A Secret Book
“See anything?” Severus, standing at the base of the pine tree, craned up through the branches at James.
“Hold on.” James, clinging to the trunk fifty feet above the ground, squinted through the morning light. “Let me concentrate.”
Severus fell silent. James scanned the view a few minutes more, making sure he had seen everything, before swinging himself back down through the branches.
“Well?” said Severus, half in eagerness, half in trepidation.
James took a deep breath. They were now some distance from their original campsite, having followed the course of the stream until they found an appropriately tall tree for James to climb. They’d had a surprisingly good breakfast: James had awoken to three trout swimming around the pool in the stream, and had them all gutted and cooked by the time Severus awoke. The boys had eaten their fishy breakfast quickly, sucking meat off every bone, and packed their meager luggage before setting off down the stream. Severus had taken another painkiller at breakfast, but James saw him wince slightly when he settled the strap of his satchel over his shoulder. James had nearly offered to carry it for him, but knew Severus would never accept.
It had taken them over an hour to find a tall tree that would allow James to look over the canopy. They had tromped along, following the watercourse for lack of a path, Severus limping due to his injuries. Together they crashed through bushes and shrubs, each step so loud and clumsy that James thought every monster in the Forest must hear them. But nothing came to attack them. The Forest lightened from black to gold and green around them and birds sang in the trees. Small animals scuttled through the underbrush and fish flashed in the stream. When at last they’d found an appropriate tree, James had climbed and Severus remained on the ground, watching their things.
Now James said, “Okay, there’s good news and bad news. Good news is that I could see the castle.”
“You could?” Severus’s eyes brightened with hope.
“Yeah, it’s to the northwest. We’re heading in the right direction, more or less.” He took a deep breath. “Bad news is that it’s pretty far away. It’s going to take us at least several days to reach Hogwarts at the rate we’re going.”
“Well, damn,” said Severus after a moment.
James let out a long sigh. “Yeah, my thoughts exactly.”
They fell into a pensive silence. James pondered the likelihood of reaching Hogwarts while hiking through the pathless Forbidden Forest for days, with no reliable food source, attracting every monster and hostile magical being for miles around, in company with an injured Slytherin who refused to leave his stupid magical historiography behind.
Well, at least it was still summer. There was that. James fought back an urge to laugh.
Apparently, Severus was having similar thoughts. “We’ll never make it,” he said gloomily.
“Don’t be like that,” James snapped. “Like I said, we’re heading in the right direction. And now we know which direction Hogwarts is in, we can do the Point Me spell.” He rubbed his pine-sticky hands and grimaced. “We should probably stay near the stream, though. It’s got water, and there’ll be fish and berries.”
Suiting action to words, he headed over to the stream and began to wash off the pine sap. After a moment, Severus came over too, settling on a nearby rock with a sigh and a wince. His heavy satchel drooped down beside him.
“Do you want me to carry that for a while, Snape?” James offered gruffly.
“It’ll be fine,” said Severus, not meeting James’s eyes. “I cast a Lightening charm on it earlier.”
“Oh.” James hadn’t noticed. “Well, a Lightening charm won’t last long if you’re carrying around something really heavy. You should leave that historiography book behind.”
Severus’s hand closed protectively on his satchel. “Not a chance, Potter.”
“Come on, Snape, I’m sure they’ve got extra copies at school. It’s just a magical history book!”
“No, it’s not!” Severus snapped back, then flushed and fell silent.
James shook water droplets off his hands and crouched on the streambank, staring up at him. “What is it, then?” he asked eventually.
Severus just shook his head and clutched his satchel.
“What, is it a book of Dark curses or something?” James had no idea why he was pressing this issue now, except that he was hungry, lost, scared, lonely and suddenly completely sick of this stupid mystery. He stood up. “Show it to me!”
“No!” Severus scrambled back, clutching his satchel.
“Show it to me, you git!” He sprang at Severus. The Slytherin yelled, reaching for his wand, but James knocked his arm aside and grabbed away his satchel. He scooped out the book—damn, the thing was heavy—and flipped open the front cover.
“The Norton Shakespeare?” James gaped. Whatever he’d been expecting to see on the title page, it wasn’t this. “What…what is this?”
He made to flip through the onion-skin pages, but before he could start, the book came to sudden, monstrous life. Snapping its pages like jaws, it launched itself at his face. James yelled, falling back, and threw the book away. It landed on the forest floor, inert and innocuous once more.
James, on the forest floor himself and breathing hard, panted, “What the…!”
“I told you I warded all my possessions, Potter,” said Severus with cold satisfaction. He picked up the book and put it away. “Don’t ever go snatching at my things again. Especially not that.”
James felt his face grow hot. He stood up, brushing away loam and trying to act like he hadn’t just been trounced by a book. “What is it, though? What’s that…Shakespeare?”
“You haven’t heard of William Shakespeare.” It was more a statement than a question, delivered with a resigned sigh. “He was a Muggle playwright and poet back in the sixteenth century. A very famous one. A genius. Muggles all over the world still watch his plays.”
“And you have his…his…”
“The definitive anthology of his works. Yes.” There was a warm note of pride and pleasure in Severus’s voice, such as James had never heard from him. “I got it three years ago. The local library was selling off extra books and I got it cheap.”
Local library? What local library? James realized he had no idea where Severus went during the school holidays. He’d never given it any thought. “So…I guess you must really like this William Shakespeare?”
“Yes. I do.” Severus threw him a sulky, defiant look.
James had that feeling again: like the ground was shifting beneath his feet. He’d never imagined Severus Snape enjoying reading a Muggle playwright’s works. Actually, he’d never given any thought to what Severus enjoyed. “But why do you have it disguised as a history textbook?” The cover still showed a bland magical historiography title, with no hint as to its true contents.
“You try reading a Muggle playwright in the Slytherin common room,” said Severus with some bitterness. “You’d start disguising all your books as magical history textbooks too.”
“Ah, yes.” James’s lip curled in a sneer. “The Snake House, incubation chamber for future Death Eaters. Yes, I can see why you wouldn’t want to read a Muggle author there. Especially since you want to be a Death Eater yourself.”
Severus gave him a hard look. “Don’t tell me it’s any different in Gryffindor, Potter.”
James shifted, for, in truth, he couldn’t deny it. It was very difficult to imagine reading any Muggle author in the Gryffindor common room without people at least commenting—and probably laughing. “You still want to be a Death Eater though,” he said, sounding defiant to his own ears. “Don’t you?”
Severus heaved his Lightened satchel over his shoulder. “Let’s keep going,” was all he said.
The boys started hiking along again in silence—or as much silence as two untrained teenagers in a pathless forest could manage. James fumed with a mixture of irritation and curiosity. Who exactly was this Shakespeare person? And how dare Severus Snape know more about him than James did?
“What’s so great about this Shakespeare, anyway?” he asked eventually.
“You know, Potter,” said Severus silkily, “if you said you didn’t know who Shakespeare was in the Muggle world, you’d be laughed at as a hopeless yokel.”
“Yeah, well, Muggles don’t know who New Scamander was, do they? So what’s so fantastic about William Shakespeare?”
Severus was silent for so long that James thought he was going to ignore the question. Then he said, “His plays are truly special.” There was an odd note in his voice, something James had never heard before. Joy, he realized after a moment. There was real joy and pleasure in Severus’s voice. “He wrote in iambic pentameter, and his poetry is truly astonishing. Like the best kind of music. And the plays themselves are wonderful. All about the human condition. They’re still relevant today, hundreds of years after Shakespeare’s death.”
Iambic what? But James was too embarrassed to ask what it meant. “What kind of stuff did he write about?”
“All kinds of things.” The enthusiasm rose in Severus’s voice. “Mainly comedies, tragedies and histories. Also romances—The Tempest is considered his only truly original work. All the rest he borrowed or expanded upon from other plays or stories extant at the time. Actually, he did a lot of collaborative work with playwrights and poets like Christopher Marlowe—”
“Whoa, slow down!” James shook his head in disbelief, half laughing. “You’re a real enthusiast, aren’t you?”
Severus’s face shuttered, all the light abruptly blocked out. “Yes. I am.” He eyed James sidelong, as though wondering how the other boy was going to attack him.
But for perhaps the first time ever, James felt no urge to attack or torment Severus Snape. On the contrary, he was increasingly intrigued. “So what kind of poetry did he write?”
“Why are you so interested, Potter?” Severus demanded, cold and suspicious.
“Because it’s taking my mind off how hungry I am,” James said bluntly. “And…I don’t know, it’s kind of neat. I didn’t know that Muggles could—” He broke off abruptly.
“You didn’t know that Muggles could do great things,” Severus finished for him, after a long, embarrassed pause. His voice was dry. “And here I thought you were the Muggles’ great defender against the oh-so-evil Slytherins and their Death Eater parents.”
“Look, I don’t know much about Muggles, okay?” James blinked, realizing the truth of these words. He really didn’t know much about Muggles, did he? He didn’t know a single Muggle on a personal basis. “I just know it’s wrong to wipe them out or enslave them, like your precious Dark Lord wants to do.” He sneered at Severus. “You’ll never be able to read Shakespeare again if the Dark Lord comes to power.”
Severus’s eyes darkened and his jaw tightened. His expression clearly showed that he understood the truth of James’s words, and didn’t like them at all. He bent his head, his usual sulky sullenness settling over him like a cloak. They kept hiking along, following the stream.
After a while, James said, “So, can you tell me any of Shakespeare’s poetry?” It was a stiff, abrupt sort of peace offering. And besides, James was curious.
Severus came to a halt, staring at him. In the shadowy green light, he looked as wary as a wild animal, poised for fight or flight. “Why do you want to know?” he demanded. “You’re going to use this against me somehow, aren’t you, Potter? If we ever get back to school, you’re going to—”
“Merlin’s beard!” James halted too, and turned to fold his arms and glare in exasperation. “I’m just interested! Is that so hard to believe?”
“Yes.” It came grinding out, hard and uncompromising as stone.
The boys stood and glared at one another. James felt a strong urge to whip out his wand and jinx the Slytherin for his insolence. But then he saw that Severus had his hand in his wand pocket. Ready to draw and defend himself.
Severus Snape expected James to curse him, even now, when they were both in such dire trouble. Just as he expected James to taunt and tease him about liking Shakespeare when they got back to school. He probably expected James to tell all his fellow Slytherins and then laugh with Sirius and Peter when Severus’s roommates made his life hell.
And—James felt a lurch in his stomach—he wasn’t wrong to expect that. It was exactly the sort of treatment James had been dealing out to Severus since the first time they’d met.
James took one breath, then another. “All right, fine,” he said at last. “I’m sorry. I won’t ask again.” He started to move on.
After a few seconds, Severus’s footsteps sounded behind him. “Now is the winter of our discontent,” he said suddenly:
“Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour’d over our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.”
James turned to look at Severus in surprise. The other boy was holding himself straighter than James had ever seen him, and his face was filled with a strange light. James blinked. All of a sudden, for the first time ever, there was nothing ugly or contemptible about Severus Snape. He burned with a joy and passion that made him almost…beautiful. It was like the sun had come out, illuminating a stained-glass window and casting brilliant colors through the air.
“Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths…” Severus continued reciting, and James listened, spellbound and mesmerized.
When he’d finished, James said quietly, “Wow, Snape. That was…amazing.”
Severus smiled briefly. Already the light of passion was fading from him, leaving him sallow and sullen again. James felt a pang of regret. “I’ve always rather identified with Richard III. He’s the character reciting that speech, you see, when he’s plotting against his brothers so he can seize the crown.”
Lines from the speech floated through James’s head: I, that am so rudely stamp’d, and want love’s majesty…So lamely and unfashionable / That dogs bark at me as I halt by them… “Is that what the play’s about?” he asked, hoping to hide the surge of guilt and confusion this caused within him. “Richard seizing the crown?”
“Yes.” Severus took another step and winced; apparently, his painkillers were wearing off.
“Here.” James held out his hands. “Let me carry something.”
Severus hung back untrustingly. “You’re not getting my Shakespeare book!”
“Fine, but I can carry your bag. How’s that sound?” When Severus still hesitated, James let out a sigh of exasperation. “Look, Snape, you’re in no state to carry a heavy bag for miles. And you can’t keep casting Lightening charms on it. I don’t have any luggage and I’m a lot stronger than you.”
Severus’s jaw clenched. “Thank you for the reminder, Potter,” he spat.
“Well, it’s not my fault no one’s beaten me up recently!” James’s shout sent a flock of birds fluttering and twittering from a nearby bush. James lowered his voice, but couldn’t keep his anger and exasperation from showing. “Who did that to you, anyway?”
Severus’s mouth formed a line like granite. James let out another sigh, giving up. “Look, if I try anything with your bag, you can set the Shakespeare book on me again. Fair?”
The corner of Severus’s mouth twitched. “Fair.” Moving slowly and stiffly, he took his painkillers and The Norton Shakespeare out of his satchel. Holding his monstrous book to his side, he took off his satchel and handed it to James, keeping his distance, as though James was a snake that might strike.
James took the satchel and shrugged it over his own shoulder. “Come on. Let’s not waste daylight.”
After a moment, Severus moved, clutching his book to his chest. Together, the pair trekked on through the vast, impenetrable Forest.