings at such a speed that it lifts two banners of hair over his cheekbones. More and more his thoughts deteriorate into a war zone, full of collisions and crash lights and mental cauldron bubbles. He takes the set of stairs two at a time, half-tempted to storm into the headmaster's office and have it out with Albus's portrait. He could do with a spot of name-calling just now, maybe the shattering of an irreplaceable magical artefact or two. But no doubt the gargoyle password's been changed (and if not, why not?). For that matter, he has no wish to encounter Minerva and plead his case, not now, not ever. What would he say? He hasn't a clue. If there's one thing he's learned from his near-death experience, it's that "sorry" is only a conjuring trick. Its aim is emotional Disillusionment: to hide the truth behind a flimsy, shimmering curtain.
There is no magic word that spells forgiveness. One might as well babble nonsense syllables. He has Lily Evans Potter to thank for rubbing his nose in that demoralising fact.
Blood. Smoke. His wand hand twitches, twitches again.
The stone corridors he stalks through veer like empty tunnels through dead silence, perforated by the night-time glaze of windows. Stopping once, Severus angles his forehead against the cold glass, squinting out at the stars. Dizzying eternity twinkles like a net around his mind, closing in.
Jerking back, he stumbles over nothing and barks the heels of one hand against the smoke-damaged wall.
His palm comes away black. Skin crawling, he thinks of Lily, sees Lupin's gaunt face, the hint of dry, dead teeth and the outline of his skull.
He licks one smeared finger. It tastes like a frying pan. Burnt blood, he expects. Grimacing, he scrapes his tongue against his teeth and spits the Dark mouthful onto the floor.
Speaking of being dead. He mustn't rampage around like this. For fuck's sake, he died. He needs to stay calm. He needs to eat first. He needs to—
Find Potter.
"Headmaster? Headmaster Professor Snape, sir?"
Heart expanding like an air-filled balloon, Severus spins, wand on target.
One of the elves he recognises as loyal to Slytherin House stares up at him in astonishment. "Headmaster! You is alive! Oh, sir. We is rejoicing at this news!"
Severus' cheek muscles knot shut, his jawbone throbbing as if broken. Alarmed by his expression, the elf falls silent and cringes backward like a child anticipating a beating. With effort, Severus unclenches his jaw and tries to breathe himself down to a reasonable level of discourse. We is rejoicing. One house elf in all the world. One indebted creature whose duty it is to grovel and feign delight. The crushing pain in his chest spreads outward; his entire torso aches as if Nagini were wrapped invisibly around him, coils tightening.
"Be still," he snaps before the elf can hurl itself apologetically at the wall. "Pay attention. I don't have time or patience to explain myself." He pauses again, forcing down the rabid dog of his temper. "Tell no one, do you hear? Not even your fellow elves. My survival this night is an absolute secret. No one else must know."
The elf stands straight, eyes luminous in the darkness.
Severus lowers his wand. "I entrust you with this secret."
"But Headmaster Professor— "
"I will shortly be leaving the castle," Severus says, wishing he could do so this very moment. "It is in everyone's best interests that I—that the world think me dead." The reminder that he was dead stops him for a moment. "I've only come back to— "
There's no intelligent way to end that sentence. He can't bring himself to divulge his ridiculous task. "To be sure there's nothing more I can do. Once I'm satisfied Hogwarts is safe, my part in this disaster is finished."
The elf's forehead corrugates. "The students, Headmaster Professor. You is forgetting your students. The Slytherins is needing a voice to defend them— "
"Not mine," Severus snaps. It's pathetic and infuriating that a house elf is perhaps the only creature in the entire castle concerned for the children unlucky enough to be stuck in Voldemort's house. His own presence certainly won't help. Clearly baffled, the elf puckers its face at him. He says flatly, "I can't. Leave it at that. Now swear to me. Swear you won't say that you've seen me alive."
"I is swearing, Headmaster Professor Snape, sir."
Severus waits for it to go away, but the idiot just stands there staring at him raptly. About to order it out of his sight, he changes his mind and digs inside his breast pocket.
"Take this," he says and drops a square of white fabric into the outstretched, knobbly hands.
Cautiously the elf picks open the plain cambric handkerchief that Severus has carried about with him for years. Ever since he started earning enough to afford such social pretensions, in fact. He doesn't need it anymore. He never had the chance to offer it to Lily, and it's obvious he never will. He's carried it as a talisman all this time, but he's a dead man, not a courtly knight, and besides, Lily never actually gave him this token to remember her by. It doesn't count if the knight merely skulks about waiting to wave his emblem of failed love in his lady's face.
"You're free," he says, meaning it for both of them. This is one memory, one aspiration toward gentility, he need never bother with again.
"I isn't— " stammers the elf, beginning to shake. "I doesn't— "
"You served the dungeons," Severus interrupts before it can launch into full-blown wailing. "You've been loyal to my Slytherins, have you not?" The elf nods, ears drooping, its expression a little wild. "Then stop quaking like a jelly and behave like a member of my house. I'm no longer headmaster, but I've not yet been replaced. You have a rare opportunity. Stay if you wish to help. Go if you prefer to seek other employment. And keep that," his lips quirk, "in memory of me."
Blubbering a little, the elf clutches the handkerchief as Severus turns away, heading for Gryffindor Tower. When he looks back, the creature has, thankfully, taken the hint and gone.
He should go, too. Words cannot express how much he doesn't want to be here. Compulsively he runs his fingers through his hair, taking comfort in its heavy, oily texture. Blast. If he'd had the least presence of mind, he could have ordered the little busybody to bring him something to eat.
The lure of the dungeons tugs at him. What an inconceivable luxury it would be to stretch out on his old bed, in his old room, and fall asleep. Oh God, for a thousand days. Over the past year he's subsisted on four hours' shut-eye a night, cups of boiled coffee and overbrewed tea, Pepper-Up Potion, and the adrenalin jitters caused by repeatedly suppressing the urge to Transfigure certain members of his staff into cockroaches so that he might have the supreme pleasure of crunching them underfoot.
Working for the Light, Severus has learned, doesn't lessen one's reliance on fantasies of retribution.
Gryffindor Tower is muffled in darkness, sharp with wind. Broken panes pockmark half the windows. The smell hits him first: oil of juniper berries, burnt silk, curdled vomit. In the Common Room, lion-footed chairs and up-ended sofas are piled atop one another, upholstery glowing velvet red through the shadows. The ornate sideboard is flung facedown, the detritus crammed inside it by carefree teenagers—half-eaten Cockroach Clusters, crinkled homework, snapped quills, tins of wand wax, a smashed pair of extendable ears—strewn across a carpet scabby with hex marks. Paintings hang lopsided, and when Severus casts Lumos to scout the corners, the icy gleam and sparkle of broken glass warn him to tread carefully.
From the fireplace straggle cheerless strings of smoke, where gold-and-crimson tapestries torn from the walls sit bundled, partly burned, sporting charred patches like some horrible cindery plague. The way the colours flicker and the embroidered figures twist, trapped in the bulging folds, Severus is reminded of the iridescence that surrounded him in death.
Faint squeaky pleas for help emanate from the singed arras. He circles the room once, scanning and poking, then with an abrupt Levitation spell heaves the bulky pile out of the firepit. It drops to the floor with a whump of scattered ash. A curt flick of his wand unrolls the layers, and another flick douses the embers. Weak cheers of gratitude whisper up from the scorched cloth.
Sneering, Severus walks away.
A shutter creaks like a rook's call. The rush of wind in the Forbidden Forest breathes through his memory, the starlight braided in the phoenix song. He pauses in the darkness, straining to detect any presence but his own. Potter? Doubtful. It's too depressing here. Purse-lipped, he glides from the boys' dorm (beds stripped to mattress ticking and shoved against the walls, moonlight in pale lozenges on the stone floor) to the girls'. He whispers the length of the room and out again. His boots are custom-made Nargle-hide, which is one reason his footsteps can barely be heard.
About to quit the tower, he gives the vandalism one final glance and feels only contempt. How fragile life is. Nothing lasts. The work of wizarding hands can be undone in a day.
He thinks—never stops thinking—of that Dark-infested cadaver down below, lying up for grabs under the mingiest possible guard.
Idiots. He huffs a humourless laugh. After all, if he can be resurrected on the whim of some old tosser with a messiah complex, what's to prevent Tom Riddle from doing the same?
He checks the other Houses purely for form's sake. More chaos, more ruin, but no trace of Lily's son. Battered students lie passed out on sofas or sit quietly together, faces in hands. Without a word, Severus turns from the threshold.
The owlery next. His legs are tired, but he toils upward. The dry stench of owl fewmets helps to clear his head. This high up, the wind sighs and scrapes, a shock of ozone, leaf mould, and freezing lake water. The sky glimmers overhead, a polished black crystal. He keeps his gaze stubbornly cast down, conscious of starlight pricking along his back.
Yellow glares wax and wane in a lunar cycle of owl eyes, but no seventh-year Gryffindor skulks within. Severus didn't really think there would be—who'd want to sit ankle-deep in birdshit, after all? But this is Potter, so it's not beyond imagining.
Air shrieks around the turrets. In a flap of robes and clacking boot heels, he descends again, glowing with cold, and then uses the invigorating tingle of circulation to flog himself back up to the Astronomy Tower. With a mercury-silver flare of light, he illuminates the parapet he still faces in nightmares, and then scarpers back down the steps, breathing hard.
Where the bloody hell is bloody Potter?
He can't bring himself to go down to the kitchens. He'd be mobbed by every house elf in Hogwarts if he dared. Bad enough to die of snakebite. He has no wish to suffer an even more ignoble death by kitchen implement.
Finally, having delayed the inevitable until there's nowhere else to go, he heads for the infirmary. By the time he gets there, he's stumbling with fatigue. He knows he's borrowing trouble by refusing to feed his exhausted body, but the only hunger gripping him is the compulsion to see, no, feel Potter in his grasp. Just like some hero-worshipping idiot who crawls on all fours up to the pedestal, longing for a chance to kiss the brat's sainted toe through his grubby trainers. It's gone beyond the point where a mere glimpse will suffice. He won't feel grounded again, real and sane and scoured clean of stupid fancies, until he's laid eyes—hands—on the dratted boy.
It's insane. The last thing Severus wants is to face the consequences of Potter having watched him die, to read in the boy's eyes the knowledge instilled by those blasted memories. The fact that Potter knows eats at him like a canker sore. It wasn't supposed to be this way.
But once he finds him—aware of the ghostly onlookers keeping score—Severus intends to shove his pride into a ditch and say to the Boy Who Died to Live Again what he couldn't say to Lily.
He just hopes he doesn't choke on the words. He appreciates irony—and a good thing, too, considering he wades in it up to his neck—but there's such a thing as eating too much crow.
The brat's not in the infirmary.
At first he doesn't believe it. He makes a circuit of the beds, concentrating so hard on Disillusioning his presence that the room's occupants sniffle vaguely at the passing shadow. Some part of Severus's mind wonders when it happened that he grew powerful enough to render himself virtually invisible, an insubstantial darkness instead of a presence. He supposes crossing over into death might account for it.
It certainly fits his current status in the wizarding world: a hard-to-place, ephemeral interruption of the light.
No sign of Potter. How can that be? Candles waver at every bedside, kissing the wounded to sleep. Children doze with their mouths ajar. Their gilded eyelids twitch. The air in the room reeks of green astringent potions, the faintest traces of blood and urine, chamomile draughts, fever poultices, tea and toast.
Tea. That gets through to him. Severus tracks the fragrance to Poppy's office, where he stands fixated on the self-replenishing tea urn until she's called away.
He's almost tempted to reveal himself as Poppy knocks back a bottle of Pepper-Up, grimaces through the steam, covers one ear and coaxes the last wisp out, muttering to herself, "Steady on, old girl. Here we go."
His hand, hovering near her, falls. Like a child reprimanded for being too forward and not waiting his turn, Severus plaits his fingers behind his back and stands aside. As soon as she leaves, he pounces on her tea service like a starving ghoul.
Three rejuvenating cups later, he slinks back onto the ward.
Caffeinated to the gills but with some measure of his former grace restored, he avoids all contact in the infirmary, adroitly dodging the healers who crisscross the floor casting diagnostic spells. In the last bed in the row nearest the exit, a student lies suspended horizontal to the mattress, sixty percent of her naked body mottled with burns. Black and flaky, their red centres seep.
Severus rolls the stem of his wand back and forth for a long moment but in the end simply lowers it and plunges from the room. He can extinguish a tapestry, but he can't quench the fire in a burn curse.
He wants Potter, damn it, and he wants him now. He won't be able to rest until the boy is in his grasp.
Finally, exhausted and unable to face starting all over again, he sinks into a window seat and stares blankly at the floor. He pretends he's pondering what to do next, but in reality he's obsessing, with a perplexity bordering on despair, on the stupidity of this new lease on life. So far, resurrection has been nothing but a series of swift, pointy-toed kicks in the arse. The futility of his own existence, his sheer irrelevance to the postwar world, couldn't be plainer.
Why the hell did Albus send him back? The old bugger's parting words—"Don't believe for a moment that this is meant to punish you"—rang with a perfectly hideous sincerity. But that was then, in death. This is now, in—well, God knows Hell on earth is a thriving real estate business, and he should have guessed Albus would own shares. Severus' philosophy of teaching has made him something of an expert in the lowly arts of detention, and he rather suspects that Albus is plotting to give him a sly Dumbledorean taste of his own medicine.
Maybe this is the metaphysical equivalent of scrubbing cauldrons every night for an entire seven years of term. No, that's too kind: of writing a million times across his heart with a flesh-eating quill, "I shall not kill my friends. I shall not kill my friends. I shall not— "
The flaming torch across the hall snaps and streams sideways in a passing draft. Shadows slither in the joins between stone blocks, creating the illusion that the ancient grey walls hide a colony of secret, scuttling things.
He's still silently tongue-lashing himself to stop moping about and get on with it, when a lone set of footsteps jerks him out of his sulk.
Checking to be sure his web of spells is holding, he waits tautly as a young witch clip-clops down the hall, her wand arm swinging back and forth when it should be raised at casting angle. Twenty points from Ravenclaw, he snarls to himself, irritable out of all proportion to the offence. He could take the careless bint down with one strike. He's half-tempted to Body-Bind the imbecile and teach her a lesson in vigilance she'll never forget.
Wand hovering, he doesn't bother to speak until she comes abreast.
"Not so fast, Miss Catesby." Unfortunately for them, he remembers the names and faces of most of his students. "A word, if you please."
He pitches his voice low, calm and silky, a tactic that used to incite cold sweats in the classroom.
"I don't suppose you can tell me where Potter's gone off to." This time he swaddles the menace in satin bands, though his voice carries a mild compulsion charm that would be instantly detectable if the witless girl were paying attention.
"Oh," she says. "Harry—he needed time to—with Ginny—they went— " She scrunches her brow, finally exerting herself to stop the wagging of her own tongue.
Approving but in no position to show it, Severus dispels his Glamour, sheds his Disillusionment, and Legilimises her.
He plucks forth a blurry image of scruffy, singed Gryffindors and a snatch of slurred, eyebrow-raising conversation. Holding the abysmal memory at mind's length, he sifts through the babble.
The Room of Requirement. Of-bloody-course. He should have thought of that, if only because it's so glaringly obvious and provides the maximum possible inconvenience. Never let it be said that Harry fucking Potter has ever cooperated.
"Thank you, Miss Catesby, that was … helpful," he drawls, meaning anything but. "And I realise there's no point in my saying this, but kindly exert yourself in future to take life-or-death matters more seriously. Meaning, for Merlin's sake, do not lower your wand. Keep it raised at all times. You never know," his upper lip curls on cue, performing the job even though sneering is the last thing he feels like doing, "who or what might be lurking in the corridors."
Illyria Catesby dutifully adjusts her grip on the wand handle and takes half a step forward, never mind that the sane response would be to run as if all the Dark Lords in Hell were after her. She peers at him, a tinge of awe softening her face. Her free hand wavers as if debating whether or not to reach out, which is … not at all what Severus was expecting.
"Is that really—Professor? Professor Snape? Merlin, you've come back!" And then she—good God, did the whole world go mad during his brief demise? The silly cow smiles at him, tremulous and swallowing in a stupidly emotional way. "Wait till I tell Harry!"
Severus stares at her, nonplussed, and to his alarm those sodding coils tighten in his chest. He's astonished to be seen, and it rattles him—as so much else has recently, but here it's like being welcomed home, and he can't remember the last time that happened. This girl sees him. Therefore he exists. It's ridiculous to feel gratitude to a below-average Ravenclaw who survived the battle through the randomness of luck alone (since it's abundantly clear that her sense of self-preservation isn't up to snuff) simply because she recognises him. Who could have predicted it would matter so much?
Her next question is just as unsettling. "Are you—Harry said you—Professor, please don't hex me, but are you all right?"
Severus sits in the window seat like a ruffled crow, affronted by her concern. She's a child, and she's alive, and for reasons beyond his comprehension she's asking after his welfare. For a moment he can scarcely credit it. She's one of those he helped save, so why does it feel as though, for this one small kindness, he owes her?
Scrutinising her closely, he rises to his feet. She backs away two steps but stands her ground, and he replies, quite gently for him, "Yes, thank you, Miss Catesby. I am as I've always been." It strikes him that even this might no longer be true. The possibility makes him smile, and for once he means the twist of his lips to be a smile, even though the sight of it will no doubt scare five years off her life. It also means that she's staring at his face and not his wand when he gives it one delicate flick. "Obliviate."
He's several yards down the corridor before he risks a glance back. Illyria Catesby is just turning from the window, moving with the tentative precision of the utterly bewildered. As he watches, shrouded in spells, she jerks her wand into position and takes a step, then another, careful and quiet, her body language newly alert. She picks up speed as she walks onward, wand swivelling when the torches sputter. Her footsteps barely echo.
Ten points to Ravenclaw, Severus thinks with satisfaction, and then, twitchy from years of obeying the wards, Apparates through their absence to the seventh floor.