fic for maple_clef: Merlin and King Arthur (Snape, OC, G)
Title: Merlin and King Arthur
Recipient: maple_clef
Rating: G
Characters: Snape, original character
--
"We used to see him around," she intones carefully, her umbrella pointing at the general area of the neighboring houses standing close in the ashen arrangement of this part of the city. "Never said good morning, he did, never smiled. As I was saying to Martha here, just before you asked, I have not seen him in a fair while. You'd never know when he'd next appear out of thin air, giving you a right scare and then vanish again like a …"
"Your name?" I ask quickly, noting the swish of her umbrella, the deep intake of air as the tell-tale sign of a longer tirade.
"Burbanks, Ms Burbanks, that is B-U-R-B-A-N-K-S, born here in 1927, raised-"
"Thank you, Ms Burbanks," I interrupt her with a tip to my hat, non-existent, and the nod and smile that smoothes her ruffled feathers.
"What do you want to know all that for, young man?" her companion asks, her gnarly finger tapping my notebook, the suspicious gleam in her eyes as she cranes her neck to read my notes. "Are you an officer? One day, we were saying in our tea circle, someone would come for him. Something was not right with that man. We knew."
Nodding again to her growing self-satisfied smile I pocket my notebook. "Something like an … officer, yes ma'am. Thank you for your help, if you'll excuse me now." With a bow and turn I step away, brush the sweat off my brow, cast a suspicious look myself but there is no-one besides the two ladies and the rainy sludge passing for snow in this part of the royal country. I pull up the collar of my coat and disappear into the fog.
The house is at the end of the street. Smoke is rising from the chimneys of the black houses that stand like broken tombstones on abandoned gravesites. Yellow ministry spell-tape shines through the dim evening. They closed off the door, the windows. I walk around the house. The backdoor is sealed, too. My trouser legs are soaked, my fingers red from the cold. Gerald swore they do not have the house on the watch list anymore. I place a few spells and wait for the fireworks of apparition. Two minutes, five minutes. I open the door when the evening stays cool and silent.
Stale air makes me cough as I step into the house. The dust of more than a few months rises gleefully as a few seconds of wind make it through the open door before I close it behind me. I don't risk a Lumos, rather wait for my eyes to adjust to the relative darkness of the interior. The narrow hallway stretches to a door at its end, two doors along its length. I pull out my notebook again, turn the page from the very informative conversation of Ms Burbanks and her companion to blank. Gerald mentioned taking a recording device, magic quill or magic eye or one of the newly developed gadgets that turn journalism into a spy-game. The pencil works for me.
Hallway dark, bare, no decoration. Door on the left, kitche--
Movement. I drop the pencil. My hand goes to my wand. The rat slithers past my feet, squeaks once more in the hallway and is gone. Heartrate still accelerated I pick up the pencil again.
kitchen. Decidedly alive!
The mouldy smell makes me recoil. There are tea cups and dishes on the sink with a coating of green, rat excrements all over the place and garbage that was last emptied when someone had inhabited this building. It's been months now, more than a year and a half. I open a few drawers and doors, the fridge, glance at the papers on the table.
Prophet and Telegraph dated May 6th last year, living specimen of the unknown kind (green and pelty -- joke, Gerald). Black tea drinker, non-smoking. Rats, the non-human kind (I assume?!!)
I look around for the rat again and draw my wand, better safe than sorry. Part of me is tempted to dig through the garbage, the investigative journalist at his best. The smell easily deters me.
I leave the kitchen behind and cross the hallway to the door opposite after a cursory glance through the curtained window of the backdoor. The evening settles silently, sludge is still dripping from the clouds. I open the door to the room.
Bathroom. Rats. No blood in the tub, so much for that future headline.
Those rooms dealt with I follow the hallway farther into the house. There are stairs leading up, hidden on the right behind the bathroom. I try the door first that the hallway leads to. It only opens as I use my body weight against it. The street lights illuminate the room slightly through the front windows. The bookshelves along every free space of wall stand as silent guardians to dark secrets, ready to swoop down upon you like gargoyles for a wrong step or word. My fingers inch along the spines of the books. The leather crackles under my fingertips. I draw out a book; the sound magnifies the utter silence that is cast around me.
Sitting room. Books, books, books. No general Dark Arts domination. Blood appears to be the favoured topic (families, histories, spells and potions -- dark arts there --, science -- also muggle --, journals, essays)
I push the book back into its proper space. There are more papers spread out on the table, earlier May issues. I walk over to the window, brush the curtains aside to look out. The street remains silent and still. There is wood stacked next to the fireplace, ash still in it. I bend down, hands moving automatically to scatter the ash for the corner of a letter or a photograph.
No fireplace mystery. Another headline crossed out
The clock on the fireplace is frozen on 6:18. I check my watch, 5:52 now. I shake the eerie feeling that threatens to pull me under. With only the sound of my own feet to keep me company the crackling of the wooden shelves rolls like thunder. A car drives by. I remain frozen in its light beams for the moment they pass over me, wait until it is dark again. I look the shelves over once more but decide that time is too short for a thorough investigation of their contents. They are only books, too. I leave the sitting room and am back in the hallway where I listen to any sounds of rats or people. None. There is only the creaking of old walls with too many secrets in every single stone.
I ascend the stairs, grip my wand tighter, prepare for unwelcome surprises of traps or spells, a 'petrificus' is on my lips. The stairs moan with every shift of my weight, snarling at the uninvited guest. It is pitch black up there. I cannot see a window or door or even my hand in front of my face. My heart is beating high in my throat. Thump-thump, and it seems to reverberate through my body, the floor, the walls as though the house is shaking in sync to my heart. I count to ten, still, one number for every careful breath.
"Lumos." I keep my eyes squeezed closed and stand, shoulders hunched, waiting for the spells to rain down on me. The house remains silent. I open my eyes. There is a hallway. It glows in the fuzzy grey light of my wand. There are two doors and a hallway ending dead with a chair and a table positioned as if to sit there and look out through a window that does not exist.
My wand held out in front of me I walk to that table. I feel along the wall, where a window could be, if there is any residue magic that hides the secret look-out, but it appears to be nothing but the table and chair in a dead-end hallway.
I turn with a shake to my head, and decide to try the door on my right first. I extinguish my wand, press the door handle lightly. My watch -- muggle -- glows in the darkness. 6:03. The door shrieks. I jump back, colliding with the door behind me for only a fraction of a moment before it gives and is pushed open by my weight, landing me in the middle of the room on my behind. I remain motionless on the floor. My wand still gives off its low grey glimmer, shimmering along the floorboards into the hallway, reflected by the door and the offended handle.
I slowly turn my head, move my lit wand in a small circle. The moon appears behind grey clouds for a short while, pushing the room into eeriness. It is his bedroom. A bed, a closet, desk and chair, shelves with more books. I swallow hard and move onto all fours, bated breath.
Almost sterile, cleaned up. Hard to tell if by the ministry or himself before he left, quill on the desk, paper, not written on, magic on the surface, maybe potions, no curtains, closet closed.
I wrench the closet door open with my wand and without magic. A second later the thought comes to me that my lumos should have already set off any magic detectors, and the ministry is not yet knocking the house down.
closet empty.
I curse under my breath. My investigative masterpiece is slipping from my hands in the rivers of Insignificance and Futility. Mass murderer, on the run and the 2nd most feared man in the Queen's country and the house is a pristine, abandoned shoe box.
I dig my wand into the nooks and crannies of the closet, but it is as empty as they come. I walk over to the bed, look under the sheets and mattress but not even there are any hidden sensations or headlines. I take a few deep breaths and the moon is visible again for a few moments, observe the play of the shadows on the wooden floor. I examine the desk surface again, still only the paper and the quill. The drawers are pulled out easily, tipped over and searched for hidden floors or back.
Nothing! It all looks like someone went through everything with a fine comb. Chances of finding anything worthy of even a mention are nil.
I stick the drawers back and stalk out of the room after a last cursory glance, all pretence of stealth and silence forgotten. His bedroom, the one room in which you'd have expected the glorious secrets of his life, the dark patches of his mind or a bloody corpse in a bloody closet.
The screech on the other door does not keep me out this time.
Laboratory. Entirely emptied of anything potions.
The lonely glass flasks and cauldrons stand as an accusatory finger to any intruder. My grey light reflects off them silently, leaving a few sparks of life on the empty and unused work surfaces. A faint shine of dust coats everything, as if it has died and is not waiting to be claimed again, forgotten. The shelves are empty save for a few books, some stirring rods on a cabinet and the flasks that stand like an army ready to defend. I give the room a slow sweep of my eyes, but there is nothing there that has not been touched, overturned and put back or confiscated.
I leave the room and stand in the narrow hallway, the stairs to my left a gaping silent hole. I walk over to the table and chair and sit, put my notebook down in front of me and wait for something to magically appear for my story. The table is worn down, scratched from years of use, probably. There are etchings as if done with a knife by a child's hand, random dates and names, bad words mummy would not have wanted to hear and crude drawings.
My watch blinks 6:18. My finger tip traces 'drop like flies'. A drawer appears beneath the table, pushing my knees aside. I grab my wand, carelessly discarded by my side, almost rolled off the table and force my eyes up. My wand held out I threaten any invisible force, still my breath to listen into the silence. There is nothing, only the darkness and my wand still stupidly carrying its lumos-shine.
I pull the drawer open slowly. My fingers shake. I wait for a hex to fly up as I take the first glimpses into it but nothing happens. I scoot back and pull the drawer out fully, holding my wand closer so I can see inside. There is box, no writing on it, a stack of photos and a few toys that remind me of my own childhood, Merlin and King Arthur and a few horses all laying in a pile.
I take all of them out and put them onto the table, Merlin and King Arthur and the horses standing next to them. I lift the box out, then the stack of photos, and put those, too, on the table, close the drawer and watch it disappear again. I gulp.
I lift the lid of the box. They are letters, four, no, five of them, written on thick parchment. The Hogwarts seal is on all of them, still intact and untouched. I hesitate for a moment, then touch my wand to the first. The wax peels away and the letter opens for me.
Mother,
it has been long since your last letter to me. I worry now that you have never gotten the last one I have sent thanking you for your lines of encouragement. Are you ill? Or has something happened?
Life here is good. The 4th year is so much more exciting than the 3rd. We are now learning the really interesting things. I like Transfiguration best. Potions is okay. We now have Potions with the Gryffindors. They are an inattentive bunch. Slughorn likes them. I don't.
It is Hogsmeade weekend next week. I am looking forward to going to the village.
I hope this finds you in good health. I worry, Mother. Please let me know how things are.
Your son,
Severus
Hogwarts, November 15th 1972
I put the letter aside and take the next one. After another careful glance down the hallway I open that one also, watch the wax melt and the letter open.
Mother,
you never replied and I worry in earnest now. How are you? Has something happened? You have never needed so long to reply to one, let alone two letters of mine. Christmas is nearing and I have been meaning to ask if you will fetch me from the station like every year or if I should take the bus to the house. Please let me know what you prefer.
I hope everything is fine with you and you are merely too busy to reply.
Your son,
Severus
Hogwarts, November 23rd 1972
The next letter, the wand movement and the dripping wax. I decide to open the last two, too. My mouth is dry.
Mother,
it is only two weeks until Christmas now and you have not let me know about the arrangements. I will be arriving by Hogwarts Express at six on the 20th. Let me know if you will be there.
Please send me a notice, just a line so I know you are fine.
Your son,
Severus
Hogwarts, December 10th 1972
Mother,
what is happening with you? I am going to talk to Dumbledore. I worry.
Severus
Mother,
what has happened? Where are you? Why does no-one know what is going on?
Severus
I put the letters aside, rubbing my fingertips absentmindedly over my forehead. I regard the letters thoughtfully, then look into the box once more. There is another envelope on the bottom, sealed and stamped by the Ministry. I take it out and open it, pull out the document. It is the death certificate for Eileen Snape, maiden surname Prince. Date of Death is documented as November 10th 1972. My eyes skim the document. The cause of death makes me stop and double check; head trauma is listed as the primary cause. I look at the letters again. Snape was in his 4th year, not yet 14. It was more than a month after his mother's death that he was informed of it.
I lean back, contemplate the letters, the certificate, the King Arthur and Merlin figures, of all things, that look back at me expectantly. I push the letters into the box again. I lift the photos from the table, ten, twelve of them maybe.
The first is a family picture. The family Snape in front of an old house, not this one, somewhere in the country. There is snow on the ground. The grandparents, parents and a maybe five-year old boy waving at the photographer even as his father's hard hand and face force him to stay still for the picture. His mother's hand is ruffling his short black hair, then pulling a hat over it, laughing at the five-year-old's eye roll.
I put the picture on top of the box and look at the next one. It is a Christmas picture. The photo is of a tree in the corner, the candles glowing on it. The next shot is of the same tree, this time with young Snape from the first picture standing proudly in front of it, holding the angel in one hand and balancing it over his head, waving. Another picture of the same year has young Snape with his father at the table, traditional Christmas dinner. The boy is wriggling on his seat, until his father grabs him hard by the arm and pushes him to sit back properly in the chair. The boy smiles bravely at the camera even as his body twitches further back as his father moves to help himself to the food. I thumb through the pictures. The last of that year has the boy sitting under the Christmas tree, glass figurines in his lap. He holds them up to the candles and watches them sparkle in the light.
The next batch has an older Snape, nine or ten years of age, another Christmas. The tree is smaller on the first photo and the table less laden with food on the second. The boy is sitting motionless next to his father, forcing a smile to his face as he notices that he is being photographed. King Arthur and Merlin are on his plate until his father pushes them off with one angry movement of the hand. The next photo is of his mother smiling shyly as she turns away, then turns back, probably at a prod. She freezes as her husband appears in the doorway behind her.
There are three pictures left. The first is of Snape wearing his Hogwarts coat as he stands in the train station in front of the Express. His hair is hanging into his eyes and he pushes it away with half a smile. The next picture has the small family at the Christmas table, the traditional food and a young Snape who is sitting between his parents arching as close to his mother as he can and as far away from his father as possible. The older Snape does not appear to notice. He is staring at the wand his son carries with disgust, then helps himself to the food.
The last picture is of Snape with longer hair and a dark look in his eyes. His lips do not even twitch in a smile. The background is the Great Hall of Hogwarts. Snape frowns, his lips thin and he pushes the person attempting to capture him away. As he does that, Merlin and King Arthur are being pushed over by his elbow and tumble into a pile of legs and arms. He regards them for a moment, then snaps their heads off.
I put those last pictures down and consider their implications. Print that and the murderer becomes the innocent lamb with a life to talk of. I take Merlin and King Arthur. They are missing their faces, the colour rubbed off, but the heads must have been pasted on again at some point. They both have their arms raised in a gesture of almighty power.
I consider the implications of the letters, documents, photos for my story. My headline that could read 'He, Too, Has A Story To Tell' or something similarly dramatic. My wand is still glowing with the silly Lumos as I think of packing all this up, write the story tonight and have it on my Gerald's table by tomorrow, 'The Death Eater That Was Human Once'.
I draw my fingertip over 'drop like flies' and the drawer appears. I push the box and the photos into it and push it shut. It disappears again. I take King Arthur, Merlin and my wand and walk away from the table with the chair, down the stairs, along the hallway with screeching rats and out of the door. There are no ministry officials to take me away and no Death Eaters to kill me on the spot.
I close the door. I push King Arthur and Merlin into my pocket and walk along the street, back into a world where no-one knows of them. I nod to the two old ladies that pass me by again, mumble a greeting before I disapparate well out of sight.
I tell Gerald later that evening that I did not find anything, only a dead house, long raped of all its secrets and corpses. He nods and tells me that it was on an off-chance anyway and bids me goodnight. I walk home to Christmas tunes playing in Diagon Alley, thinking of the pictures of a boy on Christmas nights. The drawer exists, even if it is closed and hidden.
Recipient: maple_clef
Rating: G
Characters: Snape, original character
--
"We used to see him around," she intones carefully, her umbrella pointing at the general area of the neighboring houses standing close in the ashen arrangement of this part of the city. "Never said good morning, he did, never smiled. As I was saying to Martha here, just before you asked, I have not seen him in a fair while. You'd never know when he'd next appear out of thin air, giving you a right scare and then vanish again like a …"
"Your name?" I ask quickly, noting the swish of her umbrella, the deep intake of air as the tell-tale sign of a longer tirade.
"Burbanks, Ms Burbanks, that is B-U-R-B-A-N-K-S, born here in 1927, raised-"
"Thank you, Ms Burbanks," I interrupt her with a tip to my hat, non-existent, and the nod and smile that smoothes her ruffled feathers.
"What do you want to know all that for, young man?" her companion asks, her gnarly finger tapping my notebook, the suspicious gleam in her eyes as she cranes her neck to read my notes. "Are you an officer? One day, we were saying in our tea circle, someone would come for him. Something was not right with that man. We knew."
Nodding again to her growing self-satisfied smile I pocket my notebook. "Something like an … officer, yes ma'am. Thank you for your help, if you'll excuse me now." With a bow and turn I step away, brush the sweat off my brow, cast a suspicious look myself but there is no-one besides the two ladies and the rainy sludge passing for snow in this part of the royal country. I pull up the collar of my coat and disappear into the fog.
The house is at the end of the street. Smoke is rising from the chimneys of the black houses that stand like broken tombstones on abandoned gravesites. Yellow ministry spell-tape shines through the dim evening. They closed off the door, the windows. I walk around the house. The backdoor is sealed, too. My trouser legs are soaked, my fingers red from the cold. Gerald swore they do not have the house on the watch list anymore. I place a few spells and wait for the fireworks of apparition. Two minutes, five minutes. I open the door when the evening stays cool and silent.
Stale air makes me cough as I step into the house. The dust of more than a few months rises gleefully as a few seconds of wind make it through the open door before I close it behind me. I don't risk a Lumos, rather wait for my eyes to adjust to the relative darkness of the interior. The narrow hallway stretches to a door at its end, two doors along its length. I pull out my notebook again, turn the page from the very informative conversation of Ms Burbanks and her companion to blank. Gerald mentioned taking a recording device, magic quill or magic eye or one of the newly developed gadgets that turn journalism into a spy-game. The pencil works for me.
Hallway dark, bare, no decoration. Door on the left, kitche--
Movement. I drop the pencil. My hand goes to my wand. The rat slithers past my feet, squeaks once more in the hallway and is gone. Heartrate still accelerated I pick up the pencil again.
kitchen. Decidedly alive!
The mouldy smell makes me recoil. There are tea cups and dishes on the sink with a coating of green, rat excrements all over the place and garbage that was last emptied when someone had inhabited this building. It's been months now, more than a year and a half. I open a few drawers and doors, the fridge, glance at the papers on the table.
Prophet and Telegraph dated May 6th last year, living specimen of the unknown kind (green and pelty -- joke, Gerald). Black tea drinker, non-smoking. Rats, the non-human kind (I assume?!!)
I look around for the rat again and draw my wand, better safe than sorry. Part of me is tempted to dig through the garbage, the investigative journalist at his best. The smell easily deters me.
I leave the kitchen behind and cross the hallway to the door opposite after a cursory glance through the curtained window of the backdoor. The evening settles silently, sludge is still dripping from the clouds. I open the door to the room.
Bathroom. Rats. No blood in the tub, so much for that future headline.
Those rooms dealt with I follow the hallway farther into the house. There are stairs leading up, hidden on the right behind the bathroom. I try the door first that the hallway leads to. It only opens as I use my body weight against it. The street lights illuminate the room slightly through the front windows. The bookshelves along every free space of wall stand as silent guardians to dark secrets, ready to swoop down upon you like gargoyles for a wrong step or word. My fingers inch along the spines of the books. The leather crackles under my fingertips. I draw out a book; the sound magnifies the utter silence that is cast around me.
Sitting room. Books, books, books. No general Dark Arts domination. Blood appears to be the favoured topic (families, histories, spells and potions -- dark arts there --, science -- also muggle --, journals, essays)
I push the book back into its proper space. There are more papers spread out on the table, earlier May issues. I walk over to the window, brush the curtains aside to look out. The street remains silent and still. There is wood stacked next to the fireplace, ash still in it. I bend down, hands moving automatically to scatter the ash for the corner of a letter or a photograph.
No fireplace mystery. Another headline crossed out
The clock on the fireplace is frozen on 6:18. I check my watch, 5:52 now. I shake the eerie feeling that threatens to pull me under. With only the sound of my own feet to keep me company the crackling of the wooden shelves rolls like thunder. A car drives by. I remain frozen in its light beams for the moment they pass over me, wait until it is dark again. I look the shelves over once more but decide that time is too short for a thorough investigation of their contents. They are only books, too. I leave the sitting room and am back in the hallway where I listen to any sounds of rats or people. None. There is only the creaking of old walls with too many secrets in every single stone.
I ascend the stairs, grip my wand tighter, prepare for unwelcome surprises of traps or spells, a 'petrificus' is on my lips. The stairs moan with every shift of my weight, snarling at the uninvited guest. It is pitch black up there. I cannot see a window or door or even my hand in front of my face. My heart is beating high in my throat. Thump-thump, and it seems to reverberate through my body, the floor, the walls as though the house is shaking in sync to my heart. I count to ten, still, one number for every careful breath.
"Lumos." I keep my eyes squeezed closed and stand, shoulders hunched, waiting for the spells to rain down on me. The house remains silent. I open my eyes. There is a hallway. It glows in the fuzzy grey light of my wand. There are two doors and a hallway ending dead with a chair and a table positioned as if to sit there and look out through a window that does not exist.
My wand held out in front of me I walk to that table. I feel along the wall, where a window could be, if there is any residue magic that hides the secret look-out, but it appears to be nothing but the table and chair in a dead-end hallway.
I turn with a shake to my head, and decide to try the door on my right first. I extinguish my wand, press the door handle lightly. My watch -- muggle -- glows in the darkness. 6:03. The door shrieks. I jump back, colliding with the door behind me for only a fraction of a moment before it gives and is pushed open by my weight, landing me in the middle of the room on my behind. I remain motionless on the floor. My wand still gives off its low grey glimmer, shimmering along the floorboards into the hallway, reflected by the door and the offended handle.
I slowly turn my head, move my lit wand in a small circle. The moon appears behind grey clouds for a short while, pushing the room into eeriness. It is his bedroom. A bed, a closet, desk and chair, shelves with more books. I swallow hard and move onto all fours, bated breath.
Almost sterile, cleaned up. Hard to tell if by the ministry or himself before he left, quill on the desk, paper, not written on, magic on the surface, maybe potions, no curtains, closet closed.
I wrench the closet door open with my wand and without magic. A second later the thought comes to me that my lumos should have already set off any magic detectors, and the ministry is not yet knocking the house down.
closet empty.
I curse under my breath. My investigative masterpiece is slipping from my hands in the rivers of Insignificance and Futility. Mass murderer, on the run and the 2nd most feared man in the Queen's country and the house is a pristine, abandoned shoe box.
I dig my wand into the nooks and crannies of the closet, but it is as empty as they come. I walk over to the bed, look under the sheets and mattress but not even there are any hidden sensations or headlines. I take a few deep breaths and the moon is visible again for a few moments, observe the play of the shadows on the wooden floor. I examine the desk surface again, still only the paper and the quill. The drawers are pulled out easily, tipped over and searched for hidden floors or back.
Nothing! It all looks like someone went through everything with a fine comb. Chances of finding anything worthy of even a mention are nil.
I stick the drawers back and stalk out of the room after a last cursory glance, all pretence of stealth and silence forgotten. His bedroom, the one room in which you'd have expected the glorious secrets of his life, the dark patches of his mind or a bloody corpse in a bloody closet.
The screech on the other door does not keep me out this time.
Laboratory. Entirely emptied of anything potions.
The lonely glass flasks and cauldrons stand as an accusatory finger to any intruder. My grey light reflects off them silently, leaving a few sparks of life on the empty and unused work surfaces. A faint shine of dust coats everything, as if it has died and is not waiting to be claimed again, forgotten. The shelves are empty save for a few books, some stirring rods on a cabinet and the flasks that stand like an army ready to defend. I give the room a slow sweep of my eyes, but there is nothing there that has not been touched, overturned and put back or confiscated.
I leave the room and stand in the narrow hallway, the stairs to my left a gaping silent hole. I walk over to the table and chair and sit, put my notebook down in front of me and wait for something to magically appear for my story. The table is worn down, scratched from years of use, probably. There are etchings as if done with a knife by a child's hand, random dates and names, bad words mummy would not have wanted to hear and crude drawings.
My watch blinks 6:18. My finger tip traces 'drop like flies'. A drawer appears beneath the table, pushing my knees aside. I grab my wand, carelessly discarded by my side, almost rolled off the table and force my eyes up. My wand held out I threaten any invisible force, still my breath to listen into the silence. There is nothing, only the darkness and my wand still stupidly carrying its lumos-shine.
I pull the drawer open slowly. My fingers shake. I wait for a hex to fly up as I take the first glimpses into it but nothing happens. I scoot back and pull the drawer out fully, holding my wand closer so I can see inside. There is box, no writing on it, a stack of photos and a few toys that remind me of my own childhood, Merlin and King Arthur and a few horses all laying in a pile.
I take all of them out and put them onto the table, Merlin and King Arthur and the horses standing next to them. I lift the box out, then the stack of photos, and put those, too, on the table, close the drawer and watch it disappear again. I gulp.
I lift the lid of the box. They are letters, four, no, five of them, written on thick parchment. The Hogwarts seal is on all of them, still intact and untouched. I hesitate for a moment, then touch my wand to the first. The wax peels away and the letter opens for me.
Mother,
it has been long since your last letter to me. I worry now that you have never gotten the last one I have sent thanking you for your lines of encouragement. Are you ill? Or has something happened?
Life here is good. The 4th year is so much more exciting than the 3rd. We are now learning the really interesting things. I like Transfiguration best. Potions is okay. We now have Potions with the Gryffindors. They are an inattentive bunch. Slughorn likes them. I don't.
It is Hogsmeade weekend next week. I am looking forward to going to the village.
I hope this finds you in good health. I worry, Mother. Please let me know how things are.
Your son,
Severus
Hogwarts, November 15th 1972
I put the letter aside and take the next one. After another careful glance down the hallway I open that one also, watch the wax melt and the letter open.
Mother,
you never replied and I worry in earnest now. How are you? Has something happened? You have never needed so long to reply to one, let alone two letters of mine. Christmas is nearing and I have been meaning to ask if you will fetch me from the station like every year or if I should take the bus to the house. Please let me know what you prefer.
I hope everything is fine with you and you are merely too busy to reply.
Your son,
Severus
Hogwarts, November 23rd 1972
The next letter, the wand movement and the dripping wax. I decide to open the last two, too. My mouth is dry.
Mother,
it is only two weeks until Christmas now and you have not let me know about the arrangements. I will be arriving by Hogwarts Express at six on the 20th. Let me know if you will be there.
Please send me a notice, just a line so I know you are fine.
Your son,
Severus
Hogwarts, December 10th 1972
Mother,
what is happening with you? I am going to talk to Dumbledore. I worry.
Severus
Mother,
what has happened? Where are you? Why does no-one know what is going on?
Severus
I put the letters aside, rubbing my fingertips absentmindedly over my forehead. I regard the letters thoughtfully, then look into the box once more. There is another envelope on the bottom, sealed and stamped by the Ministry. I take it out and open it, pull out the document. It is the death certificate for Eileen Snape, maiden surname Prince. Date of Death is documented as November 10th 1972. My eyes skim the document. The cause of death makes me stop and double check; head trauma is listed as the primary cause. I look at the letters again. Snape was in his 4th year, not yet 14. It was more than a month after his mother's death that he was informed of it.
I lean back, contemplate the letters, the certificate, the King Arthur and Merlin figures, of all things, that look back at me expectantly. I push the letters into the box again. I lift the photos from the table, ten, twelve of them maybe.
The first is a family picture. The family Snape in front of an old house, not this one, somewhere in the country. There is snow on the ground. The grandparents, parents and a maybe five-year old boy waving at the photographer even as his father's hard hand and face force him to stay still for the picture. His mother's hand is ruffling his short black hair, then pulling a hat over it, laughing at the five-year-old's eye roll.
I put the picture on top of the box and look at the next one. It is a Christmas picture. The photo is of a tree in the corner, the candles glowing on it. The next shot is of the same tree, this time with young Snape from the first picture standing proudly in front of it, holding the angel in one hand and balancing it over his head, waving. Another picture of the same year has young Snape with his father at the table, traditional Christmas dinner. The boy is wriggling on his seat, until his father grabs him hard by the arm and pushes him to sit back properly in the chair. The boy smiles bravely at the camera even as his body twitches further back as his father moves to help himself to the food. I thumb through the pictures. The last of that year has the boy sitting under the Christmas tree, glass figurines in his lap. He holds them up to the candles and watches them sparkle in the light.
The next batch has an older Snape, nine or ten years of age, another Christmas. The tree is smaller on the first photo and the table less laden with food on the second. The boy is sitting motionless next to his father, forcing a smile to his face as he notices that he is being photographed. King Arthur and Merlin are on his plate until his father pushes them off with one angry movement of the hand. The next photo is of his mother smiling shyly as she turns away, then turns back, probably at a prod. She freezes as her husband appears in the doorway behind her.
There are three pictures left. The first is of Snape wearing his Hogwarts coat as he stands in the train station in front of the Express. His hair is hanging into his eyes and he pushes it away with half a smile. The next picture has the small family at the Christmas table, the traditional food and a young Snape who is sitting between his parents arching as close to his mother as he can and as far away from his father as possible. The older Snape does not appear to notice. He is staring at the wand his son carries with disgust, then helps himself to the food.
The last picture is of Snape with longer hair and a dark look in his eyes. His lips do not even twitch in a smile. The background is the Great Hall of Hogwarts. Snape frowns, his lips thin and he pushes the person attempting to capture him away. As he does that, Merlin and King Arthur are being pushed over by his elbow and tumble into a pile of legs and arms. He regards them for a moment, then snaps their heads off.
I put those last pictures down and consider their implications. Print that and the murderer becomes the innocent lamb with a life to talk of. I take Merlin and King Arthur. They are missing their faces, the colour rubbed off, but the heads must have been pasted on again at some point. They both have their arms raised in a gesture of almighty power.
I consider the implications of the letters, documents, photos for my story. My headline that could read 'He, Too, Has A Story To Tell' or something similarly dramatic. My wand is still glowing with the silly Lumos as I think of packing all this up, write the story tonight and have it on my Gerald's table by tomorrow, 'The Death Eater That Was Human Once'.
I draw my fingertip over 'drop like flies' and the drawer appears. I push the box and the photos into it and push it shut. It disappears again. I take King Arthur, Merlin and my wand and walk away from the table with the chair, down the stairs, along the hallway with screeching rats and out of the door. There are no ministry officials to take me away and no Death Eaters to kill me on the spot.
I close the door. I push King Arthur and Merlin into my pocket and walk along the street, back into a world where no-one knows of them. I nod to the two old ladies that pass me by again, mumble a greeting before I disapparate well out of sight.
I tell Gerald later that evening that I did not find anything, only a dead house, long raped of all its secrets and corpses. He nods and tells me that it was on an off-chance anyway and bids me goodnight. I walk home to Christmas tunes playing in Diagon Alley, thinking of the pictures of a boy on Christmas nights. The drawer exists, even if it is closed and hidden.