On the Edge

ON THE EDGE

A birthday fic for Natalie Belousova, by F.P.Barbieri

The expanse of broken rocks and brownish weeds, rising here, falling there, at some points casting themselves upwards to the sky as if in anger, stretched as far as the eye could see. A hot, unfriendly place, open to the eye, yet abruptly folding itself into unexpected cracks and gulches, only seen when the foot came near and they opened, sudden and threatening. Only the pitiless, barbarous sun saw into their depths.

Somewhere near the sea, an enormous abyss opened. Around its rim could still be seen the remains of walls and pipes, metal and concrete, the enclosures of gardens which, left unwatered in the blazing sun, were reverting to dust. A city, a whole city, had stood there not long ago, till the day the earth had opened beneath it. Narcissa Malfoy and Severus Snape could still feel the wrath of that day, enduring in the immense void beneath their feet.

This was why Narcissa had arranged to meet Severus here. She wanted an environment that suggested ideas - not ideas of force, of permanence, of victory, but of ruin, of the end of power, of the return of the wild and the alien and the deadly. She wondered whether Snape understood this.

This would require careful handling. One word out of place and she would be fed to Nagini... if she was lucky.

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"You have had a privileged position, in a sense. You know our enemies better than any of us."

"Is that what you wanted to discuss?"

"I suppose so. I want to know who we are up against. Draco tells me about them, but then he is not an adult. And I think his view is distorted by hatred."

"Do you think I do not hate them?"

Narcissa inwardly shivered. That was a dangerous suggestion, she should have avoided it. If Snape was really loyal, the last thing to do was to hint that he might not be. But her answer flowed out, smooth and undelayed: "I think you are an adult, I think that you have a cool head, and I think that you understand them well enough to have deceived them for years. And that is something of an achievement, I must say." The appeal to his vanity was fairly crude, but she had never found too much subtlety among Death Eaters. If he was one, this would please him, and if not, no harm done.

"That is a point. Is there anything in particular you want to discuss?"

That was a point in her favour already. Severus Snape was allowing her to hear his own private thoughts about the enemy, away from other Death Eaters. But she must be careful.

"I don't know... just start from your own general view of the enemy... what motivates them, what holds them together."

There was a brief silence, as Snape visibly collected his thoughts.

"I would start from one simple fact... whoever it is who stands against us, the backbone of the enemy is made of Gryffindors. And this... I would say, this gives the whole Dumbledore party a particular character.

"They say that Gryffindors are brave, but that is a very reductive viewpoint, I think. After all, there are many kinds of courage. I would back your sister, or Fenrir Grayback, against any Gryffindor you care to mention, for eagerness to fight and willingness to go up against odds. Your sister, in fact... for cold and deadly courage, I do not think there ever was anything like her Wizangemot trial... she knew where she was going, she knew what expected her, and she just threw her defiance in their faces, while her husband cringed and Barty Crouch begged and lied.

"No, it's not about courage. What a Gryffindor is, is impulsive. You might almost say, irrational. They act on the first impulse that comes into their heads, they trust their instincts, they do not stop to think. You heard of Harry Potter meeting your son and refusing his friendship on the spot? That's Gryffindor all over. He had taken a dislike to poor Draco, for no reason I can see, and it never occurred to him to be diplomatic or even silent."

"I'm not sure I agree with you there, Severus. After all, the very people you mentioned... if Fenrir is not impulsive, or my sister, then who is? I spent half my childhood trying to talk her out of trouble."

"Well, there is... how shall I put this? Let me get my thoughts in order." There was a small silence, as both kept walking on the rim of the crater, and occasionally a pebble fell over and clattered down till it was lost from sight and hearing.

"I think I have it. I think, Narcissa, that if you... if most of us in the Dark Lord's party... look back at our lives, there has always been a point where we have had to convince ourselves. There is always a point, perhaps more than one, when we have had to tame our revulsion or our anger or our rebelliousness, to follow the right party. You know what I mean?"

Narcissa was nervous. The conversation seemed to be going the right way, but she did not dare expose herself yet. "I am not quite sure. Can you try and make it clearer?"

"I think... it may be clearer if I make a comparison. At some point, say, Fenrir must have made a decision that being a werewolf was good and just and right, that the hunt and the kill were his right and his prerogative." Snape, looking without seeming to, saw Narcissa's delicate shudder, which she had fought to suppress; it was not by chance that he had picked the Death Eater whose powers and activities were most disgusting to her. "And at that point, he must have overcome the natural disgust to the blood and the filth... to what a werewolf does. Now, if Fenrir were a Gryffindor, he would never even have thought of justifying it to himself. If Fenrir were a Gryffindor, he would have immediately been overwhelmed by disgust and shame, and have run off to Dumbledore or someone to confess his poor wee soul. And he would have spent the rest of his life feeling guilt, instead of burning that part of his soul off and becoming what he is.. eh?"

There was a frightful screech, and Snape turned in horror. Narcissa had been listening to him with such intent that she had not paid attention - on the edge of the abyss - to where she set her feet. A tuft of withered grey grass had given way under her, and suddenly she was swaying here and there, with no balance for her weight to catch - she felt the great pull of the abyss - a hideous attraction -

Without warning, two arms held her, feeling like iron in the ghastly sense of void. Severus Snape was keeping her steady - much more strength in his arms than she had imagined. Below her, she could hear the rubble she had dislodged, rolling precipitously down, the noise slowly dying away as they fell too far for her to hear.

"Thanks, Severus," she eventually said with a shaky smile, when her breath had come back. "I - I rather fancy that you just saved my life." And only then his strong grip left her. He took her a few steps away from the rim, and then said, as if nothing had happened: "We were saying?"

"Nothing really. You were telling me about Gryffindors, but I think you were finished."

"Is there anything else you wanted to ask?"

"Yes, no... I don't know. I mean, I wanted to ask about Potter and the Weasleys, but I guess what you said pretty much covers it. You have explained Harry Potter to me... and why he and the Weasleys get on. He is going to marry one of them, I guess."

Severus Snape laughed. "Isn't it true what they say, that all women are matchmakers? They only came together during Trinity term, and you already have them married!" He did not add that she seemed to discount the likelihood of Harry Potter dying unmarried at the Dark Lord's hands; Narcissa only noticed this later.

"I happen to know that she has been obsessed with him since she was small. He is never going to marry anyone else; he has no more chance than Arthur had once Molly had laid eyes on him... or Lucius with me," she added with a smile.

"Narcissa!" said Snape, openly laughing, yet in a tone that removed all threat from the laughter; a tone, indeed, she had never heard from him. "Are you seriously telling me that you can compare your husband and yourself with the Weasleys?"

"Good Lord, no!" she joined in the laughter (and Snape noticed the "Good Lord"), "Lucius would divorce me on the spot. But the thing is..."

Narcissa made her question as casual as possible. This was where she was really sticking her neck out, she thought - she was not quite aware of how far she had already traveled, or how many of her views Snape could have taken to the Dark Lord, if he was loyal. "The thing is, even more than hating them - they just puzzle me. I have never been able to understand the Weasleys. They are pureblood, after all."

"You think that should determine their views?"

Narcissa thought for a second. "Well, in theory... not in theory, I suppose... But I can't see how one can be a wizard, born and bred of wizards, and want to be anything else. Arthur pretty much acts as if he wished to be a Muggle, by all accounts."

Snape was silent in turn. Then: "I suppose if I were to speak for them, they would say that they don't envy Muggles. It's more like they like them. I think Arthur feels rather protective towards them, too... Like, you know, it's unsporting, it's unfair to use wizard powers against them."

"Like them..."

"I think it is about helplessness and ingeniousness - all the things that we do not need to practice, because we have power. Arthur Weasley is mad about all kinds of Muggle gimmicks - Heaven knows how it happened, he never did Muggle Studies at school and he's totally hopeless at working them out. I could flush a Muggle toilet better than he can." Narcissa gave a shaky laugh; but she had not failed to notice that Snape had ascribed all-seeing knowledge to "heaven," rather than, as they were all supposed to do, to "the Dark Lord."

"The Dark Lord knows..." - the words hovered on her lips for a split-second, with the instinct to correct him. But they died there. This, after all, was the sign she had sought for. That was it. This was his response to her "Good Lord." Their eyes met.

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Narcissa walked quietly away towards the jagged stone she had made her Portkey. She felt confident now. Whatever Draco had seen, or thought he had seen, she was now sure that Snape was not loyal to the Dark Lord. After all, Dumbledore was by all accounts already dying when he struck him down, and there might be many reasons why he should give him the coup de grace, or pretend to. Whatever face he might have affected in polite company, a man who spoke as he had today was not a man whose thoughts rested untroubled in the Dark Lord's faith. He was not like Bellatrix or Avery or the Carrows.

There was a way out, thank the Da... thank God. Perhaps there was a way out.

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Snape stood where she had left him, looking down, down, down into that deep abyss. In a while, he too would make his way to his own hidden Portkey - a battered oil can (an idea he had borrowed from Arthur Weasley).

It could hardly have gone better. Narcissa was not the first Death Eater he had met with such thoughts, or rather roots of thoughts, at the back of her mind. Nobody dared to think them yet - not against the mightiest Legilimens in the world. But comfort them, foster their hopes, teach them to keep their rebellion hidden - and, on the decisive day, the Dark Lord might well meet an unpleasant surprise.

Snape whispered, looking to the horizon, but so softly that a butterfly flying near his mouth could hardly have caught his words: "You see, my love?" And the shadow of a bitter grin hovered for a second over his face. "Your time is almost here."