Official Fine Print: Nope. Not mine. The brainchildren of the mighty pen of JK Rowling. Just playing with them.
Fixing Harry
Chapter 4
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Subject: Harry James Potter
Interview Date: Thursday, July 10, 1998
Interview #: Second
Observations: None of your bloody business, you posturing vultures.
As you can tell by the observation heading, I did a little off-the-record research on my new Spell Damage subject. As you can also tell, this isn't the copy of my notes I presented to Clement Bagnold.
First though, let me get down the real version of our meeting before I forget anything in my frenzy about the rest of it.
Clement wasn't entirely thrilled with my ejection of Auror Flargemore, but there wasn't much he could do about it other than lecture me. Same with the change of venue; it was actually unusual to meet Spell Damage subjects in the Ministry; most of the time they were more than happy for us to go out to St. Mungo's or to visit them at home; in fact they encouraged it. Especially Spontaneous Magic subjects. Who wanted them going off in a Ministry elevator? And what if they had something catching? Half of me was glad I had arranged to meet Potter at the office just so I could watch the worst of them cringe a bit as we made our way back out again.
I chose the London Zoo because it was neutral, close (I wasn't entirely sure what his feeling on apparating was at the moment, and there was always the Underground if he couldn't manage it) and because the weather had turned hot even for London in July and it was likely to be mostly abandoned for more air conditioned pursuits this morning. We would have to put up with Flargemore or whoever the Auror of the day might be since I was taking him into Muggle territory, but as they would be there nominally to protect a wandless Potter from possible attack by unapprehended Death Eaters instead of me from him, they should, in theory, remain unobtrusively out of sight.
Not a bad little plan, if I do say so myself. As uncomfortable as this limbo must be to Potter, common sentiment must be making it hard on Scrimgeour as well if he was really out to get him. No one wanted another Voldemort, but no one else really seemed quite prepared to condemn The Boy Who Lived after all he'd done for the Wizarding world based on two incidents that appeared to be entirely out of his control. If we could just manage to identify the cause of his outbursts and control them I was convinced Scrimgeour would find the going tougher still, if not impossible. My goal today was to find out if there had been smaller, more easily hidden episodes since and if so, what the particular circumstances were. I had already begun charting possible spell combinations.
He seemed unfazed by our destination; not as pleased as I might have secretly hoped, since I rather enjoyed it there myself, but not dismissive or appalled, either. We left our robes in my office and set off comfortably in Muggle clothing. He had on well-worn jeans and trainers and a Falmouth Falcons tee shirt that we spelled to plain gray, seeing as tee shirts with swooping and diving Quidditch Seekers are not all that likely to pass unnoticed in a Muggle Zoo. I noticed he was limping significantly less than even the week before. Not bad for barely five weeks after a battle with the dreaded You Know Who in my book. Anyone casually observing us at the Zoo might easily believe he'd recently been through a car crash and was having a first therapeutic outing. Or I could make them, if came down to it.
Some of his lack of enthusiasm was surely the underground trip; he was super tightly wired and tended to start like a nervous rabbit at fairly innocuous sounds. Not all that unusual considering what he'd been through; there were spells and charms that could help with that but time was truly the best healer. He seemed much happier once we reached the Zoo itself and began our wander 'round.
"Do you have any favorite animals? Anything you'd particularly like to see?" I asked him.
"Is that your way of asking if I'd like to go practice parseltongue in the reptile house?" he responded, eyes roving the map of exhibits. "Because I can save you the trouble if you're squeamish about pythons. Yes, I can still speak it, and no, no more or less than before I killed him."
Touchy much?
"No, actually, I really wanted to know if you had any preference about what we saw." I told him.
He had the grace to blush; his skin was so fair he'd no hope of hiding it.
"Do you have a favorite?" he asked. "I don't mind where we go."
"I'm quite partial to the Sumatran Tigers, although you can't beat the Oriental Small Clawed Otters for a good show."
"Come here often?" he joked. "Lead on, I'll just follow along and give you an excuse for being here."
"There's always the children's petting zoo. They let you pet the llamas, you know."
I almost got an actual laugh, there. You know the kind; amusement rather than bitterness.
"I'm sure they do. That might look just the tiniest bit suspicious with our friendly Auror brigade in tow, though. There're two of them today, and they were none too happy to have to come up with the Muggle cash for the Underground and the Zoo entry from the look of them. Four cranky adults crashing the petting zoo aren't likely to go unnoticed. "
He was good. I'd known they were around somewhere, but I hadn't identified them yet. Then again, he probably saw them all the time.
"Three cranky adults and one happy animal lover, but never mind. You've got a point. Tigers it is, then. The otters are on the way if we go across there," I showed him, pointing out the route on the map. "There are plenty of places to sit along the way, just say if you need a break."
He nodded his agreement, and we set off. The heat rose from the pavements in shimmering waves. I stopped him and remembered to shift my wand discreetly in my sleeve and warn him before I spelled his glasses dark. "Bad for your eyes, all that magnified light," I told him.
"Do they look just as dorky as sunglasses as they do the rest of the time?" he asked with another small, almost laugh.
"About the same actually. Of course, I don't think they make you look… dorky, is it? More, I don't know… how about smart. Scholarly. Pre-professorial, since you're a bit on the young side for that."
That got the one that was building. An actual laugh. Ta daa!
"Better then a glamour then," he grinned. "That couldn't be further from the truth."
He was no idiot, this boy. I'd seen his grades. I wondered why he was so unimpressed with himself.
"Did you come here at all as a child? You were raised in Surrey, right?" I asked.
His face did that thing again when a whole tide of emotions seems to hit at once and he can't decide which to go with.
"Once. I came here once, just before I got my Hogwarts letter, actually."
"Were you close to your cousin, the one you were raised with? I noticed you were almost the same age. Was it difficult to go off to Hogwarts?"
His laugh then sounded anything but pleased to be reminded. "I was close to Dudley in the sense that his fist was very well acquainted with my face a lot of the time, and you've got to be within arms' reach for that. Otherwise, not so much. Hogwarts was… a haven for me. A huge relief. Well, in some ways, anyway."
"I'm sorry."
"Which doesn't mean I'm going to turn into some desperate Muggle hating tyrant or anything either," he said. "They just didn't understand magic, my relatives. It frightened them, and they wanted nothing to do with it, or me."
Well, that sounded jolly. Lovely way to grow up. No wonder Hogwarts was a relief.
"So you were counting down the days until your letter, then."
I got a sidewise glance from those green eyes, assessing my reaction as he spoke. "Actually, I had no idea that I was even a wizard until then. They'd hidden it all from me before the letter arrived; they told me my parents died in a car crash. I never even believed in magic."
He hadn't believed in magic. Harry Potter hadn't believed in magic. It hardly seemed possible.
"I figured out later that some of the things I'd always wondered about were because of my magic. My Aunt used to get really frustrated with my hair when I was small, and once she cut it all off. It was horrible, it looked like I'd been prepped for brain surgery and they'd changed their mind halfway through. I cried myself to sleep, thinking how I was going to be terrorized at school the next day by my cousin and his gang of friends. When I woke up the next morning it had grown back exactly the way it had been before she'd cut it."
He has thick, wayward hair. It's longer now than it was when the wizard press gave us our first look at him; I think it must have been four or five years ago the first picture I remember appeared in the Daily Prophet. He was standing beside Gilderoy Lockhart, his eyes enormous in the camera's flash.
It had stuck out wildly from his head then; now it was more of a just-got-out-of-bed look that was - dare I say it? Oh what the hell, they're my own notes after all - kind of attractive. It suits him. He's not a bad looking kid at all, but he has this kind of otherness to him that it's easy to see he senses. I don't think he gets past it to see what the rest of the world does. I want to ask him if he has a girlfriend, and if not, why not, but it seems a little early on for that. All his major magical outbursts have apparently been at highly public events, it wasn't like he was losing control when he was, you know, losing control. Don't laugh; it's not a completely unheard of Wizard phenomenon, actually.
Speaking of magical outbursts, though, that sure had all the hallmarks of one, the overnight grow- out of the tragic hair cut. He'd wanted it badly, and his magic had responded to his frustration.
Of course he did have one other early incident on his official record, although the details were rather vague. Still, if he'd grown out his own hair without even knowing he was a wizard…
"Tell me about your Aunt Marge," I said.
We'd reached the otter habitat. It was sweltering hot, the sun blazing, although there were now gathering storm clouds on the horizon. The Zoo's other patrons - the ones with any sense - were mostly visiting the indoor exhibits. The otters were somnolent in their tepid water, staring at us as if we were clueless giants too stupid to immerse ourselves to escape the heat.
"Just to go on the record, she's only my Aunt in the most obscure sense of the word. She's my Aunts' husbands' sister. There's no blood between us and no love lost, either. My Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon told everyone that I was away at St. Brutus' Secure Center for Incurably Criminal Boys whenever I was at Hogwarts. I don't even remember what I did to set her off, but she got on her soap box to announce just why she thought it was no wonder I had to go there. First she said that my father had been a layabout and a drunk, and then she asked if they caned me enough at St. Brutus' to set me straight; that the way I behaved what I really needed was a good beating. Then, to top it all off she informed me my problem was simple; if there was something off with the bitch there'd be something wrong with the pup. She bred dogs, not that that excuses her. I got so mad I couldn't see straight, I'd grown up thinking my Mum died in a car crash and I'd only just learned since I'd been to Hogwarts that she'd willingly chosen to die for me, that she'd thrown herself in front of a killing curse to save me. I didn't know what I was doing, but I blew her up. Completely inflated her like a hot air balloon. And away she floated."
Served her right, if you asked me. The image was hysterical, although I could just imagine his panic when he realized what he'd done. What a wretched way to have had to grow up.
"The wording in your file was very vague. It didn't appear to be handled like an average Underage Use of Magic case. You'd already had a warning, too."
"I hadn't actually used my wand to do it. But I panicked, because I thought they were going to expel me anyway, because of the warning from the year before. If my Uncle didn't kill me first, that is. I just ran away. It turned out that my godfather, Sirius Black, had escaped from Azkaban right around then and the Ministry was terrified I was going to get myself killed before I could have a go at Voldemort, so Fudge hushed it up."
Typical Fudge.
"So you had a verified wandless spontaneous emission of magic at what, thirteen? Well, that's heartening isn't it?"
He looked at me quizzically. "So it would be better if I was always a freak, rather than just now after killing someone."
Didn't have to be a genius to answer that question under the circumstances!
"Yes, Mr. Potter, it would be. It's not unusual for underage wizards to lose control of their magic, and a propensity to do things wandlessly ups the ante considerably, since you wouldn't actually need the focus of the wand in hand. And you didn't exactly kill someone so much as do the rest of us a really big favor. The wandless thing, by the by, doesn't show up in your official file. Any idea why that would be?
"I didn't want them to know?" he guessed. "Nope, that can't be it, because with my luck they'd find out for sure then. Maybe your guys just stink at intelligence?"
"Maybe they're not my guys. Maybe I'm not the enemy. Maybe you hate that I'm asking you all these questions, but maybe I can actually help you, too. Have I given you any reason not to trust me?"
"Other than being employed by the very people that want to lock me up for doing what I was supposed to do? No. No you haven't."
Warning! Very big mistake coming up here. Just plain stupid. Almost blew the whole thing, right…. here.
I cast a subtle cheering charm on him. Slid the wand down my sleeve into my hand behind my back, pointed and let fire. A nice, harmless happy-charm. So simple, so innocuous and easy that you learn the basic variation third year at Hogwarts. My goal? Just to take the edge off the chip on his shoulder long enough that he might listen to logic and let me help him. We do it all the time, Ministry approved. Lifting my arms to push back my hair slid the wand right back up the arm of my shirt. That's why Spell Damage Specialists like me tend to wear long sleeves no matter what the temperature even when we aren't venturing into Muggle land.
"Do not fucking ever try that again," Harry Potter snarled at me, eyes narrowed to furious green slits.
Holy hell! I felt myself instantly tense, waiting for… something. He was really, truly angry, and while that was in no way my intention it was exactly the sort of thing that should have sent his magic firing on all cylinders. And firing on all cylinders it was; I could feel it. It made my skin almost vibrate; the energy that seeped off him. I thought for sure the park bench behind us would suddenly incendio, or the otters would morph into Hungarian Horntails or something. Inflated Aurors at the very least.
Nothing.
"That's not right," I said suspiciously, as soon as I found my tongue.
"Too right it's not. Who the hell do you think you are, casting a cheering charm on me? You say you think you can help me and you haven't given me any reason not to trust you and the words are no sooner out of your mouth than you ambush me."
He was right there. Of course, it wasn't what I'd meant; I'd meant that if his problem was true spontaneous emission of magic his anger ought to have triggered it. His issues were obviously more complex, certainly the result of more than one spell and potentially even unintentional rather than deliberately cast. That might even effectively rule out Voldemort and render him innocent of possibly harboring the Dark Lord. But he was correct none the less that I had never once considered casting the charm to be a violation of his trust. I thought I had been doing what was best for him, which made me either incredibly self-confident or a very big idiot. Probably both. This was no average Wizard who'd caught a hex wrong. What had I been thinking?
Well, duh. I wanted him to like me. I wanted him to stop fighting me and just let me help him. It wasn't the fame of it; I didn't crave headlines reading Ministry Spell Damage Specialist Elspeth Hawktalon Resolves Curse Impairment for the Boy Who Lived! I didn't care about fame of any kind and really did want out of my job. There was just something about him. I wanted to help, and I thought I could.
"I'm truly sorry, Mr. Potter. You're absolutely right, and I apologize. That charm is approved by the Ministry for therapeutic use, and I just…"
"Just thought you'd play God and alter my mood a bit so I'd be more open to your suggestions. And as long as you're feeling free enough to mess about with my moodiness, you'd best call me Harry. I hate that Mr. Potter crap."
That was a surprise.
Two things struck me then. The first was that the charm I cast is meant to be unobtrusive and undetectable, and yet he knew instantly that I'd done it, and obviously repelled it. (It was quite unusual to use negative profanity whilst under a cheering charm after all; one would have expected his choice of terms to have had quite another context. I've had to fight off subjects that became too cheery on rare occasions. He, on the other hand, had been quite authentically pissed off.)
The second was that it had gotten awfully dark while we'd been arguing. A raindrop plopped on the sidewalk between us.
"Not my fault, if that's what you're thinking," he said, staring straight ahead at the otters.
"I wasn't. I know it's not. Look, I made a mistake, Harry, and I hope you'll forgive me. My intention truly was just to relax you so that all the mistrust you've got for Scrimgeour wouldn't keep you from at least listening to me and maybe accepting my help. And I haven't added anything about the wandless stuff to your file, if that's what you're thinking. I can understand how you would perceive what I did as unconscionable now; I just didn't see it through your eyes. You can't expect people to understand you if you never let them get close enough to know what you're about."
"I meant the rain," he said with a slow sideways grin. "I didn't make it start."
I knew it couldn't possibly be as easy as that, but for whatever reason he was acting as if my apology was accepted and I was forgiven. Turns on a dime, this one, but no brakes!
Rings began spreading across the smooth surface of the water in small rippling waves wherever the rain drops fell. The otters perked up noticeably, skimming the water, and the ones who had been on the shore waddled happily to the edge and glided in. The pups seemed to race the outward flowing rings until a game of tag ensued; rather than watching benevolently the adults soon joined in. Otters are so much smarter than people. We were starting to get rather wet, but Po… Harry's eyes were intently watching their play and I was loath to disturb him now.
"Do you think the form our patronus takes reflects something about our true nature?" he asked seriously.
It seemed a mistake to say yes; that he could quite obviously be proud and fierce if he wanted, but he could spook, turn tail and bound away right fast as well. I don't think that was what he wanted to hear. My own patronus was a cat, boring and ordinary. I looked out over the otters and suddenly the connection was obvious.
"They seem to, yes. Not always the way we see ourselves, but perhaps who we truly are as Witches and Wizards. Why?"
"I have a… friend. A good friend, whose patronus is an otter. I think this is the first time I've actually seen a real one now that I think of it. Hers is very like these, but watching them play like that… They're so…" he seemed to struggle, so I provided some of the more obvious adverbs.
"Playful? Bright? Lively? Clever? Mischievous? Lighthearted?"
He gave me a look that said quite plainly, 'Aren't you the walking thesaurus?'
"See, that's it. She's about exactly half those things; the others don't seem to fit at all."
"See how they waddle around on land but glide like water itself when they're in it? Maybe she's just got to be in her natural element for the rest of it to show."
Okay - hardly the most profound of comments, right? I was looking at the otters and just said the first thing that came to mind. Still, you could almost hear the gong going off in his head from the look on his face; whoever his friend was something must have made sense to him at last.
Since he'd said 'she' my mind naturally leapt to the girl from his class at Hogwarts who'd helped him defeat Voldemort; Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley had both gotten their share of most likely invasive and annoying press coverage too. I'd never come across her but I could recall Granger's picture in the Prophet over the years as well; there'd been some nonsense or other about her two-timing him with Viktor Krum when they'd been all of what, fourteen? The latest pictures after Voldemort's defeat showed a girl a good bit smaller now than her two friends, with determined features, a bright, inquisitive expression and rather a lot of wavy brownish hair.
Hmm. Of course, it could be anyone. Still, Granger and Weasley were his closest friends and witnesses to both incidences I was investigating. Perhaps it was time for a chat with them. My sense was he'd find that a huge invasion of his privacy, so it would likely be best to simply have them sit in with him one time and see how it went, first. I was completely within my rights to just contact them and question away, but I really didn't want to risk the fragile peace between us yet again. It's harder to help someone when they hated you, and I was feeling quite intrigued by the whole problem by now and thoroughly compelled to do something about it.
There was a sudden crack of thunder and the rain let loose. We never did get to see the tigers.
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When we returned to my office and he'd retrieved his robes, I brought up our next meeting.
"I'd like to meet with a couple of the people who were present for both the incidents Scrimgeour's complaint lists. Hermione Granger and Ron Weasley were there, and I understand they're still close friends. Ron's your flat mate isn't he?"
He nodded, his expression guarded.
"Would it be possible to bring them with you next time?"
"Ron's out of town at a Quidditch tryout camp next week. Hermione might come. What are you going to ask her?"
"Oh, all your deepest, darkest secrets. How often you skived classes. Whether Filch ever caught you comparing the relative positions of Venus and Mars on the Astronomy Tower. Boxers or briefs. That kind of thing."
But what I really want to know is how you survived the childhood you just told me about. How you carried on after Dumbledore died. How you managed to defeat the Darkest Wizard of the age and what he might have done to you that night at Hogwarts. I want to know at least some of what they must know. I'm sure the answer is there somewhere.
A blush stained his cheekbones, but he laughed it off. "Hermione can probably tell you every single time I missed a class, but she won't be much help to you with the rest of it. We've only ever been friends."
What a boy. They always underestimated their girls-who-are-friends and overestimated the girlfriends. I'd bet this Hermione knew all the answers and the ones he'd dated never paid attention or forgot entirely.
"That's fine. She'll still be a help; she was there. And isn't she supposed to be the smartest witch to pass through Hogwarts in ages?"
"That she is, without a doubt," he said. He sounded quite proud of her, and I got a small sense then of what it meant to be his friend. "I can't promise you, but I'll ask her."
Interesting. Perhaps that was part of what spurred me on in my research, talking of his clever witch. Of course, I wasn't talking about the sitting in the Ministry sorting through old parchments kind of research. I was talking about the best kind; the kind you do in a pub. So perhaps not.
Because it had struck me that I wasn't making full use of my resources. I was a Hogwarts alumnus as well; I knew many of the teachers that had taught him. If I could get them to believe I wasn't taking the Ministry's line on him, they'd be my most valuable source of information. One person in particular I knew I could bri…er, could get to talk to me, must have taught him at least a couple of years. This person was sharp as a knife when it came to assessing character, and he owed me. A lot, actually, and I didn't feel the least bit shy calling in this particular debt.
Potions Master Severus Snape.
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So it was that I found myself in The Augurey's Best Guess, a well-rumored but little-known Wizarding pub that flits around the countryside without fixed address. You have to know The Proprietor to get in, and the only way you get to know The Proprietor is to come with someone else who does. If he doesn't like you, you'll never know; your memory gets wiped on the way out. Only if he approves do you get to remember being there, and how to request a return visit. It's always the same inside; a comfortable, understated sort of place with a long bar for drinks and lots of table-filled nooks and crannies in which to meet and eat in relative privacy. Walk out the door, however, and you're never likely to find yourself the same place twice. I've no idea the magic behind it; it never seemed polite to ask.
I came here with Almerick fairly frequently; he'd been a great favorite actually and he proposed to me in the coveted corner table behind the stuffed Augurey. I still remember exactly the way his eyes had gleamed in the lamplight when I'd said yes. As if I could have ever said anything else. He was almost six years older than I, Almerick, but that had never mattered once I'd managed to get his attention. He was brilliant - if in a most off-kilter kind of way - and clever and kind at once. Not a combination to take for granted. So many brilliant Wizards know only too well what they are, and look down on the rest of us. Take, oh, I don't know, Voldemort for example. Far too smart for the size of his heart.
Or Severus Snape, for that matter. Another wizard fallen victim to his own intelligence. Severus and Almerick were… well, you couldn't possibly call them friends, certainly not at Hogwarts, anyway. Respectful competitors sums it up best, I guess. I think they were well aware of each other's strengths and weaknesses, but it never occurred to Almerick to rub his nose in it when he beat Severus at something. I only knew of them at school for the one year; they graduated that June. Snape apparently went dark and got caught up in Voldemort's insanity, while Almerick went into Auror training. I actually met him five years later during my own sixth year when I did a career internship. I'd thought I wanted to be a healer then, I only realized Spell Damage Reversal was my strength a bit later. I was doing the typical four week rotation through St. Mungo's when they brought him in.
But that's a story for another time. Suffice it to say that it was Snape's fault he was in St. Mungo's that night, so you could say in a way that he brought us together. It was Snape's fault when he died ten years ago, too, so you could truthfully say he sundered our bonds in this life as well. I know I'll be meeting up with Almerick again somewhere, sometime. Not a doubt about it. We were meant to be together and we will. This was just another interlude.
I know quite well how to play all Snape's little games now. So when I made contact in the usual way and told him where to meet me, I was fairly confident he'd come.
He'd sullenly suggested the Cockatrice's Cup in Langsdale and I'd laughed and told him not to be so cheap or think me such a fool. The Augury is my territory, and I feel safe here.
So here I am. And here he comes, still swooping like an angry bat past the only mildly curious wizards at the bar. His progress is halted when one speaks to him, but the exchange is brief and the other turns back to his drink, shaking his head and likely rebuffed.
He sits down across from me, black eyes glaring with the same cold fire.
"Snape."
"Hawktalon. I am assuming it still is Hawktalon? Or have you found yourself another obsession?"
Bastard. His aim is still pretty sharp.
"As a matter of fact I have." I tell him. "I've been keeping myself quite busy lately with a former student of yours."
"Taking a leaf out of Almerick's book and robbing the cradle, are you? How charming."
"Tell me everything you know," I instruct him, reveling, "about Harry Potter."
He is stunned for a moment. 20 points to Gryffindor! He recovers fairly nimbly, however and barks out a laugh.
"As little as I could get away with, I assure you," he said. "Have you any idea how sick I am of the very name, let alone the whelp that answers to it? I got it from Dumbledore in one ear and the Dark Lord in the other for the best part of six years. I played pushme-pullyou for that little cretin and what do I have to show for it? Nothing."
"You played both sides until no one knew who you favored. Narrowly escaping Azkaban sounds more than fair to me. How did you manage that, by the way?"
He is silent a moment and glares at me. Oh. Oh! Oh no, that's too good.
"I should have thought that might have made you just slightly less sick of his name."
"Then you are quite possibly a degree more idiotic than he is."
"Did you ever say thank you?" I wondered.
"Despite my better judgment I was about to make an attempt to do so after his Order of Merlin ceremony. I narrowly escaped with my life. I consider the attempt made. Until some unfortunate figures out his little control problem, I'm…." He stopped abruptly and a wolfish smile curled those sour lips. "It's you, isn't it. They've saddled you with Potter. Fate has a sense of humor after all."
"As a matter of fact they have. He seems like a perfectly nice young wizard to me. The whole spontaneous magic thing is hardly his fault, is it."
Our waiter came just then to take our orders, and there was silence between us until our food and drink was chosen and we were alone again.
Fathomless black eyes glared intently at me and I did my best to meet them head on.
"Let me guess, Elspeth. You like him. You find him an appealing young man and you wish to help him, to solve all his problems and fix the broken hero."
"You make it sound a bad thing."
He let out another bark of bitter laughter. "No, I just never thought it would be this easy to dispel my debt to you. I advise you to run away. Screaming. Quit the Minions of Idiocy and get a real job if you must. Do everything within your power to be free of Potter. There, I've saved your life. We're even. Good day."
He started to rise, but had dropped back to his seat before I'd even finished hissing for him to sit down. He'd never really meant to go. He isn't stupid, after all.
"Tell me what you know," I told him. "Perhaps then we will be even."
"Even your bleeding heart of a husband would never have sold himself that cheaply," Snape sneered. "And I noticed the qualifying 'perhaps'."
Our drinks arrived, and our waiter hurried away, as if he could feel the waves of anger rippling back and forth between us. Unlikely, as most of them were squibs, but you never knew.
"Hearing himself termed a bleeding heart from your lips would likely have chuffed Almerick no end. I'm only sorry he isn't here to enjoy it. And I think he'd be cheering me on right about now. He wouldn't think it too cheap at all."
Snape took a long sip of his drink then, relishing it. I had no real idea what his circumstances in life were now, but my guess was that they didn't stretch often to the brand of single malt he'd ordered and he was either attempting to throw me off or sure that I was paying. For all he'd been cleared in the end a cloud of mistrust still hovered over him and there'd been no way he could go back to teaching. I doubted he missed it; Hogwarts had been his penance and prison as well as his safe haven. Double agents could never grow too fond of either bed.
"The Dark Lord truly hated Potter, and he began to fear him in the end. Year after year, chance after chance Potter always managed to slip away by the skin of his teeth. Potter saw it in the simple terms of the prophecy that bound them. One would live, the other die. The Dark Lord, however, began to sense uncertainty, and he looked on their future differently. He was determined not just to kill Potter as the prophecy ordained, but to make a final lesson of him. He wished to bend him, forever break him and reshape him as his own. You know, I assume, about the horcruxes?"
He knew with certainty at least I'd know what a horcrux was, and it wasn't knowledge I was proud of. But Death Eater Horcruxes? Not a single word had been made public about that.
"Er, no. Horcruxes as in plural? Did they all make them, then, the whole inner circle?"
Snape nearly snorted up all that expensive drink.
"As if he cared about them. And how typical of the Ministry to have failed to learn the lesson that hiding the knowledge of things will never make them go away. No, Hawktalon, the Dark Lord himself made six horcruxes of his own soul to ensure his immortality."
I am quite sure I goggled at him then.
"He was making the last one the night he went to kill Potter as an infant. Lily Evans invoked some very old magic to protect her son and the whole world quickly learned the result. The boy lived, and the Dark Lord, although not dead as so many believed him to be, was little more than a wretched shred of a tattered soul. Had he made but one horcrux, he might have managed to come back sooner, and stronger. Ripping his soul six times left little to work with. Still, he managed. Little more than three years ago now he used some truly dark and desperate magic to regain a true body. It was apparently just as Potter told it at the time, though no one would listen to him. They tied him to a gravestone and took his blood, then forced him to watch as they used it to bring his worst fear to life. It was perhaps the one and only time I felt for the boy. There was nothing he could have done; even Dumbledore had failed to see the plot before us begun with Potter's forced entrance into the Tri Wizard Tournament."
It was like he was speaking a foreign language; my head was spinning. I'd thought I knew a good bit about Harry after reading his ministry file. In reality, I knew nothing at all. None of this was in there. Not anything like this, anyway. The language was all "Potter reported seeing the Dark Lord the night of 24 th June 1995. The boy is clearly lying and seeking to renew attention as You Know Who has been dead a dozen years now."
Merlin.
"He told you none of this," Snape said, merely stating the obvious. "How puzzling. He must be awfully certain of his celebrity these days not to be doing the 'poor pitiful Harry' routine. Either that or you are still too busy nosing around his pampered childhood looking for Freudian excuses for his magical instability."
Hey!
"It didn't sound very pampered from what…"
"He told you," Snape finished. "Say no more. I can save you the trouble, anyway. The Dark Lord never once spoke of what might happen if he did not defeat Potter, even as he began to suspect that more of his horcruxes might have been compromised than first thought. But he did begin to encourage a most suspicious behavior in one of his favorites. Bellatrix Lestrange was a truly mad woman, in both senses of the word. She was thoroughly insane, and she hated Potter with a passion. I heard her promising him once that she would not rest if anything happened to him. He crucioed her for having the very audacity to vocalize such a thought. But then, as she lay gasping in her own special half agonized, half pleasured way, he asked her, 'tell me, what would you do, my Bella?' She said she would make sure that the world hated Potter and cast him aside. She said, 'And when they do, my Lord, I will recall you through him. When he is forgotten in Azkaban, he will know my kiss before the Dementors come, and you shall be reborn."
My skin shivered reflexively. "She really was insane."
"Is, Hawktalon. Is. She is in Azkaban herself. And do not think there are not those who even now would heed her call and help her."
"You don't think she has anything to do with this?"
Snape shrugged; a highly unusual gesture for him that looked out of place even as he did it.
"Why should she? If Scrimgeour is truly as concerned with power as he seems, Potter will be an unbearable affront even if his current problem is resolved. The boy was always too powerful for his own good; he had his father's lackadaisical approach to everything but Quidditch and the mental discipline of a Diricawl. I tried to teach the brat Occlumency after the Dark Lord's return, and he was…worse than useless. Clearly Lily gave him nothing but his infamous eyes."
"You never did like James Potter," I remembered vaguely.
"I'm sure you thought he was too dreamy for words," Snape sneered.
Actually I'd been too young, too busy learning the ins and outs of being a witch at Hogwarts to give any of them all that much mind. They were the seventh years, beyond our reckoning. Although I do have vague recollections of a suspicious dream or two starring one of James' friends. I'm not really sure which of them Snape hates worse, and I'm not anxious to find out. Not that I care what he thinks.
"Seventh years always think they're the center of the known universe. I hardly remember any of you, to be honest."
He actually rolled his eyes at me. The unmitigated jerk.
"So in summary, you're telling me exactly what?" I asked.
"Shouldn't we wait for the pudding to summarize our conversation? What would we talk about else?"
"If you're a good boy and spit it out now, I might actually leave you to enjoy your precious postprandial the way you like it best," I told him. "Alone."
"Alright then. You wanted to know what I know about Harry Potter. I know he's powerful. I also know that Scrimgeour's barking entirely up the wrong tree if he thinks Potter would go Dark. He doesn't have the wits. What he does have is the instinctual determination and ability to come back for blow after blow of the dumbest animal. The Dark Lord did things to him that night that even I don't want to remember. I don't recall any individual spell that would account for what apparently happened to him afterward, but it was a desperate battle in the end. Potter managed to get a hold of the Dark Lord's wand and turned it on him, but it incinerated in his hands. It was a phoenix feather core, you know, the same phoenix who gave the feather in Potter's own wand. And here is the part I'm willing to bet never made it into any Ministry report, knowing Potter."
Time to score some points.
"I know all about the wandless magic, Severus. That just makes his problem more noticeable and difficult, it's hardly a root cause."
"Oh he was far beyond wandless magic then," Snape continued, unimpressed, "and watch him; as powerful as he is, he is still young, still learning. He uses his hands. No, there was no way that was going to help him in his condition. He appeared to be through. And then the little pile of ash at his knees began to stir, and a new wand rose out of it like the proverbial phoenix from the flames."
Holy hell! Nope, that wasn't in my file.
"Did he use the…" I didn't even want to say it. As much as I firmly believed Voldemort deserved it, if Harry had used an unforgivable to defeat him I could already see Scrimgeour's next line of attack.
"No. He used it to summon a boggart of all things. Potter's boggart takes on the form of a Dementor, because he discovered at some point that the Dementors could draw out of him the memory of the night his parents died for him. And like everything else he does, Potter is apparently a tad different then the rest of us. His boggart Dementor was powerful enough to perform the kiss."
"But wouldn't Voldemort simply turn the boggart into his own form before banishing it? That's O.W.L. stuff. Why would he…"
Snape smiled again. How could a smile be so humorless?
"Oh the Dementor wasn't for Voldemort. It was for himself. He let it kiss his scar."
Even Snape paled slightly at the recollection; not a small thing to achieve. My mind reeled.
"Why would he…"
"It turns out it was a horcrux all along. The last one, actually, though the Dark Lord didn't know it. None of us did. They'd planned it all; Granger had made a clever fake out of one of the ones they'd already destroyed. Voldemort had reclaimed it, he thought intact, from its original hiding place and he had it in his possession before the battle, so he was certain that no matter what happened he had at least one left.
After the Dementor was through with Potter and he had screamed what I was sure would be his last scream in this world; the Dark Lord stood over him and laughed. He broke into his usual little soliloquy about how he would always win out and Potter had put himself through it all for nothing, and then he cast not the killing curse but a spell of my own devising. He meant to mark Potter with a giant bloody "V" before killing him, so there could be no doubt, I suppose. Potter was perhaps less out of it than he'd seemed, or he finally managed to squeeze a thought out of his excuse for a brain. After the pain of the first stroke he recognized the spell and managed to cast a reflecting shield. The sectumsempra the Dark Lord meant to finish carving the second line in the "V" ended up severing his own carotid artery. Almost cut his head off, to be honest. He was dead before he even landed on Potter. Who oh-so-cleverly began to pummel the life out of his already dead body until Granger finally managed to call him off."
Snape's black eyes flickered, the way they do when he's telling you either a really big lie, or else the truth. Whoever knew with him?
"Belatrix was there that night, as were any number of the Death Eaters, but only she knew of what he believed to be his final horcrux. It was never found after they fled. I think she has it somewhere, and I believe she thinks it to be real."
I was sickened. Really, truly, hopelessly sickened. It would have been a horrifying enough story as an anecdote, but knowing Harry now, understanding what he was attempting to put himself back together after… I'd never have made it this far, but if by some accident of fate it had been me instead of him I'd have hexed the balls off of Scrimgeour and fled to some deserted tropical island, never to be heard from again. His restraint stunned me, and I wondered not for the first time exactly what motivated it.
And I'd tried to put a cheering charm on him.
"You win." I managed to choke out to Snape just as our food arrived. "Two dinners. On me."
"Put it on my tab, please, I've, um… lost my appetite." I told the young man bearing the tray.
He wasn't much older than Harry and I felt my stomach surge again. He took one look at Snape and nodded graciously, and as he set his tray down and I rose from my chair he whispered, "Always had the same effect on me, he did. I had potions first year right before lunch. Couldn't eat a thing afterwards."
I wondered if Snape still checked his food for poisons.
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Hence the heading of this report. I'm sitting now in the comfort of my own home, my daughter safe and sleeping soundly upstairs. She is a pureblood, but I am not; any way you look at it if the war had gone on long enough it would have touched us in some way for sure. We are safe because of someone the Ministry deems too powerful to live free; because of one Severus Snape terms the dumbest animal.
I will help him. I will clear him if it's the last thing I do.
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A/N: Oops! That went on a bit, but it was all full of stuff that had to be said before the next part to come. Once again, I promise the next chapter will be lots of Trio, and I think I should be able to manage the beginning of the H/Hr. Yippee! Always my favorite part. Thanks for reading, and for all the awesome reviews! **Blushes** You guys are the absolute BEST. I do read them all when I can, but unless you ask a specific question, I just try to update faster rather than answer each one. I really appreciate you reading, and all your comments are considered and taken to heart. Thanks!