Alliance

Alliance Part IV

by Leni Jess

Cross Words

Since Harry could not meet Miranda Bell and her boyfriend yet, he accompanied Snape into the staff room. Snape handed him the Sunday newspaper.

"Filius always does the Daily Prophet crossword before breakfast, so we get extra copies. Have Rolanda's; she only reads the front page and the sports news."

Snape settled into an armchair with another paper and a determined expression, so Harry turned obligingly to the crossword.

Soon he asked indignantly, "What do they think I am?" and read out a clue: "'A mob in a French island and a stretch of water' [8]. France doesn't have any islands these days."

Across the room Remus Lupin said, "Tahiti." He went on relentlessly, "Martinique, Corsica... Héréhérétué."

Snape said, "Let Potter do his own thinking for once, Lupin. There's a Muggle atlas on the shelf behind Minerva's desk."

"There's an 'i' in there, but it doesn't fit them. And they're the wrong length."

"Marotiri. Rangiroa."

Harry snarled.

"Île de France."

"Where's that?"

Snape rolled his eyes. "Ancient Paris is built on it, idiot sports star. Remember Henri II's Accords of Paris with the wizards Nostradamus led?"

Harry counted on his fingers for show. "It's too long."

"Shorten 'France'."

He added, "I don't remember any History of Magic. Except Goblin Rebellions. Lots."

Snape sighed long-sufferingly. "Maybe it's an anagram. Must I explain what that is?"

"No!"

Snape returned to flicking pages he did not seem much interested in, until he found an account of Harry's Friday match. Harry was pleased to see he read it carefully.

Eventually however Harry asked, "Is there a word 'caneilla'?"

Snape said resignedly, 'Tell him, Lupin; I don't think he'll get any closer."

Laughing quietly, Remus prompted, "'Canaille' - there's your mob. And your stretch of water. Severus was right, it's an anagram."

Satisfied, Harry filled that in.

Snape murmured, "Like that riffraff who were fighting on the pitch after your last match."

Harry shrugged. "They always confiscate wands at the gates for an England-Manchester match; the Mancunians think their two boys should have stayed home and not joined the England team. So at least there weren't any hexes flying, except from the stewards."

Snape complained, "The reporter wrote more about the fight than the match."

Harry shrugged again. "Lots of people think fights more interesting than the game, so long as they know who won."

"You did. Caught the Snitch when England drew twenty points ahead."

The possessive pleasure in Snape's voice was unmistakable.

"That was a problem," Harry admitted. "The Manchester Seeker nearly had it before we drew even, but I fended him off."

"And you were both nearly buried in the turf," Lupin said reprovingly.

"It's not illegal. Few things are."

Snape asked suddenly, "What if someone's killed?"

"I'm probably supposed to avoid the funeral in case the mourners hang me."

"Make sure no one hangs for you, then," Snape ordered sharply.

"I'm the Boy Who Lived, remember?"

"The Boy Who Lived to Break His Neck is not how I want to remember you."

Second-class Citizens

Snape folded the Daily Prophet, discontented with the quality of the sports reporting. It was not something he had needed to consider before. Remus Lupin had known the details of Potter's last match; perhaps he could recommend something more useful. Snape supposed there were specialist publications. It might be interesting to look through a back file.

He glanced over at Potter, still wrestling with the crossword, and saw Lupin rise abruptly, toss his paper down, and leave. Snape would have expected him to farewell Potter, at least; he still seemed to feel a substitute godfather relationship with him. Such untidiness was abnormal, too.

He leafed hastily through the newspaper, and found what had driven Lupin away: the Minister of Magic's latest weaseling on the campaign for changes to the laws the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures enforced.

He read it, scowling more thoroughly as he worked through Areneus Gabbedy's prolix statement. One might conclude the man was still running for office with a constituency incapable of remembering what he had said three sentences past.

It boiled down to what had been the essence of every such statement, since, a year ago, the not-so-new Minister had been forced to pretend to address the issue.

While recognition could reasonably be given to centaurs, which preferred to live separated from wizards (sourly Snape noted the pronoun), house-elves would only be disadvantaged by being granted an undesired independence. Werewolves were dismissed, Goblins not mentioned.

The current state of affairs was preserved. Centaurs indeed lived separately, and foolish the wizard who tried to interfere in their lives. House-elves commanded a powerful magic, but had allowed themselves to be bound, first to places of service, and then to service without wands.

The werewolf statement probably affected Lupin most strongly. Gabbedy asserted treating them as fully human endangered the wizarding world, even those who voluntarily used the Wolfsbane potion under supervision. So, still no right to marry, no right to privacy, no employment without stringent supervision by the Department as well as a magically powerful employer...

There had been a time - most of his life - when Snape would have cheerfully agreed to those propositions and restrictions. However, in the last three years he had come to know one werewolf well, far better than when they were students together, and the werewolf had been the only one of his enemies who had scrupulously refrained from harassment.

Lupin had performed selflessly in the war, and in the years before as a member of the Order. He was a fine teacher. Snape was no longer forced to claim that he wanted the Defence Against Dark Arts teaching position. It would have been interesting, yes, but the students would have been as miserably useless as they were in Potions, which remained his first love.

"Potter!"

His lover looked up.

"Have you read page eight?"

"What's gone wrong?"

"Nothing new, but you'd better know about it. It's likely Lupin will stay a second-class citizen for a long time."

Oppression

Harry read the Minister of Magic's speech on regulation of magical creatures, resigned rather than angry. There was nothing but the same old treacheries. No wonder it had upset Remus, though, being told again he was an untrustworthy brute.

"Just as well for Remus that Hogwarts needed a DADA teacher - he was our only good one, not counting Barty Crouch being Moody."

"I lost him the job, the first time. I told myself I had to betray him; no true Voldemort follower would let a werewolf keep such power."

Harry stayed silent.

"They knew I hated him, just as I hated your father, and made you pay for it."

Snape added, "I couldn't admit my jealousy to myself. I thought I did it to preserve my spy's position among them."

He looked at Harry and confessed, "I wasn't quite in my right mind, all those years; I see it now."

Harry would have liked to deny that, but he had committed himself to honesty - a good reason to keep his mouth shut most of the time. He replied, "Everyone could see it then."

To soften the judgement he continued, "You were under enormous stress. You had to do terrible things - that one wasn't fatal, and enabled Remus to work full-time for the Order."

Snape grimaced. "I'd soon understood how downright stupid I'd been, joining Voldemort just because I was angry, resentful. Though if I'd known how much I'd have to do that was quite as bad as anything I'd done for him, to work secretly for Albus, I might simply have cut my throat."

Harry asked himself, 'How much torsion can a soul withstand, before it's wrenched apart?'

There was no one else in the staff room. He went to his lover, taking him in his arms and holding him tightly.

Snape let himself be held, and even rested his head on Harry's shoulder.

"Nothing can be undone. I've always known that." He sighed sharply.

Harry stroked Snape's hair and back, wishing him peace.

With deliberate calm that his body's tension belied, Snape went on, "At least we can get work. Now the war is over I don't have to work for Albus, though I'm not exactly a public image of shining virtue, as you are."

Harry scowled, knowing how distorted that image was.

"I could go elsewhere - St Mungo's would welcome me, or the teaching hospital in Edinburgh. You're quite independent of him - a good thing. To have a job worthy of his skills Lupin must teach at Hogwarts."

Snape relaxed slightly.

"What would you have done, if you hadn't been able to play Quidditch professionally?"

"If I hadn't had a world where no one cared about anything but my chances of catching the Snitch first?" Harry shrugged, willing to shift the conversation, even to this topic. "Lived as a Muggle, probably. Only wondering what I'd do for a living made me hesitate, immediately after the war ended, when I saw how nothing changed, except that Voldemort was gone."

TBC