Mordant

Chapter Fourteen: Sanity in Grimmauld Place

Severus pulled the door of his office shut, filled his favorite quill with red ink, and sat down to mark the latest set of essays from his second-year Hufflepuffs. The dictionary defines a potion as “a drink or liquid dose, as of medicine or poison.”

Thank you, Mr Cauldwell, he wrote in the margin of the essay. I would have had no idea what I have been teaching all these years without a Muggle dictionary to enlighten me.

Wizards have been brewing potions since the dawn of time, however, in today’s ever-changing society in which we live in, potions are an ever more important topic. Whether they are used for murdering or curing people, or just for getting high.

Severus read no further. He penned a neat red T at the bottom of the essay, stabbed the paper a few times with his quill to relieve his feelings, and turned to the next paper in the pile.

When one is brewing a potion, you must make sure that no forrain material falls into the calldron. No matter whether it is a scorpion, a piece of paper, or any other sort of bug.

Evidently Hagrid had not covered insect taxonomy in Care of Magical Creatures. Severus added a few well-chosen comments in the margin and clutched his head to keep it from exploding.

A knock at the door interrupted his work. Although not a sociable man, Severus almost welcomed the distraction from the stack of essays – but that was before he saw who the visitors were. Lupin, looking irritatingly smarmy as usual, and Black, with high-handed arrogance smeared all over his aristocratic features. He wondered idly how the Ministry’s most wanted criminal had contrived to get into Hogwarts Castle, but even as schoolboys, those two had always managed to appear and disappear in complete defiance of the laws of physics.

“I’ve come to have a word with you about Harry’s education,” said Black, not bothering with a greeting.

“Potter’s education is, to the best of my knowledge, in the same abysmal state it has been for the last five years,” said Severus. “The boy is not entirely devoid of intelligence, but he has made no effort to apply himself to the study of potion-brewing. If you are concerned about his marks, I suggest that you have a word with him, not me.”

A few muscles twitched in Black’s jaw, but after a fleeting glance at Lupin, he said in an even voice, “This isn’t about Potions, and you know it, Snape. It’s about the other subject you were hired to teach – Occlumency.”

Severus heard, or thought he heard, a faint emphasis on the word hired. Damned upper-class pureblood drones. Most of them had never done an honest day’s work in their life, and somehow they thought this gave them the right to look down on those who did.

“Potter has made even less effort with Occlumency, so I terminated his lessons. I see no point in giving private lessons to a pupil who has shown no aptitude for the subject and no willingness to learn.”

Lupin strolled over to the bookcase and inspected the volumes that lined the shelves with studied casualness. Severus knew this was a pose. Despite being the son of a famous Potions researcher, his former colleague was appallingly ignorant of the subject, and the book titles couldn’t have conveyed less to him if they had been written in ancient cuneiform.

“I was under the impression,” Lupin said airily, “that the responsibility of deciding whether a student is fit to study a given subject rested with the student’s Head of House. I take it Minerva agrees with you, then?”

“I have not yet informed Minerva of the worst of Potter’s behavior during our lessons. I might add that this is as well for Potter.”

Black stepped forward and leaned over the desk, gripping its edge so tightly that his knuckles went white. “Did you inform her of the worst of yours?”

“I cannot imagine what you mean,” Severus said coolly, although he felt a tiny prickle of fear. If Minerva found out that he had grabbed one of her cherished Gryffindors hard enough to leave bruises and thrown a glass jar of cockroaches at his head –

“I mean,” Black said through his teeth, “you weren’t exactly an innocent little lamb set upon by vicious bullies, no matter how it might have looked to Harry. Did you tell him you hit Lily with a Scorching Hex so badly that she carried the marks until the day she died? And why? Because she was Muggle-born and she had the audacity to hurt your precious pride.”

The memory brought back a confused haze of emotions: the vicious, perverse joy he’d felt at causing the Mudblood pain; the rush of shame when the pleasure subsided; mingled pride and lust when Narcissa Black had offered him her hand and told him he’d done well; and fiercer and more bitter shame at the recollection of everything that had followed. Severus felt his cheeks burning, but he mastered his scattered thoughts and told himself firmly that the only thing he needed to feel just now was relief. At least young Potter hadn’t told his godfather he’d been assaulted by a teacher...

“It was twenty years ago, Sirius. Leave it be.” Lupin took a deep breath and turned to Severus. “What matters, in the here and now, is that Harry has to continue his Occlumency lessons. If he doesn’t, we’re all at risk, including you. In fact, I’d venture to say you have more to lose than any of us.”

This was an eminently reasonable point, which meant it irritated Severus all the more. “We wouldn’t be at risk if the Potter boy would leave the war to the adults. You may make a practice of confiding sensitive information to him, but I certainly didn’t ask to have a brat snooping into my deepest secrets.”

“You know perfectly well why Harry hasn’t got the luxury of leaving the war to the adults,” said Lupin.

“Yeah,” Black put in, “and he’s making a better job of fighting Voldemort than you are. If your deepest secret is that Lily Evans saw your underwear once, you can’t have found out much in what, fifteen years of spying?”

“Sirius, why don’t I do the talking, all right?” Lupin gave Black a single, sharp look, and Black took a step backward.

“What’s the matter, Fido, is the lead too short?” Severus taunted. Then, as he looked from one man to the other, a sudden, diabolical inspiration struck him. “Or won’t the little wifey let you wear the trousers in the family?”

He had been braced to defend himself against a magical attack, and he didn’t see Black’s fist until it connected with his jaw. A moment later, he was lying flat on the floor of his office.

“That,” he said coldly as he gathered the remaining scraps of his dignity, “was assault. I give both of you three seconds to get out of this office before I summon the Acting Headmistress. I need hardly remind you what awaits you if she catches you here.”

Black shot him a look of pure venom, and Lupin gave one last, despairing glance around the room before they stepped into the fireplace.

 

                                                            *          *          *

“You idiot!” said Remus as soon as they were back at Grimmauld Place. “We were on the edge of making him see reason, but you couldn’t resist scoring a few cheap points, could you? And if you couldn’t have left things to me, why in hell couldn’t you have at least not punched him? Have you grown up at all since we were schoolboys?”

He kicked the edge of the fireplace, sending up a shower of sparks, and immediately felt a good deal better. It was a great relief to be alone with somebody who didn’t expect him to be a model of calmness and restraint.

Sirius flushed. “Even you can’t say that I should have taken that lying down. That was a direct insult to my masculinity.”

“On the contrary,” murmured Remus, looking at the ceiling, “I rather think it was a direct insult to mine.”

This drew a laugh from his companion, though it was a short and bitter one. “Touché, Moony.” Sirius hit the mantlepiece with his open hand, hard, for all the world like a house-elf that had just been ordered to punish himself. “You were right. I can’t be trusted to do this sort of work. Or much of anything else, either.”

“Sirius ... Pads, I didn’t mean –”

“I’m no use to anyone. Most of the Order would be thrilled if I just went and disappeared – like Kreacher...”

“That isn’t even remotely true,” said Remus, and proceeded to illustrate this point with numerous examples of people who would not be at all thrilled if Sirius disappeared – Dumbledore, Tonks, Kingsley, Mundungus, even Molly after the events of last Christmas. Before he reached the end of the list, he realized his friend was no longer listening. Sirius had meant that he felt like disappearing; and the thought of what this might entail made Remus shiver.

“Moony?”

“Mmm?”

“You don’t have to go all calm and gentle like that – like you’re visiting a mental ward at St. Mungo’s. I think I liked it better when you were calling me an idiot.”

Remus rubbed his temples, feeling as if he were trying to hold a bursting dam together with Spellotape. “Tell me what you need. You idiot.”

“I don’t bloody well know what I need. That’s the whole problem.”

Much later, spending a sleepless night huddled in front of the fire, Remus remembered there were people who did know. Alienists, weren’t they called?

 

                                                            *          *          *

Thursday afternoons at St. Mungo’s had become routine now, whenever Tonks could spare the time from work. Her visits with Alice were a welcome distraction: the Order stood poised on the brink of warfare, unable to make a move until their enemy showed his hand, and her attempts to discover who was behind the attack on Linus Berowne had turned up only dead ends. Linus had said that Thersites Mason had implicated Martin Lovegood, but Lovegood seemed to be entirely clean. If he had any connection to the Death Eaters, the Ministry had certainly failed to trace it – and the Ministry had devoted a remarkable amount of time and resources toward investigating a man who appeared to be a harmless eccentric.

On her last few visits to the Longbottoms’ ward, she had kept an eye out for Hope McRae, but the Healers were always busy, and a couple of weeks had passed before she had an opportunity to ask the friendly Alienist the question that had been nagging at her.

“Have you ever treated people who have been exposed to dementors?”

“Oh yes.” Hope put down the tray of potions she was carrying and sighed. “More than a few of the patients on the long-term ward are ex-Azkaban. Served their time, but never recovered from the aftereffects.”

“Can you – do anything for them?”

“Sometimes. We can treat depression with Cheering Charms, and there are potions that seem to help with the nervous effects. And the old standby, chocolate.”

Tonks nodded. She knew this much already; Remus was a fair hand at a Cheering Charm, and she’d brewed quite a few of those potions herself over the last few months.

“We try to give them some time in the courtyard every day. Dementors are hole-and-corner creatures, so sunlight and open spaces counteract the effects. But some of the patients can’t tolerate being outdoors. They’re too used to being surrounded by walls and bars, and they go mad without them.”

Sirius could have tolerated it. Hell, he was starving for it and they couldn’t give it to them. Not when he was the most wanted man in the wizarding world.

“But in the end, it’s the person’s life-circumstances that seem to make most of the difference. If they’ve got friends or family and some sort of work to do – someone to support them and something to keep them going, their odds are much better. Of course many of them are just disconnected – unfit for work, no means of support, families have cut them off. Most people who have spent more than five years in Azkaban commit suicide, eventually.” She shook her head. “That place is barbaric. Whatever they’ve done, they’re still human. It shouldn’t happen in a civilized country.”

“No,” said Tonks softly. “It’s horrible.”

The Healer gave her a sudden, sharp look. “Is there any particular reason why you’re interested?”

It was on the tip of her tongue to confide in the woman, to ask her exactly what friends and family could do to help. She didn’t have to mention names – she could say she had a relative who’d been in for burglary – no, a friend – No. For once in her life, she regretted introducing herself by her surname. With that knowledge, Hope could easily trace her connection to Sirius Black, and if she had any suspicions at all, it would be her responsibility to report them.

“I’m an Auror,” she said at last. “I suppose you always want to know – what will become of people after you arrest them...”

The Alienist drew up a chair and sat down next to her. “It isn’t your fault, love. You didn’t write the laws and you didn’t fill that godforsaken island with the worst monsters that ever preyed on the human mind. Think about it this way. If it weren’t for Aurors like you, there would be an awful lot more people on this ward in the same condition as the Longbottoms.”

Tonks took some comfort in this thought. “Is there any hope Frank and Alice will get better?” she asked.

“Perhaps,” said Hope cautiously. “More hope now, I’d say, than there’s been at any time in the past thirteen years. Do you know anything about potion-making?”

“A fair bit, yes. It’s part of my job.”

“Have you heard of herb o’ grace?”

“It’s rue mixed with Charmed water from Merlin’s Spring, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Old, old folk remedy for a mind troubled with remorse. Well, I’ve tried the same thing with rosemary and used it as a base for various memory potions, and the results are promising. I think they’re beyond all possibility of a complete cure, but Alice, in particular, might regain some language use. There are times when she really seems to be trying to communicate.”

Tonks grinned. “That’s brilliant. I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for you.”

“Thanks, but keep in mind that this is very, very experimental. I haven’t even told the family yet – I don’t want to give them false hope.” She gave Tonks a meaningful look that was clearly a plea for her not to repeat the news.

 

                                                            *          *          *

She stopped in at Grimmauld Place that evening to find Padfoot curled up on a heap of old blankets, and Remus looking out over the square with his elbows on the windowsill and a distant expression on his face. She told him everything the Alienist had said, not sugar-coating the part about suicide, and watched the lines on his forehead deepen.

“I’m taking him out tomorrow,” he said at last. “I don’t give a damn about the risks. Would you stay here and cover for us in case anybody from the Order drops by?”

“Naturally. I’ll tell them you’re upstairs having a threesome with Buckbeak, will that do?”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort,” he said. But he was smiling, and she thought – not for the first time – that she liked his smile very much, and enjoyed being able to coax it along.

 

                                                            *          *          *

Linus had just delivered the latest Martin Miggs to his printer, an errand that he no longer entrusted to owls. He decided to go for a walk in the park; he was fond of Muggle London, and he could justify an idle afternoon as research. To recreate Martin’s world properly, he had to keep up with Muggle fashions and customs. Those portable telephones, for example – you wouldn’t have seen those a few years ago – and the teenagers racing around on the new sort of skates with all four wheels in a row...

He was surprised to recognize Remus Lupin walking toward him on the path. He had an enormous black dog with him, a shaggy beast that looked just like a Grim.

“I didn’t know you had a dog,” said Linus. “Is he new?”

Remus shook his head. “I’m just looking after him for a friend.”

“A friendly beast,” Linus commented as the dog bounced forward to greet him, putting both of his paws on his chest.

“But a very ill-mannered one.” There was an odd little quirk to Remus’ mouth, as though he were sharing a private joke with himself. “Snuffles, sit down!”

The dog ignored him and bounded straight into the middle of a flock of pigeons, filling the air with feathers.

“Shouldn’t he be on a lead?” asked Linus.

“That’s an excellent idea,” said Remus. “I shall have to pick one up on the way home if he doesn’t behave.”

The dog growled and gave him a reproachful look, but Linus noticed that he stayed very close at heel for the rest of the walk. “Animals are wonderful, aren’t they? It’s almost as if they can understand everything we say.”

“Yes. Remarkable, isn’t it?”

They walked along the edge of the small lake in the middle of the park, the dog setting a brisk pace and occasionally wading in for a swim. (“Don’t shake!” said Remus when he came out of the water, and after a single regretful glance at the two men, the dog obeyed.)

They had reached the far end of the lake by now. Remus sank down on a park bench, and Linus was only too glad to join him; it was a few days after the full moon, and he was still feeling tired and achy.

“I was just wondering,” Linus said after a moment. “If you had a Time-Turner, and you could go back to when you were six years old and stop yourself from being bitten – would you?”

Remus patted the dog absently and gazed off into the distance for a minute or two before he answered. The dog looked up at him with an intent expression, as if he wanted to hear the answer too.

“No,” he said at last. “Don’t get me wrong – if they ever find a cure, and I hope they will within our lifetime – I’ll be the first one to take it. But changing the past – that means changing the person you are, and maybe ... changing who other people are. I don’t think I could make that choice.”

The dog relaxed and stretched out on the grass.

“Would you?” Remus asked Linus.

Linus thought about the question. Four months earlier, the answer would have seemed obvious – but if he hadn’t been bitten, he wouldn’t have met Remus or Celia. And he wouldn’t have had the slightest idea that he was on somebody’s enemies list. Tom Riddle would have been a half-remembered name from his school days, and werewolf rights Somebody Else’s Problem.

He wouldn’t know an awful lot of things, and to an old Ravenclaw, knowing was important.

“I suppose not,” he said at last. “I’m ... I wouldn’t say I’m glad that it happened, exactly, but perhaps it was meant to happen.”

Remus nodded and stroked the dog behind the ears. “I feel the same way, I suppose.”

The great black dog curled up in the sunshine with an unmistakable air of contentment.

 

                                                            *          *          *

Hope had been keeping long hours lately, working on her Potions research after she finished her regular shift at St. Mungo’s. It was past dusk when she finally set out for home. She locked her office and went out the back door of the hospital, taking the shortcut down the alleyway that led to the hospital’s designated Apparation point.

Somebody standing in the shadows pushed his wand behind her ear, and before she had time to react, a rough and unfamiliar voice whispered, “Imperio.”

Hope had no experience at resisting the curse. She went under without a struggle.