clix. despondent creature
Harriet's first steps into Professor Dumbledore's office were greeted by a sudden flurry of cheerful singing.
"Oof!" she gasped as the wizard's familiar soared and dropped upon her, and Harriet's glasses would have been knocked clean off by his crimson wing had they not been Charmed into place. "It's nice to see you too, Fawkes," she told the bird sourly.
Dumbledore chuckled at the pair and gave a passing effort to remove Fawkes as he ushered Harriet to a seat, but the phoenix remained content on her shoulder, poking his beak at her pockets in search of treats. Harriet shifted under his weight, pursing her lips when she felt the prick of talons against her collarbone. Though he was careful, she'd been scratched more than once by those sharp claws before.
She settled in the chair and lowered her little plastic sack of books to the floor, where it leaned against the chair's leg. For such an innocuous item, the Muggle bag was easily the most out-of-place oddity in the room.
"Would you like something to eat, Harriet?" the Headmaster asked as he sat behind his great desk. He wrote out a note with a quick flourish of his eagle quill and sent it spiraling into the hearth. It disappeared with a burst of green flames. "Perhaps a snack? Or something to drink?"
Harriet declined, if only because the Mandrake leaf was still lodged under her tongue, and she didn't want to make a spectacle of herself trying to eat.
"Very well," he said, leaning his elbow upon the desk and making as if to steeple his fingers, remembering himself at the last moment. Harriet wondered if he did that a lot, if the phantom urge to use his right arm overcame him and if he felt sad for it not being there. "I must speak with you before we have our conversation about Professor Snape."
Harriet stroked Fawkes' breast and nervously eyed the older wizard. Was she in trouble, then? "Yes, sir?"
"I would like to know why you ran away from Grimmauld Place."
At first, Harriet didn't have an answer for him because she couldn't quite parse the words. "But I—I didn't run away, Professor! I just needed some time to myself."
"And you felt you needed to leave the house despite knowing the danger in doing so?"
There was no judgment in the Headmaster's tone, though if anyone else had spoken them, Harriet would've winced at the recrimination.
"I don't mean to chastise you, dear girl. I simply worry, as Severus has brought the contentions within the house to my notice. I will be speaking with Sirius to ensure the incessant arguing with his daughter either comes to an end or is brought within an acceptable increment. I will not hesitate to remove you if I find it is in your best interest."
Harriet jumped to her feet, shocked. "But sir!" she cried.
"I am not saying this to be cruel. I allowed myself to be foolish before and to blindly trust the good intentions of family when I placed you in a home, and I promised I would not be so complacent or negligible again."
"But they're nothing like the Dursleys. Not at all, sir!"
"Emotional neglect is still neglect, my girl." He observed her over his half-moon spectacles. "And if it is so overwhelming it has driven you from safety, then it is not something I could or even want to ignore. You deserve a pleasant, calm home. I will speak with Sirius."
Harriet subsided and sunk into her chair again, Fawkes warbling on her shoulder. She didn't want to leave Grimmauld Place. She just wanted the arguing to stop—though, she wondered if Professor Dumbledore talking with her godfather would do any good or if it would only frustrate the man. She should not have run out of the house, but Merlin! Harriet despised being cooped inside for days on end, and she resented Gaunt and Voldemort and Riddle and whoever else wished her ill and couldn't let a girl have an ordinary childhood. Or, as ordinary as one could get when they were both orphaned and magical.
Not that I'm exactly a child anymore, Harriet thought.
Professor Dumbledore ordered tea, and Harriet accepted a cup, though it still tasted of leafy sewage and she had to concentrate on keeping from making faces. Fawkes dipped his beak and seemed to find the tea to his satisfaction, so Harriet held the cup and saucer up for him while she and the Headmaster sat in companionable silence.
"Ah," the elderly wizard sighed as he savored his last sip of overly sweetened White Peony. "Now that we are watered and refreshed, let us bend our minds to the current predicament presented by our favorite Potions Master."
Seeing as Snape was the only Potions Master Harriet knew, she acceded with Professor Dumbledore's words; he was her favorite and her least favorite, most hated, despised, and reviled Potions Master.
"You asked me why I employed Severus when I am aware of his previous occupation as a Death Eater."
"Yes, sir."
"The answer is both complicated and simple, as the best answers are. The simple answer would be I have use for him." Dumbledore had the grace to give a slight, sheepish shrug when Harriet arched a brow. "Severus…is an eminently capable wizard. He is the youngest Master of his trade in decades, one of our highest cumulative N.E.W.T achievers, and a person of indomitable strength. I did not hire him for any of these reasons, however."
Dumbledore pressed a finger to his lips as he gathered his thoughts. Fawkes took the opportunity to hop from Harriet's shoulder to the arm of the chair, settling there as Harriet continued to smooth his feathers. "You are aware that there is a…connection between our Defense professor, Minister Gaunt, Tom Riddle, and Voldemort?"
"Yes," Harriet said. "You told me at the end of second year that they're the same person, and yet not."
"Correct." He lowered his hand. "They are, and are not, the same person, and as such do and do not share the same ambitions."
"That's terribly unclear, Professor."
He smiled, though it didn't quite reach his eyes. "What they desire, my girl, no matter the road they have chosen to travel or the miens they utilize, is undisputed power."
"Power?" Harriet wrinkled her nose. "But what does that have to do with Snape?"
"Professor Snape."
"Professor Snape, then."
"Because Professor Snape, like so many young men and women before and after him, saw something he wanted in Lord Voldemort's agenda." He paused to allow Harriet's disgusted grimace. "You yourself once commented you felt tempted by Voldemort's promises, and you proved strong enough to resist. Should you not have compassion for those weaker than yourself?"
Harriet opened her mouth—and closed it, twice, unsure. "I—I want to say yes, Professor, but he…he's a Death Eater."
"It's a difficult issue, yes. The world is not divided into halves that are true and untrue, good and evil, or right and wrong. I have known Dark wizards who made their decisions because they were cruel and violent; I have known those who folded to Voldemort's lot because they were frightened or vulnerable. I won't defend Severus' choices when he was younger; I only have evidence of his character in the present and knowledge of what he has done in reparation." Dumbledore exhaled, low and sad. "I hired Professor Snape despite his past because he acts upon his former allegiances to impart critical information against Voldemort and his iterations—at great peril to himself, might I add."
Pausing, Harriet furrowed her brow and glanced at Fawkes, who watched her with his sharp, beady eyes. "He's…a spy? You hired him because he's a spy against Voldemort?"
"Simply put, yes. He turned against Voldemort before the war ended and has continued surveillance in opposition to similar parties in the years since."
Slytherin, Harriet realized, eyes widening. She'd always thought Snape and the Defense professor were—well, not friends, but associates or allies of some kind, Snape always shadowing Slytherin through the corridors or in the common room, doing whatever the wizard required of him. Snape was spying on him? Bloody hell.
Professor Dumbledore took advantage of Harriet's thoughtful quiet and waved his hand, one of his many cabinets popping open. A curious bowl floated through the air from the cabinet's innards, drifting over until it settled on the desk with a solid click. Harriet leaned closer to inspect it and saw the flat bowl was made of gray, inscribed stone, filled with a bizarre material. It was neither liquid nor gas but somewhere in between, like a thick, pooling mist in which Harriet saw indistinct figures and shadows moving.
"Has Nicolas ever taken you into a Pensieve before, Harriet?"
She shook her head. "No, sir."
"Oh? Surprising. Allow me to show you, then." He again waved his hand at the bowl, and Harriet slid to her feet so she could come closer, her front bathed in the otherworldly blue light exuded by the basin's mist. "This is a Pensieve. It allows one to pull thoughts and memories and musings from their mind and place them within the basin for perusal."
"Really?" Harriet asked, peering closer. "Why would someone do that?"
"It separates your perception from the moment and allows for more diversified recall. It's easier to form new perspectives or notice details you hadn't spotted before when you can physically step back from your own recollection."
Professor Dumbledore prodded the Pensieve with his wand and withdrew a glimmering silver ribbon connected to the end. He brought the ribbon to his temple, and it vanished with a flicker of light. As Harriet watched, he returned the wand to the Pensieve twice more, repeating the process, and then touched the tip of his wand to his temple and squinted, removing a silver ribbon instead of replacing it. Finally, he flicked his wand, and the ribbon detached, dropping into the Pensieve, dissolving into the white, meandering mist.
"Here is a memory of mine from 1981 I would like for you to see. I occurred not long after the deaths of your parents."
Harriet's eyes flicked from the Pensieve to the Headmaster's. She didn't have a clue what he meant for her to witness or how it would impact her thoughts on Snape, but it made her nervous. "What do I have to do, sir?"
"Touch your brow to the Pensieve's edge. The rest will be self-explanatory."
Frowning, Harriet shuffled her feet and eyed the Pensieve, then bent down toward the whirling mist. She breathed in, speculating what the mysterious substance smelled like and if it was safe to ingest—and as soon as her face came close to the basin, Harriet felt a hard jerk behind her navel. Reality suddenly bled away, and she was falling, hurtling through the air, and Harriet let out a smothered yelp when she landed.
The Headmaster's office had disappeared. Turning in place, Harriet found it'd been replaced by a courtroom—a courtroom very much like the dark, intimidating dungeon where Sirius' trial had taken place in the bowels of the Ministry. Thick gray swirls encumbered the room's edges like bits of frazzled cotton stitching up the corners, all the details gone as thin as a child's crooked drawing. A few people perched in the chairs and on the benches, the color of their plum-colored Wizengamot robes not as vibrant as Harriet remembered, their voices muffled behind white noise like the dead air between radio stations. Next to her sat a familiar face.
"Professor Dumbledore?" Harriet said, and her words came out quieter than she intended. Her breath huffed as if she had a thick cloth over her mouth. Dumbledore gave no indication that he'd heard her; instead, he was staring into the pit below, where a lone figure slouched in the prisoner's chair.
It was Snape.
Harriet almost didn't recognize him, though not because he looked terribly different than he did in the present. Given wizards didn't age quite like Muggles did, he didn't appear much younger, and he had the same, long dark hair, though his black robes had been replaced by a gray uniform, and he had the beginnings of a beard. Harriet had never seen him so…defeated, his spine bent, his head lowered toward his knees. His skinny arms twitched as if he would have put his hands over his face if they hadn't been chained to the chair. The horrors of Azkaban lay upon him like a ghastly funerary shroud.
He didn't have any of the scars around his left eye. Dumbledore still had both his hands.
As far as Harriet could tell, whatever trial had occurred was over, Dumbledore having not given her the entire memory. Perhaps that was why the room had gone so fuzzy at the edges; Dumbledore's attention had turned from what few Wizengamot members dotted the raised seating and instead focused on Snape, who emerged crisp and clear in the Pensieve's vision. When the Potions Master shifted his head, Harriet saw yellow and green bruises smeared across his wrists, hands, and cheekbones.
"It was a closed trial," said a voice in Harriet's ear. She nearly expired when she whipped around and found Dumbledore—the current Dumbledore, missing one arm and dressed in his ridiculous Muggle suit—seated on her other side. He smiled, but it fell as fast as it appeared. "Very short, and private. I provided evidence of Professor Snape's shift in allegiance, and the details were kept from the Prophet's grasp for his protection and anonymity. He was arrested and incarcerated, briefly, in the middle of November after a Death Eater by the name of Igor Karkaroff gave his name in return for amnesty."
People moved in earnest now, dispersing, but Snape was still chained, and Harriet realized the front of the room, where Madam Bones had sat at Sirius' trial, had grown less foggy. A man sat there, dark-haired, stern, adorned with a severe part and a trimmed, narrow mustache and frown lines that looked like they'd been carved into his skin with a knife. The glower he threw down at Snape's bent head could have curdled milk.
"Barty Crouch Senior," Dumbledore explained without prompting, looking at the Ministry official with an oddly blank expression, as if he'd thought of something unpleasant and meant to hide it. However, both the past and present Headmaster fidgeted with their sleeves when they glanced his way, and Harriet knew Dumbledore did the same thing when looking at Slytherin. "He used to be the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement before a bit of family drama forced his reassignment. Barty was a very zealous man, especially when given authority over the Death Eater trials in 1981. He despised Dark magic and Voldemort's followers, so much so I believe he dehumanized them. When we begin to see our enemies as lesser, as inhuman beasts unworthy of compassion or decency, we are little better than those we oppose, and such is the hubris poor Barty cannot shake."
"Even Voldemort, Professor? Is he worthy of our compassion?" Harriet asked. Crouch stood and gathered his papers, still sneering at Snape.
"Compassion? No, I couldn't say so. Voldemort has committed many monstrous acts, and yet, if he were at my mercy, I would not subject him to torture. I am a better man than that."
Harriet looked again at the healing bruises spread on Snape's thin face and scrawny hands. She watched how his fingers curled into fists when an Auror finally unbound the shackles to set him free. Past-Dumbledore stood, straightened his plum robes, and made for the steps, so Harriet and current-Dumbledore rose to follow him.
"Severus," Dumbledore said, uncertain, as he reached down to cup a hand below Snape's elbow. The Potions Master allowed the Headmaster to lever him out of the chair and yet still didn't raise his head, his posture slumped and so bizarrely out of character, Harriet stared in wordless shock as they followed the pair from the courtroom to a small, stuffy antechamber across the dim corridor. There was nothing there but an old desk and a collection of mismatched chairs, and Harriet guessed it was where Sirius must have gone after the trial to collect his possessions and sign paperwork.
Snape shook Dumbledore's hand off and slouched into the nearest seat. Harriet heard a click and glanced down, spotting the chains still hooked to the shackles on his skinny ankles. Dumbledore also saw this because he dismissed them with an angry flourish of his wand and asked in his most gentle tone, "Are you all right, Severus?"
"No," Snape croaked in reply.
"We'll get you to Poppy just as soon as we return to the castle, then—."
Snape once more shied from Dumbledore's touch like an unhappy, wild animal, and when he finally raised his chin, his expression exuded raw, poignant grief. He smelled unclean and sharply of salt, like some pale, half-dead sea creature pulled from the swelling tide, and his eyes were red-rimmed. Harriet didn't think that was from someone hitting him, and she was so startled by his savage, tearful appearance, she backed up into the real Dumbledore. He steadied her with a hand on her shoulder.
"I don't know why you bothered," Snape said. "I belong on that rock. I belong there for all that I've done."
"No."
The short, curt reply incensed the younger man into baring his crooked teeth in a painful grimace. "You should have killed me that night on the hilltop. That is what I deserve—what I want. I don't know why you bothered with—. With—! I should be dead. Please, God. I wish I was dead!"
"I said no." Dumbledore knelt and took hold of Snape's fists, squeezing tight enough to form new bruises over the old, shocking the stormy, disturbed look off Snape's haggard face. "What use would you be to anyone then? How would you fulfill your promises? Are you such a coward, Severus?"
Snape gasped and looked down, the curtain of greasy hair falling between them. Silent sobs racked his frame. Harriet stared at the despondent creature and wanted nothing more than to leave this place.
"That was cruel," she whispered, and the present-Dumbledore sadly nodded, his solemn gaze on Snape.
"Yes. Even when he was younger, Professor Snape didn't respond well to softness, and in the depths of his grief after his best friend's death, he would not hear affirmations. I had to be unkind at times for him to truly listen to me."
Snape managed a small, choked statement. "I—I am not a coward."
"Then prove it. Take the harder road and survive. Live. If not for yourself, then for Lily."
Snape shuddered and sniffed, freeing one hand to wipe at his wet face, refusing to meet Dumbledore's eyes.
"Her daughter is alive and well. Lily would want you to ensure she remains so."
A soft snort left Snape—and he jerked his ratty sleeves down, hiding his hands and the slight, glinting scar wrapped about the right one. "She does not need me. I have never done anyone any good. Beyond that, does it matter? The Dark Lord is dead."
"No, I don't think he is, Severus. I don't think he is."
And then Snape had his face in his hands, the deep baritone of his voice gone high and thready in mournful agony. "I only ever wanted to escape the future I seemed doomed to find," he said. "I only ever wanted to be better than what everyone thought I would become, and I failed. I failed, I always fucking fail. I never wanted this. Merlin, please—I cannot live with my failures. I cannot bear that my own idiocy has brought her end. Headmaster!"
"Every man must live with his mistakes. Trying to rectify them is what matters, and failure only occurs when you give up. I will not let you give up now, Severus."
The door opened—and the memory began to fade, colors streaking like water through oil paint dripping on a tilted canvas. Harriet's stomach lurched as Dumbledore gripped her arm, and they seemed to rise through the air, leaving Snape and the dim little chamber behind. Reality returned, and Harriet yelped at the sudden crick in her neck when she threw herself back into her chair. Fawkes let out a displeased chirp.
"Not an entirely pleasant experience," Professor Dumbledore said as he settled, rubbing at his own sore neck under his gray hair. The memory continued to whirl and twist within the Pensieve, not unlike one of Harriet's snakes in the terrarium, waiting to be fed. Circling and circling, a mass of coils never-ending.
Perspiration made the skin of her hands sticky, and Harriet wiped them on her thighs. She wished she hadn't looked. The torn, wretched image of a ruined man didn't mesh with her understanding of Snape, stirring like oil and water, spoiling her anger. In her heart, she knew Snape's grief hadn't been fake; she'd witnessed true malevolence in Voldemort when he stood over her mum's corpse and laughed, and Snape was nothing like him. The Potions Master carried grief with him like a calling card, and it made him mean and spiteful and so profoundly, pathetically miserable.
He had not meant what he did, and still Harriet wanted to be mad, to rage against all semblance of empathy, but she also grew tired of hating him. For how long would she have to carry the grudges of dead people?
"I don't think he'll like that you showed me that, Professor."
"No, he wouldn't," Dumbledore agreed with a sigh. "He would prefer you go on believing him cold and impervious and incapable of remorse, but I think it's important you better understand the character of Severus Snape. He has loved and he has lost, and he has endeavored on to the best of his ability. There may come a time when he must do or say things that bring you to question his allegiance, and I would have you remember this: I trust Professor Snape. I believe you should as well."
"I don't know if I can. I don't know if I want to—I'm very confused still, Headmaster. I'm sorry."
She remembered Snape standing between herself and the werewolf. She remembered the horrible, garish red of the Dark Mark emblazoned on his pale flesh.
"She does not need me. I have never done anyone any good."
But that wasn't true, not in Harriet's reckoning. Snape had saved her life—had saved the lives of her friends, had cared for the House of Slytherin while their inattentive Head ignored them in favor of his own agenda. He'd inadvertently gotten her parents killed. He was a prickly bastard, but Merlin did it hurt to remember him hunched over, begging to die.
Harriet didn't think her mum would have wanted that.
Dumbledore only nodded at her admission. "There's nothing to be sorry for, Harriet. I only ask you to keep an open mind. Allow Professor Snape to prove himself, for good or for ill, through his actions, and form your own opinion."
Fawkes clicked his beak and leaned closer, Harriet's fingers passing once more over his gleaming wing, feeling the fire that lived within his chest. She breathed in as she looked toward the window, the summer disproportionate in its yellow, cheerful glow, and she thought about Snape and Voldemort and the monster who resided even now in the dungeons, red-eyed and evil despite the youthful beauty of his face. The phoenix trilled.
"I will, Professor. I promise."
A/N:
Dumbledore: *talks*
Harriet: "I'm taking your thesaurus away."
Dumbledore: "That makes me disconsolate and bereaved."
