Another Story

Chapter Ten

In which Severus has a long argument

The mind ought sometimes to be diverted, that it may return the better to thinking.

- Phaedrus, obscure Greek fable writer.

Severus was standing on a low hill that overlooked a gray and imposing manor set amid the fens. The faint and slightly sour scent of the marshlands filled his nostrils. He closed his eyes for an instant as he recognized the scent of home. A warm, almost sultry summer breeze blew through his hair, carrying upon it the forlorn sound of marsh-dwelling birds. It was almost like music, melancholy and full of meaning to him. His robes billowed around his frame, and he spread his arms out to enjoy the sensation of the heavy material brushing against his skin. For a moment it was almost like flying.

"Severus! Come inside this instant!" called an impatient feminine voice.

His eyes snapped open and he looked upon the house again. There was a raven-hared woman in dark, velvety blue robes standing at the door with her wand raised. He did not consciously take note of the Sonorous charm that she had cast upon her voice as she called to him again before stepping back inside the manor. He knew her, and yet could think of no name that was hers.

As Severus began walking, trudging down the hillside, he looked down at his body, his hands, and his robes. They all seemed so small. He plucked at the black, hooded robes and felt an unpleasant, sickening chill. But he did not know why he felt like that..

"Am I a child?" he questioned, looking down at his small and delicate hands. "Why does this seem all wrong?"

He did not have the answers to the questions that tumbled through his mind as he made his way to the house. Everything was so familiar, and yet so foreign to him.

When he stepped into the manor, something hard hit him across the face, sending him to the floor where he shielded his head with his arms.

"You should know better than to dawdle when your mother calls for you," said the angry voice of a man, who had given him a clout. "Now go wash up for dinner," he ordered Severus.

"Yes, sir," Severus heard himself say, looking up at the man and for a moment studying his face.

He had a sharp, aquiline nose and a complexion that made him look as though he had been born of the fen. It was an unwholesome and sallow hue that reminded Severus of sour milk. His inky black eyes were very piercing and held in them a look of perfect and unmitigated disdain. He turned quickly on his heel as Severus dragged himself up from the floor.

"Worthless nothing," the man muttered, and Severus felt his entire body burn with shame as he closed his eyes to stop the tears.

When Severus opened his eyes again he was lying upon a soft bed in a room that felt very familiar. But if asked, he could not have said where he was or what he was doing there. He drew his knees up under the sheets as he heard raised voices in the next room.

"He's a squib, Donatella. I am almost certain of it. Eight years old and not the first sign of magic! Nothing!" said a masculine voice in furious tones. It was the man who had struck him.

"Phaedrus, your first signs were at the tender age of four. My magic did not manifest itself until I was seven. It comes late in my line, but we are no less powerful. If you had other sons, I would only naturally allow you to drown him in the pond, but he is our only heir," said the softer and more persuasive voice of a woman, the same one who had summoned him from the hill.

"And you would let him ruin our good names?" questioned Phaedrus Snape dangerously.

"I did not say that," she said in quiet, but not less perilous reply. "There are ways to force the magic out of him, to make him show whether he is truly a wizard."

"And you will allow this?"

"It is time for him to show his true colors. And do you really need my permission?" she asked with an unpleasant sort of laugh.

"His life was dearly bought."

"I suffered for our houses and for our bloodlines, not for the life of a mere squib. If he is not a true wizard, then it was all in vain," she answered.

"Then tomorrow ..."

Severus squeezed his eyes closed and hid his face in his pillow, trembling with fear and shame. If he wasn't a wizard, then he was as good as dead, and maybe he deserved to be.

"Merlin, please, let me be a wizard! I don't want to die," he thought miserably, wracked by painful sobs.

For a moment he felt removed from the situation, and very ill.

Time passed in the form of a deep, all-consuming blackness that swept over him in an instant of confusion and despair at the end of which rough hands jerked him to his feet. Severus opened his eyes to find his father pulling him none too gently up a set of spiraling stone stairs and out onto the top of a tower.

He could smell the nearby fen and it comforted him, helped him to stop struggling, as he was dragged to the rampart of the tower. He glimpsed the ground far below, wet with morning dew and covered with misty tendrils of fog that was just beginning to abate in the gray light of morning. The ground seemed so faraway.

Then he looked at his father again as he hoisted Severus onto the parapet. The dark eyes of the older man were filled with resolve and nothing more. Then their eyes met for a split second, but Phaedrus quickly looked away. He could not look Severus in the eye.

"Da?" questioned Severus weakly, his lips moving without volition.

He felt as though he were only a witness to the act and not a true participant in it. He felt removed, but not unafraid because he knew what was going to happen. Or at least part of it.

The elder Snape took a deep, shuddering breath and shoved his son from his perch, The boy screamed in panic and confusion as he plummeted toward the ground.

The next thing Severus knew, he was being dragged along by the arm through a busy train station. There was a dull ache in his shoulder, which he was certain was being wrenched out of joint. He glanced up and was not surprised to see the man he knew to be his father. His lips were thin in repressed anger and fury, but his eyes were cold.

"You are going to school, and that is my final word on the subject. You will get good marks, obey your professors, and bring honor to the family name," Phaedrus informed him. "Just like your mother would have wanted."

"Da, what if the other boys are mean to me?" asked Severus. He could hear the tears and dread in his own voice as he was dragged toward a brick wall and then through it and onto another platform where a train was waiting.

"Curse them in their sleep," muttered Phaedrus, giving his arm one last twist before releasing him. "Now get on that damn train, and I had better hear nothing from you until the holidays," he hissed.

"Can ... can I come home then?" asked Severus in a trembling voice, wiping his eyes on his sleeve as Phaedrus shoved their push cart toward him.

"We will see," he answered impatiently.

As he turned and walked toward the Hogwarts' Express, Severus wondered why this was happening to him and what all of it meant.

He was reeling from a blow to the face, doubled over in pain. His eyes were stinging too, but he would not shed tears. Never again. There was a hard, pitiless, and cold feeling in his stomach as he straightened himself. Phaedrus, a number of years older, gray just beginning to touch his dark hair, was standing before him. Severus had never seen him so angry. He did not know why. He only knew that his cheek hurt and that it was most likely going to get worse before this was done.

"You wanted me to learn, father, and he has agreed to teach me. Allegiance was his price. I am only too glad to pay it," spat Severus, tugging up the left sleeve of the heavy black robes.

Why were his clothes always the same? Severus wasn't certain, but it seemed strange to him.

Then he looked down at his exposed arm and felt giddy as he saw a skull and serpent there. He did not understand the meaning of the symbol, only that it made him feel ashamed and elated at the same time. Part of him felt proud and defiant, although those feelings hardly felt like his own. The rest of him felt remorseful and very afraid.

Phaedrus struck him again with a wild look in his eyes as he said, "You fool! Don't you know what he is? Don't you understand how serious this is?"

"I only understand that he can show me the way to secret and forbidden knowledge, that he can help me become a great and powerful wizard," said Severus coldly, touching his bleeding lip. "And if you touch me again, I will kill you."

Their wands were both drawn in an instant. The tension in the room was a powerful force. For a moment Severus was afraid that they would kill each other. Then his father spoke.

"Get out of this house and never return," said Phaedrus.

"Gladly," Severus sneered, lowering his wand slightly.

Suddenly everything was gone. Only darkness remained. Severus turned around, peering into the surrounding blackness. Where was he? What was this place? He waited and nothing happened. Silence and all-pervasive darkness and emptiness. He looked down at his robes and shuddered. The same black and hooded affair. Nothing had changed. He plucked at the garment and wondered why he hated it so.

Then he heard footsteps behind him in the lightless world around him. Severus turned and gasped sharply as he recognized the figure.

"Da?" he questioned. This felt very wrong to him. "Da, is that really you?" he asked, faltering.

The tall wizard paused a few feet away from Severus and looked him up and down as though assessing him, judging him. His black hair was not touched by gray nor his sallow face by age. He sneered slightly before speaking.

"You think I am Phaedrus Snape," he said. It was not a question, but rather a mildly curious statement.

"Aren't you?" asked Severus.

"Your father died in 1987," the man told him.

Severus looked around the place wherein they both stood and asked, "Am I dead too then?"

"No," was the casual reply.

"Am I dreaming?" asked Severus.

"I would not call this a dream."

"Then what are you?"

"What do you think I am?"

"You look like my father ... as I remember him from my childhood," answered Severus with a hint of both impatience and uncertainty in his voice.

"Pleasant memories those were," his companion commented with a note of sarcasm in his voice.

"Well?"

"Try again," he suggested.

Severus didn't feel like playing games. He was beginning to realize that something was terribly wrong, but he didn't know what. It was so confusing.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"A new question," said the man almost approvingly.

Hearing such a tone in voice of Phaedrus Snape was almost chilling.

"You won't answer."

"That isn't why we are here. But why don't I ask you a question? It might be more productive that way," he said almost pleasantly. "What is madness?" he asked.

Severus regarded him coolly for a moment and said, "Your questions might fall into that category."

"Touché. Your wit is still intact, I see, but your answer is incorrect," chuckled Phaedrus, crossing his arms over his chest.

"Madness ..." Severus began, attempting to give him a sensible answer, "Madness is not knowing right from wrong."

"No, that is insanity. Not quite the same thing, though not always mutuality exclusive states."

"It is behavior that ..." he began again.

"Be more subjective," Phaedrus suggested.

Severus felt a chill as he thought of what he had seen and what was happening around him. He shuddered.

"I am mad," he said, the words tumbling from his lips before he could examine their meaning.

"Yes, I believe you have the picture now," nodded Phaedrus.

Severus felt his heart hammer in his chest as he asked, "Then where am I?"

"Inside your own mind, I'm afraid," he answered, shaking his head.

"And you would be ...?"

"Who are you?" asked the figure standing before him.

"Severus Snape."

"Good, very good. Maybe your ego is still in one piece, not shattered entirely."

"Ego?" Severus questioned.

"You once read muggle books, learned some of their ideas. Don't tell me you've lost that knowledge, because I certainly haven't. In fact I am well aware that at the age when most healthy young men were looking at pictures of scantily clad young women, you were pouring over prohibited books about the muggle sciences," he said with an impish smile that did not suit his face.

"You can't possibly tell me that you are my Id," said Severus with a dubious sneer.

"Of course not. Well, not exactly."

"Then what, pray tell, are you?" he asked.

"I am the undamaged part of your mind. The part that remembers all of the passions and impulses, mostly the ones never acted upon. The part that remembers what it was like to be a man, to be alive, and to live. I am your memory. Or more precisely your memories. Actually, in strictest terms, I believe you may also consider me something of a delusion."

"Undamaged?" Severus questioned, feeling a sudden sense of dread at that word.

"You are the damaged portion, consisting mostly of your personality and fractured bits of memory without any context or meaning. I am the undamaged portions. No surprise why you find that difficult to understand."

"Do you know what happened to me?"

"I suppose that wouldn't be something you would have troubled to hang onto," said the delusion in the form of his father. "You managed to hoard all of the worst moments of your life, especially those having to do with your father, but choose to forget being tortured until you went stark raving mad."

"And you? Why aren't you ..." Severus began to ask, shivering involuntarily.

"Just as confused, damaged, forgetful? Because some things stand up better to torture. Passions and frustrations are like that. Only death can truly strip those away. Lucky you," he answered.

"Why are we here?" questioned Severus, looking around at the darkness again.

"You want to live. You want to put your mind back together. You want to be whole again."

Phaedrus, as Severus continued to think of him, cupped his hand to his ear as though listening to some faraway sound. Severus narrowed his eyes as he heard nothing.

"What is it?" he asked suspiciously.

"You cannot hear her voice."

"Whose voice? What voice?" snapped Severus.

Phaedrus smiled at him and said, "Oh, if you cannot remember her, then I hardly think you deserve to know," Severus glared steadily at him until he spoke again. "Your beloved speaks."

"My beloved?" Severus questioned blankly.

"You would forget her," snorted Phaedrus, sighing aloud and closing his eyes. "And she is so good to you," he added.

"What are you insinuating?" asked Professor Snape, stiffening and narrowing his eyes as Phaedrus opened his. This was making Severus very uncomfortable.

"That's right ... You haven't consummated anything with her, have you?" he asked almost derisively.

"I am a perfect gentleman," he replied automatically.

"You're practically a eunuch."

"I beg your pardon!" exclaimed Severus.

"You want to know what's going on out there?" asked Phaedrus with a superior look and nod upward.

"How would you know?"

"I have my ways," he answered a bit too smugly to be lying. "She's rubbing your back. Saying soft words in your ear. Planting tender kisses on your neck. It sort of tickles," he chuckled.

"Why can't I feel any of this?"

"You don't want it badly enough. You never have," answered Phaedrus, touching his neck, presumably where she had been kissing Severus, who shook his head and rubbed his eyes as he tried to wrap his mind around that one.

"I have had women, you know," answered Snape after a moment of Phaedrus staring at him.

"Well, yes, I should say you have. Three in fifteen years, right? But having sex with strange women that you've met in bars, some of whom were at least part hag, and making love to the woman who has sole possession of your heart are worlds apart, Severus. The former cannot compete with the latter."

"We wanted to wait ..." said Severus absently, feeling his cheeks color at the observations. A few vague memories, like feathers on a breeze, flitted through his mind, but he could not catch them.

"Right," said Phaedrus disapprovingly. "Or are you saying that you remember your beloved now?"

"I don't know and I don't remember," he replied sullenly.

"You don't believe that anyone could ever love you," said Phaedrus, reaching out and plucking at Severus' robes. "Why else would you present yourself like that?" he questioned, shaking his head.

"Like what?"

"You are a mental representation of yourself. And you are wearing the robes of a Death Eater. You never take them off when you think of yourself. Forever nothing more than this."

Severus looked down at his apparel and felt suddenly cold as he recognized in what he was clothed. The delusion was right.

"I don't understand why," he said.

"You have never forgiven yourself."

"Who am I to forgive what I did while wearing these robes?" asked Severus sharply.

"Don't give me that," sighed Phaedrus in frustration. "You are you. You know your crimes, your motives, your punishments, your long quest for repentance and absolution."

"Is it enough?"

"I am your conscience now too?"

"I thought you might know ..."

"It isn't my area," he shrugged, closing his eyes again.

"What now?" asked Severus, almost not wanting to know.

"She is very sweet. Nice hands. Do you like it when she runs her fingers through your hair? I seem to recall that you felt rather astounded that she doesn't find it greasy or disgusting."

"I don't want to talk about this," said Severus, turning away from Phaedrus.

"I thought as long as we were in here we might as well fix as many things as possible," he said with an amused chuckle.

"You won't even tell me her name."

"I want you to reconnect your memories on your own. It's better for you that way."

"You want to toy with me," accused Severus.

"That too," he replied. "It is part of who you are, and an undamaged part at that," he added as Severus turned to glare at him.

"I resent that," he said.

"Fine," nodded Phaedrus. "She hasn't seen you naked yet, has she?" he questioned with a slightly leering smile as he changed the subject.

Asking whether Severus had seen her in such a fashion would have been a waste of time and energy. That came through rather clearly in both the question itself and his facial expression.

Severus flushed a crimson color as he snapped, "I would suppose that you would have the answer to that question."

"Unless you can find the way out of here, she probably will sooner or later. She is the one taking care of you, Severus. Think she will be impressed?"

"You are exceedingly vulgar for a delusion," said Severus, not venturing to answer his question.

"Have you had a lot of delusions to which to compare me?" asked Phaedrus conversationally.

"No," answered Severus.

"Speaking of undressing you, I must insist that you lose those horrid robes before you leave, and all that the metaphor entails. If not for your own sake, then for hers," said Phaedrus.

"And if I refuse?"

"I can't keep you here. I am only a muddle of memories, impulses, and regrets. Almost completely powerless."

"But damned annoying," he growled.

"I am trying to help you," he reminded Severus.

"You say that you are the undamaged part of my mind. I understand that."

"Good. Cognitive function seems unimpaired," nodded Phaedrus cheerily. Severus was almost certain that he detected sarcasm nonetheless. Cheerful sarcasm.

"What can I do ..." Severus began to ask, but he suddenly became uncertain as to how to phrase the question.

"To escape your madness?"

"Yes," said Severus, closing his eyes and hoping that it was possible to do so.

"There is no one right answer to that question, and none of the answers are simple. Your psyche has become fractured. You mind has collapsed in upon its self. These are not like physical things. A beautiful vase may be repaired with an adhesive agent and great care. A balloon may be patched and gently inflated again. What then can be done for this?" he asked, touching Severus' forehead with one long finger.

"I do not know," he replied.