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 IV

Severus hadn’t fallen asleep until that morning. In the late afternoon he woke with the intense feeling that someone was staring at him.

"Hey, sleepyhead," a familiar voice said. "I know you're awake."

He opened his eyes and saw a ghost.

"What are you doing here?" he mumbled, wondering if maybe he was dreaming.

"Is that any way to greet your long-lost sister?" Anda asked. She was seated on his desk - she'd never had much respect for personal space - and although she was the same age as himself, thirty-five, she looked seventeen still, just as she had been when he last saw her, so many years ago. Except...

"You cut your hair."

She raised an eyebrow. "Observant is your middle name."

"No, it's not. It's Michael." He sat up, rubbing his eyes. This really wasn't a dream. "You know that."

She laughed. "You never were at your best first thing in the morning...or afternoon, is it?" She glanced at her watch.

"I didn't sleep last night." He looked at her, and shook his head. "But really, why are you here?”

"I came to visit. I can't see my brother and my little niece and my two lovely Aunts without raising suspicions?"

"Ah. How impossibly rude of me. Of course that’s the case." He got up and walked to his closet. He needed to do something, or else he might go over there and wring her neck. His anger towards her surprised him. "Never mind the fact that I haven't seen you for almost twenty years, that you said you'd never come back, and didn't, not even when I got put in Azkaban, or when your 'little niece' was born, or when her mother died...but now you turn up. To visit."

Anda was silent.

He turned around, exasperated. "Could you get out of here, please? I need to get dressed."

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

He sighed. "Honestly...Anda."

"I'll be downstairs in the kitchen." She slipped out, closing the door behind her. He stared at it for a while, amazed at how she could turn his whole life upside down in just one stroke. It was as if it was her bloody talent.

* * * * *

Yes, I killed someone. I pointed my wand at him and said, Avada Kedavra, the words rolling off my tongue, so heavy and black I thought I might choke on them. I watched as he crumpled to the ground. Saw the way his eyes stared up at me, glassy and dead as a doll's. Then I staggered away, ripping off my mask, and vomited into a gutter.

Alan found me sitting there on the curb a few feet away from the body, still shaking and sick. He took me by the arm and led me away, through the crowd of cavorting Death Eaters, past the small group of Muggles they were tormenting - I can still see their faces now, looking at me, begging to be let free.

Put your mask back on, Alan said to me. Someone will see you! He started to lift it up to my face.

No, no, I moaned. I need to breath. I can't breath.

What's wrong with you?

I don't know.

He took me to his flat, told me to wash myself up and gave me some clothes to change into. Afterwards, he sat me down in the parlor and gave me a glass of Scotch. I drank it down like water. He poured me another.

Feeling a little better? he asked when I had finished the second glass and was well into a third.

Yes - no. I looked at the glass in my hand as if I didn't quite know what it was and swallowed the last of it. I can't tell. I feel...numb.

Alan sighed, leaning back against the couch. He looked at me in such a strange way that I should have realized right then that something was up. But I was in shock from what I'd seen and done, and well on my way to drunkenness.

What you need, Alan said, is a shock to the system.

A what?

Something to wake you up.

I just want to go to sleep, I mumbled.

Not just yet, Severus, he said. He'd somehow gravitated closer to me as he spoke, and now our legs were touching.

We're alike, you and I, he told me.

We are?

Yes. He rested a hand on my thigh. We're outsiders. That's why I wrote you. I knew you for what you were the very moment I saw you.

When was that? I asked. My voice was as hesitant as a ghost's. I couldn't move; rooted to the spot, I watched his hand travel up my thigh. I felt as though I was being tugged along by a very gentle but rapid current.

You were a Third Year, and I was a Seventh, he said. Another boy had just punched you in the face. You knocked him over and then a professor came along. Everyone said that you had started it. No one cared to see the truth. It was the other boy.

Yes, yes, it had been - amazing that he had seen that, that he had known! I could remember it with as much anger and wounded pride as if it had just happened. Sirius Black. Of course. I grimaced.

But you see, the point is, you fought back, Alan continued. His arm was around my shoulders, his other hand resting now against my hip. His mouth was near my ear, and his voice sounded warm and wet to me. You fought back, he said, even though everyone else was against you.

Yes, I said. A small surge of vindication filled me.

That's a hard thing to do.

Yes.

He turned my face toward him. Our faces were very close. I swallowed, and it felt as though something was blocking my throat. Alan - I started.

Shh...don't, he said. Very close.

Feeling my heart speed up, I blurted out the first inane thing that came to mind - What about Mary?

Mary's kind of like a floor model in a store, Severus, he answered. She's all for show.

Alan, I don't...I can't do this.

No one will know, Severus. And no one will care.

I stopped.

I told you, we're outsiders. No one cares what we do.

No one no one no one no one no...it echoed in my mind, and that's when he kissed me. It was a just a small kiss. Barely anything at all. Kind of silly, really. So I let it happen.

...sometimes...I'm terrified my heart...

He was right. No one would care. They hated me anyway. He kissed me all over and then I let him lay me down on the couch and do what he wanted, which wasn't much anyway, just his hands, and his mouth, all over, and it was so strange it was ridiculous, but nice enough to make me think that maybe I wanted it too...

...of its constant hunger for whatever it is it wants...

It was raining outside. Raining. Raining, why was it *always* raining? The lights on the wall looked liquid. I thought I would die. I let it happen.

...the way it stops...

I closed my eyes and pretended Alan was someone else, a girl...Muireen. I moaned, electrified. My head fell back. I let her go, I let her go...oh no, oh no...

...and starts.

See. It wasn't that bad, he whispered to me a little while later. Did you like it?

I didn't answer. After a few minutes of waiting, he put his head down and fell asleep.

* * * * *

Ananda was an enigma. She dressed like a Muggle; she smoked; she swore like a seaman. She made them pancakes for lunch, and French-braided Niamh's hair, and told them stories about the Annual Bull Run in Spain, which she had watched, but never participated in. ("It's just a stupid way to prove you're a man, with the added bonus of possibly being gored in the side.") The best thing about her was that you could ask her anything, and she would always answer you.

"If you're Professor Snape's twin, why don't you look anything like him?" Harry asked her.

Ananda smiled and lit herself a cigarette. "That's the way it is in this family. There's always one light child and one dark child. But we all have the eyes..."

"Thank God we all don't have the nose," Niamh said, and slapped a hand over her mouth, her eyes wide. It was the first time Harry had ever heard her say anything about her father without the utmost respect.

"Hey!" Ananda said, laughing. "Lay off the nose. Our father had the nose."

"Was he nice?" Niamh asked, wistfully.

"Dad? Yeah, he was nice. Very intelligent, too. Even Severus will admit to that. Though he's apt to add 'for a Muggle'."

"Father never speaks about him," Niamh said glumly.

"Muggle?" Harry asked, surprised.

"Oh, yes," Ananda said. "Severus and I are 'tainted', as the Aunts told us when we first arrived." She tilted her head back, smiling in a far off sort of way. "We had no idea what they meant. We were ten years old. Your age, Niamh." She looked at her cigarette and realized it was ready to burn down to the filter, and stubbed it out. "Our parents had just died."

It was very quiet. Niamh looked out the window, fingers toying with the end of her braid. Ananda lit herself another cigarette.

That was when Professor Snape came down the stairs.

Harry froze. Snape did not even glance at him. He stared at Ananda, then turned his gaze on his daughter. He frowned, and then he went outside.

There was a pause, and Ananda exhaled a long gust of cigarette smoke and stood up. "Pardon me," she said. "I do believe it's time for a little brother to sister chat."

* * * * *

Life is a maze. You never know how many turns you'll make before you get to the end, or how many dead ends you'll run into. Although in my experience, you run into a lot.

After Alan fell asleep, I gradually returned from whatever place I'd hidden myself in, shaking and scared. I lay there, looking at him, but I wasn't really seeing him. I was seeing that dead man on the ground again. Everything was mixed up in my mind - death, love, hate, sorrow, madness.

Oh, god, I thought. What am I doing here? What have I done?

I got up, taking care not disturb Alan too much, and turned on the taps in the sink. For awhile I just watched the water run down the drain, and then I stuck my hands under the cold spray and began to scrub at them. They felt sticky and wrong, no matter how much I washed them.

Alan stirred on the couch.

I turned around, wide-eyed, and watched his sleeping form in fear. But he didn't wake up.

I turned off the water and dried my hands, which still felt very dirty to me, on my robe. Out of the corner of my eye I could see through the open door to Alan's study, and within it, his desk. I glanced once more at him and saw that he was still asleep. Then I walked into his study.

The only thing that was running through my mind was that what I had done that night, and what they had been doing all along, was insane, and that I had to get to the bottom of it. I had to find an answer, I had to find out...why. As ridiculous as it might seem, I still believed then that there had to be a reason, an explanation, for everything. I began to look through his desk, taking out folders, boxes, searching through everything. I found sets of keys and spare change and old photographs. I found letters the content of which disgusted me; it was obvious I wasn't the only boy or girl Alan had 'loved'.

Then, wedged and folded inside a small wooden box, I discovered a frail, creased piece of paper. It was a list. I saw a lot of people's names on it. Some of them were crossed out, and others had notes next to them. Some I knew, others I didn't, but it was clear to me what this list was for. It certainly wasn't a list of guests for a party, believe me.

And that's when I realized that this was as close to an answer as I would ever get. That the reason, if you could call it a reason, was nothing more than - hate. Just pure, inexhaustible hate, the kind that breeds in the minds of the unhinged, the unbalanced, like mold growing dark, damp places.

I'm not like that, I told myself. I'm not, no, I can't be. I know I'm not!

I made a decision. Finding a blank piece of paper and something to write with, I began to copy out the list of names, leaving out those crossed out - it was too late for them, anyway. The last names I copied down were James Potter and Lily Evans.

Then I put the desk back together, piece by piece, securing that terrible list back in its box, and went back out into the front room. Alan was still asleep. His lips were turned upwards just a little, and his eyes moved back and forth under his eyelids, involved in their own weird, singular sights. The sun was just beginning to rise; the light that came into the room hurt my eyes. It was a good pain, though. The light of truth.

I found my wand on the floor by the door. The last thing I had cast with it had been Avada Kedavra.

I could kill with it again, I thought to myself. Alan would never know he was breathing his last breath. He'd die in his sleep. Sweetly, mercifully, undeservingly so.

For a second I thought I would do it. For a second I envisioned his filthy hands on me. Then I exhaled and recalled to myself what hate did to you.

You're lucky, you bastard, I whispered, and then I Apparated away.

* * * * *

"You've got an awful lot of nerve."

"To do what, Severus?" She stared at him, defiant, that damned cigarette perched in her hand.

"To come back. To waltz in here like you just left yesterday." Severus pointed at the house, at the door he'd just passed through, at the kitchen where his daughter and Harry Potter sat. "To sit there, talking to my daughter, filling her head with your nonsense - !"

"For God's sake, Severus!" She threw the cigarette down on the ground and stamped it out violently. Her face was almost as red as her hair. "I said that I was sorry!"

"Sorry isn’t enough. Did you really thing it was? That one word would make up for almost twenty years, for everything?"

She was silent, staring at him. Then she looked away. "What else is there to say?"

He sighed and leaned against the side of the house. What else was there? A very good question. If sorry wasn't enough, what was?

"Why did you come back?" he asked her again. "Seriously this time, Anda, all jokes aside."

She looked at him again, not saying anything; but for a second she seemed an open book to him.

"It's Harry Potter, isn't it." His hands turned to fists.

She blinked, sputtered. "No! Of course not! My God, where did you get such an idea?"

"How did you know he was here?"

"I didn't!"

"Oh, please. You finally decide to make your miraculous return to Argat Island the same summer the great, " his voice turned sour and sarcastic, "incredible Harry Potter comes here."

"God, don't tell me you're still stuck on that old gripe -"

"But it's just to see your niece, of course. She wasn't important enough for you to wrench yourself away from your life for all ten years of her life but..." He stopped and scowled even deeper. "Which Aunt was it? Which one told you?"

"Neither! I didn't know until I saw him, Severus. I'm telling you the truth."

"Fine." He pointed a finger at her. "But you had better watch yourself around Niamh. I won't tolerate you filling her head up with your nonsense." He turned around and went back into the house.

Anda stood in his wake, her mouth slack.

"Fuck," she muttered, and lit herself another cigarette.

* * * * *

I'd been a spy for almost three years when the Potters were killed and Voldemort disappeared, causing my whole world to, once again, turn upside down.

It was Dumbledore's idea that I become a spy, that I stay in the Death Eaters's ranks and become his "most important crack in the armor of the enemy", as he called it. He showed me ways to trick them, intricate illusions that were almost impossible to penetrate. I worked my way up the ranks.

It was the first time I’d ever been an important anything. The idea made me shake, made the blood pump in my veins. It made me scared. I was bound to screw it up.

I can't rightly remember the exact events of the night of James and Lily's death; it was insane, a mixture of rumors and fear and excitement and horror and...I was with a group of Death Eaters that whole night, holed up in someone's flat, where we waited, terse and excited, for news as it came in. By early morning it was out. I don't know who delivered notice of Voldemort’s demise, but one minute things were normal and then there was an uproar, and I couldn't hear a word anyone was saying.

What's going on? What is it? I kept asking, only to be answered by gibberish.

Once I heard what had happened, I set out to see Dumbledore. Nobody noticed. They were too frightened and confused. People were coming and going, screaming that it wasn't true, worrying that they should rush home to hide any incriminating evidence, running in to confirm the rumors they'd heard on the street.

I arrived there just as morning was beginning to fade. Dumbledore was nowhere to be found. There were, however, plenty of Aurors in the area.

My work had been extremely secret.

Extremely.

By noontime, I was in Azkaban.

* * *