Other Ends

OTHER ENDS

by Silverfish ~:
IV.

He found himself in a place surrounded by blank whiteness, a place that wasn't uncomfortable, or painful, or dark in any sense of the word. Soft breezes, like the caress of down feathers showered past his sight, streaks of white light laying suspended within the air. Through their haze, his dark navy eyes could see her, and the vast, unforgiving depths of her pitch black sight. She stood still before him, and he realized he was lying down on what might be a bed, though the comfort wasn't unlike that of literally sleeping on a cloud. He had no wish to get up.

"I saved you a lot of trouble," he said to her at length. "They were going to make a bomb out of my death, they were going to destroy my world with it."

She remained as unmoving as a rock, and quite possibly as emotional. He closed his eyes, sinking into the comfort of the softness surrounding him, enjoying it. He sighed, thinking one couldn't get more content than this, to simply lay and sleep for an eternity in such a bed. Still, a note of regret pulled on him, and caused an itch in his psyche that wasn't easy to get rid of. He kept seeing Sev, his stricken face as Daniel fell, that cry of horror that echoed inside of memory. Poor Sev, he'd made such bad choices, and Daniel had been yet another one.

Regret was making the perfection of his sleep uncomfortable. Severus Snape, potions master of Hogwarts, ex-spy against some horrible, unknown wizard who wanted to destroy the Muggle race kept intruding on his peace. The Severus Snape who, despite all of this, still remained as innocent in some things as a heartstruck teenager. He'd plunged headlong into Daniel's life, at first out curiosity and then later out of need. He'd surrendered everything, Daniel thought, and received nothing but sheer emptiness in return.

Oh yes, there are Dark Arts in the Muggle world, Daniel knew, and it was a knowledge tinged with bitterness. Love was definitely one of them.

He opened his eyes again, that filter of white brilliance shining into them, though not painfully. She was closer this time, standing right beside him at his bed, her abysmal, black eyes staring down at him in what could almost be considered anger. She was tiny, like a child, small and frail, but this was all an illusion meant to placate the soul as it surrendered its body. Every Muggle, and every Wizard for that matter, knew that there was no power more severe than that of Death's.

He closed his eyes again. "I'm sorry to have caused you all this trouble. But you realize, of course, that some of this you brought on yourself? If you'd given that Voldemort bastard a fatal coronary or an undetected brain tumour, the threat to mine or the Wizard's worlds would never have happened. And don't you go getting mad at me for keeping my death in that vial instead of taking it like I was supposed to--I was alive, and that's what people who are do, they struggle to keep it that way." He sighed, resigning himself to the helplessness of the situation. "I suppose there wasn't much you could do against Voldemort, given that you aren't supposed to have an opinion--But dammit, he wasn't using just any bomb at all, he was using parts of what was *my* existence, or rather the end of it!" He frowned, his eyes tightly closed. "I would have thought you of all things would understand how awful that is. A person's death is highly personal, it's intimate. It would be like killing people by sending up posters around London of me in the nude, and not on my most aesthetic day, either."

"Are you quite finished?"

Daniel frowned even further, for that wasn't a little girl's voice, as one would expect--even from Death--but the tones were definitely deep, and male, and....

He opened his eyes to see a wizard in a white coat staring down at him. Or, rather, not a wizard but a doctor, and he didn't look at all pleased. "I don't know how you managed to get into our ER without any registration, but I'll have you know we don't like people who waste our time whining over silly, tiny little injuries and moaning about their impending end." He pointed the chart in his hand towards a little boy in the next bed who looked to be about seven years old. He was crying, miserably, while his mother at his side was glaring at Daniel. "You're scaring the other patients with your nonsense."

Daniel sheepishly sat up and tested the back of his head with the heel of his palm. To his surprise, he found nothing more than a small bandage and...what was this? He brought it out and laid it in his lap, wondering how in the hell a piece of drywall plaster got into his hair. He checked again with quick sweep of his hand, and found more of the chalky chunks within his brown tangled mop.

"The next time you need stitches for a cut, don't let your drunk friends try to patch you up with carpentry equipment," the doctor shot at him. He snapped Daniel's clipboard shut and marched off, leaving Daniel stunned, confused and, oddly enough, very, very much alive.

***
Snape walked into the front entrance of the St. Thomas hospital, doing his best to hide the feeling of being grossly overwhelmed. Though he'd been in Muggle surroundings before, he'd had an escort with Daniel, and even then the journey had been fraught with many problems, not the least of which involved an embarrassing incident with a Tommy Hilfinger fashion poster. At least, as he stood in the lobby of the St. Thomas hospital, he could take some uncomfortable confidence in the fact that he'd been in these kinds of sterile environments before as well--though for Snape such a place was tantamount to a Muggle wandering into a graveyard at midnight and finding out the dead dug themselves out of their graves to sit on their coffins and play cards...

He took a deep breath, doing his best to compose himself and not make his nervousness show too much. He made a quick sweep of the people sitting on chairs in what was labeled the emergency waiting room (though why, if someone was in an 'emergency', they needed to sit at a chair and wait for Fate to intervene before a medical professional arrived didn't make all that much sense to Snape). Not finding Daniel anywhere amongst the sickly grey faces of the emergency room, he began a small journey down the hall, his hip bumping a gurney with an ancient old man moaning on its surface. Fear was creeping into every aspect of his being, and he forced himself to move on, regardless of the old man's horrible pleading behind him:

"Father..I need to confess...Father..."

The unsettling words crept up after him, and Snape hurried his steps down the pale, green corridor, the lights too bright, the atmosphere too sterile and busy and efficient. This institution was a personification of that cold, unemotional detachment he had learned was so prevalent amongst Muggles when they were confronted with mortality. Perhaps because they lived so closely on the edges of life and death every day, such distance kept them balanced. Knowing this didn't settle the feelings of unease within Snape, however, even if his discomfort was mixed with profound sadness.

When he did find Daniel here, what would be greeting him? His heart and stomach sank at the very thought, and he struggled not to explore it. But Snape is not a man without imagination, and unfortunately right now it was spilling over with images of Daniel soaked in blood, his face in a fixed mask of pain that would never relax in Snape's memory. His hand dove into the pocket of his robe, where he reflexively grasped his wand, though what service it could provide him with now was moot.

Grief threatened to overwhelm him at these black thoughts, and he did his best to suppress it. Daniel, who had been his only friend....Who, despite all of his strangeness, or maybe even because of them, had found a kindred spirit in Severus Snape. An often shortsighted, infuriating Muggle who challenged the importance of magic at every turn, who drank too much, who had a bad temper hiding underneath his calm veneer, who was definitely not a good influence on the young minds he taught strange literary snippets to, who was forever obsessed with his Muggle gadgetry and caused no small level of destruction to Hogwarts with his insistence on bringing them into the wizard world, whose stolen death nearly destroyed his own universe---No, Severus Snape wasn't going to crumble in this corridor in grief and longing and despair and all those terrible adjectives the loss of a silly, stupid, infuriating man like that would cause!

Of course it's what he felt like doing, just the same.

He hoped his tangle of black hair effectively hid the sorrow in his eyes as he saw a wizard, no, a doctor, in a white coat heading toward him, a clipboard slapping against his thigh angrily as he walked.

"Excuse me," Snape said to him. "I'm looking for Daniel Deschamps. He was in here not long ago with a severe head injury..."

A flash of something that looked like rage crossed the doctor's features. He sighed as he looked on Snape, taking in the robes and the concern in his voice. "He's taking advantage of priests now, is it?" he said. He shook his head. "If I were you, Father, I'd be staying as far away from that troublemaker as possible."

Snape let his gaze fall away. "Yes...that is what some people have told me."

"Don't let it worry you anymore," the doctor said, and slapped Snape on the arm with his clipboard jovially. "He's gone now."

The corridor felt like it was spinning. He could hear the doctor walking away from him, his steps echoing as Snape was left alone. The wall wasn't providing enough support as he slid against the green sterility of it's surface, the floor coming up to meet him as he crumbled to it. It's not fair, he kept thinking. It's not fair, not at all!

Within this rage against the injustice of life and death was this overwhelming sorrow that threatened to crush every living thing (every molecule as Daniel called those pockets of existence), inside of him.

It wasn't fair. It was never, never fair.

"Sev?"

Despair stumbled. Snape felt strong hands on his shoulders, steadying him, pulling him up. When he dared to see who it was that had offered his help, he just about collapsed again.

"But you're.." he began. Daniel gave him a small smile, and shrugged. A piece of plaster was loosed upon Daniel shoulder and he brushed it away with a freed hand impatiently.

"I guess I've been granted a reprieve, I'm not sure why," he explained, but it wasn't really any kind of explanation at all. Daniel reached at the bandage at the back of his head, and then partially turned to draw Snape's attention to it. "Five stitches. That's all I needed." He turned back and gave Snape a wan smile.

Snape grabbed Daniel by the throat with a fierce, not exactly Welcome Back To The World Of The Living grip.

"I thought you were dead! You bastard! You bastard!!!"

"S-Sev," Daniel croaked, "C-Can't b-breathe..."

The doctor who had told Snape about Daniel's release was running back up the corridor, shouting at Snape to stop. He did release his grip on Daniel's throat, but only long enough to take Daniel's face in his hands and then plant a firm, very unpriestly, kiss on Daniel's lips.

He tasted of coffee, Snape thought. Liquor and caffeine and hope.

He pressed his forehead against Daniel's when he finally released him. He was so exhausted and relieved he half felt as though he was going to shudder into mad, raging sobbing. He was shaking, he realized, and Daniel's hands on his shoulders were doing their best to calm him. "Don't do this to me again, Daniel," Snape said to him, almost pleading. Then, in a much less friendly timbre, in a manner that would even make He Who Must Not Be (to hell with it, that Bastard Voldemort!) take pause, he said, with his hand firm on his wand: "I'm warning you."

The doctor was standing shock still in the corridor, the clipboard still in his hand as he looked on Snape and Daniel. Snape ushered Daniel through a set of swinging doors. Snape swung his wand around twice and shouted "Vehere Hogwarts!"

They were both gone by the time the doctor opened the doors, the stairwell they had stepped into completely empty. He looked up and down the sections of stairs, trying to find any glimpse of them, but it was no use. He shook his head as he made his way back into the main corridor of the emergency ward, muttering under his breath about radical church reforms.

***
It was three am, and four Hogwarts students were now huddled in Deschamps' English classroom, white mugs of coffee in their hands, a courtesy Hermione had secured from the House Elves in the basement. The Something in the coffee machine's carafe was with them as well, a large speckled tentacle poking out of its glass lair, and wrapped around the handle of a steaming hot mug of caffienated brew.

Ron actually yawned. "Look, I don't mean to be nasty about this or anything, but dammit Draco, your father deserved it."

Harry shot Ron a warning glare, but Draco only nodded in agreement with Ron. "Rita Skeeves has already got a hold of this information. I've gotten a copy of the Earliest Early Edition of the Wizard's World Weekly, and he and his smashed up nose are on the front page, along with the details as per the report by Constables McKnulty and McKinnon." He bit his bottom lip harshly. "Hogwarts, especially the Slytherin section, should be a fun place for me later this morning," he said, miserable.

Hermione felt a stab of pity for him. "What are you going to do now?" she asked.

He shot her a look of angry indignation. "I'm doing nothing," he said.

Harry cradled the hot mug of coffee in his grip. "What do you mean, nothing?" he asked. "That doesn't sound like the Draco Malfoy I know."

"That's because that Draco belongs to Lucius Malfoy, and I'm afraid he's long dead," Draco replied. He crossed his arms. "I'm doing nothing. I'm quitting that fucking Quidditch game, I've always hated it. I'm dropping out of that damn potions class, and I'm going to make Muggle English my major. If anyone asks what I'm learning at school these days, I'll tell them I'm writing a groundbreaking thesis on the homoerotic subtexts of Moby Dick and how the whale is representative of nothing more than a giant penis. I'm going to start saving the fucking salmon and hugging trees and eating granola while smoking things and drinking things that are known to destroy most human brain cells--or at least get caught with that stuff so I'll end up with a criminal history and a parole officer I can bring to snobby family functions. I'm going to listen to loud, furious Muggle music that'll make the plaster in my dormitory crack. I got a good idea where to get a lot of this stuff too." He narrowed his eyes at Hermione. "Got any of those S.P.E.W. buttons on you? Better yet, some fundraising forms? I've got a few of my father's wizard notes, already signed by him in case I needed money--I think a nice healthy donation to your cause in the Malfoy name is worthwhile, don't you?"

"Dear God," Ron exclaimed, and who looked positively faint. "You're more evil than ever!"

***

It was three am, and the collection of three wizards and two Muggles in Snape's potions office had already polished off more than four bottles of quality scotch. Sirius Black kept sloshing his glass onto the surface of Snape's desk, clearly too drunk to quite get the rim in proper symmetry to his mouth. "You got a lot of nerve dying like that," he slurred at Daniel as he pointed at him waveringly. "Too bad Snape here really didn't strangle you." He looked over at Snape, hopeful. "How about if I finish what you started?"

Snape took another long, long drink of his bitter draught. He was propped up unevenly with his chin in his palm, and when he spoke his voice was even more slurred than Black's. "I'm not letting any Girfinedour jackass do my job!" Groaning at the effort to stay steady and yet actually attempt to stand, Snape sat up and then, using a good grip on the desk for support, managed to get out of his seat. He lifted the velvet cloth lump with its heavy metal parcel and dangled it above the bubbling cauldron of blue liquid that was situated in the centre of his desk.

Blurty, who had remained quiet for most of this gathering, coughed and then gave the object a wistful sigh. "Are you sure that's what you want to do?"

Snape held the wrapped gun over the bubbling cauldron for a few seconds more. A feeling of well being and peace overlayed everyone and everything in the room, an effect that even the pickled centinewt wasn't immune to. Now that Daniel was back in his proper place, and not only that but was given the special treat of this very early morning visit, it settled squishily against the side of the jar as it stared at Daniel in blissful, rapt attention. Of course, this sedated happiness may have been partially because Daniel, when Snape wasn't looking, offered the centinewt a few drops of choice Scotch alcohol through the open narrow lid of its jar.

Snape dropped the gun into the cauldron, the purification setting off a brief show of blue flames and sparks that reached the ceiling of the office before finally settling back into the cauldron beneath it.

"Happiness as a warm gun," Blurty said. He sighed again, and then took a long sip of his scotch. "A thing like that could have been useful."

"Some people are miserable no matter what kind of magic you throw at them," Sirius said.

Snape actually laughed. "If you're talking about me, you're sadly mistaken." He poured himself another tall drink from the amber bottle in front of him, which was more than half empty. "I could have been a very happy person all those years ago," he said, bitter. "If you two hadn't done everything you could to destroy my life."

Remus, who had been quiet up to this point, rolled his eyes. "It's not our fault you were a snotty little dweeb," Remus said. "Besides, you kept trying to get us expelled all the time, what did you expect us to do? Just sit around and take your stupid meddling?"

Snape was truly incensed. "I think the population of Hogwarts had a right to know you turn into a vicious monster once a month!" he shouted at him.

"Really?" Blurty said to Remus, and arched a brow. "How extraordinary, my wife has the exact same affliction."

"Every day," Snape continued, his memory clearly trapped in that place of adolescent nightmare where he'd suffered indignity after indignity, "there was always *something*. A stolen book here, a snapped wand there--a disgusting stinkfish pasted to the bottom of my cauldron!"

Sirius paused in mid sip of his drink. "I never pasted a stinkfish to your cauldron," he said, frowning.

"I certainly never did," Remus added. He tapped his chin thoughtfully, "James was deathly allergic to the rotten things, he couldn't even smell them without going into a dead faint

There was a gentle silence as this truth was meted out between them. Unknown to them all, a certain pickled centinewt was suddenly sober and awake, and looking very, very guilty.

"As for your missing books," Remus continued, "it was Lucius Malfoy who always seemed to have extra copies which he sold to unsuspecting Muggle students."

Snape was momentarily confused, only to begin seething at the truth of it.

"He used to extort lunch money out of me when I was in second year," Remus added, miserably. "I never got to buy my own butterbeer at Hogsmeade, Sirius and James always had to get it for me."

"It doesn't matter anyway," Sirius added, his own heavy brow forged into a single line of anger. "You did plenty of rotten things to us too. Thanks to you, the entirety of the girls population thought I'd given Ainsy Easyweather veneral fleas!"

Snape made a disgusted face. "I didn't say that to anyone!" He downed another gulp of his tumbler of scotch, draining it. "Besides, everyone in Slytherin knew she got them from Lucius Malfoy."

Sirius's jaw dropped in shock. "That bastard!" he shouted. He clenched his fists, helpless. "Great, now I know the real culprit and I can't kill him either." He grabbed his glass and swirled his drink around in the tumbler, the amber liquid slipping against the sides of the glass in a gentle whirlpool. "I spent the entirety of my school career painfully single thanks to that rumour."

"I'll have to mention that to Amanda," Blurty mumbled to himself, and he suddenly found the focus of the three wizards on him. He sat up, to appear a little less rumpled and maybe even a little less drunk, but facts were facts, and it was clear he wasn't going anywhere unless he spilled them. "My other officers, McKnulty and McKinnon...They thought it was a right jolly prank to give Mr. Malfoy Ricki 's cell phone number." Memories of the huge Muggle in Dumbledore's office kept reaction at this revelation silent. "Ricki is Amanda's husband. I don't know how he managed it, since you lot don't use proper phones, but Mr. Malfoy dialed Ricki up, thinking he was Amanda. Ricki wasn't too pleased to hear sweet, rather risque, nothings being leered into his ear when he answered a call from Mr. Malfoy, nor was Ricki too keen on being called 'Amanda, my precious vicious vixen of pleasure'."

Sirius, Remus and Snape exchanged gravely serious looks.

Which disintegrated instantly into uproarious laughter.

" 'Vicious vixen of pleasure'! Oh the pity of it!" Remus shouted.

Sirius quickly grabbed a still partially full bottle of scotch and topped everyone's glass, including Daniel's. He held his tumbler up with an outstretched hand. "I propose a toast--To Lucius Malfoy's newly crooked nose!"

"To his darling wife, Narcissa, who will make sure his balls do not make a speedy recovery," Remus added.

"To the fact that he's not getting laid," Snape said with great flourish. "While *I* am."

Remus and Sirius blinked at this, while Blurty simply took the information in stride and downed the rest of his drink. "I wouldn't be so sure about that," Blurty said, and nudged the unconscious, passed out form of Daniel draped over the corner of Snape's desk. "At least not tonight."

Remus reached out and pressed a couple of fingers against Daniel's neck.

"Remus!" Sirius exclaimed at him.

Remus shrugged, counting the rhythm of Daniel's pulse. "One does need to make sure."

~*~END~*~

Notes: I would very much like to thank everyone who has responded to this series, especially Asrai who has been my biggest fan throughout this entire enterprise :D. It's been a lot of fun to write, and I'm glad it was enjoyable for people to read. Thank you all so much for being patient with my silly scribblings and being kind enough to take a look and tell me what you think! It's always much, much, *much* appreciated :D

Love and hugs
Silverfish ~: