Lines that Snape annotates into an article at the end are from 'The Ultracheese," by Alex Turner
In the morning, there was tea and the papers. A new issue ofThe Practical PotioneerorTransfiguration upped his subscriptions- now he gotDust & Mildew, Obscurus was constantly new research on Wolfsbane, as a result of the post-war heightened demand- today there was an article about the efficacy of Glimmering Essence in healing traumatic injuries. He wouldn't finish them at the table but they gave him something to do later when the business of the day was done and burying one's nose in something was a way to discourage conversation with the new Defense teacher, who sat beside him.
It didn't always work on Longbottom.
"No longer getting the prophet?"
Severus ignored him.
A bit of paper pushed into his field of vision, almost touching his plate. "You can have a look at mine. The subscription fees just hiked, smarter to share."
Severus glanced up at the hall. Too many witnesses. "I don't read gossip rags. If you so much as breathe in the general direction of my personal space again, Longbottom, it's your eyebrows I'll burn next time." He reached for his wand under the table.
"Next ti- ARGH!"
The paper curled and burned in blue flames.
Then there were classes. The older ones were more interesting than the younger ones. Sometimes there was batch brewing- that was soon, they were just coming up to the Christmas holidays. There was honest grading, there was mood grading. Sometimes it was a great distraction to pick apart every sentence in an essay and eviscerate them with corrections in the margins. Sometimes it bored him so horribly to read anything at all of what they'd written and he'd fail them all without a skim. Either way they failed, actually.
Then there was his own profit brewing. He'd gotten the idea many years before, when he'd been making Wolfsbane for Lupin but never had time to act on it until after the war. He made a good bit of money that way- brewing for werewolves. A few shops had sent him requests to make some for their stores, but he preferred to keep all the profit and the people he sold to said his batches were better. He didn't know what he'd do with the money, but it felt good to have it anyway.
Then there was the thinking about dying.
He got tired of himself if he ruminated on it. He hated himself for wanting to do it, he hated himself for not doing it. If he was going to think about it so much, it would be better just to do it, and if he wasn't going to do it, it would be better just to put it out of his mind- but it was difficult, giving up a comfort, and he tried not to do anything very difficult.
Then there was lunch. Then maybe more classes or more grading or reorganizing the lab or the cupboards, then there was dinner.
Then a shower, then the water in his thoughts and his hair around his face under the stream.
He didn't write in the notebook anymore. He only read, sometimes a volume, sometimes the articles from the morning, if there were any left by then. Never a novel. Never a letter.
Then he set whatever he was reading beside him on the bedside table. Then he reached into the little inset drawer- it was always sort of jammed so he had to wiggle it (there were nights where the task was inexplicably difficult and for a split second he was filled with a dire, choking need for the relief of what was inside) and he pulled out the little vial of concentrated belladonna (very purple, but a dark purple that made it seem black) and, until now, decided not to kill himself.
Sometimes he gave a thought to how fast and casual it would be (decork, toss, swallow, done) and it tipped him, one way, closer to the 10 seconds it would take, one day. But then he might fall clearly into a thought about what would happen afterward, how a reporter might phrase it. Potions Master's last potion, something stupid like that, something that would actually be funny to a risible prat. Then: he'd better wait till the castle was empty.
Then, until now, until the next time and the next moment, he simply didn't do it and went to sleep instead.
Minerva called him to her office just after the carriages pulled Christmasing students from the station. She really didn't seem to know how to give him a moment's peace.
"Severus, it's been a year since I allowed you to use the Pensieve."
"And?"
He could see her angling. She was very annoyed with him these days but chose her words carefully anyway, always.
"It's time to return it."
"Why?"
"I am your Headmistress, Severus. I do not have to explain why I need a magical artifact that belongs to the castle which I allowed you to use, without question, for six years now."
"I still… need it." He bit out his words.
"Oh well then, keep it as long as you like," she said, moving in her chair so that she was slightly turned to the wall of portraits.
He ground his teeth together. He was being cornered. "I still have memories stored and I'm not prepared, at the moment, to empty it."
"They're your memories, Severus. Why would you need to be prepared to have them restored to where they rightly belong- in that head of yours?" She was looking at her hands. It was very annoying. "Besides, you must have been rotating them, they cannot all be that foreign to you."
"What do you mean, 'rotating'?"
"Rotating what you store, to protect the memories, to protect the Pensieve. Please tell me you've been doing that."
"I haven't and there's no evidence that that's necessary."
"There could hardly be evidence with only one known Pensieve lying around to experiment with!" She sounded alarmed.
"How much time can you give me?" He was working hard to keep his voice under hers.
"Severus, you mean to tell me you've separated yourself from your memories for over six years without pause? The same memories?"
Regrettably, he hadn't exactly managed that- they wouldn't all fit. "Justtell me how much time I have. And you can stop avoiding my gaze, I assure you I have less than zero interest in reading your thoughts." Because they were already soobvious.
"If you don't want me to avoid eye contact then maybe you should control your Legilimens!"
His anger peaked for a moment and it was only then that he felt her Occlusion. Strange. "How much time can I have?"
She looked at him then, narrowing her eyes. "72 hours."
He snapped. "If I were any other staff member, you'd pay me the courtesy of a little more notice than that."
"If you were any other staff member I wouldn't have lent you the Pensieve in the first place!"
"Minerva." Albus Dumbledore suddenly spoke from his portrait. Neither of them were surprised, or embarrassed- Dumbledore had a knack for being present for their arguments and interrupting them. "Can I have a moment with Severus?"
She pursed her lips, her chest visibly rising from a deep inhalation, apparently to give her strength to carry on. "Of course," she said to Dumbledore. She addressed Severus again. "Severus. 72 hours. I know you're hard pressed to believe anything I say, but I simply cannot give you more time." She was worried.
"Has the ministry asked for it?"
She shifted her gaze again. "I'm not at liberty to say." She looked between him and Dumbledore's portrait with displeasure and disappeared behind the door- it was as if the office had changed to fit her frame. It never changed for him when he was headmaster.
Severus said without looking at him, "She can't stand us having secrets." Then he looked.
Dumbledore was smiling. It had always looked cheeky when he was alive but the portrait couldn't get it quite right. "We don't have many of those anymore."
"Do try not to enlighten her."
Dumbledore wrinkled his brow, and that at least looked how he remembered it. "I was under the impression you'd become friends."
"We were approaching that."
"Your arrangement with Harry soured her," Dumbledore finished. Severus was momentarily speechless- he'd insisted Dumbledore call it that, an arrangement, and he'd succeeded.
"It soured me, too," he said. It always surprised him what he could divulge to Dumbledore. Dumbledore gave him a searching look and he turned his gaze down to the carpet. "No need to do that."
"What?"
"I was ever the obedient spy to you, was I not? I will willingly tell you what you want to know. No need to go fishing for it."
"Oh, Severus," Dumbledore said, his hands coming into view. "What you must think of me."
"It's not about what I think of you. It's about what I think of myself." Dumbledore, the actual Dumbledore, would have known that. Sometimes he tried to correct the portrait, as if it could learn, somehow, to be the real thing. It was stupid.
"I see. Let's put that aside for now- you haven't heeded my advice about the Pensieve."
"I found your advice quite unheedable."
"You'll start to suffer side effects if you haven't already."
He stayed very still.
"You've begun to feel it." It wasn't a question.
"I cannot- I have not been able to do wandless magic." It'd been months since he could even manage a locking charm. "It doesn't make any sense. I mastered wandless magic long before the nonsense with Potter. Why should it matter that my memories with him are misplaced?" He genuinely wanted to know the answer. "Not to mention the fact that I've been storing some memories for years. Why is this only happening now that I've added a few?"
"We do not remain the same, moment to moment. We change- evolve. Your magic, too, is shifting inside you every minute. You know love can accelerate that."
Severus felt nauseated. "Changed magic is not the same as extinguished magic."
"Correct. And don't you see how you're extinguishing yourself?"
"No," he insisted, shaking his head. "Extracting memories always made me clearer, sharper. Why should this be any different?""Not to mention the fact that I've been storing some memories for years. Why is this only happening now that I've added a few?"
"So not only are you arguing there's no correlation between the memories and your wandless magic but you also want me to accept that at the same time thereshouldin fact be a positive correlation?"
"It's not outrageous." He knew it was outrageous.
"You're too angry at him. You need to let go."
He scoffed. He felt like a child but he couldn't help but go on. "You wouldn't believe him. The people he's– he's dating in public. You should see the things he lets them write about him in the papers-he lets them follow him and oggle him and treat him like an animal in the zoo." He moved around the office, though not in as large a sphere of movement as he had when he was headmaster or even when Dumbledore was. "He doesn't even put up a fight anymore, he's completely given in tothemand the rest of us have to suffer the inanity of the front headlines every other morning. It depresses me to no end- he looks soweak, so defeated."
"It might disturb anyone, yes, to see Harry that way," Dumbledore conceded. "There was a time when you would have thought he was relishing the attention."
"I know what I thought," Severus said, irritated. "I design my thoughts."
"In that case, design your love away." Cheeky.
"And that man he's with-"
"You really expected him to pine and wait an eternity for you to come to your senses?"
Severus stopped pacing to face Dumbledore in his frame. "You're so predictable that even your senseless portraiture got that right- you're always defending him. Would it kill youover againto be on my side for once?"
"Your jealousy was always your worst trait, Severus."
"To be jealous of him I'd have to think there was a chance you could ever think me an ounce worthy of the idolatry you bestow upon him-"
"I meant your jealousyfor him. It drove Lily away from you and it will drive him from you too."
Severus bristled again. "Idrove him from him to leave."
Dumbledore nodded. "That was for the best."
He felt a smirk shape his lips without his permission. "You understand, then- I can only do one remarkable thing at a time." He turned to leave and then remembered a lingering question as Dumbledore called to him.
He beat Dumbledore to it. "What's Minerva hiding?"
"She'll tell you in time. Allow her secrets, Severus. A headmistress must have some." Dumbledore was looking at the rings on his fingers as if he'd just realized they were there.
He turned to leave again.
"Severus, return those memories. Give the Pensieve back, forget it exists. Then do have pity on me and try to move on. All our conversations now are about the same thing."
He didn't look back. "Do not pity the dead. Pity the living, and above all, those who live without love."
"Oh, that's good. Who said that?"
"You."
Immediately after he left Minerva's office he went to check on the Pensieve.
It was in the locked section of the workspace attached to his classroom. When he opened the little storage cupboard, he almost expected to find it had exploded his memories all over the place and made a mess big enough to attract the attention of a ghost.
But it hadn't- the silver strands swam in the bowl. They moved in restricted, tight loops- he'd filled it to the brim and there was no space for them to breathe.
First, he'd put in all the unbearable ones. The last fight, the last fuck. Then the super sweet ones- the first kiss, the first apology. Then the middle things would resurface in the quiet- tiny pieces he could hardly bring himself to part with. But he'd managed to summon the discipline in the end, the discipline to separate them from himself but also to do it gently. The emotional ones, they needed a patient hand. The fifth kiss, for example, the confessions, the love he'd felt in the car, the bottomless quality of it that was hard to dig up and scoop out.
How the fuck was he supposed to put all that back in his head?
"Why did you order Valerian sprigs?" Longbottom asked him at dinner.
"Pray, pray tell me Longbottom when I gave you the impression you could speak to me so freely that I might never make such a mistake again?"
Longbottom tilted his chin up. "I'm growing the ingredients, I can ask."
"Well if you insist, have the decency not to ask painfully stupid questions. It's for sleeping draughts."
"But then I should give you lavender- you forgot lavender on the list."
Severus held back from barking at him that if he'd wanted lavender, he would have ordered lavender. He should be thankful for Longbottom's idiocy.
He'd settled on favoring a brew to the volatility of memory spellwork. And frankly, he didn't trust his magic. His plan A was a Forgetfulness Potion- not to take it himself, as there was the risk of it erasing benign memories and leaving him with the ones he wanted to be rid of. Instead, he would drop the silver strands in it and hopefully be free of them directly.
When he got to the lab, there were bushels of lavender on one of the work tables, along with the other ingredients. He used what he needed, left the lavender. It seemed to stare at him as he brewed.
The potion was fairly simple- he was done in a couple of hours.
He didn't feel sleepy and he didn't have a plan B.
He took the lavender and left the castle. He was going to burn it. There was no point in keeping it- he'd already restocked the hospital wing's store of sleeping draught and it would be no good anymore by the time he needed them. He stepped out into a mild night. He thought so even as the ice crunched under his boots because there was no wind.
He set the bushels just outside the edge of the forest. "Incendio,"he whispered, without thinking, without his wand. It didn't work. He pulled out his wand and repeated the spell- it worked and the lavender began to burn. He was tired, all of a sudden, now that he had to .
Deep down, he knew plan A wouldn't work. It was a very daft idea- there was little chance he was going to penetrate or circumvent the ancient magic of the Pensieve with a potion he could brew in 2 hours. He needed something more powerful.
He could try keeping the memories in separate vials to buy himself time- but outside the Pensieve they might dissolve after a few hours and return to him, all at once. Couldn't have that. Perhaps he shouldn't have dismissed the spellwork route so quickly.
If he killed himself, he wouldn't have to worry about any of it. He could definitely achieve that in Minerva's less than 72 hours.
"Wha' are yeh doin' out here?"
Severus whipped around. Hagrid was yelling at him from a few meters away. His mangy dog barked once, making his presence known- otherwise, he blended into the black earth.
He turned back around and ignored him. But it was too late- he could hear Hagrid's half-giant footsteps coming toward him, snapping the ice and sticks, the dog trotting noisily next to him.
"Snape, is tha' yeh?"
He closed his eyes- one moment of peace, how could it be so elusive in a school devoid of students? "Yes," he called over his shoulder.
"Is tha' lavender I smell? Wha' are yeh burning it fer?"
He forced himself to answer. "It was a bad batch." And he wanted to watch something burn. He wanted that a lot lately.
"'s an alright idea, burning summat out in this cold. The smell 's lovely."
"I don't believe people venture out in the middle of the night to the edge of the forest for company."
Hagrid shuffled back, his footsteps dragging up earth, the dog still fidgeting beside him.
"Wan' ter be alone d'you? Could jus say tha' instead o' bein' rude."
Severus's jaw clenched. Hedidjust say that. "I apologize."
"'s alright. I figure yeh must miss 'im summat awful."
He expected the flames to lick up with his sudden anger, but they felt completely disconnected from him. "Not at all."
Hagrid sniffed. "Well I sure as mess do."
"Does he write to you?" It slipped out. "Don't answer that."
"He does. Hermione too, sometimes. But yeh know, the young. They keep going- forget abou' the ones they leave behind sometimes."
"I'll forget him too," he said. "All my memories of him are swimming in a bowl. I'm going to find a way to dissolve them." He didn't know why he was telling Hagrid this, of all people. Maybe he wanted someone to talk him out of it, someone who wasn't stuck in a portrait. It was pathetic.
"No!" Hagrid was acting like the memories were dangling over the fire right then and there.
Severus fed his horror. "Or if that doesn't work, I'll spill them in acid." The dog whined. "Or set them in fiend fyre, or pull them apart and hide the pieces on different corners of the earth."
Hagrid's big puffy breaths were visible in the cold. "Don't do tha', Snape. Don't go an' do tha'."
"You don't be sentimental. You said it yourself, they forget us. They move too fast and leave us behind."
"Tha's not wha' I said."
"That is what you said."
The lavender was nearly all burned away- it was a gradual darkness and then a hopeless light.
"Weren' yeh the one who left 'im?"
He supposed, technically, it was true. "It's of no consequence. I won't think of it soon."
He turned away from the ashy bushel and began his march back to the castle.
"Yeh know it won' work, Snape!" Hagrid was calling behind him. "Magic can't save yeh from everything! These are matters o' the heart, they are!"
What had Hagrid called Harry all those months ago- a year ago- a man of the heart? By all appearances it was true, like who left who, but Severus for the life of him couldn't see it that way. It felt like he was the one cursed with all the heart and he wanted to rip it out of himself. Just rip it out and carry on.
In the morning, the potion had settled. Instead of dropping the memories in, he went into the Slytherin common room.
There was one boy staying in the dorms over the holiday, a fourth year. He cast a screening spell, to check if he was there or upstairs in bed, but it was empty.
Sometimes he did this- when the students were in Hogsmeade or some other opportunity came up to take stock of what was being written about him in the sort of sordid magazine he couldn't be seen with.
The articles and the speculation about him and Harry had generally stopped some time ago but he thought it prudent to keep tabs anyway, let know who needed to know that his threats weren't empty. He found a copy ofWitch was almost four months old with an incredibly insipid and sexist cover page- Severus didn't know how they got away with it.
Spice up your pumpkin juice recipe this season!
Welcoming back Cozy Corner! Knit patterns, warming brews, and more!
Cassandra Vole on the secret to her flawless Veela skin!
He thought,the secret is, she's a Veela. It would have been funny if it weren't so stupid. He was exhausted by the number of exclamation marks. Then big, so much bigger than anything else that he'd almost dismissed it as part of the title header-Call Us Enchanted: The Latest Reasons We're Pre-Occupied with Harry and Talbott.
He sat down on the stiff leather couch, set a trip ward on the entrance so he'd know if that fourth year boy was coming. He flipped to the relevant page.
It wasn't an article so much as a collage of images and quotes sent in by readers, all precluded by a short introduction. But that was good, because it wasn't so much that he was a masochist (certainly he was), it was more that he wanted the pictures of Harry, to pleasure himself to- they were in color, not like the prophet ones. All the sex memories were in the Pensieve and they were too heavy to revisit anyway; he was much more comfortable in a voyeur role than an ex-lover one.
It's a tad salacious to admit, but let's all just get it out in the open once and for all: we're hot for Harry. And his boyfriend. And them together! The past many months have put their love story on display but what we haven't discovered yet is this: Just why are we so obsessed with them? Witch Weekly readers chime in:
Then it was picture quote, picture quote. The first one caught a glimpse of Harry's eyes, as he was looking up over the dark sunglasses that now hid them normally. Nothing of substance is happening in them, he just seems to be reading a sign and then he enters a dark room where the cameras don't follow him, Winger close behind him. It was clearly taken in the summer and they were both sweating a bit.
"I think it's not the romance we expected, what with his split with Ginerva Weasley and the strange stint with Professor Snape. But it's the romance we need." Bella from Burningham.
Another photo from the summer, the both of them about to cross a street. Harry's hand is to his ear- was that a muggle phone?
"It's just the fantasy, isn't it? Talbott's protecting Harry from the chaos of the world. At least that's how I like to imagine it." Arabella from Surrey.
King's Cross this time- inside, under the glass arches.
"I knew Harry in school and he was always rough around the edges but there's still that glamor to him- add to that Talbott's kind of mystery…pur." Padma from London.
Going home after a night out- too drunk to Apparate perhaps, Winger handing him into a car.
"Well it's what it represents, isn't it? The surprisingness of it, the next part in Harry's story and those of us who are rooting for him and would like to see him happy." Oliver from Sheffield.
Leaving Grimmauld Place. He's wearing an oversized dark red sweater with PRAGUE in big white letters across the chest and it absolutely hangs on him. He has that look of a person who hasn't left the house in many days. He's not wearing any glasses at all, not even his vision ones and his head is bowed so you can see directly into the hollows of his eyes. It's strangely intimate.
The trip-ward went off. He closed the magazine, put it back in its place, and exited the common room.
That night, he had a thought while the belladonna was in his hand that made him really want it.
He put the belladonna down and got up from the bed to put on more clothes. He didn't want to be in pants when they found him. In fact, he'd put on what he'd like to be buried in to save his corpse the indignity of being redressed. Black trousers, black tunic. Boots- no laces. No cloak- it would look too much like a blanket over the corners of his shoulders when he was lying down. Maybe that could be the visualization before the end- he planned to block anything else from touching his mind before everything faded.
He sat back down at the edge of the bed when he was done, picked up the belladonna.
He would count to 10 and then decork, toss, swallow. Done.
1
2
3, Lily, that whole episode, how empty.
4
5
6
7
8
9
10, Eileen.
His arm was paralyzed. He couldn't do it. He'd failed and now he was living through the mark of his mother's face in his consciousness. He closed his eyes, worked on brushing her away in tiny strokes. Round, erasing motions in his meditations-cool, shallow, still,frothy bubbles of water, susurration through small spaces popping her picture away, blowing out with white the unseeing gaze.
It was several minutes before she was gone.
He recognized his mistake- the count was too long. This time, he would count to three. Less space for faces, for words.
1
2
3
He was still alive in the morning and he knew something he shouldn't know. He knew something he'd given up many memories to forget- Harry spoke in his sleep. Why did he know that?
He hadn't touched the forgetfulness potion since he'd finished it. Minerva sent him a note in the evening that just read48 was insufferable.
He wanted to save up his strategies so that when he finally made the attempt and the first thing failed, he wouldn't be stuck being angry about it and instead he could try the next thing very quickly. He had a plan B, which was to cast fiendfyre, although that could get messy even if he was managing everything in the Room of Requirement. He'd like to move it to his third option and find an even better plan A.
He combed through his books, looking for answers. The solutions offered were useless to him- ancient artifacts that would undoubtedly require months of searching (if they even existed); a few more potion options that would take much too long to make. He scribbled a note to Minerva just before the sun came up, wanting to ask for more time but he couldn't bring himself to send it. He felt she wanted to put him in this position of desperation and corner him into giving her more information and he wouldn't give her the satisfaction of even knowing he was stressed.
But he was. The enchantment on his bathroom mirror was beginning to fade- he could see himself clearly in it when he'd bewitched it many years ago to show him only a blur. It was alarming to him even though this wasn't the first malfunction- there had been other signs in his quarters. The artificial sunlight he'd created didn't wake him up anymore. His quill, which helped him write faster and his ink which was meant to dry quickly did neither- his hair, his clothes, his eyesight, his Legilimens- nothing was really right.
He skipped breakfast and checked on the Pensieve- perhaps almost killing oneself had scared the memories away. Perhaps one forfeited their magic when they decided they wanted to die- perhaps whatever was tethering the memories to the Pensieve was fading like the rest of the magic his quarters- perhaps he should be forgiven for wanting to excise his soul from an exhausting mind.
"Severus."
He turned around too fast. It was Minerva and there was no reason to behave that way.
"Have you slept?" She was looking at him strangely.
Of course he hadn't. "What an odd question."
She was looking at his collar. "You look as if you've slept in your clothes."
If he could do wandless magic, he would have unwrinkled his clothes- moved closer to the light so she could see better, denied it. But he couldn't do any of that.
"Shall you sack me for the unprofessional finish of my attire? I was wondering what excuse you'd find."
Her thin lips formed a smile. "We both know I don't need an excuse to do that, Severus. Perhaps instead of sacking you now, I can refrain until I've had a wee look in the Pensieve."
"You said 72 hours."
"Now you have 36," she affirmed. "I still want to see what you're hiding."
"Why? I told you it would be sorted."
She approached. He wanted to resist but her authority as headmistress made it futile. He moved aside to reveal the basin.
She came closer, leaning her face over the bowl. It illuminated her wrinkled skin, the stray hairs along the edges of her face.
"Severus," she said. "This is far too many. You're straining it- do you see the cracks in the ruins? What are you storing here?" She felt sorry for him. He was suddenly very deep in her mind and he didn't want to be. He had no control. He started to see the walls shift- vertigo.
"It's none of your concern."
"Of course it is-"
"Your business is my emptying it, which I've told you countless times I will do,notwhat I'm keeping in there!" He knew she knew. Why did she keep asking? He had the answer then when he didn't really want it.
She lifted her wand hand and reached randomly into the bowl- he grabbed her instinctively to try to stop her but of course followed her fall was short. They materialized quickly inside a memory- they were in Harry's room, the sun was setting outside the window. Harry was at his desk, grading papers, memory Severus was leaning against the wall beside him, reaching to brush something away by corner of his eye. They were both clothed, thank Merlin.
"Can I go now?" Severus was saying.
"No," Harry said, like it wasn't the first time Severus had asked. "I need your help with something."
Severus was placing his hands behind his back. "This century?"
"Yes- look, here," Harry was moving a scroll to the edge of the desk where Severus could read it.
Then something strange happened, something not of the moment. A silver edge pressed into the room, round and round, warping Harry's voice for a moment. Then it was gone.
Severus was reading aloud, droll: "...'when we examine the differences between light and dark magic, paying attention to intention may make those differences obvious in an increasing way-' are you so permissive, Potter, that all your students write this atrociously?"
"I'm not a writing teacher." Harry snatched the parchment back defensively, looking back at the line in question. "I thought it sounded kind of clever, actually..." he trailed off. Severus's memory self was giving Harry a look of deep concern.
Harry shook his head and looked up at Severus from his seat. "But that's not what I wanted to ask about. My question was about the statement. I mean I think it's wrong- I don't think intention marks the difference between light and dark magic but I wouldn't know how to explain why that's wrong."
Severus's look was changing quickly to suspicion- god, he hated his own face. "Why are you asking me? Is it an attempt to flatter me?"
Present Severus began in earnest trying to pull Minerva away from the strand.
"Why would I want to do that?" Harry said, serious. It struck him, now, how patient Harry was being.
"You think you're doing a good deed, you've set out to make me feel useful. Be my hero."
"You're so rotten," Harry said, packing the parchments away, casually giving up. "Can't even have a normal conversation with you. I'm not trying to fix you. You think I'm that stupid." It hurt, the way the last part wasn't a question.
Memory Severus had regrets, too. "Stop," he was saying to Harry, who listened. Harry listened. It was so painfully precious. He sat back in his chair, crossed his arms, gave him a darkened look, but he waited.
"I have a different understanding of dark magic," Severus said. "I wouldn't even teach it in those terms- light and dark. I don't have definitive answers- I can only tell you whatIthink."
"Well what doyouthink?" Harry asked. He was still sore.
"I agree with you that intention is not an indicator. For example-"
Then they were pushed, pressed into another memory. Severus was trying to drag Minervaoutbut she was pulling themthrough- side by side.
They settled inside the bathroom in his quarters- memory Severus was sitting on the edge of the bath, fully clothed, arms braced on his knees, head hanging between his shoulders- Harry was banging on the door, then silent on the other side of it.
He successfully pulled Minerva away right before Harry said something he didn't want her to hear- somethinghedidn't want to hear- again-
Then they were in the grass near a motorway. He was vomiting by the side of the road.
Minerva pulled them through again this time- so fast it almost made him as nauseous as he was in the being sick memory- then everything was just quick flashes that never paused- Harry's pulse against the edge of a knife, Harry writhing in pain under his wand, Harry being choked to death in front of him, arguing in the car-
Then it was dark, nothing visible. Breathy sounds and the creaking of a cupboard door.
Harry saying his name. "Severus-"
Shuffling feet.
"Yes, please-"
Minerva pulled herself out of that one.
They were back in his office, looking at the Pensieve rather than at each other.
"Are they all like that?" she asked.
"You had no right to do that." He was trying to lift his voice above a whisper.
"Are they all about Harry? I suspected but I didn't-" He knew, again, what he didn't want to know. She couldn't believe something could bother him like that, she pitied him, she felt a little sorry for pushing so hard. He was screaming in his own head just to drown her out.
"The Pensieve just showed you the recent ones," he spat. "It's not just him in there. It's everything- everything since the war. And who do you think you are?!" He found it, the volume.
"I thought I was your friend!"
"My friends are dead," Severus said. "I killed all 2 of them, coincidentally."
"And you're close to killing your third, with your blind conniptions," she said, her voice cold. "Can't you see the world is a different place than it was 7 years ago? There's no need, anymore, for this," she was pointing to the Pensieve with her wand, "for storing your memories somewhere else so you can face the darker danger. Thisisthe danger."
She swiped her wand, once, over the bowl and the memories rose from the liquid, traveled back to him. He felt them permeate the air, felt the emptiness inside himself where they should be yawn for them. He waved his wand around himself, and used all his strength to build a shield. The memories collected at the threshold until it was a ball of silver light. He could see through the sheer parts of his black guard into that orb- could see multiples of himself, of Harry, of Dumbledore, of McGonagall and Lily.
"You must face it, Severus. Your life calls now for a different kind of bravery," Minerva said.
Nobody tells you, nobody tells you how. He wanted to say that to her but couldn't- he felt like he was under water. He looked into her kind eyes. He would weep- it was growing inside him like a weed as he watched his shield give way under the weight of waiting memories; they were coming for him. They'd developed clarity in his absence, they were whispering about him amongst themselves and he could hear them, they were coming for him. He didn't want that to happen in front of Minerva McGonagall.
But perhaps the choice, like nearly everything else, wasn't his. He bent his elbow in capitulation and the shield fell away.
She stayed and saw the whole thing.
Harry,
Excuse me if I cannot conjure up much of a preamble, although I've never heard of any love letter needing much of that. Is that what this is, a love letter? I suppose so, if I can count.
I want peace. I want to cleanse my soul of the way I've wronged you. I want you to understand what you've done to me.
I put all my memories in a Pensieve to forget you, and yet my dreams showed me your full form. It's been etched inside me somewhere. Behind the eyes. I miss your forehead. I miss the smell of you, right inside your wrists. I hate your boyfriend. I think I could kill him. I really do. What did Shakespeare say? I seem to remember you have some subconscious memories of him. Hell is empty and the devils are here. That's how it feels, living in a world with me here and you there, and him with you and me without you.
I'm writing because I don't know if what I put you through is not worse than the truth.
Yours,
Severus
His quill wrote the words as he thought them, his face wet. It seemed to be coming back- his magic, at its fullest force. He had access to it now, at the cost of other things. He was so sick of being taught a lesson.
He wasn't having trouble anymore blocking out other people's thoughts, it seemed rightfully the reverse now- he had to extend some effort to perceive them. But then, of course, that might be because he was busier now with so many more of his own.
He'd meant to tempt himself to send the letter, but aside from the fact that it was unfair to Harry, it was also so pathetic. He felt that Harry would know, somehow, about the brushed away tears.
He folded it away and stowed it in the inside pocket of his vest. Right then, a note burned the air and landed on his desk.A request for your presence at breakfast.
It wasn't a request.
Several days had passed since the incident with the Pensieve and the students had just returned to the castle the night before. He hadn't left the dungeons but it seemed inevitable now.
Upon his arrival to the Great Hall, he noticed McGonagall moved his seat so that he sat beside her. It caused quite a stir among the staff which she silenced with a look- Hogwarts traditions were sacred until, of course, the Headmistress decided they weren't.
He heard "Insensilis,"as he took his seat.
McGonagall had flicked her wand in his direction- a disillusionment charm. "Your House seems concerned about you," she explained. "And your current internal state is written all over your person."
It was her fault because she made him put the memories back in his head and because she forced him to come to breakfast this morning. But he didn't have the energy to state these glaring facts.
"Where have you been?"
Severus stared at his empty plate.
"Well of course I know you haven't left the castle," she said, as if he'd spoken. "It was one thing to miss meals when the castle was empty. It's quite another to neglect your duties now."
He let his eyes move in her direction and hoped that would be enough for her.
"I don't sense you in my thoughts."
He thought about hating her. If he thought of anything else he'd weep.
"Severus, I'm afraid I've kept something from you as long as I could manage. You were right about the ministry. They've asked for the Pensieve. They've asked for something else, too. Report to my office, tonight, after dinner."
She was talking to herself then and eventually didn't talk at all, which was very nice.
He didn't go to dinner. He went to the astronomy tower.
He'd forgotten his heavy cloak but he remembered too late into the journey there to care. He preferred the real, cold wind to spelled warmth and braced his hands against the rail while looking out at the dark grounds.
He thought he could see Hagrid all the way down, below. He was alone, no dog tonight. The wind felt good in his hair but the cold stung his eyes- trying to focus on Hagrid's image down below was too difficult.
He shifted his focus, and tried to look at the reflection of the stars in the lake. But the wind was too strong, it kept making his eyes water. He turned around, so he wasn't facing it and instead was looking into the empty space inside the tower, looking at the very spot he'd been standing in when he'd killed Dumbledore, standing where Dumbledore said his final words. Thanks to Minerva, he didn't just know it- he remembered it- he remembered the chalky spot of the wooden floor where he'd been looking before he lifted his head to meet Dumbledore's eyes. He knew that if he took 12 steps forward, he could see it again.
He leaned back, his neck prickling, despite himself, at the sightless sense of the height below. All he had to do was keep leaning back, let go. That was easier than decork, toss, swallow, done. It was lean back, let go. Done. One less step.
But then, his wandless magic was back- if it was functioning properly, and he was a coward, again, he could save himself through flight.
He leaned back, again- the wind seemed to hold him, like two great hands cupping his shoulder blades. Two neutral hands that would give way to his will and let him choose without judgement or pause.
He went back on his heels and then thought of Hagrid.
He turned again, to look back down at the grounds. He could still make Hagrid out right at the base of the tower. What on earth was he doing out there? Exactly there?
"Severus?" Minerva's voice came, quizzical and reprimanding all at once, from the floor below him. She was moving quickly up the stairs and then they were level. "Why are you up here? Do you ever for a moment cease the melodramatics?"
He made no reply, simply looked at her.
"Well, come along," she prompted, like he was a student, motioning for him to lead the way back down the steps. "We have things to discuss."
"The ministry wants the Pensieve to store collective memories."
They were back in her office.
"I'll assume you're asking why." She was looking at him from over interlaced fingers. "They think the incident last year in Robin Hood's Bay may have triggered the beginning of a calamity."
A calamity was a deep tear in the fabric of time and space. It caused anachronistic sightings, threatened the secrecy of the wizarding world, inflicted chaos.
He took a deep breath. "They're wrong."
"He speaks," she said, bouncing an eyebrow. She ruined it by commenting on it, he hoped she knew that. "They seem to have incontrovertible evidence of the contrary."
"Which is?"
"Kingsley swore me to secrecy."
"You could suggest to the minister that perhaps a calamity is for the best."
She turned to stone and said, "It's not a laughing matter, Severus," as if he were cackling. Her eyes were sayingnot everyone has a death wish.
"What collective memories are they proposing to preserve?" It was old magic. Collective memories were strong and they lasted much longer than individual ones. They'd even been used, until a time, to record magical history.
Minerva looked like she didn't want to speak anymore, but she carried on. "Memories from the incident- that day, so the information about the calamity's origin is secure." Her nostrils flared as she paused. "And the war. They want memories of the war- the faces of the innocent, the guilty, the purpose of it, the dangers of pureblood mania."
"I see." A stone seemed to settle in his stomach- it would certainly be bad for him if suddenly, no one could remember his name being cleared- but that was the least of his problems.
"So you see, they need the Pensieve. It's the only thing powerful enough to hold collective memories, in fact, it's what it seems to have been designed for- partially."
"What else do they need, Minerva?"
"You," she said quickly. "And-"
"Potter and Weasley and Granger," he finished for her.
"Yes, and anyone else who they can get to reconstruct what needs to be reconstructed."
Harry's boyfriend- he'd been there.
"Do you see what I'm saying, Severus?"
"They don't need me," he said.
A snort of disbelief came from one of the portraits. Severus glared.
"I know you to be a man that faces facts," said McGonagall.
"I'm no such thing."
"Don't be petulant."
"Could you let me kill myself? Would you just promise to let me kill myself afterward?"
"I will do no such thing."
Dumbledore chose that moment to interject. "If you do insist on suicide, Severus, do me the courtesy of avoiding the astronomy tower. That wasmything."
Minerva made him give her his word that he would cooperate with the ministry when they arrived in the coming days. Then she left him and Dumbledore alone.
The picture was in a strange mood, like it was trying to make him laugh. The old man was pretending to sleep, very obviously, and waiting for him to nudge him awake.
There, just under all the portraits was the Pensieve- the light of it was dull with its emptiness. He knew a real Dumbledore, a better one, in his memories. He approached the Pensieve.
Phineas Nigellus yelled out from his portrait. "I'm not sure the headmistress wants you around that again, good sir."
"Do shut up," he hissed.
The Headmistress reappeared in the doorway behind her desk. "What do you think you're doing?" She was weary.
"One," he said. "I just want to take a closer look at one. I'll empty it before I leave."
"Ah," she smiled.
He didn't like that. "What?"
"I'm just pleased that you've at last discovered how to properly use a Pensieve." She retreated before he could reply.
He turned, put his wand to his temple and extracted the memory. When he dropped it in, it swam happily in what now was the open ocean of the bowl. He bent his face to the surface.
The fall was much longer this time. He liked the feeling but searched for ground with his feet and found himself in the older of memory first. They were in the same place, but it felt completely different- it was full of Dumbledore's toys, his mysteries. The slant of the light, the errant hum that filled the office- the whirring, the clicking, the ticking- set off a strange ache in Severus. He resented it- it's heaviness with meaning- he missed it, he was so grateful to be out of it and yet felt so empty at it's contrast with the present.
His much younger self was sitting in the seat across from Dumbledore's desk. He was 21. It was the year of Lily's death, that Christmas. Dumbledore entered the office wearing a ridiculous hat. Thankfully, he began the conversation by removing it and looked surprised to see him.
"Hello, Severus."
His younger self made no reply, simply tensed the leg crossed over his other, shifted his shoulders.
"What can I do for you?"
He looked at Dumbledore darkly. It had been very early in their relationship and yet the old man was the only person on the planet who knew his deepest secrets- a combination that had threatened to drive him mad.
"I loathe teaching." He'd tried to quit, after Voldemort's defeat in the face of Lily's sacrifice. He didn't see the purpose of keeping up his ruse as a professor with the Dark Lord gone- but the headmaster felt otherwise.
Dumbledore paused on his way to his desk and looked carefully at Severus for a moment. Then he carried on toward his seat. "The first year's the most difficult."
"And so many more to come," he'd replied. His head hung slightly- he may have had a few drinks.
"I made you the same offer I make all the first year teachers, to spend Christmas with family." He looked at the clock. "There's still time to surprise them."
Severus watched his younger self regulate his breathing, gaze up through a haze. He could see, now, that Dumbledore had been attempting to extract information from him about his family. He never volunteered the truth- that his mother had left him shortly after he started school at Hogwarts, that his father disappeared shortly after, that he'd raised himself.
"That's besides the point," he said.
"Then what brings you here, Severus?"
"Couldn't you use me in some other way?" His eyes were shining. He'd wanted to do something dangerous, something personally painful and cruel, something exacting. "I could hunt for you, in Albania. I know that's where you think he went."
Dumbledore was quiet for a long time, just looking at him, like he was a strange and unfamiliar thing under a magnifying glass. "I'd rather you be closer to Hogwarts. Closer to me," he said, finally.
"You don't trust me," Severus burst.
"Frankly, should I?" Dumbledore shot back. "Not six months ago you couldn't see the value in a family's life."
"I'm paying for that, now, aren't I, without you having to remind me? You convinced me not to kill myself, to make myself useful instead, so use me!"
"Your time will come," Dumbledore said.
He let out a sound of frustration. Severus watched himself, remembered the feeling of being disgusted with his own emerging tears. He didn't deserve it, the release. He kept stuffing it down."And what am I supposed to do now? Tomorrow? The next day? Until I'm useful?"
"Find the light." Dumbledore was so fierce; he would have been even in the Christmas cracker hat.
Severus shook his head, eyes closed. "I can't see the light," he said, and it sounded dug out, from his heart. A plea.
"You won't be of use to me or anyone else without it." Dumbledore braced himself forward on the desk. He began to whisper, like it was a secret. "Just count to three," he said, "and decide it's there."
He lifted himself out of the memory. He restored it to himself and then something occurred to him. He thought of those early days, with Lily. One more. He formed it in is mind, dropped it into the basin, dived back in.
He was in the field surrounding the playground near Spinner's End, with Lily in the grass. He was trying to explain to her about his parents. He was ten.
"They fight," he was saying. Lily was looking mildly at the sky and he was looking at her.
"My parents fight too," she said, reaching out to give his hand a squeeze. "Then they get over it. I'm sure things will go back to normal soon." She let go of him and he changed the subject to something that would surely interest her more- magic.
He was going to sweep through to the next memory, but he found that he didn't need to. He'd thought about them so many times and even without looking again, the difference in all of them, now, was glaring. He rose back out of the Pensieve, returned the memories where they belonged and left the office.
It wasn't that Lily was wrong or bad or even any less lovely in his memory- it was just that now he had something to compare it to. Now he knew what it was like to lie in the grass with someone who understands.
He annotated everything- he'd always be that, the half-blood prince. Talking to someone, anyone. Calling them an idiot.
The day had been busy, so he hadn't finished a Wolfsbane article- an important one. Tonight he sat at his desk with it, quill in hand.
He was writing an amendment to the already amended ingredients list when his hand stopped, mid-word.
Then he wrote:The dawn won't stop weighing a ton.
He crossed it out, so hard he cut through to the other side.
He kept reading-a paragraph about a revised part of the Wolfsbane procedure, one he'd already adopted 2 years ago.
Then,I've done something that I shouldn't have done.
Some space. A little later, his hand dragging down the I haven't stopped loving you once.
"Fuck." He said it out loud, to the room.