InsaneJournal

Nine-Tenths of the Law

 

I

In the end, Hermione went alone.

Ron refused to believe there was a problem, although he did ask her to report back. Everyone else felt it wasn’t their business to interfere in a lovers’ quarrel. They all assumed that’s what it was.

Ginny had made her position clear.

~*~*~*~

“I’m not going back there. Ever.”

She’d landed on the doorstep of Hermione’s London flat on a cool summer night, shaking alarmingly, her face pale, tear-streaked, entirely confused. Hermione bustled her in to the kitchen for tea, soothing her with perfunctory words, and gestures learned from books, until she could demand an explanation.

Ginny didn’t bother to start with, “It’s Harry.” Despite shared experiences, they weren’t close friends. Harry and Ron were all they really had in common, and Ron was in the bedroom fast asleep, exhausted as ever after a long day’s Auror training at the Ministry.

“At first he was just a little distracted, you know,” Ginny said, looking to Hermione for expected agreement.

Hermione nodded; everyone had been in a sort of shell-shock at the end, moving in a daze, picking up this piece and that of their shattered lives, slowly moving toward one another, slowly starting to think and feel again, to look to the future.

Harry had stayed at Hogwarts for the first few weeks, out of sight, and everyone talked about him as they righted rooms and cleared away debris and bodies and the worst of the memories. Later, when the physical work was done and they were forced to sit down and face what to do with their lives and their world, Harry bought a cottage on the edge of the lake and moved in, the single trunk holding everything he owned trailing behind him as he walked away from Hogwarts.

He’d never refused to help. It just turned out that no one ever asked him.

Ron had considered it for a minute, shrugged, and said, “Well, he’s done the biggest thing. What else do you want?”

“I’d like him to come back to us,” Hermione’d said.

“He will.” To Ron, it was a fact, and any further discussion just whinging.

Hermione and Ginny had walked down to the cottage on a bright summer’s morning. Harry’d come out and smiled at them, absently, rather like Dumbledore. Ginny’d flung herself at him, rocking him, but he’d caught her and hugged her, and when Hermione asked if he was OK, he’d shrugged and said, over Ginny’s shoulder, “Sure. Just have a lot on my mind.”

When Hermione left that day, still worried but with too much else already on her plate, Ginny stayed.

~*~*~*~

 “I know he felt bad about Snape,” Ginny said, her voice narrow, mean with faked understanding. “He talked about him … well. He didn’t talk. Once in a while, I’d try to ask him if he was all right, you know, what he wanted to do, or if he was hungry or wanted to go for a walk. And he’d say some weird thing about Snape.”

“Such as?” Hermione prodded, but Ginny shrugged it off, sympathy exhausted.

“Who knows? Who cares? That he was a hero after all, or that nobody understood him.”

The truth, Hermione thought, but didn’t say it. It was beside the point now.

“Then … after a bit, he was quiet all the time, and he stopped sleeping. He’d get up and stare at the lake. At the mountains. At Hogwarts. All night. Then he started going for walks in the Forest. He’d come home, mud to his knees, carrying handsful of plants and roots and disgusting-smelling things that he’d take into the kitchen and …” Ginny shook her head, remembering. “He’d … he’d start brewing. Brewing,” she repeated as though it were murder. “He’d make things and bottle them and then the next day ask me what they were, what I was doing making potions when he wasn’t around.” Her lips quivered. “He didn’t believe me when I said he was doing it. He got mad at me.”

“Did he …” Hermione tried to say it, almost more careful of her own reaction than Ginny’s. “Did he hit you or…”

“No.” A firm shake of the head, red hair flying. “Nothing like that. At first. He just … did these things and didn’t remember, and then he’d be himself for a bit, only sort of tired and distracted, and then he’d … go off again.

“Then one night he was tossing and turning, having a nightmare … making these sounds in his chest like he was suffocating … and I shook him awake. I was saying his name.”

Ginny squeezed her eyes shut. “And he woke up and looked at me and he said … ‘I’m not.’”

“Then he really woke up. And … he was frightened. He was really frightened. He looked at me and it seemed as if he was actually seeing me for the first time in days, and he said my name and he hugged me.

“I asked him to go to St Mungo’s, and he said he would. Then we fell asleep.”

Ginny stared past Hermione at the wall, eyes bleak, and for a moment Hermione got a real sense of the hurt she was trying to bottle up inside, behind a calm façade.

“In the morning I tried to get him to go to St. Mungo’s. He looked at me as if I’d gone spare. As if we’d never even had the conversation. As if … as if he hated me.

“He went straight into the kitchen and started doing something with a big vat of … I don’t know, some noxious red stuff he’d been brewing the night before. I followed him. I begged him. I said … I said there was something wrong with him.” Her voice started to waver. “I said I loved him and that I wanted to help him. I didn’t know what to do.

“He screamed at me. He threw an iron ladle at me and screamed at me to get out.”

“Gin …” Hermione began. “I’m sure he didn’t …”

Ginny blurted, “He said ‘get the fuck out of here. Get out of my life and don’t come back.’”

“Something is very wrong,” Hermione said, getting up to pace, to think, to try to fix it.

Ginny hugged herself, thin arms tight, fingers curling into her arms. “As long as he doesn’t want my help, I don’t see how I can help him.”

Hermione stopped, looking across her tiny parlor at Ginny, small and pale, dark circles under her eyes.

“You are helping,” she said. “Whatever it is, we’ll find out. I’ll find out.” Then, thinking of immediate concerns, she said, “Do you want to spend the night? I can—”

Ginny shook her head. “No. I’ll go to The Burrow. It’ll be …” She stopped. Closed her eyes tight. Opened them. “Let me know if … what happens.” She looked up at Hermione, eyes filling, overflowing. “If he … needs my help. If he asks for me …”

Hermione returned to the sofa and gave her a hug, stiff, awkward, her thoughts already leaping ahead to Harry, to what could possibly have happened to him.

~*~*~*~

Hermione walked cautiously up the serpentine path of tilted paving stones, noting with a strange alarm the expanses of freshly turned earth on either side, the new-planted herbs and flowers tiny and delicate in tidy rows where once there’d been only the hippie-like waves of uncut grass in the front garden. It wasn’t like Harry to be interested in gardening, but Ginny hadn’t mentioned anything about this.

She rapped on the weathered door, timidly at first, then with more force. Then she tried the handle, opened the door, and stepped into a cloud of bitter reek and the arrhythmic clang of metal on metal.

“Harry!” she called, then coughed. “It’s me!”

The parlor was tidy enough – Hermione suspected Ginny’s influence there – but every flat surface bore a tower of books, some only a few high, some reaching unsteadily toward the ceiling. Several scrolls were tucked into a corner of the sofa, and a big book of soft brown leather lay open and face down on the rug, a cushion beside it, as if Harry had been sitting on the floor studying.

She glanced at the kitchen doorway, saw a billow of grey steam wash along the ceiling and wisp out through the doorway. The smell was half onion, half laundry – she had no idea what it signified.

“Harry?”

“I’m in here!”

She made her way around more stacks of books on the floor and stopped in the kitchen doorway.

He was bent over a huge cauldron, a long heavy iron ladle in one hand, his loose black clothes flapping as he stirred with long, powerful strokes.

“What are you –” she began, stopped, swallowed, feeling foolish because it was obvious what he was doing, although why was a complete mystery.

He turned and scowled at her, and her heart leaped jittering into her throat when she saw a stranger.

His hair was much longer, uncombed, wild about his heat-flushed face, damp black tendrils wrapped around his neck like a venomous tentacula. Ginny’d described him as vague, distracted, but his eyes pierced Hermione, making her feel transparent, then invisible, in the space of perhaps three seconds.

“Well?” he demanded. “What do you want? I’m busy.”

“H-Harry …?” Instantly she felt stupid saying it, but he was so changed, his body stiff, knotted, his face drawn and angry and old …

“What do you want?”

Even his voice was different, deeper, with a harsh, scraping undertone.

“I … came to see if – to see that you were all right.” She took a nervous step forward and he flung out a hand.

“You can see it from there. Now that you’ve seen, you can go.”

“Harry!” The reproof sprang automatically from her lips. “What is wrong with you?”

He straightened, facing her fully, the ladle clenched in one fist, and her heart jittered into her throat.

“You want to know what’s wrong with me?”

He paused, but she couldn’t speak, and it turned out the pause was for emphasis rather than for her response.

“What’s wrong with me is stupid whinging females constantly hovering around me, disturbing my sleep and my work, constantly pestering, constantly –” his voice dropped to a hiss – “asking me what is wrong with me.”

He raised the ladle – Hermione, shaking, flinched back, sick at the idea that he’d actually strike her – then stopped.

Stopped moving, stopped breathing – and shrank in on himself, shoulders curling, fists clenching, head drooping until all she could see was the jagged part in the thick black hair.

He shuddered, once, a violent, whole-body spasm, and automatically she started forward, reaching out. “Harry – ”

He slapped her hand away before his head came up, his face mottled with heat and emotion, his eyes beaming pure hatred through the mist of confusion suffusing the room. He flung the ladle aside and had his wand in its place before Hermione heard the ladle clang against the floor.

”Now will you get out or do I have to hex you out?”

She didn’t realise she’d moved until her back thumped into the front door. She half-turned, scrabbling for the handle, not taking her eyes off the tight-faced glaring specter before her.

“Harry,” she whispered, tears springing to her eyes, but she grasped the handle and wrenched the door open. “I’ll – be back.” She sidled out, turned, and ran.

~*~*~*~

 “Just let me do the talking, dear. I’ve had a lot of experience with this.”

Madame Pomfrey strode briskly along the path to Harry’s cottage, Hermione beside her and Ron trailing after them, several paces, as if to disavow any involvement in their mission.

“We don’t even know what this is,” Hermione reminded Poppy, but gently. None of the Mediwitches or wizards at St Mungo’s would listen to her. Well, they listened. But they wouldn’t help. Not without more proof than just the word of two teenaged witches that the Savior of the Wizarding World was acting very strangely. Finally she’d gone to Hogwarts and asked Madame Pomfrey, who hadn’t seemed in the least surprised.

 “Well, if it’s not physical it must be mental,” Poppy said, slightly out of breath. “The poor child went through so much. It was bound to affect him sooner or later.”

“But how could that make him look so different, look …?” Hermione stopped, realising how she would sound. Like a stranger. Unrecognisable.

“Mental stress takes a toll on the body,” Pomfrey said; she sounded reassuringly certain, but Hermione couldn’t shake the fear that once she saw Harry she’d be as shocked, as mystified, as Hermione had been.

Poppy peered interestedly at the gardens as they passed through, then rapped smartly at the front door. Hermione remained a step behind her; she was ashamed, but couldn’t make herself move. Ron continued to stay back, forcibly reminding Hermione of how hard she’d had to argue to get him to come at all, to get him to admit there might be something really wrong. If she hadn’t understood in her heart how sick to death they all were of fear and danger and death, she would have been angry, would have thought him a coward.

I don’t want this to be true either, she thought, echoing the words she’d shouted at Ron the night before. But he’s our friend and we can’t pretend nothing’s wrong.

~*~*~*~

The door flew open, crashing against the wall to reveal an empty square of space. Poppy’s hand hovered in it a moment, then dropped.

From the back of the house came a voice Hermione would not have believed, two days ago, was Harry’s – deeply hoarse, crackling with furious impatience.

“Am I never to have a moment’s peace?” It was an indictment rather than a question.

Madame Pomfrey cast a startled glance at Hermione, then stepped inside.

Harry stood in the front room, a fat book tucked under one arm, both hands awkwardly holding a parchment open in front of him. He lowered his hands, glaring over his shoulder at them, and Hermione realised he was in his nightclothes – barefoot and draped in a grey nightshirt, though it was past nine. His face was drawn, shadowed with tiredness, but he spoke sharply.

“Well? What do you want?”

Hermione heard Ron’s intake of breath even as Pomfrey stepped forward.

“Harry dear. We – your friends were concerned –”

“Perhaps—” he said, not loudly but with the heavy, inexorable force of a guillotine – “my friends should concern themselves with their own business, and stop meddling in mine.” He released the parchment from one hand and it rustled back into a tidy roll, which he set on the mantel, followed by the fat book he’d had tucked under his arm.

“Bugger,” Ron hissed. “That’s not Harry.”

“And now…” Harry turned back to them; his wand between his fingers. “Kindly get out and leave me in peace.” He didn’t look angry; he looked … contemptuous, Hermione realized. Impatient with a trivial annoyance.

“Harry—” she began, stepping forward, hardly knowing what to say, but his focus flicked to her and she sensed Pomfrey’s sudden movement behind her. She stopped and his gaze snapped back to Poppy, but her wand was in her hand; one flick and the word “Defervescero” left her lips in a whisper.

Harry whirled … eyes rolling, he collapsed sideways onto the sofa, wand tipping from his fingers to the floor.

Poppy took in and let out one big, noisy breath. “Well. Now let’s get a closer look at him.”

Hermione slipped around her, looking Harry up and down; his face in repose looked dreadfully tired, his body too thin, his fingers covered in scratches, cuts and stains. She collected his wand from the floor; it felt unnaturally hot in her hand.

Poppy passed her wand over Harry, chanting a diagnostic spell.

“He looks awful,” Ron said, his voice small.

Pomfrey stopped, head cocked. “I can’t …” Her expression firmed and she made another pass with her wand, this one slower, invoking a different spell.

“What is it?” Hermione pressed.

“There doesn’t seem to be … that is, I cannot detect any sign of physical or magical illness. No hexes, no curses, no poisons, no dark artifacts … he’s a little underweight and somewhat dehydrated, but not ill otherwise …” Mouth pursed, she pressed her fingers to Harry’s forehead and murmured another spell.

Nothing happened for a moment, then Harry stirred and his eyes fluttered open.

“Mr Potter,” Poppy said briskly. He looked at her. “Are you able to sit up?”

She took her fingers away and he pushed himself, with obvious effort, into a vaguely upright position. He blinked at Poppy, then Hermione, then Ron, without malice, but also without any particular signs of welcome, or even recognition.

Then he started. “Where’s my wand—?”

“Here,” Hermione said, raising it but not offering it back to him. “It’s safe.”

He stared at it blankly, making no move to take it, and Hermione eased closer.

“Harry?”

“You’re all here,” he said.

Hermione, Ron and Poppy looked at one another. It was clear none of them knew what he meant.

“We are,” Poppy said finally, falling back on bedside manner. “We are … concerned about you, Mr Potter. You’ve … you’ve not been well.”

His eyes bored holes in the floor, his hands limp in his lap.

“I’m all right,” he said woodenly. “It’s just … he’s inside me.”

~*~*~*~

 “Bloody hell,” Ron breathed. “How’d this happen?”

Hermione and Harry shook their heads as one. Hermione had sorted through the outrageously cluttered kitchen and made tea for them all. Harry never shifted from his slumped position on the sofa, barely moving even to accept his cup. Hermione noted as she took a seat how the three of them had positioned themselves, surrounding Harry as if they could ward off any evil. Unfortunately, it was past the point at which any external defenses would help.

“I’ve never seen such a thing in all my years as a healer,” Poppy said. “But I’ve read about it. It’s quite …” She hesitated, then glanced at the trio as if remembering they were past the point of being shocked out of their innocence. “It’s quite dark magic, I’m afraid.”

“And we thought it was all over,” Ron went on. “We thought we were through with You Know Who forever.” He made a face, no doubt intending to look fierce, Hermione thought. Instead he looked like a pouty child. “Don’t worry, mate. We’ll get that snake-faced bastard out of you and destroy him once and for all.”

Harry’s head jerked up, his face angry, the teacup tilting in his hand. He ignored the tea that splattered onto his knee, though it had to have burned through the rumpled nightshirt.

Poppy snorted.

“It’s not Voldemort, Ron,” Hermione said, wondering why she was surprised, after knowing Ron for so long, that she had to explain the obvious. “It’s Snape.”

II

Harry’s head hurt. He wished they’d all just go away. Just be quiet and go away.

Then he remembered why they were there and cold fear splintered inside him. They couldn’t leave. He needed someone to help him. He didn’t know what was happening to him – he hadn’t even really known something was, and that scared him.

The last few weeks … he couldn’t honestly say they were a blur. They were less than that. He hadn’t thought about them. Hadn’t thought about anything that he could, now, put his finger on. The final battle, the violence and deaths and revelations that had rocked him, felt, not distant, but shrouded. Vaguely he knew that that was something he’d chosen, that he’d deliberately shut himself off from everything that mattered, both outside of himself and inside. Perhaps that was why he hadn’t questioned these weeks of numbed, dreamlike existence.

Or … perhaps it had all been because of Snape. Snape taking him over a little at a time, that bastard, using him … but there was no anger in him, no venom in the thought – no real belief in it. He couldn’t believe Snape had done this deliberately, almost couldn’t believe he himself hadn’t imagined it all. If my choices are that I’m insane, or that I’m sharing my brain and body with Severus Snape …

Harry shuddered.

“You all right, mate?” Ron asked gently.

He forced a smile and shifted the teacup in his lap as if to indicate that he was fine, yes, just sipping his tea. He was wearing a nightshirt. He never wore nightshirts. It was grey. Grey. Icy fingers crawled up his back and he took a quick, unsteady gulp of the tea.

“He must’ve done it just before he died.”

Harry shook his head; whenever anyone talked about the people they’d lost in the war, there was always a funny little respectful pause before the word “died.” Except for Snape. But then, nobody’d really lost Snape, had they? He didn’t have anyone. He was just dead.

“On purpose?” Ron said.

Hermione looked at Harry.

“I can’t imagine him wanting Harry of all people to be carrying his soul around inside him,” Ron went on, and Harry smiled.

“Ron!”

“He’s right,” Harry said. “I don’t think it’s what he meant to do. He meant to give me … certain memories. Maybe that connection, with him so close to …” His throat tightened and he stopped, surprised. Was he getting choked up about Snape dying, or was that Snape, inside him, again? He felt alone in his skull at the moment, but …

“Yes, that’s possible,” Madame Pomfrey said. “At the moment of death, it’s possible the connection drew his living spirit into the nearest living vessel.”

Hermione scowled. “I’ll have to do some research.”

Pomfrey looked at her for a moment, as though measuring her ability to tackle this. Finally she said, “I recommend Erasmus Spookes. He is the foremost expert. You might check with Kloob, in Warsaw, or Professor Slibbersauce, but when it comes to possession—”

“I’m not possessed!” Harry barked. Then snapped his mouth shut.

“I’ll look into the proper sedative potions—” Pomfrey went on.

“Sedatives? What for?” Harry said, and her eyebrows rose.

“Harry,” Hermione said hesitantly. “You … this seems like the first time you’ve been … yourself … in a while. It only happened after Madame Pomfrey hit you with a sedating spell. It may be the way to keep … to keep Professor Snape … sort of …” She waved her hands, clearly unable to pinpoint her meaning.

“Dormant,” Poppy suggested. “There are a number of potions that—”

Harry snapped, “I can –” Then stopped himself, springing up from the sofa, twitching with panic. He’d almost said “I can make them myself.” He’d almost said something he would never say. Something Snape would say.

He paced, dodging the piles of books and parchments and the furniture and his nervously watching guests.

“Okay,” he said then, his stomach clenching. “Sedatives. Right.”

“I’ll whip up a batch of something mild and owl it to you straight away,” Poppy said.

“That’s fine for now, but is there a way to reverse it?” Ron said. “I mean, to get him out?”

“That’s a question for Erasmus Spookes,” Poppy said. “I believe he is in Prague at the moment at a conference.

“Can we Floo him?” Hermione asked. “An owl would take days.”

Poppy considered. “The conference is being held at The Willard Institute. Hogwarts has a Floo connection.” She stood up, as if it was all settled; Hermione rose as well.

Ron said, “You okay, mate?”

Harry shrugged. “Yeah.”

“You don’t … that is, you seem pretty calm about all this. I’d’ve thought you’d be furious the old bat did this to you.”

Harry looked at Ron for a long moment, hardly seeing him. I don’t really mind and it’s not so terrible seemed, even though the words sprang easily to his mind, admission of madness.

“I … expect he didn’t do it on purpose,” he said finally. Ron scowled at him.

“Go ahead,” he said, although Ron had shown no sign of wanting to join Poppy and Hermione, and they certainly didn’t need his help to Floo anyone. “I’ll be fine. I’ll just … wait here.”

Ron grinned crookedly. “Try not to turn back into Snape, all right, mate?”

Harry smiled. “I’ll try.”

~*~*~*~

Erasmus Spookes suited his name more than any man Harry had ever met. Thin, pale, elderly, slow-moving and slow-speaking, he looked one breath, one final exhalation, away from ghost-hood.

“Most, most interesting,” he said in a sliver-thin voice. “I’ve read about accidental transference as a theory, but as you might imagine, the circumstances required to bring it about are all but impossible to stumble upon.” He sat across from Harry, spindly fingers pyramided before him as he looked Harry over in darting, measuring glances. “Thank you,” he added as Hermione brought him a cup of tea.

“But it can be reversed, can’t it?” she asked.

“Oh yes. It’s fairly easy, in theory. After all, souls are not comfortable sharing the same corporeal form – it’s unnatural.”

Harry coughed out a laugh, surprised at himself. Was that coming from Snape, or me?

“They tend to yearn toward freedom,” Spookes went on. “It’s not a difficult spell.”

Harry took his cup from Hermione, waited ’til she’d sat down, and cleared his throat.

“I’m sorry. Hermione, Mr Spookes. I’m sorry you came all this way. But I’ve been thinking about this, and I can’t do it.”

“What?”

“Hermione … he’s … I can’t just cut him out like a cancer. He’s … he’s alive again, in a way. I can’t kill him.”

Alarm flashed in her eyes. “You have to. This is making you physically ill. There’s no telling what it’s doing to you mentally.”

Harry shook his head.

“Harry.” Her tone sharpened. “Are you taking Madame Pomfrey’s potion?”

“This isn’t Snape!” he snapped. “It’s me. I just can’t do it.”

“You … need not simply allow Professor Snape’s essence to evaporate into thin air,” Spookes said. “You may use an arcanima.”

“A what?” Hermione beat Harry to it, all concern for him swallowed up in keen curiosity.

“It is a magical container designed for this use.”

“For this use?” Harry blurted. “Other people have done this? On purpose?”

Carefully neutral, Spookes said, “It is still considered dark magic by some, but … it is a way to preserve Professor Snape’s … soul, if you will …”

Hermione was shaking her head. “No. Harry, no.”

“I didn’t know that was possible.” Harry leaned forward. “I mean, is it legal? How is it done?”

“It is not strictly outlawed,” Spookes admitted, “probably because it has not been used for centuries. But it should not surprise you that such a spell has rarely been used for … beneficent purposes. It would be best to be circumspect about it, should you elect to pursue this course.”

“Harry!” Hermione said. “This is wrong. His body is – gone—”

“It is, isn’t it?” Harry said pointedly, but she didn’t take the bait. Snape’s body had disappeared. A lot of bodies had done that in the crazy aftermath, and when it came to Snape, not many people cared. In the end Snape’s name went with a fewscore others on a memorial obelisk in front of Hogwarts. Harry’d tried to argue that it wasn’t enough, but he could never seem to form the words, to spit out that he thought Snape – Snape! – deserved his own monument.

As much as it bothered him, he hadn’t been able to summon the energy to do anything about it. To do much at all, really – his memory of the last few months held little but blurred images of eating, sleeping, walking  ... then he’d look into the kitchen, or out at the garden, and shudder. He mightn’t have done much, but Snape, in his body, had been busy.

“It is gone,” Hermione said. “His … soul should be set free. To go to … whatever is there for the soul after life is over.”

Harry’s head was moving, determined, back and forth, in response to the only thought in it at the moment: No.

“No,” he said. “I’m not killing him.”

“He’s already dead!”

“Hermione.”

She froze, startled at his tone. He leaned toward her, holding her eyes.

“He’s inside me.” He touched his chest with an emphatic index finger. “He isn’t dead. He’s … some part of him is alive, and I can’t just stomp that out. I can’t.”

Spookes seemed unconcerned. “Arcanimae are … rare and expensive.”

“That doesn’t matter,” Harry said. Hermione was still shaking her head, her expression dark. “Just tell me what I need to do.”

"To Part 2"