Sirius Black Fest 2013: Fic: Walking the Monochrome (Part 3)
Title: Walking the Monochrome (Part 3)
Rating: R
Go to Part 2
Part Three
1983
The following morning the beach was still deserted, and the sky was still grey, without a hint at sunlight. Stu came out of the white two-storey building, found Sirius walking along the shore, handed him a mug of coffee and left.
Sirius stared ahead, wondering if maybe Lily’s and James’ initial reaction was right, and he’d made a terrible mistake.
He thought of Snape, bony body covered with a white sheet, an animated tape measure dancing around his head, in a room full of strangers, and shivered.
“I don’t know,” Sirius said yet again. “I thought you’d want that. Just so that you could use both eyes to blink and irritate me twice as much.”
The sandy beach was wet. Sirius kicked a stray pebble and watched it roll down into the water.
“Then again, I don’t know anything about you. I ‘ve no idea if the stuff that I feed you is anything you’d eat on your own. If you actually ever did read Wilde. Or maybe you prefer to sleep on your side, and not on your back - I don’t know that, either. Come to think of it, I don’t even know if you are a dog person or a cat person.”
A wave rolled onto the beach, drenching his feet, and retreated hastily, leaving a few dull-green slippery seaweed strands on his boots.
“I don’t know what was going through your head when you killed Peter. I can’t know - how it was. I don’t know how you’ve managed to grow that much spine overnight and do that one crazy thing that made you what you are. I only know that you must have been insane to do that, and I’m so glad that you were.”
He shook the slippery green strands off his boots.
He wanted to go home.
Strange - to have come all this distance, and at the end of it all, to only think about how he and Snape would make it back to England, to London, their flat, half a world away, and settle into the rest of their lives.
He thought of it and realized that he no longer imagined his life without Snape’s presence by his side.
Even if it wasn’t really Snape living with him - just a memory of Snape, or a composite picture of Snape that Sirius had managed to piece together - and not much else.
“Sirius, your friend’s treatment was successful,” Andra’s voice said behind him. “You may go to him now.”
“Thanks.”
He didn’t feel grateful, not really.
He followed her into the white building, down the corridor, and into the treatment room where he’d left Snape some twelve hours ago. Still covered with a white sheet from toes to his neck, Snape was lying on the treatment bed, on his back. His right eye was closed, and his left eye was covered by a patch.
“Let the patch remain on for another six hours,” Andra advised. “You may take him to your room now. You might want to stay here for another day or two, just to allow his body to recuperate after the treatment.”
“All right,” Sirius said.
Slowly, he guided Snape to stand up, and Snape did, allowing himself to be directed, lifted off the bed.
Sirius watched Snape, or rather, his body, walk the path that Sirius had steered him onto, through the door, down the hallway, back to their room.
There was a lump in his throat and a knot in his stomach, and what seemed like a length of even more knotted rope connecting the two. Whenever Sirius swallowed, something ached and scraped at his insides, and the knot in his stomach tightened.
There was a dreadful sense of finality to all this. To picking Snape up, guiding him back to the room, settling him to rest on the bed.
Perhaps, because this was it, Sirius understood with jarring clarity. There was nothing else to do: nothing to fight for, no improvements to make. Snape’s body was as mended and as healthy as it was going to be, and they had nothing more to look forward to.
“All right,” Sirius said. “How about another day here, and then we go back?”
Snape’s chest was rising and falling evenly with each breath.
“I wish you could see it,” Sirius said. “It’s all grey: the ocean, the sky, and the sand. That’s what being a dog is like - it’s like you’re walking the very edge of the world, where almost all colour has run out, and you know that should you miss a step, you’ll fall off that edge. And it makes all your hair prickle and stand on end, and… it’s incredible, really.” He ran his fingers down Snape’s left forearm, where the skin tone was slightly paler. It was as if Snape were a quilt, pieced together with meticulous care, all fragments made to fit, and the scars were the seams, holding that quilt together. “Then again, you already know all about it. The edge and the falling.”
****
Something had changed.
Severus knew that, could sense it - through the infinitesimal tremors in the ice under his feet, through the shimmering of air in the colorless sky.
He saw it then - a bright dot of color so high above him he could barely see it.
“Red,” he thought. “This is red.”
The red grew slightly, twisted, acquiring shape and definition. It was a string of some sort, or a strand, descending into his world from - elsewhere.
Severus took a step back.
Elsewhere was dangerous, he knew that with absolute certainty, although he had no idea where that confidence had come from.
He needed to run, to hide from that strand of red before it found him, took hold of him.
He stood perfectly still, studying that intrusion of colour, unfamiliar, alien, twisting and writhing in the air, as it stretched itself from sky to ground.
If not run, at the very least, he needed to walk away. Walk away in any direction, until that thread was lost in the infinity of nothing, without a hope of ever being found again.
It is our choices that show what we truly are.
That thought that ran through him was more than a memory (he didn’t have any of those), more than an echo of someone’s voice.
That thought was at the core of him, not forcing, not threatening, not seducing with promises.
It just was - and this was a moment of pure choice, no threat or promise attached to either course of action.
Severus took a step forward and grasped hold of the strand. He felt its coarse fire run through him, and pulled, and then, it was as if the sky was falling, pulled down by that thread. More threads were descending: multi-coloured, trembling, writhing, twisting, reaching for him. He was grabbing at all of them, madly, frantically, and they were encircling him, growing into him, rooting themselves in him, and then - everything was coming back, all at once, and his universe collapsed into a singularity and then exploded once more, pushing him out - into that dangerous, dreadful, horrifying ELSEWHERE.
***
Sirius came awake with a start and turned to lie on his side.
He froze as he saw Snape’s right hand twitching, clawing at the sheets next to him and then, reaching for the eye patch on his left eye. The eye patch, torn off unceremoniously, was cast aside and Snape gasped for air and stilled, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Snape? Snape, can you hear me?”
For what seemed like eternity Snape hadn’t moved at all, as if he’d gone catatonic again, but Sirius was already sitting in bed, squeezing Snape’s hand in his, shaking it.
“Snape? Snape? Don’t bloody do this to me now, you’ve come back, haven’t you?”
A tiny, barely noticeable nod followed, and Snape stilled again, as if trying to process what was going on around him.
“It’s okay, Snape,” Sirius said. “Snape? For crying out loud, say something. Anything.”
Snape’s lips moved, and something unintelligible came out, “lleee, leee,” followed by a hoarse coughing.
“Lily,” Snape finally managed to make the word. “Lily?”
Of course, Sirius thought, last thing Snape remembers before his descent to hell - trying to save her.
“She’s fine. She’s alive, you saved her. It’s all right.”
“Son. Her son.”
“Harry is fine. Everything is okay. Has been okay for a while now.”
“How long?” Snape murmured, still keeping his eyes tightly shut.
“Two years. The war has been over for two years, Snape.”
Snape’s body seemed to relax, and then, he finally opened his eyes. He stared into the ceiling for a while, squinting and blinking as if to make sense of the colours-shapes-distances again. Eventually, he turned his head slightly to stare at Sirius.
“Seemed longer,” Snape said. “Black.”
“That’s me.”
For another long time, Snape considered that fact thoughtfully, seriously. Eventually, the corner of his mouth quirked slightly - not a smile, but something like a beginning of one.
“Could’ve been worse,” Snape muttered, and then passed out again.
Sirius stretched out on the bed next to him and let out a long, deep breath that felt almost like a sob. He couldn’t credit how much weight had just been lifted off his shoulders, and how his world has changed. He was thinking he needed to write Jay and Lily, Remus, Albus, Longbottoms, then he realized that, if they began their journey back now, they’d arrive back to England before the post did. He tried to picture the look of arrogant satisfaction on Snape’s face when he’d finally open the dusty box with the Order of Merlin in it, and that made him giddy, ridiculously so. Then he was thinking he really should thank Andra and Stu, and he was ready to thank everything around him, from the winds to the ocean, from the woods to the decrepit boat, and then, just like that, he was out of thoughts and ‘shoulds’, and he passed out next to Snape, feeling so relieved it seemed unreal.
***
In the evening, Andra received the news of Snape’s recovery with surprising calm. But, lack of emotional response aside, she was a scientist, so, of course, she was interested in what had happened. She wanted to observe Snape for another week, run some tests. Snape, still speaking in short sentences, was very much against it. He seemed so eager to go back home that he was eyeing the water of the ocean, as if trying to work out how long it’d take him to swim to the mainland, whose distant dark outline finally made itself visible in the fading mist.
In the end, Andra convinced them to stay another night, somehow managed to get Snape to agree to a few tests, (“no Legilimency!” she had to promise twice). In exchange she gave them a Portkey that’d take them directly to the East Coast, across the continent.
The tests didn’t really turn up anything out of the ordinary, and eventually Andra’s conclusion was the same as what Sirius had guessed by now. Back in Voldemort’s keep, Snape had somehow managed to sever all input from the outside world. The new eye and the new optic nerve had formed a new connection.
Snape listened to all of that, and didn’t seem to care.
He slept through most of his second day, waking up a few times to claw at the sheets and blankets, or raise his arm involuntarily, as if to shield himself from a blow-and then lower it, looking vaguely embarrassed.
Sirius let him be.
He didn’t know what to do with the real Snape, now that the Snape who’d been listening to his confessions and lamentations for some two years was gone.
In the evening, Sirius walked into the communal kitchen and appropriated a few egg salad sandwiches from a large cooler and a packet of apple juice from the cupboard. Giving it some more thought, he picked up two plastic glasses as well.
He and Snape dragged two folding chairs out onto the beach, where the tide was low again, leaving a number of tide pools, teeming with life in its wake.
“Tell me what happened,” Snape said.
Sirius told him about the war, about Dumbledore, about the Horcruxes.
Snape listened in silence, from time to time nodding, it seemed, to his own thoughts, rather than Sirius’ words.
“Why you?” he asked finally.
“Hmm?”
“Why am I with you?”
“It just made sense,” Sirius said with a shrug. “Lily and James had you with them for a while, but… they had Harry, and - well, I wasn’t doing anything anyway.”
“I see,” Snape said. He didn’t ask anything else. Perhaps, it didn’t really matter to him one way or another, whose house he’d spent the last two years in. “Lily is all right?” he checked again.
“She’s fine. She’s doing well.”
“Did she ask about me?”
“All the time. She and James both did.”
“Oh.” It seemed like mention of James left him completely indifferent. “Can I see her?”
“Well, not right this second, but yes. We’re going back home.”
“Good.”
“She was coming to see you every week, you know,” Sirius said.
Snape winced - a barely noticeable twitch that twisted his face for a fraction of a second.
“Was I… was I…. when she came…” he stammered and his eyes shifted in worry.
“You weren’t… you know… you didn’t look ridiculous,” Sirius said. “You weren’t drooling, or incontinent or - anything of the sort. You just pretty much sat there and stared. You looked a bit creepy. Kind of like the undead from the Muggle movies.”
“Good,” Snape said again. Then, after a moment’s thought, he added, “My wand?”
“We didn’t find it. When we - I mean, when we found you, back then, we didn’t look for your wand. And afterwards - it was too late. You will have to get a new one when you come back to England.”
“I understand.” Snape didn’t seem surprised. He didn’t seem interested in asking any more questions either, and his expression turned guarded once more.
“Snape,” Sirius muttered. “Mind if I ask you something?”
“Ask.”
“Do you still hate us? James, and me, and Rem…”
“Hate,” Snape’s eyes were half-shut, as he contemplated the question. “No, I don’t… think so.”
***
His own response puzzled him. Mildly.
Snape didn’t know why - but his emotions were a plateau, a level field, every valley filled, every mountain brought low. Even the thoughts of Lily didn’t bring up any particular feelings except for a faint embarrassment and vague worry, despite Black’s assurances.
He didn’t know why thinking of Potter, Black and Lupin left him feeling so… flat.
Maybe it was that he’d used up all his hate in that final Killing Curse, and nothing was left anymore.
Or maybe he’d been alone too long.
Two years, Black had said.
It seemed longer, much longer than that. Snape tried to remember what that ‘being alone’ felt like, was like, but couldn’t recall anything except for a colourless sky and a perfectly smooth sheet of ice under his feet. He had a vague, unsettling feeling that he’d forgotten something, but couldn’t tell what.
Their journey home was uneventful, if troublesome - it took Black a good four hours of arguing with local authorities to get his hands on the direct Port Key to London. Which was much more preferable to waiting for the ship that seemed to follow its own magical schedule and didn’t seem in any hurry to arrive to the wizarding dock in Halifax.
Eventually, many passionate expletives and red stamps in their travel documents later, the two of them stood in London in front of a three-storey red brick house that Snape didn’t recognize.
“It’s a wizarding neighbourhood,” Black explained. “My flat is on the top floor. I live here. Well - we live here.”
“All right,” Snape said. It still confused him that he was living with Black. He’d tried asking him a couple of times about that, and each time Black just shrugged with a quiet ‘you’re one of us, don’t you get it?’
Snape didn’t, not really.
He followed Black up the narrow windy staircase to the flat, that was small, cozy, and just a tad messy.
“Your bedroom is the smaller one,” Black told him.
Snape entered it, hoping that he’d see it and recall at least something of the time here. He stared at the simple blue duvet, two pillows, a trunk with clothes by the wall, and a bedside table.
He didn’t remember any of it. He approached the bed and ran his hand over the duvet, surprised at the coarseness of the fabric, and the tiny prickling of the few feathers poking out. Everything felt strange. Unfamiliar. The world was filled with irregularities and rough edges.
“You look like you just landed on an alien planet,” Black joked in the doorway.
“I lived here,” Snape said, not moving one way or another.
“For two years,” Black confirmed.
“I don’t remember any of it.”
“I imagine you did a good job of cutting off the outside world. Even Ackov couldn’t do squat when he…”
“You brought a Legilimency Master to try and look into my mind?” Snape checked.
“Yes. Look, try not to go apeshit on me; I reckoned it was our only shot at…”
“That must have cost a fortune.”
“He couldn’t find you.”
“He wouldn’t have. I made sure of that.” Still in his clothes, Snape stretched himself out on the bed, atop the blankets and shut his eyes. “When can I see her?” he asked.
“Anytime you like,” Black said.
Snape didn’t answer. He was asleep a moment later.
***
Standing in the doorway, Sirius smiled.
So Snape did sleep on his back. For some reason, it made him feel good.
***
Despite the numerous questions about Lily, Snape seemed in no hurry to see her, or anyone else. Sirius owled Lily and James and told them about what had happened, and the two Patroni from the Potters arrived shortly, deliriously joyful and feisty.
Snape was asleep when they arrived and didn’t wake when they left.
In fact, Snape seemed to be quite content to just stay in the same bedroom that he’d been confined to for about two years and not do anything at all.
Snape was quiet. He didn’t have any questions, he didn’t want anything.
He had nothing to tell. The few times that Sirius had cast a glance into his bedroom, Snape was lying on the bed, his eyes shut, and his hand stroking the duvet and frowning, as if its texture were a disappointment to him.
It seemed that Snape had just settled himself in and wasn’t going anywhere, and Sirius didn’t make of it. A part of him suspected that he should be pushing Snape to get out there, into the outside world, but he didn’t know if that would do more harm than good.
He really didn’t know anything, except for the fact that he was feeling as if something was being pulled out of him, slowly, torturously. As if he was losing something, which, of course, was ridiculous; neither of them had lost anything, they both had gained the entire world.
Yet, it seemed strangely soothing to have Snape around. Just knowing that he was there was … all right.
That is until one day, Sirius woke up to find Snape gone.
He searched the flat. His wand hadn’t been taken, and the Floo hadn’t been used. The money - whatever of it that Sirius kept at home, hadn’t been touched.
Sirius ran downstairs, cast a spell hoping to turn up a trace of Apparition and came up with noting.
Snape seemed to have vanished into thin air. The neighbours, woken by Sirius’ pounding on the door, said they saw nothing and heard nothing.
Sirius was about to contact the Potters and start a city-wide search for the proverbial needle in a haystack, when Snape entered the flat, looking absolutely calm. The befuddled and bemused look he’d had about him for the past weeks was gone. There was more confidence in the way he carried himself now.
“Where were you?” Sirius demanded at once.
Snape arched an eyebrow at his tone.
“At Ollivander’s. I picked out a new wand,” Snape said.
“How did you get there?”
“I walked,” Snape said, as if it were the most natural thing to do.
“It’s eight miles to Charring Cross Road.”
“That’s why I left at six in the morning,” Snape said.
Sirius breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Well, bully for you. Let’s see the new wand.”
Snape showed it to him. It was willow and phoenix feather, pliant and flexible, and exceptionally well suited for stealth and combat spells, Snape explained.
“There’s no more combat,” Sirius felt the need to point out.
Snape shrugged.
“I wasn’t about to start arguing with the wand. Seeing that my wand arm had been taken apart and put back together I reckon it was a miracle that any wand would be suitable.”
“Fair enough. Breakfast?”
“I ate out.”
“You didn’t take any money.”
“The lady working at the Leaky Cauldron didn’t mind putting it on my tab,” Snape said. “She seemed to think I was a war hero, Order of Merlin, First Class, or something of the sort. I took advantage of her confusion.”
Sirius found himself grinning at that.
“You took advantage of your own confusion, more like.”
“Meaning?” Snape inquired in a very chilly tone.
“You’ve got the Order of Merlin, First Class, Snape.”
“I have?” Snape seemed mildly surprised by the news.
“Mmhm.”
Snape was silent for a moment, absorbing that. Then, he demanded, “Show me.”
A minute later, the small box rested in Snape’s hands. Snape stared inside, studying the small golden disk and a striped ribbon, hanging from it.
“Well,” was the final verdict.
Sirius didn’t know what to make of it.
“How was it?” Sirius asked.
“What?”
“You know. Being out there. Walking the streets. Seeing the world.”
“Confusing and noisy.” Snape paused, then added, with shocking candor, “Terrifying. I didn’t know half the shops. I didn’t know how to navigate the crowds. I didn’t know what people were saying to me. At first I didn’t know how to speak.”
“You seem to’ve done all right with your little outing.”
“I’ve faked it all the way,” Snape said.
“I doubt anyone noticed.”
***
“I want to see Evans, I think,” Snape said in the late afternoon, his tone perfectly calm. “Can you take me to her?”
“I can,” Sirius agreed, feeling more than slightly unsettled. “Except, she’s a Potter now, you remember.”
Snape’s face never changed expression.
“Of course. Potter. I want to see her, regardless.”
“I’ll let them know we’re coming.”
“Fine.”
***
Snape was ready to go half an hour later. His hair, that had grown even longer over the last two years, was now flawlessly brushed and tied back into a ponytail. He was wearing the dress robes that he’d gotten out of the closet, and the Order of Merlin was pinned to his chest - just the right way.
His back was straight, almost unnaturally so, and he held his head high. His lips were pressed into a thin line, and a deep line on his forehead made him look just a bit older.
He managed to look… -- Sirius searched for the right word - Snape managed to look almost regal in the way he carried himself now.
He looks regal, and majestic and every bit the hero; and he’s completely and utterly insane, and he’s about to put the moves on my best mate’s wife, and I’m insane enough not to try to stop him, and if it comes to wands with Jay, I’m not hundred per cent sure who I should be fighting for. Maybe I’ll just stun them both and give their wands to Lil.
That seemed like as good a plan as any other.
***
They Apparated to Godric’s Hollow together.
Snape walked to the Potters’ house quickly, without faltering in his steps or looking back. He knocked on the door - two well-aimed knocks with his fisted hand, and waited.
Sirius was right behind him, not sure if he should be anticipating disaster.
The door opened and James stepped aside to let them in.
“Snape,” he said, extending his hand, “good to see you.”
Snape shook his hand - briefly, but without any obvious revulsion.
“Potter,” he said. Sirius held his breath.
“That’s me.”
Snape stared at him.
“I believe courtesy requires me to make small talk of some sort. Whatever may be the socially acceptable version of ‘I’m glad you aren’t dead, your house looks fine’ - let’s assume I’ve said it. May I see Lily now?”
For a moment James looked taken aback, but recovered quickly.
“No problem. She’s just putting Harry to sleep. She’ll be right down. Would you care for a drink?”
“No, thanks.”
“Would you care for…”
“No.” Snape hesitated for a moment, then said. “Black tells me you and her had housed me for two weeks or so after the war was over.”
A long silence hung between them, Snape regarding James guardedly, and James clearly trying to come up with some sort of response. Eventually, James spoke.
“Snape,” he said. “ You’re one of us. Like Sirius, like Rem, like the Longbottoms, like Dumbledore. You’ll always be welcome here. And that’s pretty much all that I can say about that.”
Snape opened his mouth, but didn’t get a chance to reply: Lily ran down the stairs then, and James stepped aside one more time, allowing her to come face to face with Snape. They watched each other silently, and eventually Snape took her hand in his, delicately, uncertainly.
“Can we speak in private?” he asked.
“We could go out into the garden,” she suggested, giving James a quick glance.
“I’d like that.”
They walked out of the house, and Lily shut the door behind them.
Sirius let out a long breath. “I need a drink,” he said.
“You know where everything is. Help yourself.”
Sirius did just that, and James joined him.
“You aren’t nervous?” Sirius asked.
“Why would I be?”
“You know. Him. He’s…” Sirius looked out of the window, where, in the red-golden autumn garden, Snape and Lily sat on the bench, half- facing each other.
Snape was still not a pretty man, but whatever he had about him, worked for him now. He was no longer someone desperate for HER attentions, HER smiles. He was every bit her equal, and he carried himself like he knew it.
“Yes,” James followed the direction of Sirius’ gaze, “he turned out all right.”
“Better than all right, I’d say.”
“Maybe,” James didn’t argue. “But no, I’m not nervous. I know Lily.” James shook his head. “No, the worst she’ll do to me is bring Snape into the house and tell me we’re going to be one happy joyful family.”
Sirius twitched. “Harry, say hello to Cadavrena.”
James shook his head. “Dementoria, I insist.”
***
The garden was still. There was no wind, no movement - as if everything, including time itself, just held its breath. Sunlight poured through the tops of the whistle-wood trees, and the carpet of leaves on the ground glowed, as if ready to burst aflame.
Snape watched that glow, surprised by the intensity of it. He’d forgotten how bright the autumn could shine, and how bright Lily’s hair was.
“I don’t know what to say,” she was the first one to speak.
“I’m not sure what to say either,” he admitted. “Tell me about what happened.”
“Sirius must have told you…”
“Some. I can’t say I paid attention. I was… slightly unhinged at the time.”
“All right then.” She spoke for a long time, telling him her life, their lives. Snape did his best to listen, but the events she’d told him seemed to be getting lost in the sound of her voice, and in the sore mess of his own thoughts. He still made an effort to hear her, to capture as much of the story as he was able to. In the end, he knew only one thing: she was all right.
“I’m glad,” he said.
And then, another silence stretched between them. He felt a bit like he did before, when the sky of his quiet, lonely world was coming down, and the long-forgotten strands - things unsaid, conversations unfinished - were descending into his hands.
He grasped at one of them.
“I’m not sure if it still maters to you,” he said, “about the things back in school. I just want you to know that my apology to you back then… wasn’t insincere.”
She nodded, looking away, looking strangely guilty all of a sudden.
“What?” he asked.
“It’s about back in school.”
“What about it?”
“That day. When - they - they were tormenting you. By the lake. I saw what was happening - and I smiled,” she whispered, still not meeting his eyes. “I don’t think you saw that.”
“I saw.” Snape shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It didn’t back then, either.”
For a moment she looked like she might cry, but didn’t - she just sniffled a bit, and gave him a weak smile.
“Looks like it’s not about apologies anymore, anyway,” she said.
He couldn’t disagree with that.
He knew that something was gone, something of what he used to feel about them, himself and HER.
He didn’t know when or how it happened, maybe it was peeled off of him, and torn out of him …
Or maybe, that one orange strand that he’d let go before all others, never came back.
Then again, he thought, perhaps it came back different - fainter, thinner, but stronger, too. He could hope.
He extended his hand to her. “Friends, then?”
“Of course. Always.” Her fingers barely brushed his.
They both laughed out loud, awkwardly, but with obvious relief.
“How are you doing?” she asked, studying his face with concern. “Really?”
“All right, I suppose.” He frowned, adding, “A bit confused at times. I’ve got a new wand though,” he added with a small smile. “It seems to be working.”
“If you need a place to stay, to gain your bearings - to just rest… you could stay here for a while.”
“James said the same thing. I understand that you were taking care of me for a few weeks while I was…” Snape frowned, looking for a suitable word, “disengaged.”
“Yes. We still have the guest room, we haven’t touched it.”
“Really?” Snape asked.
“Yes,” she smiled just a bit. “I suppose, deep down, I kept hoping that one day you’d walk through the door - and stay.” She looked at him with hope. “Stay?”
He cast a quick glance in the direction of the house and at the kitchen window, behind which, the silhouettes of Potter and Black were visible.
“Stay,” Lily said again.
“Don’t you think James will be irritated if I do?”
“Not at all.”
“Pity.”
***
Jokes aside, it felt good to stay.
He was surprised at how little tension there was between him and James. Perhaps, Lily was right, and it wasn’t about apologies anymore, and the past somehow exhausted itself and collapsed in on itself, in a puddle of broken bone and torn ligament.
James laughed a great deal, brought out more Firewhisky, told stories about Auror training that he was pursuing - although he kept dropping out and coming back.
“You’d be good at that, I imagine,” James said, eyeing Snape critically. “Besides, Sirius tells your wand is well suited for combat spells. It’d be a shame to let that go to waste.”
Snape listened to him and nodded absently, lost in his own thoughts. It felt good to hear them speak, hear them laugh.
It felt like being home.
For that matter, Black seemed to have made himself at home more than anyone else. He was laughing louder than everyone else put together, drinking more, as if trying to catch up on all the things he’d managed to miss in the last two years.
Snape wondered briefly what those two years had been like - and then let that thought go. He imagined it didn’t matter anymore, either.
Before that day, Snape had never seen Lily drunk - or even slightly tipsy. Now, she was - and it suited her. She wasn’t saying anything silly or embarrassing, but her cheeks were bright pink, and her eyes were shining.
When it got quite late, Snape found the guest room on his own and spend a long minute staring at his surroundings. Another place to call home, and he didn’t recognize it. Yet, not recognizing wasn’t bothering him. Downstairs, Sirius and James were laughing and Lily was making half-hearted attempts to quiet them down.
Eventually, they settled down some, and she came upstairs too, and scratched at Snape’s door before walking in and sitting down on the edge of his bed.
“Sometimes I wonder,” she said, sounding blissfully happy and mellow, “about how it’s going to be with Harry.”
“What do you mean?” Snape asked.
“Well… you pretty much destroyed the prophecy,” Lily explained. “Don’t get me wrong - I’m happy about that more than I can even begin to understand. But - I do wonder… what it’ll be like, growing up, knowing that there’d been a destiny once, and then, it was pushed aside to make room…well, for life, I guess.”
“Maybe it wasn’t pushed aside,” Snape whispered.
“How do you mean?”
“Maybe he already fulfilled his destiny. I mean - I did what I did… because I knew you wouldn’t give him up. Because I knew you loved him. Maybe this is what, in the end, made him stronger than Tom. That you love him.”
“I didn’t think of it that way,” she confessed, flushing in embarrassment. “Then again, I reckon, pushing destiny aside for the sake of life - that’s… grand in itself.”
Snape found himself wanting to laugh.
“Isn’t it just.”
He reached for her hand and kissed it.
When she was gone, he kicked his boots off, and stretched out on the bed. The linens smelled of lavender and mint, and it was soothing without being cloying or overly sweet, and he inhaled deeply, greedily, no longer caring to remember the other world, a world without smells, a world where NOTHING mattered.
Here, everything mattered. There was an undercurrent of fierce passion in everything around him, even in the quiet exchanges with Black and Potter, and in the conversations with Lily.
Snape couldn’t help but be amazed at how instantly he was accepted as ‘one of the gang’. He wondered, briefly, if that was actually true - it’s not like he’d changed sides rationally, it’s not like he’d recanted his errors or made vows or promises.
Yet, nobody seemed to expect any of that from him; somehow, one single choice he’d made two years ago, turned out sufficient.
That surprised him - and didn’t, at the same time.
He himself was used to choosing his acquaintances carefully, weighing the pros and the cons before making the choice of approaching someone.
Potter and Black, who’d been quick to make judgments and loathe someone, needed just as little to turn around and accept that same someone with reckless self-abandon.
That reckless passion seemed to run at the core of them. That, and the unvoiced faith that one single moment of choosing could have as much weight and value as years of errors.
Maybe choice is like life, he thought.
Maybe you only live once; and you only choose once, as well.
On an impulse, Snape rolled up his sleeve and stared at his left forearm, where the skin was paler than elsewhere, and where the Dark Mark used to be.
Used to be.
He still remembered with crystal clarity HOW it was forced to come off, and found himself smiling, just a little madly.
He was rid of it. It must be worth shedding a bit of skin.
***
Sprawled on Potter’s couch, Sirius woke up at dawn when he heard the footsteps. Someone was treading carefully, softly, clearly not wanting to wake him.
“Snape,” Sirius mumbled through his sleep. “Are you going for another walk to Charring Cross Road? It’s more than eight miles from here, you realize.”
“I didn’t want to wake you,” Snape said.
There was something different in his voice now. It was more guarded, more even, less relaxed than yesterday.
Sirius rubbed his eyes and yawned, forcing himself to sit up.
“Snape, would you like some tea?”
A brief silence was followed by a short, “Yes, actually.”
“Then go ahead and make some.”
“Oh.”
They sat outside, on the porch still damp from the night’s rain. Snape cradled the mug of tea in his hands and stared into it, as if trying to see if the tealeaves on the bottom of the mug would tell him something.
“What do you see?” Sirius asked, turning to him.
“I should go.” Snape set the mug, untouched, on the porch.
For some reason it stung to hear that. Just a bit.
“I thought you liked... you know. Being with us,” Sirius said, cautiously.
“I did,” Snape said simply, then amended it to a quiet, “I do.”
“Well… you’re still… I mean, look, you must know by now, it’s not about pity, or owning, or any shit like that. You’re really… you know, you’re family. And it’s been less than two weeks since you came back. You could take your time. Stay with us a while. Either me - or them.”
Snape nodded absently. “I could, yes.” He smirked slightly, but without much amusement. “It’d be nice, Black, I won’t deny that. To stay in the bedroom I don’t remember. To be with others. To not have to think about what to do next, how to get from point A to point B, and how many of those points are still ahead.”
“Right. So why are you going now?”
Snape’s answer didn’t surprise him, not really.
“Because I can. If I stayed another day, I’m not sure I would be able to leave.” Snape rose to his feet and extended his hand to Sirius. “Black, knowing you, I half-suspect that you took me in for some unhealthy, nefarious reason - perhaps, in order to perform some deviant sexual acts on my unresponsive body, or something of the sort.” The corner of Snape’s mouth twitched again, as a smile fought to get out. “However, fortunately for both of us, I remember none of that. Therefore, I must thank you for your kindness, an unlikely thing as it may be.”
Sirius glanced at Snape’s hand, but didn’t take it.
“Snape,” he said again, troubled. “Wait. Where are you going to go?”
Snape stared ahead, where, beyond the road, a large field of yellowish grass was catching the first of the morning sunshine.
“Out there.”
“Right. And how are you going to get OUT THERE?”
“I think I’ll walk for a bit, then Apparate.”
“Are you bloody insane? It’s too early for you to try Apparition.”
“I think I can do it. I can feel it.” Snape smiled - and this time, it was an actual smile.
Right, Sirius thought, all those days and months of wondering what his smile looks like - now I know.
He fought the nearly irresistible urge to punch something, maybe break something. “I’m warning you, Snape, when you Splinch yourself, I’m not going to take care of you. I’ll bring a pile of your dismembered limbs to Mungo and dump it there, at the doorstep.”
Snape scoffed at that. “As long as you bring the torso along, too, I don’t mind. Good day, Black.”
***
His bravado aside, Apparition turned out difficult to manage. It made him dizzy, almost to the point of being nauseated - much like the first time he’d ever tried it. Standing in the middle of Diagon Alley, he took a minute to catch his breath, to gather his thoughts.
The thoughts were refusing to be gathered. Or, perhaps, there were just too many of them. There were the thoughts of food, the thoughts of needing to find shelter, the thoughts of whether his house back in a Muggle neighbourhood of Manchester was still there - and whether his books were still intact. Then, quite logically, there were thoughts of money: he remembered he had a pension, then, by extension, he remembered that the Wizarding World had a bank.
He shut his eyes, trying to arrange all those strays into one logical chain.
Bank. Money. Food. Flat. Sleep. Books.
Yes. That made sense, except the prospect of dealing with all that was still daunting.
He didn’t know how people did all that on their own.
The world with so many colours, voices and noises, and rough edges, seemed terribly and needlessly complicated.
***
He had a home by the end of the day - a small flat on the top floor of one of the few unremarkable buildings that had sprang up right next to the Leaky Cauldron. By the following afternoon, he had linens, dishes, and his mother’s old books that he’d retrieved from his Muggle home. Come to think of it, he had everything he needed.
More to the point, the world was becoming more manageable, more familiar, more predictable. Sometimes, it even seemed like it was turning into the same world of colourless sky and perfectly even ice that he was used to already - all strings released, all incoming noise shut down, the perfectly predictable eternity of unchanging space as far as the eye could see.
It seemed… reasonable.
Certainly, more reasonable than the very frank and candid conversations with Black - Snape didn’t know what had come over him to speak to Black so freely - as if, upon waking, he had no inhibition, no common sense. Then again, perhaps, after spending two years in Black’s care, embarrassment seemed pointless.
It was almost too bad that Snape didn’t remember anything of those two years. He tried - and he couldn’t. His body seemed to remember the oddest things - a touch of someone’s hand on his back, or a sensation of someone brushing his hair away from his shoulders. He knew that those memories couldn’t possibly be real - and yet, it was as if something was amiss.
A week later, Snape dreamed of the white tiger again.
“Maybe it’s you that I’ve missed,” Snape said.
The creature’s ear twitched at the sound of his voice.
“I never named you,” Snape told him. “I suppose it’s too late now. Still, maybe I should - seeing that it was you who kept me sane.” He thought of it for a bit. “Well, relatively sane, at any rate.”
The tiger arched his back out. Snape reached for it - but the creature was gone before Snape’s hand could touch it.
When Snape woke up, he was alone in bed. He wondered where those dreams were coming from while he was unresponsive - one strand that he managed to forget to cut off? An echo of a memory that he’d forgotten to let go of? Either way, he reasoned, he couldn’t complain.
The knocking on the door startled him, banishing the remnants of sleep.
Snape walked down the narrow hallway to open the door and found himself face to face with Black.
Black, who seemed to be more annoyed than glad to see him.
“I was about to break in,” Black informed him. “You sleep like the dead.”
“How long have you been knocking?”
“Half an hour, at least.”
“Impossible.”
“Well, at least seven or eight minutes,” Black amended, and poked his head inside. “Let me come in?”
“Come in,” Snape agreed, somewhat reluctantly and more than a bit awkwardly.
Black strolled into the sitting room and made himself at home in one of the armchairs, sitting sideways in it, and throwing one leg over the armrest. He kicked his boots off. Snape arched and eybrow at that.
“Nice place,” Black said, seeming untroubled by Snape’s staring.
“I’m glad you approve”, Snape said, sitting down on the couch across from him. “What would I do otherwise?”
Black sighed.
“Snape, if I’m bothering you - do say so, don’t hold back. Politeness doesn’t suit you.”
Snape considered it for a moment, feeling once again like he did back in his own quiet world, a single bright-red strand descending from the clear, colourless sky, and a choice: take it or leave it.
“You aren’t bothering me,” Snape said, a bit too quickly, then qualified it with a slightly dryer, “much.”
“You’re all heart.”
“Oh no. I’m much more complex than that. I’ve got liver and spleen, too.”
“I don’t know if I can handle that much complexity.” Black glanced at him briefly, guardedly. “You feeling all right?”
“Yes.”
“Your wand works for you?”
“Yes.”
Another string of questions-and-answers followed - the questions from Black, the monosyllabic responses from Snape. It was awkward.
More than that, it was maddening. Being so near to Black made Snape feel as if he needed to understand something important.
“How are you?” Snape surprised himself by asking.
Black seemed just as surprised by the question, if not more. “Great. I went out to fly this morning.”
“The broom?”
“I’ve got a flying motorcycle.”
“Oh. Did you enjoy it?”
“For the first few minutes.” Black smiled sheepishly. “Then, I had this dreadful thought - for a split second I was certain that you’d been there with me at first, and then - just fell out. Stupid, but…”
“I managed to ruin your morning even in absentia,” Snape summarized.
“Try not to sound so pleased.” Black scowled at him.
“I do have to ask - why would you picture me on the motorcycle with you? It’s not like we ever…”
“We did, actually,” Black said, looking vaguely embarrassed. “I took you for a ride, once.”
“While I was…”
“While you were. Yes.”
Snape paused a minute, trying to picture that - his own unresponsive, blind-deaf-mute-unfeeling body, pressed into Black’s, high above the city’s skyline, high above the rest of the world. It didn’t make sense. Nothing about Black made sense.
“Sounds charming,” Snape said dryly. “Though I can’t help but wonder, Black. What else had you been doing to me in these two years?”
Black’s face paled - just slightly, but he recovered instantly, grinning.
“Why, I whored out your lifeless, unresponsive body in Knockturn Alley, of course. What else could I do?”
Snape inclined his head.
“Understandable,” he said in a perfectly monotone voice. “How else could you afford all the nice things that you’ve got. Why, those old socks alone must have cost a few sickles.”
“Oh yes, Snape, it only took two weeks for you to earn me enough money for those.” Black’s grin faded. “To answer your question, Snape - I was taking care of you. Not with the spells that they have for that, but…”
“I see,” Snape mused, then added, “you touched me.”
“I did,” Black agreed, giving him a strange look, then followed the confession with a question. “Are you going to kill me now?”
“That seems like too drastic of a measure. If the memory of touching me is so unsettling, I could just Oblivate you.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Black seemed to relax a bit. “Do you remember any of it?”
“No. But…”
But I think that I keep seeing something , just out of the corner of my eye, and I think that if I try hard enough, I could remember - something. An echo of a voice, a trace of human touch. It shouldn’t be possible - to miss so much something I don’t remember.
“I can’t stand this anymore,” Black said suddenly. “This is bloody ridiculous. We’re just beating around the bush, and - neither of us is saying or asking what he wants to say. Something needs to be done about that - Snape - have you got alcohol?”
“It’s eight in the morning, Black. You mightn’t care - but other people, people who have responsibilities, jobs…”
Black snorted derisively. “You don’t have a job, do you.” That wasn’t a question, not really.
“No,” Snape admitted.
“But you’ve got alcohol.”
“Yes.”
“Bring it. It’s a good excuse to loosen inhibitions.”
“I tend to value my inhibitions.”
“They’ll be back with you when you sober up - along with shame, guilt, headache and nausea and the general sense of self-loathing.” Black’s eyes sparked with amusement. “You’ll appreciate them more then.”
***
It turned out that Snape had Firewhisky. Sirius grinned, as he studied the bottle, lifting it to light. The sunshine, streaming through the window seemed trapped in it, a tiny knot of fire, swimming in the confines of the glass encircling it.
“I’m going to open the windows, let some fresh air in. You get the glasses,” Sirius said.
“It’s November. Are you trying to freeze us to death?”
Sirius waved him off. “We’ll never die, Snape. We’ve missed our chance.”
The wind gushed through the room, making the white curtains flutter like sails of a boat.
“You even have clean glasses,” Black teased, “why, Snape, you never cease to shock me.”
Snape poured the Firewhisky into the glasses and handed one of them to Sirius.
“Black. Do hurry to get drunk and say whatever you haven’t got the courage to say otherwise.”
“You first,” Sirius watched him appraisingly, and checked a long minute later. “How are those inhibitions?”
“Repulsively lacking. Black, what did you do to me, while I was out cold and unaware of anything? Other than groping me and taking me along on the motorcycle rides.”
“You won’t believe it,” Sirius said. “I - I don’t even know where to begin.”
“The Knockturn Alley then?” Snape checked, seeming vaguely amused.
“Oh, no. Worse, I’m afraid.”
“Black - what could possibly be worse?”
“I brushed your teeth and combed your hair. Daily.”
“You have my sympathies.”
“And I took you to Remus on the full moon.”
Snape nearly choked on his Firewhisky. “That does seem to be a recurring motif for you,” he muttered. “He didn’t turn me, did he?”
“No! It wasn’t like that - it was safe. Ah - you probably didn’t know, but Jay and I are Animagi…”
“Unregistered, of course. So what’s Potter’s beast?”
“He’s a stag.”
“He’s a deer,” Snape’s lips twisted into a rather unkind smirk. “How fitting. Black, you -arsehole, you’ve no idea what I’d have given for this piece of information some six years ago.”
“Right. Jay and I would have still been in Azkaban, hmm? For illegal use of restricted magic?”
“Most likely,” Snape let out a small laugh. “And what are you, Black? No, let me guess. It must be something utterly useless and ostentatious. A peacock?”
Sirius bared his teeth in a rather canine sneer.
“Try again.”
“An amoeba?” Snape guessed.
“Now you’re just being stupid.”
“I’m trying to come down to your level. Not an easy task, I assure you .”
“I’m a dog.”
That did cause Snape to smirk, just a bit. “A poodle, I hope?”
Whatever on earth made me think that, as a drunk, he’d be more agreeable? “I’m a wolfhound, Snape.”
“I see. Remus’ inner wolf must be thrilled by the company.”
“You don’t get it,” Sirius said, both irritated and for some reason desperate for Snape to actually understand. “He’s safe when we’re with him. Our minds become simpler, more primitive - no, please do wipe that sneer off your face - and his mind becomes more human. It’s like we meet half-way. Snape!” Sirius almost cried out, “You probably won’t believe me, but it’s… it’s an amazing thing. It’s life as it really is. It’s primal, and wild, it’s the adrenaline and the chase, and being a part of the pack, and relying only on instinct to guide you, and seeing the nature of all things, looking to their core. It’s almost - sacred! And you were there, with us. You got to see us together the way that nobody else sees, ever, not even Lil. Having you there with us meant something. Well, to us, it did.”
Snape nodded, just a bit. He was no longer smirking or sneering. If anything, he seemed to understand - at least, in part.
“I wonder what else I’ve missed,” he muttered. “What else had gone around me that I don’t remember.”
“The motorcycle ride was only once. I nearly killed us both.”
“Unsurprising.”
“My turn now,” Sirius said. “Truth for truth. Did you dream?”
Snape took a while to answer, and for a while it seemed like he was going to bow out of the truth-for-truth arrangement. But he did answer, eventually.
“All the time. One long endless dream.” Snape’s eyes fixed on Black with shocking intensity. “My turn again.”
“You ought to be joking. You’ve asked at least seven questions, I only managed to get in one.”
“My answers are worth more than yours,” Snape said. “Oh, very well. You may ask again.”
Sirius intercepted Snape’s gaze and held it. If it were a physical thing, Sirius thought, he’d have holes in his chest by now.
Now or never.
Come to think of it, ‘never’ seemed rather appealing at the moment.
“I slept with you,” Sirius blurted out.
“Black, that’s not a question.” Snape seemed untroubled by the confession.
“I know. I slept with you. You petted my fur.”
“Your - oh.” Snape took a minute to process that statement. “I remember that, at least.”
“You --“
“I saw you, back there,” Snape said simply. “In a manner of speaking.”
“You dreamed of a dog?!”
“Not exactly.”
“What was I?”
“You had paws and tail.”
“You aren’t going to tell me, are you?”
“No. Speaking of the dog, let’s see him.”
Sirius grinned.
“Thought you’d never ask.”
He didn’t even bother standing up.
***
A moment later Padfoot stretched himself in the armchair that was definitely too small for him and sniffed the air. Then, he trotted toward the human, watching him guardedly. The human was eyeing him with curiosity.
Padfoot slowed his approach. The human didn’t move.
It wasn’t the same human as before, the dog-mind thought. The human smelled slightly different than before, the difference was sublte, but Padfood noticed. Yes, different, something had changed about the human, it was as a switch had taken place - and someone else took the familiar human’s form.
Padfoot pressed his ears to the back of his head and growled at the impostor.
The human smirked.
“You know,” he spoke, “it’s really surprising, that someone so attractive in human form would turn out to be such a bloody ugly dog. You’re hideous, you know that, don’t you?”
Padfoot continued to growl. Some of the human’s words were hurtful, cutting, like sharp pebbles on the beach. And yet… his tone was warm and mild, almost affectionate. Padfoot didn’t know what to make of it.
The human sat up straight and extended his hand to the dog.
“There. Go on. If you’re going to bite, you may as well get it over with now. I suggest you go for the thumb if you want to do some significant damage.”
Something hurt about those words once more, and Padfoot quieted, staring at the hand offered to him. The human seemed unafraid and unconcerned.
The faded to near monochrome world, usually simpler than the man-world, was now confusing. The pale hand extended to him was thin, long-fingered, scarred. Padfoot remembered now, the OTHERS had bitten him and clawed at him, this human; maybe that’s why he wasn’t afraid, he’d run out of things to be afraid of; what could a dog do to him that OTHERS hadn’t already?
The hand remained in front of Padfoot’s nose, empty and open.
“You aren’t what I imagined,” the human told him. “Then again, I suppose, neither of us turned out to be what the other had imagined.”
The human’s voice was even and measured, but there was a sadness in it, a quiet note of it, that a man’s ear would have missed, but the canine didn’t.
There was a longing that came then: the longing for that OTHER human, the one who had been known to touch him, pet him, pull at his fur. Was he gone now?
“I enjoyed it,” the human said. “When you visited me, I enjoyed it. It made me believe the world wasn’t empty.”
That part Padfoot understood. He stared up, catching the human’s gaze. He liked it: the human’s face was calm, but the eyes were as wild and feral as any dog’s or wolf’s. Those eyes must have seen other worlds, too - empty, terrifying, incomprehensible; only something like that could fashion a glare so intense.
“I’m thinking now - maybe it doesn’t have to be empty,” the human said.
The human continued to stare, and Padfoot stared back, feeling like his hair was standing on end, and there was the faintest prickling of danger on his hide. He already sensed that they’d be walking more of those other worlds together, and he suspected the human knew that, too.
Padfoot took one last step towards the human and nuzzled the open hand. The long fingers cupped his chin, and then began to stroke and scratch.
Yes, that felt good, good and familiar; nothing had been lost.
Padfoot sighed in appreciation as he inched closer and closer until he finally came to rest with his head placed on the human’s bony knees.
~ fin
Go to Part 1
Rating: R
Go to Part 2
Part Three
1983
The following morning the beach was still deserted, and the sky was still grey, without a hint at sunlight. Stu came out of the white two-storey building, found Sirius walking along the shore, handed him a mug of coffee and left.
Sirius stared ahead, wondering if maybe Lily’s and James’ initial reaction was right, and he’d made a terrible mistake.
He thought of Snape, bony body covered with a white sheet, an animated tape measure dancing around his head, in a room full of strangers, and shivered.
“I don’t know,” Sirius said yet again. “I thought you’d want that. Just so that you could use both eyes to blink and irritate me twice as much.”
The sandy beach was wet. Sirius kicked a stray pebble and watched it roll down into the water.
“Then again, I don’t know anything about you. I ‘ve no idea if the stuff that I feed you is anything you’d eat on your own. If you actually ever did read Wilde. Or maybe you prefer to sleep on your side, and not on your back - I don’t know that, either. Come to think of it, I don’t even know if you are a dog person or a cat person.”
A wave rolled onto the beach, drenching his feet, and retreated hastily, leaving a few dull-green slippery seaweed strands on his boots.
“I don’t know what was going through your head when you killed Peter. I can’t know - how it was. I don’t know how you’ve managed to grow that much spine overnight and do that one crazy thing that made you what you are. I only know that you must have been insane to do that, and I’m so glad that you were.”
He shook the slippery green strands off his boots.
He wanted to go home.
Strange - to have come all this distance, and at the end of it all, to only think about how he and Snape would make it back to England, to London, their flat, half a world away, and settle into the rest of their lives.
He thought of it and realized that he no longer imagined his life without Snape’s presence by his side.
Even if it wasn’t really Snape living with him - just a memory of Snape, or a composite picture of Snape that Sirius had managed to piece together - and not much else.
“Sirius, your friend’s treatment was successful,” Andra’s voice said behind him. “You may go to him now.”
“Thanks.”
He didn’t feel grateful, not really.
He followed her into the white building, down the corridor, and into the treatment room where he’d left Snape some twelve hours ago. Still covered with a white sheet from toes to his neck, Snape was lying on the treatment bed, on his back. His right eye was closed, and his left eye was covered by a patch.
“Let the patch remain on for another six hours,” Andra advised. “You may take him to your room now. You might want to stay here for another day or two, just to allow his body to recuperate after the treatment.”
“All right,” Sirius said.
Slowly, he guided Snape to stand up, and Snape did, allowing himself to be directed, lifted off the bed.
Sirius watched Snape, or rather, his body, walk the path that Sirius had steered him onto, through the door, down the hallway, back to their room.
There was a lump in his throat and a knot in his stomach, and what seemed like a length of even more knotted rope connecting the two. Whenever Sirius swallowed, something ached and scraped at his insides, and the knot in his stomach tightened.
There was a dreadful sense of finality to all this. To picking Snape up, guiding him back to the room, settling him to rest on the bed.
Perhaps, because this was it, Sirius understood with jarring clarity. There was nothing else to do: nothing to fight for, no improvements to make. Snape’s body was as mended and as healthy as it was going to be, and they had nothing more to look forward to.
“All right,” Sirius said. “How about another day here, and then we go back?”
Snape’s chest was rising and falling evenly with each breath.
“I wish you could see it,” Sirius said. “It’s all grey: the ocean, the sky, and the sand. That’s what being a dog is like - it’s like you’re walking the very edge of the world, where almost all colour has run out, and you know that should you miss a step, you’ll fall off that edge. And it makes all your hair prickle and stand on end, and… it’s incredible, really.” He ran his fingers down Snape’s left forearm, where the skin tone was slightly paler. It was as if Snape were a quilt, pieced together with meticulous care, all fragments made to fit, and the scars were the seams, holding that quilt together. “Then again, you already know all about it. The edge and the falling.”
****
Something had changed.
Severus knew that, could sense it - through the infinitesimal tremors in the ice under his feet, through the shimmering of air in the colorless sky.
He saw it then - a bright dot of color so high above him he could barely see it.
“Red,” he thought. “This is red.”
The red grew slightly, twisted, acquiring shape and definition. It was a string of some sort, or a strand, descending into his world from - elsewhere.
Severus took a step back.
Elsewhere was dangerous, he knew that with absolute certainty, although he had no idea where that confidence had come from.
He needed to run, to hide from that strand of red before it found him, took hold of him.
He stood perfectly still, studying that intrusion of colour, unfamiliar, alien, twisting and writhing in the air, as it stretched itself from sky to ground.
If not run, at the very least, he needed to walk away. Walk away in any direction, until that thread was lost in the infinity of nothing, without a hope of ever being found again.
It is our choices that show what we truly are.
That thought that ran through him was more than a memory (he didn’t have any of those), more than an echo of someone’s voice.
That thought was at the core of him, not forcing, not threatening, not seducing with promises.
It just was - and this was a moment of pure choice, no threat or promise attached to either course of action.
Severus took a step forward and grasped hold of the strand. He felt its coarse fire run through him, and pulled, and then, it was as if the sky was falling, pulled down by that thread. More threads were descending: multi-coloured, trembling, writhing, twisting, reaching for him. He was grabbing at all of them, madly, frantically, and they were encircling him, growing into him, rooting themselves in him, and then - everything was coming back, all at once, and his universe collapsed into a singularity and then exploded once more, pushing him out - into that dangerous, dreadful, horrifying ELSEWHERE.
***
Sirius came awake with a start and turned to lie on his side.
He froze as he saw Snape’s right hand twitching, clawing at the sheets next to him and then, reaching for the eye patch on his left eye. The eye patch, torn off unceremoniously, was cast aside and Snape gasped for air and stilled, his eyes squeezed shut.
“Snape? Snape, can you hear me?”
For what seemed like eternity Snape hadn’t moved at all, as if he’d gone catatonic again, but Sirius was already sitting in bed, squeezing Snape’s hand in his, shaking it.
“Snape? Snape? Don’t bloody do this to me now, you’ve come back, haven’t you?”
A tiny, barely noticeable nod followed, and Snape stilled again, as if trying to process what was going on around him.
“It’s okay, Snape,” Sirius said. “Snape? For crying out loud, say something. Anything.”
Snape’s lips moved, and something unintelligible came out, “lleee, leee,” followed by a hoarse coughing.
“Lily,” Snape finally managed to make the word. “Lily?”
Of course, Sirius thought, last thing Snape remembers before his descent to hell - trying to save her.
“She’s fine. She’s alive, you saved her. It’s all right.”
“Son. Her son.”
“Harry is fine. Everything is okay. Has been okay for a while now.”
“How long?” Snape murmured, still keeping his eyes tightly shut.
“Two years. The war has been over for two years, Snape.”
Snape’s body seemed to relax, and then, he finally opened his eyes. He stared into the ceiling for a while, squinting and blinking as if to make sense of the colours-shapes-distances again. Eventually, he turned his head slightly to stare at Sirius.
“Seemed longer,” Snape said. “Black.”
“That’s me.”
For another long time, Snape considered that fact thoughtfully, seriously. Eventually, the corner of his mouth quirked slightly - not a smile, but something like a beginning of one.
“Could’ve been worse,” Snape muttered, and then passed out again.
Sirius stretched out on the bed next to him and let out a long, deep breath that felt almost like a sob. He couldn’t credit how much weight had just been lifted off his shoulders, and how his world has changed. He was thinking he needed to write Jay and Lily, Remus, Albus, Longbottoms, then he realized that, if they began their journey back now, they’d arrive back to England before the post did. He tried to picture the look of arrogant satisfaction on Snape’s face when he’d finally open the dusty box with the Order of Merlin in it, and that made him giddy, ridiculously so. Then he was thinking he really should thank Andra and Stu, and he was ready to thank everything around him, from the winds to the ocean, from the woods to the decrepit boat, and then, just like that, he was out of thoughts and ‘shoulds’, and he passed out next to Snape, feeling so relieved it seemed unreal.
***
In the evening, Andra received the news of Snape’s recovery with surprising calm. But, lack of emotional response aside, she was a scientist, so, of course, she was interested in what had happened. She wanted to observe Snape for another week, run some tests. Snape, still speaking in short sentences, was very much against it. He seemed so eager to go back home that he was eyeing the water of the ocean, as if trying to work out how long it’d take him to swim to the mainland, whose distant dark outline finally made itself visible in the fading mist.
In the end, Andra convinced them to stay another night, somehow managed to get Snape to agree to a few tests, (“no Legilimency!” she had to promise twice). In exchange she gave them a Portkey that’d take them directly to the East Coast, across the continent.
The tests didn’t really turn up anything out of the ordinary, and eventually Andra’s conclusion was the same as what Sirius had guessed by now. Back in Voldemort’s keep, Snape had somehow managed to sever all input from the outside world. The new eye and the new optic nerve had formed a new connection.
Snape listened to all of that, and didn’t seem to care.
He slept through most of his second day, waking up a few times to claw at the sheets and blankets, or raise his arm involuntarily, as if to shield himself from a blow-and then lower it, looking vaguely embarrassed.
Sirius let him be.
He didn’t know what to do with the real Snape, now that the Snape who’d been listening to his confessions and lamentations for some two years was gone.
In the evening, Sirius walked into the communal kitchen and appropriated a few egg salad sandwiches from a large cooler and a packet of apple juice from the cupboard. Giving it some more thought, he picked up two plastic glasses as well.
He and Snape dragged two folding chairs out onto the beach, where the tide was low again, leaving a number of tide pools, teeming with life in its wake.
“Tell me what happened,” Snape said.
Sirius told him about the war, about Dumbledore, about the Horcruxes.
Snape listened in silence, from time to time nodding, it seemed, to his own thoughts, rather than Sirius’ words.
“Why you?” he asked finally.
“Hmm?”
“Why am I with you?”
“It just made sense,” Sirius said with a shrug. “Lily and James had you with them for a while, but… they had Harry, and - well, I wasn’t doing anything anyway.”
“I see,” Snape said. He didn’t ask anything else. Perhaps, it didn’t really matter to him one way or another, whose house he’d spent the last two years in. “Lily is all right?” he checked again.
“She’s fine. She’s doing well.”
“Did she ask about me?”
“All the time. She and James both did.”
“Oh.” It seemed like mention of James left him completely indifferent. “Can I see her?”
“Well, not right this second, but yes. We’re going back home.”
“Good.”
“She was coming to see you every week, you know,” Sirius said.
Snape winced - a barely noticeable twitch that twisted his face for a fraction of a second.
“Was I… was I…. when she came…” he stammered and his eyes shifted in worry.
“You weren’t… you know… you didn’t look ridiculous,” Sirius said. “You weren’t drooling, or incontinent or - anything of the sort. You just pretty much sat there and stared. You looked a bit creepy. Kind of like the undead from the Muggle movies.”
“Good,” Snape said again. Then, after a moment’s thought, he added, “My wand?”
“We didn’t find it. When we - I mean, when we found you, back then, we didn’t look for your wand. And afterwards - it was too late. You will have to get a new one when you come back to England.”
“I understand.” Snape didn’t seem surprised. He didn’t seem interested in asking any more questions either, and his expression turned guarded once more.
“Snape,” Sirius muttered. “Mind if I ask you something?”
“Ask.”
“Do you still hate us? James, and me, and Rem…”
“Hate,” Snape’s eyes were half-shut, as he contemplated the question. “No, I don’t… think so.”
***
His own response puzzled him. Mildly.
Snape didn’t know why - but his emotions were a plateau, a level field, every valley filled, every mountain brought low. Even the thoughts of Lily didn’t bring up any particular feelings except for a faint embarrassment and vague worry, despite Black’s assurances.
He didn’t know why thinking of Potter, Black and Lupin left him feeling so… flat.
Maybe it was that he’d used up all his hate in that final Killing Curse, and nothing was left anymore.
Or maybe he’d been alone too long.
Two years, Black had said.
It seemed longer, much longer than that. Snape tried to remember what that ‘being alone’ felt like, was like, but couldn’t recall anything except for a colourless sky and a perfectly smooth sheet of ice under his feet. He had a vague, unsettling feeling that he’d forgotten something, but couldn’t tell what.
Their journey home was uneventful, if troublesome - it took Black a good four hours of arguing with local authorities to get his hands on the direct Port Key to London. Which was much more preferable to waiting for the ship that seemed to follow its own magical schedule and didn’t seem in any hurry to arrive to the wizarding dock in Halifax.
Eventually, many passionate expletives and red stamps in their travel documents later, the two of them stood in London in front of a three-storey red brick house that Snape didn’t recognize.
“It’s a wizarding neighbourhood,” Black explained. “My flat is on the top floor. I live here. Well - we live here.”
“All right,” Snape said. It still confused him that he was living with Black. He’d tried asking him a couple of times about that, and each time Black just shrugged with a quiet ‘you’re one of us, don’t you get it?’
Snape didn’t, not really.
He followed Black up the narrow windy staircase to the flat, that was small, cozy, and just a tad messy.
“Your bedroom is the smaller one,” Black told him.
Snape entered it, hoping that he’d see it and recall at least something of the time here. He stared at the simple blue duvet, two pillows, a trunk with clothes by the wall, and a bedside table.
He didn’t remember any of it. He approached the bed and ran his hand over the duvet, surprised at the coarseness of the fabric, and the tiny prickling of the few feathers poking out. Everything felt strange. Unfamiliar. The world was filled with irregularities and rough edges.
“You look like you just landed on an alien planet,” Black joked in the doorway.
“I lived here,” Snape said, not moving one way or another.
“For two years,” Black confirmed.
“I don’t remember any of it.”
“I imagine you did a good job of cutting off the outside world. Even Ackov couldn’t do squat when he…”
“You brought a Legilimency Master to try and look into my mind?” Snape checked.
“Yes. Look, try not to go apeshit on me; I reckoned it was our only shot at…”
“That must have cost a fortune.”
“He couldn’t find you.”
“He wouldn’t have. I made sure of that.” Still in his clothes, Snape stretched himself out on the bed, atop the blankets and shut his eyes. “When can I see her?” he asked.
“Anytime you like,” Black said.
Snape didn’t answer. He was asleep a moment later.
***
Standing in the doorway, Sirius smiled.
So Snape did sleep on his back. For some reason, it made him feel good.
***
Despite the numerous questions about Lily, Snape seemed in no hurry to see her, or anyone else. Sirius owled Lily and James and told them about what had happened, and the two Patroni from the Potters arrived shortly, deliriously joyful and feisty.
Snape was asleep when they arrived and didn’t wake when they left.
In fact, Snape seemed to be quite content to just stay in the same bedroom that he’d been confined to for about two years and not do anything at all.
Snape was quiet. He didn’t have any questions, he didn’t want anything.
He had nothing to tell. The few times that Sirius had cast a glance into his bedroom, Snape was lying on the bed, his eyes shut, and his hand stroking the duvet and frowning, as if its texture were a disappointment to him.
It seemed that Snape had just settled himself in and wasn’t going anywhere, and Sirius didn’t make of it. A part of him suspected that he should be pushing Snape to get out there, into the outside world, but he didn’t know if that would do more harm than good.
He really didn’t know anything, except for the fact that he was feeling as if something was being pulled out of him, slowly, torturously. As if he was losing something, which, of course, was ridiculous; neither of them had lost anything, they both had gained the entire world.
Yet, it seemed strangely soothing to have Snape around. Just knowing that he was there was … all right.
That is until one day, Sirius woke up to find Snape gone.
He searched the flat. His wand hadn’t been taken, and the Floo hadn’t been used. The money - whatever of it that Sirius kept at home, hadn’t been touched.
Sirius ran downstairs, cast a spell hoping to turn up a trace of Apparition and came up with noting.
Snape seemed to have vanished into thin air. The neighbours, woken by Sirius’ pounding on the door, said they saw nothing and heard nothing.
Sirius was about to contact the Potters and start a city-wide search for the proverbial needle in a haystack, when Snape entered the flat, looking absolutely calm. The befuddled and bemused look he’d had about him for the past weeks was gone. There was more confidence in the way he carried himself now.
“Where were you?” Sirius demanded at once.
Snape arched an eyebrow at his tone.
“At Ollivander’s. I picked out a new wand,” Snape said.
“How did you get there?”
“I walked,” Snape said, as if it were the most natural thing to do.
“It’s eight miles to Charring Cross Road.”
“That’s why I left at six in the morning,” Snape said.
Sirius breathed out a sigh of relief.
“Well, bully for you. Let’s see the new wand.”
Snape showed it to him. It was willow and phoenix feather, pliant and flexible, and exceptionally well suited for stealth and combat spells, Snape explained.
“There’s no more combat,” Sirius felt the need to point out.
Snape shrugged.
“I wasn’t about to start arguing with the wand. Seeing that my wand arm had been taken apart and put back together I reckon it was a miracle that any wand would be suitable.”
“Fair enough. Breakfast?”
“I ate out.”
“You didn’t take any money.”
“The lady working at the Leaky Cauldron didn’t mind putting it on my tab,” Snape said. “She seemed to think I was a war hero, Order of Merlin, First Class, or something of the sort. I took advantage of her confusion.”
Sirius found himself grinning at that.
“You took advantage of your own confusion, more like.”
“Meaning?” Snape inquired in a very chilly tone.
“You’ve got the Order of Merlin, First Class, Snape.”
“I have?” Snape seemed mildly surprised by the news.
“Mmhm.”
Snape was silent for a moment, absorbing that. Then, he demanded, “Show me.”
A minute later, the small box rested in Snape’s hands. Snape stared inside, studying the small golden disk and a striped ribbon, hanging from it.
“Well,” was the final verdict.
Sirius didn’t know what to make of it.
“How was it?” Sirius asked.
“What?”
“You know. Being out there. Walking the streets. Seeing the world.”
“Confusing and noisy.” Snape paused, then added, with shocking candor, “Terrifying. I didn’t know half the shops. I didn’t know how to navigate the crowds. I didn’t know what people were saying to me. At first I didn’t know how to speak.”
“You seem to’ve done all right with your little outing.”
“I’ve faked it all the way,” Snape said.
“I doubt anyone noticed.”
***
“I want to see Evans, I think,” Snape said in the late afternoon, his tone perfectly calm. “Can you take me to her?”
“I can,” Sirius agreed, feeling more than slightly unsettled. “Except, she’s a Potter now, you remember.”
Snape’s face never changed expression.
“Of course. Potter. I want to see her, regardless.”
“I’ll let them know we’re coming.”
“Fine.”
***
Snape was ready to go half an hour later. His hair, that had grown even longer over the last two years, was now flawlessly brushed and tied back into a ponytail. He was wearing the dress robes that he’d gotten out of the closet, and the Order of Merlin was pinned to his chest - just the right way.
His back was straight, almost unnaturally so, and he held his head high. His lips were pressed into a thin line, and a deep line on his forehead made him look just a bit older.
He managed to look… -- Sirius searched for the right word - Snape managed to look almost regal in the way he carried himself now.
He looks regal, and majestic and every bit the hero; and he’s completely and utterly insane, and he’s about to put the moves on my best mate’s wife, and I’m insane enough not to try to stop him, and if it comes to wands with Jay, I’m not hundred per cent sure who I should be fighting for. Maybe I’ll just stun them both and give their wands to Lil.
That seemed like as good a plan as any other.
***
They Apparated to Godric’s Hollow together.
Snape walked to the Potters’ house quickly, without faltering in his steps or looking back. He knocked on the door - two well-aimed knocks with his fisted hand, and waited.
Sirius was right behind him, not sure if he should be anticipating disaster.
The door opened and James stepped aside to let them in.
“Snape,” he said, extending his hand, “good to see you.”
Snape shook his hand - briefly, but without any obvious revulsion.
“Potter,” he said. Sirius held his breath.
“That’s me.”
Snape stared at him.
“I believe courtesy requires me to make small talk of some sort. Whatever may be the socially acceptable version of ‘I’m glad you aren’t dead, your house looks fine’ - let’s assume I’ve said it. May I see Lily now?”
For a moment James looked taken aback, but recovered quickly.
“No problem. She’s just putting Harry to sleep. She’ll be right down. Would you care for a drink?”
“No, thanks.”
“Would you care for…”
“No.” Snape hesitated for a moment, then said. “Black tells me you and her had housed me for two weeks or so after the war was over.”
A long silence hung between them, Snape regarding James guardedly, and James clearly trying to come up with some sort of response. Eventually, James spoke.
“Snape,” he said. “ You’re one of us. Like Sirius, like Rem, like the Longbottoms, like Dumbledore. You’ll always be welcome here. And that’s pretty much all that I can say about that.”
Snape opened his mouth, but didn’t get a chance to reply: Lily ran down the stairs then, and James stepped aside one more time, allowing her to come face to face with Snape. They watched each other silently, and eventually Snape took her hand in his, delicately, uncertainly.
“Can we speak in private?” he asked.
“We could go out into the garden,” she suggested, giving James a quick glance.
“I’d like that.”
They walked out of the house, and Lily shut the door behind them.
Sirius let out a long breath. “I need a drink,” he said.
“You know where everything is. Help yourself.”
Sirius did just that, and James joined him.
“You aren’t nervous?” Sirius asked.
“Why would I be?”
“You know. Him. He’s…” Sirius looked out of the window, where, in the red-golden autumn garden, Snape and Lily sat on the bench, half- facing each other.
Snape was still not a pretty man, but whatever he had about him, worked for him now. He was no longer someone desperate for HER attentions, HER smiles. He was every bit her equal, and he carried himself like he knew it.
“Yes,” James followed the direction of Sirius’ gaze, “he turned out all right.”
“Better than all right, I’d say.”
“Maybe,” James didn’t argue. “But no, I’m not nervous. I know Lily.” James shook his head. “No, the worst she’ll do to me is bring Snape into the house and tell me we’re going to be one happy joyful family.”
Sirius twitched. “Harry, say hello to Cadavrena.”
James shook his head. “Dementoria, I insist.”
***
The garden was still. There was no wind, no movement - as if everything, including time itself, just held its breath. Sunlight poured through the tops of the whistle-wood trees, and the carpet of leaves on the ground glowed, as if ready to burst aflame.
Snape watched that glow, surprised by the intensity of it. He’d forgotten how bright the autumn could shine, and how bright Lily’s hair was.
“I don’t know what to say,” she was the first one to speak.
“I’m not sure what to say either,” he admitted. “Tell me about what happened.”
“Sirius must have told you…”
“Some. I can’t say I paid attention. I was… slightly unhinged at the time.”
“All right then.” She spoke for a long time, telling him her life, their lives. Snape did his best to listen, but the events she’d told him seemed to be getting lost in the sound of her voice, and in the sore mess of his own thoughts. He still made an effort to hear her, to capture as much of the story as he was able to. In the end, he knew only one thing: she was all right.
“I’m glad,” he said.
And then, another silence stretched between them. He felt a bit like he did before, when the sky of his quiet, lonely world was coming down, and the long-forgotten strands - things unsaid, conversations unfinished - were descending into his hands.
He grasped at one of them.
“I’m not sure if it still maters to you,” he said, “about the things back in school. I just want you to know that my apology to you back then… wasn’t insincere.”
She nodded, looking away, looking strangely guilty all of a sudden.
“What?” he asked.
“It’s about back in school.”
“What about it?”
“That day. When - they - they were tormenting you. By the lake. I saw what was happening - and I smiled,” she whispered, still not meeting his eyes. “I don’t think you saw that.”
“I saw.” Snape shrugged. “It doesn’t matter. It didn’t back then, either.”
For a moment she looked like she might cry, but didn’t - she just sniffled a bit, and gave him a weak smile.
“Looks like it’s not about apologies anymore, anyway,” she said.
He couldn’t disagree with that.
He knew that something was gone, something of what he used to feel about them, himself and HER.
He didn’t know when or how it happened, maybe it was peeled off of him, and torn out of him …
Or maybe, that one orange strand that he’d let go before all others, never came back.
Then again, he thought, perhaps it came back different - fainter, thinner, but stronger, too. He could hope.
He extended his hand to her. “Friends, then?”
“Of course. Always.” Her fingers barely brushed his.
They both laughed out loud, awkwardly, but with obvious relief.
“How are you doing?” she asked, studying his face with concern. “Really?”
“All right, I suppose.” He frowned, adding, “A bit confused at times. I’ve got a new wand though,” he added with a small smile. “It seems to be working.”
“If you need a place to stay, to gain your bearings - to just rest… you could stay here for a while.”
“James said the same thing. I understand that you were taking care of me for a few weeks while I was…” Snape frowned, looking for a suitable word, “disengaged.”
“Yes. We still have the guest room, we haven’t touched it.”
“Really?” Snape asked.
“Yes,” she smiled just a bit. “I suppose, deep down, I kept hoping that one day you’d walk through the door - and stay.” She looked at him with hope. “Stay?”
He cast a quick glance in the direction of the house and at the kitchen window, behind which, the silhouettes of Potter and Black were visible.
“Stay,” Lily said again.
“Don’t you think James will be irritated if I do?”
“Not at all.”
“Pity.”
***
Jokes aside, it felt good to stay.
He was surprised at how little tension there was between him and James. Perhaps, Lily was right, and it wasn’t about apologies anymore, and the past somehow exhausted itself and collapsed in on itself, in a puddle of broken bone and torn ligament.
James laughed a great deal, brought out more Firewhisky, told stories about Auror training that he was pursuing - although he kept dropping out and coming back.
“You’d be good at that, I imagine,” James said, eyeing Snape critically. “Besides, Sirius tells your wand is well suited for combat spells. It’d be a shame to let that go to waste.”
Snape listened to him and nodded absently, lost in his own thoughts. It felt good to hear them speak, hear them laugh.
It felt like being home.
For that matter, Black seemed to have made himself at home more than anyone else. He was laughing louder than everyone else put together, drinking more, as if trying to catch up on all the things he’d managed to miss in the last two years.
Snape wondered briefly what those two years had been like - and then let that thought go. He imagined it didn’t matter anymore, either.
Before that day, Snape had never seen Lily drunk - or even slightly tipsy. Now, she was - and it suited her. She wasn’t saying anything silly or embarrassing, but her cheeks were bright pink, and her eyes were shining.
When it got quite late, Snape found the guest room on his own and spend a long minute staring at his surroundings. Another place to call home, and he didn’t recognize it. Yet, not recognizing wasn’t bothering him. Downstairs, Sirius and James were laughing and Lily was making half-hearted attempts to quiet them down.
Eventually, they settled down some, and she came upstairs too, and scratched at Snape’s door before walking in and sitting down on the edge of his bed.
“Sometimes I wonder,” she said, sounding blissfully happy and mellow, “about how it’s going to be with Harry.”
“What do you mean?” Snape asked.
“Well… you pretty much destroyed the prophecy,” Lily explained. “Don’t get me wrong - I’m happy about that more than I can even begin to understand. But - I do wonder… what it’ll be like, growing up, knowing that there’d been a destiny once, and then, it was pushed aside to make room…well, for life, I guess.”
“Maybe it wasn’t pushed aside,” Snape whispered.
“How do you mean?”
“Maybe he already fulfilled his destiny. I mean - I did what I did… because I knew you wouldn’t give him up. Because I knew you loved him. Maybe this is what, in the end, made him stronger than Tom. That you love him.”
“I didn’t think of it that way,” she confessed, flushing in embarrassment. “Then again, I reckon, pushing destiny aside for the sake of life - that’s… grand in itself.”
Snape found himself wanting to laugh.
“Isn’t it just.”
He reached for her hand and kissed it.
When she was gone, he kicked his boots off, and stretched out on the bed. The linens smelled of lavender and mint, and it was soothing without being cloying or overly sweet, and he inhaled deeply, greedily, no longer caring to remember the other world, a world without smells, a world where NOTHING mattered.
Here, everything mattered. There was an undercurrent of fierce passion in everything around him, even in the quiet exchanges with Black and Potter, and in the conversations with Lily.
Snape couldn’t help but be amazed at how instantly he was accepted as ‘one of the gang’. He wondered, briefly, if that was actually true - it’s not like he’d changed sides rationally, it’s not like he’d recanted his errors or made vows or promises.
Yet, nobody seemed to expect any of that from him; somehow, one single choice he’d made two years ago, turned out sufficient.
That surprised him - and didn’t, at the same time.
He himself was used to choosing his acquaintances carefully, weighing the pros and the cons before making the choice of approaching someone.
Potter and Black, who’d been quick to make judgments and loathe someone, needed just as little to turn around and accept that same someone with reckless self-abandon.
That reckless passion seemed to run at the core of them. That, and the unvoiced faith that one single moment of choosing could have as much weight and value as years of errors.
Maybe choice is like life, he thought.
Maybe you only live once; and you only choose once, as well.
On an impulse, Snape rolled up his sleeve and stared at his left forearm, where the skin was paler than elsewhere, and where the Dark Mark used to be.
Used to be.
He still remembered with crystal clarity HOW it was forced to come off, and found himself smiling, just a little madly.
He was rid of it. It must be worth shedding a bit of skin.
***
Sprawled on Potter’s couch, Sirius woke up at dawn when he heard the footsteps. Someone was treading carefully, softly, clearly not wanting to wake him.
“Snape,” Sirius mumbled through his sleep. “Are you going for another walk to Charring Cross Road? It’s more than eight miles from here, you realize.”
“I didn’t want to wake you,” Snape said.
There was something different in his voice now. It was more guarded, more even, less relaxed than yesterday.
Sirius rubbed his eyes and yawned, forcing himself to sit up.
“Snape, would you like some tea?”
A brief silence was followed by a short, “Yes, actually.”
“Then go ahead and make some.”
“Oh.”
They sat outside, on the porch still damp from the night’s rain. Snape cradled the mug of tea in his hands and stared into it, as if trying to see if the tealeaves on the bottom of the mug would tell him something.
“What do you see?” Sirius asked, turning to him.
“I should go.” Snape set the mug, untouched, on the porch.
For some reason it stung to hear that. Just a bit.
“I thought you liked... you know. Being with us,” Sirius said, cautiously.
“I did,” Snape said simply, then amended it to a quiet, “I do.”
“Well… you’re still… I mean, look, you must know by now, it’s not about pity, or owning, or any shit like that. You’re really… you know, you’re family. And it’s been less than two weeks since you came back. You could take your time. Stay with us a while. Either me - or them.”
Snape nodded absently. “I could, yes.” He smirked slightly, but without much amusement. “It’d be nice, Black, I won’t deny that. To stay in the bedroom I don’t remember. To be with others. To not have to think about what to do next, how to get from point A to point B, and how many of those points are still ahead.”
“Right. So why are you going now?”
Snape’s answer didn’t surprise him, not really.
“Because I can. If I stayed another day, I’m not sure I would be able to leave.” Snape rose to his feet and extended his hand to Sirius. “Black, knowing you, I half-suspect that you took me in for some unhealthy, nefarious reason - perhaps, in order to perform some deviant sexual acts on my unresponsive body, or something of the sort.” The corner of Snape’s mouth twitched again, as a smile fought to get out. “However, fortunately for both of us, I remember none of that. Therefore, I must thank you for your kindness, an unlikely thing as it may be.”
Sirius glanced at Snape’s hand, but didn’t take it.
“Snape,” he said again, troubled. “Wait. Where are you going to go?”
Snape stared ahead, where, beyond the road, a large field of yellowish grass was catching the first of the morning sunshine.
“Out there.”
“Right. And how are you going to get OUT THERE?”
“I think I’ll walk for a bit, then Apparate.”
“Are you bloody insane? It’s too early for you to try Apparition.”
“I think I can do it. I can feel it.” Snape smiled - and this time, it was an actual smile.
Right, Sirius thought, all those days and months of wondering what his smile looks like - now I know.
He fought the nearly irresistible urge to punch something, maybe break something. “I’m warning you, Snape, when you Splinch yourself, I’m not going to take care of you. I’ll bring a pile of your dismembered limbs to Mungo and dump it there, at the doorstep.”
Snape scoffed at that. “As long as you bring the torso along, too, I don’t mind. Good day, Black.”
***
His bravado aside, Apparition turned out difficult to manage. It made him dizzy, almost to the point of being nauseated - much like the first time he’d ever tried it. Standing in the middle of Diagon Alley, he took a minute to catch his breath, to gather his thoughts.
The thoughts were refusing to be gathered. Or, perhaps, there were just too many of them. There were the thoughts of food, the thoughts of needing to find shelter, the thoughts of whether his house back in a Muggle neighbourhood of Manchester was still there - and whether his books were still intact. Then, quite logically, there were thoughts of money: he remembered he had a pension, then, by extension, he remembered that the Wizarding World had a bank.
He shut his eyes, trying to arrange all those strays into one logical chain.
Bank. Money. Food. Flat. Sleep. Books.
Yes. That made sense, except the prospect of dealing with all that was still daunting.
He didn’t know how people did all that on their own.
The world with so many colours, voices and noises, and rough edges, seemed terribly and needlessly complicated.
***
He had a home by the end of the day - a small flat on the top floor of one of the few unremarkable buildings that had sprang up right next to the Leaky Cauldron. By the following afternoon, he had linens, dishes, and his mother’s old books that he’d retrieved from his Muggle home. Come to think of it, he had everything he needed.
More to the point, the world was becoming more manageable, more familiar, more predictable. Sometimes, it even seemed like it was turning into the same world of colourless sky and perfectly even ice that he was used to already - all strings released, all incoming noise shut down, the perfectly predictable eternity of unchanging space as far as the eye could see.
It seemed… reasonable.
Certainly, more reasonable than the very frank and candid conversations with Black - Snape didn’t know what had come over him to speak to Black so freely - as if, upon waking, he had no inhibition, no common sense. Then again, perhaps, after spending two years in Black’s care, embarrassment seemed pointless.
It was almost too bad that Snape didn’t remember anything of those two years. He tried - and he couldn’t. His body seemed to remember the oddest things - a touch of someone’s hand on his back, or a sensation of someone brushing his hair away from his shoulders. He knew that those memories couldn’t possibly be real - and yet, it was as if something was amiss.
A week later, Snape dreamed of the white tiger again.
“Maybe it’s you that I’ve missed,” Snape said.
The creature’s ear twitched at the sound of his voice.
“I never named you,” Snape told him. “I suppose it’s too late now. Still, maybe I should - seeing that it was you who kept me sane.” He thought of it for a bit. “Well, relatively sane, at any rate.”
The tiger arched his back out. Snape reached for it - but the creature was gone before Snape’s hand could touch it.
When Snape woke up, he was alone in bed. He wondered where those dreams were coming from while he was unresponsive - one strand that he managed to forget to cut off? An echo of a memory that he’d forgotten to let go of? Either way, he reasoned, he couldn’t complain.
The knocking on the door startled him, banishing the remnants of sleep.
Snape walked down the narrow hallway to open the door and found himself face to face with Black.
Black, who seemed to be more annoyed than glad to see him.
“I was about to break in,” Black informed him. “You sleep like the dead.”
“How long have you been knocking?”
“Half an hour, at least.”
“Impossible.”
“Well, at least seven or eight minutes,” Black amended, and poked his head inside. “Let me come in?”
“Come in,” Snape agreed, somewhat reluctantly and more than a bit awkwardly.
Black strolled into the sitting room and made himself at home in one of the armchairs, sitting sideways in it, and throwing one leg over the armrest. He kicked his boots off. Snape arched and eybrow at that.
“Nice place,” Black said, seeming untroubled by Snape’s staring.
“I’m glad you approve”, Snape said, sitting down on the couch across from him. “What would I do otherwise?”
Black sighed.
“Snape, if I’m bothering you - do say so, don’t hold back. Politeness doesn’t suit you.”
Snape considered it for a moment, feeling once again like he did back in his own quiet world, a single bright-red strand descending from the clear, colourless sky, and a choice: take it or leave it.
“You aren’t bothering me,” Snape said, a bit too quickly, then qualified it with a slightly dryer, “much.”
“You’re all heart.”
“Oh no. I’m much more complex than that. I’ve got liver and spleen, too.”
“I don’t know if I can handle that much complexity.” Black glanced at him briefly, guardedly. “You feeling all right?”
“Yes.”
“Your wand works for you?”
“Yes.”
Another string of questions-and-answers followed - the questions from Black, the monosyllabic responses from Snape. It was awkward.
More than that, it was maddening. Being so near to Black made Snape feel as if he needed to understand something important.
“How are you?” Snape surprised himself by asking.
Black seemed just as surprised by the question, if not more. “Great. I went out to fly this morning.”
“The broom?”
“I’ve got a flying motorcycle.”
“Oh. Did you enjoy it?”
“For the first few minutes.” Black smiled sheepishly. “Then, I had this dreadful thought - for a split second I was certain that you’d been there with me at first, and then - just fell out. Stupid, but…”
“I managed to ruin your morning even in absentia,” Snape summarized.
“Try not to sound so pleased.” Black scowled at him.
“I do have to ask - why would you picture me on the motorcycle with you? It’s not like we ever…”
“We did, actually,” Black said, looking vaguely embarrassed. “I took you for a ride, once.”
“While I was…”
“While you were. Yes.”
Snape paused a minute, trying to picture that - his own unresponsive, blind-deaf-mute-unfeeling body, pressed into Black’s, high above the city’s skyline, high above the rest of the world. It didn’t make sense. Nothing about Black made sense.
“Sounds charming,” Snape said dryly. “Though I can’t help but wonder, Black. What else had you been doing to me in these two years?”
Black’s face paled - just slightly, but he recovered instantly, grinning.
“Why, I whored out your lifeless, unresponsive body in Knockturn Alley, of course. What else could I do?”
Snape inclined his head.
“Understandable,” he said in a perfectly monotone voice. “How else could you afford all the nice things that you’ve got. Why, those old socks alone must have cost a few sickles.”
“Oh yes, Snape, it only took two weeks for you to earn me enough money for those.” Black’s grin faded. “To answer your question, Snape - I was taking care of you. Not with the spells that they have for that, but…”
“I see,” Snape mused, then added, “you touched me.”
“I did,” Black agreed, giving him a strange look, then followed the confession with a question. “Are you going to kill me now?”
“That seems like too drastic of a measure. If the memory of touching me is so unsettling, I could just Oblivate you.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Black seemed to relax a bit. “Do you remember any of it?”
“No. But…”
But I think that I keep seeing something , just out of the corner of my eye, and I think that if I try hard enough, I could remember - something. An echo of a voice, a trace of human touch. It shouldn’t be possible - to miss so much something I don’t remember.
“I can’t stand this anymore,” Black said suddenly. “This is bloody ridiculous. We’re just beating around the bush, and - neither of us is saying or asking what he wants to say. Something needs to be done about that - Snape - have you got alcohol?”
“It’s eight in the morning, Black. You mightn’t care - but other people, people who have responsibilities, jobs…”
Black snorted derisively. “You don’t have a job, do you.” That wasn’t a question, not really.
“No,” Snape admitted.
“But you’ve got alcohol.”
“Yes.”
“Bring it. It’s a good excuse to loosen inhibitions.”
“I tend to value my inhibitions.”
“They’ll be back with you when you sober up - along with shame, guilt, headache and nausea and the general sense of self-loathing.” Black’s eyes sparked with amusement. “You’ll appreciate them more then.”
***
It turned out that Snape had Firewhisky. Sirius grinned, as he studied the bottle, lifting it to light. The sunshine, streaming through the window seemed trapped in it, a tiny knot of fire, swimming in the confines of the glass encircling it.
“I’m going to open the windows, let some fresh air in. You get the glasses,” Sirius said.
“It’s November. Are you trying to freeze us to death?”
Sirius waved him off. “We’ll never die, Snape. We’ve missed our chance.”
The wind gushed through the room, making the white curtains flutter like sails of a boat.
“You even have clean glasses,” Black teased, “why, Snape, you never cease to shock me.”
Snape poured the Firewhisky into the glasses and handed one of them to Sirius.
“Black. Do hurry to get drunk and say whatever you haven’t got the courage to say otherwise.”
“You first,” Sirius watched him appraisingly, and checked a long minute later. “How are those inhibitions?”
“Repulsively lacking. Black, what did you do to me, while I was out cold and unaware of anything? Other than groping me and taking me along on the motorcycle rides.”
“You won’t believe it,” Sirius said. “I - I don’t even know where to begin.”
“The Knockturn Alley then?” Snape checked, seeming vaguely amused.
“Oh, no. Worse, I’m afraid.”
“Black - what could possibly be worse?”
“I brushed your teeth and combed your hair. Daily.”
“You have my sympathies.”
“And I took you to Remus on the full moon.”
Snape nearly choked on his Firewhisky. “That does seem to be a recurring motif for you,” he muttered. “He didn’t turn me, did he?”
“No! It wasn’t like that - it was safe. Ah - you probably didn’t know, but Jay and I are Animagi…”
“Unregistered, of course. So what’s Potter’s beast?”
“He’s a stag.”
“He’s a deer,” Snape’s lips twisted into a rather unkind smirk. “How fitting. Black, you -arsehole, you’ve no idea what I’d have given for this piece of information some six years ago.”
“Right. Jay and I would have still been in Azkaban, hmm? For illegal use of restricted magic?”
“Most likely,” Snape let out a small laugh. “And what are you, Black? No, let me guess. It must be something utterly useless and ostentatious. A peacock?”
Sirius bared his teeth in a rather canine sneer.
“Try again.”
“An amoeba?” Snape guessed.
“Now you’re just being stupid.”
“I’m trying to come down to your level. Not an easy task, I assure you .”
“I’m a dog.”
That did cause Snape to smirk, just a bit. “A poodle, I hope?”
Whatever on earth made me think that, as a drunk, he’d be more agreeable? “I’m a wolfhound, Snape.”
“I see. Remus’ inner wolf must be thrilled by the company.”
“You don’t get it,” Sirius said, both irritated and for some reason desperate for Snape to actually understand. “He’s safe when we’re with him. Our minds become simpler, more primitive - no, please do wipe that sneer off your face - and his mind becomes more human. It’s like we meet half-way. Snape!” Sirius almost cried out, “You probably won’t believe me, but it’s… it’s an amazing thing. It’s life as it really is. It’s primal, and wild, it’s the adrenaline and the chase, and being a part of the pack, and relying only on instinct to guide you, and seeing the nature of all things, looking to their core. It’s almost - sacred! And you were there, with us. You got to see us together the way that nobody else sees, ever, not even Lil. Having you there with us meant something. Well, to us, it did.”
Snape nodded, just a bit. He was no longer smirking or sneering. If anything, he seemed to understand - at least, in part.
“I wonder what else I’ve missed,” he muttered. “What else had gone around me that I don’t remember.”
“The motorcycle ride was only once. I nearly killed us both.”
“Unsurprising.”
“My turn now,” Sirius said. “Truth for truth. Did you dream?”
Snape took a while to answer, and for a while it seemed like he was going to bow out of the truth-for-truth arrangement. But he did answer, eventually.
“All the time. One long endless dream.” Snape’s eyes fixed on Black with shocking intensity. “My turn again.”
“You ought to be joking. You’ve asked at least seven questions, I only managed to get in one.”
“My answers are worth more than yours,” Snape said. “Oh, very well. You may ask again.”
Sirius intercepted Snape’s gaze and held it. If it were a physical thing, Sirius thought, he’d have holes in his chest by now.
Now or never.
Come to think of it, ‘never’ seemed rather appealing at the moment.
“I slept with you,” Sirius blurted out.
“Black, that’s not a question.” Snape seemed untroubled by the confession.
“I know. I slept with you. You petted my fur.”
“Your - oh.” Snape took a minute to process that statement. “I remember that, at least.”
“You --“
“I saw you, back there,” Snape said simply. “In a manner of speaking.”
“You dreamed of a dog?!”
“Not exactly.”
“What was I?”
“You had paws and tail.”
“You aren’t going to tell me, are you?”
“No. Speaking of the dog, let’s see him.”
Sirius grinned.
“Thought you’d never ask.”
He didn’t even bother standing up.
***
A moment later Padfoot stretched himself in the armchair that was definitely too small for him and sniffed the air. Then, he trotted toward the human, watching him guardedly. The human was eyeing him with curiosity.
Padfoot slowed his approach. The human didn’t move.
It wasn’t the same human as before, the dog-mind thought. The human smelled slightly different than before, the difference was sublte, but Padfood noticed. Yes, different, something had changed about the human, it was as a switch had taken place - and someone else took the familiar human’s form.
Padfoot pressed his ears to the back of his head and growled at the impostor.
The human smirked.
“You know,” he spoke, “it’s really surprising, that someone so attractive in human form would turn out to be such a bloody ugly dog. You’re hideous, you know that, don’t you?”
Padfoot continued to growl. Some of the human’s words were hurtful, cutting, like sharp pebbles on the beach. And yet… his tone was warm and mild, almost affectionate. Padfoot didn’t know what to make of it.
The human sat up straight and extended his hand to the dog.
“There. Go on. If you’re going to bite, you may as well get it over with now. I suggest you go for the thumb if you want to do some significant damage.”
Something hurt about those words once more, and Padfoot quieted, staring at the hand offered to him. The human seemed unafraid and unconcerned.
The faded to near monochrome world, usually simpler than the man-world, was now confusing. The pale hand extended to him was thin, long-fingered, scarred. Padfoot remembered now, the OTHERS had bitten him and clawed at him, this human; maybe that’s why he wasn’t afraid, he’d run out of things to be afraid of; what could a dog do to him that OTHERS hadn’t already?
The hand remained in front of Padfoot’s nose, empty and open.
“You aren’t what I imagined,” the human told him. “Then again, I suppose, neither of us turned out to be what the other had imagined.”
The human’s voice was even and measured, but there was a sadness in it, a quiet note of it, that a man’s ear would have missed, but the canine didn’t.
There was a longing that came then: the longing for that OTHER human, the one who had been known to touch him, pet him, pull at his fur. Was he gone now?
“I enjoyed it,” the human said. “When you visited me, I enjoyed it. It made me believe the world wasn’t empty.”
That part Padfoot understood. He stared up, catching the human’s gaze. He liked it: the human’s face was calm, but the eyes were as wild and feral as any dog’s or wolf’s. Those eyes must have seen other worlds, too - empty, terrifying, incomprehensible; only something like that could fashion a glare so intense.
“I’m thinking now - maybe it doesn’t have to be empty,” the human said.
The human continued to stare, and Padfoot stared back, feeling like his hair was standing on end, and there was the faintest prickling of danger on his hide. He already sensed that they’d be walking more of those other worlds together, and he suspected the human knew that, too.
Padfoot took one last step towards the human and nuzzled the open hand. The long fingers cupped his chin, and then began to stroke and scratch.
Yes, that felt good, good and familiar; nothing had been lost.
Padfoot sighed in appreciation as he inched closer and closer until he finally came to rest with his head placed on the human’s bony knees.
~ fin
Go to Part 1