Orpheus

Chapter 30

By Pigwidgeon37

“I thought you’d never come back again!” Hermione snuggled closer to Severus and couldn’t resist smiling when she felt his embrace tighten. “Two nights! I was so sad, and so… I thought you’d never come back again,” she repeated, shuddering at the thought.

“I’m sorry, Spikes, I really am. I was—” He paused, trying to find a way of formulating his excuse that didn’t betray the truth but wasn’t a lie, either. “It was impossible,” he finally said.

Hermione raised her head to scrutinize his face. “You were what?”

He was able to deceive everybody, but not her. Pleasant as the thought essentially was, right now he would have wished she were not quite so perceptive. “I was being detained.”

“Who gave you detention? St. Peter? Sorry,” she said hastily, seeing the somewhat pained look on his face. “I didn’t mean to be inquisitive. Or tact- and tasteless. I suppose there are rules, too, wherever you are. Did you break the rules when you came to me?”

“No. I’m free to come to you as often as I want. And I wanted to visit you again, believe me. But I had… other obligations. Inevitable ones. But—” he loosened his grip on her a little so that they could sit down next to each other “—Mr. Pappadopoulos told me to send you his fondest and most sincere greetings.”

“Oh, that’s—” Hermione’s face fell. “He’s… dead?” she asked, her voice very small.

He probably was, by now. “Yes, my darling. He’s dead. But he died very peacefully. One hundred eighty-six years of life, that’s a very long time, even for a wizard. He had made his peace with himself and the world and was glad—as he formulated it—to take the last portkey.”

Unlike the first time, Severus had simply entered her mind and her dreams without waiting until she actually dreamed of him. He hadn’t been sure of her reaction, but every doubt had been dispersed when she raised her head upon hearing the door creak, and her expression became one of radiant joy. Small wonder, he thought, for he had walked into a dinner party at the Minister’s Manor, where Hermione was sitting squeezed between two pompous-looking old wizards, who were droning on about something they obviously thought extremely important. Hermione, though, was looking as if she was going to fall asleep within seconds, and the polite smile she’d plastered over her face wasn’t very convincing anymore. She had risen and rushed into his outstretched arms immediately, and he had led her out of the room and once again down to the lake, where they were now reclining in the grass.

Sunrise and sunset had always been Severus’s favourite times of the day; today he’d chosen the early morning hours of a summer day, with torn veils of fog still drifting among the bushes and dew-sprinkled grass. The air was cool and soothing, containing a mere hint of the heat to come.

He looked down at Hermione’s face and brushed a few tears off her cheek. “Tell me, my love, how are you? Is your life… bearable?”

“It seems to be improving a little. Three days ago, I wouldn’t have thought it possible. But now… I really don’t know why, because I know this is just a dream, and in reality you’re dead. But with the knowledge that I can be together with you, if only in my dreams, things are becoming much easier. Will you promise something?”

“Again?” He smiled, because he loved to tease her. Just a little, so her eyes would light up. “I already promised I’d haunt you, and I kept my word.”

She closed her eyes when he lowered his face towards hers and gently kissed her forehead. “I know. But this one is just an extension of the one you already made.”

He kissed her eyelids, which were still moist with tears. “Then tell me, by all means.”

“Everybody keeps insisting that life has to go on, and that sooner or later I’ll have to get over you. But… I don’t want to, you see? I’m so sad already because I can’t remember every single moment we spent together—we were so careless—”

“We were carefree,” he interrupted her, “Carefree and happy. How should we have known?”

“I had that feeling… You remember the day when we got the letters? From Harry and Malfoy? Maybe I’m seeing it more clearly in hindsight, but I distinctly recall that I had this sensation of foreboding, as if something sinister was out there, just waiting to pounce on us and destroy everything. I should have heeded it, and lived more… more consciously.”

“That’s what everybody thinks after suffering a great loss. We were happy, Spikes, and we’re happy now. That is all that counts. Don’t blame yourself for not having foreseen what happened.”

She sniffed and relaxed into his embrace. “Yes… You’re probably right. But anyway—” she opened her eyes and looked into his “—please don’t stop visiting me because you, too, think I have to get over you. Please!”

“Selfish as it may sound,” he said, “that’s the last thing I want you to do.”

“Good.” Hermione nodded contentedly and stroked his chest. “Do you think we might give the kissing another try?”

He snorted. “I thought you’d never ask.”

*

“This is the list I made,” Hermione said smugly and brandished a piece of paper at the two wizards sitting opposite her, on the couch in Mrs. Granger’s parlour.

Sirius grinned at her, blue eyes sparkling. “That’s the Hermione I know. If you start making lists, you’re definitely on the mend.”

“Definitely,” Moody growled. He replenished his cup of tea and then, putting a finger to his lips with the expression of someone about to communicate the most secret of secrets, pulled out his hip flask and added a splash of whisky. Then he grabbed for the orphaned biscuit left on the plate and ate it with apparent relish. “Marjorie!” he called, “Are there more of these… er, what exactly are they called?”

Mrs. Granger stuck her head through the half-open door and glared at him. “They’re called ginger-almond biscuits and yes, there’s more of them. But I’m not giving you any, because you ought to watch your cholesterol. There’s a lot of butter in there.”

Moody winced. “Fuck the chol—”

“Language, Alastor!”

Sirius snorted into his teacup, thus earning himself a vicious stare from his friend.

“Sorry,” Moody said, “I mean, bugger the—”

At that, Hermione couldn’t hold back any longer and burst into a fit of the giggles.

“ ‘s long as the lass laughs,” Moody said grinning, “I don’t care if it’s about me. Anyway, Marjorie, I wasn’t asking for myself but for my dear friends here. They didn’t get the chance of eating too many of them, and I—”

“Does that mean,” Mrs. Granger inquired, now entering the room and pulling herself up to full height in front of Moody, “that you ate them all?” Both fists planted firmly on her hips, she glowered down at her unfortunate boyfriend.

“Well, not all of them, but… Oh, come on, Marjorie, don’t be so strict! I’ve taken on Voldemort, surely I can take a bit of cholesterol, eh?”

“Oh really.” She stepped even closer to him, so that he had to crane his neck to look into her face. Which he did, because the only alternative was looking somewhere else, like a subdued schoolboy who didn’t dare meet his mother’s eyes. “Did Voldemort calcify your arteries, lining your blood vessels with layer upon layer of calcium so that the blood can’t pass through them anymore?”

“Now listen, Marjorie, I—”

“Did Voldemort give you a heart condition? Or did he maybe cause you a stroke that might leave you paralysed and unable to talk? Did he make your teeth rot with caries?” Moody merely growled and looked away. “Answer my question, Alastor Moody! And while we are at it, you may answer this one too: did you do everything in your power to protect yourself against that villain, or did you just stroll into his house, inviting him to kill you? Huh?”

“Voldemort didn’t have a house,” Moody replied sulkily, well aware that he was fighting a losing battle.

“You know exactly what I’m trying to tell you, Alastor, so don’t live up to your name!” She turned to Sirius and Hermione, who were trying to guffaw silently and failing. “Isn’t there some spell you might put on the biscuits? So that he can’t touch them?”

“We-ell,” Sirius said, “Now that you mention it, I believe there might—”

“Sirius! I’ll hex off your balls, you flea-eaten mongrel!”

“Language, Alastor,” Sirius shot back, doing a fairly decent imitation of their hostess.

In the end, Mrs. Granger brought them another plate of her delicious biscuits, and Moody had to solemnly promise he’d eat only two. Which he did, grudgingly.

“Well,” he said, when Mrs. Granger had left again, “What is this all about, Hermione? Why the list, and what did you want to tell us?”

Hermione inhaled deeply, bracing herself for her friends’ reaction. “I believe that Severus is alive,” she said simply.

The two men exchanged alarmed glances.

“Hermione,” Sirius said cautiously, “I really don’t see how he could possibly be alive. We all saw him die. I hate to remind you, but you were there, love. You saw it, as did Alastor and I.”

“There’s no need for you to talk to me as if I were insane,” she replied sharply. “And I’m not just telling you this on a lark. There are reasons.” She tapped the piece of paper with her forefinger. “Quite a lot of them, actually.”

“Well…” Moody scratched his head. “Then why don’t you tell us about them?”

Hermione gave him a radiant smile. “That’s exactly what I meant to do.”

When she had finished explaining about her list—the jumper Severus had worn on his first visit was only one of many items it contained—the two men still didn’t look convinced, but neither were they sure anymore that she was fantasizing.

Sirius, who had been mechanically devouring the biscuits, wagged his head. “I can see the logic in your arguments, Hermione. All this—” he gestured at the list “—is really weird. Very, very strange. And the only explanation—the one that seems to explain it all, I mean—seems to be that he’s using Legilimency to enter your dreams. But however stringent, it isn’t sufficient to rationalize away one important, undeniable fact: we all saw him die.”

Hermione raked a hand through her already wild hair, dishevelling it even more. “I know! But I also know that there’s some missing piece, something I feel is there…” She sighed and shrugged. “It’s so hard to explain—it’s more a physical sensation than rational thought, as if my mind had a blind spot—”

“Hermione,” Moody interrupted her. His good eye was looking beadier than ever. “Didn’t Potter obliviate you? The sensation you’re describing is exactly what you feel when you’ve been obliviated. The memory is there, but you can’t access it. It’s as if your brain were itching but you can’t scratch it, right?”

“Yes, exactly!” Hermione nodded vehemently. “That’s exactly how it feels. Do you think the memory Harry took away might have something to do with all this?”

“It’s… a possibility, I’d say. But Harry’s a pretty powerful wizard; there’s no way we can break that memory spell. We might badly damage your mind.”

“Do you think that Severus might have access to the memory? I mean, if it’s there in my subconscious, maybe—”

“Look, darling.” Sirius raised a hand to silence them both and make his own contribution to the discussion, which he felt was necessary. “I know you’re excited, but try to stay calm and think. First and most important: if the memory Harry obliviated has something to do with Severus having died and come back to life, you may bet your right hand that it’s something important, classified and dangerous. You have no idea what it might be. But it might put you into grave danger, and I’m sure Severus would never take that risk. Secondly, if Harry knew what he had to obliviate, and unless he’s obliviated himself, which I doubt, he still knows. And maybe he’s not the only one. So before anybody—whether it’s Severus or us—screws with your mind, I’d say let’s try first and see whether we can’t find out something by using less drastic means. Alastor still has his connections at the Ministry—”

“Yeah, and I’m going to make some inquiries. If there really is some secret, you bet your arse it’s a fairly big one. And big secrets create big rumours. By the way—” he gestured at the window “—I think we might really be on to something. Up till now, I thought the Aurors trying to pretend they’re just strolling around were here because Potter’s worried you might try to kill yourself, so they can come to your rescue. Kind of guard of honour, for old times’ sake. But—” he shot Sirius a shrewd look “—what about those at Hogwarts and those prowling around the Academy? What if their task isn’t to spy on us, because we might be planning something sinister, but to ambush Severus, in case he tries to contact us?”

“In that case,” Sirius said slowly, “I’d bet more than just my arse that Harry has dispatched some of them to Snape Manor as well. Logical, isn’t it?”

“Very,” Moody confirmed. He grinned and rose from his chair. “I don’t know about you, Sirius, but I’m feeling like taking a little walk.”

“Good idea.” Sirius, too got up. “Somewhere nice and romantic, eh?”

“Yep. Where we can wander lonely as two clouds, maybe?”

“Pick some wee daffodils…”

“And be gay in jocund company,” Moody finished with a grin. “Bye, sweetheart.” He ruffled Hermione’s hair. “And don’t fret too much. We’ll keep you posted.”

*

He was turning into a right old sap, Severus mused. How had this happened? When had it happened?

He wiped a rivulet of sweat off his forehead and sat down in the shadow of a palm tree—totally useless shadow, really, or maybe it was just an optical illusion, because it was as hot there as in the sun.

So. When, how and why had he mellowed so much? It wasn’t that he completely disliked the idea, but it was going to take some getting used to. Probably Hermione was one of the main reasons. Until the day he’d first met her—had it really been only one and a half years ago?—he’d conserved much of his former self, without the extreme harshness and bitterness of earlier days, of course. But since they had become a couple and moved in together, the sharp jags and cutting barbs, which he had considered an essential part of his character, had grown blunter. At first only where their relationship was concerned—even when they were arguing, he was unable to hide his own insecurity behind sarcasm and stinging retorts. And gradually, so very slowly and surreptitiously that he hadn’t even been aware of it, the change had spread out, encroaching on his friendships with Sirius, Alastor and Minerva, who often glanced at him knowingly when he renounced a particularly snide comeback and swallowed a comment which, albeit witty, would also have been hurtful or insulting.

What was completely new, however—and Severus wasn’t sure he liked it; he rather suspected the opposite was true—was the fact that this new mellowness of almost Dumbledore-ish dimensions also seemed to extend to people whom he knew he disliked. He had to admit that, during the six weeks he’d been staying with the Dursleys, they had done nothing to earn his contempt. Well, no. That wasn’t exactly true. They were narrow-minded and bourgeois, and he despised them for it. But they had done nothing to further increase his already considerable disdain.

Severus sighed. It seemed that somehow the heat of this damned place had triggered a mental process similar to the physiological one of sweating. Truths were oozing out of his mind, and when he tried to wipe them off, there was more of them. As for example the awareness that he, Severus Snape, while maybe not overly susceptible to flattery directed at himself, did react very favourably indeed to compliments about his wife. Mrs. Dursley’s repeated enthusiastic declarations about Hermione (an enthusiasm engendered mainly by the fact that she’d divorced Harry) had cast a very advantageous light on her equine face and smoothed out some of the harsh lines around her mouth and nose, which came from too much haughty lip-pursing and disdainful nose-wrinkling. Hell, he had even listened to the woman’s long story about her son Dudley, who was by no means dead, as Severus had supposed, but had left the army because of a dark-haired, deer-eyed oriental beauty, married her and stayed in Iraq.

Maybe it was his own longing for Hermione which had made him understand that, warped and misdirected and essentially unhealthy though the feeling was, they Dursleys loved their son and were desperate for news—just a letter every now and then would suffice, Mrs. Dursley had assured him, with tears in her eyes. Who was he to judge the quality of other people’s emotions, after all. And so…

He sighed again and leaned against the frazzled trunk of the palm tree. And so he had suggested—oh, what a fool he had been!—that he might try and talk to the young man, seeing as how he had to go to Petra anyway, which wasn’t too far from Baghdad… Well, it was, but not for a wizard who could Apparate. Besides, he’d never been to Baghdad, the wizarding district of which was famous, equal parts because of its architecture and the excellent restaurants and bars. Since he had got Pappadopoulos’s wand, which worked surprisingly well for him (olive wood with a core of Maenad’s hair, quite temperamental but excellent for Charms and therefore also glamours) he’d been much more at his ease, for he was able to change his appearance more carefully than before and use stronger charms impervious even to the most penetrating stares.

Thanks to his excellent memory, he still remembered all the places—both libraries and private collections—Lily and James Potter had mentioned in their now-destroyed notes. Hermione hadn’t been to all of them, because the unexpected discovery of Lily’s diary and hence the notes about the Draught of Life had made further excursions unnecessary. Severus, though, had to visit every single of them, or at least as many as possible, to cut pages out of books, sever parts from antique manuscripts and, as he had done in Petra, dissolve antique clay tablets into greyish-beige mud which he had then dumped into the next river, looking sadly at the priceless artefact being washed away towards the sea. There was no wizarding settlement in Petra, just the Library and the Museum of Magical History of the Arabian World, where they had got the scales of the now-extinct Mesopotamian Triplecrest from. Severus—today with shoulder-length white hair, a well-trimmed white beard, heavy horn-rimmed spectacles on a long, pointed nose and grey eyes—had first allowed himself a stroll through the museum before heading over to the library, where he’d soon located the tablets he needed and hidden them in his wide, Arabian-style robes so as to smuggle them out. Then he’d quickly Apparated to the outskirts of Baghdad. He’d immediately altered his appearance again (less tall, black hair and moustache, dark eyes and, as a result of a rare Lockhart moment, blindingly white and perfectly aligned teeth) and disposed of the tablets.

It was already the beginning of March, and the heat, albeit dry, was bothering him more than he’d thought. Hence the short break under the palm tree, which had turned into some sort of meditative-contemplative self-analysis. Given the alternative, namely heading to young Dudley’s house so as to hammer some common sense into his thick skull, maybe this wasn’t so bad. But he’d better get that annoying business over with as soon as possible, for he planned on spending a pleasant evening at one of the city’s famous restaurants before returning to Little Winging. With a sigh even deeper than its predecessors, he got to his feet and wandered slowly towards the house where he would find Dudley Dursley, his wife and their numerous offspring.

*

There were still Aurors patrolling the Hogwarts grounds—fewer of them, and they seemed to have lost interest; a lack of motivation brought about mainly by the unceasing rain that had started at the end of February and been going on for almost a week—but McGonagall had put her foot down when the Ministry had demanded that they be allowed to enter the school. So they remained outside, ill-tempered, cursing and shivering.

Moody hadn’t been as successful as the Headmistress of Hogwarts in fending off his former colleagues, as there really was no way he could argue against the presence of Aurors at a training facility for Aurors. For their weekly or so updates concerning the clandestine inquiries about Severus, Moody and Sirius therefore met either at Mrs. Granger’s house or at the castle. Moody had always been a regular visitor, sometimes also to give guest lectures for the seventh years’ Defence Against the Dark Arts classes, and thus his presence at Hogwarts wasn’t more likely to raise suspicion than Sirius’s occasional visits at the Granger house. They just had to be careful and avoid too frequent meetings.

Moody had travelled to the school by Floo; although he usually preferred Apparating, the weather didn’t exactly encourage him to undertake the twenty-minutes walk from the gates to the castle. As one of McGonagall’s first actions as Headmistress had been to disconnect the internal Floo from the main network—with the approval of the whole staff, for none of them was eager to have the Ministry stick their noses into their private conversations—Moody arrived at the main Floo portal in the entrance hall just when dinner was about to start. McGonagall persuaded him to sit next to her at the High Table and eat with them, and when the meal was finished, she, Sirius and Moody retired to Sirius’s quarters to discuss the news.

“Ah, thanks Minnie,” Moody grunted when the Headmistress handed him a snifter of brandy. He looked at it lovingly and merely grinned unrepentantly at McGonagall’s attempt to incinerate him with a deadly glare. She really didn’t like being called Minnie. “Did you notice,” he continued when the other two had sat down with their glasses, “that there are fewer Aurors traipsing about the school grounds?”

“How would you know?” Sirius asked. “You arrived by Floo!”

“I didn’t say I had seen fewer of them, did I? I was merely asking for confirmation.”

“Yes,” McGonagall said. “Now that you say it… Yes, there are definitely fewer of them.” She took a very small, ladylike sip from her tumbler. “But how did you know?”

Moody grinned and winked at her. “Instinct,” he said, tapping his nose with his forefinger. “Nah, just kidding. There definitely is something afoot at the Ministry, dear friends. Tonks, may she be blessed—” he raised his glass in a silent salute, and so did the other two “—told me… two days ago? Or was that three?” He frowned into his glass. “Well, never mind. Anyway, she told me that the Ministry intended to diminish the number of Aurors guarding Hogwarts and the Academy. Plus, no more Aurors at Severus’s manor. They leave the job to the Law Enforcers.”

“And—” Sirius rubbed the bridge of his nose “—d’you have an idea what this might signify?”

“I’ve got lots of ideas. The question is: which of them’s the right one?”

Unheeding of the two wizards’ grins and winks, McGonagall produced one of her impeccably starched handkerchiefs and started polishing her spectacles. “Maybe it’s time for us to write down what we have got, make—”

“A list!” Sirius and Moody chorused.

“I can’t quite see what is so funny about making lists,” she said primly and summoned parchment, quill and ink.

“That’s exactly what makes it so fun,” Sirius explained.

“You—” she stabbed his arm with the quill “—really ought to grow up. The same goes, of course, for Alastor. But I suppose Mrs. Granger is seeing to that.” Moody growled something unintelligible and likely also inappropriate for a lady to hear, and she continued, “So, what do we know? Hermione’s dreams.” She wrote this down and then looked expectantly at the other two.

“The Aurors,” Sirius supplied. “First they’re everywhere, and suddenly there’s fewer of them.”

“Fine.” The quill scratched over the paper. “What else?”

Moody shrugged. “Not sure what to call it. ‘The Big Secret’ I guess, whatever it was that Potter had to wipe off the lass’s mind.” He snorted. “Can you imagine how our dear Minister must be feeling, if old Sev is really alive?”

There was a faint noise, barely audible. It sounded like a muffled squeal and was definitely coming from the door that connected McGonagall’s parlour to the small hallway. Moody’s eyes narrowed, and, with an imperceptible movement of his head, he kept Sirius who had heard the sound as well from getting up. “Potter must be quite upset,” he continued, as if nothing had happened, “and desperate to find out—Stupefy!”

McGonagall, who hadn’t noticed the suspicious noise, jumped with fright and knocked the inkwell off the table. “Alastor, what—”

“I think—” Moody got up from his chair, as did Sirius “—my dear ex-colleagues might be getting a bit too curious.” He limped to the door, which had been half-open.

Sirius, who had been quicker, glanced around the hallway. “There’s nothing, Alastor. It seems we’re all getting a bit paranoid…”

“Nonsense.” Moody shoved him aside. “We’re not—now that’s a surprise.” He pointed his wand at the far corner. “Enervate! Compliments for the nice Invisibility Cloak, Miss Malfoy.”