Three O'clock in the Morning

Three O'clock in the Morning

In the real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

Forgive an Enemy

It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend. - William Blake

"Open the damn door, you bastard!" Sirius pounded on Severus's door.

The older widow who lived next door to peered through her shades to look at the ruffian who was bothering Dr. Snape. He had long black hair, much like the doctor, but the look on his face was one of pure rage. Undoubtedly, the man was planning to do something to poor Dr. Snape, unless he was at the wrong door. The widow wondered if she should call the police. Then a rather bedraggled looking Severus Snape opened the door to his small home. He invited the strange man into his home willingly, and the widow decided not to notify the authorities, after all.

Inside the house, Severus did his best to pull his hair out of his face and look at Sirius Black. The facts that it was nearly midnight on a Saturday night and he had been safely in bed and asleep were not really helping the situation.

The two men standing in the yellow light of the mudroom could have been shades of men, representations of emotions, but not truly human in and of themselves. Severus, despite being sleep tousled and half awake, could have been Reason, with his sensible, pin-striped sleep clothes and tweed slippers. Sirius, on the other hand, may well have been Insanity incarnate. His hair, thick to start, was wild from humidity and carelessness, and his eyes held no small glint of madness.

Realizing that his hair was a hopeless case, Severus sighed and rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "Sirius, what do you want with me at this godforsaken hour? Please, just tell me and I can get back to sleep."

"You. Bastard."

Severus vaguely remembered Sirius's broken story of arrest and incarceration in Azkaban. At the moment, he was sure that he could sympathize with the police men - what had Sirius called them, Aurors? - who had found the wizard at the scene of the crime. Severus really wanted, right now, to run and hide in his room, preferably with the door locked and bolted. He wondered if his magical companion were drunk, but not even the echo of the distinctive odor of Sirius's beer clung to the man, so that was out of the question.

The fiery eyed wizard panted for breath, obviously making no effort to rein in his wild temper. "You fucking bastard!"

Taking a few steps backward and pressing his back securely against the door that led into the kitchen, Severus took a deep breath. "Sirius, what are you talking about?"

"I trusted you," Sirius hissed. "I thought you my friend, my confidant, an ally when I was in a strange land! And this is how you repay me! Do you truly hate me that much, Snape? Is this your twisted revenge?"

Gripping the door handle firmly in his right hand, Severus tried not to shiver. "I don't know what you're talking about, Sirius! Why don't you go home, calm down, and then come back here in the morning? We can talk then, when we are both rested and coherent."

"No!" Sirius snapped. "You aren't getting away that easily!"

Severus let loose a gasp of air as the other dark-haired man lunged at him. While Sirius's intent had, no doubt, been to pin the counselor to the wall, he, in the dim lamp light, had not realized that Severus was braced against a door. As it was, the combined weight of the two men forced them against the door and onto the old-fashioned, grey tiled floor of Severus's kitchen.

The half-awake man winced and moaned as his back came in full contact with the cold, hard floor. Sirius, his anger further incited by this unexpected fall, furiously pinned his companion and opponent to the floor, one hand on the man's right shoulder and the other on his neck.

"You blasted son of a bitch!"

Severus twisted and turned beneath his attacker, finally succeeding removing Sirius's hand from his throat. "What the bloody Hell are you talking about, Sirius? Three days ago we went to the pub together!"

"You sneaky, underhanded, slimy Slytherin! Why did I ever think I could trust you over everyone else?"

Managing to slap Sirius across the face, albeit not mightily, Severus was granted a brief respite. He then wedged himself up on his elbows, forcing himself to look Sirius in the eye. "Sirius Black, listen to me. I don't know what you're taking about. Honestly, I don't. I haven't lied to you. I don't want revenge. I got over our childhood differences a long time ago. What the Hell are you talking about?"

Settling himself on Severus's chest and effectively pinning the slender man to the floor, Sirius gripped his knees furiously, obviously restraining himself from reaching for his wand. "You greasy Slytherin bastard! I know you know! Don't play innocent with me! You told me to tell Lily!"

Closing his eyes, Severus realized that Lily had obviously taken this badly. "What happened?"

Sirius, leaning back on his haunches, remembered his confrontation with Lily. He had sat down with her in the living area of the flat, and they shared some tea. He explained to her what had happened, that he truly loved her, but only as a sister. He told her that he was sorry, that he wished he could have been a better husband. He described his love for Remus, but that he was married to her and that she and Harry would always come first in his life, no matter what.

Lily's reaction had been less than desirable. First, she had pitched a tea cup at the wall, where it smashed and left a dull stain on the flat white paint. Then, unleashing the once infamous Evans temper, she began screaming at him: she knew something had been wrong, did he think she would believe that shite, how could he do that to her. Sirius had stood, shocked, and taken the abuse, too surprised to react.

When Lily told him to leave the flat and not come back until he was willing to tell her the truth, he had not known what to do, really. He had grabbed a duffel bag from the cupboard and stuffed a few clothes and books into the bag. When he found himself on the pavement, carrying only a duffel bag and the keys to a flat in which he no longer lived, Sirius took it upon himself to find a hotel. He found a small one, fairly cheap, and the owner did not ask any questions.

From the time Lily began to scream up until this very moment, Sirius had had only one clear thought in his mind: why did I trust Severus? When everyone else, Sasha and Harry and Mabhubani, had told him to keep mum, to stay silent, why had he listened to Severus's lone voice in the crowd? The man was a damned greasy son of a bitch! He was a nothing, a nobody! What in Ceridwen's name would compel Sirius to listen to him? If he were not sure that Severus was about as magical as a block of wood, Sirius would have seriously considered a hex or potion.

While Sirius pondered his life's downward turn, Severus had struggled to escape his companion's dead weight and failed miserably. "So my advice went awry. That hardly justifies your unannounced attack on my person at such an ungodly hour."

"You fucking bastard!" Sirius exclaimed. "She kicked me out of the flat! I won't see her or Harry again!"

Twisting like a snake, Severus vainly attempted to escape Sirius's anger. "So tell her you were drunk, that it was a lie, that it was joke," he coaxed. "Tell her she was right and you were wrong."

"I will not lie to my wife!"

"Well, then, I really can't help you, now can I?" As soon as the words escaped Severus's lips, he realized that they were foolhardy ones. One should not be sarcastic when one is being attacked in one's own kitchen.

"She can keep Harry from me," Sirius hissed, his voice low and dangerous. "I know the laws of this world and that I have no claim on Harry. She can call me mad. I can end up like Wolfgang, locked up in that precious little world of his, thinking he's won when he has nothing!"

In his anger, Sirius had lost some of his grip on his opponent and Severus managed to twist, pull, writhe, and shake his way out from under him. The dark-eyed man quickly scuttled to the other side of the unlit kitchen, praying Sirius did not have his wand with him.

Blinking owlishly in the dark after his vanished opponent, Sirius had indeed left his wand in the flat, forgotten with Lily. "Where are you, Snape?" he yelled. "Time to face the music!"

"What the Hell are you talking about, Sirius?" Severus responded from the shadows of the kitchen. "I can't help you change the past. I'm happy to talk about what's going on, but only if you're rational."

Sirius spun around, apparently trying to see where his adversary was hidden, but failing miserably.

"Go home, Sirius," the counselor begged. "Sleep off your anger. This is a problem that must be dealt with, but not in the dead of night."

"No! The only life I know here ended tonight, Snape, because I acted upon your advice!" Sirius bellowed.

His anger, apparently stronger than either man had realized, sparked his inner magic, as had not happened since he destroyed Lily's favorite teapot, some months previous. The wild magic lit the kitchen with an eerie, flickering light which showed Severus to be pressed against the wall, still wrapped in his plaid dressing gown. On the table near Severus elbow was a small table top fountain, used for the harmonious and melodious sounds the water made as it flowed over the stones held in a copper bowl.

Sirius's eyes snapped to the counselor's form. "What do you have to say for yourself now?"

Severus just shook his head. "I gave you the best advice I could give a friend. I'm only sorry it did not work out as I thought it would. I don't take responsibility for Lily's reactions, or yours."

His companion's answer only seemed to incite the wizard's anger even more. "You always were a slimy bastard!"

With the last snapped comment, sworn in heated rage, the electric fountain at Severus's elbow burst, the stone and copper shattering into shrapnel and the water spraying everywhere. As it was Sirius's innate magic that caused the explosion, he remained unhurt, but Severus caught the brunt of it, pieces of stone and metal tearing into his clothing and embedding themselves in his skin.

He cried out in pain when a particularly large piece of copper grazed his face, leaving his left cheek bleeding profusely while his dressing gown was ripped beyond repair.

When Sirius saw his erstwhile friend crumble to the floor, not have inner magic to sustain him beyond his injures, the reality of the situation hit him with full force. The one last friend in this world, the man to whom he turned for counsel and advice, despite being Severus Snape, had been hurt. By him. He had hurt his friend, just as he had betrayed Remus in his fifth year. And judging by the fact that Severus appeared to be unconscious, Sirius had hurt his friend quite badly.

The widow next door had not been pleased when the ruffian from Dr. Snape's house ran into the street, nearly in hysteric. She had been even less pleased when she learned that the good doctor had been mysteriously injured in his own home. But while the man, Mr. Black, tried to explain what had happened to the paramedics, she felt some empathy for the man. Mr. Black seemed to be beside himself with worry for Dr. Snape and was honestly confused as to how the water fountain exploded. The paramedics assured him that they would look into it, but that did not seem to assuage any of the man's nervous tension.

As she watched Mr. Black walk down the street, shortly after the medical team left with Dr. Snape, the widow wondered just why he had gone from wrathful to hysterical to melancholy in only a few hours - and just what he had to do with Dr. Snape's exploding water fountain.