Severus Snape and the Half-Blood Prince (31)
It is with even more trepidation than usual that I post this chapter. This is the point where I wonder if I'm jumping the shark. I'm going to post some questions I have in a comment following the chapter. I would really love it if you could share your responses.
Questions That Have No Answers
When the Hogwarts Express arrived at the beginning of the fall term, Snape went to meet Regulus at the station. He waited by the Quidditch car, but his friend never stepped out.
Thinking that perhaps Regulus had given up his spot on the team, Snape sought out one of the seventh year Slytherin prefects and asked after him.
“I don’t know,” the girl replied. “He wasn’t on the train, I’m fairly sure of that.”
It was odd, but it was also possible that Regulus had decided to leave school now that he was a Death Eater. Snape decided that to inquire further might draw attention to his friend’s absence and left the station.
It was weeks later that he was ordered by Palomides Pestle to make a special delivery.
“All the way to London?” Snape asked. “Why don’t they just order from Diagon Alley?”
“Never you mind!” Palomides said. “Just make sure you don’t waste any time.”
The address was 12 Grimmauld Place, the Black family residence. Snape recognized it from having attended Lucius Malfoy’s wedding. He took only a moment to brush back his hair before Apparating.
The tradesman entrance was opened by the same elf he had treated weeks earlier. Kreacher had apparently recovered. He didn’t seem to remember that Snape had helped him--or else that wasn’t important to him. He gave Snape the same dark, suspicious look that all House-Elves reserved for him.
“The half-blood will wait here,” he said, ushering Snape into a small sitting room on the first floor. “Mistress will be down directly.”
“Mistress?” Snape felt nonplussed. That would have to be Regulus’s mother. What would she want with him?
Walburga Black swept into the room and seated herself at an ornate desk that took up at least half of the space. She contemplated Snape, who hovered nervously, unsure if he should hand her the package or keep holding it, for a long moment.
“You are Severus Snape?” she asked finally. Her voice dripped with disapproval.
“That’s right,” he replied. Did he meet her at the wedding? He couldn’t remember. He should have remembered meeting this woman who dressed like an over-decorated ottoman.
She sniffed and looked away. Apparently, the wallpaper was more interesting to her than he was. “I believe you... know... my son, Regulus?”
“Yes. We’re friends.”
“Friends.” She said, making the word sound like an insult. She dismissed that idea with a shrug. “Have you seen my son lately?”
Snape blinked. “No, I haven’t...” He trailed off, unsure how to addresss her. Was Missus correct? Or was she Lady Black? Regulus tried not to talk about her at all, but when he did, it was always, “My mother.”
“Do you have any idea where he might be?” she asked.
“He isn’t at school, then?”
Her eyes flashed angrily. “If he were at school, do you think I would be having this conversation?”
Snape wondered what she knew about him. Had she read his letters to Regulus before throwing them out? Did she know that Regulus had joined the Death Eaters? Did he dare ask her?
“The last time I saw... your son,” he felt certain that she would take offense if he addressed Regulus by his first name, “was at the wedding of Lucius Malfoy and your niece.” A thought suddenly struck him. “Have you asked his elf? Perhaps he knows something.”
He felt that he’d just made a terrible blunder. Her stare became ice cold. “You are a very impertinent person,” she said. “You may leave now.”
He stepped back. His hands, tightening around the package, reminded him of its existence. The reason he had come here in the first place. Or was it just an excuse so that she could question him? Did she want it or not?
He hovered a moment, trying to figure out, through small feints and gestures, whether she wanted him to put the package down or simply take it back to the shop. He could find no clue in her stony face, half-turned away as if the very sight of him sickened her.
Finally, as he edged into the periphery of her sight, she turned to him and shouted, “Go!”
He fled. Package and all.
***
He never learned exactly what happened to Regulus.
He wondered if the boy had been arrested. One heard about people being arrested and sent to Azkaban without any trial. He shuddered to think about Regulus being in that horrible prison.
He asked Amy Bones about it, as she had a job in the Magical Law Enforcement Department. She and Emmeline Vance were just about the only people he saw regularly. They lived in a cottage in Hogsmeade and he had dinner with them once or twice a week.
Amy was always threatening to move to London, to be closer to her job, but Emmeline had finished her internship at St. Mungo’s and was determined to set up private practice in Hogsmeade. It gave the couple an unending source for sparring which neither of them seemed to take seriously.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” Amy told him. “But I doubt that he’s there. His family is very influential and the first place they’d do to find him is look through their own Ministry contacts.” She hesitated a moment and then added, “You do understand that I’ve only been in the department for a few years? That my job is mostly paperwork? That I’m roughly seven levels below the position where you have any sort of influence?”
He nodded, but hoped Amy could find something--anything. She was the only lead he had.
Emmeline didn’t ask why Snape thought the boy would be arrested, but her eyes were sharp and sardonic. She never missed a thing, did Emmeline Vance.
Amy was good for her word. She asked around, but four weeks later, had found nothing but dead ends.
“The problem is that the department is growing every day,” she waved her hands to show the growth spreading mushroom-like. “I don’t know who half the people are. I’ve never even heard of their job titles.”
She must have seen the worry in his face. “I’ll keep trying.”
***
Things were getting stranger every day. The entire Wizarding World was dividing like volcanic earth, with Voldemort and the Death Eaters on one side and Dumbledore and the Ministry on the other.
The vast middle--the pureblood families who made up the mass of the Wizarding World--were jumping to one side or the other, or else slipping into the abyss. The papers were filled with the names of the dead.
As for the others, the invisible half-blood families and Muggleborns, they rarely made the papers. They were only mentioned when the Ministry wanted to show the Death Eaters as particularly vile for attacking helpless Muggles.
There was an aggressive drive for Aurors by the Ministry. Snape heard that Regan had been taken into training after all. Apparently her weak voice was no longer such a limitation. Instead of three years training, Aurors were put into service after six months.
He thought about joining the Aurors one Friday as he was reading the Daily Prophet in the coffee shop. He had the N.E.W.T.s and, he thought smugly, the skills. It would be a definite step up from his current position.
It wasn’t as though he believed in that stupid pureblood ideology Voldemort was pushing. He had enough cunning (and knowledge of Muggle history) to suspect that once Voldemort was done with the Muggleborns, he’d be coming after the half-bloods, too.
On the other hand, he had the uncomfortable feeling that, if he did join the Aurors, he would end up facing his old pupils on the battlefield. He might end up facing Regulus.
If Regulus was still alive.
A shadow fell across the paper. “Morning.”
It was Emmeline. She sat down at the other side of his table. They often ran into each other like this, especially if she didn’t have an early appointment.
They chatted for a bit. Emmeline chatted. Snape listened. He never had much to talk about. He loved the way that women could talk about nothing, about shopping or trying a new kind of cauldron, and make it sound exciting.
“Well?”
He turned the page and blinked. “What?”
“Shall we bring some wine tomorrow?”
He had invited her and Amy over to his flat for dinner the next day. He nodded. “Red is good.”
“It’s rude to read the newspaper when someone is talking to you,” she pointed out, eating her toast as she talked.
“If I waited until you stopped talking, I’d never finish before work,” he commented. “I don’t have the energy after--“
He stopped, staring at the small notice on the society page.
James Potter, newly qualified Auror, First Class, announces his marriage to Lillian Evans, junior member of the Department of Mysteries. The two were married this past weekend and intend to spend their honeymoon...
He crumpled up the paper and threw it on the floor. Married to James Potter. He couldn’t understand it. How could Lily settle for someone like Potter? Did she simply overlook how self-centered and arrogant he was? Couldn’t she see how shallow his love must be, when she never showed Potter her real self?
The woman who could marry James Potter was not the woman he knew. Lily Evans was gone. In her place would walk and talk a new person named Lily Potter. That was a person he didn’t ever want to meet.
***
Snape wrote out a list for himself that evening of things he’d need to buy for the dinner. He would make a chicken, he decided, although that would mean he’d need to floo Emmeline in the morning and tell her to bring white wine instead of red. There were some spring potatoes at the produce market. He could roast them along with the bird.
There was a knock at the door. Muttering, he went to answer it, leaving the list on on the table. He took out his wand. Only a fool would answer the door without a wand these days.
He opened the door, catching a glimpse of two wizards with Auror badges winking in the candlelight. Then he heard one of them cry out “Expelliarmus!”
His wand flew out of his hand. Before Snape could say a single word, he found himself hexed into both silence and blindness. A pair of arms gripped his firmly, he felt the squeezing sensation of Apparation and the light against his closed eyelids intensified into a painful, unnatural brightness.
A voice informed him in a rapid-fire monotone that he was currently the guest of the Ministry of Magic’s Magical Law Enforcement Department. The voice listed his various rights, none of which involved legal representation or seemed to apply in the event that one is silenced and blinded and having the disturbing sensation of disembodied hands undoing the buttons of one’s robes, removing them, and then having a Secrecy Sensor prodded into every part of one’s body.
They left the blinding hex on as they thrust him into a shower for ten minutes, pulled him out, handed him a bundle, and shoved him into a small cell.
Eventually, his eyesight came back, but there was barely any light. He felt the bundle and realized that it was some kind of a prison robe. He pulled it on and, his fingers trembling, did up the ties. Buttons were too dangerous, he supposed. One might... pull them off and fling them at people?
A wizard with no wand is helpless. He has no defense, no controllable power. He might as well have been a baby, cowering in the dark corner of his parents’ house. After feeling around enough to know that there was no way out of the cell, he curled up and tried to sleep.
He was just dozing off when the door opened and two large wizards entered. They pulled him to his feet and out of the cell. The hallway was unnaturally bright and hurt his eyes. They ignored his indignant demands to speak to a solicitor.
He was marched to a room with one chair in the middle of it, a table and a few chairs scattered about the walls. As soon as they sat him down in it, a set of chains snaked up from the sides, binding him securely.
The two wizards left and, after some time, another pair entered and began questioning him about some plot to kidnap some unidentified member of the Ministry.
It became clear to Snape that they had the wrong person. He tried to point this out, but every time he did, one of the wizards hit him in the head.
He tried swearing at them, but that didn’t work any better. Nor did sarcasm. Or threats. Or simply saying, “I don’t know.”
That left him out of options and he fell silent. Eventually, they got tired of yelling and had him dragged back to the cell.
He never knew how long he was there. Long enough to lose track of the days. He couldn’t keep track by light, because there was never any natural sunshine. There was only the darkness of the closed cell and the intense white light of the interrogation room.
He couldn’t keep track by sleep, because half the time he started to fall asleep, he’d be woken up and questioned by the Aurors. They had names like Dawlish, Moody, Longbottom, and, of course, Shacklebolt. It hardly mattered what their names were. They were all loud, aggressive, and interchangeable.
He couldn’t keep track of meals. He was terrified to eat or drink in case it was laced with Veritasserum. He had too many secrets that he didn’t want anyone knowing about.
But then, they never even asked him about the things he might have known about, such as Regulus joining the Death Eaters or the fact that he’d sold illegal potions for several years out the back door of his parents’ house.
Instead, they asked him about things he had never heard of--a plot to poison the Ministers of Magic by sending doxy dust through the Owls, for example. Another time, he was grilled about smuggling dragon eggs by transfiguring them into faux jewelry boxes. They accused him of consorting with people he’d never met and being seen in places he’d never visited.
These question sessions became more violent and desperate as time went on. He found himself alternating between bouts of begging and pleading and staring stoically while they threw chairs around the room. After awhile, he stopped responding at all, except to say, “Snape. Special Agent. Serial number SOP279432.”
It was what his father had said, over and over, in those memories of the prison camp. If it was good enough for Da, he decided, it was good enough for him.
He remembered his father telling him that he had survived the prison camp by thinking about numbers. That wouldn’t work for Snape, as wizards have only the most rudimentary mathematical education. He knew basic functions and measurements, but that was not enough to fill his mind.
Instead, he shut his eyes and thought about Lily Evans--reliving every moment of their friendship. There were painful moments, that he shied away from, but there were happy memories, too. There was one that he particularly loved.
It was that one day that he had gone Christmas shopping with her family. There had been a Father Christmas in the middle of the shopping center. Children stood in line to climb into his lap and whisper their hopes for presents into his ear.
Petunia had sniffed and called the children greedy for wanting so many presents. Snape agreed with her, but he felt a sad longing to be one of them. The Father Christmas had blue twinkling eyes, a smiling face, and a long white beard. Severus had no illusions about the presents--Father Christmas would never stop at Spinner’s End. But if he had been smaller, he would have liked to climb up into those embracing arms. It would be so nice to have the white-haired head tilt to listen as he whispered his desires and that face smile just for him.
Lily wasn’t interested at all in Father Christmas. She liked the reindeer. The most vivid image he had of that day was seeing her holding out a sugar cube as a small doe nuzzled at her hand. Her entire attention was on the deer, on not frightening it away. It was the first time he had ever seen Lily completely unselfconscious.
He tried to focus on those memories before he passed out, but whenever he did managed to snatch a few minutes of sleep, he would dream that he was being questioned all over again.
Finally, after it seemed like he had been there forever, the Aurors brought him to a new room and bound him so tightly to a chair that any movement was impossible. They blinded him, and wound a thin chain around his neck. For a moment, as he felt fingers fumbling at his neck, he wondered if they were going to pull it tight and strangle him. But nothing happened. There was just a strange moment of silence.
“We got another one,” someone said. The blinding hex was lifted and he was blinking into the face of a clerk, who was busy untying him from the chair. Another clerk was sitting at a desk, shuffling through sheaves of paper.
“Name?”
“S-s-severus Snape?”
“Right.” The second clerk looked on a list, made a check mark, then pulled a bundle out of a cabinet. He handed it to the first clerk who handed it to Snape. “There you go. Now make yourself scarce. I’ve got another coming in ten minutes.”
Snape held the bundle, his brain a muddle of confusion. “Where should I go?”
“Down the hall and through the fireplace.”
Clutching the bundle to his chest, Snape shuffled out of the room and found himself in a hallway. At the other end, a large fireplace stood with a large fire burning within in. As he approached it, a quantity of floo powder dropped from the chimney, turning the flames green.
He stepped into the fire and found himself disgorged onto the hearth in his flat. It looked as though he had never left it. The list was still lying placidly on the table, as though he had just left it there. His wand lay beside it.
He looked at the bundle in his arms. It was the robes he had been wearing the night they had come for him. How long ago was that? He had no idea.
There was a knock at his door. He froze, clutching the bundle. They were back!
“Are you all right, Mr. Snape? I heard some noise.”
He could breathe again. It was his landlady.
He cleared his throat. “I’m fine, Mrs. Stillwater. I--I knocked over a chair.”
He heard her go down the stairs. He wondered why she didn’t seem to notice that he had been gone for several weeks. He went into the bathroom and barely recognized his face. He had grown a beard and his eyes were like the empty sockets of a skull.
Pouring water into the sink, Snape plunged his face into it, drinking it in great gulps until he started choking. He came out dripping and wrapped a towel around his head.
He crawled into his bed and his last thought was to wonder how he was going to explain his long absence to his employer. If he still had a job at all.
***
He woke to the sound of knocking.
“Who’s there?” he called out. He stumbled out of bed, desperate for his wand. It was still lying on the table. He snatched it up.
“It’s Emmeline and Amy. We brought wine.”
He opened the door. Emmeline’s smile fell right off her face. “What the hell happened to you?” she said. She pushed her way into the room. Amy followed, closing the door after her.
“Why are you here?” he asked, bewildered.
“You invited us for dinner?”
“That was... ages ago.”
“We talked about it yesterday.”
He felt a strange misgiving. It was all so strange... like a nightmare or hallucination. Had he imagined it all?
But it seemed real. It felt real.
He was so dizzy.
Emmeline had him sit down, poured him a glass of wine, and forced him to drink it. Amy disappeared to find some food.
“Tell me what happened.”
“But it doesn’t make sense--“
“Never mind. Tell me.”
So he started at the beginning. He told her as much as he could remember. He didn’t remember it all. It blended together. The longer he kept talking, the crazier he felt.
Amy returned with some hot soup from the inn halfway through his story. They forced him to eat a few bites, although his stomach twisted painfully.
He finally finished and looked anxiously at Emmeline. She was a healer. She could tell him why he had had this strange delusion.
Instead she tilted her head to glance at Amy, who looked troubled to learn that Snape had gone insane.
“What do you think, Amy?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“You’re not the least bit upset? Look at him!”
Snape shrank from Emmeline’s waving hand.
Amy sighed. “It’s not like I condone it, Em. But I can’t do much about it, either. The Ministry’s desperate. There’s this growing sense that we’re losing this war. They’re questioning anyone who seems the least bit suspicious.”
“Was it your department?”
Amy shook her head vehemently. “Of course not! From what Sev’s describing, he was taken in by the new anti-Death Eater unit. Very high up. The top cadre of Aurors.”
“But why? He’s obviously not a Death Eater.”
Amy shrugged. “Who knows? His name was on some list. It’s happening to more people than you’d think.”
“I don’t understand,” Snape said. “It’s not all in my head?”
“No,” Emmeline said, tartly. “It’s not.”
“But I was... I thought I was there for weeks--“
“You were.”
“But... I wasn’t. It’s only been a day.”
Emmeline’s voice was dry. “People don’t grow full beards and drop thirty pounds in a day, Sevvie. Obviously, you were gone longer than that.”
“But how it is possible?”
“Time-turners,” Amy said quietly. “The Ministry is using time-turners. That way they can keep you as long as they like without anyone noticing.”
It suddenly made sense. But that hardly helped. He was happier thinking that he’d gone insane than he was knowing that it had actually happened. His hands started shaking and Emmeline took the glass from him.
“You mean... the Ministry just grabs random people and...” He didn’t want to say it, so Emmeline did.
“They grab random people and torture them, on the off-chance that they might learn something useful.”
Amy sighed. “Technically it isn’t torture--“
“Oh, come off it, Amy! This is exactly why I stoppped working at St. Mungo’s. We were required to report any suspicious injuries--and this is what happens--“
“Would you rather that You-Know-Who won?” Amy asked quietly. “Because if we don’t do everything in our power to stop him, he will.”
“At this point, it hardly makes a difference!” Emmeline snapped.
“If you really think that, Em, you’re stupider than I thought you were!”
Snape hid his face under his arms. He couldn’t bear to hear them arguing--especially over him. They were reaching real conflict--some painful, irreconcilable split in their relationship that was hidden under the playful fight about where they lived. He didn’t want to know about it. He didn’t want to hear the anger in their voices.
Something wet and gooey landed on his hands. Looking up, he saw that the ceiling was covered with a thick, greenish liquid. It was just like the first time he had ever manifested. What was happening to him? Was he losing all control?
The women noticed it as well. Amy seemed faintly embarrassed. Emmeline immediately switched from outraged to practical and made him lie down.
“Let’s talk about it later, Amy,” she whispered. “I think he’s still in shock.”
Amy nodded. She sat down and took one of Snape’s hands in hers.
“I’ll try to help you, Sev,” she said. “I don’t have any control over the A.D.E., but I can try to move the wheels along--contact people who might know people who might know people. We’ll get you out as soon as we can.”
“I don’t understand,” he started saying. Then it dawned on him. It was over and it wasn’t. He was free. He was safe, but somewhere---in some anonymous building that he couldn’t possibly identify, his past self was still captive.
The next day, he got up and shaved. He made himself go to work on Monday. He knew that his hollowed-out face would invite questions, so, for the first time in his life, he used a glamour charm to mask it.
For weeks afterward, as he went about his normal routines, he would often be brought up short by the realization that--no matter what he was presently doing--he also existed in another place where he was helpless, alone, and afraid. The war was no longer something that just happened to other people. It had happened to him. Somewhere out there, it was still happening to him.
Questions That Have No Answers
When the Hogwarts Express arrived at the beginning of the fall term, Snape went to meet Regulus at the station. He waited by the Quidditch car, but his friend never stepped out.
Thinking that perhaps Regulus had given up his spot on the team, Snape sought out one of the seventh year Slytherin prefects and asked after him.
“I don’t know,” the girl replied. “He wasn’t on the train, I’m fairly sure of that.”
It was odd, but it was also possible that Regulus had decided to leave school now that he was a Death Eater. Snape decided that to inquire further might draw attention to his friend’s absence and left the station.
It was weeks later that he was ordered by Palomides Pestle to make a special delivery.
“All the way to London?” Snape asked. “Why don’t they just order from Diagon Alley?”
“Never you mind!” Palomides said. “Just make sure you don’t waste any time.”
The address was 12 Grimmauld Place, the Black family residence. Snape recognized it from having attended Lucius Malfoy’s wedding. He took only a moment to brush back his hair before Apparating.
The tradesman entrance was opened by the same elf he had treated weeks earlier. Kreacher had apparently recovered. He didn’t seem to remember that Snape had helped him--or else that wasn’t important to him. He gave Snape the same dark, suspicious look that all House-Elves reserved for him.
“The half-blood will wait here,” he said, ushering Snape into a small sitting room on the first floor. “Mistress will be down directly.”
“Mistress?” Snape felt nonplussed. That would have to be Regulus’s mother. What would she want with him?
Walburga Black swept into the room and seated herself at an ornate desk that took up at least half of the space. She contemplated Snape, who hovered nervously, unsure if he should hand her the package or keep holding it, for a long moment.
“You are Severus Snape?” she asked finally. Her voice dripped with disapproval.
“That’s right,” he replied. Did he meet her at the wedding? He couldn’t remember. He should have remembered meeting this woman who dressed like an over-decorated ottoman.
She sniffed and looked away. Apparently, the wallpaper was more interesting to her than he was. “I believe you... know... my son, Regulus?”
“Yes. We’re friends.”
“Friends.” She said, making the word sound like an insult. She dismissed that idea with a shrug. “Have you seen my son lately?”
Snape blinked. “No, I haven’t...” He trailed off, unsure how to addresss her. Was Missus correct? Or was she Lady Black? Regulus tried not to talk about her at all, but when he did, it was always, “My mother.”
“Do you have any idea where he might be?” she asked.
“He isn’t at school, then?”
Her eyes flashed angrily. “If he were at school, do you think I would be having this conversation?”
Snape wondered what she knew about him. Had she read his letters to Regulus before throwing them out? Did she know that Regulus had joined the Death Eaters? Did he dare ask her?
“The last time I saw... your son,” he felt certain that she would take offense if he addressed Regulus by his first name, “was at the wedding of Lucius Malfoy and your niece.” A thought suddenly struck him. “Have you asked his elf? Perhaps he knows something.”
He felt that he’d just made a terrible blunder. Her stare became ice cold. “You are a very impertinent person,” she said. “You may leave now.”
He stepped back. His hands, tightening around the package, reminded him of its existence. The reason he had come here in the first place. Or was it just an excuse so that she could question him? Did she want it or not?
He hovered a moment, trying to figure out, through small feints and gestures, whether she wanted him to put the package down or simply take it back to the shop. He could find no clue in her stony face, half-turned away as if the very sight of him sickened her.
Finally, as he edged into the periphery of her sight, she turned to him and shouted, “Go!”
He fled. Package and all.
***
He never learned exactly what happened to Regulus.
He wondered if the boy had been arrested. One heard about people being arrested and sent to Azkaban without any trial. He shuddered to think about Regulus being in that horrible prison.
He asked Amy Bones about it, as she had a job in the Magical Law Enforcement Department. She and Emmeline Vance were just about the only people he saw regularly. They lived in a cottage in Hogsmeade and he had dinner with them once or twice a week.
Amy was always threatening to move to London, to be closer to her job, but Emmeline had finished her internship at St. Mungo’s and was determined to set up private practice in Hogsmeade. It gave the couple an unending source for sparring which neither of them seemed to take seriously.
“I’ll see what I can find out,” Amy told him. “But I doubt that he’s there. His family is very influential and the first place they’d do to find him is look through their own Ministry contacts.” She hesitated a moment and then added, “You do understand that I’ve only been in the department for a few years? That my job is mostly paperwork? That I’m roughly seven levels below the position where you have any sort of influence?”
He nodded, but hoped Amy could find something--anything. She was the only lead he had.
Emmeline didn’t ask why Snape thought the boy would be arrested, but her eyes were sharp and sardonic. She never missed a thing, did Emmeline Vance.
Amy was good for her word. She asked around, but four weeks later, had found nothing but dead ends.
“The problem is that the department is growing every day,” she waved her hands to show the growth spreading mushroom-like. “I don’t know who half the people are. I’ve never even heard of their job titles.”
She must have seen the worry in his face. “I’ll keep trying.”
***
Things were getting stranger every day. The entire Wizarding World was dividing like volcanic earth, with Voldemort and the Death Eaters on one side and Dumbledore and the Ministry on the other.
The vast middle--the pureblood families who made up the mass of the Wizarding World--were jumping to one side or the other, or else slipping into the abyss. The papers were filled with the names of the dead.
As for the others, the invisible half-blood families and Muggleborns, they rarely made the papers. They were only mentioned when the Ministry wanted to show the Death Eaters as particularly vile for attacking helpless Muggles.
There was an aggressive drive for Aurors by the Ministry. Snape heard that Regan had been taken into training after all. Apparently her weak voice was no longer such a limitation. Instead of three years training, Aurors were put into service after six months.
He thought about joining the Aurors one Friday as he was reading the Daily Prophet in the coffee shop. He had the N.E.W.T.s and, he thought smugly, the skills. It would be a definite step up from his current position.
It wasn’t as though he believed in that stupid pureblood ideology Voldemort was pushing. He had enough cunning (and knowledge of Muggle history) to suspect that once Voldemort was done with the Muggleborns, he’d be coming after the half-bloods, too.
On the other hand, he had the uncomfortable feeling that, if he did join the Aurors, he would end up facing his old pupils on the battlefield. He might end up facing Regulus.
If Regulus was still alive.
A shadow fell across the paper. “Morning.”
It was Emmeline. She sat down at the other side of his table. They often ran into each other like this, especially if she didn’t have an early appointment.
They chatted for a bit. Emmeline chatted. Snape listened. He never had much to talk about. He loved the way that women could talk about nothing, about shopping or trying a new kind of cauldron, and make it sound exciting.
“Well?”
He turned the page and blinked. “What?”
“Shall we bring some wine tomorrow?”
He had invited her and Amy over to his flat for dinner the next day. He nodded. “Red is good.”
“It’s rude to read the newspaper when someone is talking to you,” she pointed out, eating her toast as she talked.
“If I waited until you stopped talking, I’d never finish before work,” he commented. “I don’t have the energy after--“
He stopped, staring at the small notice on the society page.
James Potter, newly qualified Auror, First Class, announces his marriage to Lillian Evans, junior member of the Department of Mysteries. The two were married this past weekend and intend to spend their honeymoon...
He crumpled up the paper and threw it on the floor. Married to James Potter. He couldn’t understand it. How could Lily settle for someone like Potter? Did she simply overlook how self-centered and arrogant he was? Couldn’t she see how shallow his love must be, when she never showed Potter her real self?
The woman who could marry James Potter was not the woman he knew. Lily Evans was gone. In her place would walk and talk a new person named Lily Potter. That was a person he didn’t ever want to meet.
***
Snape wrote out a list for himself that evening of things he’d need to buy for the dinner. He would make a chicken, he decided, although that would mean he’d need to floo Emmeline in the morning and tell her to bring white wine instead of red. There were some spring potatoes at the produce market. He could roast them along with the bird.
There was a knock at the door. Muttering, he went to answer it, leaving the list on on the table. He took out his wand. Only a fool would answer the door without a wand these days.
He opened the door, catching a glimpse of two wizards with Auror badges winking in the candlelight. Then he heard one of them cry out “Expelliarmus!”
His wand flew out of his hand. Before Snape could say a single word, he found himself hexed into both silence and blindness. A pair of arms gripped his firmly, he felt the squeezing sensation of Apparation and the light against his closed eyelids intensified into a painful, unnatural brightness.
A voice informed him in a rapid-fire monotone that he was currently the guest of the Ministry of Magic’s Magical Law Enforcement Department. The voice listed his various rights, none of which involved legal representation or seemed to apply in the event that one is silenced and blinded and having the disturbing sensation of disembodied hands undoing the buttons of one’s robes, removing them, and then having a Secrecy Sensor prodded into every part of one’s body.
They left the blinding hex on as they thrust him into a shower for ten minutes, pulled him out, handed him a bundle, and shoved him into a small cell.
Eventually, his eyesight came back, but there was barely any light. He felt the bundle and realized that it was some kind of a prison robe. He pulled it on and, his fingers trembling, did up the ties. Buttons were too dangerous, he supposed. One might... pull them off and fling them at people?
A wizard with no wand is helpless. He has no defense, no controllable power. He might as well have been a baby, cowering in the dark corner of his parents’ house. After feeling around enough to know that there was no way out of the cell, he curled up and tried to sleep.
He was just dozing off when the door opened and two large wizards entered. They pulled him to his feet and out of the cell. The hallway was unnaturally bright and hurt his eyes. They ignored his indignant demands to speak to a solicitor.
He was marched to a room with one chair in the middle of it, a table and a few chairs scattered about the walls. As soon as they sat him down in it, a set of chains snaked up from the sides, binding him securely.
The two wizards left and, after some time, another pair entered and began questioning him about some plot to kidnap some unidentified member of the Ministry.
It became clear to Snape that they had the wrong person. He tried to point this out, but every time he did, one of the wizards hit him in the head.
He tried swearing at them, but that didn’t work any better. Nor did sarcasm. Or threats. Or simply saying, “I don’t know.”
That left him out of options and he fell silent. Eventually, they got tired of yelling and had him dragged back to the cell.
He never knew how long he was there. Long enough to lose track of the days. He couldn’t keep track by light, because there was never any natural sunshine. There was only the darkness of the closed cell and the intense white light of the interrogation room.
He couldn’t keep track by sleep, because half the time he started to fall asleep, he’d be woken up and questioned by the Aurors. They had names like Dawlish, Moody, Longbottom, and, of course, Shacklebolt. It hardly mattered what their names were. They were all loud, aggressive, and interchangeable.
He couldn’t keep track of meals. He was terrified to eat or drink in case it was laced with Veritasserum. He had too many secrets that he didn’t want anyone knowing about.
But then, they never even asked him about the things he might have known about, such as Regulus joining the Death Eaters or the fact that he’d sold illegal potions for several years out the back door of his parents’ house.
Instead, they asked him about things he had never heard of--a plot to poison the Ministers of Magic by sending doxy dust through the Owls, for example. Another time, he was grilled about smuggling dragon eggs by transfiguring them into faux jewelry boxes. They accused him of consorting with people he’d never met and being seen in places he’d never visited.
These question sessions became more violent and desperate as time went on. He found himself alternating between bouts of begging and pleading and staring stoically while they threw chairs around the room. After awhile, he stopped responding at all, except to say, “Snape. Special Agent. Serial number SOP279432.”
It was what his father had said, over and over, in those memories of the prison camp. If it was good enough for Da, he decided, it was good enough for him.
He remembered his father telling him that he had survived the prison camp by thinking about numbers. That wouldn’t work for Snape, as wizards have only the most rudimentary mathematical education. He knew basic functions and measurements, but that was not enough to fill his mind.
Instead, he shut his eyes and thought about Lily Evans--reliving every moment of their friendship. There were painful moments, that he shied away from, but there were happy memories, too. There was one that he particularly loved.
It was that one day that he had gone Christmas shopping with her family. There had been a Father Christmas in the middle of the shopping center. Children stood in line to climb into his lap and whisper their hopes for presents into his ear.
Petunia had sniffed and called the children greedy for wanting so many presents. Snape agreed with her, but he felt a sad longing to be one of them. The Father Christmas had blue twinkling eyes, a smiling face, and a long white beard. Severus had no illusions about the presents--Father Christmas would never stop at Spinner’s End. But if he had been smaller, he would have liked to climb up into those embracing arms. It would be so nice to have the white-haired head tilt to listen as he whispered his desires and that face smile just for him.
Lily wasn’t interested at all in Father Christmas. She liked the reindeer. The most vivid image he had of that day was seeing her holding out a sugar cube as a small doe nuzzled at her hand. Her entire attention was on the deer, on not frightening it away. It was the first time he had ever seen Lily completely unselfconscious.
He tried to focus on those memories before he passed out, but whenever he did managed to snatch a few minutes of sleep, he would dream that he was being questioned all over again.
Finally, after it seemed like he had been there forever, the Aurors brought him to a new room and bound him so tightly to a chair that any movement was impossible. They blinded him, and wound a thin chain around his neck. For a moment, as he felt fingers fumbling at his neck, he wondered if they were going to pull it tight and strangle him. But nothing happened. There was just a strange moment of silence.
“We got another one,” someone said. The blinding hex was lifted and he was blinking into the face of a clerk, who was busy untying him from the chair. Another clerk was sitting at a desk, shuffling through sheaves of paper.
“Name?”
“S-s-severus Snape?”
“Right.” The second clerk looked on a list, made a check mark, then pulled a bundle out of a cabinet. He handed it to the first clerk who handed it to Snape. “There you go. Now make yourself scarce. I’ve got another coming in ten minutes.”
Snape held the bundle, his brain a muddle of confusion. “Where should I go?”
“Down the hall and through the fireplace.”
Clutching the bundle to his chest, Snape shuffled out of the room and found himself in a hallway. At the other end, a large fireplace stood with a large fire burning within in. As he approached it, a quantity of floo powder dropped from the chimney, turning the flames green.
He stepped into the fire and found himself disgorged onto the hearth in his flat. It looked as though he had never left it. The list was still lying placidly on the table, as though he had just left it there. His wand lay beside it.
He looked at the bundle in his arms. It was the robes he had been wearing the night they had come for him. How long ago was that? He had no idea.
There was a knock at his door. He froze, clutching the bundle. They were back!
“Are you all right, Mr. Snape? I heard some noise.”
He could breathe again. It was his landlady.
He cleared his throat. “I’m fine, Mrs. Stillwater. I--I knocked over a chair.”
He heard her go down the stairs. He wondered why she didn’t seem to notice that he had been gone for several weeks. He went into the bathroom and barely recognized his face. He had grown a beard and his eyes were like the empty sockets of a skull.
Pouring water into the sink, Snape plunged his face into it, drinking it in great gulps until he started choking. He came out dripping and wrapped a towel around his head.
He crawled into his bed and his last thought was to wonder how he was going to explain his long absence to his employer. If he still had a job at all.
***
He woke to the sound of knocking.
“Who’s there?” he called out. He stumbled out of bed, desperate for his wand. It was still lying on the table. He snatched it up.
“It’s Emmeline and Amy. We brought wine.”
He opened the door. Emmeline’s smile fell right off her face. “What the hell happened to you?” she said. She pushed her way into the room. Amy followed, closing the door after her.
“Why are you here?” he asked, bewildered.
“You invited us for dinner?”
“That was... ages ago.”
“We talked about it yesterday.”
He felt a strange misgiving. It was all so strange... like a nightmare or hallucination. Had he imagined it all?
But it seemed real. It felt real.
He was so dizzy.
Emmeline had him sit down, poured him a glass of wine, and forced him to drink it. Amy disappeared to find some food.
“Tell me what happened.”
“But it doesn’t make sense--“
“Never mind. Tell me.”
So he started at the beginning. He told her as much as he could remember. He didn’t remember it all. It blended together. The longer he kept talking, the crazier he felt.
Amy returned with some hot soup from the inn halfway through his story. They forced him to eat a few bites, although his stomach twisted painfully.
He finally finished and looked anxiously at Emmeline. She was a healer. She could tell him why he had had this strange delusion.
Instead she tilted her head to glance at Amy, who looked troubled to learn that Snape had gone insane.
“What do you think, Amy?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“You’re not the least bit upset? Look at him!”
Snape shrank from Emmeline’s waving hand.
Amy sighed. “It’s not like I condone it, Em. But I can’t do much about it, either. The Ministry’s desperate. There’s this growing sense that we’re losing this war. They’re questioning anyone who seems the least bit suspicious.”
“Was it your department?”
Amy shook her head vehemently. “Of course not! From what Sev’s describing, he was taken in by the new anti-Death Eater unit. Very high up. The top cadre of Aurors.”
“But why? He’s obviously not a Death Eater.”
Amy shrugged. “Who knows? His name was on some list. It’s happening to more people than you’d think.”
“I don’t understand,” Snape said. “It’s not all in my head?”
“No,” Emmeline said, tartly. “It’s not.”
“But I was... I thought I was there for weeks--“
“You were.”
“But... I wasn’t. It’s only been a day.”
Emmeline’s voice was dry. “People don’t grow full beards and drop thirty pounds in a day, Sevvie. Obviously, you were gone longer than that.”
“But how it is possible?”
“Time-turners,” Amy said quietly. “The Ministry is using time-turners. That way they can keep you as long as they like without anyone noticing.”
It suddenly made sense. But that hardly helped. He was happier thinking that he’d gone insane than he was knowing that it had actually happened. His hands started shaking and Emmeline took the glass from him.
“You mean... the Ministry just grabs random people and...” He didn’t want to say it, so Emmeline did.
“They grab random people and torture them, on the off-chance that they might learn something useful.”
Amy sighed. “Technically it isn’t torture--“
“Oh, come off it, Amy! This is exactly why I stoppped working at St. Mungo’s. We were required to report any suspicious injuries--and this is what happens--“
“Would you rather that You-Know-Who won?” Amy asked quietly. “Because if we don’t do everything in our power to stop him, he will.”
“At this point, it hardly makes a difference!” Emmeline snapped.
“If you really think that, Em, you’re stupider than I thought you were!”
Snape hid his face under his arms. He couldn’t bear to hear them arguing--especially over him. They were reaching real conflict--some painful, irreconcilable split in their relationship that was hidden under the playful fight about where they lived. He didn’t want to know about it. He didn’t want to hear the anger in their voices.
Something wet and gooey landed on his hands. Looking up, he saw that the ceiling was covered with a thick, greenish liquid. It was just like the first time he had ever manifested. What was happening to him? Was he losing all control?
The women noticed it as well. Amy seemed faintly embarrassed. Emmeline immediately switched from outraged to practical and made him lie down.
“Let’s talk about it later, Amy,” she whispered. “I think he’s still in shock.”
Amy nodded. She sat down and took one of Snape’s hands in hers.
“I’ll try to help you, Sev,” she said. “I don’t have any control over the A.D.E., but I can try to move the wheels along--contact people who might know people who might know people. We’ll get you out as soon as we can.”
“I don’t understand,” he started saying. Then it dawned on him. It was over and it wasn’t. He was free. He was safe, but somewhere---in some anonymous building that he couldn’t possibly identify, his past self was still captive.
The next day, he got up and shaved. He made himself go to work on Monday. He knew that his hollowed-out face would invite questions, so, for the first time in his life, he used a glamour charm to mask it.
For weeks afterward, as he went about his normal routines, he would often be brought up short by the realization that--no matter what he was presently doing--he also existed in another place where he was helpless, alone, and afraid. The war was no longer something that just happened to other people. It had happened to him. Somewhere out there, it was still happening to him.