“Legilimens!”
The spell hit Snape in the chest like a bucket of cold water. He closed his eyes tight and clenched his jaw, but the greyness came rushing into his head like the tide and threatened to engulf him. The room reeled around him like a drunk. As it spun, he tried to hold himself still at the centre, to make himself bear it until the wave passed. He lived on the knowledge that all things must pass, but even as he thought this, his stomach twisted with an empty, wet nausea, and threatened to turn him inside out. Bugger bearing it. If this doesn't clear up soon, I'm going to have to sit down.
The thought seemed to take an unnaturally long time to articulate. By the time he had completed it, he was opening his eyes on the floor. He had felt no impact, and he could only imagine that he had floated down softly on the greyness. He stared at the ceiling with a placid disinterest. Painted figures had gathered and were staring right back at him in knotted blurs of colour. His head, he found, was tilted back, and his back was rigid and arched above the floor. He tried to relax his muscles, but he couldn't move them at all. Fair enough, then. He stopped trying. In a strange way, it was a relief to be so completely absolved of responsibility for his body. He didn't have to do anything except lie there. A shape bobbed anxiously above him. A voice swelled and receded, its sweep making him briefly nauseous, but the sensation soon passed. His head was full of light, and it was bleeding out of him softly. He drifted.
When he came to again, it was like breaking the surface of a deep ocean. Light rushed into his eyes and sounds poured into his ears, eerie and echoing like the boom of a gong. He grappled briefly with his consciousness, trying to rediscover the stillness, but soon gave up and let himself be dragged back into the land of the living.
Albus Dumbledore was leaning over him, his beard twitching with concern. Snape parted his lips to speak, but at the same moment, Dumbledore reached down and pushed two rude fingers into his mouth and pressed down on his tongue. Snape sat bolt upright in surprise at the intrusion, spluttering and indignant, and suddenly very aware of his saliva, which had apparently been flowing unsupervised for the last few minutes. He wiped his chin, and glowered at Dumbledore to compensate.
"Ah, there you are," Dumbledore said, sitting back on his haunches to allow Snape room to rearrange his dignity. "I didn't realise you were back with me."
"Just what in Merlin's name were you doing with your fingers in my mouth?"
"Trying to keep you from swallowing your tongue. For which, by the way, you are most welcome."
Snape busied himself spitting dry sleep taste from his mouth while he thought of a retort. His tongue suddenly felt oversized and malevolent. Glancing at the clock on the wall, he saw he had been out for barely two minutes, but none the less he felt strangely refreshed. Dumbledore was looking at him with that expression of tragic reproach, no doubt for being so crass as to spit on his office floor. Snape looked away.
"Can't keep your hands off your bloody students," he grouched half-heartedly, feeling the need to hurt something. "A few minutes more, and I would've woken up with my underpants on backwards."
"Would you like to go and see Poppy?" Dumbledore cut in. It took Snape a moment to realise he meant Madam Pomfrey; he was not used to hearing members of staff referred to by their first names to his face. No doubt Dumbledore did it to make him feel like a trusted adult. Manipulative bastard. Besides, Snape couldn't imagine any scenario at all in which he would actually like to go and see Poppy Pomfrey, officious, thin-lipped old witch that she was. He shook his head.
“I feel better now,” he said. “Besides, I think my orifices have been poked and prodded at enough for one day, thank you."
"Don't be so ungracious," Dumbledore chastised him without any real force. His mind was clearly elsewhere. "It's not at all becoming. You do make yourself very hard to help."
"Becoming," Snape echoed, leaning carefully on each syllable to emphasise quite how alien the concept was to him. He opened his mouth to continue arguing, but closed it again with a look at Dumbledore's eyes, bright and hard like two stern bluebirds in a tangled, white hedgerow. Instead, he swore to himself in a low voice. Dumbledore seemed to accept this as acquiescence, and continued in a teacherly tone.
"What do you think happened there?"
"I passed out," Snape returned, a little sullenly. He still felt light in the head and hot and cold all over.
"You didn't try to block me at all. You just let it come. I cast the spell hard enough to break through your defences, but as it turned out you had none... well, the force was apparently excessive. Next time, do let me know in advance if you don't intend to try. I'd hate to do you an injury." Dumbledore's tone was light, but Snape knew he was being scolded.
"You didn't get anything from me," he had to point out.
"No, I didn't. But next time, I will. I'll get whatever I want. You've weakened your defences. Blacking out is a remarkably effective counter, but I don't think you can depend on it to happen every time."
Snape pursed his lips, lost for a retort.
"I'm sorry," he said shortly, sounding anything but. "You just caught me in the middle of wondering why the hell I should bother. This isn't working. I'm not getting any better." Dumbledore regarded him thoughtfully for a moment. Then he gathered up his robes, and sat himself down cross-legged on the floor beside his student. Snape stiffened slightly at the friendly proximity, but made himself sit still.
"On the contrary, my boy, I'd say you were doing remarkably well, considering your tender years. I wouldn't expect to have to use such force to break through a seventeen year old's defences. When you're actually trying to block me, that is."
“But that’s not good enough, is it?” Snape said to the carpet. “Good for my age is no good at all. The Dark Lord is somewhat older than I am.”
“You’ll get better.” Dumbledore said. “You’ve improved so much already. And we have time. Not a lot of time, perhaps, but enough. He doesn’t… suspect you, does he?”
“No. I don’t think he does. But I doubt he would give any sign at all, even if he did. He’s not likely to put an add in Death Eater Digest, is he? He’ll say nothing. He’ll play me until he’s bored of me.”
“Have you given him any reason to suspect you?”
“No. But…”
“But?”
“I don’t have to do anything. He’ll just know.” Snape raised his left arm and chopped the air bluntly.
“Not if you don’t let him. I think you’re a better Occlumens than you know. You’re just so used to doing it, you don’t notice. I think you’ve been blocking him for months without knowing it.”
“Or he’s been playing with me for months.”
"I don't imagine Tom has that much patience."
"He's changed somewhat since you were last… intimate."
"Less than you might think, perhaps," Dumbledore said. Snape regarded him sceptically.
“I would be far less willing to attempt this if I thought you were underestimating him. You talk like he’s just some wayward student of yours. He’s not. This particular wayward student will flay me feet first if he finds out what we’re doing.”
“I don’t underestimate him,” Dumbledore said softly. He scrambled to his feet, leaving Snape still on the floor, and went to his desk. The headmaster rifled vaguely through the assorted papers and instruments there. Snape had learned this was a sign of anxiety, and he was aware also that Dumbledore was rarely careless enough to let it show in front of anyone else. No doubt, he thought, another trick to make him feel trusted. And yet, stupidly, it worked. If he offers me a sherbet lemon, Snape thought, watching his hand hover near the bowl, I’m going to kill him.
Dumbledore’s hand moved on, however, and he shuffled with his pensieve and his papers for a moment, before turning back to Snape. He perched himself on the edge of his desk. Snape, still cross-legged on the floor, regarded him politely and blankly enough to be slightly insulting.
“We’ve talked about this before, Severus,” he began. “We both know what the risks are…”
“And yet,” Snape broke in, “At this stage, I really don’t have any other options.” He felt too tired to let Dumbledore continue, to offer him a way out. More than anything else, he just wanted to lie back down and go to sleep.
“One does not simply leave the Death Eaters,” he pointed out, softening his voice in an attempt to leave the bitter edge behind. “Either I do this, or I go back to them, and I don’t imagine you’ll let me do that now you know about me. You’d call your Auror friends. Wouldn’t you?”
Dumbledore’s face began to mould into some kind of protest, but then he seemed to give up.
“Of course I would.”
“So, there is no choice.”
Dumbledore looked at him sombrely. He suddenly seemed to have acquired some self-possession. The cheerful and bumbling headmaster was absent from his eyes.
“You won’t be comforted, I see. There’s little point in my lying to you. I have noted your displeasure. I must, however, remind you that you did have a choice once, even if you have none now. You needn’t have come to me at all. I am trying to help you as best I can. I’m confident you have… quite remarkable abilities, if you care to use them. And things are not quite as bleak as you are determined to believe. I admit we have but a thin hope of success. But it may be that a thin hope and a bit of old fashioned luck are all we need. And your rather bizarre brain, of course,” he rounded off cheerfully, a bit of the spark returning to his eye. Snape hung his head, not ready to be seduced by the sparkle.
“I don’t believe in luck,” he intoned darkly.
“Well, happily, your beliefs have no bearing on the existence, or not, of luck. You may need it yet.”
Snape stared blankly at Dumbledore for a few moments, while his brain worked through that.
“I’ve made my choice,” he said, eventually. Dumbledore’s steady eyes on his softened.
“Excellent.” He said. “I knew you’d come round.”
“You are a manipulative sod,” Snape remarked conversationally as he got to his feet. Dumbledore suppressed a snort of laughter.
“Coming from such a fine Slytherin, I’ll take that as a compliment. Are you ready?”
Snape nodded.
"Then let's try again.”
Snape gritted his jaw and thought hate-filled thoughts at Dumbledore. When he felt perfectly poised in his hatred, he nodded.
“Legilimens!”
This time when the spell was cast, Snape felt it coming before it struck. He felt almost like he could reach out and catch it and hold it in the air before his forehead, twisting like a furious insect, longing to dive for his skull. There’s nothing there for you, he told it, meaning there was nothing in his mind, and for a moment there was nothing, beyond the immediate seconds of his existence. The spell washed over him and nothing happened, though his fingers tingled and the colours around him were urgent and blurred.
Then he found he was holding his breath, and he broke his concentration to exhale. The spell’s focus snapped back to his mind like an elastic band. His vision popped like a camera flash, dizzying snapshots from his brain rising unbidden and roaring in his ears. He snagged one thought in the dark like a blind man with a hook and tried to hold it there. Stilling his mind was the first step, and this was easier to do if he focused on one thing. Besides, if he couldn’t keep Dumbledore out all together, he could control what he saw, and this might be a better trick to learn in the long run. Trying to keep the Dark Lord from his brain was as good as an admission of guilt, if it ever came down to a stand-off.
He pinned the thought down, its shapes briefly whirling, and then reassembling in order.
A flash. A fireplace in wood and green marble, with coals, quiet and cold, sleeping softly in the half-light. Flash. A large vase on the mantle, curved like a fat and comforting woman Flash. And his mind’s eye moved closer, to the base, where sweeping, playful lines rose and fell over the porcelain like dolphins. Flash. Himself, small and studious, sitting cross-legged before the vase. There was a sheet of paper in his lap, a short, blunt writing implement clenched in his fist, and he was scowling with fury as he tried to copy down the sweeping shapes and they came out jerky and crass beneath his hands. He hated himself for being so clumsy, so inept, for ruining the perfect textured pattern with his crassness. He scrubbed out his work furiously, and he ripped the paper in two and beat his serious little foot against it in his impotent rage. His tiny self had sensed there was something of power there, something he couldn’t grasp.
Flash.
A hand fell on his shoulder. He looked up, tiny tears bursting from his eyes, and his vision filled with patterns and curves; he thought for a moment the vase itself had stepped down from the mantelpiece and swollen horribly in size, he gasped and pulled away, but then he saw it was a woman. In wordless relief, he picked up the paper and held it out to her, wanting her to fix it, to make it okay. She took it from him, and…
Flash.
The yellow, well-lit world rearranged itself before his eyes again. There was the tang of blood on his tongue. Another fat woman, textured in oil paint, was craning over him, her glasses poised on the end of her nose in disapproving concern. There was no escaping bloody interfering paintings. They even sprawled between the rafters of the roof, rustling and giggling, having been put there, no doubt, by some artist lying as supine as he was now.
“Bollocks.” He muttered to himself. He was staring at the ceiling again.
********************************************************************************
Dumbledore watched him sit up again, blinking owl-like in the light, and realized he was still inside the boy’s mind. Severus hadn’t thrown off the spell completely, and the residue of it was still lurking between them, so that Dumbledore could feel the scrape of rough carpet on Severus’s knees as he got to his feet. He could feel his exhaustion like a weight on both their minds, feel the strange detachment over what they had both just seen. It appeared the texture and pattern of handwriting had been fascinating to Severus even before he could read it. No wonder he had worked so hard on his own tiny, perfect, spidery script.
Snape turned to look at him in slow motion, it seemed, and when their eyes met, they both felt it physically. The boy’s jaw dropped a little, and he shook his head as though he were trying to clear it.
“Shaking won’t get rid of me,” Dumbledore told him, his own voice in his ears seeming to come from miles away. I could pluck any thought out of his head I wanted to, he realised. I could make him do anything. The knowledge was not unpleasant. He felt like a puppet master, God-like, and huge, watching Severus flounder and gulp on the floor like a beached sea-creature. The focus of the spell had cleared his mind of emotions and distractions. Everything simply was. There were no complex rights or wrongs about it.
“You’re not fighting,” he said. Severus shook his head mutely. “Well, fight.” A spark of frustration flared in Dumbledore’s breast, and Severus felt it too, and he tried to still his mind. He pulled himself to his knees, his weight on his splayed, pale fingers turning them bloodless at the joints.
“No good stilling now. I’m already in. No good pushing. I’m pushing with you.” Dumbledore intoned. He was enjoying this now; he could feel the butt of the boy’s mind against his, and feel it was hopelessly inadequate; a kitten paw batting at a lion. Snape turned to look at him, his jaw working soundlessly, his eyes imploring.
“My dear boy,” Dumbledore said, suddenly benign. “Why do you continue to come back here?” The question was not his own; it belonged to Snape. He asked it with his eyes, of himself and of Dumbledore, because, Dumbledore knew - and the knowledge was like a weight on his chest - Snape still thought the headmaster knew the answers. If he didn’t provide them, he felt slighted and sulky, as though Dumbledore withheld them on purpose. There was dried blood on Snape’s cuffs, Dumbledore noted, and engrained on the pale skin of his wrists just showing beneath his cloak. Old or new? Dumbledore wondered. He doesn’t look like he’s bathed since I last saw him.
Then something shifted. Dumbledore frowned suddenly. He’d lost his foothold somehow. It was his turn to shake his head now, trying to lose the lurching sensation, the weak ache of effort. Snape suddenly blinked, and looked away from him, and Dumbledore’s head cleared. He looked around him in vague surprise. Coming to from a spell was like throwing off a trance. Severus had his fingers pressed to his temples. He looked sideways at Dumbledore.
“Force of habit,” he said shortly, and lay back down flat.
“You did it,” Dumbledore said.
“Ouch,” Snape said blandly.
“I know, it isn’t pleasant. But you threw me out! By Merlin, I don’t even know how.”
“You stopped paying attention. You were looking at my wrists. And thinking I don’t bathe.”
“So I was.”
“You should see the state of the bathtub. I’d be dirtier if I did bathe.”
“You could always clean it.”
“You could lend me a house-elf.”
“Don’t you have house-elves?”
“I sent them all away.”
“Oh. Well, ours are not for hire.”
“I wasn’t going to pay you.” Severus snorted with light laughter, despite himself. “Salazar! I think you’ve dislocated my head. I feel like I’ve died.”
“I think we’d better call it a day at that, then. Come and have a seat when you’re ready.”
Dumbledore busied himself moving papers so he could arrange the teapot on his desk to allow Severus to lie unobserved for a moment. He was still flat on his back, the only life about him in his tar-pit eyes as they followed the movement of the paintings on the ceiling. There were no frames dividing the images there, and the characters moved from place to place without inhibition. Some of the well-greaved boys had armed themselves with pots of olive oil and congregated behind the rafters. Dumbledore sometimes heard them giggling when he was working late at night.
The eye was drawn mostly, however, to the image of Klytemnestra, washing Agamemnon’s back in the bathtub. Vivid red curtains swept between the pillars behind them, and Agamemnon reclined, his eyes closed, and deep relief etched in every line of his noble face. One of the handmaids tittered. Klytemnestra shot her a look of pure venom, and she fled. Dumbledore suspected this particular piece dated back to Phineas Nigellus’s time in office. The tragic and inevitable betrayal lurking behind a seemingly innocuous scene would have appealed very much to the Slytherin in him. Nigellus himself, like all the portraits, was watching the proceedings silently. He had a slight smirk playing about his lips, as though the whole situation were completely ludricrous and good manners alone prevented him from stepping in and telling them exactly how it should be done. Dumbledore had learned, however, not to pay much attention to this particular expression, for Phineas rarely took it off. A carefully moulded sneer was just the thing for hiding one’s true feelings at all times.
Severus was getting to his feet again. He followed Dumbledore’s eye line upwards.
“Perhaps I should offer to soap his back,” Severus suggested. The stress was on the “I”, the subtle implication being that he may not be the first person in the room to make such an offer. For a moment, Dumbledore wasn’t sure if he was referring to Voldemort or to hapless Agamemnon, but as a motive for soaping the latter’s back eluded him, he concluded Snape must mean Voldemort. He opted to ignore the subtle stress, also. Severus occasionally emphasised odd words; it was the only sign of his old stutter that remained in his speaking voice. Klytemnestra, who had been carefully unwrapping a knife from her robes behind her oblivious husband’s back, suddenly caught them looking. She shoved the knife away and glowered heavily. Agamemnon, noticing the movement, turned to look at her. She smiled at him, honey-sweet. Snape gave a little laugh through his nose.
“I really must get that painted over. It is most depressing to such despicable plotting going on over your head at all times,” Dumbledore said.
“Just ask the Dark Lord,” Severus concurred. Dumbledore had to laugh.
“Have a cup of tea?” he offered. Snape shook his head.
“Have a nip of this, then?” Dumbledore suggested, pulling a bottle of Fire Whiskey out of his bottom draw. “It’ll take the edge of the headache that it’s no use denying you have.”
Snape inclined his head slightly. Dumbledore took this for a yes.
“For medicinal purposes only, of course,” He said as he poured.
“Of course.” Severus replied. His pose mirrored the stoic watchfulness of the portraits on the wall. He met eyes briefly with Phineas Nigellus and something passed between them. A frisson of Slytherin understanding, perhaps. A mutual rolling of eyes at Dumbledore’s Gryffindor-coloured naivety. Dumbledore caught the exchange, and grimaced to himself. If we were all Slytherins, the world would be lost.
And if we were all Gryffindors, he reminded himself wryly, We’d have no one to spy.
“To your health,” he said, and inclined his glass to the old Slytherin headmaster. To his surprise, Severus laughed out loud. Phineas himself rolled his eyes in good-natured exasperation, and removed himself from the frame without a word.
“A fine man, Phineas Nigellus,” Dumbledore said, to make conversation more than anything else. “Legend has it he once deducted eight hundred and fifty-seven points from Gryffindor for eight hundred and fifty-seven separate offences in a single day. I don’t think Professor McGonagall can quite bring herself to look him in the eye.”
Severus raised an eyebrow.
“I wasn’t aware they co-existed.”
“Oh, they didn’t. Nigellus preceded McGonagall by a number of centuries. But she feels the slight in her very bones. It’s a kind of Gryffindor ancestral memory.”
“I can believe that.” They were silent for a moment. Severus sipped at his whiskey, his eyes still on Nigellus’s empty frame. Dumbledore noticed he didn’t flinch at the fiery taste.
“Sirius Black,” Severus said out of the blue, some minutes later. The shadows in his face seemed to darken as he said it. “He’s a descendant of his, isn’t he? Of Phineas Nigellus?”
“Yes, I believe he is.”
There was silence for a moment. Severus looked upwards, again, muttering something to himself. Dumbledore tried to crane to make out the words without looking like he was craning. Most of it seemed to be obscenities. Dumbledore relaxed. Severus had recently taken to throwing obscenities into his otherwise delicate speech at times, as though he actually craved the disapproval of his elders, or the familiarity of being in disgrace. At times, Dumbledore had to bite his lip not to laugh, not at the crudity, but at the sheer volume of dignity and bile wrapped up in one seventeen year old package. Plenty of his former students were still too shy to talk to him at thirty. It was refreshing in a way to have his authority so completely disregarded, not that he would ever say so out loud. Severus could take being knocked on his arse by the Legilimens spell all night, but he wouldn’t stand for it if he suspected he was being mocked.
Minerva would be shocked at me, Dumbledore thought, for laughing when he swears and then offering him whiskey. She’d give him detention till he’s forty, never mind that he’s not a student here anymore.
Minerva and Severus never had seen quite eye to eye on the subject of his education, however. She had remarked out of the blue once, with such a sudden splutter of frustration that she’d splashed her tea,
“That Severus Snape! You try telling him off! He’s so thick-skinned, it’s untrue. He and that Evan Rosier were trying to throw a pituita curse at James Potter, and I caught them at it. At least Rosier can look a little bit chastised, but that Snape… He just stares at you with his jaw slack, like he can’t even begin to comprehend what you’re saying to him. If I didn’t know he wasn’t stupid, well, I… I don’t know what I’d think. I’d think there was something wrong with him.”
“But he gets good marks?”
“Oh, yes. He always gets good marks. Frankly, it makes no difference to him whether he pays attention or not. I wouldn’t mind if he swung from the chandeliers, so long as he doesn’t distract the others. He’s got it in for James Potter, Merlin knows why. But there’s no doubting he’s clever. If you ask me, he’s too clever by half.” Minerva gave a tight little sniff. Dumbledore had had to smile to himself. Minerva was a clever and sensitive witch in many ways, and yet when it came to the Slytherins, her ideas were rather conservative. A clever Slytherin meant trouble, as far as she was concerned, and that was that. Dumbledore rather disagreed. Or, at any rate, it doesn’t necessarily mean trouble for us. I expect Voldemort would rather his Slytherins weren’t clever enough to doubt him.
But if Minerva McGonagall’s Gryffindor fire had no impact on Severus, the slightest cross word from Dumbledore would make him sulky for hours. Dumbledore was cautious not to be too optimistic, but it did all seem to add up to the boy having some kind of respect for him. It was hard to tell, however. Like Nigellus and his sneer, Snape maintained the same belligerent attitude towards everybody, regardless of his feelings for them.
“Will you go and visit your father?” he judged it safe to ask eventually. Snape regarded him thoughtfully for a moment, as though this idea had not occurred to him before.
“It will look strange if you don’t,” Dumbledore pointed out.
“Yes, I suppose it will,” Snape agreed. “I must say, I’m not keen.”
“I don’t imagine anybody would be keen. But none the less.”
“I will, then.” Severus set down his empty glass.
“I had better go,” he said. “If you’re quite sure we’ve finished.”
“Oh, absolutely. You look as though you could use some sleep. I’m afraid all these late nights are not good for your, uh, optimum performance.”
“Not really, no.” Severus fumbled with his travelling cloak, which was hooked over the back of the chair. In profile, he looked pale and clammy and ill.
“Do be careful,” Dumbledore implored him suddenly, as though these words were a spell to absolve him of worry and guilt. Severus paused in the act of folding his cloak carefully over his arm.
“I’m always careful,” he replied. The light in his eyes was suddenly playful. Some instinct in him made him taunt whenever he detected weakness.
“Liar,” Dumbledore told him. “It doesn’t comfort me, Severus, considering what you do, that you’re not a better liar. Twice you’ve lied to me - three times now- and I’ve caught you out both times.”
Snape laughed, the sound seeming unnatural in his throat.
“Twice you’ve caught me, old man. How do you know you’ve always caught me?” These moods swept over him sometimes. Dumbledore wondered if part of Severus’s motive for his defection from the Death Eaters was simple intellectual curiosity. Whether, having been told in no uncertain terms that it couldn’t be done, he’d just determined to try. He was as proud as a centaur, still, despite everything, and telling him he couldn’t do something was a sure way to make him try. The Slytherin and the Gryffindor have much more in common that they’d like to admit. Probably why they hate each other so much.
They locked eyes for a moment. Severus looked away first, ducked his head by way of farewell, and left the room. The headmaster and the paintings silently watched the young spy leave, and overhead, with all observers distracted, Klytemnestra swiftly drove the dagger home.
~fin~
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