(no subject)
"Casualties"
Harry/Hermione, Harry/Snape
R-ish.
A cheerless little war-time fic in which Harry is seriously down on his luck and unofficially investigating the death of Ginny Weasley. Everybody has a miserable time.
With apologies to Gerald Kersh, whose novel Prelude to a Certain Midnight directly inspired this. Try not to spin too fast in that there grave, Mr. Kersh. Also, apologies to the poets I've quoted herein. For, eh, they did not mean quite that.
Thanks to t_winkle725 and elfiepike for the beta.
Prelude.
On the 7th of October, Eva Malfoy was bound with Petrificus Totalus, raped and strangled, and left in the boiler room of an abandoned building. One week later, Colin Creevey was identified as the culprit by his wife, Ginny Weasley.
Hermione Granger walked briskly down the corridor, her sensible grey flats clap-clapping on the stone. One eye on her clipboard, the other on the walls: 940, 939, 938...
Creevey, Colin. Rm 937. Sentence: Life, for the reasons following:
She rapped on the door with no hesitation. "Mr. Creevey, this is Ms. Granger from the Muggle-Born Rights Association." The door wavered, then disappeared. The dementor behind her came closer.
Colin Creevey arose stiffly from his cot and gave Hermione a little salute. "Ma'am. I'm so glad you could come out to see me. This whole thing is crazy, innit?"
Hermione took a deep breath and tightened her grip on the clipboard. "Mr. Creevey. You asked for my guidance, but I have to say, I have no idea what-"
"I'm a victim," he said, and ran a hand through his dirt-thickened hair. "They wouldn't be giving me the kiss if I were a pureblood. Damn sanguinist bastards." He was thin and tall, with wide eyes that didn't quite seem to focus. Hermione tried not to remember him from before.
"Well, Mr. Creevey, I'll do my best to ensure you get exactly what the law demands. In the mean time - "
The death-cold edge of the dementor's cloak brushed against her shoulder. Time to go.
"In the mean time, please try not to give any more interviews. The last one led to picketing; you can't afford more ill will."
She turned away and forced herself to walk at a normal pace, because she wasn't scared, not at all.
He shouted out after her as the door rematerialized.
"She wa'n't even a virgin, you know. 'Er father-"
She walked faster.
1.
The first time Harry Potter descended to hell, he was fourteen years old and sick of winning. The second time, he was fifteen and sick of losing.
Both times he came back up, for that was what he did: he was the savior, Our Last Hope. Harry Potter had to save the world and so he wiped away his tears and moved on.
The third time he descended, he was nineteen with the dead body of the wrong man in front of him. He'd watched helplessly as the right man laid waste to Dumbledore's army of children. It was his first real mistake. He didn't come back up.
Afterwards he'd moved with the thick woozy bluntness of an ex-prize fighter, wounded pride and indignation wrapped thinly over grief. He'd declined the easiest duels, retreated from routine battles, and the Ministry, discovering that he had somehow lost his ability to do magic, had quietly moved him to a desk job, with a note to the papers detailing how The Boy Who Lived was on a very secret, very important mission, possibly in Spain.
He works the nightshift for more money than he's worth, wearing a tie incompetently knotted around his neck and a plain black robe he bought with his parent's savings. He's in charge of the watchwall, a bank of crystal balls that track all released criminals and suspected Death Eaters. It's a very-nearly automated process, and the condescending pity inherent in his position gives him pause, but not much. He's lost his birthright and half of his friends, half of his mind. The job earns him his keep and gives him something to do, and he doesn't look for anything more than that.
The globes give off a pleasant glow in the darkened room, and there's a certain voyeuristic thrill, so he passes the time with a minimum of restlessness. He sits back in his swivel chair, lets his eyes glaze over, and swallows to drive out the taste of blood inexplicably caught in the back of his throat.
2.
Hermione comes home and tells him that she's defending Colin in court, and Harry nods, though he still hasn't wrapped his mind around his boyhood acquaintence going out like that. He sits on the couch and sips his whiskey as she tells him, I'm not defending his actions, just his right to a fair trial and sentence. He understands, of course he understands, because anti-Muggle-born sentiment is rising and hardening even in the higher reaches of the Ministry, and this is why Hermione rarely ever relaxes.
He smiles and pats her hand reassuringly, and she smiles back.
They've both fallen quite far out of love, but they never make a move to leave each other, though he catches her fiddling anxiously with her wedding band from time to time. For him it's support, and for her it's habit and sympathy, and besides, they're still the best of friends. It's comfortable and beneficial and neither of them have the energy for adultery or divorce, so they live together in their house without a yard and sleep in separate beds.
3.
The last Weasley is found dead, and instead of the numb acceptance that everyone expects, something inside of him snaps back into place. Anger finds its way back into his heart and he's certain that he can feel magic crackling at the very tips of his fingers, just out of his reach. He's not completely awake - he still hears through cotton, still moves too slow - but he's rising.
The Ministry says it was an accident, but he doesn't believe that. No one dies accidentally anymore, especially not someone married to a criminal. There is a war seething under everything and old age is becoming a myth and she was the last Weasley, she was killed just like her brothers before her and he knows it.
Harry doesn't cry but he yells, trembling with impotent rage. It wasn't an accident, you're wrong, you're wrong, how could you even think-
Hermione doesn't cry either, just makes kettle after kettle of tea, and she spends the night awake from the caffiene, reading a report, waiting in case Harry does something rash.
4.
Harry Potter is twenty-eight years old and sick of losing.
5.
He tracks down Tonks during one of his breaks and confides in her. Wasn't an accident, couldn't have been, don't you see? She nods, running a hand through her bristle-short pale green hair.
"I know it's hard to take, but Harry, there's no evidence to suggest it was murder. And honestly, it's the kind of thing you'd almost expect when someone lives surrounded by all those Muggle contraptions."
Harry isn't convinced at all, but he promises not to do anything stupid. Tonks frowns like she knows he's lying, and Harry smiles, because it's been so long since he's seen that look.
6.
Hermione doesn't talk about Colin, but she's exhausted and buzzing with the potion she pretends not to take, and Harry knows she's having a difficult time. She's become even neater, if that's possible, keeping her stacks of papers ruler-straight and her desk completely free of dust. You lose control in one place, you find it in another, Harry thinks, and is vaguely dissatisfied with his 6th-year-level psychology.
He writes out lists in his scratchy handwriting: lists of motives, lists of suspects, of leads and contacts. He doesn't have much to go on. The motives could be found in dozens of people: to revenge Eva Malfoy's death, or to punish Ginny for turning Colin in and presumably foiling a Plan. He has no evidence, either, because he doesn't want to alert the Ministry by rifling through their files. The fewer people who knew about Harry's investigation, the better.
The only place he can think to start is with Malfoy. The thought of seeing him makes Harry's chest clench up; Malfoy had been there when -
But Harry doesn't think about that anymore.
7.
Grief, he thinks abstractly, grief is no reason to fall apart. He stands in front of the bathroom mirror and presses his nose to the cold glass, his eyes open so wide they begin to tear. Grief has its place but it will not tear me down.
Hermione's downstairs going over transcripts of famous court cases and he hears her, can almost feel the parchment rustling and the ink splattering and the tough skin of her fingers being corrupted by papercuts. He listens intently, trying to commit every movement to memory so he can have something to think about, something to concentrate on, because concentration keeps him together.
He breathes out slowly, and watches the fog grow on the mirror.
8.
The first note left on his doorstep says:
We must love one another or die.
It's written in the tell-tale rounded hand of a Quick Quill, blue ink in even lines. The paper's thin and wrinkled, like it was rained on. Harry tucks it neatly in between the pages of a dictionary.
9.
When he steps off the grounds of the Malfoy estate, he finally allows himself to press his forefingers to his temples, to force down the pressure that built as he sat there, watching him -
Merlin, he needs a drink.
- watching Draco emphatically not cry, his pale and drawn face gathered up with the inground dignity of class. Draco, still carrying the lingering remnants of childhood rivalry, managing to look destroyed and sneer at Harry's plain robes at the same time. Draco was a father without a child, and Harry didn't hate him anymore.
They had sat on opposite ends of a cavernous room, surrounded by paintings of a score of Malfoy generations, paintings that went from the floor to the ceiling. Malfoy's voice echoed, and Harry had to strain to hear it above the chatter of portraits and the wind howling down the chimney, but he heard.
and you wonder why we hate Mudbloods
He pulls a cigarette out of the rumpled pack with shaking hands, and snaps his fingers three times before the fire comes. He doesn't want to, but he believes Malfoy. Death Eaters, ex- or no, would never resort to something so Muggle as electrocution.
10.
The invisibility cloak hides his body but not his trail, and though the boys in the watch cover his shifts for him, there's someone who notices where he isn't. He catches shadows in corners and around the edges of buildings, snatches of dark fabric rustling away before he can put his finger on it. He's sure, positively sure, that if he just thought hard enough, he'd remember where he saw that blur before.
He doesn't fly anymore - lost his touch for that, too - so he walks everywhere, his uncomfortable shoes chafing blisters on his ankles. The feel of the ground under travel-worn feet has been bred out of wizarding blood, and although he's gone blocks as a Muggle, he's never been this far. It feels almost like he's re-learning how to move, the cobblestone streets educating him through his heels.
Familiarity chases him, and he walks.
9.
He finds the house after three hours, arriving with sweat collected in his collarbone and his energy escaping him. Hermione had passed the address and a name along to him - nothing solid, she'd said, just rumour - but since Harry didn't have the faintest idea of what else to do, he'd followed it.
Inside the house, this girl, twenty-something Ministry factory worker with middle-class desperation already in her eyes, all long blonde hair and too-short robes - she'd answered every questions but the one he asked: she admires him, always has; she thinks he looks good in that color; she'd love to get to know him better over coffee.
She'd crossed her legs and batted her eyelashes and Harry tried very hard not to let the revulsion show on his face. Are you sure you have nothing to tell me? he'd asked, cutting her short when she'd begun telling him things he didn't need to know.
He didn't have business cards or anything like that, but he wrote his name and address on a paper napkin he found in his pocket, and left it with her, saying If you remember anything...
10.
The second note left on his doorstep says:
We may not safely trust the judgement of the world.
11.
Back when, way back when, Harry said he fought because there were things he had to protect. He didn't save the world because of a vague philanthropy; he didn't save the world to save society, but to save friends and lovers and shopkeepers and the children who played in the street.
In the trenches at Aberdeen, he forced the syllables of Avada Kedavra out of his mouth and thought of Ron's embarrassed laugh, Hermione's eyebrows when she disapproved, Ginny's hair glowing in the sun, Remus' hand heavy on his shoulder. Each footstep had a purpose, and this was how he was able to walk.
Now his fingers curl instinctively around chopsticks and pencils, and he knows they work just as well as a wand would. Self-pity fills his lungs, a dead weight in his chest. A victim of gravity, he thinks. A victim of inertia.
He breathes as best he can.
12.
The glimpses and flashes of black cloak and creeping fingerprints fall finally into place.
Snape, he thinks. Snape's been following me. The knowledge doesn't bother him as much as it might.
13.
Harry had spent the afternoon pacing in the upper floor hallway, and around the second hour Hermione had come out of her office and clenched her teeth at him, asking very politely if he would please just stop. Lately, his conversations with her had a way of quickly leading to slammed doors, and tonight he wound up in the Leaky Cauldron with his suitcase and pillow.
The train outside rattled plaster down from the walls and his thoughts from his head. He sits straddling the windowsill, leg braced on the roof, and watches it go by. Once every fifteen minutes it comes, and Harry's begun to count on the diesel and machinery breeze it brings, clearing through his room and ruffling his hair. It's calming. He tightens his grip on the bottle before it slips from his hands, and tries to think again.
Colin is in jail. Ginny is dead. Nobody knows anything, or nobody will tell. Everybody has only the best of things to say about her. Harry remembers when she made people dislike her, and he misses that, even though he had almost let her tear him down too. The train slows and blurs and he tilts back towards the room to keep from falling into it. He takes another swallow from the bottle.
Colin is crazy and Ginny is dead. Ginny broke men before a ghost of a boy broke her, rising again from a diary unearthed from the rubble of the Malfoy family home. Nobody knows anything about that, or nobody wants to talk. Harry knows and remembersand desperately, desperately wants to talk, but good people didn't listen to that sort of thing.
There was a mirror in the bathroom that he covered with a washtowel. He isn't sure whose face he'd see, and he doesn't want to find out. He isn't that brave. Ginny is a ghost pressing down on the back of his head.
Smoke from his cigarette curls up and out into the sky, twisting like a revenant, a spectre, a soul trailing into a Dementor's mouth.
14.
On the evening of January 12th, as he's walking home from a lead, Harry finally catches Snape.
I's a thick night, one of those nights where the air closes around you and the fog steals your sight, but even though sounds are muffled, he can hear footsteps exactly in time with his own. He knows it isn't just him; his feet don't make that much noise. He ducks around a corner and waits, leaning against the greasy wall.
Snape seems to know he's falling into a trap: his face is calm, impassive, as he turns to face Harry. He silently tucks his arms into his cloak, letting Harry speak first.
"Why are you following me?" asks Harry, more curious than angry.
Snape's face doesn't change at all as he says "Because you need someone to watch you," and sweeps past Harry.
Harry stares after him as he he folds himself into the shadows outside the street lamps' glow.
15.
Dennis Creevey keeps close to the walls, shy in a way that suggests he's holding something back. The floral print of the wallpaper shrinks away from him, flinches from his touch. He speaks in sparse, calculated lines. The dark of the room allows him to give nothing away.
There's something here, Harry thinks, and when he asks questions, he ignores the answers and listens to the roses on the walls run scratching away. Dennis' face is puffy and white, bracketed by lank dirty-blonde hair; he looks like a worm, sunless and sightless. He keeps his right arm determinedly behind his back.
"You're the one leaving the messages, aren't you."
Dennis stops his pacing and turns to face Harry. "Now why would I do a thing like that?"
"Because you want to be caught." Harry closes his eyes as he drags on his cigarette. "And you're supposed to say, 'what messages'." He doesn't acknowledge Dennis when he says I'm sure I do not know what you're talking about.
16.
The second time Harry catches Snape, he doesn't let him go. He's a little drunk, maybe more than a little drunk, and he grabs onto Snape's arm with a possessiveness that suprises even him.
"I don't need watching over," he snarls, but it sounds petulant even to him. He draws him in close, breathing heavily onto the rough wool. "You should leave me alone," he says. "You should leave now." But he doesn't let go, tightens his grip if anything; they're close, too fucking close, and Harry pretends he doesn't feel Snape pulling away as he kisses him.
"You should just leave me the fuck alone," he says, and kisses him again, all sharp teeth and thick tongue.
17.
In the morning, Snape's not there, and Harry wonders if anything really happened at all, until he finds the handprint-shaped bruises on his hips.
18.
The third note left on his doorstep says:
Evil saith to good: My brother, My brother, I am one with thee.
- D.E.C.
The letters are rough and jumbled, shakily falling into one another.
Dennis Creevey lost his right hand, his writing hand, in the War.
"Good guess," Harry says to himself.
19.
Snape doesn't have to follow Harry to sleep with him anymore, and Hermione says nothing when her husband stays out for nights at a time.
It's not something he expects to happen; he's not particularly attracted to Snape, and his patience with sarcasm is still lacking, though he does understand the cynicism now. Harry can't quite explain it, and he wouldn't want to try, but he feels -
Like this: when he comes, when he bites his tongue to keep from crying out, he feels a wave of magic running lightly but surely through him, buzzing across atrophied synapses. He feels long-abandoned spells forming in the back of his throat. It's coming back to him, he knows it.
And if Snape starts certain words and then cuts himself off, or if his eyes seem to be focussing on something that's not entirely there, Harry doesn't mind.
20.
Dennis struggles against the heavy hands of the Aurors. "I did it for him, for Colin, she was killing him and I loved him and I had to - "
Harry holds up his hand. "I don't need to know. It doesn't matter." Ginny broke men. Harry doesn't care to know how. The Aurors say Creevey's just crazy, don't mind what he says, he's crazy as a soup sandwich - Harry doesn't mind any of them, just watches as Dennis is led away.
That night, when Snape is asleep, he pours a glass of whiskey and salutes with it, facing south-southwest. "That was for you, Ron. Hope you get to tease each other again, wherever you are."
21.
They walk home together after they watch the Creeveys recieve the Dementor's kiss (not at the same time, but close enough for Dennis to reach out to Colin, hand opening and closing as if to catch a little bit of soul).
Snape's quiet, like he always is, letting Harry do the talking.
"I cast Lumos today, and it worked, really worked. The mediwizard says I'm probably going to get most of my magic back. They're going to try to get me back into active duty again." He realizes he's babbling and not saying at all what he wants to say, and stays silent for a moment as he collects his thoughts.
Slowly, carefully, simply, he says: "They're going to make me fight a war for them. I can't fight for anyone anymore, not like that. I wouldn't fight a war for you. But if I did have to fight, if I did have to save the world, you'd be someone I could save."
Snape smiles at him, this crooked reluctant smile that makes Harry feel almost - almost - like he's falling in love.
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
Credits
note 1: Auden, "September First, 1939."
note 2: Vaughan, Preface to the Rosicrucian Manifestos
note 3: Swinburne, "Ilicet"
cut-text quote/final quote: Auden, "September First, 1939."
Harry/Hermione, Harry/Snape
R-ish.
A cheerless little war-time fic in which Harry is seriously down on his luck and unofficially investigating the death of Ginny Weasley. Everybody has a miserable time.
With apologies to Gerald Kersh, whose novel Prelude to a Certain Midnight directly inspired this. Try not to spin too fast in that there grave, Mr. Kersh. Also, apologies to the poets I've quoted herein. For, eh, they did not mean quite that.
Thanks to t_winkle725 and elfiepike for the beta.
Prelude.
On the 7th of October, Eva Malfoy was bound with Petrificus Totalus, raped and strangled, and left in the boiler room of an abandoned building. One week later, Colin Creevey was identified as the culprit by his wife, Ginny Weasley.
Hermione Granger walked briskly down the corridor, her sensible grey flats clap-clapping on the stone. One eye on her clipboard, the other on the walls: 940, 939, 938...
Creevey, Colin. Rm 937. Sentence: Life, for the reasons following:
She rapped on the door with no hesitation. "Mr. Creevey, this is Ms. Granger from the Muggle-Born Rights Association." The door wavered, then disappeared. The dementor behind her came closer.
Colin Creevey arose stiffly from his cot and gave Hermione a little salute. "Ma'am. I'm so glad you could come out to see me. This whole thing is crazy, innit?"
Hermione took a deep breath and tightened her grip on the clipboard. "Mr. Creevey. You asked for my guidance, but I have to say, I have no idea what-"
"I'm a victim," he said, and ran a hand through his dirt-thickened hair. "They wouldn't be giving me the kiss if I were a pureblood. Damn sanguinist bastards." He was thin and tall, with wide eyes that didn't quite seem to focus. Hermione tried not to remember him from before.
"Well, Mr. Creevey, I'll do my best to ensure you get exactly what the law demands. In the mean time - "
The death-cold edge of the dementor's cloak brushed against her shoulder. Time to go.
"In the mean time, please try not to give any more interviews. The last one led to picketing; you can't afford more ill will."
She turned away and forced herself to walk at a normal pace, because she wasn't scared, not at all.
He shouted out after her as the door rematerialized.
"She wa'n't even a virgin, you know. 'Er father-"
She walked faster.
1.
The first time Harry Potter descended to hell, he was fourteen years old and sick of winning. The second time, he was fifteen and sick of losing.
Both times he came back up, for that was what he did: he was the savior, Our Last Hope. Harry Potter had to save the world and so he wiped away his tears and moved on.
The third time he descended, he was nineteen with the dead body of the wrong man in front of him. He'd watched helplessly as the right man laid waste to Dumbledore's army of children. It was his first real mistake. He didn't come back up.
Afterwards he'd moved with the thick woozy bluntness of an ex-prize fighter, wounded pride and indignation wrapped thinly over grief. He'd declined the easiest duels, retreated from routine battles, and the Ministry, discovering that he had somehow lost his ability to do magic, had quietly moved him to a desk job, with a note to the papers detailing how The Boy Who Lived was on a very secret, very important mission, possibly in Spain.
He works the nightshift for more money than he's worth, wearing a tie incompetently knotted around his neck and a plain black robe he bought with his parent's savings. He's in charge of the watchwall, a bank of crystal balls that track all released criminals and suspected Death Eaters. It's a very-nearly automated process, and the condescending pity inherent in his position gives him pause, but not much. He's lost his birthright and half of his friends, half of his mind. The job earns him his keep and gives him something to do, and he doesn't look for anything more than that.
The globes give off a pleasant glow in the darkened room, and there's a certain voyeuristic thrill, so he passes the time with a minimum of restlessness. He sits back in his swivel chair, lets his eyes glaze over, and swallows to drive out the taste of blood inexplicably caught in the back of his throat.
2.
Hermione comes home and tells him that she's defending Colin in court, and Harry nods, though he still hasn't wrapped his mind around his boyhood acquaintence going out like that. He sits on the couch and sips his whiskey as she tells him, I'm not defending his actions, just his right to a fair trial and sentence. He understands, of course he understands, because anti-Muggle-born sentiment is rising and hardening even in the higher reaches of the Ministry, and this is why Hermione rarely ever relaxes.
He smiles and pats her hand reassuringly, and she smiles back.
They've both fallen quite far out of love, but they never make a move to leave each other, though he catches her fiddling anxiously with her wedding band from time to time. For him it's support, and for her it's habit and sympathy, and besides, they're still the best of friends. It's comfortable and beneficial and neither of them have the energy for adultery or divorce, so they live together in their house without a yard and sleep in separate beds.
3.
The last Weasley is found dead, and instead of the numb acceptance that everyone expects, something inside of him snaps back into place. Anger finds its way back into his heart and he's certain that he can feel magic crackling at the very tips of his fingers, just out of his reach. He's not completely awake - he still hears through cotton, still moves too slow - but he's rising.
The Ministry says it was an accident, but he doesn't believe that. No one dies accidentally anymore, especially not someone married to a criminal. There is a war seething under everything and old age is becoming a myth and she was the last Weasley, she was killed just like her brothers before her and he knows it.
Harry doesn't cry but he yells, trembling with impotent rage. It wasn't an accident, you're wrong, you're wrong, how could you even think-
Hermione doesn't cry either, just makes kettle after kettle of tea, and she spends the night awake from the caffiene, reading a report, waiting in case Harry does something rash.
4.
Harry Potter is twenty-eight years old and sick of losing.
5.
He tracks down Tonks during one of his breaks and confides in her. Wasn't an accident, couldn't have been, don't you see? She nods, running a hand through her bristle-short pale green hair.
"I know it's hard to take, but Harry, there's no evidence to suggest it was murder. And honestly, it's the kind of thing you'd almost expect when someone lives surrounded by all those Muggle contraptions."
Harry isn't convinced at all, but he promises not to do anything stupid. Tonks frowns like she knows he's lying, and Harry smiles, because it's been so long since he's seen that look.
6.
Hermione doesn't talk about Colin, but she's exhausted and buzzing with the potion she pretends not to take, and Harry knows she's having a difficult time. She's become even neater, if that's possible, keeping her stacks of papers ruler-straight and her desk completely free of dust. You lose control in one place, you find it in another, Harry thinks, and is vaguely dissatisfied with his 6th-year-level psychology.
He writes out lists in his scratchy handwriting: lists of motives, lists of suspects, of leads and contacts. He doesn't have much to go on. The motives could be found in dozens of people: to revenge Eva Malfoy's death, or to punish Ginny for turning Colin in and presumably foiling a Plan. He has no evidence, either, because he doesn't want to alert the Ministry by rifling through their files. The fewer people who knew about Harry's investigation, the better.
The only place he can think to start is with Malfoy. The thought of seeing him makes Harry's chest clench up; Malfoy had been there when -
But Harry doesn't think about that anymore.
7.
Grief, he thinks abstractly, grief is no reason to fall apart. He stands in front of the bathroom mirror and presses his nose to the cold glass, his eyes open so wide they begin to tear. Grief has its place but it will not tear me down.
Hermione's downstairs going over transcripts of famous court cases and he hears her, can almost feel the parchment rustling and the ink splattering and the tough skin of her fingers being corrupted by papercuts. He listens intently, trying to commit every movement to memory so he can have something to think about, something to concentrate on, because concentration keeps him together.
He breathes out slowly, and watches the fog grow on the mirror.
8.
The first note left on his doorstep says:
We must love one another or die.
It's written in the tell-tale rounded hand of a Quick Quill, blue ink in even lines. The paper's thin and wrinkled, like it was rained on. Harry tucks it neatly in between the pages of a dictionary.
9.
When he steps off the grounds of the Malfoy estate, he finally allows himself to press his forefingers to his temples, to force down the pressure that built as he sat there, watching him -
Merlin, he needs a drink.
- watching Draco emphatically not cry, his pale and drawn face gathered up with the inground dignity of class. Draco, still carrying the lingering remnants of childhood rivalry, managing to look destroyed and sneer at Harry's plain robes at the same time. Draco was a father without a child, and Harry didn't hate him anymore.
They had sat on opposite ends of a cavernous room, surrounded by paintings of a score of Malfoy generations, paintings that went from the floor to the ceiling. Malfoy's voice echoed, and Harry had to strain to hear it above the chatter of portraits and the wind howling down the chimney, but he heard.
and you wonder why we hate Mudbloods
He pulls a cigarette out of the rumpled pack with shaking hands, and snaps his fingers three times before the fire comes. He doesn't want to, but he believes Malfoy. Death Eaters, ex- or no, would never resort to something so Muggle as electrocution.
10.
The invisibility cloak hides his body but not his trail, and though the boys in the watch cover his shifts for him, there's someone who notices where he isn't. He catches shadows in corners and around the edges of buildings, snatches of dark fabric rustling away before he can put his finger on it. He's sure, positively sure, that if he just thought hard enough, he'd remember where he saw that blur before.
He doesn't fly anymore - lost his touch for that, too - so he walks everywhere, his uncomfortable shoes chafing blisters on his ankles. The feel of the ground under travel-worn feet has been bred out of wizarding blood, and although he's gone blocks as a Muggle, he's never been this far. It feels almost like he's re-learning how to move, the cobblestone streets educating him through his heels.
Familiarity chases him, and he walks.
9.
He finds the house after three hours, arriving with sweat collected in his collarbone and his energy escaping him. Hermione had passed the address and a name along to him - nothing solid, she'd said, just rumour - but since Harry didn't have the faintest idea of what else to do, he'd followed it.
Inside the house, this girl, twenty-something Ministry factory worker with middle-class desperation already in her eyes, all long blonde hair and too-short robes - she'd answered every questions but the one he asked: she admires him, always has; she thinks he looks good in that color; she'd love to get to know him better over coffee.
She'd crossed her legs and batted her eyelashes and Harry tried very hard not to let the revulsion show on his face. Are you sure you have nothing to tell me? he'd asked, cutting her short when she'd begun telling him things he didn't need to know.
He didn't have business cards or anything like that, but he wrote his name and address on a paper napkin he found in his pocket, and left it with her, saying If you remember anything...
10.
The second note left on his doorstep says:
We may not safely trust the judgement of the world.
11.
Back when, way back when, Harry said he fought because there were things he had to protect. He didn't save the world because of a vague philanthropy; he didn't save the world to save society, but to save friends and lovers and shopkeepers and the children who played in the street.
In the trenches at Aberdeen, he forced the syllables of Avada Kedavra out of his mouth and thought of Ron's embarrassed laugh, Hermione's eyebrows when she disapproved, Ginny's hair glowing in the sun, Remus' hand heavy on his shoulder. Each footstep had a purpose, and this was how he was able to walk.
Now his fingers curl instinctively around chopsticks and pencils, and he knows they work just as well as a wand would. Self-pity fills his lungs, a dead weight in his chest. A victim of gravity, he thinks. A victim of inertia.
He breathes as best he can.
12.
The glimpses and flashes of black cloak and creeping fingerprints fall finally into place.
Snape, he thinks. Snape's been following me. The knowledge doesn't bother him as much as it might.
13.
Harry had spent the afternoon pacing in the upper floor hallway, and around the second hour Hermione had come out of her office and clenched her teeth at him, asking very politely if he would please just stop. Lately, his conversations with her had a way of quickly leading to slammed doors, and tonight he wound up in the Leaky Cauldron with his suitcase and pillow.
The train outside rattled plaster down from the walls and his thoughts from his head. He sits straddling the windowsill, leg braced on the roof, and watches it go by. Once every fifteen minutes it comes, and Harry's begun to count on the diesel and machinery breeze it brings, clearing through his room and ruffling his hair. It's calming. He tightens his grip on the bottle before it slips from his hands, and tries to think again.
Colin is in jail. Ginny is dead. Nobody knows anything, or nobody will tell. Everybody has only the best of things to say about her. Harry remembers when she made people dislike her, and he misses that, even though he had almost let her tear him down too. The train slows and blurs and he tilts back towards the room to keep from falling into it. He takes another swallow from the bottle.
Colin is crazy and Ginny is dead. Ginny broke men before a ghost of a boy broke her, rising again from a diary unearthed from the rubble of the Malfoy family home. Nobody knows anything about that, or nobody wants to talk. Harry knows and remembersand desperately, desperately wants to talk, but good people didn't listen to that sort of thing.
There was a mirror in the bathroom that he covered with a washtowel. He isn't sure whose face he'd see, and he doesn't want to find out. He isn't that brave. Ginny is a ghost pressing down on the back of his head.
Smoke from his cigarette curls up and out into the sky, twisting like a revenant, a spectre, a soul trailing into a Dementor's mouth.
14.
On the evening of January 12th, as he's walking home from a lead, Harry finally catches Snape.
I's a thick night, one of those nights where the air closes around you and the fog steals your sight, but even though sounds are muffled, he can hear footsteps exactly in time with his own. He knows it isn't just him; his feet don't make that much noise. He ducks around a corner and waits, leaning against the greasy wall.
Snape seems to know he's falling into a trap: his face is calm, impassive, as he turns to face Harry. He silently tucks his arms into his cloak, letting Harry speak first.
"Why are you following me?" asks Harry, more curious than angry.
Snape's face doesn't change at all as he says "Because you need someone to watch you," and sweeps past Harry.
Harry stares after him as he he folds himself into the shadows outside the street lamps' glow.
15.
Dennis Creevey keeps close to the walls, shy in a way that suggests he's holding something back. The floral print of the wallpaper shrinks away from him, flinches from his touch. He speaks in sparse, calculated lines. The dark of the room allows him to give nothing away.
There's something here, Harry thinks, and when he asks questions, he ignores the answers and listens to the roses on the walls run scratching away. Dennis' face is puffy and white, bracketed by lank dirty-blonde hair; he looks like a worm, sunless and sightless. He keeps his right arm determinedly behind his back.
"You're the one leaving the messages, aren't you."
Dennis stops his pacing and turns to face Harry. "Now why would I do a thing like that?"
"Because you want to be caught." Harry closes his eyes as he drags on his cigarette. "And you're supposed to say, 'what messages'." He doesn't acknowledge Dennis when he says I'm sure I do not know what you're talking about.
16.
The second time Harry catches Snape, he doesn't let him go. He's a little drunk, maybe more than a little drunk, and he grabs onto Snape's arm with a possessiveness that suprises even him.
"I don't need watching over," he snarls, but it sounds petulant even to him. He draws him in close, breathing heavily onto the rough wool. "You should leave me alone," he says. "You should leave now." But he doesn't let go, tightens his grip if anything; they're close, too fucking close, and Harry pretends he doesn't feel Snape pulling away as he kisses him.
"You should just leave me the fuck alone," he says, and kisses him again, all sharp teeth and thick tongue.
17.
In the morning, Snape's not there, and Harry wonders if anything really happened at all, until he finds the handprint-shaped bruises on his hips.
18.
The third note left on his doorstep says:
Evil saith to good: My brother, My brother, I am one with thee.
- D.E.C.
The letters are rough and jumbled, shakily falling into one another.
Dennis Creevey lost his right hand, his writing hand, in the War.
"Good guess," Harry says to himself.
19.
Snape doesn't have to follow Harry to sleep with him anymore, and Hermione says nothing when her husband stays out for nights at a time.
It's not something he expects to happen; he's not particularly attracted to Snape, and his patience with sarcasm is still lacking, though he does understand the cynicism now. Harry can't quite explain it, and he wouldn't want to try, but he feels -
Like this: when he comes, when he bites his tongue to keep from crying out, he feels a wave of magic running lightly but surely through him, buzzing across atrophied synapses. He feels long-abandoned spells forming in the back of his throat. It's coming back to him, he knows it.
And if Snape starts certain words and then cuts himself off, or if his eyes seem to be focussing on something that's not entirely there, Harry doesn't mind.
20.
Dennis struggles against the heavy hands of the Aurors. "I did it for him, for Colin, she was killing him and I loved him and I had to - "
Harry holds up his hand. "I don't need to know. It doesn't matter." Ginny broke men. Harry doesn't care to know how. The Aurors say Creevey's just crazy, don't mind what he says, he's crazy as a soup sandwich - Harry doesn't mind any of them, just watches as Dennis is led away.
That night, when Snape is asleep, he pours a glass of whiskey and salutes with it, facing south-southwest. "That was for you, Ron. Hope you get to tease each other again, wherever you are."
21.
They walk home together after they watch the Creeveys recieve the Dementor's kiss (not at the same time, but close enough for Dennis to reach out to Colin, hand opening and closing as if to catch a little bit of soul).
Snape's quiet, like he always is, letting Harry do the talking.
"I cast Lumos today, and it worked, really worked. The mediwizard says I'm probably going to get most of my magic back. They're going to try to get me back into active duty again." He realizes he's babbling and not saying at all what he wants to say, and stays silent for a moment as he collects his thoughts.
Slowly, carefully, simply, he says: "They're going to make me fight a war for them. I can't fight for anyone anymore, not like that. I wouldn't fight a war for you. But if I did have to fight, if I did have to save the world, you'd be someone I could save."
Snape smiles at him, this crooked reluctant smile that makes Harry feel almost - almost - like he's falling in love.
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.
Credits
note 1: Auden, "September First, 1939."
note 2: Vaughan, Preface to the Rosicrucian Manifestos
note 3: Swinburne, "Ilicet"
cut-text quote/final quote: Auden, "September First, 1939."