Vanilla-Scented Smoke

Vanilla-Scented Smoke

Chapter Four: Drooble's Best Blowing Gum and a Bribe Below St. Mungo's¹

In which Remus acts uncharacteristically stupid, someone gets hit on by an ugly person, stuff explodes, and everything doesn't go according to plan.

Lupin bit his finger. Hard. It hurt, but he kept his teeth clenched for long enough to leave white marks. His mouth stayed clamped around his fingers while he Apparated into the waiting room at St. Mungo's, leaving Severus alone in the living room.

---

"Hey there, Lupin," a portrait mouthed to him from the wall. At least, that's what he thought the portrait said. It was rather loud in the room.

Remus remembered to take his fingers out of his mouth in the nick of time. He waved to the portrait with a hand that he hoped looked rather mangled, and got in line.

---

"Got a moment, Snivellus?" said a scratchy voice behind Snape.

"Not to speak with a murderous, shape-shifting, raw meat addict ex-con, Black," he responded without even turning around.

Footsteps indicated that Sirius was making his way towards him, and for a moment he had the urge to reach for his wand.

Sirius stopped in front of him and Snape felt his muscles relax just a bit.

They stared at each other for a moment before Sirius, as calmly and yet with as much conviction as Severus had ever observed, said, "He's too bloody good for you."

Sirius's eyes flashed and he shuddered almost imperceptibly, as if he felt strongly what he was saying and was glad to get it out, but there was something much bigger behind it that he couldn't translate into words. He whispered fiercely, "He likes girls, Snape, he likes women, not traitorous slime from the slums of human decency."

Severus regarded Sirius with a neutral face, and then Disapparated and was gone.

---

"My mirror bit me," Remus complained to the witch at the desk. "It hurts."

"Of course, dear," the witch said kindly, examining Remus's red and faintly saliva-ey fingers. "How did it happen?"

"We got in a fight," Remus said dolefully. "She didn't like my new haircut."

"And so she bit you?"

"Only when I smudged her surface with glue."

"How cruel!" the medi-witch exclaimed.

"Oh, I know," agreed Remus. "She could really have hurt me."

"I see."

"Mirrors are venomous, you know."

"In fact, I didn't. But I'll have someone escort you to have your hand bandaged." Remus could tell her smile was increasingly becoming more forced.

"Oh, thank you. And you'll do something about the venom?"

"We'll do all we can." She spoke a message through a loudspeaker and turned to the next patient.

---

Remus repeated his piece for the medi-wizard who led him out of the waiting room.

"I think it was poisonous. My cousin bought it for me." Remus lowered his voice conspiratorially. "He shops in Knockturn Alley sometimes."

"That does sound serious. Do you know what breed of mirror it was?"

"The shiny kind," Remus said proudly.

"I see. Let's have a look at your hand."

Remus gratefully held out the extremity in question. He was already tired of playing dumb for the healers.

"Those don't look like mirror bite marks," the medi-wizard said, frowning.

"Oh, she has very sharp teeth," Remus explained quickly, in a manner that made the healer feel momentarily dense. Which was senseless, he knew, because of the two of them, the man he was talking with was obviously the one who was a little bit off in the head.

---

"I demand to speak with the manager!" Severus boomed as soon as he arrived in the waiting room at St. Mungo's.

A few people turned to look at him. He pushed his way through the door and started down the hallway to he Artifact Accidents wing, continuing to yell at thin air. "I brought my nephew here two weeks ago for a grindylow bite and he was supposed to be released yesterday!"

Remus, close enough to hear the code word they had arranged, snapped his fingers and conjured a ball of fire (a trick he had studied for months in his school days). He touched it subtly to the bouquet of fireworks he had just pulled out of an inner pocket.

The fireworks barreled past the people in the hall and didn't explode in shocks of color and light until they reached the waiting area. What ensued was a minor panic and a major thrill of excited voices. Mediwizards and -witches were running every which way to calm people down and perform some quick healing on anyone who looked like they needed it. The wizard with Remus had been facing the other way and, luckily, didn't know Lupin was the culprit. He was already racing back the waiting area, hoping to be named a hero for rescuing a few victims who were in reality no more than amused and animated from the display.

As soon as he entered the room he almost tripped over two short, giggling twin witches, no more than four or five years old, in matching purple dresses.

"Are you a real healer, Mister?" one of them asked.

He granted them a charming smile that belied his irritation at being stripped of his hero status. "Yes I am, little lady."

She giggled while her sister piped up, "Can I have your autograph, Mister?"

"I don't know about that," he said modestly. "I'm not famous."

Just then, the twins' mother appeared. She, like them, had jet black hair and a purple dress. In fact, she was thin and young and really rather attractive. She looked kindly at her smiling daughters while the mediwizard asked politely, "How are you doing, Ma'am?"

She looked at him and giggled like a 15-year-old might, opening her rose-petal lips on a cherubic face to reveal a multitude of crooked yellow teeth - more than plenty for the wizard but not nearly as many as healthy people are supposed to have. "I wouldn't say no if you asked me to go out sometime," she told him in a wash of garlic-breath that was totally incongruent with her pretty face.

The twins, identical expressions on their faces, looked up at him again and giggled.

Time froze for a moment and the healer assumed the terrified look of a cornered rabbit.

"Goodbye, Mister," the twins waved as he backed away slowly.

---

Lupin was running to catch up with Snape, who, as soon as the distraction had been created, had started sneaking down the corridor to the high security vault where they had reasoned the records were kept. He slowed down when he heard the shout of "Stop!" from behind him. He turned around to see the recently escaped mediwizard at the corner, looking irritated. This wasn't supposed to happen.

Lupin turned around again and found that Severus had disappeared. "Come back!" the mediwizard yelled again. Lupin was torn. Should he help Snape or try to not to attract attention?

He had the feeling that being alone with Severus in the records room would be too taxing on his self confidence and painful for his libido.

Lupin had done his job. Snape could figure out how to fix the records.

He turned and slowly walked back to the top of the hall.

---

The portrait that guarded the entrance to the records room featured a beautiful, curly-haired girl in 15^th century robes of green and blue velvet. Her deep blue eyes were so intense they seemed to burn though the canvas; her curly black hair draped gracefully across her shoulders, which were stunning next to the modest silver chain around her white and shapely neck. She had a face designed for observing passersby, imbued with stately and ladylike grace. At the time the portrait was painted, she had looked calm, beautiful, rich, and proper - but not lacking in sympathy or kindness. Originally, she had been posing on a grand, curving staircase with an oak banister and a red carpet, staring placidly at the painter, with one creamy white hand clutching her bunched skirts and the other holding a wineglass.

Now, the glass was on the carpet next to where she sat with her wide, elegant skirts settled awkwardly around her and hitched over her knees. Her black stockings and shoes were off and she was painting the toenails on a calloused white foot. Her blue and green sleeves were not rolled but scrunched around her elbows; a peeling ladybug tattoo and a huge, crooked heart drawn in permanent marker were plainly visible on her left arm. Her tongue poked out of her lips and she frowned in concentration as she painted. She blew a big, pink bubble of Drooble's Best Blowing Gum as Severus approached; he could see the multiple wrappers, along with the slightly crushed and open carton of cigarettes, on the floor next to her.

She popped the bubble and spoke around the huge lump of gum in her mouth to say, "Password?"

Snape, not knowing how long his mission would take, skipped threats and moved directly to diplomacy. "Perhaps we can work out an arrangement in which you let me in without my telling you the password," he said.

The girl pushed the gum to the side of her mouth and smiled at the idea, but said, "One problem. You're corporeal and I'm paint."

Severus moved closer. "You misunderstand. I'm interested in going inside, not with the terms of the agreement."

She looked at him with an expression that said she still didn't get it.

"Look," he began. "Miss-"

"Eden is fine."

"Eden." He sighed. "All I need is for you to let me inside for five minutes."

"I can't if you don't have the password."

Snape switched tactics. "Eden, has anyone ever told you that you have beautiful hair?"

"I told you it won't work between us, skin-boy," Eden chided, cracking her gum.

"What shampoo are you using?"

"What?" The girl was caught off guard.

"You heard me."

"What do you care?" Eden said. "You're positively dripping with bacon grease." She stopped talking and wrinkled her forehead, remembering something. "Reminds me of an old boyfriend," she told Snape, reaching down the front of her robes and pulling out a glossy, moving magazine cutout. Snape looked; the man in the picture was wearing a calm expression, heavy-looking chain mail, a purple vest, and a glittery Christmas-tree ornament around his neck. He had shoulder-length, stringy black hair, a widish nose, and rough looking stubble that covered his whole chin, including a huge, ferocious-looking dimple just under his lip. His face sprung to life as he smiled at Eden and bared a wide row of teeth, which made his nose look big. Despite it all, he was rather attractive on a whole. "Name was Digger or Tosser or Strider or something," Eden interrupted Snape's evaluation. "Found him in a Muggle magazine sword fighting a bunch of clanky midgets with pointy teeth."²

"Mm," Snape remarked.

Eden's face fell. "But I had to break up with him. He was cheating on me with his sister."

"That's nothing," the man scoffed. "I know a family with six sons and one daughter who practically all share a room."

"I see," said Eden, still looking at her ex's photo.

"But I'm getting off subject," Snape reasoned, trying to bring back a sneer. "Turpentine can be horrible for your hair, you know."

"Not to mention my existence, obviously."

"Well, yes," Snape admitted. "But I'm sure no one would be so cruel as to scrub out your portrait entirely. But if turpentine was accidentally to come into contact with those beautiful locks of yours..." he trailed off.

Eden looked at him in shock. "You wouldn't dare," she said quietly.

"It's hard to know what might happen," Snape threatened. "I can be dangerous when I'm tired of waiting."

"You wouldn't dare," Eden said again, haughtily this time.

"Sure you want to take the chance?" Snape asked, feeling around in his pockets for a vial of water.

"All I have to do is scream. They can hear me down the hall, you know."

"You're asking for it!"

Eden said nothing.

Snape was getting another idea. "Let me see that picture again?"

Eden once again extracted Digger/Tosser/Strider's picture from where it was stuffed down her front and showed it to Snape.

"He's a knight?" Snape inquired.

"Or something."

"You when they can sword fight?"

She nodded.

"Ride horses?"

"Bareback," Eden said proudly.

"And let me guess. Act chivalrous?" Snape finished.

"It'd be nice."

"Well, then," Snape almost smiled. "I have a friend whom you might want to meet."

---

Five minutes later found Severus playing with a paper clip. It had been child's play to convince Eden of the merits of Sir Cadogan, and almost as simple to make her believe that Severus was capable of setting them up together.

Now he was faced with the task of opening the endless filing cabinets along the wall. At least they're all labeled, he thought to himself. It would be quite an ordeal to have to open them all to find the right one. Each drawer had its own anti-Alohomora charm, and never having studied the art of robbery, Severus had no idea how to start disarming them. He did remember, however, action-movie-watching Muggleborns from his school years fashioning paper clips and hairpins into keys and breaking open his trunk and discovering his leather-bound diary and ripping out pages and putting enlargement charms on them and displaying them all over the Great Hall.

He still winced visibly to think about what had happened next. Everybody in the whole school had read about what he thought of Lily Evans, the love poems he had written but didn't show her, about his dreams of becoming a Quidditch all-star, about what they'd done to him at his old school - how they'd made fun of him for his greasy hair and dirty clothes and because he had tripped on the stairs on the first day, and how somehow had put a spider in his pocket and made him yelp and everyone had laughed, as they were all doing then. And they read about how his favorite book was Peter Rabbit and how he used to sleep with a stuffed dragon and how he had tried to do a charm to shrink his nose, and they read about the token incident where he had wet his pants at Diagon Alley when he was four, and last of all, they, every single one of them, with avidly interested faces, had all read about the dream he'd had at age 11, described in great detail, the dream about Lily that had made him wake up with wet sheets for the first time, leaving him very confused because no one had ever explained to him about that.

Before McGonagall was able to take the pages all down, the student body at Hogwarts had illustrated cruelty designed to reduce him to a cowering lump, the kind that people like to believe doesn't exist. The pain of it had been too much for Severus: they had torn at the skin of his memories and dismembered their meat with their bare hands. They had smeared blood on the walls and examined his reactions and his short, pitiful life, and ripped his dreams to shame They had peeled back the skin of his chest to look at his beating heart, getting blood under their fingernails trying to pull it out, tossing it back and forth in a game of catch with everyone in the school joining in. And when smelly little Snivellus had (figuratively) stood on a chair and jumped, hands raised, trying to catch it like the monkey in the middle, they had only laughed harder and taunted him like a baby, and Severus had shrunk smaller and smaller until they could step on him. But they didn't step on him. Instead, they stepped around him and drove him into the corner, and picked him up by the tail and batted at him with their paws. And they were all the while digging up his life where it had been buried, exposing it to the sun, reading his personal thoughts and his secrets and judging him and eternally laughing at his inadequacies and mistakes. And when they had finished playing catch, and finished pointing their fingers and roaring with laughter and making him squirm and shrivel in their harsh light, they had each taken a bite out of his heart and let the blood drip down their chins and screamed with drunken laughter.

There was no doubt that they were cruel in the innocent way that only children can be. But their delighted jeers and the fact that they snickered behind their hands for years later didn't matter to him, not as much as what was happening at the Gryffindor table. That was what stuck in his mind and froze him with still-tender scars for the rest of his life. Lily had shrieked with laughter despite herself when she had read the dream and the poem, but that in itself had been nothing next to Sirius Black.

Black had looked right at the butt of his little jokes, Snivellus, and started quaking with laughter. He had laughed so hard his throat must have ached, so hard Severus expected to see his sides splitting, so hard that it seemed his cheeks held that mold for the rest of his life. Tears had formed in his eyes and Black hadn't been able to hold them back. Hilarity had made his cheeks wet and his breaths gasping, and the happy gusts of noise had escaped in suffocating gulps and issued from him like a cacophony: Black was a million measures of humiliation all on his own, and all coming from his uproarious laughter and hysterical tears.

Snape had shrunk down at his table, and Rosier and Wilkes and Nott and Malfoy had not even bothered to suppress their giggles or try to catch their breaths. He was just an ant in a room crawling with big, black spiders. The pain of having his chest wrenched open and his privacy set on fire and his feelings played like a guitar had been too much. And before he could stop himself, he had drawn in a great, wheezing gasp and let it out in the form of hot, wet, miserable tears. They weren't only tears of humiliation; they were tears cried by a person whose structured world has collapsed and landed directly on top of him. They had run into his mouth and streamed down his front, and he had sniffed his drippy nose loudly, which made him cough, and the lips which had fallen open stayed open, and yet somehow it made him feel better, so he made no effort to stop, and it warmed his face and made himself his own; his saliva and his warm tears formed a wall and saturated him with his own sorrow and kept away the bright light outside (his eyelids were kept nearly closed, heavy with salt,) and made him warm and protected him from the foreign invaders, and unlike his memories, they stayed his own and inside him and warm and his own and his very own, never to be wrenched away.

He didn't only cry tears that had built up that morning. They were tears from his whole life. They were tears from the pages that somehow they hadn't displayed, the entries that he just wouldn't (leave me alone, you bloody bastard,) have been able to deal with if people were ever to even suspect that he cradled them and suppressed them and let them burn him slowly from the inside out. They were from the memories that were his and only his and his very own that nobody would ever see or feel or know existed, the ones that would make him scream in pain upon being exposed to air from the smothering bandages he had worn for all his thirteen years.

They were the tears he had held inside him when Nana had died in the fire that had devastated the whole house, twisted and melted his home and left him with nothing but pure blue blood and a memory of a warm bed with broomsticks printed on the sheets. They were tears from the next death he remembered, that of his sister, the way she had disappeared one night in a fit of his father's rage: how she had cried and screamed and then was gone for a reason he couldn't fathom. They were the tears from the hundreds of nights on end that he had kissed his fingers and touched his hand to his forehead and tucked himself in because no parent had thought to be there to do it for him. They were tears sprung from a lack of warm laps and warm arms and warm hearts, from emptiness that ached coldly because he didn't know what was supposed to fill him up in the first place. They were tears from meals missed due to Your whore of a mother doesn't fucking feel like cooking; they were tears he hadn't bothered to shed because no one ever saw or heard them or cared, when he stared at the ceiling, wearing pajamas he hadn't bothered to wash because no one ever cared, with teeth he never brushed anymore because no one ever bloody fucking cared.

They were the tears built up sitting numbly in his room and listening to the crying screaming yelling rage and the fizz of hexes outside his door, the crash of glass, the thump of a body as it hit the wall, the cries as it was shaken and bloodied and bruised again and again, the opening of his door and the looming shadow of his father who had steel fists and was thirsty for more tears, tears he had gotten from his wife and daughter but would not get from his son. They were tears sprung from the firewhiskey bottles broken on the floor, and from the punches and the slaps that re-formed his face, and from the smell that was now an eternal part of their kitchen and seeped from the pores of the worn chairs and the dim light surrounded by flies: a mix of sweat and rotting meat and alcohol and blood and smoke. It wasn't the bright aroma of baking bread and lemon dish soap it should have been. He had even held back tears for the scents that were on the other end of the spectrum than love, and he had collected all of these tears inside of him, in the place in his chest where in most people there was something else.

So that morning in the Great Hall he let all of them gush out hotly; for much longer than a normal 13-year-old should cry, but these were tears that had been waiting inside him his whole life, with salt that had been burning his insides for too many years, so he was entitled. He had every hot, angry right to a release of all the sorrow he'd had, just like adults did, like when things got too much for them and they needed a break, whether someone gave a damn or not, whether someone they loved (no one will ever love me) did it for them or when they did it themselves, when they needed a release of stress, of whatever they had been bottling up, and a cock and a hand could grant the break they needed, when they could gush out a warmth that would envelope them, when they could hide away with their own pain - his shudders could have been spasms, his collapse entirely a different kind - but it was much the same kind of comfort. It was how they hid from the world, and it was how they curled into a ball in the corner when things were too hurtful and too much. Tears were the only comfort Severus could find.

Everything that had ever hurt him had poured out that morning. He had sobbed loudly and sobbed some more, breathing with quick, vocal breaths, making enough noise to attract the attention of every Hogwarts student, who found one more reason to laugh at him. He, the smallest, meekest, and only outcast in the room, had been in the middle of a thousand bigger, better enemies, and had sat crying loudly and painfully and sweetly, uncaring of how many people saw it, while he steeped in old, bitter sorrow and more recent absolute and abject humiliation.

And with one charm the papers had all disappeared in one instant, and Dumbledore had stood up, finally holding the attention of all the students, yet no one had so much as patted Severus's shoulder.

Snape dug the point of the paper clip into his hand as he sat, drooped, on the sterile white floor. It drew blood that flowed into the creases on his palm. He hated to think it, but as it congealed, deep and thick, it was just as warm as the brine in his eyes had been. He thought of Black's face, streaming cruelly with hysterical tears. When the two looked at each other for a hundredth of a second, an unidentifiable feeling deep enmity had passed between them. It was a blazing hate that danced on his nerves, just as the tiny pricks in his palm thrilled him. He dug the metal in deeper.

---

Snape had decided three things from the experience. The first was that he would make the lives of Black and his friends a living hell. He was still working on that one. The second was that females simply were not worth the trouble. The third was that nowhere was safe for him. He could not keep his feelings anywhere, no matter how well he guarded them. He had known already never to wear his heart on his sleeve. Now he learned that it was best not to keep it anywhere. Charmed pages in a protected trunk in a locked room could not keep intruders out. No, his heart wasn't safe in the open, where it had been drowned in his father's firewhiskey, or in a sealed diary, where it had been suffocated in taunts. He began to think that it was best not even to have private thoughts in his head. Love and lust and compassion and trust and humanity - there was no place for any of them. He, out of fear, had cut them away from his life altogether.

---

That day was the only time Sirius and Severus had seen each other cry. Snape had not shed a single tear since.