Chapter 32

In which Thomas and Severus had an encounter

"Harriet! You have guests!"

Aunt Petunia's voice startled Harriet from her musing. She smoothed the dress she was wearing and picked Esmeralda, carrying the puppy with her down the stairs. After releasing Esmeralda, she looked up and blinked at the uncomfortable faces of Severus and Thomas.

Severus looked helplessly at Aunt Petunia who looked constipated and exclaimed rather obviously.

"Oh! It's been so long since I last saw you, Severus, why don't you come to the kitchen and have tea with me?"

Severus coughed and said rather dourly, "Of course Petunia, how have you been?"

The duo left Harriet and Thomas staring at each other in the foyer.

"Hmm…are you here to scold me?" Harriet finally broke the silence. "Here, let me take your coat and store it here. Aunt Petunia must have forgotten to ask Severus for his cloak."

"No…I…Medusa told me that I've been neglecting you. We've not have a date for quite a few weeks, haven't we?" he asked, rubbing his neck uncomfortably.

"Well, you've just had a shock. Like I said, I understand. How's the Dueling Camp?" she said airily.

"uh, yeah. It's going very well, but we've missed you." Thomas tried to hold her gaze a little bit longer, but Harriet turned to lead him to the living room.

"My Lady, please forgive me. I did not mean to ignore you." He reached for her hand before they reached the living room, unknowingly giving the four occupants of the kitchen a live drama.

"Thomas…I really don't know what to say. Like I said, it's okay. You've just had a shock. I wasn't going to be insensitive and badgered you about our courtship in your time of need, was I?" Harriet shook her head.

Sure, by the time week 2 rolled around, she felt a little bit neglected and sad that Thomas wouldn't even talk to her, but she did understand his reasoning and give him space. She just wished that Thomas would open up to her a little.

"I need to explain, at least. So that you know where I came from." He pulled her to the sofa and sat her down before sitting cross legged in the floor in front of her.

"My Mother died giving birth to me, and for as long as I remembered, I don't have any friends until I met Medusa. The caretaker of my orphanage, and my fellow inmates were rather…unpleasant, and any animal friend I made was quickly either killed or released by them. So I was truly alone until Medusa." He took a deep breath.

"When I was growing up, we were in the middle of a war, and you wouldn't know how it felt to hear the alarm rang through the city for us to go hide in a bunker. At that time, children were being sent to the countryside, to foster parents, for safety. Us, the orphans, no one cared whether we lived or died. When we went out of the orphanage, we can only see the carnage, of adults fighting for food and shelter, surrounded by the rubbles of buildings. It was called The Blitz. Since then, I have feared death. For me, and for my loved one. So I was rather upset that Medusa had decided to accept the end of her life peacefully."

Harriet was silent when she listened to Thomas' story. Of course, she had read about the Blitz in the library when she was younger, but listening to a firsthand story from the person who experienced it as a child was quite different from reading the adult point of view's tale in the books.

"I'm sorry that you have to experience that. But Thomas, don't you think Medusa deserve rest? It's been so long since she was alive. Maybe she felt stretched thin, like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. Besides, didn't a bonded familiar live as long as it's master? I don't think you have to be worried about her so soon." Harriet run her hand through Thomas' hair.

"Must you quote that book? I've gotten in trouble because of that series." He grumbled in irritation. "Medusa said that too. She said that it wasn't like she was going to die tomorrow, she still has a few hundred years to teach her youngling about protecting Hogwarts and whatever else she wanted to teach the snakeling. So yeah, I've gotten a lecture from her about over reaction."

Harriet smiled at him, amused that he was getting a scolding from his familiar.

"Anyways, I should say that rather than fearing Death, you should fear the living. When you're dead, you're just dead. Especially if you were blessed to go peacefully, in your sleep. Life had so many horrors to offer. Like natural disaster, disease, or worst, murderers. Did you know that axe murderers are still around? You've gotten lucky so far to escape them."

"You mean like that Jack the Ripper? Muggles are so savage, what's wrong with a neat Avada Kedavra? Less mess, the victim won't know what hit them too. And if you're really particular about pain like Bella, there's the Cruciatus too…" Thomas mused.

He remembered when he first read about Jack the Ripper, he couldn't sleep for a while, fearing that the serial killer would come to get him in the night. That is, of course, before he realized that he wouldn't become a target by simply being born in the wrong gender. He'd never thanked his mother so much before he came to that fact.

"Who's Bella? An old girlfriend? Is she pretty?" Harriet asked curiously.

"Hmm? Bellatrix? Well, passably, I'd suppose. She had that aristocratic beauty she was born with. Unfortunately, she was, …hmm…how shall we say it? Not right in the head? She reveled in giving and receiving pain. Personally, I think her parents went overboard disciplining her when she was younger, the poor thing."

In the kitchen, Severus sprayed the tea he was drinking to Uncle Vernon's face. The poor thing? Bellatrix Lestrange? Really? He thought as he apologized to Vernon and dried him off with magic, making the man's moustache extra fluffy.

"Enough about that, though. May I say that you look very nice today. Are you going somewhere?" Thomas shook his head to clear it from the thought of Bellatrix.

Even incarcerated, Bellatrix had enough presence to make one shudder in dread with just a thought.

"Oh, my family and I were going to the cinema to watch some movie. Would you like to come with us? You can join us for dinner too. Uncle Vernon had a reservation in the city." Harriet smiled brightly at him.

A little too bright, if Thomas was at the right mind, but he was on groveling mode, so he didn't realize the mischief in Harriet's eyes until he sat beside Harriet on the theatre and the music was so foreboding it sent shivers down his spines.

A few minutes later, they were kicked out of the theatre for disturbing other peoples with Thomas' continuous screams and pleas to just let him out of there. Severus, following behind them in his capacity as a chaperone, shook his head in exasperation.

"I should have known that you're up to something when you said that you wanted to treat My Lord to his first movie experience."

Harriet snickered as she patted Thomas's back. Her husband sat with his head between his knees, all sweaty with the fear and energy he spent to scream and claw at Harriet and Severus.

"Have you ever been to the Cinema, Severus?" she asked curiously.

Both Thomas and Severus were muggle raised, but Thomas couldn't afford going to the place when he was younger, and by the time he entered Hogwarts, he cut ties with all things muggles.

"A few times, with your mother. But Horror movies weren't made like this, back then. Your mother loved Horror movies too." Severus massaged his temples in irritation.

"Really? I didn't know that. It wasn't quite that scary, in my opinion. There are scarier movies, but they weren't showing today." Harriet said with a smile as she handed a bottled water to Thomas, who finally lifted his head out of his knees.

"For a wizard, looking at the cinema is already a harrowing experience. We didn't have anything quite like this in the wizarding world. But The Ring? That is just too much for a first experience. We should have started My Lord with something in the tele. Like National Geographic, maybe?" he commented dryly.

"Don't be like that Severus, even my Inferis weren't quite that grotesque. Who in their right mind could create something like that?" Thomas shook his head as he drank the water. "it gave me chills."

They were silent as they pondered the statement.

"You have Inferis, my Lord?!" Severus almost shouted in panic.

Oh Lord, Severus thought. Lucius must hear about this. He's going to have a conniption at the unaccounted horrors hidden in wherever his Lord thought to hid them.

"What's Inferis?" Harriet asked.