Pandora's Box

Harry sighed as he stared down at the back of Cousin Quigley's bent shoulders. The man was flopped facedown across the bar within one of Dublin's many pubs. One hand clutched a round glass half-filled with an amber fluid. His entire body shivered as if he suffered a bad case of chills. The black material of his Muggle suit, damp with sweat, clung to his back.

Harry rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses. He knew it was another one of his dreams as he was currently suspended in the air and, though the pub was busy and brimmed with patrons, an eerie silence filled the area. He saw Cousin Quigley twitch in his alcohol-induced sleep.

"Pathetic," said a hoarse voice behind Harry. "Pathetic and shameful to the family."

Harry hardly spared the Bloody Baron a glance. "It's not like you're the epitome of family perfection," Harry said with a fierce protectiveness toward the subject of their conversation. True, Cousin Quigley, with his stringy hair and pallid skin, clothes soaked with sweat and body collapsed from too much drink, was a pathetic sight. However, there were times in Harry's life where he certainly would not have minded drowning all his sorrows in alcohol. All those years of living with the Dursleys, losing his family and knowing why, Cedric's death, the constant fight with Voldemort; thinking about all of it made Harry depressed. While Voldemort may not have terrorized Cousin Quigley, Cousin Quigley still (according to Pandora) saw what would happen and went so far as to send Severus to assure events would occur differently. Harry had seen Cousin Quigley do it, and he knew only a desperate man could find the strength to do something as heart-wrenching as knowingly abandoning a child to the life Severus had lived.

The Bloody Baron snorted and folded his arms before himself. Harry glanced at him and then looked quickly away from the gruesome vision that was his ancestor.

The Bloody Baron sneered at Cousin Quigley's back. As if sensing the loathing hatred of the Slytherin ghost, Cousin Quigley flinched and the hand not clutching the drink curled into a hook. "Most powerful magic-user in the family since Hyacinthe the Druid. The imbecilic fool not only winds up in Hufflepuff but he also throws all his talent away for Divinations and drink."

"Divination?" Harry frowned. "Well, some things are true," he said as he carefully skirted around the memory of Professor Trelawney. "Divination isn't necessarily all useless crap. And what do you mean by his being the most powerful family member since Hyacinthe the Druid?" He tried to imagine Cousin Quigley--poor, drunken Cousin Quigley who hiccupped and slurred his words and tripped over his own two feet--as being the most powerful family member since the creator of the Mirror of Rebounds.

Yet it made sense. Where else would Cousin Quigley have gotten the power to thrust Severus into the future?

Harry's eyes shifted over to the Bloody Baron, who watched him with dangerous eyes. Now was probably as good a time to confirm what everybody suspected. "Cousin Quigley pushed Severus through the Mirror of Rebounds, didn't he?" he asked.

The Bloody Baron looked at Harry oddly. "Who's Severus?"

"The little boy Cousin Quigley pushed through the Mirror of Rebounds." Harry gave the Bloody Baron his own version of an odd look. Surely the man knew who Severus was. Severus was not only a Slytherin, but also Head of the House. Or at least Severus at least used to be; Harry was not sure if ghosts could be Heads of their respectable Houses.

"Oh. Him. Yes," the Bloody Baron said darkly. "Bloody moron probably doesn't realize how much pain and suffering he probably caused the child, thrusting him into the slums. Someone ought to drag that sorry piece of shit out in the street and shoot him. Child didn't understand what was going on anymore and is probably dead anyway. You can't expect a babe to care for itself in the slums. Death is far kinder. And because the fool deigned to force such a fate on his son did his wife leave him." He sneered again. "Worthless idiot couldn't even keep the woman he married, and she was a damn fine addition to the family, even being the unorthodox heathen that she was."

Harry's mind stuttered to a halt. "Wait a minute . . . Did you just saw his son? Severus is Cousin Quigley's son?"

Again the Blood Baron gave him an odd look. "If you knew he pushed a child through the Mirror of Rebounds, then you should also know that the child he pushed through was his own."

"Cousin Quigley is Severus' father?"

The Bloody Baron frowned. "Perhaps we are talking of two different people. Quigley's son's name was Dominic."

Harry did not pay attention. If Cousin Quigley meant to assure the future of the Snapes, then sending his own son into the future would probably assure the future. But how could placing Severus in the slums protect him? If he was only a little boy, how could he possibly protect himself?

Harry looked at Cousin Quigley. The man's hands still quivered in his sleep. Harry floated over to the side to catch a glimpse of Cousin Quigley's face. In his sleep, Cousin Quigley cried.

"I think he does understand what he inflicted on Uncle Severus," Harry said softly. "I think that may be one of the reasons why he takes to drink."

"He takes to drink because he is too weak to face the problem headlong. He does it only to escape. He cannot stomach the idea of pain or suffering. The worthless coward."

Harry flinched at the venom that drenched the Bloody Baron's words. "I think you're being harsh," he said as he wondered if Uncle Hector Snape had been a closeted Gryffindor, since Slytherins never seemed to have the word coward in their vocabulary.

The Bloody Baron turned his eyes on Harry. "Harsh?" he asked as he drifted backwards. "Harsh? Boy, the bloody idiot had a gift and he could have taken it far, but he threw it away because he was too weak to control it. He allowed that thing to control him, and in the end, 'tis his own damn fault. He gave up his heir for a fate even I would not wish upon anyone." He considered what he said. "At least, not on anyone I would not care to kill."

Harry stared at Cousin Quigley's back. He heard Pandora's voice, and unknowingly found himself echoing it. " 'Too innocent and naive to be sly. Too happy and go-lucky to be manipulative. Too gentle to be harsh.' " The Bloody Baron glared at him. Harry glared back, defiantly. "That's what Pandora said," he said defensively. "She said that's why Cousin Quigley winded up in Hufflepuff. Yes, it might have seemed to be a gift to him, but he never asked for it. It's probably a curse instead and it always will be. He's got the ability and power he'd rather give away, because the weight that comes with the power's too much of a burden to make the 'gift' seem worthwhile. But you wouldn't understand." Harry stubbornly gritted his teeth as he subconsciously traced the lightening bolt-shaped scar on his forehead. "You wouldn't understand," he said absently.

"It destroys him," a woman whispered. The Bloody Baron and Harry froze, and then slowly turned to see Pandora floating behind them, her legs drawn in a seated position. She wore a simple white dress as a curved cane rested in her lap. She nodded her head respectfully to the Bloody Baron. "Good day to you, Uncle Hector," she said.

The Bloody Baron nodded stiffly in reply, looking puzzled at the sight of Pandora. He looked at Harry sideways with a cunning deviousness in his dark eyes. "You stupid boy," he hissed, half in awe and half in anger. "You're not just a Wanderer, but a Caller!"

Harry blinked at that. "So?" he finally asked. He ignored the Bloody Baron's sputtering and gazed fully at his great-grandmother. "What are those?" he asked.

Pandora remained silent as the Bloody Baron answered. "A Wanderer is someone who roams in their dreams, across time and space and reality. A Caller is someone who brings someone else into their dreams. 'Tis a random skill, and being a Caller has more to do with having enough power to bring others along than it being an exclusive talent."

Harry scratched his head. "You mean the Mirror of Rebounds has nothing to do with it?"

The Bloody Baron muttered something under his breath that Harry suspected he would never find anywhere in a dictionary. "It has everything to do with the Mirror of Rebounds."

"These are terms used exclusively for those with Snape blood," Pandora explained as she prodded the Bloody Baron with her cane.

"Do that again and I'll turn it into matchsticks," the Bloofy Baron growled as a sword appeared in his hands. Pandora ignored him.

"The Mirror of Rebounds is what opens the avenue to Wandering and Calling, two skills that involve what he," she nodded to Cousin Quigley, "is able to access while waking. He is the only person in our family known to do so. Everyone else has to sleep because, after all, sleeping is when a person is most receptive to what the Mirror of Rebounds has to say, even should the person be too rigid to use it while awake." She frowned at the Bloody Baron. "If you don't stop tormenting Cousin Quigley, I shall lock you in the Hells of Hades."

The Bloody Baron grinned; it was a gruesome sight. "Don't bother," he said smugly. "Inigo Snape tried that. I got kicked out after four hours."

"I know. You told me that."

He blinked. "I did?"

"Or you will."

He slapped his forehead. "You both jumped time?"

"No." Pandora pointed at Harry. "He Called me. I'm so far removed from reality that time doesn't exist." She was thoughtfully silent for a moment before giving Harry a bright smile. "Well, technically we don't exist because there is no time."

Harry groaned and she laughed. "This is Pandora speaking and not the Mirror of Rebounds, right?"

Pandora sniffed, wounded. "Harry," she said softly, "I am what I am and that is all that I am, for I cannot be any less than me. If I am not who I am, then who can I be but someone other than myself?"

Even the Bloody Baron looked confused.

Pandora reached outward and pressed her hands against Harry's shoulders. He grabbed her cane just as it began to slip from her lap. "Harry," she said softly, "you're on the right track. Just keep going. And remember, the only Tom Riddle that is not connected to Harry Potter is the one where the Boy Who Lived was not needed." She pressed a kiss over his scar and pushed him backwards.

"Wait!" Harry flung his hand out to grasp at her, but it passed through her as if she was a wisp of smoke. "What do you mean?" Everything faded away to darkness as he plummeted downward.

=====================================

"Is he going to wake up soon?"

"Well, at least I got my wand this time."

"How much money do you owe Dumbledore?"

"Nothing, actually. He convinced the ugly gremlins that I was getting the money for Harry."

~sigh~ "They're goblins, not gremlins."

"Still ugly."

". . . I miss my toaster oven."

Harry looked at the fleeting and distorted images of Francis and Severus the ghost speaking as they stood between two beds, both of which contained unconscious Harry Potter. He whirled around them, dizzy and disoriented, and caught in another maelstrom. He clutched Pandora's cane closely to himself, wondering if his great-grandmother would be upset with him for his having it. "Francis? Uncle Severus?" Harry almost cried in frustration when neither heard him.

Harry reached out to brush his fingers against Severus' shoulders. The ghost jumped as if someone had smacked him with a hot brand. Harry whirled around them in a large circle. The further away he got from them, the more faded the voices became. But as he swung close around them he saw Severus rub his shoulders and heard him tell Francis that it felt as if he was alive and an invisible ghost has just touched him.

"What do you suppose it was?" Francis asked.

"I don't know. It felt familiar." Harry nearly cried as he futilely reached out again.

He could not even remember how he got into the whirling circle he was in. He felt trapped and useless. It seemed to be exactly how his life was like. No matter what he did, he was always trapped. No matter how he tried to cope, he couldn't free himself of his fate. It hurt knowing Pandora had shoved him away. It hurt seeing Cousin Quigley drowning his sorrows and it hurt to know exactly how it felt to be so desperate.

"I'm here!" he called frantically as he reached out to bush Severus' shoulder again. The ghost jumped and looked around. His eyes settled upon Harry. He managed to give Severus a tense smile as he whipped past him.

"You get back into your body right this moment, young man!" Severus snapped angrily. Francis squinted in the direction that Severus was arguing to. After a moment, his eyes focused.

"How?" Harry called. And then, as an afterthought, "Which one is mine?"

"That one." Severus pointed to the Harry on the left as Francis pointed to the Harry on the right.

"Wait." Francis looked at the bodies and scratched his head. "Which one is our Harry?" They scrutinized the bodies for any tale-telling marks as Harry whirled around them. He sighed and hugged the cane close to his chest. A feeling of giddy relief welled up in his chest, but he ignored it for the moment. As he whirled around the images, he saw a tendril of warm golden light with flashes of red arching reach out of the dark depths into the whirling circle he was caught in. He watched it with a morbid interest.

As Harry whirled close to it, he heard Francis say, "You know, I don't think our Harry had a hickey on his neck."

"He better not be making out with someone!" Severus declared in a fit of parental rage.

The tendril of golden light snapped forward and wrapped around Harry's ankle. "Uh oh." It wrenched him free of the maelstrom and hurled him through the darkness. Harry flipped head over heels, away from Francis and Severus. His stomach heaved once before he crashed into something very solid.

It was a bookshelf. He learned this after he fell to the floor and several dozen books (all which must have had more than a thousand pages each) dropped off the shelf onto his head. He rubbed his sore head and straightened his glasses before picking up one book and reading its title: Study of Africa's Voodoo Magic. The hair on the back of Harry's neck rose on end as he hastily dropped the book. He snatched up another to look at. Curses Created by Cults.

"Oh bugger," he moaned as he stood up.

"Not only are you a nightmare," said a familiar voice behind him, "but you are also a nuisance. I know I'm awake this time." Harry whirled around, clutching Pandora's cane close, and saw the same man with the bronzed skin and black hair from earlier. He wore light green robes this time and carried a brace of candles. The affect of the warm glow the candlelight cast and the neutral look upon the man's handsome face drove away Harry's fear. He looked sheepishly at the pile of books at his feet.

"Sorry," he mumbled in apology. The man sighed and shook his head, clearly exasperated with Harry.

"Pick those up and then come and see me; we have some words to exchange." The darkness trembled from the force of command in his voice, soft and gentle as it was. Harry shivered and flinched. The man set the brace of candles on the floor and turned away. He gracefully walked down the hallway. The end of it was golden from the glow of other candles.

Harry slowly put the books onto their shelves, hesitant to finish and seek the man out as he had been told. He wondered what order the books had been, or if it really mattered. Not wanting to take a risk, Harry placed them on the shelf in something of the arrangement he could vaguely recall from the dream he had on the Knight Bus.

The dream Harry was currently trapped in hardly seemed real. The scope and reality of the dream was beyond the complex depths of a dream, but it seemed all the more unreal because of it. The only other times everything seemed to solid and so realistic while he was asleep were those two dreams of the child-woman thought to be his mother, but got kicked out of his own head at the end of both dreams.

After he finished, Harry picked up the brace of candles and slowly followed in the same direction as the man did earlier. He clutched Pandora's cane close for comfort and confidence. Remembering all too vividly the hellish power that filled the man's eyes in his last dream, Harry reluctantly entered the room at the end of the hall. It was the same room where he had first met the man. Not much had changed, except the pile of papers on the desk had increased in size. Harry carefully sat down on the chair before the desk and set the brace of candles to the side. The man sat behind the desk but did not look up at Harry as he buttered a golden crumpet. At his elbow was a tray of crumpets with a platter of butter and a tea set. Little wisps of steam drifted out of the teapot's spout.

"I didn't expect to see you again." Harry jumped at the sound of the man's voice. The man still did not look up from his domesticate task. "While I did not care to either does not change the fact you are here." He set the buttered crumpet on a napkin and pushed it to Harry before picking another crumpet. He dug his fingernails into the bread and pried it in half before buttering it. "Therefore, you are going to explain to me what you are doing here."

Harry fidgeted nervously with a corner of the napkin the offered buttered crumpet rested upon. "Well, what if I don't know what I'm doing here?"

"Then you shall explain how you got here and I will draw my own conclusions."

Harry sighed. "You sound just like Francis."

The eyes, all-knowing and all-understanding, turned from the crumpet to Harry as the hands stilled in their motion. Harry squirmed uncomfortably beneath the man's gaze. "Francis Potter?"

"My great-grandfather, yes."

"Interesting, that." The eyes looked away from Harry and the hands resumed their buttering motion. Harry did not know the matter was interesting because Harry was related to Francis, or was insistent of being related to Francis.

"Why is that?" Harry asked cautiously. He was wary of prodding this man for information. The man seemed dangerous, but not deadly. It was like shopping carrots with a sharp knife. The knife was deadly enough to slice a finger off, but not dangerous enough that it would actually happen.

"I find it odd that you should know your great-grandfather when he died at the age of thirty-six upon falling from his broom and breaking his neck."

"Again?"

The hands did not falter, but the man's eyes glanced at Harry again. "Again?" It sounded more like an observing statement than a question.

"He died like that once before." Harry looked away from the man's eyes. They reminded him too much of Pandora's. "Well, it's all sort of hard to explain, really," he said finally. He rubbed the pad of his thumb against the head of Pandora's cane.

"Do tell."

Harry wanted to. In that moment, when he looked back and saw the man gazing at him with a deep curiosity, Harry knew he would never again find anyone so completely unconnected to his life, yet so absolutely capable of understanding Harry's constant plights. The man's eyes were gentle and soothing, but the kindness and understanding disguised immense power and endless cunning. Again, Harry was struck with the sensation of how familiar with the man was.

"Who are you?" he asked.

Lips twitched, as if suppressing a smile. "No one of whose likes you have ever known before, nor ever will again."

"I can believe that," Harry said. The man poured him a cup of tea. Harry propped Pandora's cane against the desk and accepted the tea. "It's a long story," he said as he took a sip and burned his mouth.

"Child," the man leaned causally against the slanted back of his chair, "ever since my wife died and my grandchildren left, I have had plenty of free time. Today is no exception." He waved his hand. "You can talk yourself hoarse of your life and I will still have too much free time. Now speak."

So he did. Harry pushed the tea away to give it a chance to cool, and told the man everything, leaving nothing out. Drawn by the knowledge that the man was too removed from his life to make a judgment, yet close enough to be a listener who genuinely cared how Harry felt, Harry spoke.

All the many years of living with the Dursleys, the fates of his parents, the constant war with Voldemort, how he winded up with Severus, who Severus was, both the gain and loss of his Snape family, what they were doing as they jumped realities. He skipped sporadically about in his tale, saying everything he could think of in whatever order they appeared in is mind. The man remained quiet as Harry spoke, though there were a few times when the man flinched and once, when Harry told him of the night Voldemort came back and had killed Cedric, there was an sporadic flare of power from the man's stoic figure that nearly knocked Harry off his seat.

Harry was exhausted when he finished his story. He sighed as he folded half-over the table, his head resting against his arms. "And that's that," he said softly into his arms, too tired to hold his head up. Fingers brushed against his hair and he picked his head up just enough to peer curiously at the man. The man was reaching across the table to touch the top of Harry's head. "So who are you?" Harry asked again.

The man said nothing as he stood up and walked around to desk behind Harry. "Such a burden for one so young," the man said softly as he picked Harry up as if he weighed no more than a feather. "You're tired and still growing; you need your rest." Harry felt himself relaxing in the man's surprisingly protective hold. He dimly realized that he had left Pandora's cane propped up against the man's desk.

"Who are you?" he asked again before he fell asleep.

The man froze as Harry Potter dissolved into a shower of green sparks and was no more. After a moment, he sighed and whispered to the air, "I took the path less traveled, and am who I am because of that."