Working on the People Thing

The first thing the morning brought – apart from the rising sun that blinded Snape while he sat in the back garden, brooding – was Ayda.

"Master Potions Master," She greeted him while walking over to the house and opening the back door as if she owned the place. "I see you haven't given up on Harry, yet."

"Mistress Secret Leader of the British Druids," He replied and followed her, not bothering to hide his dislike at her presence. "I see you haven't, either."

But Ayda just chuckled. "Now I see where Harry's sudden bursts of sarcasm stem from," She commented lightly and sat down at the kitchen table, her eyes firmly on Snape.

"I'm glad to say that I have nothing to do with that matter," He said just as lightly. "For I never detected a trace of humour in him when he still unnerved me with his presence."

"I'm just glad I met him after that phase was over, then," She grinned. "For what he told me about his descents into self pity, they must have been rather impressive."

"Unforgettable," Snape agreed dryly, and, before he even realized what he was doing, served her tea.

"Thank you dear," She nodded happily and he could have hit himself. Gods, he thought with sudden panic, If it goes on like this, I will soon start grinning stupidly like Potter!

"You looked tired," She suddenly announced, looking him up and down critically. "Anything I should know about?"

"Apart from the fact that Potter had another seizure last night, worse than all the others, because he was too stubborn to tell me in time?" Snape answered, his voice dripping acid. "No. Nothing of particular importance. Only that he has decided to destroy his soul in a ritual if we can't heal him in time."

"Oh dear, we are a bit tense today, aren't we?" She chirped in the dreadful imitation of a normal, cheerful woman in her sixties. Snape couldn't completely suppress a shudder. If she offered him a bun now, he would simply bolt from the room.

"Being asked to kill your ex-pupil does that to you, yes," He snapped back and tried very hard to drown himself in his tea.

It didn't work, of course. And Ayda didn't go away either.

"So you're unhappy about being the one chosen to end his life and soul?" She asked, some of the unnaturalness vanishing from her voice.

He gritted his teeth. Where was Potter when he needed him?

"You could phrase it that way," He sneered.

Silence.

He was glad about it, of course, but something in the atmosphere of the room told him that it wouldn't last. She wouldn't simply get up and leave again. If Snape had learned anything about Potter's friends, it was that they were all very persistent. They had to be, of course, being friends to Potter.

"Among the druids, it is considered the greatest of honours to be chosen as the executioner of a death," Ayda said, in a tone so totally different from before that Snape lifted his head and gazed at her in astonishment. "It is considered the highest trust someone can place into another being. Usually, only members of the family and the closest friends are granted that trust."

"And that is supposed to make me feel better?" Snape inquired, his brow raised in silent scepticism.

"It should, yes," Ayda answered quietly. "He did ask you officially, didn't he?"

Snape nodded.

"Then he didn't choose this lightly. It is a serious wish, and by following his will you honour everything he believes in. Quite literally in this case, as you protect not only his dignity, but also the safety he fought for."

Snape looked at her, hard, then shook his head in exasperation. "I always hated this multicultural nonsense," He announced decisively. "And I see no reason why I should adopt some obscure druid position on the honours of suicide when the whole thing seems perfectly clear to me. He wants to die. More than just die, he wants to destroy his own soul. And he wants me to do it."

"And you refuse."

"Of course I do," Snape barked, rose to his feet abruptly and decided to prepare the breakfast he had threatened Potter with. He rummaged through the cupboards, producing plates and utensils, absentmindedly searching for the rolls Potter had baked yesterday morning. "I can't simply kill Potter off, just because he wants it. Especially not since I don't know for certain why he wants it!"

He found two jars of jam, obviously house made, butter, ham and cheddar and arranged them on the table. The rolls were in a little wooden box and he cancelled the preserving charm on them before they joined the rest of the food.

When he looked over at Ayda the next time, she was calmly buttering a roll. "Shadow told you about the suicide attempts, then," She commented. "I'd like an omelette, if you're already preparing breakfast."

"I don't know how to make omelettes," Snape admitted, then shook his head as if to clear it from the spider webs of madness. "And omelettes are besides the point anyway. He is only twenty-five! He has barely had a life, and now he asks me to end it because he couldn't do it on his own!"

Ayda lowered her roll to the table, turned her head towards him and fixed her eyes on his angry face.

"You are being completely irrational, Master Snape," She told him calmly. "And your logic is flawed, which is even more disappointing in a man like you. First of all: He had a life richer and more beautiful than many people manage to live in a hundred years. He will be remembered by thousands of creatures, and he changed the worlds in more than one way. Second: The acceptance of death and the wish for it are not the same thing. Don't confuse the younger Harry with the man upstairs. He is rather mad, I know," She bared her teeth in a broad grin, and gold glittered in the morning sun. "But he is not suicidal. That phase in his life is over. Third: I am glad you like him…"

"I do not like him!" Snape protested sharply. "Just because I don't intend to join the long line of people who abused him…"

"That's exactly what I'm talking about," Ayda interrupted, still unnaturally calm. She was holding the jars of jam in her hand, very much resembling a surreal Hamlet who unexpectedly had to choose between two different skulls. "You like him. You feel compassion and pity for what happened to him. You want to protect him. But although he would have needed all that back in school, it is not going to work with the Potter upstairs. Though with his illness you will at least be safe from being hexed." She hesitated for a moment, then nodded as if she had come to a momentous decision. "Yes. Raspberry, I think."

"He hexed you?" Snape asked, finding it difficult to imagine that anybody would challenge Ayda in such a way.

"He tried to hex me," She corrected amiably. "I have always been unusually agile for my age. And of course, that gave me the right to hex him back." She grinned again, and Snape shook his head again. Without the long practice Albus had provided, his brain would have probably exploded by now.

"Back to the topic at hand, Mistress Ayda," He then decided. "I am not going to prove that I don't like him. And he needs…" He simply refused to use the word "compassion" about anything even remotely connected to himself. "acceptance more than anybody else."

"You're confusing the boy in the pensieve with the Potter upstairs," Ayda disagreed and bit into her roll. The next moment, she groaned in pleasure and rolled her eyes. To Snape's mind, it looked rather obscene. "His jam got even better! He added a trace of cinnamon, I believe – my idea, of course."

Snape could feel his stomach grumble with impatience, demanding a roll with raspberry jam for itself. But Snape would not eat breakfast while discussing Potter's death. He had certainly more decorum than that, thank you very much.

"I can imagine it is difficult," Ayda now continued between bites, her speech slightly slurred by the contents of her mouth. "To find out all that you missed about the past and still keep in mind that the Potter by your side is 25 and has dealt with his – how do you wizards call it? – issues. But it is still true."

"How would you know that?" Snape demanded, eyeing the rolls warily.

"Because I was with him when he picked the pieces up and put them back together," She answered simply. "And I was with him when they broke once more and he had to do it all over again, and again."

Snape remembered that Potter had lived with the druids for a number of years, then. And he remembered Shadow telling him that Ayda had helped Potter more than he ever could have.

"How did you change his wish to kill himself?" He asked carefully, not sure if he wanted to know. Not sure if he wanted to be dragged into all this even deeper than before.

"He did that himself," Ayda answered. "I only told him to stop acting like a stupid wizard and start behaving like a tree."

Snape sighed, sat down and took a roll from the little wooden box. "Care to hand me the butter?" He asked and received a brilliant grin.

"There you are," Ayda practically crooned and handed him the butter. "Death is no reason to miss a decent meal."

Snape growled. "I don't like Potter, and I do not like you, either," He announced darkly, and Ayda grinned again.

"That I don't mind," She answered comfortably. "Just as long as you find out how to make me my omelette."

"Just wake Potter and tell him to do it," Snape said. "He likes playing the house elf."

"He likes cooking for his friends," Ayda corrected him. "Again, you mistake the cause for the result, Master Snape. And I wouldn't like to wake him."

She hesitated for a moment, then reached for her bag and withdrew a little wooden box, not unlike the one Potter had used for the rolls. "Give him that when he wakes, and tell him I'll be along in a few days. And hand me a fresh cup."

Snape decided to refuse, but then found that he had already stood and walked over to the cupboard. Stopping the motion now would look stupid, he realized, and picked up the cup Ayda had demanded. To his surprise, she lifted a tea spoon to her temple and withdrew a long, silver thread of thoughts from her head. She dropped it in the cup with a satisfied nod.

"Take a look at this when you have the time," She ordered. "It will explain a few things about Potter to you, I think. And take this."

Once more she rummaged through her bag. When she raised her hand, a leather band was dangling from it, and fastened on it was…

"A whistle?" Snape asked, and she nodded.

"We do not use owls for our post. There's a contract between us and the doves instead. Doves are always around, other than those bloody useless owls. Simply blow the whistle and a dove will come to you and collect your message. When things get difficult," She grinned fiercely. "And they will get difficult, after all Potter is involved, the druids will follow their leader and his appointed guardian. In other words: We will come if you ask for help, Master Potions Master."

She placed the whistle on the table, grabbed another roll and the jar of strawberry jam, letting both slip into her bag without even trying to conceal the action, and left the kitchen through the back door with a merry wave. Once more, Snape shook his head, but this time it was in resignation.

"Inform Shadow, please," He shouted after her and saw her head bob in the distance, probably acknowledging the request. Or biting into that stolen roll.

0o0

Once Snape had recovered from the shock some overconfident mother had named Ayda, he did prepare a full breakfast, although he left out the omelette, and arranged it on a tray, which he floated behind him up the stairs and to Potter's bedroom.

The man was still sleeping, not surprisingly after the sleeping potion Snape had administered last night. A barked "Potter" and a spell to open the curtains changed that, however.

He felt totally ridiculous as he placed the tray on Potter's legs and ordered him to eat in the tone Madam Pomfrey always used in cases like this. But obviously Potter didn't share his sentiment. He simply offered him the chair again and eyed his breakfast with obvious pleasure.

"Do you realize this is the first time you offer me something to digest that won't taste absolutely vile?" He asked brightly. Obviously, the long hours of sleep had done much to restore his happy mood.

"I would have added raspberry jam, but Ayda stole it," Snape grumbled as he settled down on his chair.

"Ayda was here? Why didn't you wake me?"

"She didn't want to. But she told me to give you this," Snape lifted the box and placed it besides the tray. "She also presented me with a dove-whistle. At least I didn't get another tattoo."

Potter shook his head. "The druids are much more pragmatic than the vampires," He said. "With them, you have to pay for the tattoo."

His words were light and unconcerned, but he opened the box with obvious anticipation.

"Brilliant," He commented happily on something that seemed to Snape nothing but a bunch of leaves. Even when Potter lifted out what had to be the real content of the box, Snape found it hard to see what his enthusiasm had been all about.

What Potter held in his hand was nothing but a flat, grey stone, after all.

"This is a get-better-stone," Potter explained as he moved the stone from one hand to the other and turned it around to let Snape see the upper side. Its surface was marked by red, yellow and green finger prints. "Druid children love to send them to those who are ill, to show them that they are remembered and thought of," Potter smiled. "Though I always thought they just liked a pretext to get their hands dirty."

"Charming," Snape commented, not bothering to hide his disgust. Children were bad enough when their hands were clean.

"Isn't it?" Potter asked, grinning at Snape's obvious displeasure. "It is from Catherine, the girl who will marry me one day."

He looked up, laughter turning his eyes grass green like a dewy meadow. "She is eight years old and very decisive about it. I had no say in the matter at all."

Suddenly, Snape remembered a bushy-haired, bossy little know-it-all that would rush through Hogwarts' corridors with an entourage of two boys, telling them what to do and how to do it with incredible self confidence. He had to hide a smile. It seemed that bossy girls were drawn to Potter.

"If she is so decisive about it, I suggest you finish your breakfast and get ready for another set of memories. We shouldn't disappoint the lady of your heart, after all."

Although Snape's words had dripped sarcasm, Potter smiled again and nodded as if to show Snape that his words were taken seriously.

"Of course, Professor," He agreed. "I will be down in a moment."

It took him longer than just a moment, but twenty minutes later a freshly showered and cleaned Potter climbed down the stairs to the living room. Without a word, Snape stood and led the way to the potions lab. They had lost enough time already, and putting off the inevitable had never been his cup of tea.

He sneaked a glance at Potter as he entered the lab after him. He looked pale, worn and still tired, as if the long hours of sleep had done him little good. But there was also the calm and serenity that nearly always surrounded him these days, and when Snape met his eyes he could see concentration fuelling a steadily burning flame of determination, and will to end this.

He nodded sharply. They had less time than he had hoped for, and the development of Potter's illness was most worrisome, but as long as Potter could fight his weakness, they would move on. He would just have to keep an eye on the younger man.

"After you, Potter," He said and stepped away from the pensieve, in which the silvery mist of a memory writhed and danced. Fourth year it would be, and Snape expected a rather boring sequence of Triwizard Tasks to lie before them.

"Fourth year," Potter whispered, as if echoing Snape's thoughts, his hand on the edge of the stone bowl. "Brace yourself, professor. We're going to meet the Wizard of Oz."

0o0

A/N:

I'm sorry about the long silence, everybody, but life is pure stress at the mometn - to put it mildly. I suspect updates to be extremely slow until Christmas, and then not much faster until April. For details- both on the reasons why and the exact dates - please see my lifejournal, which I will try to update regularly. You can access it via my profile page, or simply search for lioness-kayly on lifejournal.

Aside from that: Thank you all so very much for your many reviews! And please be patient with me...