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
Be warned that this chapter includes a very bizarre scene in which Snape is directly processing fairly graphic and extremely dark memories of sexual abuse whilst having consensual sex. I don't normally go in for very detailed "lemon" scenes, either reading or writing them, since I usually find them quite boring: but this one represented an important step in Snape's ability to deal with his trauma. And yes, it's extremely weird: I wasn't expecting it either. It just sort-of happened. If you don't fancy it, skip ahead to the next section when you come to "Hermione gazed at him levelly".
In the event, the de-Horcruxing of the Hufflepuff Cup had been quite uneventful. Pomona had insisted that her Founder's artefact not be destroyed. Albus had drunk Felix felicis, and promised faithfully to summon Severus if he were injured: but he had insisted that Severus not be exposed to a portion of the Dark Lord's soul unless absolutely necessary.
Severus in return had argued that Albus was letting him resume attempting to teach Potter Occlumency, despite the risk of encountering the Dark Lord in what passed for the boy's brain; but Albus had countered that the Dark Lord had not risked trying to inhabit Potter since he had been burned by the violence of Harry's love and grief for Black. This seemed to Severus to be a dubious proposition, since the Dark Lord revelled in the grief of others, and had no difficulty exploiting the love between parents and children. He suspected that it was the fire of Lily's sacrifice for the brat, combined with Potter's lack of self-interest, as extolled by Hermione, which confused a man (if Riddle still qualified as human) who had never for a moment considered the welfare of others, except as it might profit himself. Plus, Potter did have a certain amount of native talent in that line, despite his earlier unwillingness to apply it, and the fact that that unwillingness had led fairly directly to the death of Black had done more than Severus himself had ever managed to convince the boy not to leave his brain lying around open and unattended like a dog-eared copy of The Beano.
At any rate Albus and Filius and Bill Weasley, in his role as curse-breaker, had taken the Cup to the low hill beyond the greenhouses, where it couldn't do much damage if it blew up or shot out spinning death rays. It proved, in fact, not to have any curses on it, other than the Horcrux itself: perhaps because a cursed object would have attracted attention from the Gringotts goblins. Albus had rendered the Cup broken beyond magical repair, and thus expelled the Horcrux, by punching a hole through the bowl and then cursing the hole so that it couldn't be mended by any normal magic; and then Filius had taken the Cup, and a substantial whack of Albus's retirement fund, and paid a goblin finesmith to repair it by physical, non-magical means.
Nearly all of the student members of Team Severus, and most of the Honour Guard, were sitting NEWTs, or in Heggarty's case OWLs, and even those who weren't had end-of-year exams. Somebody (usually but not always Hermione) could still spend the night, since all of them had to sleep – he insisted on it – and he made an ideal study-partner for most subjects; but for security reasons Severus was spending most of the second and third weeks of June back in the hospital wing, replenishing the Infirmary's potions supplies, while Nymphadora kept watch from the corner, twirling her wand and experimenting with different noses.
She had taken up with Remus Lupin, according to gossip, and Severus mentally slapped himself on the wrist for wondering whether she took the form of a woman, a man or a wolf (of either sex) in the bedroom and whether, if they attempted to have sex while Lupin was in his wolf form (after being safely dosed with Wolfsbane), they ended up stuck together for half an hour, like his grandad's whippets. The thought brought up a trailing memory of – blank it out, blank it out, and in any case, these days Lupin seemed quite anodyne by comparison with....
He wasn't sure what he felt about being back in the hospital wing, which represented both horror and hope, now. It was pleasant to spend time with Poppy as a colleague again and not a patient or a client, but he knew that here he had been laid after being brought up from the store-room, on that very bed in that very side-ward where one of the kitchen elves was currently being treated for a nasty cauldron-burn, and being scolded by Rinna for protesting volubly about being ordered to rest for a few hours while the burn-paste took effect. Here, on that bed, he had been that almost-dead thing which he had seen in Hermione's memory: a rack of bones split open and breeding maggots, most of his skin either red-raw with chemical burns or flayed by the lash or bruised nearly as black as Adrian's, and the rest as white as bone, with the teeth showing horribly through his slashed cheeks and his tongue dried out like leather, all scraggly beard and matted, filthy hair, jolting and twisting in silent anguish and mindless with sleep-deprivation, but unable to be healed or even Stunned.
But here, too, he had been healed, eventually: had been cleaned and crooned over and cared for, fed and rehydrated and tucked up in bed like the loved child he had never been, and Hermione had brushed his hair, and Adrian had brought him wine, and he had begun to become... something else. Someone new.
Nymphadora took the chance to slope off and get some lunch while he was with Albus, since it was known that not even the Dark Lord Himself would tackle the sinister, twinkling old goat.
The said old goat was currently nibbling absentmindedly on the end of his quill as he compiled a list. "So, we will need, hum, samples of each of our memories of ourselves and each other in, ah, happier days when we were both whole in body if not, hah, always in mind."
"Yes, but not from so long ago that it no longer feels like our present selves, so from about two years ago, ideally, after the fiasco with Potter at the Ministry and just before you put on the blasted ring. Runespoor eggs, a phoenix tail-feather...."
"I have several of Fawkes's set aside, and for the um, the snake-skin I thought we could ask young Harry to have a word with the snakes in the Forest, and see if any of them are shedding. I presume we will have a few adders or grass-snakes in the more open, sunny areas, if the late Aragog didn't eat them all. That's assuming it doesn't need to be a full-thickness skin."
"Not so far as I can tell. But it does need to be a whole, intact shed skin. One from a decent-sized specimen should suffice: using Nagini's skin was overkill, even given that He needed a whole cauldronful."
"Perhaps Harry can find one which is about to shed, then, and offer it a nice long soak in a warm bath: I believe grass snakes are fond of water."
"You'd need to ask Hagrid." The thought of flesh-and-blood snakes was still an uncomfortable reminder of how he had seen his own flesh and bone devoured by Nagini, but at least it was a relief to know that Pettigrew had now been removed to a Ministry holding cell.
"To be sure. I imagine Harry will also still be able to help us in the matter of the unicorn blood, and Filius believes he has deciphered the spells which need to be said over the potion as it is assembled."
"And he agrees with me that with the correct charms this potion can be used to generate a prosthetic body part, rather than regrowing a human body, of sorts, as the Dark Lord did?" Simply regenerating Albus's human arm might or might not buy him some time, but would certainly not hold off the curse indefinitely.
"He has made some alterations to the spells which he believes will enable it to be used to generate a limb of, ah, the caster's own choice. And you know better than I what the effect on the potion itself will be of omitting the bone and blood and body parts."
"I recommend including a few drops of your own blood and possibly, ah, seed in order to prime the potion, and the same when it's my turn." His gut curdled at the idea of having to touch a potion containing another man's "seed", but potions, especially Dark ones, often contained unappetising ingredients. "He used 'bone of the father' as the only way he had of getting some of the, um, Adrian calls it dee-ehnay that his original body had got from his father."
"Very well. I only need to dip my arm and shoulder, so the Pensieve should be big enough."
"That's easy enough for you to say, Albus, but I'm going to need to submerge my left side in it from my shoulder to where my feet ought to be, plus the thickness of the thigh I'm trying to regenerate, and my right knee. I'm going to need enough to fill a six-foot bathtub to a depth of about ten inches. At least – ten inches once I'm in it, displacing volume." He wondered if it would be possible, in fact, to regrow his natural, flesh-and-blood limbs. But Voldemort had used an aborted and re-animated human foetus as the literal skeleton for his new body, whereas his own skeleton was incomplete: besides which there were certain advantages to a prosthetic which was fully sensitive.
"Perhaps, dear boy, perhaps, but it may be that so long as you have added some of your own, ah, essence to the brew, as Pettigrew did when he added his hand, then once I have a fully-functioning wand hand which was freshly regenerated using the potion, I will be able to Summon new limbs for you in the same way that Tom did for Pettigrew. As I believe I've mentioned, my wand is, ah, an unusually powerful one."
"About that. Albus, what exactly did you mean when you said you put on the Peverell ring because you wanted to speak to your sister?"
For the first time since they had known each other, the great Albus Dumbledore looked suddenly flustered – and shifty, although that one was less unusual.
"Well, ah, you know, the Peverell ring has a reputation...."
"I don't know, no, but apparently Xenophilius Lovegood does, according to his daughter." He saw Albus squirm uncomfortably at that. "I never really noticed the markings before, until I saw it in the case with Godric's sword and it happened to catch the light: but Lovegood tells me that that is the symbol of the Deathly Hallows, one of which was a ring used to speak to the dead, and the others an unusually powerful wand and an indestructible invisibility cloak." A cloak like the one which he himself had worn, a mere two weeks ago, when he laid an ambush for Pettigrew; and four years ago when he had attempted to ambush Black.
"Well, ah – fairytales, you know... they can be very – colourful."
"Like the stories about Obscurials? Come on – give."
Albus looked shifty again for a moment, then suddenly sighed. "Very well. I suppose there is no risk now of Tom... extracting the information."
"I fucking hope not."
"As do I, but you will see that if I had told you before, and Tom had... had forced the information from you last year, the results could have been disastrous."
"What have you been getting yourself into, you old fool?" Severus said roughly, wincing at the reminder of how much information he had spilled on the floor of the Dark Lord's prison: but he hadn't, he hadn't volunteered information they hadn't known to ask about.
"How much do you know about the, ah, Hallows?"
"As in 'hallowed' – holy, in other words. I know that there are many Muggle stories about the Hallows or Treasures of Arthur's Britain, every story with a different number of items – up to thirteen! – with different attributes, but usually some of the items connected in some way with invisibility or with Christian mythology: the Lance of Longinus (that's the spear that wounded Christ on the Cross); a ring that made you invisible if you rotated the stone inwards into your palm and closed your fist over it; an, um, a cloak that shortened and displayed a woman's bum if she was unfaithful, I seem to recall. Sometimes an actual Invisibility Cloak."
Wincing, he remembered his boyhood disappointment when his father, whose interest in Muggle mythology was one of the few things which could cut through his alcohol-fuelled rage and depression, and whose hatred of real magic stemmed partly from its failure to live up to the legends, had told him that at least two were designed to separate the "well-born" from worthless "churls" like himself. He wondered vaguely what a churl actually was – wasn't a house-carl some kind of soldier? "Meanwhile we – wizardfolk, I mean – only really have one story. There are variations, but they all say that there are three Hallows, a wand, a cloak and a stone, connected not with Jesus but with Azrael."
"That's... you possibly know more than I do, about the Muggle aspect I mean."
"Possibly. Is that what you think you have? The Eldest – Elder Wand, and the Resurrection Stone?"
For once, it was Albus's turn to smirk. "There, I know more than you do, dear boy. It's 'elder' as in wood, not seniority."
"The fuck? I use elder for making wine: it smells like cat-piss, and the branches are flat and bendy like a rubber strap. How can you possibly make a wand out of it?"
"I have to say that the wand, if indeed it is that wand, is still surprisingly flexible for one so old. I believe that the core is Re'em horn, which would give it some support whilst still being quite, ah, springy." He drew the wand and passed it to Severus, who took it rather gingerly.
"I suppose that's why it's the Elder Wand, then: no-one else was stupid enough to try to make another one. Where did you find this... mythical implement?"
"I won it in combat" Albus said shortly: "from Grindelwald. He, I believe, had stolen it from a wand-maker named Gregorovitch. The wand must be taken by force or treachery in order to transfer its... ownership. And its powers."
Severus felt the weight of the wand, flexing it gently with his fingers. "It sounds as though the wand and its ownership are in some way separate."
"Like a strongbox and its key, yes. It is possible to possess either without the other, but only he who possesses both can unlock its full potential. It always does seem to be 'he', for some reason – I suppose it has some kind of um, phallic symbolism."
Severus laid the wand down carefully on the headmaster's desk. "If memory serves, the stories my mother told me said that this wand was unbeatable, if it's truly that wand. She called it the Deathstick."
"That part, I'm afraid, is purely mythical. The wand is powerful, but it is not invincible, and nor is it proof again trickery such as, ah, poisons, or a tripwire at the head of the stairs. Most of its masters have in fact met violent ends at the hands of those who sought to possess it."
The younger man carefully pushed the wand across the desk with two fingertips, propelling it as far from himself as he could reach without obviously stretching. "What, then, is the point of it?"
"It is, as I have said, unusually powerful. It can perform feats which no other wand can, such as repairing any other wand which is broken, and restoring it to full function; or, ah, damaging an object in a way which no magic can repair, other than that of the Wand itself. I fear that if Tom were to learn of its existence, he would be determined to possess it. And it has this property in combat, that so long as its allegiance has not been won away, it cannot be used to strike at its own master, and any attempt to use it to do so will rebound on the wielder."
"I can see how that could be used to bait a trap... but what of the ring, Albus? Why would a ring which actually was one of the mythical Hallows have their symbol engraved on it? Isn't that like finding 'Made in 30 A.D.' stamped on the Lance of Longinus?"
"It, ah, was, or became, the heraldic badge of the Peverells, so I suppose they decided to set the stone into a ring and engrave it to use it as a signet ring. It's not clear whether by that point they even knew that it was the Resurrection Stone."
"If it is."
"If, as you say, it is. I did see Ariana when I put it on, but as I told you she did not speak, so it might have been hallucination or, ah, the power of the Wand."
"And then you broke it."
"I had to, to destroy the Horcrux, and it broke the more readily because it had been engraved: and, of course, stone cannot be mended by non-magical means, as gold can. It cost me... a great deal to break it, but the stone itself appears to be obsidian, so it fractured quite easily: but not, unfortunately, before the curse had migrated into my hand. I wonder now if it was the Horcrux which encouraged me to put it on: I realise now that Tom's soul-fragments can be quite... seductive."
"He always was a glib, persuasive bastard. It would be amusing, if true, to think that he had one of the greatest treasures of wizarding Britain in his hands, and didn't even know it."
"I doubt if he would care about its historical value, except insofar as it made a more impressive vessel for his Horcrux. Tom has no loved-ones to mourn and no need or desire to speak with the dead. Tom is interested only in what serves Tom. And before you ask, Harry is also a Peverell, although on a cadet line, which may have encouraged Tom to make use of his blood, and I suspect, although I cannot prove, that his Cloak, which James told me was a family heirloom, may be the third item that makes up the set. It seems both unusually effective and unusually durable: it was as potent when you used it to deceive Pettigrew as it was twenty-five years ago when James first used it to, ah, cloak his many misdeeds, and if what he told me is true it had been successfully in use for several centuries beforehand."
Severus shivered slightly, wondering whether he too had had a Hallow in his hands and not known it, and what would happen if he borrowed the ring and tried to speak to Lily. "Couldn't you have collected wally dugs or cigarette cards, like normal people?"
Albus had walked him back down to the hospital wing and was just taking his leave, on his way to a late lunch in the dining hall, when the door burst open to admit Harry, panting and with his hair sticking up like the spikes on an irate Knarl. "Oh, ah, Se— Sn— Professor. Headmaster. I need to tell you—"
"What is it, my boy?" Albus asked kindly, w
