He watched himself, he heard himself shouting and crying out and making guttural noises that animals would be proud of it and he wished, he wished he had his wand, or his Occlumency or anything, really. Or... He wished he was dead.
.
"Hermione?" someone said, shaking her by the shoulder and she tried to blink her eyes open, tried to push the masses of frizzy, uncooperative hair from her face.
"Mpfhglr," she replied, doing her best to form words — or see how was waking her.
"I've talked to Kingsley, Hermione," said that someone — and her head, slowly, very slowly, registered the words. Harry. Severus Snape. Loss of wand and magic.
"What?" she sat up, insistently pushing her hair back.
"I talked to Kingsley," repeated Harry slowly.
"Yes, yes," she answered impatiently, "and?"
"And," he sat down on the edge of the bed, "it seems someone was over-eager, and someone...Kingsley suspects it was one of the Malfoys but there is a sort of ban on Snape. It's irreversible that's why it was made illegal and it's old magic, so..."
"Get to the point," she snapped.
"There is a sort of spell on Snape. More like a curse, I'd say, or a jinx. Well, a..."
"Stop with the Semantics already, what did they do? What happened? What did Kingsley say?" she shouted.
"Severus Snape cannot do magic. He's basically not magic anymore and if he tries, really hard, to get through this jinx, curse, spell, whatever, he'll die, or if someone else does, for that matter. It's like an overdeveloped Unbreakable Vow. Kingsley found the entire matter just as ridiculous as we...
"He what?" she hated to be woken like this. She hated getting bad news first thing in the morning.
"He cannot use magic anymore. Someone must have been in the courtroom with us as well, or it was one of Malfoy's lackeys in the Wizengamot. They know it wasn't on him when he was brought into the courtroom. You know they check for Polyjuice and stuff like that now and for curses and jinxes and spells and there was nothing on him. But Kingsley checked on Snape..."
"Can he do that?" interrupted Hermione.
"Apparently," sighed Harry, "and he's effectively a Squib. No, a Muggle. Or a half-Muggle. Or whatever the..."
"You're very fond of Semantics today," she shrieked. "What does he plan to do?"
"That's the point. He cannot do anything. He cannot. If he tries to lift that Squib-Curse — that's how he called it — Snape will die. If Snape tries to break it — Snape will die. There is no need for a Tracking anymore because effectively, if he uses magic, he will die."
She let herself fall back on the bed and covered her face with her hands. "Who invents something like that?"
"Kingsley doesn't know. But it's old magic, that much he said. It was probably used to defeat enemies back in Merlin's days or sometime. There is nothing anyone can do. And it's a Dark Curse, and all we can do at the moment, is run a spell over Snape, which might not kill him, and find out who did it. But we don't know if that works. He's...It's..."
"Hopeless," she muttered. "He can't get his magic back."
"No," Harry lay down on the bed she regularly occupied at Grimmauld Place and stared, much as she did, up at the ceiling. "And what's worse, every ward he put into place has fallen. He seemed to have added tens of thousands of layers on Hogwarts and they all fell yesterday."Nobody had noticed them before because they were subtle and...well, Kingsley said that McGonagall has never been so agitated in all her life."
Hermione sighed and rolled over to face Harry. "I don't understand it. Here we are, here you are, and here she is and you all give testimony, there are Pensieves, there is Veritaserum and he still get his wand snapped."
"Hermione, the verdict, now, doesn't matter. Kingsley said he would have overruled it, would have waited a month or two for the attention to die down, and would have brought him back in, would have given him a new wand. But that's not possible now. There are hundreds of people in front of the Ministry protesting for Snape. But if we bring him back...a wand would only make it worse."
"He's really a Muggle."
"Yes," he sighed and opened his arms wide when Hermione came to snuggle in. It wasn't uncommon since the end of the war and yet, if Ginny would see them this way, she would grow red in the face and would begin screaming again. She was the jealous type. Not that there was anything to be jealous about, really. At least not concerning her. She was happy being alone, she was happy though as well that she had Harry who always gave her hugs and always let her cuddle up. But they were friends. Strictly best friends. Besides, Hermione suspected that the thing with Ginny had, maybe, run it's course. She wasn't sure of it but there had been a moment when they had been out the evening before last when Harry's eyes had lightened up. Upon seeing, well, a Muggle man. Man as in male. She wasn't sure of course, not at all but there had been moments when she had thought that he seemed to appreciate the male physique better than the female. And...well, she was going against all that she was and all her instincts and her grain but she didn't ask. She kept her thoughts to herself. That was one thing he would have to tell her. And not have pried out of him.
Still, she enjoyed snuggling with him. He was warm and familiar and just Harry. The person she could rely on, despite his temper and his hero-complex.
"Why did I sleep so long? Or did you get up early?" she asked suddenly.
"I couldn't sleep at all. And you drank a hell of a lot more elf-made wine than I did," he chuckled and it vibrated against her cheek. "You sang when I brought you up here."
"Again?" she groaned. "What of Snape's potions?"
"Nope," he said. Well, he could make potions but they wouldn't be magical. They would be more like herbal tea or just disgusting smelling and tasting goo."
"He will kill himself," said Hermione darkly. "Harry, what can he do?"
"We'll find out. Sooner or later. Aunt Petunia was most forthcoming when I asked her where they used to live. It's astonishing that you only have to whip your wand out and that woman sings like a little birdy. And better than you," he smirked and pressed a kiss on her temple.
.
He had fallen on the floor, or had sat down there, he couldn't remember. Or maybe one of the impacts of throwing something against something else had taken his last bit of strength. He wasn't sure. But he knew he was on the ground and his entire body hurt from the, well, exercise. He had no strength left. Azkaban had cost him all strength. But at least he had just produced a lot more wood to burn. He wouldn't freeze quickly that winter. Not that he had a coat apart from the old Mackintosh and maybe an old coat of his father's. But that reminded him, in his dazed state on the kitchen floor, that he would have to do something about that too. As quickly as he could, which wasn't quickly at all, he picked himself up from the dirty tiles and trudged, slowly up the stairs.
He gathered all his father's clothing in his arms — something he should have done years ago and took the robes he had been wearing for — seventeen years — and made his way down the stairs again. This was exercise. He would get exercise just by being unable to Summoning things. By having to fetch them. By having to walk and not Apparate. By having to...it didn't matter. There were a lot of things to be done before he could think about losing his magic. He needed...
First things first.
The fire obviously had worked and it burned nicely through the legs of the former rickety chair. The books were all gone, not even a cover left and he quickly threw in another leg of the chair and first, his father's clothes. He wanted them gone. He did not want to remember the looks of some of the people — most of the people — who had passed him as he had gone shopping. They had that pitiful look in their eyes and he had felt like some of them wanted go give him money or maybe thought he was a homeless person. And maybe he was. This house did not feel like home.
But — he had no other choice but make it at least habitable. He would be able to sleep in his old room, as he had done the night before and the nap before that. He would clear out his parents' former bedroom and he would burn all the furniture. It made little sense to heat with anything else when that had to go in any case. He needed paint on the walls and he needed to clean. He desperately needed to clean.
House elves had been marvellous creatures. They were marvellous creatures. They loved to clean and they loved to do the laundry and the washing up and all the chores he had to do now. But it couldn't be put off. He had had a good breakfast of lukewarm beans on burned toast (much like his tea had been) and he had a fire going and now he had to tackle the next thing on his list of priorities.
The windows looked like they hadn't been washed since his mother had died and he faintly remembered the carpet of being a friendlier colour. Not that he wanted a friendlier colour — he just wanted the dirt to be gone. He wanted this to look like nothing the old house had looked like. And he didn't even know why, well, apart from the fact that it slowly trickled into his empty, stuffed brain that he would have to stay there. He had nowhere else to go, no other choice. Had to live in that hovel and if he had to live in that hovel, that hovel better not remind him of that dreadful summer when he had made the one mistake that had led him to be there now. He wanted nothing there to remind him that that insipid creature that was half man, half rat had been there. He did not want to be reminded that this was the place where he had spent his miserable childhood, and he did not want to be reminded that this was the place where his mother had given up on herself after his father had run away.
This needed to change. He was forced to change, so this hovel better change with him.
The living room was hot and he had no other choice but to roll his sleeves up, his eyes firmly not on the marred skin on his forearm and he began, with a huge bowl filled with soapy water he had found in the kitchen, to wash off the grime of the windows. Dirt that had collected there for over twenty years.
He didn't mind that his shirt got splashed and he had no idea if what he was doing was in any way, shape or form correct but he did it. This stupid, silly washing of windows kept his mind off other things. His memories bubbled just below the surface and he knew that any moment that he stopped doing something, they would burst through, would infect his brain, infest his thoughts. It would make him taste bile in his mouth and he was rather surrounded by acid smell of window washing things than the taste of bile.
He scrubbed vigorously, not noticing that the window next door open and that old Mrs Callaghan stuck her head out, made tutting noise and shouted a greeting in his direction. He was too busy scraping the dirt away, the bad things that had happened in that house. Was too busy not remembering.
4. Face Threatening Act
Face-saving Act / Face-threatening Act
If you say something that represents a threat to another person's self-image, that is called a face-threatening act. For example, if you use a direct speech act to order someone to do something (Give me that paper!), you are acting as if you have more social power than the other person. If you do not actually have the social power, then you are performing a face-threatening act. An indirect speech act, in the form of a question (Could you pass me that paper, please?), removes the assumption of social power. You appear to be asking about ability. This makes your request less threatening to the other person's sense of self. Whenever you say something that lessens the possible threat to another's face, it's called a face-saving act.
(Yule, 1985)
It took him three days and five trips to the supermarket but then, finally, the house resembled a house and not a dump and not a hovel. All the furniture was put into pieces, either by raging fits of temper of by the mere work of an axe and a hammer he had found in the old cellar. There was nothing left, expect the bed in his former nursery, and the small cupboard that held his clothes in there, as well as the things in the kitchen. The living room was completely bare, except the left over stacks of books he needed to get the fire going and the stacks of wood that used to be furniture. The colours on the walls were different, darker where no furniture had stood, a little lighter where there had been the cupboards. But all was yellow-brownish. He had never noticed before but there were obviously still traces of the thousands of cigarettes his father had smoked in that house. He needed wallpaper or paint. And furniture.
The carpet had been cleaned, the dust was gone, he aired the entire house for hours and hours and he had managed to warm up a tin of spaghetti and had only burned about half of it while the rest remained cold. He did not want to remember that he knew the exact right temperature when it came to potions but could not do the same with a simple stove.
He had nevertheless eaten all of it. He always ate all of what he had cooked, or heated up. Or tried to, at least. He felt hungry all the time, his stomach continually growling and wanting more and more. He drank litres of water every day, thirsty and hungry. And he always sat in front of the fire in the living room with his half-burned, half cold meals. He had no chairs left and he was always cold. Besides, staring into the flames made him forget, or at least made him — not remember. In the four nights he had spent there, the four nights since he had been let out of Azkaban, he had woken up screaming during three. All except the first one. He could always remember the dreams, always knew what he dreamed about but instead of dwelling on them, instead of thinking about them, he usually got up — in the middle of the night — and went to clean some more. The bathroom was spotless. The kitchen was spotless, despite the one burnt-beyond-recognition-pot and the cracked tiles on the floor. The living room, apart from the yellow-brownish tinge to the walls was spotless, the hall was spotless. The empty room that used to be his parents' bedroom was spotless, his former nursery was spotless. He could say with absolute certainty that there wasn't a single spider living in his house — apart from the cellar — but that he had, carefully, captured about thirty-seven spiders of all varieties and had carried all of them outside and had there, in the small garden, set them free.
Paint and garden, that was next. But he couldn't very well tend to his garden in the middle of the night. He could paint in the middle of the night, so he would, he thought, go to the shop just before closing time, tiring him out so he could go to sleep and maybe be so exhausted that he slept the night through, and if he didn't, he could paint during the night. Now, while there was still light, he would attack the garden. The grass was so high that he could get lost in it — and it looked like nobody had ever cared for it (even though he knew for a fact that his mother had a little herb garden out there, back when she had still been half-way normal).
