Orpheus

Chapter 22

By Pigwidgeon37

After Dumbledore's visit, which had shaken the Minister of Magic more than just a little, he had sent a rather long list of names to the MLE department, stating clearly that none of these persons was to enter the Ministry.

What he had not reckoned with were the House Elves at the Minister's Manor. Hermione had lived there for more than five years, she had treated them better than anybody ever before, and they had adored her. Not only Twitchy, who had even given up this position that meant the fulfilment of every British House Elf's dream to follow her to Hogwarts. All of them. They had been inconsolable when she left the Manor.

He should, of course, have expected a confrontation with his ex-wife, but the day had been so long and so busy that it had somehow slipped his mind. He'd arrived home after ten p.m., the list of people who had claimed and been denied admission to the Ministry still in his hand, among other documents unread; he'd changed his clothes and gone to the dining room to have a light supper. The boiled chicken breast with pilaf rice and a fluffy broccoli soufflé looked very appetizing. A miniature jar of white wine had been placed next to his plate, together with a much larger pitcher of water. He still had work to do and couldn't afford drinking alcohol. Not yet. He'd have a glass of brandy before going to bed.

Inhaling the aroma of broccoli and Béchamel sauce, he smiled and cut off a tiny piece of the chicken. He chewed with relish, drank a sip of water and unrolled the list the MLE had sent. Instead of casting a flattening charm, he put the wine jug on the top edge—the condensed humidity made the first lines dissolve into smudges, but it didn't matter. This was just routine. Besides, the department had a copy of the document. Frowning, he loaded a bit of pilaf onto his fork. 'Mrs. Snape' had shown up—what? Twenty-two times in less than ten hours? She had received a few severe warnings and apparently only given up when the guard had threatened they would permanently confiscate her wand. Black, twenty-one times. McGonagall. Moody. The whole merry group. It had been a good idea to forewarn the Law Enforcers—those fanatics might have wreaked havoc at the Ministry.

Maybe it was pure coincidence, maybe there still was a certain connection between him and Hermione. In any case, she flung open the dining room door at exactly the moment he remembered that he would have to take the same precautions here at the Minister's Manor.

If not for the hair, and for just having thought of her, he might not have recognized her.

Hermione was relatively short, not much more than 5' 3'' or 4''. But she seemed much taller now, standing in the doorway, her fingers still on the handle. Her face was paler than he had ever seen it, her eyes burning and huge, her hair wild and tangled. She looked like an antique heroine, sad and tragic and furious and utterly out of her mind. Harry's hand crept furtively to the cuff of his shirt; a twist of his left wrist ascertained that his wand was safely stored there, ready to be used. And he was certainly going to use it, if this madwoman made one wrong movement.

"You may leave your wand where it is," Hermione said. Her voice was unbelievably calm and steady, but Harry was by no means reassured. "I don't intend to hex or attack you."

"I am glad to hear it. Won't you sit down?" Harry gestured to the chair at his left.

She nodded briefly and went towards the table. Her movements were abrupt, like those of an inexpertly handled marionette. She pulled out the chair and sat down.

"A glass of water?" Harry held up the jug.

"Yes, please."

Now that she was so close to him, Harry noticed that her lips were chapped and bleeding, and the white of her eyes bloodshot. "Would you like something to eat as well?"

She shook her head. "No, I can't eat."

But she poured herself another glass of water and gulped it down avidly.

"Hermione," he said, pushing away his plate, for his appetite had suddenly left him, "I know why you are here, but—"

"Why, Harry?"

Her eyes were trying to get hold of his, but their scorching intensity was too much for him. He looked away. "Because he is a traitor, that's why. He lied to me, to you, to everybody. And if he had managed to brew that potion…" He glanced briefly at her and again averted his eyes. "The consequences would have been… unimaginable."

"You don't have to repeat the speech you gave Albus. He already told me. He was…" Now her lips started quivering, and her eyes filled with tears. "How could you do this to him, Harry? I've never seen him… like… like…" The tears spilled over but she didn't seem to feel it. "He's an old man, Harry. How could you…"

"I thought you came to me to talk about your… husband. As far as Dumbledore is concerned, I didn't do anything to him. He tried to stick his nose into a business that isn't his, and I told him to stay out of it. Nothing more and nothing less. And it seems—" his fingers flexed around his water glass "—that you are about to do the same."

"This is our business, Harry. Albus's, Minerva's, mine, everybody's. Because you're pretending to act in everybody's interest. Only you aren't. You're either pursuing your very own goals, or completely misguided. Whichever it is, it's wrong. You have every reason to hate Severus—"

Her eyes widened when, with a brusque gesture of his right hand, Harry swept plates, cutlery, glasses and food off the table. "This is not about you!" he yelled, "Do you really think, insignificant little female that you are, do you really think I would sentence a man to death because he stole my wife?" He stood, panting, chest heaving. "You wouldn't be worth sending five of my top Aurors to Hogwarts, believe me. Or feeding and housing Snape at the Ministry. Not to mention a trial. Although," he added scathingly, "everybody seems to believe just that. Including your precious husband."

"Then why?" She, too, had risen and stared at his face, as if trying to take it apart, to arrive at what was hidden behind. "Why? Why? Why?" She hurled her water glass against the wall, where it burst into a rain of glittering shards, leaving a dark wet patch on the tapestry. "Why, Harry? You're going to kill the man I love, you're going to destroy my life and my happiness! Don't you think that you owe me at least an explanation? Can't you imagine how I'm feeling? I went to my mother's yesterday morning, and we kissed good bye—" now her voice broke, and the words came out between harsh sobs "—and I thought… I thought we were… were going to… to meet again… in three… three days' time, and… next thing I… I know is that he's going… going to die? Please, Harry—" she visibly tried to calm down, get some control over herself "—please, I beg you, tell me this is just… just some terrible, cruel… some joke, and—"

"This is no joke. You know that all too well. Your husband committed a very serious crime, the punishment for which is death. Do you really think that bending the law, just because we used to be married, would be acceptable? I am sorry, Hermione, really and truly sorry, but I cannot let a traitor live only because he's now married to my ex-wife. That would be wrong, not letting justice take its due course."

"A traitor?" Hermione stared at him, eyes huge and empty. "But… Severus is no traitor. I know him, Harry, I know him better than myself, I know him and love him—he is no traitor! Whom or what do you think he betrayed? We didn't tell you the whole truth, and it was wrong. But that doesn't justify killing him! Or—" she let her head loll against the backrest of her chair "—are you going to kill me as well? Are you afraid I might go and bring back big bad Voldemort, to have my revenge?"

Harry, who had been pointedly looking at the arrangement of flowers on the mantelpiece, abruptly turned his head towards her. "Bring back—so Dumbledore told you? That old—"

"No, Harry. No, Dumbledore didn't tell me anything. I knew it, I've known it from the very beginning. I knew it wasn't called Visvita potion but Draught of Life. I knew what it could do. Come on—" she held out both hands "—cast a binding spell and call the Aurors. If Severus is a traitor, so am I, and I demand the same treatment."

He shook his head and sat down again. "You were not a Death Eater, Hermione. You never left the right path. This is different, even though you played a part in lying to me. Which, to say the truth, hurts me a lot. But it doesn't compare—"

"Harry. The whole thing was my idea. I wanted to research the Draught. He tried to dissuade me, he was the one who saw that there were more dangers than benefits to the Draught. He is innocent, can't you see it?"

"All I can see is a desperate woman who doesn't want to lose her husband. You would do anything to get him back, wouldn't you?"

"Of course I would, but I'm telling you the truth! Give me Veritaserum, do whatever you want, but please, Harry, please, let him go! I promise that we'll leave the country, even the wizarding world, but…" She fell back down on her chair, suddenly limp and exhausted. "Please, Harry. Or at least send me to prison as well. I don't want to live without him. I can't live with the knowledge that his death was all my fault."

"When all this is over," Harry said slowly, "you will realize that he only had to bear the consequences of his own actions, not yours."

"But I told you I’d known all along—"

"Yes," Harry said, drawing his wand. "You knew. Obliviate!"

*

After the three days of emotional ups and downs preceding her confession to the Headmaster, and after the exhausting scene down in the dungeons, Lucy hadn't even minded anymore when he left her standing in the corridor and hurried away—to prepare his flight, she thought. She just hoped dimly that he might succeed, that he might manage his escape in time. The Mudblood had left, and after what Lucertola and the two girls had revealed to him, he had certainly understood all about his so-called wife's plans. With any luck, he'd manage to get away, and the Aurors would capture her. The Mudblood was going to get what was coming to her. Lucy's father would certainly be able to find the Headmaster, wherever he had gone. And then…

Lucy climbed into bed and fell asleep instantly. She slept through the evening and the night and only woke up late the next morning. A glance at the alarm clock told her that it was way past breakfast time, and so she merely went down to the kitchen to grab some tea and toast, returned to the Ravenclaw quarters and tried to do a bit of reading, in order to keep her mind from constantly gravitating around the Headmaster. As she had been reading curled up on her bed, she fell asleep again and woke up shortly before dinner, feeling very hungry and very nervous.

The best thing to do, she thought while trudging to the bathroom, would be to dress, go down and have dinner. It was the most promising and unobtrusive way of gleaning information—if the Headmaster had already left, people were bound to be alert and suspicious, and sneaking about under her Invisibility Cloak probably wasn't a good idea. There might even be Aurors traipsing around the castle. Not that the teachers were going to share anything with the students willingly, but Lucy was sure she'd be able to guess something from their looks, expressions and gestures.

She didn't encounter anybody on her way to the Great Hall, not even one of the ghosts. The corridors seemed to be more quiet than usual, but it was a tense, weighty silence. Lucy took this as a positive sign—of course, people and ghosts alike had to be upset if the Headmaster had disappeared overnight. The sound of her heels clicking against the stone floor suddenly seemed incongruously loud, as obscene as hearty laughter at a funeral, and she automatically continued her walk on tiptoes, trying to produce as little noise as possible.

When she had arrived at the large oak door leading into the Great Hall, she paused for a moment, took a deep calming breath and told herself that everything was going to be fine. Headmaster Snape wouldn't be sitting at the table, and the other teachers would attempt to act as if nothing out of the normal had happened. Easy, because none of the few remaining students had seen the Mudblood leave, so they would presume that the couple had gone away for a few days. Everything was going to be fine.

Lucertola inhaled deeply one last time and pushed the door open.

There were no students, was the first thing she noticed. Only Madam Pomfrey and Professors McGonagall and Black were sitting at the table, together with a very ancient wizard whom she recognized as Albus Dumbledore—he had been on some of the pictures her father had shown her—and a horribly disfigured old man, whose face looked as if it had been taken apart a few times and then put together again the wrong way. A chunk was missing out of his nose, and when he raised his head upon hearing the door creak, Lucy had to cover her mouth with her hand, or she would have screamed. The magical eye staring directly at her had given her quite a fright. The others looked her way as well, but their movements seemed tired, slowed down, as if they were underwater or had been hit by an Impedimenta hex.

"S-Sorry," Lucy stammered, "I didn't mean to intrude, I… I ju-just thought it was dinner time…"

"Students have been told that dinner is being served in the common rooms tonight," said the wizard with the magical eye, his tone gruff and unfriendly.

"Oh, I… I didn't know. I've been sleeping almost the whole day… is something wrong?" she took a few hesitant steps towards the table, eager to hear the news.

"Nothing is wrong, lassie." The magical eye was now boring into her forehead, making her feel very uncomfortable. "You mind your own business. Run off and have dinner at your quarters."

They were all giving her uneasy, shifty looks. Lucy would have liked to laugh and sing, because this meant that Headmaster Snape had slipped out of the castle and managed to escape, and now the teachers were trying to piece together some story to explain his absence to the students. Well, she certainly wasn't going to detain them. On the contrary, she was quite curious to hear what they'd come up with.

"Of course," she said, "I'm terribly sorry to have disturbed you. Good night." She gave them all a radiant smile, but nobody smiled back.

Well, she thought, if she was to eat in the Ravenclaw common room, she might just as well make a little detour and ask Alecto and Tisiphone if they'd heard anything. The paintings were such gossips, somebody had to have heard or seen something. Trying to fend of the feeling of oppression the quiet was causing her, she walked faster and faster, broke into a run and arrived at the painting fairly out of breath. But Alecto and Tisiphone weren’t there; nobody was there, only the birches were swaying gently in the summer breeze Lucy would have liked to feel on her skin. With a last rueful look at the outline of the manor, hoping against hope that maybe the sisters had retired into the house and would come out when they saw her, she made to return to the Ravenclaw quarters, feeling unaccountably dejected.

“Oy, young lady!” a male voice called after her.

Lucy spun around, eyes scanning the paintings in search of the young man—she was sure he had to be young, his voice had suggested as much. She had almost given up, convinced that the voice had been the product of her wishful imagination, when she noticed a blonde wizard, not older than maybe twenty-five or thirty, who was sitting in front of a mirror, preening and winking at her. “Did you just call me?” she asked, stepping closer to the painting.

“As a matter of fact, I did.” He rose from the chair he had been sitting on—a ridiculously fragile construction with spindly rococo legs—and moved to the foreground, where he leaned against the frame, not without carefully arranging the folds of his jade-green robes. They matched his eyes, Lucy noticed. “Lovejoy Lockhart, ma’am, at your service.”

“Lockhart?” Lucy frowned, trying to recall where she’d heard the name.

“Indeed, Miss…?”

“Malfoy. Lucertola Malfoy.”

“Ah, what an honour.” He bowed deeply, careful to rearrange his golden locks when he straightened up. “I assume you have come to see your young relatives?”

“Yes, I… Do I know you, Sir?”

“One of my descendants, probably, a rather insignificant individual called Gilderoy. Such a shame to the family name—he was a teacher here, if only for a year.”

“Oh, of course! My father told me about him.”

“Your father—that would be Lucius Malfoy?”

“No, Draco Malfoy. Lucius is my grandfather.”

He nodded and smiled, while openly scrutinizing her from head to toe. Lucy felt both flattered and a bit irritated. “You don’t have the Malfoy looks, though,” he observed. “I’ve never seen a black-haired Malfoy.”

“That’s because my mother is Chinese. Her maiden name was Cho Chang.”

“Ah, the beautiful Miss Chang. Well—” he flashed her a broad smile “—that explains the black hair, of course. You seem rather downcast, Miss Malfoy. Is there anything I might do to brighten your mood? Not that everybody else isn’t downcast these days,” he continued, examining his fingernails. “What with the tragedy—”

“Tragedy? Which tragedy?” Lucy asked, trying to ignore the pang of anguish his words caused her.

“You haven’t heard? My dear girl, what have you been doing for the last twenty-four hours? Nothing I wouldn’t approve of, I hope” he added with a roguish grin.

“No, no! I’ve been feeling… what is the saying again? A bit under the weather? So I’ve slept quite a lot, and it seems I missed the important news.”

“So you did,” he confirmed gravely. “Aurors were here last night, just after dinnertime—although, if you ask me, ‘tis a most unfashionable hour to have dinner at. Back in my day—”

“Excuse me, but…” Lucy’s hand had flown up to her throat and she could feel her pulse beating wildly. “What exactly were the Aurors doing here?”

“Oh, I have no idea.” He waved a careless hand, looked at it in shock and adjusted a large ring so that the stone was again centred properly. “But it appears they behaved quite badly, like a horde of Huns. And they took the Headmaster, it seems. Some of my fellow portraits were quite upset, I can tell you.”

“They took… Are you sure?”

“Of course I am sure, my dear girl. I don’t tell lies—not unless necessary, of course.”

“Oh, no!” Lucy breathed. “Did they… did they take him to Azkaban?”

“Maybe, maybe not.” He gingerly touched his right eyebrow, to flatten it into a perfect arc. “But, my dear child, you are looking terribly out of sorts! May I suggest an infusion of chamomile and lavender, and maybe..”

His last words were spoken into thin air, for the girl had taken off at a run.

“Terrible manners,” Lovejoy Lockhart murmured to himself, as he returned to his mirror. “Terrible, terrible manners. And the hair… And then they wonder why men do not respect them.”

*

The light had changed only infinitesimally during the day, and when it finally faded into bluish grey and then into darkness, a guard had entered Severus’s cell and put a candle on the table, together with a new tray that contained the same items as last night’s. The flame didn’t flicker. It was magical fire, cold and sharp, burning without giving off smoke or warmth.

It was enough for Severus’s purposes, though, for he only needed to see. Warmth was something he’d done without for a very large part of his life, and the habit had come back to him easily.

Fighting his disgust, he grabbed the bowl of soup and ate its gloppy contents—just as he had expected, it tasted of nothing in particular but filled his stomach. He’d rather have fasted than to eat this repulsive brew, but he needed his strength. Every last bit of it. For he had a plan, finally.

Severus had spent most of the morning and afternoon in an empty-minded daze, occasionally dozing off, only to be assaulted by nightmares from which he woke, drenched in sweat and overpowered by anguish. During the waking phases, he’d asked himself again and again whether he had made the right choice. He might have accepted going to Azkaban and at least saved his life. Maybe he’d manage to survive the Dementors, although he told himself in his more lucid moments that this was an illusion. He might have survived thirty years ago, when he possessed no happiness or memories thereof they could suck out of him. But now—no, there was too much for them to feast on. He wouldn’t stand a chance in hell, not long enough to give him reasonable cause to hope that anything might change in the meantime. True, Ministers came and went, but Potter was likely to hold the position for many years to come, and even in the unlikely case that his successor decided to end Severus Snape’s imprisonment at Azkaban, he’d be nothing more than a vegetable by then. If looked at from that point of view, he’d certainly chosen well.

Only he didn’t want to die.

In the afternoon, when his cell had still been illuminated by daylight, he had gone through denial, despair, and arrived at a numb state of mind, which he tried to think of as acceptance. He had sat up on his cot, face buried in his hands, and attempted, honestly attempted to come to terms with his fate. With the fact that he had less than two days left. Changing position to cross his legs, he’d felt something scratch his thigh, delved into his pocket and found the picture Hermione had drawn of him. It had been enough to plunge him back into a despair so black and deep that he’d thought it was enough to make him die there, right on the spot. He had cried, for the first time in years, cried with abundance and without caring whether anybody might hear or see him. His face was wet with tears and snot and sweat, and he had reached into his pocket again, momentarily oblivious of the fact that the Aurors had taken away his handkerchief.

But he had found something else, something that made his eyes stop shedding tears and his mind soar high with euphoria. For pinched between his right thumb and forefinger was a button, a tiny mother-of-pearl button similar to those on his now crumpled and stained shirt. The vial filled with Draught of Life he had transfigured the other day.



Back in his Death Eater days, he had been trained in wandless magic. Theoretically, everybody could do it—children did it, after all, before receiving their magical education. It had been banned centuries ago, though, because it was difficult to detect and hard to control, and labelled Dark. This had been a sufficient reason for Voldemort to drag it out of oblivion and teach it to his followers. Not only was it a symbolic act, a gesture of defiance against the Ministry and society, it also was a highly useful skill. If you were able to throw a stunning curse at your adversary without having to betray your intentions by drawing your wand, the advantage was definitely yours. Not that the method didn’t have any drawbacks; the most important of them being that the power of the spell, curse or hex cast wasn’t increased and bundled by the magical core of a wand. A killing curse fired without a wand, for example, wasn’t lethal. It might stun the opponent for some time but wasn’t likely to kill him. Easier hexes, like for example levitating, binding or the minor pain-inducing ones, were as effective if cast by hand as they were focused by a wand. It all depended on thorough training and practice, of course.

Severus had been quite good at wandless magic, but had never used it again since Voldemort’s final downfall. He needed practice, and for that he needed time, which was exactly what he didn’t have. But, once he had become aware that he actually had a possibility of rescue, he decided to make up by sheer willpower what he lacked in time. There was, of course, still the lingering thought of what the Ministry might do to Hermione once they realized that the Draught had worked for him but didn’t have the same effect on others, due to the formula he’d altered. But now that he saw a faint glimmer of hope that he might survive all this, he was pretty sure that she’d prefer him to be alive, even at the cost of being bothered and harassed by the Ministry. Besides, she had friends who’d protect her and would do so even more fiercely after what had happened to him. Yes, the topmost priority was staying alive. And once he was out of here, his was going to find a way out of it all.

After finishing his soup, he started practising silencing spells. It was hard work, draining and exhausting, but in the end he succeeded. The first time he banged the glass on the table and the room remained as quiet as it had been before, he actually smiled. Then he cast the same spell on the whole cell. The chances of a guard actually overhearing him were slim, but he wouldn’t incur even the tiniest risk.

His smile grew into a grin when the glass hovered above the table, glinting and shimmering in the candlelight like a bubble of hope.