The True Meaning of Tourism
"Honestly, Potter, today was a bit much even for me," Snape said mildly as they sat at the kitchen table, drinking tea. "I wonder if you actually plan these sort of days – do you write a list every morning? Let's see – revisit the basilisk and Tom Riddle, face off Dumbledore, irritate the Order of the Phoenix, propose your own death, meet the king of all centaurs and take a little ride on his back – and it's just lunch time."
"It wasn't really that much," Potter replied just as mildly. "Just remembering something and visiting some people from the past… and some friends."
"You're not just friends with the centaurs. You ride their king. They even dubbed you the "Rider". And I'd really like to know how you managed that. It's a bit rich, even for you."
"Even for me?" Potter asked, his mouth twitching amusedly. "And here I thought I was simply a bookseller with a history as full time tourist."
"You may be able to fool the Headmaster, Potter, but your innocent little act certainly doesn't work with me," Snape warned him, only to find himself the recipient of a bride, contented smile.
Obviously, Potter was quite satisfied that he couldn't fool his former Potions Master.
"Ah, but I never wanted it to work with you, Professor," He answered happily.
"Do not change the topic, Potter," Snape hissed, not wanting to dwell on the fact that he, too, felt strangely satisfied about Potter's answer. "Why do they call you Eques? And why did you use the Stallion King as your personal horse?"
"He's not my horse, Professor!" Potter protested, obviously scandalized. "I do not…control him in any way! It's more like a bond, forged to our mutual advantages. And I really only became their 'Eques' because of that duel with Ayda…"
Snape sighed. "Let me guess," He took over, drawing his words out until they were a mockery of patience. "The leader of the druids is traditionally also the Eques of the centaurs? Or did you challenge somebody else to a duel for that title?"
"No, not exactly," Potter admitted, a slight tinge of unease creeping into his face. "In fact, there hadn't been an Eques for quite some time when Chairon approached the druids."
"How long? And why did he turn to the druids?"
"An Eques is only chosen in times of need. For the bond to work best, the man or woman chosen must be a wizard. And as the centaurs hate "normal" wizards for their arrogance and behaviour towards magical creatures, they decided to turn to the druids. As to the how long…" He hesitated, then shrugged as if really wasn't worth mentioning. "As far as I know, they didn't have the need for one for about two hundred years."
"Two hundred years," Snape murmured and sipped his tea, refusing to be impressed that yet again Potter had managed to do something unheard of since more than a lifetime. "Two hundred years – that would have been the centaur wars against the giants, I presume?"
"Exactly," Potter agreed, then grinned. "Though the centaurs would never call it 'their war'. In fact they rather described it as a 'criminal and completely unjustified attack on an innocent people', the people being, of course, themselves. But the giants were too much for the herds back then, and thus they needed the certain extra power an Eques could provide."
"And what extra power are we talking about, here?"
Potter smiled sadly. "Centaurs are strong, and resilient. But they cannot command magic. The Eques can. His powers amplify that of the Stallion King, and the bond to the centaurs gives a wizard strength and magical power no wizard alone could ever wield. Plus a few more extras."
As it had been when they had talked about Potter's role as leader of the druids, his face now again made clear that he wouldn't talk about these extras, and Snape, knowing by now that nagging was useless with Potter in such a mood, accepted the invisible limit Potter had set him.
"I see," He said thoughtfully and Potter presented him with a relieved smile. "So what exactly happened in our time to make the centaurs need another Eques?"
Just because I accept one limit doesn't mean that I won't go for the other information, Potter. I am a Slytherin, after all.
The resident Gryffindor opened his mouth to answer, then took a demonstrative look at the kitchen clock.
"Shouldn't we be doing another memory?" He asked hopefully. "Only it's past four already, and we should finish at least my third year today, shouldn't we?"
"I want an answer, Potter," Snape simply replied, not willing to move from the table until he was satisfied.
"And you will get one, Professor," Potter promised. "But let's talk about this inside the pensieve, yes?"
0o0
Snape watched quietly as the Weasley boy was abducted by Black in his animagus form, refusing to admit that he had given in to Potter. He would get his answers, and that he had agreed to move from the kitchen table to the pensieve didn't change a thing about it. It had simply been sensible, even Potter being the one who had proposed it didn't change that.
"Why did this memory start so early?" He asked while Granger and Potter danced among the whirling, whipping branches of the whomping willow. "The other one we saw only began when the dementors approached you."
Surprisingly, they had stepped from the Potions lab into a train's cabin, filled not only with Potter's friends, but also with the ragged figure of Remus Lupin, sleeping in a corner.
The werewolf had never had any dignity at all, really, Snape couldn't help thinking. He would never have slept in the presence of students, and the way the Gryffindors talked about their new Professor only confirmed his principles.
It was only when Potter had reminded him of Black's escape, a month before the start of his third year, when Snape had understood why they were on the Hogwarts express.
Dementors, Snape had thought glumly. I hate dementors. And now I will have a year's worth of memories filled with them.
But it wasn't so bad as he had expected. The chill didn't affect them, and neither did, it appeared, the memory-dementors. They looked dreadful, certainly, but they didn't feel dreadful. Compared with those memories of the Dursleys, with the two Dark Lords and the basilisk, Snape decided, relieved, this wasn't that awful. In fact, it had been rather relaxing.
Until the screaming had started.
It was the voice of a woman, high pitched, desperate and pleading. Her helpless shouting filled the air around him like the voice of someone under the Sonorus charm, and for a moment, he had believed this real, part of the memory, until he had remembered where he was and who was present.
Still, the pure terror of it tore at his heart.
If Potter hadn't told him who it was that screamed and screamed in their ears while the dementor slowly glided closer, he wouldn't have recognized the voice. Hell, he wouldn't even have been sure that it was human.
"My mother," He had explained quietly. "Trying to stop Voldemort. Dying to protect me. It is the only memory I have of her."
Lily Evans. Snape remembered her as an irritating Gryffindor, nearly as bad a busybody and know-it-all as Granger. But this had nothing to do with the self righteous girl of his past, as little as the mutilated corpse of Miss Granger belonged to the bright, bushy haired witch he had known.
How many souls Voldemort had destroyed.
And not a muscle had twitched in Potter's face while he had listened to his mother's screams. As if all this didn't concern him, he had fixed his whole concentration on the figure of Remus Lupin, watching silently as the professor woke and defended the students with his Patronus.
When Potter had noticed Snape's irritated look, he had just shrugged and given his lopsided smile.
"It's much easier to bear when it isn't inside your head," He had simply explained and turned away.
"Potter? Would you care to enlighten me why the memory started here?" Snape repeated impatiently. They were now following Granger and the younger Potter through that terrible tunnel leading to the Shrieking Shack. Snape remembered it all too well. It had played a major role in too many of his nightmares.
"I'm not sure, Professor," Potter answered quietly. There was something strange in his voice, some barely noticeable strain, and Snape wondered for a moment whether the screams of Potter's mother had touched him more than he admitted, then decided that it was of no interest at all to him what Potter felt.
"As far as I understood the spell you used to extract the memories, both physical and mental stress must reach a certain level. While my younger self isn't particularly hurting at the moment, he is currently worrying about his friend and had just watched the execution of Buckbeak. That might be the reason why the memory starts at this point, although the dementors are yet a good twenty minutes away."
"Well, the longer the better," Snape drawled sweetly. "Then you should have time enough to explain why exactly the centaurs needed an Eques and decided to take you."
Potter sighed, and Snape couldn't quite hide his triumphant smirk – or wasn't he even trying? – Potter would not get out of this one. He had, after all, promised an answer, and he would make quite sure to get it.
"Are you sure you really want to know, Professor?" Potter now inquired politely.
Triumph was replaced by irritation. Potter really had a knack for ruining every good – or bad – mood.
"Of course," He shot back, not caring that his face had taken on his trademark scowl. "Why shouldn't I? After all the nonsensical, pathetic and boring biographical details I was forced do endure over the last days, the least you can do is provide me with what little interests me about your life. So, why not?"
"Because it could fundamentally change your perspective on the past, Professor. Not many people like that, so I thought it better to warn you beforehand."
In the middle of the dark, slimy tunnel, on his way to the reunion with two of his three most hated peers, Snape stopped abruptly, turned around to his former student, and stared at him. Hard.
"If this is a joke, Potter, it is not funny at all," He said, his usually silky voice rough. "I have led a rather content life over the last years, due to the fact that you, and Voldemort, and all the other would be heroes that used to drive me mad were gone. Then you waltz back into Hogwarts and in less than a week, I am forced to converse with druids, vampires and centaurs.
"Most of what I believe is turned upside down while you stand at the sideline grinning like some imbecile saint, my loyalties and friendships are questioned, my moral beliefs sink into twilight and I am forced to remember a part of my life I had rather forgotten.
"You may enjoy all this warm, feely-touchy bonding nonsense, but I do not. I have come here for a task, and this task is the only reason I am willing to endure your weak attempts of domesticity, your imbecile friends and your irritating behavioural patterns! This afternoon you happily announced that I was to assist in your death without bothering to even inform me beforehand, and now you have the gall to ask me if I really want to know why the centaurs needed an Eques? You dare warn me that this could change my view of the past?"
Silence. And under the dark, wordless blanket that his little outburst had thrown over them, only interrupted by the sounds of something crawling in the darkness, something dripping from the wet stones around them, Snape's mind caught on with what he had just released into the night of this memory.
Stupid. Not only that he had wailed like a Gryffindor about the injustice of life, his complaint further ridiculed by the moribund state of the man at his side.
He had also told this same, dying man, the man who had expressed his trust and confidence in him over and over again, the man who had treated him with unwavering courtesy, that he considered their time nothing but a nuisance.
From somewhere deep inside his mind, the urgent wish to apologize crawled into his consciousness. He quashed it ruthlessly, too preoccupied with the last, and worst, implication of his little rant.
He had told Potter that he felt out of his depth. That his world had been turned upside down. That he was wavering in his loyalties to Dumbledore and Hogwarts. He had admitted a weakness to Potter.
And although he racked his mind for a fitting precedent, he couldn't remember when such a thing had happened to him the last time.
There had been an incidence once, during school, when Northstine had challenged him to a drinking contest and Snape had spilled one too many domestic stories. His secrets had been all over Hogwarts the next day, and Snape had never, ever let his guard down again completely.
Even with Albus he had always been careful what to tell, or rather, he hadn't needed to be constantly on his guard, for when he had begun spying for the Order, he had already turned himself into a polished, untouchable being that simply didn't do weaknesses. Unapproachable. Meticulous. Perfect.
Come to think of it, his last real sore point had been the wretched Marauders, two of whom he was on his way to meet now, and their leaders' little son, the Golden Brat of Hogwarts.
Fitting, that he would be the one to break a more than decade long control record. Less than fitting was the question of why this had happened to Snape, and why now.
If Snape had been in Hogwarts now, on his own, he would have retired to his chambers immediately and brooded over a glass of whiskey until he had analysed, dissected and explained the incident to himself, thus banishing it from his memory forever.
Unfortunately, he was not in Hogwarts. He was standing in an underground tunnel, with Potter by his side, who was probably waiting for an apology to topple from his former teacher's mouth.
Well, as far as Snape was concerned, he could wait forever.
"Lumos," Potter now whispered, and in the golden glow of light streaming from his left hand, Snape could see eyes as worried and astonished as when Snape had confronted him back in the cupboard resting on him.
"I didn't mean to insult you, Professor," Potter said, examining him all too closely to Snape's liking. "Now that you phrase it this way, I certainly understand why my behaviour this morning unsettled you. And I know that all this can't be pleasant for you. I'm sorry."
"You did not 'unsettle' me, Potter," Snape hissed. "It is far beyond your limited mental capability to unsettle me. You irritate me, and that is a sentiment completely differing from 'unsettled'."
Potter just smiled. "If you say so, Professor," He answered without the slightest hint of aggression or disbelief in his voice, without a grain of emotion Snape could chew on to increase his own anger. "But nevertheless, I was thoughtless. I should have shown more regard to your person. And I should have kept in mind how much I used to irritate you."
And here we go again, Snape thought, not sure whose head he wanted to bang against the tunnel's wall – his own for losing control like that, or Potter's, for taking all the blame in stride and apologizing with the kind of simple honesty Snape had never managed.
When he apologized, it always sounded vindictive and sarcastic, like it did now: "I'm rapidly getting used to it, Potter, and whether it is my neural system unravelling or simple sleep deprivation, I find myself suffering less every day."
Pathetic as apologies went, this one was rewarded with a grin so dazzling, so delighted, that Snape wanted to sneer and scowl all over again, much like a stubborn child that refused to make a good impression. Potter's smile was all too pedagogic to his liking, telling him that I just knew you had it in you, good job!
Teachers had usually only tried this attitude with him once. For a moment, he was tempted to fall back into his sharp tongued arrogant bastard mode, but found that he was too tired to do so.
"So, what has this Eques-business got to do with my prejudices?" He asked instead, hoping to gain some amusement from one of Potter's harebrained stories. "Do they only accept Gryffindors or their likes in character?"
It was a lame joke, he knew that himself, but Potter's pained expression didn't do much to improve his mood.
"Do you remember the incident at Kinnairds Head, five years ago?" Potter finally asked, his voice completely neutral and his face turned towards the darkness of the tunnel wall.
Snape snorted. "To call it an incident would be an understatement. I believe that Minerva, with her usual Gryffindor melodrama, declared it to be a miracle. Of course I remember it."
And, although he would never admit it, he had considered it a miracle, too, the mysterious event that had brought the continued hunt for rogue Death Eaters to a swift and very permanent end.
He had been part of the team assigned to follow the anonymous tip the Order had received – that Death Eaters had been sighted in the north-east of Scotland, near the coast of Kinnairds Head.
"I was there when the bodies were found," He now told Potter, his voice down to a whisper. "Nearly a hundred of them, obviously trying to build a hiding place in the middle of the forest. All dead. We never found out what happened to them."
It had been gruesome, the sight of the corpses lying sprawled among the trees and huts. They had all been killed in the most brutal way, but as far as their experts had been able to determine, there had been no magic involved in their deaths, apart from a strange, residual power they could neither determine nor explain.
The thought of someone who was able to kill a hundred of the most powerful pureblood wizards alive without using magic had been more than unsettling to all of them.
Silence. Potter's face still averted from the light Snape's wand cast on their surroundings.
"Potter? What has Kinnairds Head got to do with anything?"
"The Death Eaters never built those huts," Potter explained quietly, his voice echoing from the walls around them. "There was a settlement of centaurs there, the second largest centaur group in Great Britain."
"Impossible," Snape spat, while at the same time his mind began to work feverishly. Had he understood correctly? Was Potter telling that the centaurs had asked him, the leader of the Druids, for help with the rampant group of Death Eaters? Had Potter, together with the stallion king, attacked the camp and tipped the Order off? But that would mean… "We didn't find any traces of centaurs, and there were never any reports of centaur activities in that area. All herds and their whereabouts are known to the public!"
"All herds but the one near Kinnairds Head," Potter corrected him calmly. "They were hidden by a complicated system of wards that had been installed with the help of druids more than three hundred years ago. The centaurs bring their children and their old there, everyone who is too weak to run with the herd. No wizard ever knew about them. We believe that the Death Eaters stumbled over the settlement by accident. But once they were inside the wards, once they had taken control of the herd, even an army of centaurs wouldn't have been enough to defeat them."
He paused, and brushed back his hair with a sigh. Snape didn't notice. He remembered how he had mocked Potter over those first days of their forced partnership, how he had mocked even Shadow when the Prince of Vampires had voiced his admiration for Potter. He remembered Shadow's disbelieving face when he had asked Snape if Potter had never told him…
"Thus they decided they needed the extra power of an Eques again. And approached me."
"And approached you," Snape whispered, not believing how simple these words sounded, when the facts behind them changed yet another part of the torn and tattered thing his reality had become over the last days.
He had hated Potter for leaving them in the middle of the war. He had despised him for his cowardly escape into full time tourism. Even when he had found out about his role with the druids, and the vampires, he hadn't taken it seriously. Potter had still been the one who had fled before the job to be done was finished.
And now it turned out that he had, in fact, finished their job for them, without informing anyone. Without even reacting to the way Snape had mocked him.
Martyrs truly were a terrible thing.
"So you could never stop playing the hero, not even for a few years," Snape said acidly, the taste of bitter defeat in his mouth.
Stop it, a voice inside him whispered. You were wrong, you were unjust. Don't make it worse by biting his head off now for helping back then. But being a spy for such a long time meant that one became very good at ignoring little voices.
Only now did Potter turn back towards him, only now he lifted his head into the blue-white light streaming from Snape's wand.
"No Professor. It seems that I was never able to stop that even for a few years," He agreed quietly.
He smiled. And that smile, friendly, and open, and a little sad, told Snape that Potter understood. Completely. And that he wasn't angry, or hurt, or unsettled at all. That he was willing to give Snape the time he needed to accept the bedlam his world had turned into, and that he wouldn't hold a single word, a single insult Snape uttered during this time against him.
Suddenly, Potter's saintly attitude didn't hold the slightest irritation to Snape. Instead, it frightened him senseless.
But he wasn't the most fearsome Professor of Hogwarts' history for nothing. Instead of making a fool of himself, he gathered his thoughts and banished them into the furthest corner of his mind, refusing to acknowledge them until a later, and, hopefully, safer time.
"Now that my curiosity is fully satisfied," He announced, his voice sounding brittle and thin even to himself. "I'd very much like to return to the business at hand, if you wouldn't mind, Potter."
He didn't wait for the nod of acceptance that would certainly come - for hadn't Potter accepted every single thing Snape had flung at him over the last days? – and brushed past the other man swiftly, his steps echoing through the tunnel as the swept towards the Shrieking Shack, his face fixed into an eternal scowl.
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A/N: Review! Next chapter will feature three animagi, a dementor attack and an attack of an entirely different nature...