Blood Magic

The Dungeons

With a long and rapid stride, Severus passed the Potions Lab and turned toward his rooms. Next, he must contact Pettigrew or Avery, while appearing no more than curious, or perhaps annoyed that he was not informed that his schedule was to be so disrupted. In the meantime, every second lost diminished the already slight chance that the boy might be found alive and sane. He whirled around the last corner so fiercely that his cape floated up past his waist, and stumbled to a stop, just short of the entrance to his room. There, sitting on his worn trunk, was a tired, but very much alive, Harry Potter.

"There you are --" Harry began, but Snape seized him by the shoulders, cutting off the words.

"Harry!" Suddenly aware that he had called the boy by his first name, as well as touching him in a way that might, perhaps, be interpreted as affectionate, or at least possessive, Snape shoved the boy roughly away. "Everyone has been frantic!" he snapped.

"You told me to," Harry retorted angrily. "Did you think I couldn't?"

Snape grabbed Harry's near shoulder, causing the boy to gasp with pain, and growled the password at the portrait. What was I thinking?! The door opened, and he pulled Harry inside, then went to the fire and tossed down a pinch of powder. "Albus Dumbledore's office," he commanded.

Harry waited for Snape to put his head into the flames, but instead, the professor pointed his wand at the fire. Something that looked like a large bubble or crystal ball glided from it into the flames and appeared to flatten. In its place, Harry saw a view of the headmaster's office appear in the fire. He wondered if Dumbledore saw the full room he was in with Snape, or just Snape.

"Yes, Severus?"

Harry was amazed at how weary the headmaster looked. Surely summers shouldn't be that exhausting? He wondered if Voldemort had been more active than the Daily Prophet indicated.

"I have Harry ... Potter, headmaster. He left the house early this evening, and he is unharmed."

Relief flooded Dumbledore's features. After a few seconds, he became more guarded. "Are you certain, Severus? It's not someone using Polyjuice Potion?"

Severus frowned. Appraisingly, he looked at Harry. A sly look crossed his sallow face.

"Potter," he barked. "What would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?

Harry's remaining control vanished. "A question no Muggle-raised child could hope to answer, so some arsehole teacher could humiliate me for no reason!" he shrieked.

Snape smiled coldly and returned his attention to the fireplace.

"I am certain, headmaster. Could the inquiry wait an hour or two?"

Harry didn't listen to Dumbledore's reply. He rested his head on his knees and shut his eyes against Snape's sour countenance. What had ever possessed him to leave the crude, predictable malice of the Dursleys for Snape's vindictive cleverness?

"I hate you," he murmured. The noise of the flames died as he spoke, leaving his words audible in the silence.

Harry decided there was no point in opening his eyes. He'd just stay here, until Snape threw him out, and then he would go to Dumbledore and do whatever the headmaster told him to. Eventually, Harry heard the click of Snape's boots retreating into an adjoining room. He remained still. A few minutes later, the footsteps returned, passed him, and stopped somewhere to his left. The soft sound of paper brushing against paper followed.

Harry opened his eyes and lifted his head enough to turn it. Snape was sitting at one end of the green couch, reading what looked like a thin newspaper, and sipping a pale green liquid that looked ... well, more like a potion than a drink.

Harry forced himself to stand up and walk over. "I apologize, sir," he said quietly. "That was rude."

Snape looked at him quizzically.

"I... I've had a horrible day, sir. And when I got here, I couldn't find anyone but Filch, who gleefully predicted that you'd eviscerate me, but made me carry my trunk down anyway, and ... And honestly, that was the second worst thing you ever did to me. That was when I knew that people hated me here, too."

Snape, his face expressionless, evaluated him for a moment, then replied:

"I'm afraid your day is not about to get any better, Mr. Potter."

Harry kept himself from looking down. Snape is going to throw me out, he thought, and not help with Dumbledore, like he promised, or they've already discussed it, and Dumbledore said no....

"Perhaps I could make you a drink?"

Harry stared. "A drink?" he asked incredulously. Does he remember I'm sixteen?

Snape looked uncharacteristically flustered. "I'm afraid that is the only thing I recall how to do for someone who is upset. You don't seem to require a Calming Potion."

"Sure," Harry responded, amused. "I'll have whatever you're having."

Snape looked at the drink in his hand, then back at Harry. "No," he said firmly. He took a sip of the green concoction. "One drug at a time."

"Excuse me, sir?"

Snape smirked at him. "What would I get if I added sugar solution to a tincture of wormwood?"

"Um... Some sort of poison, sir?"

The answer seemed to amuse Snape. "As with most so-called poisons," he said smoothly, "it depends on the dosage." He held out the drink to Harry. "You may try a sip."

Harry wasn't too sure about sampling something Snape had been drinking from, but when he raised the glass to his lips, the aroma was so enticing that it overcame his distaste. A small sip overwhelmed his mouth with a clean, full, almost licorice-like taste, and he spent a while holding the liquid his tongue, before he could bring himself to end the experience by swallowing.

"Wow." Reverentially, he handed the glass back.

Snape shook his head. "I see you're one of those unusual people who likes the taste at first exposure. That would be from me. Lily always said she couldn't understand why I would consume 'an addictive psychotic that tastes like cauldron residue.' I never did manage to persuade her that I liked it."

"What is that?"

"It is absinthe, Mr. Potter. The taste is from wormwood, among other things."

"You're serious."

"It has a worse reputation in the Muggle world than it deserves. It is really not much more of a psychotic than the alcohol it contains, although the stimulants allow you to function much further into drunkenness than with other alcoholic beverages. That is not always a feature." Snape set the drink aside and stood up. "Do you like almond?"

"If I say yes, are you going to give me cyanide?"

Snape stared at him for a moment, before a flicker of amusement crossed his features. "I was considering almond liqueur in hot chocolate."

"Well, yes then."

Snape crossed to the fireplace. "Anything else from the kitchens? I haven't had dinner, myself."

"I haven't eaten in a while," Harry confessed.

"What?! Why didn't you say so?"

"It's ... I reckoned dinner was over with, by now."

Snape stared at him again, evaluating, with a vaguely sneering look. "P- When did you last eat?"

"I ordered some hot chocolate on the Knight Bus, though I think at least half of it ended up on the floor."

"When did you last eat?" Snape repeated.

"I had an apple at lunchtime."

"Breakfast?"

Harry shook his head. "Look, I'm --"

"The day before?"

"I had dinner," Harry said angrily.

"Anything else?"

Harry looked down. He felt himself growing hot with embarrassment.

"That would mean 'no,' I gather," Snape said. Again, he threw a handful of powder on the fire. "Kitchens."

A house elf's face appeared in the fire. "Yes, Master Snape, sir?"

"I would like two dinners, two very specific dinners."

"Yes sir!"

"One is to be a light meal. I would like a grilled fillet of fish, white rice, and whatever vegetable you wish to add. The other is to be an even lighter meal --- gruel -- beef-based, I think, and white rice. That rice must be cooked with no butter or other fat, though it may have a bit of salt, and may be cooked in a broth."

The house elf looked unhappy, but nodded. "May we add saffron to the rice, sir?" it asked, brightening slightly.

Snape looked questioningly at Harry, who nodded. "Saffron is acceptable," Snape relayed. "Also, we will probably want additional food in a few hours."

This cheered the elf considerably. "Any time, sir!" he said brightly, and promptly vanished.

"I take it I'm not getting hot chocolate with almond liqueur?"

"No, Potter, you are not." Snape stopped in mid-sneer and stared at him. Harry's family name stayed almost palpably between them. "Keep that down," he added more quietly, "and you may have poached fish or chicken, and some form of yogurt, in a few hours. In the morning, you will see Madam Pomfrey, and get her recommendations. I expect you will be back on normal food in two or three days."

Harry nodded.

"I know what I am doing, Potter. It won't do you any good to eat more and throw it all up."

"Could you please stop calling me that?"

Snape froze. Harry saw his jaw clench for a minute before he replied.

"What would you like me to call you?"

"Harry, please."

Snape nodded. "Harry," he repeated, almost threateningly. "Regardless, I know what I am doing."

"I believe you sir."

Dinner arrived, complete with a table and chairs. The rice seemed to have been cooked in chicken broth, although there could not possibly have been time, and it was lightly floral and brilliantly yellow from sparse orange threads of saffron. Harry drank his gruel and ate about half his rice, which was as much as he could manage.

"Not so hungry?" Snape mocked.

Harry conceded with the slightest of nods. He sat back and tried to relax as he watched Snape continue with his fish and brussel sprouts.

"Earlier...." he began hesitantly.

"Yes?"

"I thought you said my day wasn't going to get any better." Harry met Snape's startled look. "So, what is it? What's going to happen once I'm fed and presented to Professor Dumbledore? I thought I'd get sent back, after all, but you said I need to see Pomfrey tomorrow."

Snape pushed at his remaining fish with his fork. "You will stay, of course...." he began. He looked up. "There was an accident, Pot- Harry --"

Harry tensed with fear. Someone had been hurt, perhaps died! His mind began racing through all the people he could not stand to loose -- Hermione, Ron, Ron's family....

"—earlier this evening. Your aunt and cousin died in a car crash."

Harry's first reaction was relief. Everyone he cared about was okay. Then he found himself off-balance. He couldn't absorb the idea of Aunt Petunia and Dudley being gone. They were constants in his life. He couldn't manage to feel sad, but it felt ... strange.

"With no blood relatives left to reside at the house, the wards failed."

Harry understood that. Implications immediately began racing through his mind.

"The Death Eaters noticed before Dumbledore did." Snape raised his eyebrows. "Perhaps the Dark Lord had deduced the effect and had the crash arranged. The house was attacked. Your uncle was killed. They sent up the Dark Mark and set the house on fire. We arrived to find your door smashed in and your room empty."

"Good thing I left when I did," Harry said numbly.

"I should not have told you to leave. It was idiotic, even though you are watched. You were vulnerable every second between there and here. You could have been killed." Snape smiled thinly. "But my luck went the other way. You survived, despite my idiocy."

"Due to, it sounds like."

"The intelligent thing, Po- Harry, would have been to take you out of there at the start."

"But you don't rescue people."

"You shouldn't be rescued. We need you to be capable, not coddled."

Harry looked down at the lovingly prepared rice on the fine china. "Perhaps you should give me a hunting knife and send me out into the Forbidden Forest to catch my own damn dinner."

"Don't give me ideas. I'm perfectly capable of being that spitefully consistent."

Snape ate a final bisected sprout and pushed his plate away. "I take it I have not worsened your day?"

Harry thought about it. Slowly, he began to grin. "No one," he said fiercely, "can ever send me back there. I'm delighted. Horribly guilty about it, but delighted."

"You'd rather deal with me?" Snape prodded, raising an eyebrow questioningly.

"At least you'll feed me," Harry pointed out. "Or someone will. You're cruel and derisive and vengeful, but no worse than Uncle Vernon, except for being intelligent. I have some hope you'll finally stop confusing me with my- James, which might not make you kinder, but might make you go after me for my actual faults, rather than his."

"Dangerously honest, boy," Snape growled.

"That's why the Sorting Hat settled for Gryffindor." Harry set the statement out as bait. Snape took it.

"Settled?"

"It wanted me in Slytherin." Harry stared intently at Snape. "Would you have been kinder to me?"

Snape shook his head, but not in negation. "I did not drink enough for this," he muttered. He looked at Harry. "I ... You look so like James...."

"James felt you were friends, at the time he wrote me the letter. That was after I was born. He admitted you were enemies most of your time at school, and that it was mostly his and Sirius's fault...."

"May I see that letter?"

"Did you think you were friends, then?"

Snape's lip curled into a cold sneer. "'Friends' is a bit much. We were on civil terms."

"So what happened?"

"Lily died! I had told him and told him not to trust Sirius -- an arrogant, vicious liar, a pureblood of the sort the Dark Lord would recruit -- what could he expect? And he ignored me, and Lily died for his arrogance."

"But it wasn't Sirius."

"I know that now. But I did not believe it until I saw Pettigrew by the Dark Lord's side."

"So last year, and the year before, you knew," Harry pressed recklessly.

"Do you think twelve years of hate can be brushed away by a single truth, Potter? Do you think I could uproot this dark and sprawling tangle from that? From that, when I now share the guilt -- what if he listened to me, after all? My only solace is that I'm certain I did not sway him. James Potter did not listen to the likes of me, ever."

Harry looked down. There was a time when he would have argued with that, on general principles, but he was now willing to allow that perhaps Professor Snape knew better than he did.

He was saved from the awkward silence by a sputtering from the fire.

"Severus!" a voice called. Snape went to stand by the fire as Dumbledore's head appeared in the flames.

"We have just finished dinner, Headmaster," he said. "Shall I bring the boy to your office?"

"Yes, Severus. And expect to stay yourself."

"I intended to go to Avery..."

"After our meeting, Severus. Not before."

---

Chapter 9: Forms of Protection