Chapter 4
‘Though this be madness, yet there is method in it’
4
‘Hades? Hades?’
‘Haven't you ever wondered what happened to Sirus? Your parents? Don’t you want to see them?’
‘No,’ Harry said shortly.
‘What about Dumbledore, didn’t you always dream about giving him a piece of your mind?’
“Draco- you thread on dangerous paths. I’m warning you.” Harry took a sip of his peppermint tea and grimaced. They were seated of all places, in Snape’s dank dungeons, and his stingy ex-potions professor wasn’t a man who believed in the manifold merits of alcoholic beverages. He did however, believe in overpowering tea.
Snape had thumped a dusty tome in front of them, his ink-stained fingers jabbing at a crudely drawn map. ‘The route that Aeneas used to gain entrance into Hades is located at Avernus, a crater near Cumae.’
‘I’m not going with anyone into bloody Hades,’ Harry announced, and was naturally ignored.
‘Do you know how we might find the entrance to this cave?’ Draco asked.
‘How the hell should I know?’
Draco emptied a pill of Galeons on the knife-scarred desk.
‘There might be a potion,’ Snape said grudgingly, his eyeballs moving very rapidly across the golden pile.
Draco emptied another pile of Galeons on the table, and Snape cleared his throat.
‘The ingredients are costly and can be very rare.. even seasonal.’
The tinkle of gold coins filled the room for a good many minutes, until Snape looked almost happy. It was not in Snape’s nature to be helpful, Harry thought, but he had a dragon-like eye greed for hoarding gold. Harry suspected that the potion master’s floorboards and walls were probably crammed to the rafters with Galleons.
‘Wait here,’ the Potions Master grouched, ‘and don’t touch anything.’ He returned bearing an elaborate, rune-decorated vial, its silver stopper wrought into the finely crafted likeness a poppy. ‘Legend has it that the alchemist who stole this formulae from Pluto paid the same price as King Sisyphus,’ Snape said in an oily, covetous voice that made Harry’s hair rise on the back of his neck.
‘King who?’
‘Somebody’s got syphilis, big deal,’ Draco scoffed. 'Harry’s had it umpteen times by now.’
‘Clearly, I should expect you both to know your venereal diseases more than the most basic of myths. Sisyphus was the King of Corinth, you blistering fool, cursed to an eternity of hard labour for hubris and overstepping his boundary as a mortal, and a warming to the vain struggle of man to seek for that which should NOT be sought.’
‘Has the bloke met Voldermort?’ Draco asked sarcastically.
Snape looked his beaky nose down at them. ‘Should you come upon Him, you’ll find Pluto rather more partial to torture than talk. Now listen. Each additional day you spend down will leak more memories from you. Stay longer than a week, and you won’t recognise each other from Adam, much less remember the reasons for which you went.’ The Potions Master lobbed something round and rusty at Harry. ‘Consult this often: it will tell you how much time you have left.’
Harry wrestled with the clasp. There was a rusty watch on one side of the locket, and an even more rusty compass on the other.
Draco grabbed it from him and shook it. ‘Godfather, its not even working.’
‘It doesn’t work till you get to Hades, you fool. Now shut up and drink your tea,’
‘Yes sir,’ Draco mumbled, finger’s slinking back to curl like pale ferrets around his mug. Snape was probably the only person left on earth who could still speak to Draco like an errant child now that Lucius was long consigned to dust, making Harry wonder if perhaps discouraging their association had been such a good idea after all.
‘Now,’ the greasy bat cleared his throat, ‘the Inferi are relative easy to dispatch, but you’ll still have to deal with Cerberus. Whilst I won’t assume you’re bringing that Gryffindor along for any semi-intelligent reason, he might still have his uses - so I suggest your knight errant bring along his Sword of Gryffindor-‘
‘Oh, Harry brings is Sword of Gryffindor everywhere,’ Draco chuckled.
Snape expelled a long suffering sigh and continued, ‘-you will also need to bribe for the ferryman Chauron-‘
‘Cerebus? I thought he was just a myth!’
‘I’m not signing up for zombies and rabid canine,’ Harry scowled. ‘I had enough of that in school.’
‘Fine, fine, I’ll go alone.’ Draco sounded so agreeable that Harry was immediately suspicious. ‘Is there a less hazardous way, godfather? Like a back lane perhaps-’
‘The ancient mythographers were not perfectly consistent about the geography of the afterlife. Most of them had a rather irritating habit of not coming back, for some reason,’ Snape said dryly.
‘Three-headed reasons, no doubt.’ Harry muttered.
‘If by some fool luck the both of you manage to get as far as the Fields of Asphodel, that’s where your search for Lucius will truly begin. Remember, take nothing from the land of the dead, and leave nothing but footprints. Pluto takes a very dim view of mortal tourism.’
‘Surly fella,’ Draco remarked idly as he preened his fringe. ‘He must not get a lot of sun.’
‘Just in case nobody heard me the last sixteeen times, I’m not following anybody down to Hades.’
‘Do you still have a lot to do on the surface, Potter? Last I could tell, they don’t ask much for your autograph anymore.’
‘I’ve been told that have a pole I need to remove,’ Harry said sweetly, ‘and the best time to do it is when the asshole who put it there in the first place has died.’
Draco jabbed his hairbrush at Harry’s chest and opened his mouth to retort, but he was interrupted by a long suffering sigh from Snape.
‘Spare me these pathetic exchanges that you pass off palavers. Both of you unmitigated assholes are going to end up at Hades at the same time anyways, so you’ll just have to help each other locate your respective assholes. How delectably ironic.’
Harry’s hand went very still on his mug. ‘What exactly are you saying, Snape?’
‘Didnt I tell you, Potter?’ Snapes voice was sweet as sugar, his expression twistedly benevolent- something so terrifying to behold even Draco blanched; ‘To enter Hades, one must first cut the mortal coil.’
Draco was still brushing his hair, as if the whole thing was beyond his grasp. ‘Did you just poison us, godfather?’
‘Only with the most expensive, untraceable, inexorable, and irreversible poison that wizarding galleons can buy,’ Snape practically purred, ‘which exist in only minute quantities in this world. The two of you should feel practically anointed.’
‘What about the vial?’
‘That’s just coloured water,’ Snape shrugged elegantly. ‘It’s useless. The real deal, as they like to call it these days, was in your teapot all along.’
Like a ping pong ball, two heads shirviled from vial, to teapot, to Snapes untouched and still steaming drink.
‘You treacherous bastard,’ Harry roared, hitting the table with his fist. He felt faint, as if his knees was about to buckle under him; ‘What- what the fuck did you put in our tea?’
‘Oh, a pinch of nightshade, a measure of weeping mandrake, very expensive mind you.. and oh, abit of death.’ Snape told him pleasantly. ‘Don’t worry, you wont feel a thing.’
‘Stop your fucking excuses! I can feel the poison working!’
‘We’re dying?’ Draco stood up, looking puzzled. ‘I don’t feel anything.’
‘Sit back down, you overreacting sop. You won’t die for another 24 hours.’
‘Oh.’ Draco straightened and sank back into his chair meekly. Then he frowned. ‘but you- i’m- are you telling me we’re still going to die?’
‘Of course.’ Snape folded his arms, looking utterly bored. ‘Is that is not you came here for, after all?’
‘We didn’t ask you to KILL US IN THE PROCESS!’ Harry shouted.
‘Mister Potter, do try to concentrate on the matter at hand. You did ask me to find you the quickest means of expediting this little problem. In about nine hours, you should feel some pins and needles and experience some shedding. That is merely the potion taking effect.’
‘What sort of shedding?’ Draco asked looking very suspicious.
‘Flaky skin, hair follicle-‘
The blond Slytheri shot up like a rocket. ‘YOU DIDN’T SAY THERE’D BE SHEDDING!’
‘Sit down, Draco,’ Harry said.
‘Your own godson, Severus, how could you?’
Harry reached for his wand, only to find the greasy bat had outdrew him. For a man well past his prime, Snape’s reflexes were incredibly sharp.
‘Incidentally, I am the only one with the know how to preserve your worthless bodies whilst you gallivant around the Underworld, so have a care how you speak to me. Godson or not, you wont smell very good if I accidentally forgot to recast a charm, even by an hour or two.’
‘Sit down, Draco.’ Harry bit out.
‘The evil eye!’ Draco moaned. ‘All my beautiful hair will turn grey and fall out,’
‘I suggest then, that you complete your errands and get back into your worthless hides before that happens,’ Snape said shortly. ‘Take your bespectacled beau with you; I don’t keep vermin in my dungeons that I can’t use as potion ingredients. And you can keep your galleons.’
‘Don’t you want your reward for services rendered?’ Harry spat as he dragged the sobbing blonde towards the door.
‘I find that certain things in life, such as the privilege of watching you two numbskull cretins die to be very much its own reward.’ Snape informed them pleasantly before slamming the door in their faces. ‘But I dowish you both a good afternoon, Potter, Malfoy, seeing as it will incidentally be your last. Good day.’
*