Tinkerbell and Lemon Drop Are Dead
Snape desperately wanted to sleep.
Normally, he was his best at situations of crisis, his mind and body alert and sharpened to an unbreakable edge, able to work for hours and hours on end.
Normally, he was able to detach his mind from his surroundings no matter what was going on, to detach his mind and analyse, interpret, organise, build his own little world from the ruins of other men's hopes.
But the long string of memories that he had seen, the pain and horror and wrongness of it all, had left him numb and aching at the same time, raw and vulnerable in a way that he hadn't known before.
And then the realization hit him that he would have to meet Dumbledore, in less than an hour if his sense of time hadn't gone awry.
He would have to meet him in the office that he had seen just now, and he would have to pretend.
He sat down at the kitchen table, hard, and it was only the awareness of Potter moving somewhere behind him that kept him from burying his head in his hands and going to sleep.
It's shock, The analytical, medical voice in his head whispered. But why was he shocked? These things hadn't concerned him. He had seen worse manipulations over the years, more complete destructions of men – or had he?
"You shouldn't take it so hard, Professor," Potter said quietly, sitting down besides him and offering him a cup of tea of whose brewing process Snape had no recollection. "These things happened a long time ago, and you had no way of knowing."
"That doesn't make it any better," Snape answered in a hollow voice and took a sip of his tea. To his horror, he found that Potter had laced it with a light calming potion. Was he looking that rattled?
"I thought you'd need it," Potter explained apologetically with a gesture towards the cup.
It was strange, Snape thought, that both leaders of the light, Dumbledore and Potter, had developed this eerie ability to know what one was thinking, yet that they used it in such a totally different way.
Dumbledore would spring your own thoughts on you, to show you how clever he was, or that you couldn't hide anything from him, or merely to shake your control. But Potter… he used that strange omniscient trait only to make it easier, to spare his opposite the necessity to say or do something he didn't really want to.
"I probably do," Snape admitted, unable to muster the strength for his usual glare. He was shocked at how brittle his voice sounded. "Considering that I have to meet the Headmaster soon and that strangling my employer wouldn't look very good on my CV."
He felt a light touch on his shoulder and looked up to see that it was Potter, leaning forward intently and looking, all of a sudden, very serious.
"This isn't your fight, Professor," He said, determined and very clearly. "Don't be too hard on Dumbledore. Don't judge him. It is all in the past, and, after all, I have forgiven him."
Perhaps I'm not as forgiving as you are, Potter, something snarled in the back of Snape's mind, but it was a very small thought, and Snape was too much taken up with looking at Potter in disbelief to really notice it.
"I don't understand you," He said finally, too tired to manage his usual angry tirade about bloody saints. "Why do you do that? You have every right to be angry. You have every right to be unforgiving. And still you are civil to everyone and constantly excuse their failures!"
"It is true," Potter agreed. "I would have that right. I could spend my life as a bitter, hateful man, constantly moaning about the things that have been done to me, running around like a martyr clamouring about my terrible, terrible life. I could develop mental disorders, deliver dramatic speeches and break down every now and then."
He paused thoughtfully, a tiny smile playing on his lips.
"But the question is not whether I have the right. The question is whether that would be the kind of life I'd like to have. And the answer is most empathically no."
"If this is some kind of centaur thing…" Snape warned him, but Potter shook his head, smiling again, and poured more tea.
"Just consider, Professor," He said. "What would have happened if I had kept all my anger and hate bottled up for the past eight years? None of you would have known. You didn't even know that I was alive. And even if you had known, would you have cared? Would it have changed anything? Not for you."
He paused, his lips pursed in a way that told Snape how serious he was taking this talk, how important it was for him to get it right, to articulate exactly what he meant.
"But it would have changed a great deal for me, Professor. I remember how it was during that first year after Voldemort's defeat. I remember the nightmares, and what Shadow calls my 'harebrained suicide attempts'."
He smiled again with something like twisted, sad nostalgia. "It wasn't a good time. The hate and the pain poisoned everything. I had to let go of it in order to live on. It seemed a huge step back then, but now all that seems so unimportant, so childish. And see what I got in return!"
His smile widened, to encompass his home, his absent friends, and, Snape found to his wonderment, Snape himself.
"Isn't this worth letting go of that hate and that anger?"
Snape couldn't help but feel that this discussion had become far more than just an explanation of Potter's reasoning, that it was, on a deep, complex level, perhaps the most important discussion they had ever had.
It was as if, in contrast to the painfully manipulative explanation of Potter's life he had witnessed mere minutes before, Potter had decided to lay himself open to Snape, to give him the key to all the changes that had made him the person he was today.
Only that Snape couldn't get it. Perhaps he was too tired, perhaps he was still too angry with the world in general and Dumbledore especially, but he felt that while he intellectually understood the things Potter was telling him, while he heard his words, he couldn't understand them.
How could one let go of the past? How could one forgive? Weren't past injuries and injustices like a loose tooth that hurt with every touch and that one still couldn't keep away from?
Despite Potter's openness, he had never felt so distant from him, so cut off from the mystery that was the Boy Who Lived. After all, he had lived in the past and cultivated his own grudges longer than Potter was alive. And hadn't it always been the way he wanted to live? Hadn't it been his decision to remember, and to count every slight, and to never forgive?
He refused to wonder for even a moment, even a split second, that maybe his decision had been the wrong one, that he, like Potter, had been a victim to Dumbledore's manipulations, only that he had never freed himself, had never torn through the net of tenderness and lies that the Headmaster had woven around him, had never seen clearly…
Until now.
But he couldn't think that. For wouldn't it mean that his whole life had been nothing but a huge, worthless lie?
"Ayda," Potter suddenly said in a clear, rather loud voice, and Snape's head snapped up from its dangerously low position over the mug of tea. He felt the moistness of condensation on his own skin and rubbed it away with irritation. "It's good of you to come!"
"It is not good of me to come," A well known voice declared decisively. "It was perfectly sensible. After all, you promised lunch."
"Potter," Snape barked, focusing all of his irritation to the situation at hand. "I told you to stop buzzing around in the kitchen. You are not to overexert yourself, and just because that thieving old slave driver came to baby sit you doesn't mean that you…"
"My, my," Ayda clucked disapprovingly. "What a temper we are in! Had a bad day of memories?"
"Fifth year," Potter informed her shortly. "Department, possession, office talk. And the Professor will have to meet Dumbledore soon."
And again, Snape felt a soft touch on his shoulder. He looked up, expecting it to be Potter once more, but found to his surprise that Ayda was standing at his side, pressing his shoulder for a moment before she led go, an unreadable expression in her face.
"Harry knows many lunches that can be made with a minimum of work," She then said, and it sounded like a peace offering to him.
He nodded stiffly. Now that the vexing druid woman was here, the kitchen seemed less homely to him, less… safe, and he didn't think that he would be up to a little banter right now.
Better to leave early and take his time with the walk to the castle. It would take some preparation to meet the Headmaster in the right state of mind.
"These are the potions Potter needs to take in the case of another seizure," He told Ayda, withdrawing vial after vial from his robes and organising them in a neat line in front of him. "If the symptoms start, slap him hard. If it doesn't get better, put him into a bathtub full of ice water – that worked the last time. If that doesn't help, you are free to invent new and creative ways of hurting Potter without maiming him for the rest of his life. Have fun."
Potter grinned at him, obviously amused by this short speech, and opened his mouth to respond, but something in Snape's face, blank and forbidding as it was, must have told him not to, and so he simply shrugged in that irritating way of his and stood to say goodbye.
"Remember that it isn't your fight, Professor," He said softly. "I'm quite grown up, you know?"
"Unfortunately that is true," Snape drawled back, feeling the layers and layers of his spy personality, that arrogant, untouchable bastard he had perfected over the years, come up and surround him with their comforting safety. "For otherwise I could simply hand out detentions to you and all your friends."
He saw Potter's eyes sadden suddenly, as if he knew perfectly well what Snape was doing and felt, for some reason, sorrow about it.
"Take care," He said, as if he wasn't the patient, but Snape. "And check everything you take back with you for tracking spells."
"I'm not stupid, Potter," Snape said acidly. "I taught you how to detect these spells, remember?"
And with a small pop he was gone from the kitchen, and looked up to the towering façade of Hogwarts.
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The trip up to Hogwarts was spent with thinking – not the kind of thoughts Snape found himself pondering these days, like how he was going to keep Potter alive for the next weeks, or why the Headmaster had lied to him all these years, or whether he hadn't misjudged a huge part of his past completely.
Rather he was withdrawing into that carefully constructed castle of misleading tracks, crafted thoughts and unreadable intentions that he had built himself during his years as a spy.
Only that he would use it against Dumbledore this time, not against Voldemort. The thought confused him less than it would have a day ago.
Out of sheer spite, he decided to visit his chambers and lab first. After all one seldom had the chance to make the most powerful wizard of an age wait. But as careful and meticulous he was about choosing ingredients and textbooks, the tasks he had set himself didn't occupy him for long.
It was time to enter the lion's den, then.
He ascended the staircase and opened the office door to be greeted by the smell of tea and scones. Really, now. As if he would taste anything that Dumbledore handed him today. He had thought the Headmaster a good deal more subtle.
"Severus," Dumbledore greeted him genially. "I am glad you found the time to come! Harry is safe, I trust?"
A bit late to think of that, isn't it? Snape thought, but outwardly he just nodded and settled down in his usual chair, refusing to give the Headmaster the information he had implicitly asked for.
"I hope you didn't tie him down and force fed him a sleeping potion?" Dumbledore asked again, and Snape very nearly shook his head in annoyance.
Did the man have no self control at all? Could he have been any more obvious?
But then it hadn't taken many hints for Snape to spill everything he knew in the past years. Perhaps the Headmaster had become complacent, too used to getting everything he wanted handed on a silver platter.
Snape would make sure that this would change.
"Certainly not, Headmaster," He answered expressionlessly. "You told me to treat the brat well."
"Severus," Dumbledore said admonishingly. "I'm sure there's no need for that kind of language. Surely Harry hasn't been too aggravating?"
"It's in his genes. I don't suppose he can help it," Snape answered simply and fell silent again.
Dumbledore shook his head slowly, in the gentle disapproval that usually accomplished Snape's tirades against Potter.
Who had been right, Snape realized. There were a thousand things Dumbledore might have said in justification of Potter, but he didn't bother. He just allowed the prejudices to continue simmering.
Only that he didn't know this time that his game was up. That the prejudices had been tested against the truth and had shattered in the process.
"How then is the treatment progressing, Severus?" A direct, open question this time, not even a veil of concern drawn over it. Just simple curiosity.
"Slowly."
The Headmaster's impatience was very visible now, and Snape wondered whether he should simply leave it at that, but then decided that a confrontation was unwise.
"We have worked through about a third of his memories by now, but the more his health declines, the slower we will have to work."
"A third!" Dumbledore exclaimed, honest surprise in his face. "But surely he can't have that many memories that fit the parameters you set?"
Snape suppressed the effort to audibly grind his teeth. "Obviously he has," He answered curtly.
"Have you reached the abduction by Voldemort yet? I believe that a lot of his bad memories must centre around his time of imprisonment," Dumbledore continued, leaning forward with real and undisguised interest now.
"No," Snape answered, not quite able to keep the disgust out of his voice. "Sorry to disappoint you, Headmaster. I have been witnessing nothing of that period yet."
Something flashed in Dumbledore's eyes at these words, and the open and curious expression was replaced by guarded suspicion.
All of a sudden, the Headmaster looked wary, no longer like the eccentric old man he liked to cultivate in times of peace, but like the general of long gone years, suddenly confronted with a dangerous situation he couldn't quite evaluate.
Snape watched the tensing of this old, frail body, the way his hands curled around the the edge of his chair in nervous anticipation, and knew that Potter had never lied to him. There was a secret about the Headmaster, buried in Potter's past, and Dumbledore was desperate that no one find out about it.
"What did he tell you, Severus? What is it that you witnessed?
Snape met the blue, twinkling eyes of the Headmaster, and for the first time in many years, he couldn't see the man who had rescued him from the Death Eaters, couldn't see the wise and just commander that had led them through the war.
He found himself in a whirl of Potter's memories, of a Headmaster with bright twinkling eyes, who told him that all his sufferings had been caused by love, who demanded absolution from those he manipulated.
And a voice rose to his mind, a small, desperate voice that didn´t seem to belong to a fifteen-year-old. He tells me that he's there for me, but he never is! He tells me that I must trust him, and yet he's keeping things from me! Why must everyone I love die? Why can't he stop it?
"Albus," He said, forcing his voice and mind under control. "Do you really think that your actions and words of the past 25 years have earned you any right towards Potter at all?"
He had expected denial, a charming smile and a soft twinkle perhaps, a conspiratorial comment about students in general perhaps, or even anger at this open questioning of his behaviour.
Not the sad but very honest expression that settled on Dumbledore's face at his words.
"Whatever I did concerning Harry," The Headmaster announced solemnly. "I did for his own best. I did it because I loved the boy, because I love him to this day. And the fact that he has forgiven me should show you that he himself has realized it, even if it took him eight long years to do so."
About to snarl a caustic remark, Snape met Dumbledore's eyes head on – and stopped.
"You really believe that, don't you?" He finally whispered, amazement open and undisguised in his voice. "You really think that you did the best for Potter."
"Of course," Dumbledore answered as if there had never been a question about it, and to him it probably hadn't.
Snape wanted to yell at him, wanted to ask him whether abuse was the best for a child, whether underhanded schemes and power struggles were the way to raise a troubled student.
But he realized that there was no sense in it.
One look into Dumbledore's eyes had told him that the Headmaster would never see reason, could never be persuaded to view the situation from another perspective.
Gryffindors in their righteous confidence truly were a terrifying thing to behold.
"Then," He said after a long moment of searching silence. "I don't believe that there is anything else I have to say to you, Headmaster."
He rose from his chair, feeling suddenly like an old man, and turned to go.
"Severus," Dumbledore called after him but he walked on anyway, his hand stretched out for the door knob, and for one single, awful second he wasn't sure whether it would open, whether Dumbledore wouldn't lock him into his office until he would see reason, like he had locked Potter in.
"Severus, that is not the way I want you to go. Let us talk about it…"
But the door wasn't locked, and Snape ripped it open, stepped through and passed the stone gargoyle before he allowed himself to breathe out in sudden relief.
Not his wisest move, perhaps. Not a very Slytherin thing to do. His behaviour had told Dumbledore far more than he had intended, and the Headmaster was probably even now wondering how he could get the situation back under his control.
No. Not very Slytherin. But for the first time since this mad trip down memory lane had started, Snape felt something like contentedness, like belonging.
He had made his decision. His spying days were over, finally and irreversibly. He would not be a puppet any longer.
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A/N: The title of this chapter is an allusion to the play "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead" by Tom Stoppard, which in turn alludes to Shakespeare's Hamlet.