Chapter 3
Severus woke with a jerk. Pushing his hair back from his face he took stock of his surroundings, trying to figure out what had woken him. The memories of the night before trickled in and he sucked in a sharp breath.
The smell of coffee wafted against his nose and he realized that must have been what woke him up. Staring down in the dim, fluctuating light coming from the small porthole looking up into the lake, to where the blanket had pooled in his lap, he detachedly noticed the fine tremor running through his hands.
A soft shuffling noise came from beyond his closed door and he realized he couldn’t stare at his lap forever. Abruptly throwing the blanket to the side, he swung his legs out of bed and touched his feet to the icy floor. He sat still for a moment more. Shaking off the feeling of dread that consumed him, Severus reinforced his occlumency walls and shoved himself to his feet.
Severus entered the small ensuite bathroom attached to his bedroom, deciding to comb through his memories in the shower and try to figure where he had gone wrong with the Dark Lord. He must have made some mistake, somewhere. Losing the Dark Lord’s trust would be debilitating for the Light side of the war, never mind the potentially lethal consequences for himself. He would have to move forward with the assumption that Potter was completely loyal to the Dark Lord and reporting Severus’ every move and word and act accordingly. He just hoped Albus would be able to see through the front. If Albus also lost trust in him, he would truly be screwed.
Thinking over every scrap of information he had passed, both to Albus and to the Dark Lord, he couldn’t find any instance where he had made a mistake that could have resulted in this situation.
He shut the water off and wrang his hair out roughly. Stepping out of the shower, he reached for his wand to cast a shaving and a breath freshening charm and wrapped himself in a towel. Moving back into the bedroom he dressed on auto pilot. He roughly dried his hair with the discarded towel and finished the process with a spell as well. Yanking his brush through the long locks, he tried to listen to anything that might give away what he would be walking into in his living area.
He had retreated to his rooms the previous night – or rather, very early that morning – and the large bird that rode in on his shoulder had alighted to the mantel above the fireplace almost immediately on entering his quarters. He had waited a moment to see if Potter had any intentions of continuing their conversation, but the bird had just blinked at him. He had absconded to his bedroom quickly afterwards, wanting to get some sleep in before he would be expected to get up for the day.
Resting his right hand on the doorknob, taking solace in the firm pressure of his wand holstered against his forearm, he steeled himself.
Yanking the door open, he stepped into the room beyond swiftly. Looking around, Severus saw no sign of Potter anywhere. The bookshelf lined wall to his left was just as cluttered and overflowing as always. The back of the faded, black leather sofa in front of him and the two high-backed, upholstered chairs facing it looked untouched. The small birch coffee table, piled high with partially marked student essays and stained with the occasional splotch of red ink, was undisturbed. Even the half full cup of coffee, perched precariously near the edge of the table closest to the large fireplace along the right-hand wall, was just as it was when he left for the forest the night before. Unable to find anything amiss - not an overcoat out of place on the coat-tree to the right of the door, opposite him, or a footprint on the well-worn blue rug on the floor beneath the small table - he turned towards the narrow, open doorway on the wall to the right of the fireplace.
Severus moved quietly towards the small kitchenette, almost hoping to find it empty, though knowing he would find Potter instead. The bright light emitting from the open door lit most of his quarters even without a fire in the cooled grate of the living area floo. Stopping just at the threshold of the room he observed the half full coffee carafe resting on the narrow counter beside the wood fired stove to his right, a clean mug resting next to it. To his left, at the small, two-seater, dinette table, sat Potter with his back to the left wall. He was wearing the same clothes as Severus had observed the night before – sans leather jacket that, he noted, was draped over the back of the chair Potter was occupying. The man was leaned back in the chair, legs stretched out before himself, crossed at the ankles. The silvery button down was unbuttoned at the cuffs and rolled up to just below Potter’s elbows that were resting on the chair’s arms, propping them up to cradle the chipped white mug of coffee in front of his lips.
Potter glanced up and Severus was struck by how green the man’s piercing gaze was. At eleven, shielded by hideous glasses, Severus had hated how similar to Lily’s rich emerald eyes his had looked. Now though, at nearly twenty, unencumbered by the circular metal frames, Potter’s eyes were closer to the bright Kelly green of peridot.
Potter slowly lowered the mug from in front of his face to place it on a small cleared off section of the table, careful not to bump any of the stacks of student grading that hadn’t fit on Severus’ coffee table.
“Hello, Professor. Did you sleep well?” Potter looked as at ease in Severus’ kitchen as if it was his home that Severus had barged into and not the other way around. Severus hated it.
“Fine,” he bit out shortly, finally moving into the kitchen. Stalking over to the coffee pot he disregarded the clean mug, clearly meant for him, and opened the cupboard just above, pulling out his favourite mug instead. Focusing on pouring his coffee, Severus tried to ignore the way his skin crawled along his spine at having his back to Potter. Now that he was more awake and not distracted by the other dangers of the Forbidden Forrest, he couldn’t ignore the aura of the other man that screamed predator.
Muggles often described having gut feelings about dangerous people and things that would turn out to be true. Whether they actually had that ability or not had been a strongly debated, niche topic amongst muggologists for nearing a century now. Many believed it was merely a matter of hindsight allowing them to become aware of things they hadn’t noticed in the moment. After all, how could muggles be aware of something that had long been known to only be accessible to those with magic. Whether muggles had that ability, as some sort of vestigial, or evolutionary, trait, or not, didn’t matter though. Severus was very, very aware that his magic was nearly screaming with the need to remove either himself or the danger from the room.
Forcing himself to finish doctoring his coffee to his liking and calmly turn back to Potter, he moved across the small space to lower himself carefully into the other chair with his back to the stove.
He brought the cup to his lips to take a small sip, looking across the mounds of parchment at the believed saviour of the Wizarding World. Potter had his right hand resting on the table, fingers loosely curled around the side of his coffee cup, the other arm resting on the arm of the chair, hand dangling loosely over his lap, showing the same polite mask as before. Severus took another drink from his cup as he took in the extensive myriad of scars that thoroughly marred Potter’s exposed forearms, trying to hide his reaction as a deluge of emotions worked through him. Severus’ eyes flicked up and he saw that, though the scars didn’t extend to Potter’s face, they were also present on Potter’s collarbones and the hollow of his throat where the top two buttons of his shirt were open and the skin peaked out above his undershirt.
Swallowing a bit tightly, he placed his cup down softly. “You said,” he started slowly, hedging his way into the conversation cautiously, “that the Dark Lord sent you?”
“I did, and he did,” Potter responded, face never changing.
“I have only ever served the Dark Lord faithfully,” he lied. “I am unsure why he believes otherwise.” Hopefully Potter would tell him something he could work with to get himself out of this situation as rapidly as possible.
“Come now, Professor. We both know that is a lie.” Severus nearly stopped breathing but forced himself to not react. “You may have served the Dark Lord faithfully in the beginning but you haven’t in some time.” Potter paused and absently tapped his index finger against the side of his mug, seeming to contemplate what he was going to say next. “The Dark Lord believes you may be getting influenced unduly by the Headmaster. I believe he wants to trust you but distrusts the Headmaster more.”
The relief that swept through Severus was palpable. He hadn’t made a mistake then. The Dark Lord’s paranoia – though not unwarranted – was nothing more than that, not a sign of evidence had against him.
Then Potter continued, “I, on the other hand, have a different theory.” Potter’s finger stilled and he lifted the mug to his lips.
Severus thought his heart would soon give out. Every time he thought he was as good as dead Potter would unknowingly relieve him of some of the dread. Alternately, every time he thought he would be able to breathe a little easier Potter would say something that would bring the soul deep fear rushing back.
Potter placed the cup back down with a quiet thunk and lifted his gaze to make direct eye contact with Severus. The bright green seared through Severus leaving him feeling naked and exposed, though nothing even whispered against his occlumency shields.
“I think,” Potter started in a soft murmur, “that you served the Dark Lord faithfully in the beginning. For quite a bit too. And then he targeted my mother and you turned. You went to Dumbledore and became a spy. You spied on the Dark Lord until the death of my mother and the end of the first war. When the Dark Lord resurrected, you marketed yourself as a double spy for the Dark Lord, gaining his trust back. Truly, you acted more as a triple spy; acting as though you spied for the Dark Lord on the Light while pretending to spy on the Dark, while you, in actuality, spied for the Light. You are quite the commendable actor. But from all of that, I believe that you don’t really belong to the Light or the Dark. I think you’ve been pulled in too may directions to have real loyalty to anyone anymore and you are serving yourself to the best of your abilities, many that they are.” Potter took another sip of coffee and offered a very tiny quirk of his lips. “So, tell me, Professor. How did I do? Did I get anything glaringly wrong?”
If Severus had felt off-balance and wrong-footed before, he felt as though the floor had fallen out from beneath him entirely now. Even Albus had never said what he was so explicitly before and it was far too dangerous for Severus to even think about the ins and outs of his own life, let alone the interplay of his own ruses. The worst part was that Potter wasn’t wrong. He got nothing glaringly incorrect and, in fact, got damn near everything spot on. How Potter even knew half of what he did was beyond alarming as well. If Potter knew all this then the Dark Lord surely did too. Potter said the Dark Lord wanted to trust him but that couldn’t be true if he knew that Severus had betrayed him multiple times over.
“Before you drive yourself into a complete panic, Professor,” Potter spoke up again gently, “I want to assure you that the Dark Lord knows none, or at least very little, of this. I just thought it best that, seeing as we’re to be spending a considerable amount of time together, we are both on the same page. Personally, I couldn’t care less who you do or don’t serve or to what degree your loyalty to anyone is. For the sake of transparency on my part; I’ll tell you that, while I do serve the Dark Lord, it did not start, nor is it currently, in a purely willing capacity. I will be reporting to him but what I tell him is up to you.” Potter offered a small quirk of his lips again and tipped his mug towards Severus in a swooping, cheers motion before draining the cup of the remaining liquid.
Severus felt like he had just been dragged across the bottom of the Black Lake by the giant squid without being let up to breathe. He stared blankly at the closest pile of parchment, absently noting that he would have to yell at Miss Sanders for incompetence soon.
He watched out of the corner of his eye as Potter got up and moved to refill his coffee. With Potter’s back to him now, he could see that the other man’s hair was held back at the nape of his neck with a leather tie and fell to just between his shoulder blades. The wild locks curled and kinked in every direction, so dark they had an almost purple sheen to them.
Severus was stuck again by how different this Potter was from the scrawny child he had been. He couldn’t imagine the Dark Lord raising a child in any capacity and the visible scarring on Potter certainly attested to an upbringing that was far from loving. Part of him wondered where the Dark Lord had kept Potter all these years. He had not seen any sign of a child any of the many times he had been called to the Dark Lord’s manor.
Potter moved back to his seat with his fresh cup and settled back into his previous position.
“As lovely as your assurances are, Potter, I have no guarantee that you are not lying about your willingness to share theories with the Dark Lord. Even if you are speaking the truth, what is to stop the Dark Lord from ripping this information from your mind?” Severus realized that playing dumb about Potter’s assessment of his loyalties would be futile. Even if Potter was just making a wild guess, his own reaction to the accusation would have given the truth away.
“You have no guarantees. I could go to him today and tell him of your betrayal and you would be able to do nothing but face the consequences. Luckily for you, as I mentioned before, I don’t particularly want to. Call it a mutually beneficial arrangement. The longer I stay with you and report on your unwavering devotion to the Dark, the longer you stay alive and the longer you stay alive, the longer I have a reprieve from his loving attentions.
“As for the Dark Lord, quote unquote, ‘ripping the information from my mind’, as you put it, you have no cause for worry there. The Dark Lord has not been able to access my mind for many years now. He has other ways of ascertaining truth from me and he knows that I know this. He has no reason to believe I’m lying in the first place. He is aware of my past distaste for you and the impressively staggering amount of hate you hold for my father that you, quite happily, foisted upon me in my short time here. I’m sure he believes I would jump at the chance to see you fall to his wand.”
Severus took in Potter’s calm logic. He was right. Severus had no way of stopping him from reporting the truth to the Dark Lord if he so chose. He could stress himself out further with jumping at shadows or he could put his energies into more productive measures. What was snagging his attention though was the last of Potter’s words.
“Why don’t you?”
“Pardon?” Potter lifted an eyebrow slightly at the less than elucidate question.
Severus licked his lips and asked again. “Why don’t you hate me? As you correctly pointed out, I treated you abominably and it was several years after your disappearance before I was even willing to admit such to myself. So. Why wouldn’t you rejoice at my death?”
“Ah.” Potter leaned back further in his chair and laced his fingers together above his abdomen, elbows still on the chair arms. He raised his eyes towards the ceiling with a contemplative look. “I don’t think I ever hated you, Professor. You confused me too much to really despise you. I disliked you certainly. Perhaps even hoped a cauldron would blow up in your face one day. But your spite and ire that came from, seemingly, nowhere was truly baffling to me. Familiar as well, I suppose. The Dursleys acted much the same and I never thought to question it then. As I got older and learned about how much of an ass my father was in school it made more sense. Not really forgivable, mind you,” Potter’s eyes dropped to make contact with Severus’ briefly before rising again, “but forgettable. Wishing death on you for your actions to me would make me quite hypocritical as well. I have done far worse than yell and snark and harmlessly terrify some eleven year olds. The most relevant reason though is the simplest. I hate him. I would burn the world down just to slightly inconvenience him if it was within my power to do so. So. Does that answer your question, Professor?”
Severus wasn’t sure how to respond. Yes. Potter had answered his question and raised many more in the process. Finding his tongue tied as he tried to figure out what to ask first, he ended up only nodding assent instead.
Pulling himself together, Severus took another drink of his now lukewarm, neglected coffee and decided to stick to the practical questions for now.
“If you hate the Dark Lord as much as you say,” he started cautiously, “why not defect? You are here now. We could go to Albus. He would be insufferably overjoyed at your return.”
Potter’s face darkened slightly and he rubbed his left hand over the slight stubble of his jaw. “That is not an option, unfortunately. What I am doing now is as close to defection as I can do. Even if I did trust the Headmaster in the slightest, I’m going to have to make it clear that what I said last night about not informing him of my presence is still required. I am connected to the Dark Lord in a way that is far more binding than your Dark Mark. He has enforced that if the Headmaster even suspects my presence or if I have the slightest inkling that you may have slipped the knowledge in any way that I must report it and take you with me.”
“I see,” Severus said. “You say he enforced this. Is there any way around whatever method he used?”
Potter visibly stiffened in his seat. “Careful, Professor. Even asking that, you are edging very close to the threshold of my being required to report.”
Severus swallowed. “Ah. No workarounds then.” Whatever binding the Dark Lord had on Potter was clearly an ingenious piece of work. It was relaxed enough to not see Potter’s lying to his Lord on Severus’ behalf as betrayal but was able to pick up on an, admittedly rather loaded, clarifying question.
Severus saw Potter’s stiff shoulders slowly relax again as he formulated his next question. “Can you tell me,” he began slowly, “what you are not required to report.”
Potter propped his jaw on his fist and furrowed his brow in thought. “You have to understand, Professor, this is not an exact equation. There is a fair amount of guesswork involved in what may trigger a response. For the most part, I can see where the limits are but some I won’t know until they come up.” Potter’s right index finger began lightly tapping his coffee cup again. “You can continue with your teaching as you are, as I can justify anything traitorous as maintaining a low profile with the Ministry. You can speak to the Headmaster about the Dark Lord and the war, as it is expected of you to maintain your cover as a spy. You can speak to me about the Dark Lord, as I am expected to inform you that I am observing on his discretion. Anything else I would have to feel out.”
Severus’ mind was racing. “The way you describe it, most of this relies on if you, yourself, can rationalize my actions within the bounds of the Dark Lord’s orders.”
Potter gave him an approving nod. “Well deduced, Professor. That is almost exactly how it works. I was given very few direct orders and I must follow those orders. But. The interpretation of those orders is up to me. It is nearly a perfect manifestation of following the letter of the law, not the spirit it was written in. Obviously, the more specific the order is, the less leeway I have. Thankfully, the Dark Lord was never one for contract writing.”
“And you staying at my side at all times is a direct order?”
“Yes. I can move about freely within reason but I must remain in your general vicinity unless reporting to the Dark Lord.”
“Ah.” Severus ran a hand through his hair. The prickling at the back of his neck caused by Potter’s aura had subsided to a mostly ignorable awareness. “I assume you can maintain your animagus form for extended periods of time? There are very few areas of the castle that are private enough to allow you to return to yourself without an observer. The portraits and ghosts all report to the Headmaster.”
Potter’s lips quirked again, “I can maintain that form for as long as required, Professor.”
Severus’ interest was piqued. Animagi were not often known to be able to remain in animal form for indefinite periods of time without losing grasp of the spell and returning to a human state. If they were able to hold the transformation, they often found it difficult to return to human. The longer they spent transformed also carried the risk of developing permanent animal traits. Potter had made the comment the previous evening when questioned about his animagus status as it being ‘close enough’ and Severus hadn’t given much weight to it. Now though, this was the second vague comment that agreed while sounding like something of an obfuscation.
“You are not an animagus, are you?”
“Ah Professor, you are quite observant.” Severus felt an irrational flare of indignation at Potter’s comment.
“Obviously,” he drawled with a hint of a sneer. “I would not have survived this long otherwise.”
Potter nodded concedingly, “Fair enough, Professor. You are correct. I am not an animagus. My crow is as natural a form to me as this one. Animagus revealing spells do nothing and I could spend years in that form without ever feeling a single side effect.”
Severus’ brow furrowed. “I am unaware of any spell that would allow such a thing. Nor is there any creature that I am familiar with that embodies that type of transformation.”
“Hmm. Yes, I wouldn’t imagine so,” Potter responded affably. “The Dark Lord believes this ability to be unique to me. Hence his surety in my going undiscovered without your betrayal.”
The academic in him desperately wanted to endlessly pepper Potter with questions about his ability but the reminder of the true purpose of the conversation and the implicit and explicit threat was enough to rein Severus back.
“Stop me if this pushes a boundary,” Severus started, trying to think of a way that he could word his question without veering too close to anything that might cause the Dark Lord’s orders to react. Potter seemed to sit up slightly and watched him attentively. “You said that you don’t serve the Dark Lord willingly.” Severus paused to take in Potter’s reaction. The other man did nothing but nod so he continued, letting each word spill from his lips slowly, as to give Potter time to intervene should he stray too far, “If it was possible to break the binding he has on you…would you do it?”
Potter snorted softly and relaxed back into his seat. “No need to pussyfoot around on that particular topic, Professor. I have no orders to not speak of the binding. He knows very well that I’ve been trying to find a way to break it for years and he thinks it’s funny to watch me fail over and over and over so he lets me do as I please in that regard. And to go back to our first topic, I’m quite sure he never expected us to ever be civil enough with each other to ever speak of it.”
Severus was almost embarrassed by how much intensity had fizzled out so spectacularly but couldn’t be, given how severe the consequences could have been if there had been orders involved.
“But would you,” he pressed, “even if the method was thoroughly abhorrent to you?”
“Professor,” Potter suddenly looked as old as time itself, a weary expression plastered on his face. “Believe me when I say I want nothing more. However, as I said, I have been looking and trying and testing since he first bound me. I’ve spent the last six and a half years attempting and failing repeatedly. He made zero efforts to stop me, even gave me his notes on how he bound me in the first place. His confidence in the impossibility of breaking the binding says quite a bit.”
“I see.” Six and a half years. That meant the Dark Lord had managed to bind Potter to himself when Potter was only thirteen. Potter had said that he had done despicable things and with the new understanding that Severus had of his situation he could barely imagine what the Dark Lord may have forced upon him in that time.
His eyes were unwillingly drawn back to the exposed scars on Potter. There were many. There was more scarring than there was clear skin and they ranged wildly in appearance. Some wide and raised, others little more than silver lines the width of a hair. Burn marks that seemed to still have an almost charred look to them interspersed the swirling patterns that looked to have been made with a knife. The telltale black, snaking veins that indicated severe, prolonged exposure to the cruciatus curse up the right hand side of Potter’s neck, just kissing his jaw, and a disconcertingly familiar lightning shape carved into his left collarbone. And all that was visible with just a couple undone buttons and some rolled up sleeves. Severus felt more than a little nauseous just thinking about how covered the rest of Potter’s body likely was. He felt downright ill when he contemplated the thought of some of the scars possibly being self-inflicted, unable to disobey the Dark Lord’s orders as Potter was.
Tearing his eyes away to stare into his half empty, cold coffee Severus pulled all the thoughts of Potter’s scars into a little ball and shoved it deep down under his occlumency barriers. “I shall look anyways. If that is all right with you? Hogwarts has one of the largest libraries in wizarding Europe. Perhaps there will be something here that may shine some light that you did not have access to before.”
The silence was a near physical thing and Severus almost retracted his proclamation. He glanced up just in time to see Potter giving him a baffled but appreciative look. The man saw Severus looking and caught his eye. Potter dipped his head in a nod and said softly, “I would appreciate that very much, Professor.”
Severus felt that he had been stripped raw by the conversation and, although he knew it was far from over, he desperately needed a break from stomach dropping information and heart clenching revelations. Shoving his chair back with a screech, he nodded sharply, avoiding Potter’s still thoughtful gaze.
“We should go. I still need to acquire some Adder’s Tail and the shop in Hogsmeade will be open by now.”
“Of course, Professor,” Potter’s soft voice followed him as Severus spun on his heel and exited the kitchen.
He had just placed his hand on the doorknob to the main entrance of his quarters when the softest sound of air movement reached his ears not a second before the heavy weight of Potter’s crow form landed on his shoulder with a dig of talons.
Severus glanced out of the corner of his eye at the large bird before bringing up his masks and yanking the door open.