A/N: As always, many thanks to SadSnail for betaing and encouragement!
The House has hundreds of doors. They appear and disappear at random, and the rooms they open to today are not the same that were there yesterday. The room with the veil stays around, and Sirius takes time to locate it every morning after he wakes up in a bedroom he claimed as his back in the first days. His room is sparse: just a bed, a table and a chair, and an empty wardrobe. He hasn't accumulated much at all over the years. There's a jar of coins that randomly pop up around the house, an ornate knife he nicked from an armoury that appears once a year or so, and the journal he keeps infrequently in an attempt to avoid going barmy. Well, barmier.
It's much more than he had in Azkaban, and the screeching portrait of his mother isn't there to bring back the worst childhood memories, but it's still another big house he's trapped in. Some rooms are reminiscent of Grimmauld Place, and all of them share the general air of neglect, the ever-present musty smell of the days long gone that lingers no matter how much Sirius scrubs every surface.
He does that a lot now, fighting off the encroaching ash-like dust, thick and greasy, from his room every day. The magic is powerless against it, not that it's much use for anything else here. It's thankless work, but the knuckles cracking and bleeding around the coarse, cold rag feel satisfying, as if he achieved something, moved forward. It's just a nice bit of self-delusion, of course. He isn't going anywhere.
He never tried making Grimmauld Place liveable, drinking himself to a stupor between the Order meetings, but the booze around here tastes like dirty water in his pile and fails to produce even a faint shadow of buzz, so here he is, trying to prove that he can do better than Kreacher.
The food is similarly flavourless, both anything he can magic and things he finds around the house from time to time. Usually he just spells a quick sandwich, because, unlike many things in this house, the hunger doesn't disappear. He tested. Whenever it gets too much, he goes to hunt crows in the attic. They taste rubbery but real when cooked over fire—or eaten raw in his dog form—even if they give him horrible indigestion. He refuses to try the rats he's spotted in the cellar.
Most of the rooms face a train station. The occasional train passing by only ever runs east, and never stops. Sirius hasn't been able to work out a schedule—sometimes it's two or three in a row, and sometimes the station stays empty for months—but time is wonky here. Based on the seasons, he's been here for five years so far. In reality, if such a word is even applicable still, it might've been a year or a decade. Daylight might last for weeks, or the sun might come up halfway and decide that it just isn't feeling it. Springs fly by shorter and shorter, and the last winter dragged for ages, drafts and snow seeping through the windows that never opened.
No doors ever lead outside, to the tracks, but a courtyard can be found every once in a while when he's especially lucky. Like everything else here, it's dilapidated, with its crumbling stone lions and overgrown elderberry bushes. Sirius gorged himself on the berries the first time he stumbled upon it and was violently sick for days. Perhaps this year he can experiment with jams.
He's not completely alone in the house. There's Tom, a sixteen-year-old in a Slytherin uniform with an old-fashioned haircut, whom he occasionally meets in the library. The kid just walked in one day on his third year here as Sirius was reading Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Won and gave him one hell of a shock. Sirius might have cried actual tears of joy and relief to see a fellow human being. They still play a game of cards or chess every time their paths cross, even though Tom turned out to be a nasty little psychopath who attempts to kill him in increasingly creative ways at every meeting.
It's not like it sticks.
The kid's poker game is unrivalled, which is much more irritating. Sirius has always been the best at poker, with Peter being a close second, a fact that was surprising then and explained a lot in hindsight. In contrast, Tom's abysmal at chess, even against Sirius who has never been particularly good, and it's always funny to see how losing throws him into unbridled rage.
Then there's Sybil Trelawney. Sometimes she would appear in a nightgown or crumpled day clothes, sleepwalking through the corridors, pushing at random doors with her eyes open and unseeing. It's almost impossible to wake her up, and the one time he managed that, she screamed and screamed and screamed like a bloody banshee until he dragged her into a room with a bed and put her there. He fell asleep next to her and woke up in his own bed, and the door to Trelawney's room disappeared together with the whole floor.
The first time a train stops, he's in the music room. The orchestra's worth of instruments is playing Sibelius, although not a piece he can recognise. It brings back the few nice memories he has of his father, listening to the old-fashioned gramophone with Regulus in his study. The past hasn't faded in his mind—if anything, it's clearer than ever now that the after-effects of the Dementors' exposure eased up—but the blade of it is dull.
The train stops, and Dumbledore walks out, in his lilac robes, looking much the same as Sirius remembers him. Sirius bangs at the window, but Dumbledore doesn't see him, flicking a lighter with his blackened hand to light a cigarette instead.
Sirius doesn't allow himself a moment to be surprised at such an unexpected habit, too busy to try and open the window he knows full well will remain shut.
Except this time it doesn't, and Sirius laughs in relief, leaning out of the frame as far as he can.
"Headmaster!" he calls. "Albus!"
The violins swell triumphantly in his ears.
Dumbledore looks up and gives him a startled smile.
"Glad to see you in good health, Sirius," he says, eyes twinkling over a mouthful of smoke. Lucky bastard. Sirius would kill for a fag right now.
"Can you come up?" he asks excitedly. "Is there a door? I can't find a way to go down to the tracks, but if you—"
"I'm afraid it's just a short stop for me. The train isn't waiting for long."
"Then I'll jump down to you." He made a move to climb onto the windowsill. It seems to be the third floor today, but it's well worth the risk.
"Oh no, dear boy, don't you do it on my account. Your train hasn't come yet."
With that, Dumbledore squishes the stub with his heeled shoe and jumps onto the step of the already moving train with the agility of a much younger man.
Sirius watches the train disappear into the distance and throws the window shut, panes rattling. The nearest cello starts playing some funeral dirge, and he kicks it. The cello flies across the floor, unscratched, victorious over his toe that hurts as if under Cruciatus.
When he tries the window again, it stays stubbornly closed.
Life goes on, such as it is. He scrubs his floors, hunts, reads books he's never heard of—fiction, to peek into the lives of others since he never got to live out his—and plays poker with Tom.
"Finally kicked it, sssenile old bugger," the boy crows when Sirius tells him about Dumbledore, eyes alight with malicious joy. His accent slips into some version of lispy Cockney, as it does sometimes when another convoluted chess strategy makes him lose.
"Have you ever met anyone else here?"
A shadow crosses Tom's face. "I haven't."
"Liar." Sirius grins.
Tom sends a cutting curse at his throat.
The trains run more frequently now, rattling the floors and spooking the crows with their piercing whistles. Two years pass since Dumbledore stopped by, although time keeps growing more erratic. It's almost summer, but the nights grow longer, and some days the sun decides not to come up at all. On one of these long nights, he opens a door that yesterday led to a large hall with statues and finds Severus Snape bleeding out from his neck on a dirty wooden floor. Well. Quite a downgrade from a marble Adonis that Sirius hoped to admire more closely today.
The man looks quite dead, but when Sirius comes closer and pokes him with his boot, he opens his eyes.
"Ma was right about Hell, after all," Snape rasps, making his gnarly wound push out more blood. Are those fang marks? Has a werewolf finally done Snivellus in? He hopes it wasn't Remus; his friend has enough self-recrimination issues as it is.
He never felt guilty for the Prank, and refuses to do so now, even if the room looks disturbingly like the Shrieking Shack. On some instinctive level, Sirius knows that if he walks out and closes this door, he will never find it again.
Instead, he takes Snape by his feet and drags him into the corridor, leaving a bloody trail behind.
His healing spells do nothing, but a coagulant potion from a first aid kit he finds in Snape's robe pocket stops most of the bleeding. He pours a blood replenisher into Snape's throat, and a vial labelled 'Antivenim', figuring that it wouldn't hurt, then cleans and dresses the wound. He's got plenty of supplies; Snape stocked his kit like a paranoid hoarder.
Levitating charms are unreliable at best here, so Sirius conjures a garden cart and heaps Snape onto it. Getting it down to his own floor is tricky, but Sirius manages it with grunts and curses. For such a scrawny man, Snape is surprisingly heavy.
The room across the hall is a bedroom much like Sirius's own, and he unloads Snape onto the pastel bedding. He checks the man for other injuries, but there are none, at least not any fresh ones. His chest is a patchwork of yellowish bruises over protruding ribs. On his way back, he put a chair to the door to keep it open and vanishes withered camellias from a vase. It won't be good for Snape to get any ideas about the extent of his hospitality.
The night lasts for another week. Trains keep Sirius awake and jittery, as does his unwanted roommate. Snape is still unconscious; his fever rises and breaks. Sirius changes his dressing, struggles to concentrate on the dense Latin of Ovid's Medea, turns into a dog to chase some crows. There are more of them than usual, but they evade his snares and his jaws.
He thinks about Harry, the precious few moments they had. He doesn't think about James.
Finally, the sky lightens, the crisp grey of pre-dawn. Sirius looks around and notices the thick layer of grime and dust for the first time. He has shirked his duties.
He's mopped Snape's blood from the corridor above and is battling a particularly stubborn stain that has eaten into the floorboards while he wasn't looking when he hears a sandpapered voice behind him.
"What are you doing?"
He straightens to meet Snape's incredulous gaze. "I realise that the concept of hygiene is alien to you, but it's called cleaning. Something normal people do in their houses."
"Did you even know what a mop was in your life? I thought Your Highness relied on house elves for prosaic matters like this."
"Spare me the hypocritical lecture when you spent most of your life in Hogwarts and did it too. Could've asked one of them to wash your hair, if you yourself are incapable. They'd be delighted to please."
"You bloody—" Snape steps forward but sways, putting his hand against the wall to regain his balance. "I knew I'd be punished for my sins, but an afterlife with you seems like a cosmic joke too cruel even for my wretched fate."
Sirius scowls at Snape's ungratefulness and the a-word.
"I don't know what I expected saving your sorry arse," he says. "Well, it's a big house, Snivellus. Get lost."
With that, he goes back to scrubbing.
Naturally, Snape, contrary bastard that he is, doesn't listen. He doesn't even change the rooms, and pops us like a bad knut all over the house, although he mostly spends his days holed up in the library. Sirius shudders to think what dastardly plots Snape might come up with if he joins forces with Tom, but the kid is making himself scarce these days.
"Hiya, nerd," Sirius greets Snape who predictably has his long nose in a musty tome—and is even scribbling notes on a parchment—when Sirius comes to find a new book to read, a juicy-looking chicken leg in his hand. He goes to glance over Snape's shoulder. Predictably, it's some boring magical theory.
"Caveman." Snape looks at the chicken in disgust.
"Don't go appointing yourself a librarian here. There are no rules, and that's how I like it."
Snape purses his lips, still staring at the chicken. He has discarded his bandages, and his unblemished Adam's apple jumps as he swallows. Right, his rations, neatly packed and shrunk in his other pocket, must have dried up already. Sirius tried them when Snape was unconscious, but they tasted as flavourless and textureless as everything else here.
He makes a show of biting into the meat with appetite, grease running down his fingers. Snape looks downright murderous now.
"Just conjure your food," Sirius says after smacking his lips obnoxiously.
"Principal Exceptions to Gamp's Law state that food with nutritional value over zero cannot be conjured out of nothing," Snape says primly.
"Well, Principal Exceptions to Your Mum's—"
The chicken vanishes from his hand, and a fist flies to his jaw. They tumble onto the floor, and it's so much more satisfying than fighting off Tom's murder attempts. Unfortunately, the kid is a germaphobe who detests skin contact, but there's nothing like good old honest physical violence.
Snape must have fully recovered as he holds himself admirably. He always makes sure to speak posh and act proper but fights like a street rat, and Sirius doesn't pull any punches either. Afterwards, they sit on the dusty floor, panting heavily, and Sirius licks his split lip gingerly. It's fine, because Snape is going to have a nice shiner, so he counts himself as a winner.
"You're a disgusting brute," Snape says, examining the collar of his robe where Sirius's fingers had left greasy stains, but the heat is gone from his voice.
Sirius hums happily in agreement.
Snape sniffs his collar and frowns. The tip of a pink tongue darts out and is back just as fast.
"It's tasteless," he says.
"Get used to it," says Sirius.
He summons the pack of Muggle cigarettes he's stolen from Snape's bottomless pockets. It's rather like smoking straw, but it's better than nothing.
"Those are mine," Snape says, outraged.
"We're sharing in this house," Sirius admonishes.
Snape flips him off and grabs the cigarettes to light one as well. His wince at the first drag is almost comical.
In a show of goodwill, he takes Snape to hunt. Snape looks more prissy than he has any right to be at the idea of eating a crow, although he certainly doesn't refuse, and is much better at the whole plucking and cooking business. Spending his life dissecting and boiling revolting ingredients is finally yielding some use.
Having been plied with food, Snape is in a good mood, or what passes as a good mood for greasy grumpy gits, so Sirius decides he's got no more excuses to avoid the question.
"How's Harry been?" he asks as they banish the plates from the brand new dining room they found to wherever plates go in this house.
The open expression on Snape's face shutters, and a blank mask replaces it. The bastard is probably occluding.
"He was alive when I—when I died," he says tersely. Before Sirius can breathe out in relief, he adds, "But not for long."
"Was there a battle?" Sirius asks. "Harry is strong, he'll find a way to survive."
"Not from this." Snape gets up to pace along the table.
"You've never believed in Harry," Sirius spats. "Always bullied him to get back at James, like the bitter manchild you are."
"If there's a manchild here, it certainly isn't me." Snape whirls to face him. "And it doesn't matter what I believed. Potter has a piece of the Dark Lord's soul in him, and he has to die so that the Dark Lord can be defeated."
"What? That's nonsense. Harry is the best kid I ever… How in Merlin's name did you come to this asi-fucking-nine conclusion?"
"Albus informed me before his death."
"And since when had Dumbledore decided that?"
"Since 1993."
"Before I even… I should have killed the bastard when he stopped by."
"Don't worry, I already did that."
With that, Snape stalks out of the room, robe billowing.
Snape avoids him, or at least he is suddenly not there to provide acidic commentary on everything Sirius does, which should have made Sirius happy but only makes his skin itch. After a few days, he scouts the house and opens doors at random until he finds Snape in a dark cinema, a screen projecting a black and white Muggle film. How unfair; the house never showed him any movies.
He flops onto the seat next to Snape, throwing his arm onto the backseat behind him.
"How did you kill Albus?" he asks.
"The Killing Curse." Snape doesn't turn to face him, but his posture is rigid.
"His arm was all blackened."
"That one was his own foolishness."
"Why did you kill him?"
"Aren't you going to accuse me of being a traitor, a duplicitous Death Eater dirtbag, a viper your Headmaster nursed on his bosom?"
"You're doing it well enough on your own. Keep going. The alliteration was a nice touch, but maybe less about Albus's bosom next time. I'm sure the man could get it back in the day when he was fighting Grindelwald, but thinking about it just feels wrong."
Snape's lips actually quirk with a smile. It's not a pleasant one. "You have no idea."
"So why?"
"He asked me."
Is the man allergic to straight answers?
"Asked you what? Why do you hate fun and rainbows and puppies?"
"Asked me to kill him, you idiotic mutt!"
"Ah. That."
They watch a reporter investigating the death of a gambling professor in Monte Carlo. The acting is bad, and the plot predictable—that fiancée is clearly up to no good—but the hero is doing it for him. Too much of an airheaded pretty boy for his taste, but what a juicy arse.
"I heard Muggles kiss in the cinema, when the lights are out," he says. "Is it true?"
"How should I know?" Snape says through set teeth. "I'm not a Muggle."
Sirius laughs and leans in for a kiss. What's the worst Snape can do, kill him?
For a moment, Snape's lips are motionless under his, but just when Sirius is ready to move away, conceding defeat, he responds in kind. Snape kisses just like he fights, bruising, without a hint of the restraint he works so hard to maintain.
They make out until the credits roll, and then Snape is out of the door in the blink of an eye. Sirius doesn't follow him; he knows when to tactically back out. Besides, he isn't sure himself where he wants things to go. He's never consciously thought about kissing Snape before, give or take a few confusing dreams back at Hogwarts that mostly left him disgusted at his subconscious. What would James think of it? Well, James is dead, and so is he. If that isn't reason enough for doing whatever the hell he wants, he doesn't know what is.
Kissing Snape was a spur-of-a-moment decision, but a successful one. Sirius puts his finger to his lips and watches a new film play out on the screen. It's a musical.
The first time they fuck, it's over embarrassingly quickly. For all Sirius used to mock Snape for being a virgin, the man must have got more experience than him, as Sirius's own sex life has been basically non-existent since 1981. There were a few anonymous encounters that summer abroad after his daring escape on Buckbeak's back, but it's been decades since he was with someone whose name he knew, and who knew his.
Snape seems to know what he wants and how to get it. After the first few times when they are too wound up to do more than just slide their cocks against each other, hot and heavy, Snape pins him under and rides him, still half-clothed, dark eyes boring into his the entire time. Perhaps that intense stare is meant to convey some message, but Sirius is too busy trying not to come to think about it.
They still fight a lot, as a matter of habit and because contrary to Sirius's old theory Snape remains an ornery bastard even when he's getting some on the regular. Baiting Snape has always been his favourite sport, after all. James used to do it because he was jealous of Lily, but Sirius always enjoyed the game itself, the art of putting pink spots of rage on those pale cheeks. The reasons he does it now might have changed, but the principle still stands. None of these fights are about anything that matters, except for the one he doesn't intend as a fight when he starts it.
They are in Sirius's bed, and Snape is idly leafing through the memoirs of Lord Byron—damn, those 19th-century aristocrats were spicy—and Sirius is tracing a shaving cut on his jaw. There are no mirrors in the house, at least not the ones that will deign to show you your reflection, but Snape is always giving it his best try. Sirius himself resigned himself to facial hair long ago, after a particularly disastrous nip at his jugular.
"How's Remus been?" he asks, another question he's been avoiding so far.
Snape shuts the book and moves away from his hand.
"Last time I heard of him, he was running away from his pregnant wife," he says acidly. "Irresponsible coward."
"Don't call Remus that," Sirius says reflexively, although the truth is, he's not surprised. He'd trust Remus to have his back in a battle, but whenever things got too serious on a personal front, Remus's first instinct was to do a runner. It seems some things didn't change. "Wife?"
"Tonks. She's had a baby last month. A boy, I heard."
"That's… fast." He knew his cousin was interested, but didn't think Remus was. And according to Snape, it's been only two years in the real world.
"Your wolf has moved on," Snape says, throwing the book on the table.
Oh. So that's what it's about.
"Despite whatever rumours I know were going around at the time, Remus and I were never an item."
"It's not any of my business." Snape scowls, as if he's not the one throwing a jealous fit here. Then, "He couldn't take his eyes off you in Hogwarts."
"It wasn't like that."
"Wasn't it?"
"Well, if it were, I was too busy being unrequitedly in love with James to notice." Sirius laughs, because he can finally laugh about it now.
Snape sits up and starts putting on his trousers.
"It was me who told the Dark Lord about the prophecy," he says in a clipped voice, and Sirius can feel his sneer even when his back turned. "I was the reason they had to go into hiding and find a Secret Keeper, why they were murdered."
He stands up and shrugs on his robe, grabs the rest of his clothes and walks out of the room. It's likely meant as another dramatic stalk-off, but he hasn't got his shoes on, so the patting of his bare feet undermines the effect.
Sirius just lies there for a moment, oddly empty and weightless, staring at the pair of black shoes lined up neatly on the floor. Finally he gets up, grabs them and walks into the corridor to hurl them at Snape's door.
"Fuck you, you miserable, pathetic fucker!" he yells.
This time, they both avoid each other. Sirius knows Snape still lives in his room, but he never sees him anymore, and nor does he particularly want to. It feels like the weather should reflect his gloomy mood, but the summer outside is the cheeriest one yet, with the sun staying high in the cloudless sky for days. The house must surely be mocking him.
His throat is parched for a real drink. He's glad he doesn't have it.
He doesn't go to the library or the cinema, but the music room must pity him enough to pop back up for the first time since Dumbledore. It still doesn't trust him with live instruments, it seems, but there's a record player with a bunch of records. Sirius casts Sonorus on it, so the entire house is shaking to the disco beat. He hopes Snape hates it.
Snape is in the attic, lying robeless, with his sleeves rolled up, greasy hair fanned across the dirty floor. The Dark Mark is stark on his milky white skin. The crows circle overhead, and he shoots at them with his wand. Truly a level of drama one can only find in particularly angsty teenage boys, ageing actresses or one Snivellus Snape. Sirius has come here to have a good fight, throw a hex or two, but now that he's there, he can only stare.
"There's a lot of things I could say to you, but I'm sure your self-loathing got there first," he tells Snape.
"Undoubtedly." Snape still isn't looking at him.
"Do you regret it? The prophecy?"
"Every single day."
"Because of Lily. That's why you switched sides, right?"
"Initially."
"Do you regret doing it to James?"
"No."
Sirius leaves.
The courtyard is utterly still in the midday summer haze, no breeze or buzzing of a bee, no rustle of small animals. The absence of life is particularly glaring to his dog senses. Sirius chases his tail among the elderberry bushes, now covered in white, sharp-smelling flowers, and, once he's sufficiently exhausted himself, lies next to the sleeping stone lion.
Snape walks in and sits on the bench, back as straight and rigid as the columns around them. Sirius is unsure if he knows he's here at all until Snape speaks.
"I'm sorry I ruined our… situationship with uncomfortable truths."
Sirius turns back and sits next to him.
"Situationship?"
"An arrangement of convenience, if you will. I do realise you wouldn't be doing this with me if I wasn't literally the only other person you're in contact with, and the same is true for me."
Sirius stares at him.
"Why are you trying to feed me this load of hippogriff shit?" He knows what this ugly feeling in his chest really is, no matter how unhappy he might be about it. And Snape wouldn't self-sabotage so desperately if there wasn't anything to sabotage.
"I'm, ah—how did you put it? A miserable, pathetic fucker." Snape offers solicitously.
"That you are."
Snape's furtive hand finds his.
"And for your information, you're not the only person here," Sirius adds. "There's also Tom."
"Tom?"
"We play poker in the library."
"I'm in the library all the time, and haven't seen anyone other than you grabbing precious volumes with your dirty hands."
"That's not what you said about my hands that last time in the stacks. And Tom is perfectly real. You probably just spooked him with your glare."
"I'm sure that's the reason we've never met." Snape doesn't believe him, but that's alright.
They make love that night. He wants to take it slow, to make it meaningful, but Snape's hungry for him, urging him on with his legs around his hips and his nails clawing at his back, and Sirius is powerless not to give in. Perhaps it can be just as meaningful like that. After all, slow has never been them.
"We can bring in some of that elderberry inside," Snape says as Sirius lies on his bony clavicle after. "Proper cuttings will have to wait for spring, of course, and we'll need bigger pots, but I believe it's doable."
"To liven up the place."
"To closer examine its properties. Its value as a decoration is entirely secondary."
Sirius laughs, and Snape brings him even closer.
When he wakes up at dawn, Snape's side of the bed is cold, and the bathroom is empty. It's Snape's bedroom, so he shouldn't be anywhere else. Perhaps he simply couldn't sleep and went to the library, Sirius tells himself, even as the alarm bells in his head are going off. He hasn't realised how attuned he became to Snape's presence in the house until now, when he can't feel it anymore.
Snape's not in the library, or the cinema, or the courtyard, or the attic. He's not in any of the hundred rooms Sirius has checked.
"Snape! Severus! Come out, you bastard!"
He doesn't get an answer.
He finds the one room he's neglected since Snape arrived, but the veil is just a piece of fabric, as always.
The days drag by. It's like the night when Peter escaped all over again, only a thousand times worse, because it feels final. Why is it that every time he has a hope of happiness within his reach, fate yanks it from him? Was this entire thing a mocking punishment devised by some deity who is laughing at him right now, unseen in these blasted halls? He's not a particularly good man, he can admit that. But hasn't he served his time? Why couldn't he have this one thing, one good thing?
Perhaps Snape found a way to the other parts of the house and ran from him there like the coward he is. After all, he's never met Tom anywhere other than the library, but the kid has to live somewhere. But even if he thinks it, lying in Snape's bed and allowing the grime around him to accumulate, he knows it's not true. Snape is many things, but a coward is not one of them, no matter what Sirius might have insinuated in the past. He pushes, but he doesn't run. It was the house taking him away, because he was making Sirius insufficiently miserable for its taste.
"Well, fuck you too, you stupid pile of bricks!" he shouts into the air.
He doesn't get an answer to that either.
After a week of feeling sorry for himself, Sirius drags himself into the library to find some tragedy to read. The Greeks knew how to make them back in the day. Everybody's dead, and the hero is gouging his eyes out so he doesn't have to see what an immense fuckup he is.
There indeed might be some eye-gouging on the menu, because Tom is here for a change, looking as morose as Sirius feels.
"What a pitiful picture you make," he tells Sirius, eyeing his tangled beard in disgust. A lock from his own usually perfect coiffure falls onto his forehead, which for Tom probably means extreme mental anguish.
"You know your way around a compliment, kiddo."
Tom sneers at the nickname and puts a large bottle of some blood-red liquid on the table.
"Want to be my test subject?" he asks.
Sirius conjures a glass and pours it full.
"Cheers," he says and pours it down his throat.
It turns out to be elderberry wine, tart and viscous and strong enough to down a dragon. He drinks until it does that to him.
The hangover is vicious, but at least in between puking his guts out and feeling like his head was given to Bella as a spell dummy, he doesn't have much capacity for agonising due to other, less physical reasons.
He takes a cold shower. The urge to go back to the library and find Tom with his bottle is overwhelming, but he's not going to do that to himself. Not again. Instead, he takes Snape's journal and starts reading from a random page. It's a summary of Rowena Rawenclaw's treatise on sympatic curses, believed to be lost in the Great Hogwarts Fire of 1512. Sirius couldn't care less about sympatic curses, but he can't bear putting the journal away, and slips it into his pocket as the train whistles outside. Snape's room doesn't face the train station, so he ventures into the corridor to look out of the window in his own room, which does.
He opens the door and comes face to face with Snape. He's wearing a St Mungo's hospital robe, and his throat is bandaged again. The shadows under eyes can rival a Dementor's.
Sirius stares at him.
"You look like shit," he says, and laughs hysterically.
"At least I have a good reason," Snape says, his voice raspy and tight. "Why are you looking like that?"
"Tom's wine."
"Tom's—"
"Don't get all jealous on me again. Tom's sixteen and in all likelihood a serial killer. I prefer my murderers older and with some moral compass."
Snape swipes his hand over his face.
"For Merlin's sake, I leave for less than two days, and you—"
"It's been nine days."
Sirius desperately yearns for Snape to touch him, but he only looks, his eyes bottomless and uncertain.
"I need you to follow me," Snape says with an odd intensity, although maybe it's just painful for him to speak. "Can you do that?"
There's an unfamiliar wand in his hand that looks suspiciously like the Headmaster's, and a thread of red yarn falls from its tip to the floor, disappearing into the corridor.
"Severus? What's—"
"Trust me, Sirius. Please."
Sirius searches his face. Perhaps it's foolish, but once he starts trusting someone, that trust is unconditional. He thought he knew better by now, but it turns out that he doesn't.
"Yes. Of course."
In two long strides, Snape is next to him, placing a short, desperate kiss on his mouth. Snape's lips are chapped and burning. Sirius wants to deepen it, but Snape steps away and turns around.
"Just follow me."
The wand leads them through countless corridors and halls, some familiar, some strange. The music room plays madrigals when they pass. Funny how he never noticed it had another door. Snape is always one step ahead, and not once does he look back. Sirius wants to say something, break the awful silence, but Snape's back is the stiffest he has ever seen it, so he stays quiet.
The thread ends in the room with a veil. Sirius opens his mouth to tell Snape that it doesn't work anymore, but Snape draws it aside, and there's a different, half-forgotten hall on the other side. People are running in their direction, and he can recognise Harry's face. He stands taller and his shoulders are broader, a young man instead of the boy Sirius remembers.
He stumbles at the plinth as he sees him, and Snape's head jerks but still doesn't turn back. He passes through the veil, and Sirius follows him. Finally, he grasps Snape's hand and entwines their fingers together.
Behind them, the veil is just a piece of fabric again.
Thanks for reading!