Fic: Lost Boys 13/14 - Consequences
Oct. 26th, 2007 06:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hobgoblinnPrologue - Two Dads
Part 1 - Visions of the Afterlife
Part 2 - Little Boy Lost
Part 3 - Detention
Part 4 - An Intruder
Part 5 - Conversations with the Dead, Part 1
Part 6 - Conversations with the Dead, Part 2
Part 7 - Another Life
Part 8 - A Sudden Illness
Part 9 - Spectres of the Past
Part 10 - The Pensieve
Part 11 - The Headmaster’s Portrait
Part 12 - Choices
Title: Lost Boys, 13/14 - Consequences
Rating: FRT (PG-13)
Distribution: Sure. Let me know where it’s going. Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
snape_after_dh ficathon.
Feedback: Makes me write more. Or feel guilty for not writing more. Flames make me toasty.
Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
lady_clover, rainkatt emmessann and Wee Hob for fantastic beta work. Remaining mistakes are, of course, my own.
DISCLAIMER: The characters are the property of J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Books, and whoever else may have a hold on them. I own nothing in the Potterverse, or anywhere else, for that matter. Strictly for entertainment, and no profit is being made. Please sue somebody else. David Dursley, however, is mine. Please ask before you borrow him.
Notes: I will place a small warning here-- some mildly disturbing content in the second half of this chapter. This section took a much darker turn than I was expecting. And I should thankcmwinters for an entry on her journal, wondering when someone would write a certain pairing suggested by the opening of DH. It certainly colored my rereading of it for this purpose.
Also, I am unsure where I first encountered the phrase “Nimue preserve us.” If someone reading this knows the origin of the phrase, please let me know so I can attribute it properly. It's a wonderful phrase, similar to those invoking the Mother of God, and I sure didn't come up with it myself. But I'll happily use it.
Finally, it's the mark of a really good writer, when people mistake her story for canon.mistful is one such-- I got her description of a certain person on a train platform confused with a similar scene from DH, and I use it here. If you haven't read her “Coda to an Epilogue,” stop now and go here to read that instead. It's a much better story than this one. Please note that the links in my rec will expire in September of 2008, as the author is going on to professional status and pulling down her fanfic. I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing her the best.
***
“Well, Potter,” he said finally, a little unsteadily. “Shall we go see to that cousin of yours, then?”
The irritating boy, now a man, grinned at him, and oddly, it wasn't so irritating anymore. “Yeah. I mean, yes, Sir.”
***
The ghost promptly disappeared, and Harry trudged back up to the hospital wing, muttering darkly inventive curses only a man who’d spent years working under Kingsley Shacklebolt could have commanded.
When he got up to the hospital wing, he found Snape already sitting at his cousin's bedside, his ghostly hand holding the boy's. “He's breathing more easily,” Hermione told him, “but he hasn't come around yet.”
Snape glanced up and Harry glowered at him. “Thanks for waiting, Professor.”
Snape turned back to David. “I am a ghost, Mr. Potter,” he said mildly. “Surely you do not expect me to forgo the advantages of such a state merely for the pleasure of your company.”
“Glad to see he hasn't changed much,” Ron murmured.
Without looking his way, Snape replied, “I, for one, am sorry to see that you have, Mr. Weasley. What, pray tell, is that ridiculous growth on your upper lip? Or has Walrus become, in the years since my untimely demise, some sort of fashion statement?”
Ron spluttered for a moment as Harry and Hermione and even Neville snickered at him. Then, Ron said, looking disbelievingly at the twitching corner of his old teacher's lips, “Wait-- are you teasing me, Professor?”
The old Potions Master turned a baleful eye on him, lips still twitching slightly. “It seems to me that someone should.” And Harry and Hermione could no longer contain their laughter. Even Neville joined in with a nervous chuckle. Only Rose looked affronted. Before she could protest, however, the boy on the bed stirred, and all eyes turned anxiously to him.
David stirred then and his eyes fluttered open. “Professor Snape,” he breathed in obvious relief, as he saw the figure gripping his hand tightly. “You’re all right, Sir.” Then he looked around the room and caught sight of his nominative aunts and uncles. “Oh, I'm sorry, Sir. I didn't mean to tell.”
“It's quite all right, David,” Snape said kindly, and Harry was struck by the fact that he had never heard that tone of voice from this man. Snape continued, “They knew me, from before. You kept the secret, perhaps longer than you should have. How long have you been having dreams?”
David looked at the hand holding his, ghostly and luminescent. “Since the summer holidays, Sir. I reread Hogwarts, A History. That's where I'd seen you before. There's a picture and everything.”
Snape looked around the room, dumbfounded. “Since when am I in Hogwarts, A History?” he demanded.
Hermione said tentatively, “Since I published a revised edition ten years ago. Adding the War years. I, um, did a whole chapter on you.”
“Sweet Nimue, preserve us,” Snape breathed. “Why on Earth would you do something like that, Woman?”
“Because it was true,” she replied simply. Then she turned to David, all business. “And how are you feeling Davey?”
David grimaced. “Like somebody ran over me with a truck. I mean, a hippogriff,” he amended, seeing the blank expressions on several of the faces in the room.
“Yes, well,” Hermione said. “If you gentlemen don’t mind, I seem to have a patient now in need of my services. Harry, Ron, don’t leave your reports for the last minute again, please....”
Neville rose. “I have a bit of marking I should probably finish up,” he said, excusing himself.
“You should get some sleep,” Hermione called after him, but he just shrugged.
“Look at the time, Hermione. Breakfast’s in an hour. But don’t worry-- I’ll stick to safe topics for my classes today.”
Rose looked a bit disappointed at that. “I was really looking forward to starting fanged geraniums today,” she said, also rising. “Don’t worry, Davey, I’ll take good notes for you. And, nice to finally meet you, Professor Ghost, Sir.”
Harry saw a smile flit across his old professor's face, gone so quickly he wasn't sure he'd seen it. The ghost rose, releasing the boy’s hand. “Professor Snape,” he corrected gently. “And I am charmed to have made your acquaintance, as well, Miss Weasley.”
As Harry followed Ron and Rose to the door, he heard Snape say, “I am sure you are more than qualified to treat this illness now, Madam Weasley. However, should you require a bit more arcane knowledge about curses, or potions, please feel free to call upon me. I did make something of a study of both, in my youth.”
Hermione was blushing a little as Harry looked back from the door. “Of course, Professor. And I will certainly keep you apprised of his progress.”
The ghost nodded, then looked at the boy on the bed, tired and weak, but much improved from earlier in the night. He met the boy’s eyes. “When you are stronger, David, we will talk. And I will tell you anything you wish to know.”
David nodded. “Thank you, Professor.”
Then the ghost vanished from sight, and Harry let the door close behind him.
***
Though to all outward appearances the ghost faded in and out at regular intervals, he seldom actually left the boy’s side the entire time he was in the hospital wing. He watched his former students’ visits with decidedly mixed emotions. Neville Longbottom was a professor now, Merlin help them all. Potter and Weasley were no surprise as Aurors-- they were just the sort of idiots Snape might have expected to gravitate to such a dangerous career. What was a surprise was their competence and professionalism, the insightful questions they asked for the Ministry report, and the connections they made.
He did return to his dungeon a few times, when David seemed to want to converse privately with Granger… that is, Madam Weasley. She was the least surprising of all—calm, efficient, as frighteningly intelligent as she had been all those years ago. He watched her work with a kind of grim pride.
But mostly, Snape kept his eye on David, who slept through a good deal of the first two weeks after his ordeal, aided by the thoughtful addition of Dreamless Sleep to his morning pumpkin juice, and to his warm milk after supper. The latter was administered by Madam Weasley, but the former.... He knew it couldn’t last forever, but he could not bear the thought of what the boy might see in dreams, while he was still so weak.
One afternoon, though, Madam Weasley came into the seemingly empty room and performed a few diagnostic spells on her sleeping patient. She hesitated, frowning, then called out softly, “Professor Snape? Are you here, Sir?”
Snape made himself visible at once, as he had promised he would. He could tell from her expression, however, that she was not intent on a collegial discussion of remedies and treatments. She looked him sternly in the eye. “You’ve been dosing David with something during the day, haven’t you?”
Snape could see that she had already deduced the truth of it, so he said simply, “I have.”
Her expression softened a bit. “I thought you might. In fact, I would have done so if you hadn’t. But Sir, he’s gone as far as rest alone can take him. We need to wean him off of it now. Do you concur?”
Snape felt his heart sink at that, though he’d been expecting it. “Yes.”
Madam Weasley was studying his face, which he was doing his best to keep impassive. “It will be difficult for him now,” she said gently. “He will start to dream again.”
There was an alternative, one Snape had been giving considerable thought to, during the long quiet watches of the night. He hesitated, then said, “As you are no doubt aware, Madam, there are a number of memory modification spells and potions....” He let the suggestion hang in the air, his eyes on hers.
Madam Weasley nodded. “Yes. But as you are also aware, Professor, such therapies have side-effects. Davey has enough problems in that area as it is. You may recall, for instance, the effects they had on a boy named Neville Longbottom, some years ago.” He flinched involuntarily, and she went on, “I am reluctant to administer such remedies until other avenues have been exhausted. Certainly I shall not do so without his informed and drug-free consent. And the consent of his parents.”
Snape looked away. “I am unable to perform such delicate magic in my current state,” he admitted.
“I know. Or I suspect you would already have tried. But Professor, I think Davey is made of sterner stuff than you give him credit for.”
Snape felt a cold rage rise within him. “You have no idea, Woman, the things he is likely to have seen, the things I’ve done,” he hissed viciously.
She did not even recoil from him. Instead she said, quite calmly, “Pardon me, Sir, but I do. It should come as no surprise to you that I did extensive research for my book. A number of your former... colleagues, were eager to share quite detailed and damning information about you.”
That brought him up sharply. He blinked, then looked at her, surprised to see that while her expression was grim, it was not.... He had no idea what he’d expected it to be. Horrified? Disgusted? Pitying?
She went on, her voice carefully dispassionate now. “I have made something of a study of the survivors of war and other trauma, over the years, Sir. They tend to have this one thing in common: they made a deal with the devil to get through it. They did things that would have been unthinkable to them, under normal circumstances. I have no doubt you did the same. And you did survive. Long enough to help Harry when he needed you most. There is no shame in that.”
Snape could not bear her steady compassionate gaze any longer. He fixed his eyes instead on the boy’s lamp, so odd and delicate, on his bedside table. After a moment, he found his voice, raspy and a little broken. “How long?”
“He will probably wake in a few hours for supper. I suspect he will doze off afterwards. But he will certainly dream tonight.”
Snape sank into the chair drawn up beside the bed and took the boy’s hand in his, still not able to look at her. “Then, with your permission, Madam, I shall attend him.”
She nodded. “I think that would be best, Sir.” She watched him a moment longer, then turned away.
Snape sat there alone with the boy as the afternoon light waned and shadows lengthened. He disappeared briefly when the boy woke and Madam Weasley sat with him while he picked at his evening meal. But he reappeared as the boy dozed off again and Madam Weasley took his tray, giving the ghost a nod of acknowledgment as she left the room. He sat once again and waited, as the shadows deepened, making no move to light a lamp or candle. Watching the boy’s deep, even breathing. And waiting.
****
The boy whimpered in his sleep, his breathing becoming erratic, eyes moving rapidly under the lids. Snape tightened his grip on the boy’s hand and murmured soothing words. The boy relaxed, and for a moment Snape thought he had drifted back down to sleep. But then a raspy whisper pierced the darkness.
“Professor. Are you there?”
Snape cast a dim lumos, then lit the boy’s bedside lamp. “Yes.”
David’s face was pale, but he also seemed relieved. He stared at the ceiling overhead for a time, as Snape grasped his hand and projected warmth into it. Then the boy said, in a stronger voice, “I was having a dream.”
“I gathered as much. An unpleasant one, from all indications.”
“Yeah.” David lapsed into silence again, his eyes far away. Snape mustered all his courage to break that silence.
“Tell me.”
David looked at him in surprise. But Snape kept his eyes steady, fixed on the boy’s unflinchingly. The boy nodded slowly.
“All right.” The boy moistened dry, cracked lips with his tongue, and Snape helped him take a sip of water from the glass on his bedside table. Then the boy lay back against his pillow and said, “I saw a woman. Suspended above a table. She… she begged you for help. By name.”
Snape wanted to look away, but he forced himself to keep his eyes fixed on David. “Yes. She did.”
“Who was she?”
“Professor Charity Milwyn Burbage. Hogwarts Professor of Muggle Studies from 1986 to 1996.”
“Professor. Like you.”
Snape smiled sadly. “Nothing like me, David.”
“Did you love her?”
Snape thought for a time how best to answer that. “She had reason to believe I... cared for her.” The reply was delicate, but not evasive. But the boy was not nearly as naive as Snape had hoped.
“Were you lovers?”
Snape thought about lying, but something in the boy’s eyes compelled the truth. “A few times, over the years.”
“And you were friends.”
“After a fashion.”
“You watched her die. Without showing any emotion at all on your face.”
“I did that by not having any emotion at all about it.”
David thought about that for a minute. Then he said, very softly, “Tell me about her.”
Snape began haltingly, listing her academic credentials, her publications. David had read some of her papers for class. But at David’s gentle probing questions, he found himself remembering and relating all kinds of things. The way the sunlight looked in her hair. How she liked ginger biscuits. How she could do impressions of their students that left him helpless with laughter when they were alone, and hard-pressed to contain himself when they were not. How she thought Albus’ robes were indicative of a mental disorder. How she liked to walk in the warm summer rain up from Hogsmeade.
“That’s why she died, isn’t it?” Snape said, almost to himself. “Death Eaters must have captured her on the way back up to school.” He’d never known, had never gone out of his way to find out, at the time. He had cleaned out her office and sent her effects to her family with a dutifully penned and vague letter of condolence in his capacity as headmaster. But he had never allowed himself to grieve her loss. Until now. And he really should have foreseen the danger. Voldemort had been broadcasting his intentions to do something special to Muggle sympathizers that whole damned summer. “I killed her,” he breathed, as the realization dawned. “It was my fault.”
“Did you mean her harm?” the boy asked, quietly.
Snape looked over at him, his eyes bleak. “My dear boy, it is quite possible to cause immeasurable harm without intending it.”
“Yes. But Voldemort killed her. Not you.”
“Do you think that matters, child? I would have, had he asked it of me.”
“Would you have tortured her first?”
“It would not have been the first time I did such a thing.”
“Yeah. I have seen some of that, too. In my dreams.”
Snape did look away then and close his eyes, not daring to imagine what David must have witnessed. When he found his voice again, he said hopefully, “Mr. Dursley, there are a number of memory modification charms and potions that could remove these troubling experiences from your mind....”
“No.” Just that. Flat and decisive.
Snape turned back to him. “You are a child, my boy! You should not have to live with the sins of a man who died before you were born. Particularly sins so vile as mine.”
David looked him in the eye for a long moment, his face suddenly much older than his years. Then he said slowly, “Aunt Hermione thinks I have what Muggles call ‘second sight’. I can-- find things. People. Know things about them, from touching objects connected to them. Usually, it’s small stuff. I thought for the longest time everybody could do it, and then when I found out about magic, that all wizards could do it. So I never really talked about it much. I used to tease Rosie, saying I had Seer dreams. I'm thinking now, that may be how I was drawn to you, my first day at school.”
His voice seemed so childlike, so innocent. As if they were in the lab talking about Charms theory, or Quidditch scores. But there was something chilling in the boy’s eyes. When he went on, his voice was very soft. “At the beginning of the summer holiday, I saw something... else. This kid on our street came up missing. And I saw where they were going to find him, before they did. What happened to him. What the man who killed him looked like.”
Snape stared at the boy, frozen in horror.
David continued, “I started having new dreams soon after that. You were in most of them, one way or another. I saw... but you're my friend. I know you. I started trying to find out, then, who you were. To make sense of what I saw. I figured you had to have been in the War. So I started reading histories. And I found you.”
“Why... why didn’t you tell me?”
David shook his head. “The more I saw, the more I realized, why you didn’t want those memories back. You seemed... much happier without them.”
“But they were harming you.”
David shrugged. “I didn’t know that. Not until I woke up with you and Uncle Harry and everyone all around.”
“You were very foolish, Boy.” Snape struggled with his emotions for a long moment, then gripped the boy’s hand more tightly. “But... thank you.”
David smiled, a little sadly. “I think I got the better end of the deal, Sir. You had to take all that awful stuff back. It’s all been fading for me since that night. Before I got sick, it had got to the point where it was always in front of my eyes, even when I was awake. And the dream tonight wasn’t as… bad as before. But, don’t you see? I’m always going to see stuff like this. I need to be able to understand it.”
Snape regarded him silently, remembering another brave, if foolish, boy. But he couldn’t argue with the child’s conclusion. At length he said, “I don’t know if things like this can be understood, David. But we will talk. As often as you need it. All right?”
David nodded, his eyelids starting to droop a little, as if they were growing heavy. Snape said, “I think you should rest more now. Don’t worry, though. I won’t leave.”
David slowly relaxed back into sleep, Snape cradling the boy’s hand in both of his. Such was the unfairness of life, he thought, that an innocent like David Dursley would be afflicted with something like this. He knew it was much more prevalent in Muggles than wizards, a type of unbiddable magic that had no effect on the conscious magic that made one a wizard. Regardless, this boy did not deserve it.
He sat with his young friend for the rest of the night, the boy now sleeping peacefully. And though Severus Snape had given up wishing long ago, he wished now with all his dead heart that there were some way to spare the boy the horrors this ability would bring. Just as he had wished, years before, that another boy, one he had hated, might be spared a destiny he likewise hadn’t deserved.
Part 14 - Light in the Darkness
Part 1 - Visions of the Afterlife
Part 2 - Little Boy Lost
Part 3 - Detention
Part 4 - An Intruder
Part 5 - Conversations with the Dead, Part 1
Part 6 - Conversations with the Dead, Part 2
Part 7 - Another Life
Part 8 - A Sudden Illness
Part 9 - Spectres of the Past
Part 10 - The Pensieve
Part 11 - The Headmaster’s Portrait
Part 12 - Choices
Title: Lost Boys, 13/14 - Consequences
Rating: FRT (PG-13)
Distribution: Sure. Let me know where it’s going. Written for the
snape_after_dh ficathon.Feedback: Makes me write more. Or feel guilty for not writing more. Flames make me toasty.
Thanks to
lady_clover, rainkatt emmessann and Wee Hob for fantastic beta work. Remaining mistakes are, of course, my own. DISCLAIMER: The characters are the property of J.K. Rowling, Scholastic Books, and whoever else may have a hold on them. I own nothing in the Potterverse, or anywhere else, for that matter. Strictly for entertainment, and no profit is being made. Please sue somebody else. David Dursley, however, is mine. Please ask before you borrow him.
Notes: I will place a small warning here-- some mildly disturbing content in the second half of this chapter. This section took a much darker turn than I was expecting. And I should thank
cmwinters for an entry on her journal, wondering when someone would write a certain pairing suggested by the opening of DH. It certainly colored my rereading of it for this purpose.Also, I am unsure where I first encountered the phrase “Nimue preserve us.” If someone reading this knows the origin of the phrase, please let me know so I can attribute it properly. It's a wonderful phrase, similar to those invoking the Mother of God, and I sure didn't come up with it myself. But I'll happily use it.
Finally, it's the mark of a really good writer, when people mistake her story for canon.
mistful is one such-- I got her description of a certain person on a train platform confused with a similar scene from DH, and I use it here. If you haven't read her “Coda to an Epilogue,” stop now and go here to read that instead. It's a much better story than this one. Please note that the links in my rec will expire in September of 2008, as the author is going on to professional status and pulling down her fanfic. I’m sure I’m not alone in wishing her the best.***
“Well, Potter,” he said finally, a little unsteadily. “Shall we go see to that cousin of yours, then?”
The irritating boy, now a man, grinned at him, and oddly, it wasn't so irritating anymore. “Yeah. I mean, yes, Sir.”
***
The ghost promptly disappeared, and Harry trudged back up to the hospital wing, muttering darkly inventive curses only a man who’d spent years working under Kingsley Shacklebolt could have commanded.
When he got up to the hospital wing, he found Snape already sitting at his cousin's bedside, his ghostly hand holding the boy's. “He's breathing more easily,” Hermione told him, “but he hasn't come around yet.”
Snape glanced up and Harry glowered at him. “Thanks for waiting, Professor.”
Snape turned back to David. “I am a ghost, Mr. Potter,” he said mildly. “Surely you do not expect me to forgo the advantages of such a state merely for the pleasure of your company.”
“Glad to see he hasn't changed much,” Ron murmured.
Without looking his way, Snape replied, “I, for one, am sorry to see that you have, Mr. Weasley. What, pray tell, is that ridiculous growth on your upper lip? Or has Walrus become, in the years since my untimely demise, some sort of fashion statement?”
Ron spluttered for a moment as Harry and Hermione and even Neville snickered at him. Then, Ron said, looking disbelievingly at the twitching corner of his old teacher's lips, “Wait-- are you teasing me, Professor?”
The old Potions Master turned a baleful eye on him, lips still twitching slightly. “It seems to me that someone should.” And Harry and Hermione could no longer contain their laughter. Even Neville joined in with a nervous chuckle. Only Rose looked affronted. Before she could protest, however, the boy on the bed stirred, and all eyes turned anxiously to him.
David stirred then and his eyes fluttered open. “Professor Snape,” he breathed in obvious relief, as he saw the figure gripping his hand tightly. “You’re all right, Sir.” Then he looked around the room and caught sight of his nominative aunts and uncles. “Oh, I'm sorry, Sir. I didn't mean to tell.”
“It's quite all right, David,” Snape said kindly, and Harry was struck by the fact that he had never heard that tone of voice from this man. Snape continued, “They knew me, from before. You kept the secret, perhaps longer than you should have. How long have you been having dreams?”
David looked at the hand holding his, ghostly and luminescent. “Since the summer holidays, Sir. I reread Hogwarts, A History. That's where I'd seen you before. There's a picture and everything.”
Snape looked around the room, dumbfounded. “Since when am I in Hogwarts, A History?” he demanded.
Hermione said tentatively, “Since I published a revised edition ten years ago. Adding the War years. I, um, did a whole chapter on you.”
“Sweet Nimue, preserve us,” Snape breathed. “Why on Earth would you do something like that, Woman?”
“Because it was true,” she replied simply. Then she turned to David, all business. “And how are you feeling Davey?”
David grimaced. “Like somebody ran over me with a truck. I mean, a hippogriff,” he amended, seeing the blank expressions on several of the faces in the room.
“Yes, well,” Hermione said. “If you gentlemen don’t mind, I seem to have a patient now in need of my services. Harry, Ron, don’t leave your reports for the last minute again, please....”
Neville rose. “I have a bit of marking I should probably finish up,” he said, excusing himself.
“You should get some sleep,” Hermione called after him, but he just shrugged.
“Look at the time, Hermione. Breakfast’s in an hour. But don’t worry-- I’ll stick to safe topics for my classes today.”
Rose looked a bit disappointed at that. “I was really looking forward to starting fanged geraniums today,” she said, also rising. “Don’t worry, Davey, I’ll take good notes for you. And, nice to finally meet you, Professor Ghost, Sir.”
Harry saw a smile flit across his old professor's face, gone so quickly he wasn't sure he'd seen it. The ghost rose, releasing the boy’s hand. “Professor Snape,” he corrected gently. “And I am charmed to have made your acquaintance, as well, Miss Weasley.”
As Harry followed Ron and Rose to the door, he heard Snape say, “I am sure you are more than qualified to treat this illness now, Madam Weasley. However, should you require a bit more arcane knowledge about curses, or potions, please feel free to call upon me. I did make something of a study of both, in my youth.”
Hermione was blushing a little as Harry looked back from the door. “Of course, Professor. And I will certainly keep you apprised of his progress.”
The ghost nodded, then looked at the boy on the bed, tired and weak, but much improved from earlier in the night. He met the boy’s eyes. “When you are stronger, David, we will talk. And I will tell you anything you wish to know.”
David nodded. “Thank you, Professor.”
Then the ghost vanished from sight, and Harry let the door close behind him.
***
Though to all outward appearances the ghost faded in and out at regular intervals, he seldom actually left the boy’s side the entire time he was in the hospital wing. He watched his former students’ visits with decidedly mixed emotions. Neville Longbottom was a professor now, Merlin help them all. Potter and Weasley were no surprise as Aurors-- they were just the sort of idiots Snape might have expected to gravitate to such a dangerous career. What was a surprise was their competence and professionalism, the insightful questions they asked for the Ministry report, and the connections they made.
He did return to his dungeon a few times, when David seemed to want to converse privately with Granger… that is, Madam Weasley. She was the least surprising of all—calm, efficient, as frighteningly intelligent as she had been all those years ago. He watched her work with a kind of grim pride.
But mostly, Snape kept his eye on David, who slept through a good deal of the first two weeks after his ordeal, aided by the thoughtful addition of Dreamless Sleep to his morning pumpkin juice, and to his warm milk after supper. The latter was administered by Madam Weasley, but the former.... He knew it couldn’t last forever, but he could not bear the thought of what the boy might see in dreams, while he was still so weak.
One afternoon, though, Madam Weasley came into the seemingly empty room and performed a few diagnostic spells on her sleeping patient. She hesitated, frowning, then called out softly, “Professor Snape? Are you here, Sir?”
Snape made himself visible at once, as he had promised he would. He could tell from her expression, however, that she was not intent on a collegial discussion of remedies and treatments. She looked him sternly in the eye. “You’ve been dosing David with something during the day, haven’t you?”
Snape could see that she had already deduced the truth of it, so he said simply, “I have.”
Her expression softened a bit. “I thought you might. In fact, I would have done so if you hadn’t. But Sir, he’s gone as far as rest alone can take him. We need to wean him off of it now. Do you concur?”
Snape felt his heart sink at that, though he’d been expecting it. “Yes.”
Madam Weasley was studying his face, which he was doing his best to keep impassive. “It will be difficult for him now,” she said gently. “He will start to dream again.”
There was an alternative, one Snape had been giving considerable thought to, during the long quiet watches of the night. He hesitated, then said, “As you are no doubt aware, Madam, there are a number of memory modification spells and potions....” He let the suggestion hang in the air, his eyes on hers.
Madam Weasley nodded. “Yes. But as you are also aware, Professor, such therapies have side-effects. Davey has enough problems in that area as it is. You may recall, for instance, the effects they had on a boy named Neville Longbottom, some years ago.” He flinched involuntarily, and she went on, “I am reluctant to administer such remedies until other avenues have been exhausted. Certainly I shall not do so without his informed and drug-free consent. And the consent of his parents.”
Snape looked away. “I am unable to perform such delicate magic in my current state,” he admitted.
“I know. Or I suspect you would already have tried. But Professor, I think Davey is made of sterner stuff than you give him credit for.”
Snape felt a cold rage rise within him. “You have no idea, Woman, the things he is likely to have seen, the things I’ve done,” he hissed viciously.
She did not even recoil from him. Instead she said, quite calmly, “Pardon me, Sir, but I do. It should come as no surprise to you that I did extensive research for my book. A number of your former... colleagues, were eager to share quite detailed and damning information about you.”
That brought him up sharply. He blinked, then looked at her, surprised to see that while her expression was grim, it was not.... He had no idea what he’d expected it to be. Horrified? Disgusted? Pitying?
She went on, her voice carefully dispassionate now. “I have made something of a study of the survivors of war and other trauma, over the years, Sir. They tend to have this one thing in common: they made a deal with the devil to get through it. They did things that would have been unthinkable to them, under normal circumstances. I have no doubt you did the same. And you did survive. Long enough to help Harry when he needed you most. There is no shame in that.”
Snape could not bear her steady compassionate gaze any longer. He fixed his eyes instead on the boy’s lamp, so odd and delicate, on his bedside table. After a moment, he found his voice, raspy and a little broken. “How long?”
“He will probably wake in a few hours for supper. I suspect he will doze off afterwards. But he will certainly dream tonight.”
Snape sank into the chair drawn up beside the bed and took the boy’s hand in his, still not able to look at her. “Then, with your permission, Madam, I shall attend him.”
She nodded. “I think that would be best, Sir.” She watched him a moment longer, then turned away.
Snape sat there alone with the boy as the afternoon light waned and shadows lengthened. He disappeared briefly when the boy woke and Madam Weasley sat with him while he picked at his evening meal. But he reappeared as the boy dozed off again and Madam Weasley took his tray, giving the ghost a nod of acknowledgment as she left the room. He sat once again and waited, as the shadows deepened, making no move to light a lamp or candle. Watching the boy’s deep, even breathing. And waiting.
****
The boy whimpered in his sleep, his breathing becoming erratic, eyes moving rapidly under the lids. Snape tightened his grip on the boy’s hand and murmured soothing words. The boy relaxed, and for a moment Snape thought he had drifted back down to sleep. But then a raspy whisper pierced the darkness.
“Professor. Are you there?”
Snape cast a dim lumos, then lit the boy’s bedside lamp. “Yes.”
David’s face was pale, but he also seemed relieved. He stared at the ceiling overhead for a time, as Snape grasped his hand and projected warmth into it. Then the boy said, in a stronger voice, “I was having a dream.”
“I gathered as much. An unpleasant one, from all indications.”
“Yeah.” David lapsed into silence again, his eyes far away. Snape mustered all his courage to break that silence.
“Tell me.”
David looked at him in surprise. But Snape kept his eyes steady, fixed on the boy’s unflinchingly. The boy nodded slowly.
“All right.” The boy moistened dry, cracked lips with his tongue, and Snape helped him take a sip of water from the glass on his bedside table. Then the boy lay back against his pillow and said, “I saw a woman. Suspended above a table. She… she begged you for help. By name.”
Snape wanted to look away, but he forced himself to keep his eyes fixed on David. “Yes. She did.”
“Who was she?”
“Professor Charity Milwyn Burbage. Hogwarts Professor of Muggle Studies from 1986 to 1996.”
“Professor. Like you.”
Snape smiled sadly. “Nothing like me, David.”
“Did you love her?”
Snape thought for a time how best to answer that. “She had reason to believe I... cared for her.” The reply was delicate, but not evasive. But the boy was not nearly as naive as Snape had hoped.
“Were you lovers?”
Snape thought about lying, but something in the boy’s eyes compelled the truth. “A few times, over the years.”
“And you were friends.”
“After a fashion.”
“You watched her die. Without showing any emotion at all on your face.”
“I did that by not having any emotion at all about it.”
David thought about that for a minute. Then he said, very softly, “Tell me about her.”
Snape began haltingly, listing her academic credentials, her publications. David had read some of her papers for class. But at David’s gentle probing questions, he found himself remembering and relating all kinds of things. The way the sunlight looked in her hair. How she liked ginger biscuits. How she could do impressions of their students that left him helpless with laughter when they were alone, and hard-pressed to contain himself when they were not. How she thought Albus’ robes were indicative of a mental disorder. How she liked to walk in the warm summer rain up from Hogsmeade.
“That’s why she died, isn’t it?” Snape said, almost to himself. “Death Eaters must have captured her on the way back up to school.” He’d never known, had never gone out of his way to find out, at the time. He had cleaned out her office and sent her effects to her family with a dutifully penned and vague letter of condolence in his capacity as headmaster. But he had never allowed himself to grieve her loss. Until now. And he really should have foreseen the danger. Voldemort had been broadcasting his intentions to do something special to Muggle sympathizers that whole damned summer. “I killed her,” he breathed, as the realization dawned. “It was my fault.”
“Did you mean her harm?” the boy asked, quietly.
Snape looked over at him, his eyes bleak. “My dear boy, it is quite possible to cause immeasurable harm without intending it.”
“Yes. But Voldemort killed her. Not you.”
“Do you think that matters, child? I would have, had he asked it of me.”
“Would you have tortured her first?”
“It would not have been the first time I did such a thing.”
“Yeah. I have seen some of that, too. In my dreams.”
Snape did look away then and close his eyes, not daring to imagine what David must have witnessed. When he found his voice again, he said hopefully, “Mr. Dursley, there are a number of memory modification charms and potions that could remove these troubling experiences from your mind....”
“No.” Just that. Flat and decisive.
Snape turned back to him. “You are a child, my boy! You should not have to live with the sins of a man who died before you were born. Particularly sins so vile as mine.”
David looked him in the eye for a long moment, his face suddenly much older than his years. Then he said slowly, “Aunt Hermione thinks I have what Muggles call ‘second sight’. I can-- find things. People. Know things about them, from touching objects connected to them. Usually, it’s small stuff. I thought for the longest time everybody could do it, and then when I found out about magic, that all wizards could do it. So I never really talked about it much. I used to tease Rosie, saying I had Seer dreams. I'm thinking now, that may be how I was drawn to you, my first day at school.”
His voice seemed so childlike, so innocent. As if they were in the lab talking about Charms theory, or Quidditch scores. But there was something chilling in the boy’s eyes. When he went on, his voice was very soft. “At the beginning of the summer holiday, I saw something... else. This kid on our street came up missing. And I saw where they were going to find him, before they did. What happened to him. What the man who killed him looked like.”
Snape stared at the boy, frozen in horror.
David continued, “I started having new dreams soon after that. You were in most of them, one way or another. I saw... but you're my friend. I know you. I started trying to find out, then, who you were. To make sense of what I saw. I figured you had to have been in the War. So I started reading histories. And I found you.”
“Why... why didn’t you tell me?”
David shook his head. “The more I saw, the more I realized, why you didn’t want those memories back. You seemed... much happier without them.”
“But they were harming you.”
David shrugged. “I didn’t know that. Not until I woke up with you and Uncle Harry and everyone all around.”
“You were very foolish, Boy.” Snape struggled with his emotions for a long moment, then gripped the boy’s hand more tightly. “But... thank you.”
David smiled, a little sadly. “I think I got the better end of the deal, Sir. You had to take all that awful stuff back. It’s all been fading for me since that night. Before I got sick, it had got to the point where it was always in front of my eyes, even when I was awake. And the dream tonight wasn’t as… bad as before. But, don’t you see? I’m always going to see stuff like this. I need to be able to understand it.”
Snape regarded him silently, remembering another brave, if foolish, boy. But he couldn’t argue with the child’s conclusion. At length he said, “I don’t know if things like this can be understood, David. But we will talk. As often as you need it. All right?”
David nodded, his eyelids starting to droop a little, as if they were growing heavy. Snape said, “I think you should rest more now. Don’t worry, though. I won’t leave.”
David slowly relaxed back into sleep, Snape cradling the boy’s hand in both of his. Such was the unfairness of life, he thought, that an innocent like David Dursley would be afflicted with something like this. He knew it was much more prevalent in Muggles than wizards, a type of unbiddable magic that had no effect on the conscious magic that made one a wizard. Regardless, this boy did not deserve it.
He sat with his young friend for the rest of the night, the boy now sleeping peacefully. And though Severus Snape had given up wishing long ago, he wished now with all his dead heart that there were some way to spare the boy the horrors this ability would bring. Just as he had wished, years before, that another boy, one he had hated, might be spared a destiny he likewise hadn’t deserved.
Part 14 - Light in the Darkness
