A Dish Served Cold

Chapter 28 – Breathe

Severus let out a long breath of relief. He doubted that he had ever been happier to see the back of anyone as much as he was glad to see his Grandmother leaving. Sarit Yidoni made him look like pleasant company and that was saying something. He resisted an urge to dance a jig as she and her cowering family crowded around a port key and vanished. He settled for promising himself a large tumbler of celebratory Scotch later.

Beside him a subdued Hermione muttered something under her breath that he didn’t catch. He had no doubt though that she was equally thrilled to be rid of the old bat.

“Good riddance to bad rubbish, eh Madam?” he muttered and she shot him an amused glance from beneath dark lashes.

“I liked the Lion and Serpent statue she gave us, but I must admit to some skepticism about her motives,” Hermione replied, keeping her voice low. They were standing on the front steps of the school and there were far too many witnesses for her to act as anything other than intimidated by him.

“I agree. Some tests will have to be run.” He wondered if he should tell her about Potter’s little project, but decided that it would be better coming from the boy-who-skived.

“Like what?” Her eyes brightened at the prospect of lab work and he snorted. Trust Hermione to only be cheered up by the promise of hard work and studying.

It occurred to him that perhaps he was going about this all wrong. Instead of sympathy and tea he ought to set her a pile of homework and a particularly difficult potion to brew.

“I have no doubt that the Headmaster will be doing the lion’s share of it.” He hadn’t meant to make a pun and Hermione’s snicker was quite unwelcome, but she was laughing which was better than crying. He had never liked weepy women.

“I am going down to Hagrid’s, would you like to come?” she asked him with a studied casualness that he found quite transparent.

“I already like Hagrid, Madame, so no need to push him on me and should you ever mention that fact to anyone I will afflict you with the most miserable curse I can imagine,” he growled at her and her amusement vanished.

“Too late,” she snapped back at him and stormed away across the greensward towards Hagrid’s Hut. Severus counted to ten and reminded himself that Goody what’s-her-name had said that Hermione would be moody.

The silly witch hadn’t told him that he would miss his companion of the previous weeks quite so much, though.

Angry with himself for succumbing to maudlin self-pity, Severus swept through the halls assigning detentions and taking away House points with a fine disregard for justice.

Ginny spun before the mirror with satisfaction. Over the past week, she had been carefully using her mother’s book of charms to add maturity and gravitas to her countenance.

In truth, the outside was now matching more closely to how Ginny felt on the inside. Ever since first year she had felt far older than she was. Perhaps it was the spidery writing of Tom Riddle etched across her soul or perhaps it was the brittle care with which most people had treated her afterwards.

She had been irrevocably altered by her experiences and maturity had come more quickly to her than to her contemporaries. Her experimentations with the opposite sex had started from a desire to overwrite Tom’s influence on her and continued as she found that she enjoyed it. She wasn’t like her mother Molly who had been with only one man all her life. She was more like her brother Bill, but different as well, Bill had fallen in and out of love every week or two while she never got emotionally involved.

Until now.

She frowned at her reflection and wondered if gypsies had cursed her at birth. Why was it always her that got shafted by destiny?

How came it to be that the first man that she felt was her perfect complement wasn’t going to live long enough for her to really enjoy it? She thought about Ron and his promise to help her save Remus, but to be honest, for all Ron’s cleverness, this might be a problem beyond even him.

She smiled in memory, thinking of the many times that Ron had outsmarted his brothers and parents. His special gift in the family was his ability to appear slow and stupid and get people to underestimate him, just as hers was to vanish into invisibility.

She twisted around to make sure that her robes fell properly. She had fixed the hemline on the second-hand garment and repaired the small tears and frays, but even the best mending spells had their limits. She sometimes wondered what the use of being magical was if you couldn’t conjure galleons from the air or food onto the table.

She pushed the thought away from long habit. She had been born poor and married a poor man and that was all there was to it. She simply wasn’t destined for wealth. It occurred to her that Susan would soon be very wealthy and utterly miserable. Maybe money wasn’t all that important after all.

She heard his step on the stair and spun to greet him joyfully. Remus’ face bloomed a smile in response and she bounced across the floor and pounced on him.

“I see that you were glad to be rid of me today,” he teased and she silenced his self-deprecating wit with a kiss. He was all softness on the outside and hardness beneath, it was an intoxicating combination and she just wanted to crawl inside him and curl up around his heart. “How was school?” There was an ironic tilt to his eyebrow as he asked and she sighed.

“It was the same as usual, Bines droned, Snape snarked, McGonagall clucked and Tamarind glared. There isn’t much that happens in the usual course of a day at Hogwarts, unless, of course, you are Harry Potter.” She rattled the words off with a grimace, trying to underplay the fact that she was still only sixteen and in school. Every time he asked her about her day she felt like a grubby first year all over again.

“Yes Harry does seem to find more trouble than any twelve other students,” Remus sighed and the lines of worry creased his brow. He settled himself on the bed, smoothing down the quilt with a nervous gesture. Ginny didn’t comment on the whole Voldemort trying to kill Harry angle, since not only was it depressing but it was also rather self-evident. Ginny hated to be obvious.

“It’s a talent, like playing Quidditch,” she remarked lightly.

“Speaking of which, don’t you lot have a game coming up soon?”

“If by “you lot” you are referring to the Gryffindor team, then yes, we have a game against Hufflepuff, whom we shall annihilate easily. You may come and observe the carnage if you like,” she offered with a generous wave. He grinned at her attitude and slowly shook his head in negation.

“I still don’t feel comfortable going to Hogwarts,” he confessed and Ginny frowned in irritation. Instead of snapping at him, she picked up clutter around the room and waved it into its rightful place. She hoped that it looked like she was merely being useful rather than suppressing an urge to hex half the school.

“No one is going to start screaming and running if you show up for a Quidditch match, Remus,” she remonstrated with him gently. She watched the shutters close up behind his eyes and the amiable face replaced the serious man she had been talking to. It made her want to scream sometimes. He had many more years of self-protective wall building behind him than she did and he was far more adept at it.

“Of course they won’t. I just don’t want to make anyone feel uncomfortable, that’s all.” Remus spoke as though the matter touched him not at all, but Ginny wasn’t fooled. She stalked across the room sending loose scrolls back down the stairs towards the study.

“This is Scotland, Remus. It will be raining, cold and windy, they will already be uncomfortable,” she answered, already knowing that the battle was lost.

“As you say,” he muttered vaguely and she knew that he would simply ‘forget’ to come to the game if she pushed it any more. There was no way to win with him sometimes. She looked at Remus where he was sitting on the bed, looking like he was on another continent and sighed again.

Ginny dropped a light kiss on his forehead as she headed out of the room to start dinner. She forgave him easily for these moments where he balked from human company. It wasn’t as though she didn’t understand. She too had spent years being stared at like she was some half-wild zoo specimen. She knew how it felt to be feared.

It was just that she was a Weasley. Weasleys never backed down and Weasleys never ran away.

Even when they really wanted to.

Taliesin Snape leaned back in the sage green velvet wing chair and stared up at the arched ceiling above him. Somewhere in the dancing dust motes that were illuminated by shafts of sunlight from the high windows he sensed a pattern. If only he could make sense of it all.

He had spent years lying awake at nights, listening to his wife’s mumblings as she dreamed. Kaleen had dreamed of the future, she had known what it would take to break the curse, to defeat Voldemort, to save everyone. Her stubborn refusal to share that knowledge with him had angered and disgusted him. What sort of coward could see danger coming but do nothing to try to stop it?

Their son, the black-eyed child with his intense eyes and quick mind had been in as much danger as anyone else and still she would not speak. Her pathetic mewling about ‘destiny’ and ‘the dangers of altering history’ were merely mouthed platitudes so that she could hoard the precious secrets to herself. She was as mad and power-hungry as her mother. The mysterious smiles and withheld knowledge were all part of the Yidoni power game.

They all flaunted their secret knowledge but refused to share it, even with those they claimed to love. Taliesin squirmed in his seat, his impotent anger clutching at his guts. Just remembering the arguments and frustrations of his first marriage could drive him mad all over again.
Therese had been nothing like Kaleen. Therese had been an open book, no secrets, no hidden agendas, and no lies.

Except one.

He had long ago forgiven her for that solitary indiscretion however. She had been genuinely regretful, not like false Kaleen, who spoke words of sorrow and grief with a forked tongue.

Now Helena was gone as well, married off to the Longbottom heir, which was a far better match than any Taliesin could have arranged for her. Still, he had thought that he would have her company for a few more years yet. He had hoped, an unfamiliar emotion for him these days, that he would have the time to break the curse before she married and drew yet another unsuspecting soul into darkness.

Too late now.

The curse would eat every last descendant of the Snape line before it was through and there was nothing he could do about it now. Kaleen was dead and the secret was dead with her. Sarit Yidoni would certainly never share it with her most despised enemy and there was no Seer child alive today who might whisper the information into Taliesin’s ear.

So many years he had dreamed of saving the family, and the world. Now he was left sitting under the ancient hill with nothing but memories and regrets.

Just another victim of the curse.

Sabine Snape sat quietly in the Three Broomsticks’ most private parlor and sipped Rosmerta’s very best tea. It was a pleasant room, very Tudor in style with worn, but comfortable couches and a blazing fire in the hearth that chuckled to itself as it burned.

The door to the parlor creaked open and she looked up, completely unsurprised to see Albus poking his long nose in. He was wearing a tall pointy hat with far too many spangles and the word ‘Wizzard’ written on it. She suspected some sort of joke, so she ignored the garish thing.
“Albus, either come in or go out, you are letting in a draft,” she chided him. Sometimes he still looked quite like the skinny, redheaded first year he had been as a child. For one of the last descendents of Merlin, he was quite underwhelming looking.

“Sorry, Sabine,” he apologized with a twitch of his lips. No doubt he knew exactly what she had been thinking, he had always had that rather annoying talent. “Am I bothering you?”

She suppressed her first urge, which was to snap at him and send him away and instead took a deep breath.

“Not at all, Albus,” she lied smoothly.

“You did that very well, it was very nearly civil, Sabine,” he complimented her and she ground her teeth together in annoyance. He was no doubt the most obnoxious man ever to walk the face of the earth.

“Did you want something from me, Albus?” she asked with an arched eyebrow and he grinned at her.

“You know Severus does that thing with the eyebrow as well, it really is quite effective on the students,” Albus confided in a chatty tone, but the very mention of her grandson’s name made Sabine sit up straight and pay attention.

“What is wrong, Albus?” Her concerns about Severus and Sarit were strong enough to override her usual tendency to circumnavigate an issue.

“Sarit left this morning,” he informed her and her mind began whirling as she tried to figure out Sarit’s motivations.

“She must not have realized that he is the Seer,” mused Sabine aloud.

“She left a spying device with him, which indicated some sort of interest though. After all, she has ignored him completely for more than thirty years.” Albus settled into one of the nearby chairs and propped his feet up on the coffee table. Sabine ignored the casual way he waved a wand at the teapot and poured himself a cup without asking permission. He had saved the world once or twice, so she felt allowances might be made.

“Whatever interest she has in him cannot be good,” Sabine muttered and grabbed a scone from off of the tray.

“Ooh, currant!” Albus interjected and he was soon busy spooning clotted cream and jam onto one and happily stuffing it into his face.

Sabine frowned and sent a napkin over to him with a significant look. With a slightly chagrined look Albus dabbed the cream off of his beard and took another healthy bite.

“Albus, perhaps it is time we removed his restraints and taught him to deal with his gift,” mused Sabine and the brightly innocent look on Albus’ face told her that he had been maneuvering towards that aim for a while. She sighed. For all that she was mostly unimpressed by his defeat of Grindelwald and everything else that he was famous for, she was forced to admit that he was pretty good at getting his own way.

“What a lovely thought, Sabine,” he murmured around a scone. It was exceptionally hard to take the man seriously while he was gobbling up her tea, she thought in vexation.

“Oh Albus, sometimes you are very nearly Slytherin,” she grumbled. It was embarrassing to be foxed by a Gryffindor of all people, especially one that she had know since he was in short pants.

“Why thank you, Sabine, I take that as a very great compliment from you,” he answered with apparent sincerity. She gave him a long suspicious look, but he merely smiled back in total complacency.

“Hmm,” she replied, unsure of whether or not he was teasing her.

“Which reminds me, would you be averse to marrying me?”

For the first time in a very long time, Sabine Snape was utterly speechless.