Loose ends chapter 27 - Mephistopheles
Feb. 28th, 2017 10:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
coriariaHagrid gives Snape a kitten. Bit of angst. PG.
This is a work of fan fiction. The world and all recognisable characters belong to J.K. Rowling and I make no claim or profit etc.
Mephistopheles
Harry returned the following evening, apparently back to normal. He placed the box he carried on the kitchen table and immediately began rummaging through the pantry, his usual habit on arriving home. When Andromeda reminded him that dinner was only half an hour away, he nodded and grabbed an apple. He showed no sign of being angry with Snape, but he did reveal that he was on edge by running his hand repeatedly through his hair. Occasionally, he found a stray earthworm there.
“The wormhead hex was the hardest to reverse, and it kept recurring. In the end we had to firecall Madame Pomphrey. She was familiar with that hex already,” he said, looking pointedly at Snape but sounding quite cheerful. “They were quite impressed at the aurors’ college that you’d managed to cast three hexes at once, and wandless.”
“Uncontrolled, wandless magic isn’t something to be impressed by,” Snape snapped back. “It’s what undisciplined, unskilled children do.”
Harry just grinned at him.
“Good point. Do you remember hearing about the time I blew up my uncle’s sister?”
“You blew her up? Like a… blown up like an explosion?”
“Like a balloon. She floated off, ended up miles away. Much oblivation was required.”
“I see.”
The faintest glimmer of a smile appeared on Snape’s face.
“What’s in the box, Harry?” Lupin asked, watching it suspiciously as it appeared to twitch slightly.
“I don’t know, it’s a bit odd. After we called Madame Pomphrey this morning, she turned up at the aurors’ college with it just before I came home. She said that hearing from me had reminded her that Hagrid wanted you to take this as it’s been giving him some trouble and he thought you might have more success. She had a note for you.”
Harry pulled the note from his robe and before Lupin could state the obvious – that it might be best to read the note before opening the box – Harry had lifted the lid.
The moment the lid was up they could hear an unearthly yowling from inside, then a small, black shape leaped out and ran into the pantry.
“What the hell was that?” asked Andromeda.
“Kitty!” exclaimed Teddy in delight.
Lupin raised his wand, quickly closing the pantry door and setting wards to confine the creature, whatever it was.
“It’s not a kitty, Teddy.”
“What is it?” Harry asked.
“Well, Harry” Lupin replied with a sarcastic edge to his voice, “If it’s been giving Hagrid trouble and he’s sending it to me, what do you think it’s likely to be?”
Harry looked chastened.
“Dark creature?”
“That would be my assumption, yes,” Lupin replied, looking at Harry then looking across at Teddy, his point made without a word.
“I’m sorry, Remus, I didn’t think.”
Lupin restrained himself from pointing out the frequency of that event. It wasn’t Harry’s best trait, but he was trying. And the previous day’s thoughtlessness had already earned him an unpleasant hexing.
Lupin dropped his head to read the note. After a few moments, his lip twitched and a smirk appeared on his face.
“Well, no harm done this time, Harry. It appears that I was wrong and Teddy is, in fact, correct. It really is a cat. Hagrid found it outside Hogsmeade but it’s rather… unfriendly. Apparently it’s eaten several of his fire flovs as well. He thought we might have more time to try and tame it… well he. It’s a boy apparently.”
Lupin looked up at Snape, who was suddenly looking very interested. What the note had also said, but Lupin didn’t share, was that after staying the night of the full moon, Hagrid had consulted Dumbledore’s portrait for advice on what might help Snape. His suggestion was to give him a cat, preferably one that was black and would require some effort to tame. Hagrid had followed the instructions wholeheartedly and acquired the most feral black cat he could find.
“Severus, perhaps you could help Harry get him out of the pantry?”
In the warmth of Lupin’s smile, Snape had no option but to agree.
Harry took down the wards and cautiously opened the door. The yowling had faded to pathetic mews. The cat, little more than a skinny kitten, was trembling in a corner, behind the bin of potatoes. Harry reached out to it and was rewarded with a hiss, a yowl and a bleeding scratch on his hand.
“Fuck, it’s vicious” he muttered, softly enough so that Lupin couldn’t hear him swear in front of Teddy.
“Merlin’s sake, Potter, he’s terrified. How would you feel if you’d been stuck in a box and apparated halfway across the country. You’d lash out if some gigantic hand tried to grab you.”
“And what’s your suggestion?” Harry snapped back.
“We give him some time to get used to us and calm down. Then… maybe some sort of calming spell and lift him out magically. And we need to find somewhere to confine him, but where he can feel safe. If he has been living wild, he probably won’t like being indoors at all, so he will need enough space, and somewhere to hide.”
Harry was looking at Snape with curiosity in his eyes.
“Never took you for a cat person.”
“I had a cat, once.”
Snape sat himself down on the floor of the pantry, wrapping his arms around his knees.
“Sit down, Potter, he will feel safer if you make yourself smaller and stop moving. And you should think about healing that scratch.”
Snape edged away as Harry sat down beside him. He felt distinctly uncomfortable confined to a small room with his former student, but suspected that this was a part of Lupin’s design. Harry awkwardly swapped wand hands and attempted to heal the still-bleeding scratch. After three unsuccessful attempts, Snape gave a sigh of irritation.
“Get Andromeda to do it, she’s clearly competent with healing spells.”
“You could do it,” Harry replied.
Snape was silent in response. After a moment, Harry turned his wand around and offered Snape the handle. In response, Snape froze. When did he last touch a wand? A horrible image of Lupin in agony from the Cruciatus curse reared up at him.
“I can’t,” he said softly.
“Of course you can.”
Snape hesitated. He looked across at the cat and narrowed his eyes briefly, but it didn’t respond. Then he nodded and cautiously placed his hand on the wand.
It felt strange, feeling the rush of controlled magic through him. He took a moment to steady his breathing.
“Lumos,” he whispered, and a tentative flicker of light burst from the wand tip. He tried again, and again, until he had gauged the strength of magic to apply. Only then did he place the wand tip on Harry’s right hand.
“Episkey.”
The scratch quickly faded. Snape passed back the wand and wrapped his arms back around his legs.
“Potter, I’m sorry about the hexes. I… I really didn’t intend to do that to you.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“It’s not. I hurt you.”
“I’m fine now. And I know I upset you. It was thoughtless of me.”
“It’s not your fault, Potter. It never was, none of it.”
Harry was looking at him with an intense gaze, the way Lily sometimes had when he inadvertently revealed something of the pain he’d tried to keep hidden from her.
“At school, I was awful to you. And it wasn’t because of you.”
“I know. My father… I know how you were treated.”
“No Harry, it wasn’t that. I wasn’t so… juvenile as to punish you for the actions of a father who had died when you were just a baby.”
Snape saw disbelief in the young man's face and cringed inwardly. Harry really did think his former teacher was that juvenile. He had always been too convincing an actor for his own good.
“I was… acting under instruction. When you came to Hogwarts… I… I had hoped…” Snape struggled to find the words.
“You were Lily’s son, and I cared deeply for her. I wanted to get to know you, to help you, and… Albus did say that I was to help you… only not in the way I wanted. Albus deemed it… dangerous… for me to be close to you. He made it clear that when Voldemort returned, part of my role would be to crawl back to him, try to regain my place at his side so that I could once again act as the Order’s spy. If you trusted me, it would have been... too easy for Voldemort to use me to get to you. He… Albus… was very specific. I had loathed James, and I would transfer this loathing to you. You were to be convinced that I hated you. And preferably to believe I was on Voldemort’s side.”
Harry was silent in the face of his former teacher’s words.
“You were a good actor then,” he said eventually.
Snape nodded.
“It was more than acting. It’s one of the advanced occlumency skills. You take a thought, a memory, and lock it away so tightly that you almost forget it exists. Then you carry a replacement thought. I replaced the thought that you had Lily’s eyes, only infinitely more sad, with the fact that you looked like your father and he bullied me for years for no discernible reason. I… I did hate you, I’m afraid, when I was being horrible to you. Even lately, I had lost that memory of when you first arrived at Hogwarts, it was only when Lupin reminded me last night…
“I had to do the same mind trick when I was with the death eaters most of the time. I had to nurture my loathing and resentment against Albus, against my father and his muggle family, against… everyone really. I sometimes lost what I really felt.”
Harry was silent again for a moment, his face grim.
“What did you mean,” he asked finally, “about my eyes?”
Snape turned his head away. He didn’t want to answer this, but he had trapped himself yet again, with his careless choice of words. He hated the exposed feeling he got from revealing the secrets he had held for so long, but somehow he no longer had the energy to hide.
“You have your mother’s eyes, you know.”
“Yes, I had heard that.”
“But I noticed the first time I saw you that there was something in them that I never saw with her. You were so watchful, wary. I could see your pain. I wanted… I tried… Albus… he made… I had no choice. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Harry shook his head and placed a tentative hand on Snape’s arm.
“I don’t blame you, not anymore. What Albus asked of you… it wasn’t fair.”
“He gave me a chance when nobody else would or could. He trusted me.”
“He still wasn’t fair in what he asked you to do. He made both of us miserable with his manipulation.”
“He had his reasons.”
Harry gave Snape a hard look. Snape avoided looking at him, turning his gaze again to the cat. The eyes were huge and black, with only the thinnest ring of green around the edge. He had sat himself down, paws tucked in front, whole body tense. Faustus had looked at him like that.
“Potter, can you do wall-less wards that could contain a cat but let us through?”
“Wall-less wards, not a problem, but I’m not sure about containing an animal. Most of the ones I know are against human magic. But Remus would. He knows wards against dozens of different dark creatures, I’m sure he could manage a cat. Why?”
“I was thinking, if we warded off a part of the garden, we could let the cat out there – just make a temporary hole in the pantry wall to let him out. He would feel safer outside and we could feed him and take the time to let him get used to us.”
Harry nodded.
“Okay, I’ll ask Remus.”
He stood and made to leave the pantry.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Potter?”
“Do you think… do you think you could call me by my name? It might help you remember I’m not my father.”
Snape was still. His eyes avoided Harry and he appeared to have almost frozen.
“It was just a thought, sir. You don’t have to,” Harry continued, when Snape didn’t respond.
“No, it’s… thank you… I will try… Harry.”
Harry left the pantry and returned a few minutes later with Lupin.
“Harry said you had an idea?”
Snape nodded.
“Could you ward off part of the garden so the cat is contained there? Maybe keep Grimmy out so he doesn’t get a fright, but allow us through?”
“Yes, that would be no problem. He’ll need a name for that though. You should name him, you know.”
“Why me?”
“Well, the letter actually said that cat was for you. Hagrid asked Dumbledore’s portrait if there was something that you’d like, that might help you. He suggested that you would like a black cat, and wouldn’t mind taking the time to tame it.”
“Albus suggested it?” Snape felt warmth travel through him. Albus had thought about helping him. Albus had remembered about Faustus.
“Yes, Severus,” Lupin replied softly. “Yes, he did.”
Snape was silent a moment. Thinking of Faustus gave him an idea.
“Mephistopheles. I’d like to call him Mephistopheles.”
Lupin’s expression didn’t change for a few moments, then a faint twitch appeared at the corners of his mouth.
“Mephistopheles?” Lupin repeated. “Really?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Snape snapped.
“Well, it’s a bit of a mouthful to call,” Lupin replied with a warm smile. “But he’s your cat.”
This is a work of fan fiction. The world and all recognisable characters belong to J.K. Rowling and I make no claim or profit etc.
Mephistopheles
Harry returned the following evening, apparently back to normal. He placed the box he carried on the kitchen table and immediately began rummaging through the pantry, his usual habit on arriving home. When Andromeda reminded him that dinner was only half an hour away, he nodded and grabbed an apple. He showed no sign of being angry with Snape, but he did reveal that he was on edge by running his hand repeatedly through his hair. Occasionally, he found a stray earthworm there.
“The wormhead hex was the hardest to reverse, and it kept recurring. In the end we had to firecall Madame Pomphrey. She was familiar with that hex already,” he said, looking pointedly at Snape but sounding quite cheerful. “They were quite impressed at the aurors’ college that you’d managed to cast three hexes at once, and wandless.”
“Uncontrolled, wandless magic isn’t something to be impressed by,” Snape snapped back. “It’s what undisciplined, unskilled children do.”
Harry just grinned at him.
“Good point. Do you remember hearing about the time I blew up my uncle’s sister?”
“You blew her up? Like a… blown up like an explosion?”
“Like a balloon. She floated off, ended up miles away. Much oblivation was required.”
“I see.”
The faintest glimmer of a smile appeared on Snape’s face.
“What’s in the box, Harry?” Lupin asked, watching it suspiciously as it appeared to twitch slightly.
“I don’t know, it’s a bit odd. After we called Madame Pomphrey this morning, she turned up at the aurors’ college with it just before I came home. She said that hearing from me had reminded her that Hagrid wanted you to take this as it’s been giving him some trouble and he thought you might have more success. She had a note for you.”
Harry pulled the note from his robe and before Lupin could state the obvious – that it might be best to read the note before opening the box – Harry had lifted the lid.
The moment the lid was up they could hear an unearthly yowling from inside, then a small, black shape leaped out and ran into the pantry.
“What the hell was that?” asked Andromeda.
“Kitty!” exclaimed Teddy in delight.
Lupin raised his wand, quickly closing the pantry door and setting wards to confine the creature, whatever it was.
“It’s not a kitty, Teddy.”
“What is it?” Harry asked.
“Well, Harry” Lupin replied with a sarcastic edge to his voice, “If it’s been giving Hagrid trouble and he’s sending it to me, what do you think it’s likely to be?”
Harry looked chastened.
“Dark creature?”
“That would be my assumption, yes,” Lupin replied, looking at Harry then looking across at Teddy, his point made without a word.
“I’m sorry, Remus, I didn’t think.”
Lupin restrained himself from pointing out the frequency of that event. It wasn’t Harry’s best trait, but he was trying. And the previous day’s thoughtlessness had already earned him an unpleasant hexing.
Lupin dropped his head to read the note. After a few moments, his lip twitched and a smirk appeared on his face.
“Well, no harm done this time, Harry. It appears that I was wrong and Teddy is, in fact, correct. It really is a cat. Hagrid found it outside Hogsmeade but it’s rather… unfriendly. Apparently it’s eaten several of his fire flovs as well. He thought we might have more time to try and tame it… well he. It’s a boy apparently.”
Lupin looked up at Snape, who was suddenly looking very interested. What the note had also said, but Lupin didn’t share, was that after staying the night of the full moon, Hagrid had consulted Dumbledore’s portrait for advice on what might help Snape. His suggestion was to give him a cat, preferably one that was black and would require some effort to tame. Hagrid had followed the instructions wholeheartedly and acquired the most feral black cat he could find.
“Severus, perhaps you could help Harry get him out of the pantry?”
In the warmth of Lupin’s smile, Snape had no option but to agree.
Harry took down the wards and cautiously opened the door. The yowling had faded to pathetic mews. The cat, little more than a skinny kitten, was trembling in a corner, behind the bin of potatoes. Harry reached out to it and was rewarded with a hiss, a yowl and a bleeding scratch on his hand.
“Fuck, it’s vicious” he muttered, softly enough so that Lupin couldn’t hear him swear in front of Teddy.
“Merlin’s sake, Potter, he’s terrified. How would you feel if you’d been stuck in a box and apparated halfway across the country. You’d lash out if some gigantic hand tried to grab you.”
“And what’s your suggestion?” Harry snapped back.
“We give him some time to get used to us and calm down. Then… maybe some sort of calming spell and lift him out magically. And we need to find somewhere to confine him, but where he can feel safe. If he has been living wild, he probably won’t like being indoors at all, so he will need enough space, and somewhere to hide.”
Harry was looking at Snape with curiosity in his eyes.
“Never took you for a cat person.”
“I had a cat, once.”
Snape sat himself down on the floor of the pantry, wrapping his arms around his knees.
“Sit down, Potter, he will feel safer if you make yourself smaller and stop moving. And you should think about healing that scratch.”
Snape edged away as Harry sat down beside him. He felt distinctly uncomfortable confined to a small room with his former student, but suspected that this was a part of Lupin’s design. Harry awkwardly swapped wand hands and attempted to heal the still-bleeding scratch. After three unsuccessful attempts, Snape gave a sigh of irritation.
“Get Andromeda to do it, she’s clearly competent with healing spells.”
“You could do it,” Harry replied.
Snape was silent in response. After a moment, Harry turned his wand around and offered Snape the handle. In response, Snape froze. When did he last touch a wand? A horrible image of Lupin in agony from the Cruciatus curse reared up at him.
“I can’t,” he said softly.
“Of course you can.”
Snape hesitated. He looked across at the cat and narrowed his eyes briefly, but it didn’t respond. Then he nodded and cautiously placed his hand on the wand.
It felt strange, feeling the rush of controlled magic through him. He took a moment to steady his breathing.
“Lumos,” he whispered, and a tentative flicker of light burst from the wand tip. He tried again, and again, until he had gauged the strength of magic to apply. Only then did he place the wand tip on Harry’s right hand.
“Episkey.”
The scratch quickly faded. Snape passed back the wand and wrapped his arms back around his legs.
“Potter, I’m sorry about the hexes. I… I really didn’t intend to do that to you.”
“I know. It’s okay.”
“It’s not. I hurt you.”
“I’m fine now. And I know I upset you. It was thoughtless of me.”
“It’s not your fault, Potter. It never was, none of it.”
Harry was looking at him with an intense gaze, the way Lily sometimes had when he inadvertently revealed something of the pain he’d tried to keep hidden from her.
“At school, I was awful to you. And it wasn’t because of you.”
“I know. My father… I know how you were treated.”
“No Harry, it wasn’t that. I wasn’t so… juvenile as to punish you for the actions of a father who had died when you were just a baby.”
Snape saw disbelief in the young man's face and cringed inwardly. Harry really did think his former teacher was that juvenile. He had always been too convincing an actor for his own good.
“I was… acting under instruction. When you came to Hogwarts… I… I had hoped…” Snape struggled to find the words.
“You were Lily’s son, and I cared deeply for her. I wanted to get to know you, to help you, and… Albus did say that I was to help you… only not in the way I wanted. Albus deemed it… dangerous… for me to be close to you. He made it clear that when Voldemort returned, part of my role would be to crawl back to him, try to regain my place at his side so that I could once again act as the Order’s spy. If you trusted me, it would have been... too easy for Voldemort to use me to get to you. He… Albus… was very specific. I had loathed James, and I would transfer this loathing to you. You were to be convinced that I hated you. And preferably to believe I was on Voldemort’s side.”
Harry was silent in the face of his former teacher’s words.
“You were a good actor then,” he said eventually.
Snape nodded.
“It was more than acting. It’s one of the advanced occlumency skills. You take a thought, a memory, and lock it away so tightly that you almost forget it exists. Then you carry a replacement thought. I replaced the thought that you had Lily’s eyes, only infinitely more sad, with the fact that you looked like your father and he bullied me for years for no discernible reason. I… I did hate you, I’m afraid, when I was being horrible to you. Even lately, I had lost that memory of when you first arrived at Hogwarts, it was only when Lupin reminded me last night…
“I had to do the same mind trick when I was with the death eaters most of the time. I had to nurture my loathing and resentment against Albus, against my father and his muggle family, against… everyone really. I sometimes lost what I really felt.”
Harry was silent again for a moment, his face grim.
“What did you mean,” he asked finally, “about my eyes?”
Snape turned his head away. He didn’t want to answer this, but he had trapped himself yet again, with his careless choice of words. He hated the exposed feeling he got from revealing the secrets he had held for so long, but somehow he no longer had the energy to hide.
“You have your mother’s eyes, you know.”
“Yes, I had heard that.”
“But I noticed the first time I saw you that there was something in them that I never saw with her. You were so watchful, wary. I could see your pain. I wanted… I tried… Albus… he made… I had no choice. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Harry shook his head and placed a tentative hand on Snape’s arm.
“I don’t blame you, not anymore. What Albus asked of you… it wasn’t fair.”
“He gave me a chance when nobody else would or could. He trusted me.”
“He still wasn’t fair in what he asked you to do. He made both of us miserable with his manipulation.”
“He had his reasons.”
Harry gave Snape a hard look. Snape avoided looking at him, turning his gaze again to the cat. The eyes were huge and black, with only the thinnest ring of green around the edge. He had sat himself down, paws tucked in front, whole body tense. Faustus had looked at him like that.
“Potter, can you do wall-less wards that could contain a cat but let us through?”
“Wall-less wards, not a problem, but I’m not sure about containing an animal. Most of the ones I know are against human magic. But Remus would. He knows wards against dozens of different dark creatures, I’m sure he could manage a cat. Why?”
“I was thinking, if we warded off a part of the garden, we could let the cat out there – just make a temporary hole in the pantry wall to let him out. He would feel safer outside and we could feed him and take the time to let him get used to us.”
Harry nodded.
“Okay, I’ll ask Remus.”
He stood and made to leave the pantry.
“Sir?”
“Yes, Potter?”
“Do you think… do you think you could call me by my name? It might help you remember I’m not my father.”
Snape was still. His eyes avoided Harry and he appeared to have almost frozen.
“It was just a thought, sir. You don’t have to,” Harry continued, when Snape didn’t respond.
“No, it’s… thank you… I will try… Harry.”
Harry left the pantry and returned a few minutes later with Lupin.
“Harry said you had an idea?”
Snape nodded.
“Could you ward off part of the garden so the cat is contained there? Maybe keep Grimmy out so he doesn’t get a fright, but allow us through?”
“Yes, that would be no problem. He’ll need a name for that though. You should name him, you know.”
“Why me?”
“Well, the letter actually said that cat was for you. Hagrid asked Dumbledore’s portrait if there was something that you’d like, that might help you. He suggested that you would like a black cat, and wouldn’t mind taking the time to tame it.”
“Albus suggested it?” Snape felt warmth travel through him. Albus had thought about helping him. Albus had remembered about Faustus.
“Yes, Severus,” Lupin replied softly. “Yes, he did.”
Snape was silent a moment. Thinking of Faustus gave him an idea.
“Mephistopheles. I’d like to call him Mephistopheles.”
Lupin’s expression didn’t change for a few moments, then a faint twitch appeared at the corners of his mouth.
“Mephistopheles?” Lupin repeated. “Really?”
“What’s wrong with that?” Snape snapped.
“Well, it’s a bit of a mouthful to call,” Lupin replied with a warm smile. “But he’s your cat.”
