This Spiral Dance

Chapter 9: Changes

The golden doors of the locket swung wide open with a click, exposing the living, lucid eye behind each of the glass windows. Regulus felt his mouth going dry and sour, his tongue glued to his palate as if it had grown number and larger. Dumbledore's presence behind him didn't diminish the impact of that sight. He had tried picturing this final moment over many countless, restless nights but the reality didn't even come close.

Regulus tightened his hold on the consecrated athame- the one he had just used to break the locket open - feeling it was about to slide out of his hand. He had never perceived more clearly that every step he had taken in his life had brought him here, to destroy one of the most perverted artefacts magic could create in the darkness of this cave, alongside the Hogwarts Headmaster.

So, this was what a Horcrux looked like.

Nothing was happening, but Regulus' heart beat faster, overcame by an elusive sense of foreboding. Those greenish eyes, so unnaturally aware of their surroundings, attracted him in spite of himself. For the longest minute, he wondered if the poison he had drank was beginning to have its effect, but then he remembered it was impossible: Severus had prepared for him a potion, another poison which, while couldn't completely nullify the first one, would largely diminish its effects and delay them for several hours. It wasn't an enthralling prospect, but at least there was the guarantee nothing would interfere with the therapy he was still undergoing: the experimental cure which had mostly healed him from the magical and physical paralysis that had affected him on that terrible day - the day he had come close to being delivered to death's cold embrace.

Being back in this place gave him goosebumps.

There was a hiss - the Horcrux was reacting finally, and Regulus was no longer able to think, to do anything but listen to that sound, rattling yet hypnotic, articulating itself slowly to form sensed words: "I've seen your heart, Regulus Arcturus Black, and it's mine."

A hand painfully squeezed his shoulder, a voice admonished him, very close to his ear, and Regulus was only barely aware of whom it was. He should be able to recognize it, the same way he should be able to listen its advice, but it was very difficult make a sense of anything but the Horcrux's mocking insults.

"You are a murderer. What good could you ever do to the wizarding world, other than paying homage to it with your death? You never knew quite what to do with your life. You hardly questioned anything, did you? You let others rule your mind all your life until it was too late... Would your mother have still accepted you back if your brother hadn't been a bitter disappointment? You were lucky to be the last one left. The mere stress of seeing you so crippled and useless because of your betrayal is likely to have killed her."

Regulus called forth his Occlumency training, and shut that revolting voice out of his mind. When his defenses were in firmly place, a task which required more than a little effort, he was relieved to observe how it felt like he was hearing Riddle's threats from far away.

"Coward. Murderer. Hypocrite. A failure to your family, to your brother..." the Horcrux insisted, but Regulus sensed all the power it had on him it was the power he would willingly hand it. So he focused on the pressure of Dumbledore's grip on his shoulder and deafened himself to the echo of his fears; instead he turned to Dumbledore, silently asking him what he was to do.

"Immobilize it upon that rock," Dumbledore commanded, unwavering, as if the scene hadn't brought him to doubt Regulus' resolution as much Regulus had just doubted himself.

Regulus laid the locket open on the rock a few feet ahead and rose his wand over it, waving it in a mute Petrificus Totalus. He had to concentrate hard on keeping the energy flowing from his arm to the rebelling object, deaf once again to the vile insults it shouted, but with heaviness in his heart that made him wish he could bend and cry here and now. He felt his palm burning up and his arm hurt but Regulus resisted, channelled more energy into the spell as Albus Dumbledore stabbed the first eye.

His heart almost plummeted through his ribcage and for a few seconds, Regulus guessed he was about to have a seizure... but then whatever dark magic had him under its claws ceased to be and he was breathless, sprawled gracelessly on the ground but healthy.

He saw Gryffindor's sword still penetrating the second eye and understood it was over, finally. The Horcrux had died, if what did could be called living. He had indeed managed to distract and keep frozen the Horcrux to allow Dumbledore to destroy it, like they had agreed.

"A fine work," Dumbledore commended, helping him up.

"Yeah." Regulus smirked, accepting back his cane, which had fallen on ground sometime along this venture. For the first time in too long, he didn't feel like an invalid but... gratified.

Proud of himself.

**

That evening, the poison Regulus had downed. began its effect. It began with an innocuous vertigo, while he played Wizard's Scrabble with Kreacher. It was more as if he were trying to teach the elf how to play than an actual game: a pathetic hobby, even to him, but he needed to be distracted and have someone around to succour him when he would begin to feel sick. He was overall regretting that he couldn't share his newfound sense of accomplishment with anybody. The only person left who would have interest in his successes was Charity, but he could hardly reveal all that he had done today to her.

Regulus didn't recognize the vertigo for what it was until he realized that Kreacher's large eyes were scrutinizing him rather than the chess board.

"My master Regulus isn't all right," the elf stated uselessly and Regulus realized a sheen of cold sweat was beading his forehead. He grabbed his cane, but it almost slid out of his grasp before Kreacher steadied him from behind. Brief flashes of memories - anything but happy - ran through his mind.

"It's beginning, Kreacher. Remember what I have told you?"

The elf nodded, looking displeased, and Regulus repeated nonetheless, to squash the laughable tide of rising gratitude that someone was so concerned for him at last: "Severus Snape could pass by later. You are to let him in and bring him to my room."

Hours later, Regulus was barely conscious, twisting in his bed and plagued by too realistic visions of blood. Blood was everywhere - on his shoes, on his robes - and he tried scrubbing his skin clean by rubbing on his sheets, but they smelled the same iron stench of that bodily liquid. Somewhere inside him, Regulus knew those visions weren't real, unlike the icy, humid rolls Kreacher placed on his forehead with his wrinkly, roughened fingers, but there were moments when he sensed the weight of a corpse in his arms and looked down to see Charity's blankly beautiful face - certain he had killed her. He knew then it was just luck it hadn't happened for real: it made him wish earth could open and bury him alive for centuries.

When a chalky white visage loomed over him, he didn't know whether it was a product of his fever or reality. He lunged toward the spectral figure anyway, and his hand ended up grasping something soft, the texture of wool.

"Forgive me," he mouthed voicelessly before passing out.

***

Severus Snape wasn't a wizard who looked favourably on remorse. Among human emotions, it was the most useless: it was an unproductive distraction which prompted you to look back, stopping you from moving forward when you should . Regret was different: it taught you a lesson. But remorse? It would eat you again and again until nothing but a shell was left. So he had never asked for anyone's forgiveness and nobody had ever asked forgiveness of him. Until last night.

It was a small consolation knowing the youngest Black would probably remember nothing of his disgraceful onslaught of sentimentality in the morning. It had been only the Headmaster's insistence which had propelled Severus to check on Regulus the previous night - the Potions Master's plans had only included a quick visit to Grimmauld Place, to see enough to be able to report to Albus nothing was going awry. Then that idiot went to grab his sleeve, his white lips forming those purposeless words Severus had never had directed to him before and it had been strangely, for few stale minutes, like looking into a mirror.

That impression had pinned him there, sitting beside a feverish caricature of man, until his delirious mutterings had quieted and his shaky movements had ceased, doing nothing but staring at Kreacher agitating over his master, trying to recapture the spark of that fleeting emotion he had felt when clouded grey eyes had bored into his. To analyze it, to rationalize it.

A few hours and Regulus' skin had lost that sickly glow, but Severus remained unable to articulate himself. So he had left, wondering why he had stayed in first place.

Nobody had ever asked for forgiveness of him and he hadn't what it took to lay the past at rest. If Regulus was even conscious enough to mean what he had said, the idiot had chosen the wrong recipient.

Of all people, Severus would be the first to recognize his wretched father had proved himself more significant in death than in life: Tobias could not be openly violent unless he was drunk, regardless of his transparent spite for his wife and son, who he blamed for every real or imaginary failure of his and now he was an adult, Severus could consider with neater rationality his childhood, the resentment his parents - both of them - had held onto, but it didn't mean his opinion of the deceased man had modified.

Shocking a Black out of his belief system was doubtlessly the major accomplishment of a mediocre existence, which was poetic justice for a man who had destroyed his life and his family out of hate and fear of magic. In the morning, the Slytherin Head of House watched indolently on Poppy's visit of Harry and when the mediwitch became distracted by two Ravenclaw prefects streaming into the medical wing while supporting a younger girl with a greenish complexion, and Lily left the room to help the Healer, he stepped in to apply the ointment on the child. It occurred to him that the child in the question was more a product of his malice than of the James Potter's blood: in some twisted ways Harry was the son Lily would have never given him.

The mocking thought designed on his mouth a faint, embittered curve which could have resembled a smirk. He massaged the young Potter's shoulders, trying to evaluate whether most of the medicament had been absorbed by the skin and he could hence stopping his ministrations, when he felt muscles flexing under his fingertips and then he was suddenly looking down into a pair of erringly familiar eyes. At least so far, Lily's boy had shown no more decisional and intellective capacity than a rag doll, but now had turned his neck back to look at him, in absence of a stimulus which could have triggered that response on an instinctual level. Severus blinked, holding the gaze: inside those green irises he couldn't find a definite expressivity, but as he tentatively Legilimized the kid, he sensed a superficial awareness veiling the blank slate he expected. A progress?

Lily's return in the room ended his suppositions. "I've finished here," he explained with a brusque nod. Instantly, he decided it would be unwise telling her anything. He would have not fed an eager expectancy over what could be been only a fluke. Time would give him the answers he sought; in the meantime, he would observe more closely.

***

During the following days, Severus struggled to watch out for possible indicators of change in the condition of Harry Potter. He went so far as to trick Lily into suggesting a chess game after dinner - which became quite a frequent occurrence, considering how her refusal to accept his superiority prompted her to require rematches - encouraging her to bring her son with her into his private quarters, but no peculiar episode presented itself to his attention, nor to Lily's motherly surveillance.

***

It was the first week of January when everything changed. It had snowed all the previous night and Lily, already insomniac for a long time, had slid out of her bed around 2.00 AM to stand looking the landscape out of her window. It was an enchanting sight, because trees and grounds covered by a heavy blanket of snow seemed to glow with an azure-ish halo during nighttimes. Muffled rumours had her turning away from that beautiful sight to allow her eyes to search for their source in the darkness. Lately, she managed to convince Poppy to let Harry sleep in her room, rather the medical wing. She had noticed that he moved more often in sleep than when he was younger, but both Severus and Poppy were more inclined to consider it was due to his growth rather the anything else.

"Mha!" The sound startled her, and her heart caught in her throat before she localized its source. It wasn't possible she had actually heard a human voice. Maybe a house elf?

"Lumos," she murmured, pinching the wick of a candle on her bedside and warm, tenuous light flowed from her fingertips to light the room.

"MH-MH-MH!"

Biting her tongue, so hard that it hurt, she half-swayed toward Harry's bed: her little boy stood there, sitting upright rather than simply leaning on the cushion, and his arm was... stretched forward. Toward her.

"MHH-MH-MHU. MHU! MHU-MHUM!"

And Lily went to him and took his little face between her hands, her palm exploring the soft lines of his visage as if she was blind, desperate to prove this wasn't a dream, because if it was, she wouldn't survive it.

"Mum is here, Harry," she choked, hugging him to her chest, utterly unaware of the wetness on her cheeks.

***

When a dozen of resonating tinkling bells roused him from his light sleep, Severus was fully prepared to either face another of Albus' untimely requests or to confront properly any Slytherin who had dared to cause such a disturbance to require his direct intervention. He hoped it was the latter, because relieving himself from the unavoidable frustration would be been more immediate, direct and enjoyable. What the Potions Master couldn't have anticipated, instead, was being confronted - the exact moment he opened the door of his private rooms - with an excited red-head, who flung herself onto him, slipping her arm around his neck.

He stiffened instinctively at the impact and shook off the initial shock to realize he was being hugged by a muttering Lily, who held her other arm around her son, whose darker head was uncomfortably pressed against his chest. Snape forced himself to try and make sense out of the words which rushed out of her mouth. It was really not simple task, because, well - she was hugging him!? Why on earth...?

The woman in question seemed oblivious to his bafflement, and kept on with her murmured rambling. Only when she finally drew back, looking at him with limpid eyes and a beaming expression which left him incoherent for few precious seconds, he recovered his capacity to understand the English language.

"He called me mum! Do you see, Sev, you did it for real! Harry called for me, as if he had recognized me in the dark and he -"

"Perhaps it's better if you come inside, and explain to me everything from the beginning." He stood aside, unable to concede any attention to his young patient - even if he suspected strongly it should have to be his priority - because it was so much more enjoyable to focus on Lily, looking ecstatic as he had never seen her. Because of him?

"Err. Right," she blubbered, securing Harry against her breast and following him inside. It wasn't the first time she came here, yet to Lily the main room looked more discreetly beautiful and more homely than ever, from the numerous shelves well-furnished with thick leather-covered volumes and colourfully filled phials to the four silent paintings representing the Elemental Goddesses. Severus lit the fireplace and she sat on one of the two green armchairs in front of it, placing Harry down on the floor as Severus took the other.

She breathed in deeply and told him everything, recalling as many details and first impressions she was able to and he listened to her with great attention, although he didn't appear anywhere as enthusiast as she felt. It did nothing to diminish her happiness.

"So, how do you think it will happen from now on? I mean, must I expect little changes like this one or it will happen all at once, with him getting up on his own and doing things -"

"Lily, I truly didn't expect this. It isn't congruous with the diagnosis."

Stubbornly, the witch shook her head, not seeing why he was so serious but without really wanting to. "Were you listening me? My son has spoken today for the first time, actively recognizing me for the first time. Yet you speak like it wasn't a good thing!"

"It is a good thing!" he asserted with a firmer, louder voice. "I don't deny this." She nodded her assent, looking calmer and pacified by his confirmation, although she was sitting up straighter and her chin lifted a bit determinedly, so he felt free to continue.

"Reason over it, Lily: however you can dislike hearing it, your Harry was basically close to a vegetable until a short while ago. Forgive my frankness," he added hastily when he saw opening her mouth to debate, "but he didn't speak or look possessing interest or capacity to interact with the outside world. He is unable to perceive when he needs urinating or eating. His sense of conservation is so lacking than if he was left with a dragon, he might allow the beast to eat him without noticing. It was assumed such a damage it was caused by the repeated Cruciatus and at least one other curse -"

"Flameo," Lily impatiently added, bothered in spite of herself by his bluntness. Healers had never been certain of the nature of the other curse, since the caster was dead and neither James nor Sirius had heard or witnessed Bellatrix uttering anything else but Cruciatus.

"But it was never confirmed, because the only other person present in the room was you and you were unconscious. Yet, if those Healers were right on all the accounts, it was more likely Harry would begin showing a more physical approach to his surroundings, rather than a more precocious response on a mental level. To be concrete, he should have to have learned to act before he learned to talk."

"He has reached for me."

"Regardless of how touching that is, he should have to be able to do without a napkin before demonstrating practical intelligence and verbal articulation. Certified studies -"

"Neither muggle medicine nor healing is an exact science. Maybe Harry is an aberrant case."

"I don't think so. I had seen him reacting to me once, turning to observe me, but this only reinforces my point. Random episodes of lucidity don't substitute a gradual neurological progress. Look at him now - he looks hardly improved. You say he shows agitation during sleep, but we don't even know what it does mean."

They stared at each other stubbornly and Lily was the first to backtrack, feeling suddenly unable to recall why this had became a competition. Leaning back with huff, she pushed back her red hair behind her ears and asked, "So what is your theory?"

"I doubt Bellatrix had casted Flameo that night. Henceforth part of the equation will keep escaping us until we figure out what had really happened. Your son may seem better now, but this cure might stop benefiting him in the long haul or will, in the best among the hypotheses, give Harry moments of normality interspersed with long parenthesis of catatonia. The treatment needs to be balanced to give us stable results and the answer lies in finding that missing link."

Lily let her gaze linger on Harry, who sat crouched before the fireplace, seemingly deaf to the discussion happening over his tousled head and maybe interested in the entwining flames. She couldn't deny Severus talking sense: maybe her little miracle was already waning, like a mirage in the desert to a thirsty woman. It was bizarre how certain she was at the moment, that the stinging disappointment she was experiencing wouldn't grow to shadow the joy she had so recently tasted, nor would it diminish her faith. Of course, she was sad that the Harry's recovery was far more than it could have been, but she also had a deeply rooted hope that this was just the beginning of a quest they would eventually win. The beacon of hope which had tempted tonight was more than she had had in years.

"How we do it then? How do we find the truth?"

The firmness in her voice surprised her. It was like she was once again - in spite of his brutal honesty - trusting that this man knew just what it was right to do and how to do it.

He didn't disappoint her.

"It's just fortunate," he began, his black eyes gleaming promisingly, "that the human brain withholds far more information than we are capable to register consciously. Even when we are sleeping or in altered states of consciousness."