Haunted

"because cowboy, the snakes, they are my kin." Tori Amos, “Black-Dove (January)”

“I’m haunted - by the hallways in this tiny room, the echo there, of me and you...” Poe, “Haunted”

Part II

It was warm and damp on the last day of school, a thunderstorm threatening. There was the buzz of children in the hallway, echoes of footsteps, as they ran around in between bouts of packing. Professor Severus Snape sat in his own small room, staring at the two empty suitcases on his bed. They were not the same suitcases he and Anda had dragged with them to the Aunts' that summer many years ago. He didn't know what had happened to those suitcases; they had been made of old brown leather and they had belonged to his parents. They had been the only suitcases they had been able to find in the house before they left. They had smelled like his mother's perfume.

He should have kept track of them.

There was a new letter from Anda in the post today. Her hurried hand rushed across the page, as though her words to him were an afterthought, quickly ended in parentheses at the end of her day. It was all very perfunctory. She was in Venice. Italy, honestly, Anda had been all over the world, and Severus had never been anywhere. But then, Anda had a spirit he had never possessed; a willingness to stick out her neck, to ignore risk. He'd always been too withdrawn. Never mind. There was work to be done.

Packing; slowly filing away his life into one carefully contained space. It always made him feel slightly dizzy; that was how he had felt as he'd gotten ready to leave for Argat Island for the first time, sixteen years ago. It had been raining that day, too; it had been raining the whole damn week, starting on the night of the accident.

It was a Saturday, and they had been madly happy because they could stay up until ten o'clock (but not a moment later! their mother told Moira, before she and Dad left). He and Anda had been sitting in the kitchen, eating sandwiches for dinner, while Moira, who was their mother's American friend, was teaching them how to play bouree, Louisiana poker. Led Zeppelin's 'Dazed and Confused' was spinning on the record player - one of Moira's albums. The phone rang. Moira answered it, and right as Severus was taking a drink of his Coke, she screamed, and he almost choked.

Enough of this. It got him sidetracked. He closed the lid of the suitcase and buckled it. Time was slipping through his fingers, and all he could do was remember stupid inconsequentialities from the past. Like the bustle of people in the house that night, and Anda crying into Moira's shoulder. He'd just sat there at the kitchen counter, staring at the linoleum, ignoring everyone who spoke to them. He'd fallen asleep eventually, and someone had carried him up to his bedroom.

Forget it. He put the letter from Anda in a side pocket of the suitcase, and there was a sudden roll of thunder outside. He looked out the window. It was beginning to rain, finally. There were tracks of water sliding down the window; the sky was blank and white and emotionless, as it had been then.Yes, morning breaking, and he'd been laying on his bed, right near the window, watching the pitiful drops of rain on the window. Anda had crept into his room and climbed up on his bed next to him. Rain. It's like the whole world is crying, she'd said. He'd nodded.

Then why aren't you? she'd asked.

* * * * *

There was a feeling of heaviness, a type of foreboding in his stomach. Harry sighed, and let his trunk down with a thud; then he rested Hedwig's cage atop of it. Everything was in order. He was all ready to go. What a miserable thing.

He saw Snape every day for two-thirds of the year. Still, there were many degrees between their lives; and Harry wanted it to stay that way. He didn't want to know Snape, and he didn't want Snape to know him. He didn't want to live with Snape and any of his relatives, who were surely just as vile as he was. He didn't want to have some feeling of debt - it made him uneasy. It was an intrusion of sorts; a dread-filled intrusion, and he was sure Snape would make the Dursleys seem like angels in comparison to him. He would make it his personal business, most likely.

Now Harry looked up as Snape held out the Portkey - a smooth glass bottle, empty and uncorked. Dumbledore hadn't told Harry much; he had only said that he was going to stay with Snape and his family for the summer, on a little island called Argat, of the coast of Ireland.

"Go ahead," Snape said. "Don't waste time, we have to get going."

* * * * *

When we were seventeen, and we had both graduated, Anda decided she was going to leave. She didn't see fit to tell the Aunts this - they'd only make things complicated, she told me. So on a shady June day a few weeks after we had come home from Hogwarts, I helped her pack.

My whole life has been packing. Packing for myself, packing for my loved ones; watching one place recede behind me as I leave, or watching someone recede down the road as they leave me. It's left me tired, tired with the knowledge that nothing is stable or transitory.

I carried her suitcases for her out of the house (the Aunts were in their workroom - they never knew a thing was happening) down the path to the gate, and then we settled on the road to the village.

You could just apparate, you know, I said to her. It's easier than traveling the Muggle way.

She shook her head. You have to know where you're going when you apparate, she told me. And I don't know where I'm going. I'm just going to go where the road and the wind take me...

You'll write, won't you?

She laughed. Of course, Severus. And you'll write to me. That's what owl post is for, after all - we aren't held down by addresses.

I nodded. Of course, just as she said. I wasn't losing Anda. Don't be ridiculous.

I hate it when people say 'of course' to me. It makes me feel stupid.

We got to the docks, and Anda paid a fishermen with some Muggle money. I could feel everyone's eyes on my back. Anda was wearing Muggle clothes, and she looked like a Muggle, laughing and joking with the man on the boat. But I was still wearing wizard robes. Muggles disgusted me. Everything about Muggles disgusted me. I could never understand how Anda acted so easily around them, after the way they treated us on the island. But, then, she wasn't a Slytherin - she was a Ravenclaw. We were different.

I said good bye to her that day and I didn't see her face to face again. I got piles of letters from her, from all over the world, but she did not come back. I don't think she will ever come back. I think she will stay as far from Argat Island as possible. She once told me she made a point to never even step on the soil of the British Isles again. Too many bad memories. Too many ghosts. I never left.

* * * * *

The first thing Harry was aware of, after the nauseous feel of traveling wore off, was the crashing of breakers on the shore; then the smell of the ocean itself, a salty, whiskery smell, carried on the warm breeze that hit him in the face. He squinted, reaching up to push his windblown bangs away from his face, and looked around.

Snape had already let go the Portkey and turned away, staring up the hill behind the rocky beach, where a large house loomed. Harry let his trunk go from his deathgrip on the handle and peered at the house with him; it was dark and unfriendly looking to him, but considerably more shabby looking then he would have thought.

"Get your things, Potter," Snape said to him. He himself began to walk up the hill, not once looking behind himself at Harry. Harry sighed and grabbed his trunk again, beginning to lug it up the hill after Snape; his other hand gripped Hedwig's cage. The owl did not look too happy, either with the afteraffects of the Portkey or with their present location, Harry did not know. He felt much the same way, himself, though.

When he finally reached the summit (Harry, by this time, the recipient of many bruises and scratches courtesy of his bulky trunk), Snape had already entered the house. Harry scowled. He had the lost feel of the completely unwanted; he didn't want to go into the house alone - couldn't Snape, for once, have been a little more understanding? Harry didn't like this any more than him!

He had just gathered up enough of his courage to enter the house when the door opened and someone stepped out.

It was not Snape, certainly, although she did possess the man's long, straight black hair, dark eyes and pale complexion. He estimated her age to be about nine or ten; she had thick eyelashes and a small, round mouth that was set into a solemn line. She walked down the steps and, without a word, took Hedwig's cage from him and began to walk back up the steps. Harry hastened after her.

"Uh, er, hello," he said, heaving the trunk up onto the porch.

She began to open the door; its huge brass knob was larger than her hand. "I'm Niamh Snape. My father told me to...show you around." Her tiny voice was silky smooth, like Snape's; but Harry reckoned it somehow suited her well, and did not cause the same kind of unease Snape's did.

"Your father?"

She nodded, and gestured for him to step into the house. "Severus Snape. Your professor. I'm his daughter."

"I - I wasn't aware he had a daughter. Or was married, for that matter." He hadn't even really thought of that last possibility until it came out of his mouth.

Niamh's mouth quirked a little. "He's not married."

"Oh." Harry decided that the floor in this house was very interesting, and opted to stare at it and keep his mouth shut from now on.

* * * * *

I reached a low point in my existance that summer that has only been touched again once more in my life. It was an effort to get up in the morning, an effort to dress, an effort to eat. As a matter of fact, many days I didn't even try - I went for long periods of time wearing the same clothes, eating and drinking very little, sometimes staying in bed most of the day. Too much effort - hell, it sometimes seemed too much of an effort to breath. It always took the Aunts awhile to notice anything, but eventually their attention was drawn to my behavior. Jessa, who had always considered me her 'protege', was the one who approached me.

I've owled some of my friends at the Ministry, she told me one morning as I sat at the kitchen table, trudging my way through breakfast. I've set up an appointment for you in August to interview as an assistant in the Potions department. Won't that be...fun?

You could tell she was uncomfortable with her attempt at sounding cheerful.

Her smile looked like a crack in a china cup. I shrugged my shoulders at her false gaiety and made my mouth a bald line. She went away after awhile, disappointed.

Part of me rejoiced at this turn of events. An assistant position at the Ministry was not that momentous; but it meant getting out of that house, didn't it?

Still another part of me glowered at Jessa and Birgitte; what right had they to interfere with my life? It was mine to waste, wasn't it? They'd spent all their lives as recluses, doing nothing, why couldn't I? They probably were just annoyed at my presence. They wanted to get rid of me.

This thought made me so angry that I went upstairs, got washed and dressed and went outside. I had been in so long that the sun hurt my eyes, the air seemed to wither my lungs. I walked down to the beach, my legs feeling like jelly by the end of the walk. It was low tide, and half of the rocky beach was dry and gray; the other half was stained almost black by now-absent water. There was no one there but a few sea birds.

No, there was someone else there.

She was crouched down, not too far off to my right, on one of the large, flat rocks. Bent over, looking in the water, her long, wavy brown hair seeming almost golden in the summer sun. She'd been so still I had at first not noticed her.

I could tell, even from this far off, that she was a Muggle; she wore their clothes, ridiculous brand-name blue jeans, with a brown and white striped silky blouse rolled up at the sleeves. She was barefoot; her brown leather sandals were parked in neat attention at the base of the rock. I used to wear clothes like that, when I was a child. I remembered all their names and the way they felt on my skin, the comforting, confining feel of trousers.

I should have just left; that's what my mind was telling me to do. My feet, however, had decided on a different course of action, and I approached her, silently. She did not know I was there until I spoke.

Are you looking for something?

She jumped, and her head came up, her hair flying. I - she said. She took me in; I was suddenly painfully aware of my wizard robes. They seemed so foolish all of a sudden, along with all of my pretensions. I wished I was wearing jeans and a regular shirt, just like her; young and Muggle and carefree.

I thought perhaps she would try to leave, that she'd be frightened by my odd appearance and want to get away; just another freak, a product of the strange times, most likely on drugs. It almost made me laugh. How far removed from the truth!

But she didn't leave. She smiled at me, her eyes squinting in the sun, one hand going up to shade her eyes. Mussels, she said.

Mussels?

Yeah, she said. You know, they're a type of clam, or whatever. My grandfather likes to eat them. Her accent was thick but educated; she wasn't from the village, she was from the mainland, Dublin or Galway or another big city. Product of a public education, no doubt, and probably on her way to some Muggle university to learn all their great classical literature. My mind strained for names I'd almost forgotten. Shakespeare. Rosetti. Shelley. Marlowe. I'd never read them; but I remembered them lining my mother's bookshelves. A great lover of Muggles and all their trappings, my mother had been. She'd even married one, hadn't she, completely leaving behind the Aunts and their claustrophobic world? Traitor. Lucky bitch. I looked down at the girl on the rock, and for a second her hair turned red and I saw her - Deirdre, my mother. Then I blinked and the mirage was gone.

The girl stood up. I'm Muireen, she said, offering a hand. I'm here visiting my grandfather. I haven't seen you in the village. What's your name?

You haven't seen me in the village because I don't live there, I said, forcing myself to refuse her hand. My name is Severus. I mumbled it; my name sounded so strange and decayed beside her own, a flowing of syllables, free like the wind, like the waves of the sea. I wanted to say it and see how it rolled off my tongue. I bit down on the side of my mouth to keep myself from opening it.

Where do you live then? she asked. Her hand did not lower.

Up on the hill...I said vaguely, not wanting to really say - but she knew where I meant, anyway. There was only one house up on the hill, and no person could stay in the village for more than a day without knowing about it. I could see the recognition in her eyes, in the way her forehead wrinkled up in the shape of remembering. I wondered what stories the villagers made up about my Aunts these days. Doubtless many horrible ones, guaranteed to scare her away before another word left my mouth.

But she did not move. She just looked at me, and finally she said: Aren't you going to shake my hand?

It surprised me, without a doubt. I reached up and took her hand; my own appendage felt dull and death-laden but hers was alive and warm. She pumped it up and down vigorously. Want to help me look? she asked.

For mussels? I asked, taking my hand back and curling it up against my stomach, trying to keep the startling warmth of her on my skin as long as possible.

Of course, she said, and gestured over to the water. She had a tin bucket and a little metal pocket knife over there; the bucket was about a quarter-ways filled with dark, oblong shapes - the mussels. They hide under the overhang of the rock, she explained, sitting down. And once you do find them, you have to pry them off; it's a little tough.

I stood there for a second, letting the strange feelings wash over me. Behind me was the house, and all of my anger and loneliness and resentment; and here was this girl, smiling and tanned and talking about, of all things, mussels!

Sure, I said, and sat down next to her.

* * * * *