Disclaimer: I'm not muscling in on JK's turf – just gambolling on it, like a spring lamb, having fun working out the literary and psychological puzzles which she is having fun setting us
It's been a very long time. This story started as a riff on somebody else's very ose (on the traditional scale of ose, morose and more morose) "Snape is hideously tortured and dies, and everybody who ever doubted him feels horribly guilty" fic but giving Snape a better outcome through the application of Muggle medical techniques. It was originally written as two-handed extemporé theatre, with me (whitehound) playing Snape and Dyce playing Hermione and then just talking in character and seeing where it took us, with only an occasional steer to keep the plot heading in the right direction.
When Dyce had a baby and gaffiated (Got Away From Fandom) I wasn't sure whether I would be able to carry the story solo and write her Hermione, rather than mine, and I wasn't able to find anyone else to play the Hermione role. It wasn't helped by the fact that this next chapter was a technically very difficult one requiring three major set pieces. It had originally been Dyce who was going to write the meet-the-parents scene, and I wasn't sure where to even start. In addition, the combination of caring for my mother as she became increasingly ill, then organising her funeral, developing cataracts, and then six years of Long COVID gave me plenty of real-life problems of my own.
On top of that there was a review for this fic sneering at Snape for being stressed out by the class ignoring him, and jeering at anyone who is afraid of public speaking – despite public speaking being such a profound and common human fear that if psychologists want to induce stress in a subject, they tell them they're going to have to make a speech. It's at least as common and deeply ingrained in the human species as fear of falling.
Since public speaking is my own greatest fear, and one which has warped my entire career, I was unable even to think about fanfics for two or three years thereafter, even to read them, because thinking about fanfics meant thinking about this review, which meant thinking about public speaking, which meant having a borderline panic attack. I still haven't been able to re-read it or reply to it, to the point that initially I couldn't look at any of my fics on ffn because I couldn't remember which one this review had been for: and I still can't look at my reviews for Lost and Found because it's always there, near the top, and there's no way to delete or hide it.
After a few years the public-speaking-induced panic eased up enough for me to start reading fanfics again, and finally after six years the Long COVID improved enough for me to resume writing. I started with a new chapter of Sons of Prophecy and originally intended to finish that story first before moving on to the other two (this one and Giving Extras): but instead, I ended up reading through Lost and Found three times until I felt that I'd got the hang of Dyce's Hermione, and reading somebody else's meet-the-parents scene which enabled me to get a handle on what I wanted to do differently. And besides, there are only three or four chapters to go on this one, as compared to about six on Sons of Prophecy and ten or fifteen on Giving Extras, so it makes sense to finish this one first. Once I've wrapped up the fanfics I can get on with stand-alone original work I can actually charge money for.
For those who've forgotten what happened before this point, see the early chapter headed The story so far for a chapter-by-chapter recap, and the Prologue for an explanation of when and how this story diverged from canon.
Be warned that these final chapters include a lot of angst, as well as more cheerful moments, and that parts of this particular chapter, #26, are very, very dark. All I can say is, in the immortal words of Corporal Jones, "Don't panic!", and if it gets too much, skip to the last paragraph.
His own face in the faded, uneven glass made him look like a drowning man, lost under deep water, the mottling of the mirror blending with the mottled discolouration of his right temple where the acid had made its permanent mark. But the last thing he needed right now was a crystal-clear, state-of-the-art magical mirror to criticise his lank hair and the still-and-forever-visible scars dragging at the corners of his already sour mouth: although he gathered that he had Adrian to thank for the fact that they weren't worse. He could have ended up with a face like a badly-zipped-up rucksack, if Addy hadn't lined the cut edges up with such skill and care. Instead, thanks to Muggle surgery, he looked more like a shabby, moulting eagle (or, God help him, a vulture).
"Zabini – you did promise that you would obey me, as your Head of House."
"I did, didn't I? And I'll keep my promise – Sir. What is it that you require?"
"I need to borrow a book on cosmetic preparations – don't pretend you don't have one – especially those for concealing blemishes on the skin. I also need for you not to tell anyone that I asked."
Meeting the Grangers at Madame Puddifoot's was a compromise between Hogwarts and the Muggle world, which allowed them to be surrounded by guards without the pressure of meeting on Severus's home ground; as well as reassuring them that the magical world contained things as ordinary and reassuring as an overly twee tea-shoppe. But unless they booked the entire shop for the afternoon and filled it with Slytherins – which would attract attention in itself – their meeting was bound to rouse speculation in the village and, very soon afterwards, in The Daily Prophet. It was time, therefore, to take The Next Big Step, and hang the consequences: although Hermione screwed her robes up in her hands so neurotically at the thought of it that she was scolded by Finty for making work for the laundry elves.
After some discussion it had been decided that Albus would make the announcement, although he insisted that Severus be present and not, as he put it, "skulk off and pretend it isn't happening". So, in the middle of breakfast on the day the meeting was due to take place, less than three weeks before the start of NEWTs, Albus cast Sonorous on himself, and stood as tall as only he (and, of course, Hagrid) could.
"Ladies and gentlemen: might I have your attention, please. Almost seven months ago," he began, "it was both my pain and my pleasure to inform you that my esteemed colleague Professor Snape had been terribly injured, but that he was alive and was expected to recover. Today, I bring you far more light-hearted but almost as momentous news. I have to tell you now that Professor Snape and Miss Hermione Granger are, ah... walking out. No formal contract of betrothal has yet been issued," he added, over the sudden buzz of excited chatter (not least at the staff table), "owing to the uncertainty of the current political situation, but the liaison is established and acknowledged, including by myself and by the Deputy Headmistress." He was peripherally aware of Rolanda poking Severus in the ribs and calling him a dark horse under her breath. On the other side Professors Sprout and Flitwick had gone into an intense gossip-huddle, and Aurora Sinistra had tipped her chair right back onto its rear legs in order to peer along the table behind his back and get a good look at the embarrassed swain.
"I – we thought that it would be desirable to make the announcement now, before Miss Granger takes her NEWTs, so that there could be no accusations of covert favouritism. Miss Granger came of age almost two years ago and Professor Snape has of course not been her teacher for eleven months, and will not resume teaching until after she has finished school; and while he has given her occasional private tuition" – Rolanda snickered openly and Severus hissed at her like an angry cat, but many of the students had clearly taken that comment the same way and were sniggering behind their hands – "this was no more than is available to any student from their Head of House. Also, of course, Miss Granger needed it far less than most.
"I am assured by both parties that she has not in any way taken advantage of her position as Professor Snape's carer during his illness, but that this was a meeting of true minds brought together outside the classroom by unusual and traumatic circumstances, forged in the fires of suffering and bound together by mutual care and growing mutual esteem, and to which we shall admit no impediment. It only remains to us to congratulate the, ah, happy couple." He smiled encouragingly and there was a sporadic round of applause, rather less certain than the one which had greeted the invalid's return to the dining-room a week earlier, and somebody on the Slytherin table wolf-whistled.
At the Gryffindor table, Hermione seemed to be surrounded by chattering girls, most of whom looked fascinated or envious and a few sulky. Severus saw Luna nod dreamily to the Ravenclaw boy next to her, apparently confirming the fact that she had known about it already, and faintly, he heard somebody at the near end of the Hufflepuff table say "Geeks of a feather obviously flock together", and somebody else tittered and added something about pheasant pluckers. He gave them a quelling look which, as the saying went, did not quell them noticeably, but at the Slytherin table he was gratified to see that Liam Bennet and his pro-Voldemort cronies looked is if they were going to have a collective apoplexy. He amused himself by smiling at them sweetly: especially as he was fairly sure Bennet was still a virgin. At the far end of the staff table Aurora clutched wildly at the tablecloth to keep from tipping over, and pulled a plate of bacon and eggs down on herself.
It was Severus's first time off the school grounds since his capture last year, and even though his strength and energy were improving he was definitely not up to walking well over a mile, or even the nearly half a mile to the main gates: quite apart from the fact that he wasn't yet comfortable about passing again down the drive and out through the gates which he had last entered just before he had been seized, returning from Hogsmeade on another summer day nearly a year ago. Visiting Hogsmeade again was quite reminder enough. Little steps.
Instead, he made his way rather stiffly through the castle to the little private door next to the chapel by the base of the North Tower, from which he had been taken out over seven months ago to meet the unicorn. From there he passed the narrow north end of the lake and climbed the slope to the little station, surrounded by Hermione and an escort of armed Slytherins with wands drawn, and he nearly not needing to lean on Bulstrode at all. Even that short journey added up to about a quarter of a mile, when you factored in the indoor corridors. There was only one short flight of steps involved – little steps indeed – but even those few were still a challenge and the walk left him quite breathless: but he was determined to manage as much of the journey on foot as he could. At least the ground was warm and dry and he could take the shortest route across the grass without slipping, aided by a staff which Finty had sourced for him from the Room of Hidden Things, and which was definitely not anything like Lucius's pimp cane.
[Hidden Things? Could Riddle possibly have been that obvious, when he hid a Horcrux? His brain started to tell himself "surely not" and then his other brain reminded him that this was the teenage boy who had dubbed himself Lord Death-Flight. At least he actually had been a half-blood Prince, so his own grandiose teenage nickname had been a clever pun, not a badly-forced anagram. The bastard had actually had letters left over, like the screws Arthur had had left when he tried to assemble a Muggle flat-packed desk that time, and had turned them into "I am".]
From the station gate they Apparated to the open ground near the town-hall in Hogsmeade, about sixty yards from the tea-room. Anwar and Jaquin went first, and then Anwar sent her Patronus – which no-one was surprised to see was a rook – to tell them that the coast was clear. Hermione and himself, along with Heggarty, Longchamps, Brooksmith and Hennessy, then made the jump to the village, while Crabbe, Goyle and Bulstrode remained behind to play Gobstones and make sure their return route remained open and ambush-free. Finty had promised to make sure they got tea and cakes as least as good as the ones at Puddifoot's.
Severus was uneasily aware that even in the best dress-robes which Albus had presented him with at Christmas, a fall of near-black silk with jet-black embroidery around the neck, still the rook, with its parchment-pale face, its massive beak, its stalking walk and its untidy feathers which gave the impression of a shabby cloak swirling around its legs, bore an unfortunate resemblance to himself.
Hermione in her turn was uncomfortably aware that in telling her parents that Severus was "just in his thirties" she had deliberately given them the impression that he was just over thirty, not not-quite forty. Despite his appalling suffering last year, however, regular consensual sex, regular sleep, months of rest and relative safety and the novel experience of real, accepting companionship had left him looking and acting younger than at any time since she had met him – almost boyish at times, especially when he was playing cards with Harry and Ron, now that Ron had decided to embrace home-brewing – so she hoped her parents wouldn't enquire too closely, at least until after he had made as favourable an impression as he was capable of.
They made their way past a party of pre-Hogwarts children who were playing goblins and warlocks amongst the trees on the open ground, overlooked by the back gardens of their parents' homes, and Severus felt a small pang of envy: but after all he and Lils had had their own games, in and out of the bean-rows and roses of the allotments and down by the river, even if he had tried to stay as far away from his parents as possible, and all they had had at the back of their house had been a tiny paved yard with an outdoor lavvie, a coal-bunker and some straggly weeds growing out of the joins in the drain-pipe.
Across the cobbled street to the row of low, white-walled thatched shops. Jaquin pushed the door open very cautiously, wand at the ready, even though they could see a young couple peacefully taking tea by the window with its fake leaded panes: but after the disaster with Greengrass there was probably no such thing as too much vigilance. The bells above the door tinkled tinnily, and they stepped down into the hot, steamy little seating area, crowded with tables and overwhelmed by chintzy baubles and bows.
Severus propped the staff just inside the door and drew a deep, nervous breath, seeing the grey-haired middle-aged couple seated against the back wall, talking to a rainbow-punk Tonks. She waved cheekily and got up with a word to the woman, about whom there was a distinct hint of 'chipmunk', although her bobbed hair was sleek and neat.
It was the man whose close-cropped hair was still visibly curly (and indeed, Hermione had told him that when she was a small child her father's hair had formed a frothy chestnut mullet, even curlier and more bouffant than Jaquin's pre-Raphaelite locks). He stood up as they approached and gave Hermione a one-armed hug, whilst eyeing Severus rather warily. Both men cleared their throats at the same time, and the older man gave a twitch of a smile at that.
"Oberon Granger", he said, holding out a hand which Severus clasped gingerly, fighting the urge to raise an eyebrow; but Oberon was at least as observant as his daughter, and evidently picked up on the implied query. "The ah, Shakespearean theme is a family thing. And this is my wife Jean." She nodded and smiled fairly warmly, before returning to beaming at Hermione.
"Severus Snape." He eased himself down onto the bow-bedecked chair, still rather stiff and cautious whenever he needed to bend at his prosthetic hip, especially after his fall of a few weeks ago. He could feel Hermione at his side restraining the urge to fuss.
"Severus was a Roman emperor, wasn't he?"
"Septimus Severus, yes." He smiled blandly, beginning to enjoy himself. Two could play at weird-name one-upmanship. "I saw that you already met Nymphadora: I presume she transported you here?"
Jean picked up her tea-cup, daintily. "The young woman with the hair? Yes, she gave us a tour of the high street. It's very... rural, isn't it? Was I imagining things, or did her hair change colour?"
"Oh, Tonks – Nymphadora – is a Metamorphmagus, Mum", Hermione said brightly. "She can change her hair, her face: even turn into a boy!"
"Good God", her father said in alarm. "If you can never tell who anybody is, then how...?"
"Fortunately," Severus interposed smoothly, "such talent is exceedingly rare; and Miss Tonks works for law-enforcement; as does the black gentleman with whom she is sitting." He tried to will Hermione not to mention Polyjuice, or Animagi. Over in the far corner Nymphadora grinned and gave them a thumbs-up: evidence that she was snooping, but that was only to be expected, despite their being well outside the ten-foot range of the discreet Muffliato which Hermione had cast around their table. He had long suspected that the Aurors had an enhanced lip-reading spell.
"Severus, Hermione", Jean said formally, once they had placed their orders with a harried-looking young waitress. "While we are somewhat concerned about the – the age difference, and the fact that you were once her teacher, Hermione is nearly nineteen and old enough to know her own mind, and Addy, Adrian, gives you a very good write-up, Severus. He thinks extremely highly of you."
"I think highly of him", Severus muttered, looking discomfited. "I literally owe him my life and he is, ah, an excellent and charming young man, as well as a gifted surgeon."
"He is, very much, so I'm inclined to take his word when it comes to you, and take you at" – her eyes flinched aside slightly from the scars, not to mention his other charms, and he suspected both of them of sneaking a surreptitious look at his teeth although he had at least shaved meticulously – "face value. But you will understand that Hermione's father and I are very concerned about the... security issue For example, how safe are we here, now? I'm not blind, and I can see that most of the other guests are... observing us very closely."
"Nearly all the young ones are here especially to protect us, Mum. Severus is, is loved, and protected, wherever we go." That might not have been true a year ago, but his terrible martyrdom had made even most of the people who had once despised him feel stricken by guilt and eager to make up for having judged him harshly in the past. Even if he had rather encouraged harsh judgment, out of a combination of tactical scheming and wilful bloody-mindedness.
Severus smiled at her, stroking the back of her hand with his thumb. "And the rest are just gawping at my, ah, injuries, because this is the first time I've been outside the school grounds since...."
"Forgive me", Jean said, "and don't answer if you don't want to, but I was wondering, ah... Hermione said that you had... lost limbs? But you seem to be, um...."
Severus smirked, turned over his left hand and rapped his knuckles sharply on the table.
"It's wooden? Oh, but that's extremely good – I never would have guessed. How does it work?"
They ended up having a gruesomely technical conversation over tea and cakes – pistachio ice cream with wafers and sweet tea for Severus; cherry torte and coffee for Hermione; tea and coffee cake for her parents – halfway through which Severus detached his lower right leg and showed the Grangers how the nerve connections worked, to the amused approval of Hermione, the alarm of some of their audience and the suppressed horror of their hostess.
"And you say these have actual sensation?" Jean exclaimed, peering rather myopically at the contact surface. "You can feel the, the toes and so on like a real foot?"
"Well – almost. There's an, ah, a slight loss of fine sensation."
"Even so...."
"Yes. And of course there's a, a practical advantage of sorts in combat, although I suppose that would also apply to M— to non-magical prosthetics. Any spell or, ah, non-magical attack which hits a prosthetic won't be experienced as pain and won't necessarily affect my natural body at all, other than that I could tell that the prosthetic had been hit."
"I can see why Adrian was so impressed with magical medicine", Oberon commented. "This is a better neural interface than anything we currently have in the norm— the non-magical world."
"Prosthetics even better than these – ones which don't need to be buckled on, or even become permanently integrated into the body, and which have completely normal or even enhanced sensitivity, while remaining magically-isolated in the case of spell-damage or exposure to poisons or fire – are possible, although I do not currently have access to the, ah, technology. I have slightly mixed feelings in any case. These... they do eventually become irritating and have to be removed, at least while I sleep. I'm not sure whether a permanent implant would feel like a part of my own body or... well, like an itch I couldn't scratch."
He winced suddenly, looking down at his mismatched hands. "Ironically, one of those who disarmed me has just such an implant. I suppose that was what gave him the idea...." Hermione laid her hand over his, and he gave her a fleeting, sideways smile.
Oberon cleared his throat. "Forgive me, I don't wish to touch on an, ah, painful subject, but I understood from Adrian that the... Defeaters, is it? I have some difficulty following his accent."
"Death Eaters", Severus said woodenly.
"Ah. Thank you. Anyway, I understand that they were able to capture you in some form of raid last summer, and also to smuggle you back into the school after you were, ah, injured. Hermione wrote to us that she was safe so long as she was with you, because you were so heavily guarded – but how certain are you of your own security? Are you quite certain that you aren't, ah, a magnet for future attacks?"
Severus clenched his fists, both the flesh and the willow-wood, and drew a deep breath. "Please believe me, if I truly thought that being close to me was putting Hermione in more danger, I would not allow it: her safety is of paramount importance. But any close associate of Potter's is automatically in increased danger, especially one who is, um, of Muggle parentage, and by being near me she is covered by the increased security which now surrounds me.
"The raid in which I was captured was an unexpected brute-force attack on a party returning from the village, carried out with the specific purpose of taking me in order to – to find out what information about the Death Eaters I had shared with the Order. That's an, um, I suppose you would say a paramilitary group, dedicated to undermining the Death Eaters, and for which I was, ah...."
"Adrian said you were a 'secret agent', yes. He sees you as some form of magical... Dick Barton, if you know who that is."
"I grew up Muggle, and my family were too poor to afford a telly, so yes, I heard the version that was on the radio in the early seventies. Leaping free with one bound is sadly still beyond me, although I do have some ideas in that line...."
Jean leaned forwards. "And this... paramilitary order. Are they... above board?"
"I'm a member, Mum," Hermione said firmly, "and so are Harry and Ron and, yes, Tonks and Kingsley, that's the chap she's sitting with, who are... I'm not sure if you'd call them police officers or soldiers, but they work for the government, anyway. And yes, we're... well, the leader is the Headmaster and he's also a senior official in the government, sort of – a bit like being in the House of Lords – so it's a bit like MI5, only not quite so... official."
"And unpaid", Severus added sourly. "Anyway... the initial attack was carried out via a tunnel from the village to the school which had caved in several years ago, so it was assumed to be safe. Unfortunately the village end was inside a warehouse which was standing empty, so they were able to conceal themselves while they secretly re-dug it. When they had –" He clenched his fists again and drew a shaky breath, and Hermione laid a steadying hand on his forearm, under her mother's beady eye. She could feel his muscles jumping with tension. "When they had wrung from me all that they thought that I knew – a surmise in which they were not entirely correct, I might add – I was returned by taking a boat across the loch and then infiltrating the castle via the watergate, which has a connection to passages which in turn connect to the Potions department. Both routes have since been sealed with wards and with round-the-clock surveillance."
"I hope there isn't any other way in that your security people haven't thought of", Oberon said soberly.
"So do I, believe me."
"So", Jean said brightly, after her third round of tea and her second of cake, "I realise it's terribly clichéd and all that, but what are your long-term plans? With Hermione, I mean. Should we be expecting marriage? Children?"
Hermione went scarlet. "Mu–um, we haven't even decided that ourselves, yet! We can't even think about stuff like that until after the war!"
"Indeed." Severus smiled at her fondly, a fact not lost on her parents. "Whatever the... precise technicalities, we do however have plans for a lifelong... academic collaboration. With... other forms of lifelong collaboration as a definite option, if Hermione so chooses." He couldn't imagine his own preference being in any doubt.
"Well, I thought that went quite well. Really, it wasn't bad. Didn't you think it went quite well?"
"Calm down, do. I thought it went very well – a lot better than I feared, at any rate. Despite some of the questions being a bit... discomfiting."
"That was a brilliant save you made at the end: I thought I was going to die of embarrassment! But they both really understand academic collaboration, especially when it relates to me."
"Just think," he said sourly, "our children if any could have huge noses and buck teeth."
She giggled suddenly. "At least, I don't think it's possible for hair to be greasy and frizzy at the same time."
"There's a first time for everything."
The front-page headline in The Prophet read "HERO, HERMIONE IN HOGSMEADE HARMONY", with a secondary, inside story headed "MEET AND GREET". The latter featured the "heroic young couple" meeting the Grangers at Madame Puddifoot's, and somebody's Pensieved memory had been edited into a moving snapshot showing the moment when he had had to refer to his captivity and Hermione had laid her hand on his arm in comfort, making it look as if he were about to cry. But he supposed that Albus was right and that being portrayed as nobly tragic was better than most of the alternatives, even if it did make him itch.
"We note", the second article added, "that these two lovebirds have recently taken to wearing favours in each other's house colours." So much for discretion. A third article, entitled SAFE AS HOUSES?, listed the security measures which surrounded him: the guards at the door, the elaborate wards, the detailed surveillance which should, according to the paper, filter out anything larger than a castle rat.
What was more surprising was the lead story in the special, rushed edition of The Quibbler, which proclaimed "A Marriage of True Minds?", accompanied by a very flattering drawing of himself and Hermione poring over a book together, and treating their relationship as both a fait accompli and a promise of future research (some of it rather odd). He was relieved to see that it wasn't possible to tell what book it was: there were so many possibilities, not all of which he wished to make public.
When asked about it, Luna smiled vaguely and said that she had written the story months ago and told her father to have it type-set and ready to roll whenever she gave the word.
Hermione's campaign to replace bad sexual triggers with good ones was fighting an uphill battle, but still some significant progress was being made, even in less than a month. He now rarely associated the sounds and scents that accompanied sex with anything other than pleasure: especially since they came with tactile distractions which bore very little resemblance to anything he had experienced as a prisoner. He was even willing to give the pretty little Oriental pictures in that most private of books a whirl – at least the less improbably athletic ones which could be attempted sitting or lying down. He had no desire to risk his hip collapsing again when that might mean dropping Hermione as well as himself. As it was the rag rug, which was big and thick enough to double as a tatame mat, had been moved to the middle of the room where they could roll about as much as they liked without falling off the bed or colliding painfully with furniture.
It was called, he believed, the Scissors position, and he had no-one but himself to blame. It was his own fault for daring Hermione to try it: but it had appealed to him because he could manage it lying on his limbless left side, without the prostheses. Tight hot waves pulsed through his loins as Hermione twisted round with his right leg, what was left of it, lying between hers, grinding her crotch against the inner side of his thigh, her back partially turned to him and her right leg lifted and hooked back over his arm. As she cried out sharply and kicked her right heel hard into his ribs he clutched her raised right thigh tighter in the crook of his arm, clenched his thigh muscles to clamp his leg against her belly and hold her fixed in position, since he had no feet to brace with, and managed against the odds to thrust again, again, harder, deeper into her slick heat, trying to drive her to climax before he cramped up completely.... His thigh was feeling the strain, he could feel the little muscles where his leg met his groin starting to give but he overrode the pain and thrust again with all the force he could muster as she bucked against him, keening like a bird, and he craned forwards, meaning to nibble erotically along the edge of her sharp, freckled right shoulder-blade as she clutched at the rug, gasping, and Crookshanks' flat face interposed itself into his field of view, breathed fishily up his nostrils and made an interrogative "Mraow?"
"Severus – are you all right?"
"Stiff – and not in a good way ow – Ow!" Flat on his back on the rag rug, he gasped for breath and blinked blurrily at the ceiling, trying to clear the scent of sardines as Crookshanks purred vigorously in his ear. "I think I pulled something... other than you, I mean." At least being startled almost into a convulsion had resulted in a dramatic double climax.
"Well – that was fun", she said, hands on hips, arching her back and working her shoulders from side to side, "but we probably should warm up to it gradually next time – and I mean that in the gymnastic sense, you understand, not just uhm, foreplay – and shut Crooks in the bedroom. Do you want a massage?"
"Please. Otherwise I don't think I can get up – in either sense." Even if the cramped muscles were in a place which suggested interesting possibilities....
More gymnastic exercise was definitely on the cards and it was time, if he could maintain his balance, to assess how well Hermione's practice with Bulstrode was going. He supposed that what the Room of Requirement had come up with was suitable for something like what Adrian had described as a "Klingon Hunt". The room was circular, and dimly and diffusely lit. The walls and floor were padded with cushioning charms and there was no furniture, except a bench near the entrance. Instead, the room was criss-crossed by a kind of open maze of padded barriers, similar to a mattress in consistency and thickness, but extending above head height.
Holding absolutely still, he listened for the sound of Hermione's footsteps, for her breathing: but she was apparently doing the same thing. The diffuse light prevented the formation of tell-tale shadows, and the deadening effect of the padded walls made it difficult to hear which direction any sound she might make was coming from. But he had his "feel" for her, and it surely wasn't cheating to use it, since he was trying to teach her to defend herself in a war against a powerful Legilimens.
Holding his breath to avoid giving himself away, his gaze fixed at Hermione's head-height, he edged his way carefully towards the far end of the nearest padded panel, slowly, slowly, as sure as he could be that his steps were as silent as a cat's.... He drew a deep breath as noiselessly as he could manage, shot round the end of the panel with wand raised and then fell backwards onto his arse with a yell of surprise as Hermione barrelled into him at knee height.
Once his escort had peeled away, he sank gratefully into the chair and accepted a cup of tea and a Jammy Dodger from Albus, while Hermione hovered anxiously, waiting for Neville to join them. "What does this one do?" She stared, fascinated, at the whirring and clicking construction, half mechanical blossom, half steam-punk lobster.
"Well, my dear", Albus twinkled. "It explores the cloud of possibilities that surround the querant: essentially, it can tell the handler what a person isn't telling because they don't actually know...." He coughed, delicately. "Not... in detail, you understand, otherwise one could corner it into revealing all the secrets of the universe. But if I were to tell it, say, an incompletely remembered recipe for Victoria sponge, it would tell me that I had forgotten the filling, even if not what the filling actually was."
"Oh, ah – that sounds very useful for revision, actually."
"Also for cheating on exam papers. Fortunately it is, as you see, quite bulky."
Hermione was a constant support at his side, but she didn't know the half of it. Breathe. Breathe. Today might be stressful beyond measure but by tomorrow it would be done, for good or ill.
He could have given evidence by mirror-talk from the safety of his own rooms, but now that he had been outside the school grounds without spontaneously combusting it would seem disrespectful to the prisoners' families not to show up in person. Or cowardly, but if he was going to co-author a paper on his own immolation and recovery, he was going to have to get used to appearing in public in front of people who had some idea of what had been done to him.
Either that, or spend the rest of his life hiding in his rooms: but he and Hermione had an appointment with a cottage in Wales. So here he was in Albus's office, dressed in silk and waiting for the Floo connection to be set up. He noticed that the Sword of Gryffindor now had a label beneath it that declared it to be on loan "by the generosity and good fellowship of the Goblin High Council" – the fruit of Filius's bargaining for the Hufflepuff Cup.
He noticed that a heavy silver ring with a plain dark stone split by a crack – surely the cursed ring which had burned Albus's hand almost two years ago – was sitting on the same shelf, tucked under the lee of the sword as if for its protection. For the first time he noticed a faint triangular design scratched on the broken stone, and something plucked at his memory: something from a story heard in childhood, on one of his mother's few good days. Something about Death, and a wand, and a cloak like Potter's. In a world where Merlin was real and a hero of his house one couldn't just dismiss myth as fiction: could it be...? He shook his head as if clearing away a buzzing fly. There would be time enough for that if... later. Today he had other things to worry about: even if the idea that Potter's Invisibility Cloak might be the storied one that made the wearer invisible to Death Himself did have a certain charm.
At least, he hadn't had to explain his embarrassing need for what Adrian termed an Emotional Support Human. Persons who were not directly part of the enquiry were not permitted to attend, so Hermione, currently fussing nervously at his side, would be unable to go through with him: but Neville was accompanying him as a witness to Greengrass's attempt to murder him, and Albus would be there as a member of the Wizengamot. The fact that Alastor Moody would be there as well was rather less of a comfort, but as a senior Auror his testimony as to the actions of Greengrass and Patil in the Head's office would be accepted without question, and his support in other matters would be invaluable.
After much soul-searching, Severus had decided to give the Wizengamot permission to view a copy of his memory of being transported into the school by boat. The thought of the snooty bastards all seeing him like that, naked, carved open and mindless with exhaustion and pain, was mortifying but to have to describe the scene verbally would be worse, since whatever he said was likely to end up in The Prophet.
With a final deep breath and a squeeze of Hermione's hand, he stepped forwards into the flames.
"All set?" the old Auror growled softly, as they waited in the dingy stone corridor to be called in.
"Yes I – I suppose so." Severus drew a shuddering breath. "But I wish it could have waited until after the exams."
"Courage, boy. We must strike while the iron is hot."
"But can we be certain that this... colourful memory is genuine?" Pius Thicknesse, Amelia Bones' replacement as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, peered down his nose at Severus. "Professor Snape is well-known to be an expert on mind-magics: how can we be certain that he did not fabricate this memory to get revenge on Miss Greengrass for drawing her wand on him?"
"Use your head, man!" Moody snapped. "Greengrass attempted to use an Unforgivable in front of multiple witnesses. She and Patil admitted their part in conveying Professor Snape into Hogwarts, in front of me. There are multiple witnesses to the fact that Professor Snape arrived with numerous very severe injuries inflicted prior to being transported: and are you suggesting that Albus Dumbledore, of all men, lied when he stated that he had first viewed the memory in front of you almost a month before Greengrass's attempt on Snape's life? What reason would Snape have to frame one of his own house students?"
Thicknesse sniffed. "I wouldn't care to speculate on Professor Snape's motives. However, if Dumbledore confirms that this memory is the one which he viewed at the beginning of March...."
"I do", Dumbledore said firmly. "It is identical in all respects, and was copied from that original memory."
Minister Scrimgeour, for the prosecution, cleared his throat. "So, Professor Snape, there is no doubt that the two accused were present while you were assaulted by McLaggen and did nothing to prevent it, and that they then left you in a side-room with life-threatening injuries, and then went about their normal school day without alerting anyone to your presence?"
"Yes, that is correct." He tried not to flinch from the row on row of the Wizengamot, decked out in plum purple and ranked above him like the audience at a Roman arena. "But I must point out that Gr— Miss Greengrass held me responsible for the arrest of members of her family. Also Miss Patil did not injure me, or seek to do so, and she did, at least, call a halt to McLaggen's attack on me." Within the last few hours all of those purple-robed arbiters had seen his memory of himself naked and convulsing in the belly of the boat as McLaggen's boot lashed into him, as well as the memories of Aurors Moody and Tonks regarding the interview in the head's office. Here and now he was, he supposed, the lion and not the Christian, with revenge within his grasp: but he found himself reluctant to move in for the kill.
"Although my memory of my – captivity is not entirely clear, I do not believe that Miss Greengrass was involved in my, my torture, and for future reference I do not believe that McLaggen was either, until – what you saw, although in his case I am less certain. There were very few women involved in that – situation – and Miss Patil, I am quite certain, was merely present while I was assaulted by McLaggen." Seeing his own students chained into the Chair of Witness was beyond disturbing and he wasn't sure which was harder to hear: Greengrass's vitriolic self-justification or Patil's shocked realisation of what she had got her idiot self into, and he was more grateful than he cared to admit for Longbottom's solid presence and unruffled testimony.
[How would he feel if he had to give evidence against McLaggen or, worse, against Lucius or Macnair? How would he be able to bear being in the same room as his torturers, even to take them down? Fear passed through him like a wash of freezing water at the thought of being close to even one of them: yet it would surely have to be done, because the alternative was worse.]
Deep breath, deep breath. Focus on the present. "I myself, as a teenager, was present during... attacks by people whose politics I was foolish enough to share, at that age."
Minister Scrimgeour steepled his fingers. "You, however, as I understand it, abandoned the Dark Lord's cause when you realised that somebody you knew was under threat. Or have I been misinformed on that point?"
Severus winced internally at the thought of how insane with rage the Dark Lord would be if he knew that he had been truly working for the Order ever since Lily was threatened, not just since the supposed torture of Black as he had claimed. Perhaps the old bastard's scaly head would explode, and save them all a lot of trouble.
Two rows above Scrimgeour, Dumbledore held up his hand and coughed. "I feel I must point out, Minister, that Severus was and is possessed of exceptional courage. Not every young person would be willing to walk into the dragon's mouth as he did and also, ah, the conditions were different, in that Misses Greengrass and Patil would first have assumed that their professor was beyond saving, then believed that he was already dead, and then learned that he was in fact already safe. There was no point at which a possibility of saving him rested on their actions."
Severus bit back the urge to point out that they could, at least, have spared him a day and a half of silent, solitary agony on the floor of the students' potions store. Patil was probably no more foolish or malicious than he had been at her age, and Greengrass, however unpleasant, was a child of his House, and his to defend.
The Minister raised his shaggy, brindled eyebrows. "Be that as it may, Chief Warlock, we have heard from both Mr Longbottom and Auror Moody that Miss Greengrass admits drawing on Professor Snape with the intention of killing him, and using an Unforgivable Curse in front of witnesses, while being of age."
"Miss Patil was given five years which – well, at least she will have the prospect of some kind of future life, if her mind survives intact. At least there are no Dementors at Azkaban, for the moment. But Greengrass...."
Hermione patted his hand gently. She had swapped places with Luna and taken an extra shift with him, because she could see how tense and shaky he was. "I don't see that you could have done anything different: and I'm not sorry that she's going to be shut away where she can't try again."
"Neither am I, as far as that goes: I prefer not to have to worry that even my own house students might be out to get me. Bennett and his cohort of petty thugs are bad enough, but I doubt anyone of that lot would have the courage to actually tackle me. But I've been responsible for Greengrass during the school year since she was eleven, and now her whole life is gone. She will sit in a cell until she dies."
"It's a long-term project, but once the war is over, and we are war heroes, perhaps we could look at improving conditions in Azkaban. Muggle prisons, at least the ones here in the UK, concentrate on rehabilitation nowadays, and even if somebody isn't safe to release, well...." She frowned. "I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that one of the first compilers on the big Oxford Dictionary was in a secure psychiatric hospital, but he managed to collaborate through the Muggle post. And if Muggles can do it...."
"Then wizards ought to be able to come up with a way for prisoners to work and contribute remotely, yes, so long as all use of magic is strictly supervised." He clenched his fists, breathing carefully through the cold wash of remembered terror. "I would be, will be, happy to see my, my torturers in Azkaban and even fed to the Dementors, just so I knew I would no longer have to breath the same air as them and I suppose McLaggen comes into the same category, although really he's a just a, a petty thug with the brains of an earwig."
Hermione snorted at that. "Far too many hands, too, and thinks he's God's gift to girlhood."
"Hah. Yes. But somehow I can't feel the same about a child I've been responsible for since she was a first year even if – even if she wants me worse than dead. Even if she enjoyed seeing what they – reduced me to." He shivered, remembering how it had felt to be helpless in their hands.
Now that Severus was spending most of his time up and dressed, he no longer needed anyone to sit beside his sick-bed instead of in it. The weather was too warm for fires, so they had moved the bed over to the side of the room, into the angled corner next to the fireplace, to make room for the new chair: a large, square, heavily padded armchair which sat on the rag rug facing diagonally towards the foot of the bed. It looked more comfortable and inviting than the sofa or the old chair, but he was relieved that Hermione didn't choose to sit in it but instead remained standing. "I'll be all right with Draco, really I will, and I want to spend more time with him. I'm the only family he has access to now. You go and study with those two idiot boys – and sleep. You know it's less than two weeks to NEWTs, and you need to be rested if you're going for Special Merits."
Despite his words, as he watched her leave, nodding to Draco as she passed him in the doorway, he was gripped by a strong sense of trepidation. He wondered if her reluctance to go meant that she sensed something in the air; but on the other hand Sybil had told him that Hermione had no divinatory sense, and if indeed there was danger he wanted her well away from it. After donning one of his older nightshirts he reached out without looking towards the bedside table at his right, located the whisky glass by touch and downed the golden liquid in one long swallow, then grasped his wand and with a silent flick Banished the two prostheses to the wardrobe in the bedroom. He lay down in the bed, arranging himself carefully, and looked expectantly past the chair towards his godson. "Well, come in Draco, do, and shut the door."
Draco exchanged a few words with the guards outside, then closed the door and locked it. "I, um, I need to speak to you privately, and I don't want to be overheard or interrupted, if that's OK?"
"Of course. What is it?"
Draco drew his wand and cast a Muffliato around the bed. Severus looked at him expectantly, but instead of sitting down in the chair Draco remained on his feet next to it, lifting his chin with an expression of grim determination. "This." Smoothly, he reached under his shirt, produced a large grey rat and tossed it to the floor, where it warped and swelled upwards into the nightmare form of Peter Pettigrew.
Severus swore and made a clumsy lunge to grab the wand on his bedside table, but Pettigrew was faster. "Expelliarmus!" he snapped, just as James had done over twenty years ago, and the ash-wood wand sailed away from Severus's wild swipe. He felt it brush past his fingertips, too far and fast to get a purchase on, as the force of the spell slammed him back flat against the bed, his right shoulder colliding painfully with the corner post. In a jagged flash of memory he recalled that Hermione had said that it had been Expelliarmus which had hurled him into a wall and knocked him out, on the night that Pettigrew had escaped. The next moment, Pettigrew had cast Incarcerous, and his wrist and forearm were dragged back painfully, yanked up above the headboard and bound to the bedpost.
Fixed in place as he was, Severus could only cringe away from his nightmare made manifest, pressing himself against the oak headboard as if trying to burrow through it, as Pettigrew snapped the ash wand in two and threw the pieces down. Out of the nightmare quadrumvirate of Lucius, Bellatrix, Pettigrew and Macnair probably only Macnair would have been worse. "Why?" he croaked, and Draco had the grace to look discomfited.
"My father is still – my father. He contacted me and told me that getting Pettigrew here in to... see you would buy our way back into the Dark Lord's favour. I'm sorry." The back of his right hand, where the blue-green hound had been, was pale and blank.
Pettigrew laughed at that. "Seeing him is only the start." Of the four, Pettigrew was the most intensely focussed on humiliation, and the one whose idea it had been to adapt the spell intended to stabilise accident victims, and use it to force his victim to stay alive and relentlessly awake while they prolonged his suffering well beyond the point of insanity. He approached the bed, sneering, and ripped the bedclothes off as Severus cowered against the headboard, as white as the sheets under him, trying to hang on to the fabric as his nightshirt was Vanished away to leave him bare.
"Draco here tells me that after all the fun we had last year, you hate being seen so much that you wouldn't allow any portraits in your quarters, so I won't even have to bother to curse-bind any snoops into their frames while they see what I'm going to do to you."
He ran an appraising eye over his naked captive, lingering first on his crotch, and then on the scars and the gaps where his missing legs had been. "How... nice. I see they've put you all back together, so I can have the fun of breaking you to pieces again."
"Do you – do you have to?" Draco asked in a small voice.
Desperately, Severus tried to catch his godson's eye. "Draco – Draco please...."
After a second Draco dropped his gaze and looked away. Pettigrew sneered. "Don't be a snivelling little fool, Draco. The Dark Lord is going to want proof that we made a thorough example of the traitor who tried to escape him, and if you want your parents to be safe you'll join in and earn some of the credit."
Draco bit his lip and then nodded, sharply. "Very well", he said quietly.
"We'll finish what your father and I started, and then if there's time we can... experiment." Severus shuddered as his torturer walked around him, as far as the position of the bed permitted, trailing his metal fingers across his skin. "First this", Pettigrew murmured, stroking along the crease of his right thigh, still sore from his experimental sexual exertions with Hermione a few days and a lifetime ago, and the ice-cold rush of remembered terror prickled his skin and left him dizzy and sick and struggling not to wet himself. "Then the hand, the arm, one joint at a time... it's a lot to get through, but if we take five to ten minutes for each joint we should still have plenty of time for... other games." He laughed as Severus tried mutely to pull his hand free and roll away from him, tugging against the ropes which bound his wrist, then he reached out with his metal fingers and twisted savagely at his captive's nipples, one nub and then the other. "These – oh, I'm sorry, does this hurt? Or this? Oh don't cry, I won't take them quite off – yet. Everything in its proper order. Maybe Draco here can finish twisting them off, when we get to that point: it will be good practice and a trophy he can show our Master."
Severus saw Draco wet his lips, looking nervous but resolute. After a moment he nodded to Pettigrew. "All right."
"You surely can't have forgotten the list so soon, Snivellus, after I taught you to say it for me so prettily – ears, eyelids, eyes, nose, teeth, tongue, lips, then these" – with another vicious twist with both hands, making his victim gasp raggedly – "and finally...." He laid the cold metal briefly, almost tenderly over Severus's groin, smirking as his captive struggled mutely to roll away. "'First the balls and then the cock, until an arse is all I've got'" he quoted mincingly, then he smirked at Draco. "Your father and I taught him to say it so well, while he could still speak: almost like a nursery rhyme. Then we were going to flay him in strips, but I doubt we'll have time for that tonight. Pity. Maybe I'll skin his cock before I chop it off: what do you think?"
Draco looked, to do him credit, like a deer in the headlights. "I – I don't think even my father would –"
"Oh, he definitely would, boy, and he'll be so pleased with you if he knows you would too." He drew a silver fingertip slowly up the scar on his prisoner's stomach. "We'll have to open this up again, of course, Snivellus, but not till I'm ready to let you begin to die, and that won't be till after I've pared you down to a stump and ridden you till I feel you squeal and jump and beg for me. I see they regrew your fingernails," he added, pushing the furled curtain of the drapes by the headboard aside, "so while I'm – recovering between rounds and while you still have any fingertips we can play with those, good and slowly." He gripped one of the slim fingers and bent it back until it snapped with an audible pop, then reached inside his robe and drew the slender silver knife that Severus remembered with a sickening wash of pure terror – the knife which had whittled his joints apart piece by piece – and forced the point in hard under a nail, watching Severus's face turn even whiter as he fought not to make a sound.
"Plenty of time for that," his tormentor said, with a last sharp jab before he sheathed the knife again, "but we'll leave these alone, I think" – he trailed the fingers of his still-human left hand along the scars leading out from his victim's mouth as Severus strained to lean away from him, pulling futilely against his bound and bleeding hand – "and leave you your lips and your nasty, lying tongue almost till last. I do so want you to be able to suck me properly. If I get tired I'll have you suck Draco here." He turned to Draco, who smiled nervously and wet his lips again. "You deserve a reward, and it's almost more fun to watch anyway."
"Is that why you – why you betrayed James and Lily and, and Sirius – because they weren't giving you the show you wanted, any more?" His own voice in his ears sounded choked and hoarse. Dimly, as if at the far end of a very long and echoing tunnel, he could remember lying under torture, trying even in extremis to make the Dark Lord think that he and Black had been lovers to disguise the date and depth of his defection, so Riddle wouldn't realise how deeply his organisation had been compromised. Predictably, his current tormentor had been stupid enough to believe it.
Right on cue, Pettigrew cackled. "Ah yes, you were ploughing Sirius's sorry arse, weren't you: or was it the other way round? Was that why you sang so sweetly for us all when we ploughed you: because we made you miss your darling? You won't miss him when I'm done with you" he added savagely, and stepped suddenly towards the foot of the bed and aimed a Stinging Hex at Severus's anus and rectum which flared through him with a burn like acid and left him struggling desperately not to cry out or shit himself or, worse, to end up humiliatingly aroused by the sudden brute-force shock to his prostate, in front of so many watching eyes.
"And you – hated him", he gasped, angrily aware that his own eyes were watering and his nose running with the pain, "because James preferred him to you."
"Cry for me Snivellus, that's right! Snivel for me!" He aimed another hex, targeted this time at the testicles with a force which left his victim gagging on bile and struggling not to throw up. In desperation, trying to regain control, Severus fixed his gaze on the delicate, glimmering shell-and-glass windchime that Longbottom had bought for him, more than half a year ago, but Pettigrew saw where he was looking and blasted it to shards which tinkled and clattered down onto the stone floor in front of the window embrasure. "Why fight it?" he crowed, firing a third Stinging Hex at the glans as Severus jumped and jerked and bit his lip until it bled; "We both know you're going to be screaming for me long before this night is over. James was no fun after he stopped torturing you and started thinking he had to duel you instead. I used to love watching him humiliating you and making you crawl, and hexing people and making them cry just for looking at him: it was such fun knowing he, we could hurt anyone we wanted to."
He smirked as he gave the hex a final burst of power, evidently proud of himself. "That's it, Snivelly, jump for me. Oh, but you can't can you, because I took your legs away, one little bone at a time. They thought I was nothing, someone to hold their fucking cloaks while the big boys played with their toys, precious James sneered at me and called me stupid and that bitch McGonagall thought I was nothing compared to her precious stars, but I was more powerful than the lot of them together: twelve in one blow! Stupid Sirius couldn't even manage to kill you, and only fucked you when you let him: but I kept you alive while you begged for death and fucked you whenever I wanted to, and I played harder with James's toy than he ever managed."
Sweating and shaking, Severus managed to regain control of his voice. "James wanted – wanted real sport, not a canned hunt." Even if he had made sure that the odds were heavily stacked against the prey.... "You couldn't – you couldn't have him, could you – the Almighty Pureblood Quidditch God wouldn't even touch a mediocre thing like you, when he had Sirius right there. But if you were hurting people together that was nearly as good... like Lucius and Bella."
"Shut your poisonous mouth before I gag it with shit again. Once he and Sirius joined the Order and he started sucking up to that red-headed Mudblood hag they were no use to me any more – worthless rubbish, just like all those stupid Muggles I killed, and the Jorkins whore. I couldn't believe my luck when they made me Secret Keeper because oh-so-handsome and intelligent fuckwit Sirius thought that Remus was the spy: I enjoyed giving James and his ginger whore to the Dark Lord, and the Dark Lord gave me what I wanted."
"He gave you your – your hand, after you brought him back and killed Diggory to do it."
Pettigrew held up the gleaming silver hand as if it were some kind of religious icon. "He gave me this sign of his great favour after I – I alone – was willing to sacrifice my own flesh and bone to rebuild his body." Severus resisted the urge to comment that that explained why the Dark Lord had ended up even madder than he had been seventeen years ago. "You should feel honoured that I used the same knife to take you apart that I used to sacrifice my hand for our Lord. And trying to buy time by getting me to talk isn't going to help you, you snivelling traitor. You sold us out for your arse-fucking boyfriend so your death should commemorate that." He aimed another internal Stinging Hex and Severus clawed at the sheet under him and at the lambswool fleece beneath it, put there in another world for his comfort, as his back arched, fighting to breathe through the pain and the unwanted stimulation and keep control of his bowels, and wondering blurrily whether, if he hadn't told that lie about Black, his punishment might have been less aggressively sexual. But after all he had really defected because of Lily, and they would assume his interest in her had been about sex even though it hadn't really been. And that betrayal had been unimaginably greater: nearly seventeen years of treachery, instead of the one year they imagined.
"Diggory was nothing, an annoyance – you're going to beg me to give you the quick death I gave him, but yours is going to be as slow and degrading as I have time to make it." He licked his lips in a lascivious, performative way, enjoying seeing his victim shudder and try again to turn his torso away and protect his groin, almost burrowing into the pillows against the headboard. "I loved watching Macnair and that lot making you beg. Now Draco and I will have to do all the work ourselves, won't we boy?"
He looked pointedly at Draco, who nodded, his mouth set in a grim line. "That's right."
"Prove it!" Pettigrew snapped, as sharp as a whip. "Make him cry!"
"Please..." Severus pleaded quietly, but Draco bit his lip, nodded curtly to Pettigrew and pointed his wand, aiming a targeted stinger at his godfather's mouth which made him gasp and jerk his head back in sudden agony, feeling as if hot wires were being jabbed through his teeth and up into his facial nerves, and thence to his eyes and nose, which ran with water as he let out a thin whimper .
"Nice", Pettigrew said approvingly. "But next time, don't be so squeamish. You'll need to get used to hitting 'em in the privates if you're going to please your dad, and our Lord. That's the way to make 'em really squirm – see?" he said, demonstrating. "Just look at him wriggling and jiggling." Severus gasped and writhed and jolted as his tormentor held the hex steady, fighting not just not to cry out again but not to point out that Pettigrew himself was too squeamish to say the word "genitals", and he wasn't sure which fight was harder. When he was there he would have said it, while he could still think and speak, even knowing the punishment that would follow.
After what felt like eternity Pettigrew lifted the hex. "Bellatrix likes to hurt 'em so much that they lose all sense of who they used to be and just do whatever she wants without even thinking about not doing it, but your dad and I think that humiliating 'em while you hurt 'em, making 'em do things they still know they don't want to do, hurts more than just pain on its own. Your dad could spend hours of wand-play making his dear friend Severus come when he didn't want to, without laying a finger on him, or anything else inside him. And you can build it up from just enough so they can still talk but they can't ever get comfortable or get any rest, all the way to making them scream for their mothers, or make them writhe and beg for days without risking killing them.
"I made old Snivellus here beg for a week, once, before I got bored" he added, and chuckled, cosily, as Severus flushed, remembering what was probably coming. "It was a great way to keep him from resting or getting any relief when we were too busy with other things to pay him proper round-the-clock attention. After a week his mouth had dried out so much from begging that he couldn't do anything except squeak and he was too dry to suck properly, so I lifted the spell and let him drink my piss. I didn't even have to force him: by that point he'd swallow anything that was wet.
"Anyway, since Snivellus only has one hand, thanks to me", he went on, forcing his thumbnail under the already damaged nail and bending it back until his victim jerked against the ropes, tears of pain running from his eyes and nose again, "or none, after I've finished carving this one to bits as well, he's not going to be able to stop us from doing anything we want with him, so we'll have plenty of time for you to practice and get the hang of it."
He smiled at Severus happily, and licked his lips. "I'm going to enjoy your helplessness so, so much, and I have so many plans for our last evening together, and for Draco's... education. We might as well both put that vicious mouth of yours to good use before I take your tongue." He began to pace around the bed, ecstatically contemplating that helplessness from every angle like an artist viewing a sculpture in progress as Severus hung panting, curled on his left side and partially suspended by the bound arm which was wrenched back behind him, his face turned towards the fireplace – the only corner of the bed that Pettigrew could not easily reach, because the swelling curves of the stone serpents partially blocked the gap between wall and bed – and his lips clamped tightly shut. "I've been thinking about it for months: I'm only sorry I won't have months to carry it out as slowly as you deserve, but I'll just have to do the best I can."
He drew the slender knife again and began to trail the point down the scar on his victim's belly, scratching lightly and leaving a very thin line of blood that burned like a papercut. As he twitched under the sharp point, trying to stay desperately still, in the corner of his eye Severus saw Draco stiffen and watch the knife's progress as if hypnotised by it, licking his lips nervously, his knuckles white where he gripped his wand and his other hand clutching the back of the armchair as Pettigrew delicately drew the stinging cut down the line of the scar to the end, and then on down to finish with a delicate jab to the tip of the glans.
"When your guts are ropes wrapped round the bedposts till you can't twitch without tugging on them and you've choked on my cock and sucked me off for an hour or two I might be so pleased with you that I'll be willing to let you die. Draco tells me we have eight hours, so there's plenty of time for that. And then, I think, after I take your traitorous tongue we'll have this off" – Severus wanted urgently to be sick as he felt the moist soft hand grabbing suddenly at his genitals and beginning to fondle them crudely – "and gag you with it for darling Hermione to find, while I Engorgio myself until I tear you open and ride you to death." He laughed as Severus bit his lip again and tried to pull away, unable to avoid responding at least slightly to that sweaty grip. "Does that prospect... excite you, Snivellus? Wil you come for me again and again, squirting white ropes like a fountain and squealing like a girl when you feel me inside you, like you used to do?"
He continued to stroke and pinch as Severus fought a losing battle to shut down his reactions. "How – how do you expect to get away with this?" he gasped.
"Well, now, I've given that a lot of thought, ever since I saw the stories in the Prophet about your... daring to think you have a right to whore yourself out to somebody when you want to, instead of when the Dark Lord decides. Your body is mine," he snarled suddenly, giving a vicious twist, "and I mean your 'lovebird' to know that. Another bloody Mudblood bitch: but then you're a Mudblood too, aren't you, Snivellus?" He punctuated it with a second sharp twist. "Aren't you?"
"My – my father was a Muggle, yes."
"Say it!"
"Mublood! – I'm a Mudblood!"
"After I've finished with you your precious Mudblood whore is going to see plenty of your blood, believe me." Blood as clear a red as any man's was already tricking slowly down from Severus's right hand, still bound tightly to the bedpost, and pooling stickily in the crook of his elbow as well as smearing his stomach and glans so he was, he thought distantly, already wearing her house colours. "I intend to draw the bed curtains to hide you from those blood-traitors at the door, then when dear Hermione arrives in the morning Draco here will let her in, and then we'll silence her and bind her into that chair before opening the curtains and letting her see what's left of you." He paused, stroking and fondling again, as Severus fought to keep control of his ragged breathing. "Maybe I'll leave just a little life in you and curse-bind you to stay alive for a few hours so she can watch you die. Do you think she'll enjoy that? Then I'll become the rat again and Draco and I will simply... walk away."
He looked at the broken pieces of wand on the floor, thoughtfully, then waved his own wand to enlarge them. "Lucius was going to impale you as a gift for Dumbledore, wasn't he, but we'll have to improvise. Dumbledore was meant to watch you die without being able to do anything to help you, and the Prophet says it was your Mudblood slut who defied the Dark Lord and kept you alive and we all saw the pretty photo' of her comforting you while you cried about your just punishment, so it will be a fitting punishment for her to spend four hours watching you die with your arse leaking shit and spunk and a broom-handle made from your own wand stuffed up it, gagging on your own cock in a cat's-cradle of your own intestines, before I lift the spell and let her summon the old fool to view your corpse. The pain of your death will be... unimaginable" he purred, clearly enjoying imagining it. "It will be a true work of art. Are you going to be sick?" he added with interest, although behind him Draco looked almost equally shaken. "No? Pity – I thought I might have the fun of making you eat it again. Maybe later. There's a lot to get through tonight, and we have to start somewhere." He let go, stepped back and raised his wand. "Crucio!"
Severus arched and convulsed as the sudden fire ripped through him, the hot needles jabbing hard into every nerve from his already sore and abused genitals, nipples and back passage to his guts, his skin, his teeth and eyes, the facial nerves again, his torn nail, even the roots of his hair as he clutched desperately at the mattress and tried in vain not to scream, feeling himself lose control and wet himself in a hot spurt and his bowels letting go shamefully as the needles jabbed again and again; his arm was wrenched almost out at the shoulder and the scream forced its way out anyway and tore at his already torn throat, every second feeling like an eternity of agony until finally, finally Pettigrew lifted his wand clear and let him drop back to the bed, panting and shaking. Even the Dark Lord's curse was not more intense although the Dark Lord, as he knew from bitter experience, could keep the curse coming for up to twenty minutes, or until the victim suffered a fatal cerebral haemorrhage, whichever came first.
Pettigrew, at least, had limits and was himself panting with the exertion. "That will do to begin with", he said, passing off his loss of strength as a choice. "We don't have time for you to lose consciousness, and making you writhe will be so much more fun after I've gutted you." He fondled his victim's now damp groin again, letting his fingers trail slowly down the perineum to probe at the anus, his pupils dilating as he felt Severus's answering, reflexive dilation and desperate flinch, then strolled up the side of the bed to wipe his now wet and dirty fingers across the man's tightly clamped-shut lips. "Now – face down or face up? Face up, I think, at least to begin with, so I can watch your expression as you come for me. I want to savour this, and we can turn you over and whip the skin off your skinny arse later, if we have time."
He stood back, eyeing the bed. "First let's put you where I can get at you. I want us both to be properly... ready. I've missed having my fun with you so much while the Dark Lord was playing with your mind instead of letting all of us play with your scrawny arse, so I want to enjoy the view. Once I've broken you in I want Draco to have a try: it's high time he learned how to make it really hurt, so he can assist his father with interrogations, and then maybe I'll have you suck me at the same time. Do you remember how much fun it was, taking it up the arse and in the mouth at the same time?" Severus swallowed reflexively, remembering all too well, and Pettigrew laughed. Behind him, Draco's expression was guardedly neutral. As if he felt Severus's eyes on him he looked up and met his godfather's gaze with a steady, hooded stare.
With a complex wave of his wand Pettigrew shortened the bed to the length of Severus's torso, so that his head and shoulders were against the headboard and his buttocks were at the extreme edge of the bed, then cast Incarcerous again to bind what was left of his right leg to the re-positioned bedpost, leaving him horribly exposed and unable to get away even by a few inches. His torturer laughed. "See what I mean, Draco? Hitting 'em in the privates hurts like nothing else short of Crucio, without any risk of losing consciousness, and without the leg in the way you can really see where you're aiming. Like this!"
As his target squirmed miserably, mortifyingly aroused and trying vainly to cover himself from view, Pettigrew smirked at the sight and then sat himself down at the edge of the large, soft armchair, hitched up his robe, spat noisily in the palm of his human left hand and began to stroke himself to hardness, licking his lips.
"How – how did you...." Severus gasped, unable to look away, and sickly aware of how he himself must look to the onlookers. "The guards...."
"Won't hear you, even when I make you scream yourself inside-out, because your own spell will stop them from hearing you: such a clever idea of yours. I remember you using it at school. But if you're wondering how I managed to penetrate your defences..." He smirked at that, giving his shaft an extra, luxurious pull and then smoothing his hand over the glans: as his cock twitched in response he shifted his hips restlessly, moving slightly farther back into the chair.
"James and Sirius did have their uses, before James decided he wanted to impress that fat ginger cow. I'm sure you always wondered how we always managed to find you on your own, however hard you tried to hide? They made a spelled map which let us see where you and your friends and any staff were at any time. We used to laugh so much when you tried to tell the staff or the ginger whore that we kept getting you on your own without any witnesses, and everyone thought you must be lying! Draco here stole the last remaining copy from that whining cur Remus and sent it to me, so I would be able to violate all your precious protections.
"So you see", he said gloatingly, "all of this, the very idea of imagining that anyone in the whole world cared about you, it was all just a dream the Dark Lord gave you, so we could have the fun of breaking you all over again, just when you imagined yourself safe. You never left our care, and all the friends you thought you had, Avery, Mulciber, Lucius, they were all only ever just using you, and they all enjoyed... using you" he said, stroking lovingly and caressing his lips with his tongue, "so, so much last year. Even your beloved godson here sent me the Map that shows the safe way in, and soon he's going to have the pleasure of ploughing you till you come screaming his name." He waved his hand towards Draco who was also licking his lips, his pupils dilated and his breathing tense. "You can see how eager he is, but the first dance is mine."
Idly, as he continued to stroke and tug at himself with the moistened human hand, he used the wand held lightly in the other, silver hand to let off another targeted Stinging Hex, first to the exposed anus again and then the testicles, laughing to see his victim squirming and fighting not to become more aroused as a thin, undignified squeal of pain and a second spurt of blood-tinged urine escaped his diminishing control, fractured as it had been by the Cruciatus. "A pity I don't have the sensitising potion any more, but if I sting you inside the arse enough times before we start that's nearly as good." He snapped off another shot to prove it. "That's six, I think – a few more should have you ready to sing for me."
"Which – which is it, then?" Severus croaked hoarsely, feeling slightly dissociated and rather sick; trying hard to keep still and force away the vivid memory of how much worse the pain caused by Pettigrew's burgeoning erection could get, but unable to make himself look away from that hypnotically caressing hand as Pettigrew slid farther back in the chair, very clearly enjoying himself.. "How can you leave me for, for Granger to find or, or punish her for helping me survive, if Granger is just a dream the Dark Lord put into my mind?"
"Shut your smug nasty mouth until I'm ready to plug it. You're going to scream and come for me and beg me to let you suck me instead of playing with my little knife so many, many times before I'm done with you tonight." His eyes were glassy and his mouth almost drooling as he sank back luxuriously into the soft, padded depths of the chair, still stroking his shaft lovingly with a saliva-coated palm until he was visibly hard and eager, almost climaxing already at the thought of the pain he was soon going to be causing with it. "Did you truly imagine that anyone would ever want you for anything except to use you like the whore you always were? Do you know what you are, Snivellus?"
"Emmental" Severus said clearly, and smiled a beatific smile. "Yes", he said happily, tasting the summer gold of the Felix felicis on his tongue as he shrugged Potter's Invisibility Cloak off his left arm. With two flicks of the hawthorn-and-hippogriff-feather wand which was gripped in his prosthetic fingers, he dismissed the ropes which bound him, as the arms of the armchair deftly plucked the enemy wand from Pettigrew's silver hand and clutched him firmly to Horace Slughorn's ample bosom. The Extendable Ears in the chimney that was well within ten feet of the bed dangled into view, down from his office on the floor above where Alastor and Nymphadora sat listening, as the hound on the back of his godson's hand wagged its tail blurrily under the film of makeup. "I'm a piece of cheese. Welcome to the trap, Pettigrew."
"Emmental" was of course the safe-word with which to spring the trap. Now you can see why this chapter took years to work out: not just the meeting with the Grangers, but the scene with Pettigrew. Bear in mind that even though people tend to see him as weak and negligible, even in the books Pettigrew was a stone-cold killer and a mass murderer who personally killed at least thirteen people (twelve Muggles and Cedric) while being an accessory in the deaths of two more (Frank Bryce and Bertha Jorkins), whose expression was "avid" when he saw that James and Sirius were about to attack Severus, suggesting quasi-sexual and voyeuristic enjoyment of cruelty, and who preferentially served bullies: the sort of person who in the real world would probably be an enforcer for a drug baron. He was established as a prime mover of Snape's torment in the original Missing in Action fic, where it was he who suggested keeping Snape alive under torture and starvation almost indefinitely, and he who devised a spell to do it.
The scene had to thoroughly incriminate him, but in a realistic way – his confessions had to come as odd, scattered comments mixed in with other action and conversation, not as a single info-dump. It had to be terrifying, exhausting, gruelling in order to set up the sharp reversal at the end, and be in character for the gloatingly sadistic version of Pettigrew already established in Missing in Action – and also drag on a bit, for reasons which will become apparent in the next chapter. It had to direct attention away from the fact that Draco was play-acting and that Snape was stringing Pettigrew along to get him to thoroughly incriminate himself (both by admitting to past crimes and by casting an Unforgivable in front of witnesses).
It also had to realistically qualify as torture, because obviously Pettigrew wasn't just going to stand around talking and incriminating himself for half an hour when he only had one night in which to make an example of Snape. That torture had to be emotionally extreme, highly sexual and use Snape's consensual relationship against him, to conform with what we know abut the torture he already experienced as established in Missing in Action, whilst being as far as possible miserable and deeply revolting rather than erotic, and not actually causing him any serious injury or more additional trauma than he can handle fairly easily: hence, Pettigrew concentrating mainly on humiliating but not damaging Stinging Hexes and on savouring an anticipatory terror which Snape was in fact mostly faking. And the twist at the end had to have been flagged in advance by previous conversations about the Map, makeup, being able to cast a spell on a prosthetic without affecting the natural body, and Draco's acting skills, if you were really paying attention, without being too blatant about it.
Alert readers may have noticed at the time that Snape put on one of his horrible old nightshirts in the expectation that whichever one he wore was going to get Vanished or torn off him, and that he had to arrange himself (and the Invisibility Cloak) carefully before calling Draco to come in; that it didn't actually say that the golden liquid in the whisky glass was whisky; that Snape has three prostheses but Banished only two; that whilst Pettigrew thought that Snape had only one hand, which was securely tied to the bedpost, Snape himself knew he had another hand with which he was hanging on to the mattress (in order to keep the Cloak in position); that he spent a lot of time and effort preventing Pettigrew from getting a good look at his left shoulder; that the bed was positioned close to the fireplace, ensuring both that the fireplace would be inside the cordon of any Muffliato and that it was hard for Pettigrew to walk far enough along Snape's left side to get a good look at his shoulder; that Snape didn't want to become aroused in front of "so many watching eyes" which implies more than the four owned by Draco and Pettigrew; that Snape is fighting a running battle with himself not to make smart-arse remarks, because he needs the conversation to go a particular way; that we are never told what Snape is thinking about Draco, rather than observing or saying; and that although Snape acted terrified throughout, the only times he was described as feeling terrified it was a response to something he remembered, not what was happening now or that Pettigrew was threatening to make happen in the future. He knew he could at any point put a stop to what was happening now, once he had the evidence he needed and Pettigrew was sitting far enough back in the "chair" for Horace to get a firm enough grip on him to be able to hang on if he transformed.
Even more alert readers may recall that when McGonagall sat on armchair-Horace he pinched her bum and she slapped him, which explains why Severus was relieved that Hermione didn't try to sit on him; that thanks to Luna, the headboard of Severus's bed is a focus of strong protective magic; and that Severus's wand is hawthorn, not ash. He borrowed Ron's old broken-and-badly-mended wand to use as a decoy.
Very, very alert readers might have wondered why I was suddenly making a big deal about a new chair in Snape's rooms....
"Let us not to the marriage of true minds // Admit impediment" is from Shakespeare's Sonnet 116.
The Pheasant Plucking Song, recorded by The Barrow Poets in 1980, is a well-known sung tongue-twister with suggestive possibilities.
I think that "He gave him a quelling look, which did not quell him noticeably" is from one of the works of either Nicholas Stuart Gray or P.G. Wodehouse, but until I locate it I can't swear to that.
Anwar's Patronus: it was mentioned before that Anwar is a chess champion, beaten only by Ron, and a rook is both a common and very Snapey Eurasian corvid, found in large flocks throughout the UK, and a chess-piece, also called a castle.
Dick Barton, Special Agent was an iconic but rather camp spy thriller that was on British radio from 1946 to 1951: my mother, who heard the original, referred to it as "Dick Barton, Essel Spagent". "And with one bound, he was free" became a well-known catch-phrase and a famously lazy way of resolving cliff-hangers: Severus in this universe was captured before he had finished perfecting his wandless-flight spell. Hermione's dad is probably just about old enough to remember the tail end of the original show, assuming he is fifteen years older than Severus and was about six when it ended: I can remember listening to Churchill's funeral on the radio when I was five. Ten abridged episodes were re-broadcast in 1972.
"Greeting" is Scots for crying.
Klingon Hunting is a kind of wargame played by Star Trek fen, and involves people in costume stalking each other through the corridors of a hotel – or in one memorable case circa 1980, in and out of the trains on London's Circle Line – and sniping at each other with plastic ray-guns. There's generally an honour system for recognising whether you've been hit, and how long you should sit it out if you have been. And I really did once nail somebody during a Klingon Hunt by crouching low to the floor, then firing upwards from knee height when they rounded the corner expecting me to be at eye-level.
A Jammy Dodger is a sweet, crunchy biscuit similar to shortbread, consisting of two circular discs of biscuit sandwiching a thin layer of a red, chewy gel made from strawberry jam. The upper layer of the biscuit has a hole cut in the centre, often heart-shaped, through which the red filling is visible.
William Chester Minor was an American Union Amy surgeon who moved to England after the American Civil War, had a mental breakdown and murdered somebody while suffering from delusions, and was then confined for 28 years to a psychiatric hospital, where he performed sterling research work for the Oxford English Dictionary.
Note that because this timeline diverged from canon at the end of OotP, there was never a Slug Club party in Hermione's sixth year and she didn't go to that party with McLaggen in an attempt to make Ron jealous.
"Bosom" was originally a unisex term, and in any case I'm sure Horace has moobs. If you are seeing this text, your browser does not support inline frames: to select a chapter you will have to return to the <a href="../Lost_and_Found.htm">title-page</a>
