Into the Fold

Meeting Meed

June 1976

Severus opened his eyes on a bedroom even bleaker than the one he slept in at home, with his stomach feeling even emptier than usual. Then he remembered. He was in a Trainee's Room at St Mungo's Hospital, waiting for Professor Dumbledore to take him to the Head Healer, who would prepare him for life imprisonment in Azkaban, because he couldn't imagine how any of them--Dumbledore, the Head Healer or himself--would ever work out how to heal James Potter.

At least, if they all failed, Potter would be out of his life for good. But then Dementors would come into his life--also for good--and he couldn't see how that would be an improvement.

Severus got out of bed, washed and dressed, then went to the window. He nudged the flimsy curtain aside and looked out. Muggles thronged the street below, striding purposefully along the pavement and riding in cars and buses on the road. Few of them spared so much as a glance for Purge and Dowse, Ltd., the dowdy department store with the "Closed for Refurbishment" sign in the window.

The pedestrians were as varied as they were numerous. Severus saw a group of middle-aged women intent on a serious day's shopping. He saw men in three-piece suits carrying briefcases and consulting watches. Here were two girls in saris as bright as summer flowers, giggling behind their hands, there an imposing ebony man in a dashiki. Behind the dashiki-clad man came someone in a frock coat with a luxurious white beard. The bearded man turned into the walk that led to Purge and Dowse, heading straight for the ground floor window.

Professor Dumbledore. Severus saw his face just before the headmaster disappeared beneath a ledge. He waited for the knock on his door, and in a few minutes it came. He opened the door, and there stood Dumbledore.

The headmaster beamed as if the one thing he wanted was to see Severus. "Good morning!" He gestured Severus into the hallway. "The Head Healer awaits."

Severus followed Professor Dumbledore into the corridor, trying to quiet the fluttering of his stomach. He wasn't going to the Dementors, he told himself. Not yet.

"I hope you slept well?" Dumbledore said as they headed for the stairwell.

"Yes, thank you, sir."

"Good. I didn't, I'm afraid. There was a raucous party in the Cauldron common room, must have lasted till two in the morning. Dragon-keepers' convention, from what I could gather. I suppose you live your leisure to the fullest when your work could kill you any day. Here we go." Dumbledore opened the door to the stairwell, and he and Severus began their climb. "We'll be breakfasting in the Trustees' Dining Room with Healer Meed. It's on the sixth floor."

"I thought there were only five floors to the hospital?"

"Oh, yes, that's what the sign says in the lobby. The sixth-floor staircase is Disillusioned too. The Trustees' view is that as they've paid well for their privacy, they shouldn't be disturbed."

They climbed the stairs to the sixth floor landing. Professor Dumbledore took out his wand and, laying it across his palms, lifted it before a door with no knob, sign or nameplate. In a moment the door swung open.

Professor Dumbledore and Severus walked through to a large, airy room. Sunlight shining through tall windows sparkled on glass chandeliers. Tables covered with snow-white cloths were laid with china and silver. A few house-elves waited unobtrusively against the wall. At one of the tables sat a woman with the blackest hair Severus had ever seen, drinking tea from a fragile-looking cup. Otherwise, the dining room was empty.

The woman lowered her cup and smiled at the headmaster. With Severus tagging behind, Dumbledore approached her table.

"Constance."

She extended her hand and Dumbledore took it. "Good morning, Albus." She looked behind him at Severus and smiled. "Severus, I believe?"

Severus looked around Dumbledore's left side at Constance Meed. Her eyes drew him in at once. They were huge, larger than they had any right to be, hardly able to fit within her face He blinked in disbelief, and when he looked again, he realised his own eyes had played tricks on him. Healer Meed's eyes were indeed large, round and of differing shades of grey which hinted at depths. They were otherwise perfectly normal.

Dumbledore looked at him pointedly. "Er, yes," said Severus.

"Severus Snape, Constance," said Dumbledore. "Severus, this is Healer Meed."

"How do you do, Severus," said Healer Meed. Her voice was calm, pleasantly modulated, with a tone that a sick person might find quite soothing. Her gaze was anything but. Severus felt she saw straight into his heart. He felt that sometimes when Dumbledore looked at him, but Healer Meed's look was noontime sun compared to Dumbledore's flickering wandlight.

"It's called Legilimency," said Healer Meed. "Won't you sit down?"

Dumbledore gave him another pointed look, and the heat rushed to Severus's face. "Erm--hello--yes."

Severus slid into a seat next to Professor Dumbledore, opposite Healer Meed. The house-elves swarmed their table with plates of bacon, eggs and toast and pots of coffee and tea. "If I recall, Legilimency isn't taught at Hogwarts," said Healer Meed. "Do you know what it is?"

"Yes, ma'am. I've read about it."

"Good. My specialty is Psychic Healing, so Legilimency is my stock-in-trade. Those who suffer from the various magical madnesses aren't often able to articulate what's troubling them. Sometimes they can't even talk. Legilimency helps me find out what I need to know without talking."

Severus nodded in reply. He couldn't talk either, for, his hunger raging, he'd stuffed his mouth with toast and scrambled eggs. He hadn't eaten since dinner last evening, before he had trailed Remus Lupin into the tunnel beneath the Whomping Willow. It seemed ages ago, and not only because it felt like ages since he'd had something to eat.

"So you're the young man who invented the spell that cut James Potter," said Healer Meed.

Another forkful of eggs was half-way to Severus's mouth. He set it down and studied the food piled on his plate . "Yes."

"James is on a regime of Blood-Replenisher Potion," said Healer Meed. "He's holding his own for the moment, but unfortunately the effectiveness of Blood-Replenisher wears off over time. If you and I don't find a way to heal him, he will die."

Severus met the strange, multi-layered grey of Healer Meed's eyes, then stole a glance at Professor Dumbledore. Dumbledore, calmly sipping a cup of coffee, looked as though he hadn't heard a single word Healer Meed had said.

"I don't know how," Severus said to Healer Meed.

"Finish your breakfast, then, so that we can start to learn."

At the word "breakfast", Severus's hunger came roaring back. After a few minutes of very serious work, he was finished.

So was Healer Meed. Professor Dumbledore was still drinking his coffee, but Healer Meed paid no attention to him. Her eyes fixed on Severus, she seemed to have forgotten Dumbledore was there. "Before we begin, I shall have to examine your magic. Do you understand?"

"Professor Dumbledore told me you would search my memories." Severus darted another look at Dumbledore. The headmaster, having set down his cup, was watching them both.

"Well, yes, that, eventually," said Healer Meed. "If we find it's worth our while. But you're the one who has to create the counter-curse to Sectumsempra. If you've mutilated your magic so far to the Dark that you can't do it, we might as well not waste our time."

Severus slumped back in his chair and included Dumbledore with Meed in his look of resentment. "Why did I have to come here if nobody knows whether I can do what I came here for?"

"To find out, obviously," said Meed. "As a preliminary, at least."

"I'm afraid I didn't have time to go into all the details with Severus," said Dumbledore. "The circumstances, you understand. Besides, we were both--somewhat overwrought."

"To be sure. Well, the finding-out isn't so bad," Healer Meed said to Severus. "I use Legilimency to enter your magical heart, which is the term the old Healers used to refer to the parts of the mind and soul devoted to magic. Once there, I examine your magic to determine whether it and the well you draw it from are Light or Dark--or, as is the case for most of us, a bit of both." Her face relaxed into a wry smile. Seeing it, Severus felt his resentment drain away. "I've mixed my metaphors, but I hope you understand?"

"I think so," said Severus. He'd never heard of anything like it before.

"Perhaps we'd better get it over with, then, eh? The first step, at any rate. So if you're finished with breakfast--" Severus glanced down at his spotless plate "--and if Professor Dumbledore will excuse us, we could go to my office for the examination."

Severus looked anxiously at Dumbledore. He'd been strangely retiring. It was so unlike him not to have dominated the conversation. But he only nodded and said, "Certainly, Constance. I'll be back at the Cauldron if you need me. I've some letters to write."

Severus and Healer Meed left the sixth floor and returned to the same corridor in which the Trainee's Room where Severus had slept was located. She had been a commanding presence in the dining room, so that, walking beside her, Severus was surprised to see that she reached no higher than his shoulder. At the end of the corridor, they came to a polished oak door. Healer Meed opened it and gestured Severus over the threshold.

He stepped into Healer Meed's office, a room which, though windowless, felt even airier than the Trustees' dining room. A gentle breeze moved across his face, carrying an early-summer scent of open sky and flower-laden meadow. The office seemed designed to soothe. Gleaming cherry bookshelves lined leaf-green walls. Candle-filled crystal globes like the ones in the lobby and corridors hovered near the ceiling, but instead of emitting the bright glare or sickly fluorescence Severus was used to seeing, these globes shone with a soft golden light. A couple of peaceful landscapes and a portrait of a competent-looking Healer in a mob cap hung on the walls. There was a modest-looking desk, a couple of puffily-cushioned armchairs and a simple pewter Pensieve on a counter in the corner. A silver-white mist swirled above the surface of the Pensieve, as if the Pensieve couldn't contain all the memories it held.

"Sit down," said Healer Meed, gesturing toward an armchair. Severus sat. The Head Healer pulled up the other armchair and sat across from him. For a few moments, she regarded him. To Severus, her eyes had the shifting, fitful appearance of the sea on a cloudy day.

"Roll your sleeve above your left elbow and give me your left hand, please," said Healer Meed.

Severus did so. She took his hand and placed her own left hand on the inside of Severus's forearm.

For a moment, sinuous white cloud like the mist above the Healer's Pensieve flowed across Severus's sight. Then the cloud parted, and--

--there was Dad howling at Mum, his mouth twisted, his teeth all yellow and jagged, spit flying, looking like a monster, scaring Sev, scaring Mum so she crouched away and forgot about her wand. She could do anything with her wand, but Dad made her forget it again, so Sev started to cry....

There was the first day of flying class with the other Slytherins and Madam Hooch. Severus had never seen a flying-broom before, much less flown one, like the kids from wizarding families, like the pure-bloods, like Maddy Urquhart, who laughed her rotten head off when the broom threw him....

Lily, Lily, seeing him at Potter's feet, choking on pink soap bubbles...Sectumsempra, take that, you bastard...his feet in the air, his robes falling round his ears, the blood rushing to his head, Potter stole my spell!

"LEAVE HIM ALONE!"

Potter obeys Lily as he obeys no one else, because he wants her more than anyone else, oh, yes; Severus understands. Potter's Liberacorpus dumps him on the ground and Potter says, "You're lucky Evans was here, Snivellus--"

"I don't need help from filthy little Mudbloods like her!"

Enough. Severus willed that Healer Meed should see no more.

He let her take him into sixth year instead. The Firewhip, its fury meant for Potter but landing on Pettigrew. The ice crystals of Madame Pomfrey's Refrigeratus Charm flowing from her wand into Pettigrew's burned skin. Detention in the matron's garden, piling mulch around the herbs....

Then darkness drew across his mind's eye like a curtain. He felt a ruffling at the drape, as of someone handling it, trying to pull it back, but it went nowhere. The blackness remained complete, as if he had closed his eyes in a dark room. He was blind a moment or two longer, then the darkness faded and light rose in his mind: the silver light of the full moon. Severus was Levitating a twig toward the knob at the base of the Whomping Willow, his head full of what Black had said:

"That's where Remus Lupin goes on the night of the full moon. You do what I say, and you can follow him."

He did what Black said. He followed Remus Lupin. And he found the wolf.

Oh, no, the wolf.

Sheer terror, then, with no sight, only feeling. Memory swam back into focus with the sound of Potter's voice.

"Stun him! With me...we both need to hit him!"

The red flash of twinned spells, the werewolf's collapse, the race through the tunnel, hands scrabbling at the Whomping Willow's knot, and they were through. But relief, sheer joy in the sweet night air, soon turned to a rage like none that Severus in all his angry days had ever known.

"If you think Sirius's dad and my dad are going to let Dumbledore take the word of a greasy little jumped-up half-blood over ours, you'd better think again.... Why do you think you can do any of it when it's my dad, not yours, who's Dumbledore's friend?"

Potter brought it all on himself. He deserved--

"Sectumsempra!"

Light flashed, Potter fell bleeding and silvery mist drifted across Severus's mind's eye. The mist shredded. Severus saw Healer Meed's face and felt her hand slip from his forearm.

"So that's how it happened."

Severus's arm was warm where her hand had lain. He rubbed it and moved back in the chair as far as he could.

Healer Meed looked at him thoughtfully. "And then there were the Dark patches."

"Dark patches?"

"You didn't notice?"

"The--the blind spots, you mean? I was blind for a minute or so."

"Yes. Patches of darkness in your soul. Behind them is something you want to keep to yourself, even more than you want to hide what you did to James Potter. Something darker than your anger. Something colder."

"I hid something from you?" Severus said in surprise.

"Oh, yes. You can hide anything from me if you really want to, if you don't mind failing at what we're trying to do."

If he didn't mind expulsion and Azkaban. "What was it?" Severus asked.

"The memory of an evil you participated in. Something more evil than your casting of Sectumsempra. That's all I know."

Severus didn't answer. He looked away from Healer Meed to sort through his memories. She'd gone through them chronologically. The first was his very first memory of Tobias rowing with Mother, so long ago he couldn't remember what they'd fought about. All that had stayed with him was fear and the howling monster.

Severus shut the memory down. But the memory Healer Meed had ended with was hardly better, the Sectumsempra that might end as murder....

The point was, Severus could probably deduce what lay beneath the Dark patches. Nothing about Lily, he reckoned. The darkness covered "something colder", Healer Meed had said, and none of his memories about Lily were cold.

Let's see, he thought. The memory before the Dark patch had been of him doing detention in Madam Pomfrey's garden.

On the day he'd collected a starling, a vole and a rabbit for Ruskin and Lestrange to practise on.

Something colder, and the darkness was ripped back, like a curtain by an invisible hand, revealing the secret Firewhip lesson he'd given to Olaus Ruskin and Rabastan Lestrange and his use of Sectumsempra to kill the rabbit Lestrange had burned.

--watching the Firewhip-roasted rabbit bleed its life out into the frost-bitten grass. "I do good work, don't I?" Lestrange says, and in a way you can't help but agree.

Then, the even more secret Sectumsempra lesson he had given to Ruskin alone.

"It's not easy to limit a spell that can kill you if you'll just give it its head. It's like it develops a mind of its own."

Ruskin had got it. It hadn't taken him long at all to learn Sectumsempra. He was a natural. And the whole time he'd been his usual cool and amiable self. While learning Sectumsempra, he'd hated no one in the way that Severus, while inventing it, had hated James Potter .

At least, not so that Severus had noticed.

Something colder. Severus looked up at Healer Meed.

"You know what I'm talking about," she said.

Severus nodded.

"You don't have to tell me," she said. "I know enough. Do you think you can find your own way back to the Trainee's Room, to wait for a bit? I need to speak to Professor Dumbledore before we can go on."

****

"I don't know that he instigated it," said Healer Meed to Professor Dumbledore, "but to fail to oppose evil can be as bad as doing evil. You know that."

Professor Dumbledore knew it very well. "Should Severus tell you what lies beneath the Dark patches? I can urge him to do so if you'd like."

"Urge him? He'll only take it as a threat. No. Let him keep his secret. I'm not here to psychically heal Severus Snape, but to save James Potter's life. All I need is proof that Severus can help me do that, because--flatter me as you like--I don't think I can do it alone."

"And what proof would be sufficient?"

"Let him show he isn't Dark at his roots. I think your own method's best; I'm surprised you haven't thought of it yourself. See if you can teach him how to conjure a Patronus."

Professor Dumbledore blinked. He had indeed not thought of it himself.

"Isn't that one of the ways you vet prospective members of the Order?" asked Healer Meed. "Because no one evil enough to become a Death Eater can conjure a Patronus."

"You're well informed," said Professor Dumbledore.

"Better than I'd like, sometimes."

"And if I can't teach him? That doesn't make him evil. Just because you can't conjure a Patronus doesn't mean you're a Dark wizard."

"No. It might only mean you're weak. Severus Snape is not weak."

"You have me there," murmured Professor Dumbledore.

"Will you do it, then?"

Professor Dumbledore thought of James Potter lying in his secluded hospital bed, his eyes closed, his face looking too pale to belong to a boy still in life. "I suppose I must."

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