That was, he knew, why he stayed, sitting there, filling his lungs with cold, more or less fresh air. Cancer? He had read about that disease. He knew what a wicked thing it was. He knew it could come back any given day. He knew that it could kill. He knew it could take her away from him.
And, much as he was loath to admit it — that thought scared him. It made him feel small and helpless. Lose her after he had lost so much already.
The children squealed.
He didn't want to admit it to himself — but he knew deep inside that she had been the one that had more or less rescued him. She had been the one with the cup of tea handy and later, the cup of tea and the lent ear. She was the one who listened and didn't judge. She was the one who made sure he was fine. She had been the one to safe him, help him fill out the forms, get furniture, help him settle in. Deep inside, he knew that he would not be sitting there like this, knowing he had a large bed and pillows under which he could hide his head, knowing he had books that helped him study, knowing he had a table he could sit at. Deep inside he knew he would still be a pile of self-pitying mess if she hadn't offered him that first cup of tea. Maybe, he thought, his house would have absolutely no walls anymore if it hadn't been for her.
The children still squealed.
That woollen set he had bought her was only a small part of what he truly owed her. Only one more person he owed. Nw that he had paid everyone back, that he had fulfilled everything that was expected of him, there was another one he owed — only this time, it didn't feel quite so terrible. No. For the first time in his life, he wanted to repay what had been given to him. Wanted to pay is debts to her in any way he could. And if it made her happy for him to be stared at like the Elephant Man, he would endure it.
The children squealed.
"There you go," said a kind voice next to him and a cup was pushed in his hands. "I know it's just overwhelming."
He looked up to see the other daughter, not the girl his mother had apparently saved, sitting next to him on the other chair provided. She pulled a cigarette from a pack and lit it, taking a deep drag. "I'm Mary. I'm the second youngest. Only Mark is younger than me. Stephen is the eldest, then Kathy, then Thomas, me and Mark." She put the cigarette between her teeth and nodded towards the children playing. "I don't think it would do much good for me to introduce you to every one of them. We're a big family. Mark's the only one that doesn't have a child. Kathleen's eldest is in there and I believe you've met Aideen, she's Stephen's. The only one not here is Flora, she's Brian's twin sister. She's pregnant and couldn't make the trip. Imagine a child with 17 having a child." She chuckled and flicked a bit of ash in an ashtray she kept in her hand, "Runs in the family, I suppose. Oh, would you like one?" She offered him the pack of cigarettes and he shook his head immediately.
"And your godson likes my niece, eh? Say, not that I'm complaining, it's good for Ma to have someone around but wouldn't it make more sense for him to live with you? Oh, forget I asked, I'm just as nosy as Ma is." Mary whose last name probably wasn't Callaghan anymore observed her cigarette and exhaled the smoke in small rings before she looked at him again.
"I know it's not my place to ask."
"My house is smaller than Eleanors," he said.
"I see. And you came back because you lost your job, Ma said?"
"Yes," he nodded briefly.
"And he'll be going back to Uni," he heard a male voice and when he turned his head, he saw Stephen, the one he had foolishly ran from, closing the door to the kitchen carefully, extracting a pack of cigarettes from his own pocket and accepting the light his sister handed him with a smile. He then smiled at Severus — seemed to understand.
Those people — he didn't understand them. All of them, five children with all their children (obviously apart from one) coming back for Christmas — and behaving as if they still lived there. No fighting so far, just general talking. Children squealing.
"Linguistics," the man said.
"Oh, Stephen. Do you have another topic you can ever talk about?" she asked bickeringly — good-naturedly though it sounded.
"No, I find it absolutely fascinating. And you'd to if you'd see how much of your life is influenced by Linguistics."
"Bore someone else with it," she rolled her eyes and then winked at Severus. "I'm sure he'll find out when he goes to Uni to study it. Going to Manchester then?"
He nodded, feeling again, much younger than he really was.
"What's that godson of yours doing? The one ogling my daughter?" the man asked, winking as well. It didn't sound mean, it only sounded — inquisitive. Curious. Nosy, if pressed, yes.
"He," Severus cleared his throat, "he just finished school and I think he's considering his options."
"Aideen just started in autumn. Medicine, if you can believe it. Don't know who she got that from," he grumbled.
"Probably from Ma. Always patching up people. Severus, you must remember...you fell one day, just on the street when you rode that huge bicycle that I think belonged to your father and...who was it that brought him in? Stephen, do you remember?"
He shook his head, "I think I might have been away already. I don't remember that."
"Then it was maybe Thomas or Mark. Don't know but one of us found you outside, having just fallen of the bike and your knee was bleeding like...it was a right mess. I remember you didn't cry. You bit your lip so hard that that bled to, but you didn't cry. And Ma gave you a bit of chocolate and cleaned the wound and put a big plaster on it. Surely you remember?"
Severus shook his head slowly. What did he remember from his childhood? His mother and his father fighting — Lily, naturally. Swings and Lily. Had he been so focused on always only remembering Lily that he had forgotten all the other things about his childhood?
Bicycle. Huge. His father's yes, but never that he could remember ridden by his father. Falling of it? He couldn't remember that. Being patched up by Eleanor? Couldn't remember that. Couldn't remember.
The children squealed.
"...dinner and the speech! People, come on in. Dad, you said you'd quit smoking," he heard fragments from the girl named Aideen and a second later, his godson's face came into focus, bending down towards him.
"Uncle Severus? We can eat," he said softly.
"I'm coming," he said, trying so hard to remember parts of his childhood without his parents in them — without Lily in them.
.
Hermione sat hunched over books. She had gathered all of them that had anything to do in the slightest with genealogy, with Wizarding families, with ancient curses, on wandlore around her.
There was honestly no system. She flipped one book open, found something and scribbled it down.
Not the way she had pictured her Christmas (they hadn't even opened the presents yet) but she was so deep in her task that she couldn't even remember it was Christmas. This was something she could do, something she could find out, something that books would help.
There were, in a dusty, old, dog-eared book, references to the Curse, called, aptly, Execratio Noli Magici. The Curse of no magic. But the dog-eared, old, dusty book only mentioned it, and only said that there were no counter-curses. At least she hoped this was the curse Hestia Jones had used.
But — had she done it because she wanted to do it or because someone had put a curse on her? And if yes, had it been the Dark Side? Had it been the same person that had hexed Lucius Malfoy? And if yes, would the Dark Side want to put a curse on their own? Make it that obvious? Or could it be someone who had fought on their side? And if so, why do it? Why use Hestia Jones? Who — of course, couldn't give an answer anymore.
She drew a line down a bit of parchment and wrote Light and Dark in big letters on top before drawing another line underneath it. She would just — she decided — make a list of people who she expected were capable of doing something so horrible. In all actual fact, she couldn't think of anyone who could be capable of doing this and who hadn't been Kissed. In her mind, the Light Side, her side, wouldn't be so cruel. All of them knew Snape had been loyal to the end, ready to give his life. Everyone, she suspected, knew he was braver than any Gryffindor, smarter than any Ravenclaw and Cunning personified. To take away his magic was not probably not as big a punishment to him as it was for the Wizarding World in general.
She shook her head to herself, then quickly picked up a fresh roll of parchment and took a deep sigh. After she had received a prompt reply from Slughorn about her potions question, she was optimistic that she would get a quick answer for this as well.
She had to know this. Not that it had anything to do with anything she was working on, but somehow, the imagine of Severus Snape, first in the garden, looking like Death with the scythe in his hand, and then underneath the street lamp, was burned in her memory. And somehow, in her mind, he looked better now, he looked like someone she wanted to look up to, she even, for whatever it was worth, realised that she was admiring him. Admiring him for his bravery, for his cunning, for his intelligence. Somehow, her mind formed an image of Snape that another part of her brain knew wasn't true, wasn't even right. But she still had to know. Just to let the Wizarding World in general — and if she ever found out who cast the curse (if it hadn't been Jones's idea) in particular — know what they had done to the Wizarding World.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I am doing research on Severus Snape and I was wondering if you could send me all the back issues of your highly esteemed magazine in which he published. Payment can be made through the delivery owl or by any other means.
Kind regards,
Hermione Granger
She smiled determinedly to herself as she tied the letter to Harry's owl's leg (she really needed to get her own) and dived into her books again, filling in names on the list. All on the Dark Side, oddly enough.
.
It was loud, it was noisy, it was messy and Draco enjoyed every minute of it. Flanked by his godfather and, incidentally, Aideen, he compared all the dinner parties, luncheons, teas at Malfoy Mansion to this. There was no way it was even similar. Aideen's elbow more than once connected with his arm or his ribs (and he, incidentally, scooted even a bit closer to her side) and Severus had his arms plastered to his sides and ate a little oddly. The children, all those under fifteen, he guessed, ate at the couch table, sitting on the floor, having a grand party of their own.
Oh, but this was wonderful. Everyone was talking, some were bickering, most didn't care that there was food in their mouths. It was warm, it was cosy, it was wonderful. Aideen smiled at him once in a while and he felt the overwhelming urge of draw her into a corner, a quieter corner, and look at her and talk to her and be with her. He had never thought he could feel something like this towards a person he barely knew. Wanting to get to know her, wanting to talk, wanting to be on a level with her, not feeling in the slightest superior or inferior to her but just level. And her smile was stunning, it was breath-taking, it made his chest burn.
He did know that his father would absolutely freak out if he knew that his only son was in the process of falling deeply in love with a Muggle. But his father was — under the Imperius or not — a sad bastard. He didn't want anything to do with him and he hoped that he could stay with Eleanor for the time being. At least as long as his fifty Galleons lasted — and as long as he could just think about what he wanted to do with it.
What Aideen studied sounded marvellous. Muggle medicine. Would make his father probably faint. Or cringe. Or puke. Or kill himself. He didn't care. Maybe, he thought, he would try to start Uni, just as Severus was starting. Maybe — he could spend more time with Aideen then. And wouldn't that be perfect?
He smiled at her when she caught his eye, then bent over, when she beckoned for him to bring his ear close to her mouth. The proximity made him shiver, her smell, like a citrussy perfume and the food they were eating his the hair on the back of his head tingle and stand up straight. It made him want to draw a deep breath, commit that scent to memory forever.
"Is your godfather okay?" she asked in his ear, her breath fanning against his neck. Another shiver went up and down his spine and he needed a moment to get his bearings to look at his godfather.
The man was pale again, but that was no news but it was his eyes that betrayed him. They were looking out of the window — and his back was rigid. The entire posture implied — ready for attack. Ready to strike. He knew his godfather. There was something, something outside the window. Something on the street and Draco quickly turned, looking past Aideen, out of the window as well, then saw what his godfather saw, and whipped his head around to him.
"What the fuck is Potter doing here?" he hissed, brows furrowed.
24. Speech Acts
Speech acts: What we have not yet explored is the fact that we also usually know how speakers intend us to 'take' (or, interpret the function of) what they say. In very general terms, we can usually recognise the type of 'act' performed by a speaker in uttering a sentence. The use of the term speech act covers 'actions' such as 'requesting', 'commanding', 'questioning' and 'informing'. It is typically the case that we use the following linguistic forms with the following 'functions'.
Did you eat the food? → Interrogative → Question
Eat the food (please). → Imperative → Command
You ate the food. → Declarative → Statement
(Yule, 1985)
And then the idiotic boy waved. Jumped up and down in front of the window and bloody waved. Had obviously seen them and gestured — so that the whole town could see it — for him (or Draco) to come outside.
"Who's that?" one of the others (male — Thomas? Mark?) asked and Severus knew he had a chance to leave this table, knew he had a chance to put a Potter into place. Knew that it wouldn't look odd if he got up now.
"Isn't he one of your former pupils, Severus?" Eleanor asked suddenly and that was when he got up. He could see immediately, that it wasn't he that Potter wanted outside — but Draco. However, he made a cutting gesture along his throat and Potter stopped jumping up and down and stopped waving and just stood.
"Yes," he replied. "Excuse me." He shook his head barely perceptibly at Draco and left the house, left the table. He knew he didn't look as impressive in his new black slacks and the shirt he had put on. He knew the leather jacket he had thrown over his shoulder was — well — the opposite of his former, black, billowing robes. That leather jacket certainly didn't have the same effect but it was nevertheless Potter who cringe slightly — and then gaped at his sight.
