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Insidious by Grainne [Reviews - 16]

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Please Note: The following contains non-graphic references to character death and an implied male-male relationship.

Story notes and acknowledgements and are located at the end.





Insidious

by Grainne






Epilogue: And Ever After


A damp, chill wind whistled round Harry’s ears and found the crevices in his cloak. He took a moment to recover from the unpleasant sensation of Apparition (he’d never got used to it); then he clutched the parcel tightly to his chest and set off along the elevated boardwalk.

Leave it to Snape to live in the middle of a salt marsh. It might be a veritable Shangri-la to the local wildlife, particularly the birds and insects, but it was mighty inhospitable to man. The tide was out at the moment, and to Harry it smelled like all of the dead things in the sea had been left behind to decompose in the dark sludge visible between the slats in the boardwalk. A variety of tall grasses grew out of this foul soup, and in the wind they shifted against one another restlessly, whispering and creaking. Harry kept looking nervously over his shoulder, all the while chiding himself for his foolishness. There was nothing here for him to fear. Nothing much.

The house sat on stilts, high above the ooze. Like any proper wizarding abode, it followed no fixed architectural design. It had balconies and gabled windows sticking out at all angles and even a small turret at the back. The whole thing was covered in wooden shingles, weathered to a brownish grey by the sun and the salt wind. The eaves were carved in an intricate design, as were most of the shutters, and here and there mussel and winkle shells and bits of colourful sea glass were fixed to the walls in geometric patterns. It looked, Harry thought, like a gingerbread house—or rather, a gingerbread house’s eccentric seafaring cousin.

From the nearest Apparition point (a small wooden platform—perhaps twenty or so square feet), guests could only reach the house via the elevated boardwalk (as Harry was doing now), or, at high tide, via dinghy. Harry wondered if it might be possible to drop in via broomstick from above, but he doubted it. When it came to protecting his cherished privacy, Snape would have thought of everything.

The door opened a crack. A protuberant eyeball appeared at thigh height.

“Potter, sir,” said a high-pitched voice. “With a parcel.”

There was a pause, then another, deeper voice said, “Just because you are one of the few people I allow the privilege of visiting—”

“I needn’t feel obliged to use it,” Harry cut in. “Yes, I know. However, as I’ve already bothered making myself nauseous getting here, may I come in?”

“Oh, very well. Let him in, Fleagle.”

The door opened wider and the house-elf (wearing, Harry noticed, a banner with the words “Dexter’s Delectable Dentifrice” on it) ushered Harry inside. He took Harry’s cloak and hung it on a peg near the door, then nodded toward the fireplace.

Snape sat near the fire in a well-padded armchair. The cup in his hand and the pot on a nearby table told Harry that he’d interrupted the man at his tea.

The two men stared at one another.

Snape’s face was fuller and his hair had more white than black in it, but otherwise he was much the same as he had been the last time Harry had seen him.

“Well, don’t just stand there gawping. Come in,” Snape snapped. “Sit down.”

He nodded toward a chair—not the other padded one, but a rickety thatched-seat number. However, he asked Fleagle to bring another teacup without prompting, which was a step up from their previous encounters.

Once Harry was seated with a steaming cup of tea in his hand, Snape arched an eyebrow.

“Well?” he said.

“How…how are things with you?”

Snape rolled his eyes. “A thrill a minute. You?”

“Better than last year. Ginny got her promotion, finally, and the youngest—but you don’t want to hear about that.”

“Probably not,” Snape agreed and took a sip of his tea.

Harry sighed. “And Dexter, he is…?”

Snape inclined his head toward the mantel, and Harry looked over at it. There was a small, black, highly polished urn there. Harry blinked. He fumbled his teacup onto the nearest table and stood up. This wasn’t going at all as he’d planned.

“Oh, I’m so sorry, I—”

“Sit down, Mister Potter,” Snape said. His voice was stern, but a faint smile pulled at the corners of his mouth. “And do look a little further to your right.”

Startled, Harry did as he was told and saw a postcard propped against an empty wine bottle. The postcard featured a city skyline set against a brilliant blue sky. At the bottom there was a bit of waterfront visible with a cheery little ferryboat waiting at a dock. In the lower left corner, in curly script, was the word, “Montréal.”

Harry felt his cheeks burn with embarrassment.

“Ah,” he said. “Dexter is in Canada?”

“Yes. At a conference. That”—Snape nodded toward the urn—“is where we keep the Floo powder.”

“You’re on the network?”

“Occasionally, for business reasons.” Snape smiled enigmatically. “But don’t you go getting any ideas. One visit a decade from you is more than enough.”

“Look,” Harry said, sitting forward in his chair, “I only came today because I thought you’d want to know that she’s dead.”

Snape, who’d looked poised to deliver another casual insult, shut his mouth. He slumped back in the chair and stared into his teacup. Harry waited. After a long pause Snape drained his cup and set in on the floor beside his chair.

“When?”

“Yesterday morning, in her sleep. You…you didn’t feel it, then?”

Snape shook his head, and a curtain of salt-and-pepper hair fell forward around his face. “Thank you for letting me know,” he said quietly.

Harry nodded.

Another silence ensued, this one longer and more awkward. Both men seemed to find the fire, the floor, and their own feet objects of great fascination.

At last Snape said, “Did she ever—”

“No,” Harry cut in. “Not completely.”

“Ah.” Snape tucked his hair back behind his ears with one finger.

More silence. More staring.

“She’d got a lot better though,” Harry offered. “Seemed to accept where she was when she was awake, had fewer nightmares. Stopped climbing the walls every time she caught sight of a moving picture or someone brandished a wand. Did you know, she and Lockhart—”

“I’m not sure I want to hear this,” Snape said, wincing.

“No, nothing like that,” Harry said hastily. “God, no. But they did get on…eventually. At first he made a nuisance of himself, but once she got used to him she seemed to enjoy his company. Found his egotistical fantasies amusing. They’d go swanning about the ward as if it were a Royal Residence, hold ‘garden parties’ for the newcomers, that sort of thing. Completely mental, but sort of nice, if you think about it.”

“I’m glad you take such a cheery view of it.”

“Look, Snape, I’m not the one who—well, whatever it was you did to her. I never liked her; she never liked me. At the time I couldn’t have cared less what happened to her. But I get the sense that you did care, that you do care, and I was just trying to give you a little peace of mind.”

Snape looked directly into Harry’s eyes. “That, Potter, is admirable, but entirely impossible.”

“Maybe if you told me exactly what you—”

“No!” Snape interrupted. He stood up, and for a moment Harry was sure he was about to be thrown out of the house. Instead, Snape crossed over to the table and picked up the teapot. Seemingly labouring under some great physical or emotional strain, he turned toward Harry.

“Would you care for some more tea, Mister Potter?”

“Yes, please.” Harry waited until Snape had refilled both their cups (and the pot was safely back on the table) before broaching the subject again. “I’ll never understand how you got her to cooperate with, well, whatever it was. I wouldn’t have thought she’d have allowed you within ten feet of her.”

Snape lowered himself stiffly into his chair. “I’m not without my charms, Potter.” He flicked his eyes toward the postcard on the mantel.

Harry blushed. “Yes, well, my aunt was very uptight about any number of things, and you embody most of them—really, the only point in your favour is that you’re not foreign—and yet you told me that she wasn’t forced, magically speaking, that is.”

“Never,” Snape said. “She made her own decisions; her free will was always intact. That was one of the conditions of the…er…transaction. The headmaster wouldn’t have allowed it otherwise.”

Harry thought that Snape’s eyes went a bit shifty as he said this. Harry opened his mouth to question him further, but Snape cut him off.

“Potter, I appreciate your coming here to tell me about your aunt, but no more fishing for secrets. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you a thousand times: Let it be. We’ve both survived. Let that be enough. You needn’t go scratching at every little mystery that wriggles across that inferior brain of yours.”

“And you needn’t insult me just for old time’s sake. This isn’t trivial, Snape. It was—is—a major part of my life.” Harry paused, realising that his voice was becoming strident (and remembering the effect that had always had on Snape). He took a sip of tea before continuing.

“I wanted to kill you, Snape, I really did. But then something changed—even before you helped me with Voldemort. For a while there I thought I’d gone mad. Everything I thought I knew…everything I’d been sure about was suddenly…unsure. Again.”

“Yes, yes,” Snape said in a bored voice. “I’m sure it was all very trying. Very sad.”

“You’re doing it again,” Harry said.

“You should have seen your face, Potter,” Snape went on. “Right at the moment you realised that I wasn’t aiming at you. Eyes as big as saucers. Mouth hanging open like a prize carp. I wish I had a photograph.”

“You’re a real bastard, you know that?”

“Or perhaps a signed statement: ‘My name is Harry Potter and I would be dead were it not for Severus Snape.’ Now that would be something to put on the mantel. Better than any old Order of Merlin medal.”

“All right, I take the hint. I’ll go,” Harry said coldly.

Snape made an exasperated noise. “Oh, come off it! Surely your skin’s grown thicker than that in thirty years.”

“And my time had grown more valuable,” Harry shot back. “So excuse me if I don’t want to waste any more of it listening to your insulting drivel.”

Snape’s eyebrows shot up. “Drivelling, am I now? Oh dear.” He took a sip of tea, sighed, and looked into the fire. “I suppose I am. But you’re so much easier to bait than Dexter. He never lets me get away with it.”

“That explains how he can stand living here,” Harry mumbled.

Snape looked at him sharply, but he said, “What is it you want to know, exactly? I’m not promising I’ll give answers, but I’ll hear your questions.”

Harry regarded Snape in a calculating way.

“Do you still have the dreams?” he said. The look of surprise on Snape’s face only lasted a moment, but Harry saw it, and he thrilled to think that he’d actually caught the man off guard. “And don’t pretend you don’t know which ones I mean.”

Snape scowled. “Clever Harry,” he said. Then, quietly, he added, “Sometimes. Not as often as before. Not as intense.”

Harry nodded. “Me too. You don’t think it is just that we’ve got used to them?”

Snape cocked his head to one side, one long finger rubbing at his lips. “It is a possibility,” he said. “Though I’m not fussed about the why, really. Either way means I can put off killing myself a bit longer.”

“Oh, ha ha.”

“Seriously, Potter, I mean it. Have you ever dreamed about your Great-Grandfather Dafydd? All those bloody sheep of his—I thought I’d never wake up from that one. Put me right off mutton.”

Harry smiled. “Better or worse than the ones about Dudley?”

Snape screwed up his face. “Difficult to say, really. Is he still churning out the sprogs with that whatsit of his?”

“His wife, Annie, and yes. Scary, isn’t it? I think he’s trying to ensure that there will always be a Dursley terrorising the play parks and school yards of Surrey.”

“What number are they up to?”

“Five.”

Snape shuddered. “Let’s hope it ends there. Makes you rethink the old Muggle breeding programs, doesn’t it?”

“Not funny,” Harry said. “What about my mother?” Again he saw the flash of surprise in Snape’s eyes before the man’s mask slipped back into place.

“Those are not so bad,” he said slyly.

“No, not the dreams about my mother, my mother herself.”

“What do you mean?” Snape said warily, setting his teacup back on the floor.

“What happened between you two? Why did you stop being friends?”

“Whoever said we were?”

“Page three hundred and ninety-four,” Harry said slowly, making his voice go a bit deeper than usual. He reached down and picked up the parcel he’d brought and tossed it onto Snape’s lap. “Hermione did say some of the handwriting looked a bit girly.”

“What are you on about?” Snape was looking down at the parcel as if it might bite him.

“Open it. I’ve marked the page.”

Snape unwrapped the parcel. When he saw what it was—one copy of Libatius Borage’s Advanced Potion-Making with a suspiciously blemish-free cover given the state of the pages within—his eyes narrowed.

“That’s the other reason I came today. I thought it might be time to return it.”

“Learned all your head can possibly hold, Potter?”

“Learned just about all I care to from you, more like.”

The two men locked eyes again, but this time they were both on the verge of smiling.

Harry cleared his throat. “Page three hundred and ninety-four, Mister Snape. Just below the recipe for exploding invisible ink. Care to explain?”

“Still so very cheeky,” Snape murmured, but he opened the book to the marked page and looked down. He smirked. “Ah, I’d forgotten about that.”

“Well?” Harry said.

Just then a cloud of herb-scented steam wafted in from the direction of the kitchen. Snape closed the book, set it aside, and rose.

“Story for another day, I’m afraid, Mister Potter. My nose tells me that I’m for dinner. I’d ask you to stay, but I’m sure that lovely wife of yours would be gutted if you didn’t turn up for the Chinese takeaway she’s no doubt lovingly purchased on her way home from work.”

Snape fetched Harry’s cloak from the peg by the door and held it up. Frustrated, Harry rose from his chair and snatched the cloak from Snape’s hand.

“Thank you for the tea, at any rate,” he snapped, cinching the cloak tight around his neck. He took a step toward the door, but Snape blocked his path with one arm.

“Whatever bonds we share, Potter, whatever peace we have made, the fact remains that I was not…,” Snape said. He looked away for a moment, then fixed his intense gaze back on Harry. “I was not a good friend to your family. Not to your mother, not to your aunt, and certainly not to you. I did what I did for my own reasons. You should not pretend otherwise.”

Harry studied Snape’s face—still sallow, still ill-favoured. He’d spent so long hating it and thinking it ugly that he couldn’t help the little frisson of disgust that went through him every time he saw it up close, but time and circumstances had tempered any real animosity he felt toward the man. After all, in a way, Snape was family.

Harry reached out and lay his hand on Snape’s arm.

“I know,” he said. “And yet…well, you know what they say. ‘The bonds of blood are—’”

“Damned insidious,” Snape broke in, wrenching his arm away. His eyes were bright and wild, and Harry saw that little flecks of spittle had gathered at the corners of his mouth.

“Well, I was going to say ‘thicker than water,’ but I think that sums it up very well. Did you…did you have any idea what you were getting yourself into when you…well, whatever it is you did that you refuse to properly explain?”

“Not enough of one, apparently,” Snape muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Hmm. Rushing in without stopping to think about the consequences. I’d say that was pretty rash of you, Snape. Pretty arrogant and glory-seeking, wouldn’t you say?”

“Shut up and go away, Potter.”

“Goodbye, Snape. See you soon.”

“Not for a good long while, I hope.”

“Give my regards to Dexter.”

“Do you need help finding your way out the door?”

“And to Fleagle. Tell him I like his new togs.”

“Goodbye, Potter.”




THE END








Story Notes and Acknowledgements:


in-sid-i-ous adj. 1. Working or spreading harmfully in a subtle or stealthy manner. 2. Intended to entrap; wily; treacherous. 3. Sly; beguiling. 4. Lying in wait.

~The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language: New College Edition, edited by William Morris, published by Houghton Mifflin

***
in-sid-i-ous adj. 1 a : awaiting a chance to entrap : TREACHEROUS b : harmful but enticing : SEDUCTIVE. 2 a : having a gradual and cumulative effect : SUBTLE b : developing so gradually as to be well established before becoming apparent.

~Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: Tenth Edition

***



This story started with 1) the hilarious (and perhaps ridiculous) idea of Snape and Petunia being forced to interact in some fashion, 2) the itch to take this idea and try to weave it into Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (canon-compliant crack!fic anyone?), and 3) the word defined above (and now you see where many of the chapter titles came from).

This story could not have been written without the assistance of my LiveJournal friends list, the folks at LJ’s hp_britglish, and the fact-compilers and essayists at the Harry Potter Lexicon. It would not have seen light of day (or, rather, computer monitor) without the support of D and my LJ friends list, and it would have no place to be seen were it not for the fabulous team behind the Sycophant Hex (and, for a brief while, Mage) archives.

Thank you all!


Special thanks (and an Unbreakable Vow to fictionally harm squirrels whenever possible) go to Vaughn for being my beta. In addition to being my second pair of eyes and Britpicker-on-demand, her thoughtful questions and advice about plot/canon matters were vital in helping me determine which of the many fragments this story originally consisted of should remain, and which should join Moaning Myrtle in her S-bend.

The plot bunny (or bit of bunny?) about Petunia winding up at St. Mungo’s with Gilderoy Lockhart was a gift from Vocalion, for which Petunia and I are eternally grateful (believe you me, it is a far better fate than what I’d originally planned). I’m also grateful to her for reminding me that (metaphorically speaking) even the darkest, foulest, most angst-ridden pit of despair needs a cream pie and a sack of bad puns waiting at the bottom, else it is just plain sad.

While I’ve no one to blame for this story concept but myself, various plot and characterisation decisions were inspired/influenced by the works of others, and I’d like to acknowledge some of them. They are not necessarily aware of their influence, nor of this story, but I wouldn’t feel right not acknowledging the debt I owe them. If anyone mentioned below would rather not be (or feels like I’ve misrepresented their work/opinions), please contact me privately. I will take care of it directly.

Stories and art may be found at the Sycophant Hex archives indicated in brackets.


* Snape’s Muggle “disguise” whilst staking out Surrey was inspired by the hilarious The New Ministry of Magic by liquidscissors. [Illusions]

* Sigune has irrevocably influenced my mental picture of Snape. Is it any wonder, then, that her drawings of Snape’s mother had a huge impact on my concept of that character? Much of the influence is hard to put into words; one concrete example is Eileen Prince’s headscarf, which was inspired by Sigune’s Two Princes. [Illusions]

* After Order of the Phoenix came out, there was much discussion about the scenes of Snape’s past that Harry sees in the Pensieve. In previous stories, I took the “face value” approach and imagined Snape coming from a “daddy drinks too much and hits mummy” situation. LJ posts/comments & fic by Sigune, June Diamanti [writing as Azazello at SH], mouse, and cmwinters, in particular, challenged me to think differently about the relationship between Snape’s mother and father, for which I am very grateful. Exploring Tobias and Eileen’s relationship and Snape’s childhood went from being something I dreaded to one of my favourite parts of writing this story. [all have stories at Occlumency]

* After Half-Blood Prince came out, we had even more fodder for speculation about Snape’s past. Many people wrote great essays and meta on the subject, but I first encountered the well-researched and well-presented argument for a thoroughly working class, thoroughly northern Snape who had actually lived in the house on Spinner’s End (rather than it just being, say, a random DE hideout) at June Diamanti’s LJ. She has a very witty story about how he lost his accent, too: The Shipping Forecast. [Occlumency, under Azazello]

* I’ll admit that out of sheer personal prejudice, characters like the Malfoys and Pansy were always easy for me to dislike when reading canon. SeaIsleWitch’s work challenged me to question these judgements and made me take a more careful look at the way I presented them in this story. And although my characterisation of Petunia took a different path in the end, SIW’s Wand Stories was the first story I read that gave me a glimpse of a Petunia who was a real, three-dimensional character. [Pansy/Draco stories at Pureblood; Wand Stories at Lumos]

* Ever since HBP came out, the “Emmeline Vance Issue” has been a hot topic for debate. I’m sure many people have written lovely, plausible scenarios depicting “what really happened,” but the first one I ever read (and it may well have been one of the first posted after HBP’s release) was The Day Emmeline Vance Died by LariLee, so she gets the credit for inspiring my own little EV revival. [Occlumency]

* Lunafish made me aware of the potential of Fawkes, both as a plot device and as a judge of character. I know others have written essays on this, but the point was poignantly brought home to me in her What Follows Betrayal, which gives a very plausible, heart-wrenching take on what happens after Snape and Draco flee Hogwarts. [Occlumency]

* Snape being…oh, just possibly…gay? I would happily give credit to the authors of all the slash I’ve been delving into in an effort to find really well-written, complex characterisations of Snape, but most of that exploration came after I had written the first draft of this story.

Obviously, as this is genfic, pairings and sex are not the focus, but I have a high need to know far more details about my characters than ever make it into the stories (I wrote out a portion of Snape’s DADA O.W.L. paper, for Christ’s sake), and that includes their desires, sexual or otherwise. At first I thought I could cut corners and make this version of Snape conveniently asexual, but as I went along he just, well, became gay. It felt right for him here. It gelled with the other details I’d created about his life and (for me) added a bit of irony to the homophobic jokes and comments Vernon and other characters make all throughout the story.

Snape also became largely celibate—no stretch of the imagination for any single teacher at a boarding school—and I can’t tell you how relieved I was when someone who’d read an early draft convinced me not to end the story the summer after the events of HBP, but to write a “proper” epilogue depicting Snape and Harry years later, as it gave me the opportunity to depict Snape having a companion. It is, of course, up to the reader to imagine the exact nature of the relationship. All I’ll say is that, in my imagination, Severus did eventually track Dexter down and buy him that drink by way of thanks, and that the encounter went very, very well…

Last, but certainly not least, thanks to all who have taken the time to read this story!
Your comments have been, and will always be, appreciated.


Insidious by Grainne [Reviews - 16]

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