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UnBroken	By : OddDoll Category: Harry Potter AU/AR > Het - Male/Female Views: 6172 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 28
- 29
- 30
Unbroken
Chapter 29
By Odd Doll
"Come on, Severus. Stay with me. It's just a little farther and then you can sit down."
Phoebe didn't know the right thing to do for Severus. She had left her room after an hour to find him lying on his bed, fully dressed. At first she had the horrified thought that he was dead too, but she was able to rouse him.
She hastily packed their belongings and loaded them into the SUV. This was quickly done, and now it was not yet dawn. All she had left to do was get Severus into the car. He could walk, but he leaned heavily on her and she didn't like his color.
"I'm sorry to do this to you," she said as he stumbled over the step at the kitchen door, "but we have to get out of here. You said that yourself." At these words he stood straighter.
"I can make it. I'm all right." But Phoebe kept her arm around his waist until he climbed into his seat.
Before they left, she forced him to drink his potions. She was terrified that he would not survive the drive, but she knew they must leave. With Jim's death the MBI would probably become involved, and it wasn't all that unlikely that Muggle law enforcement would be used to help find her. She had used credit cards and traveler's checks in her own name, and she was driving her own car. All of these things could be traced.
When they drove away he never asked where they were going.
Using mountain roads through the Sierras, it took all day and part of the night to reach Las Vegas, but she didn't want to break the trip into shorter segments. The sooner they changed vehicles, the better. Las Vegas was the kind of town where she could turn over thousands of dollars in traveler's checks, or buy a car with cash, and no one would blink an eye.
Neither spoke. Severus slept through most of the trip, and Phoebe felt as if all the pleasantness inside her had burned away with everything else she treasured. She tried to spend the time planning ahead to avoid thinking about the recent past, but sometimes the mountain scenery faded around her into images of Jim Robinson lying dead on her terrace. When this happened she would jerk her attention back to the road, but never would she cry. She was too numb to cry anymore. She didn't even have the energy to worry about a panic attack while she drove.
*****
Las Vegas was a shocking blur of lights and colors after the quiet of the mountains. Phoebe passed through the strip, still crowded and noisy during the middle of the night, and kept driving until she found a cheap motel at the edge of town. Even though the casinos stayed open all night long, she wanted to have Severus settled before she took care of business.
Even in May, Las Vegas was hot, and the dry, gritty air made Phoebe's nose bleed and her eyes sting. She removed as much clothing as she dared in front of Severus and lay sprawled on the dingy spread of the room's second bed. Severus already lay prone on the other bed, seemingly asleep, but Phoebe suspected he was faking.
"Are you ever going to ask me what happened last night?" she said. The motel's neon sign cast a red glow over the ceiling. She stared up at it rather than look at him.
"Is the topic open for discussion?" he asked, his voice cold, almost derisive.
Suddenly Phoebe was angry, furious, and she didn't think she could tolerate another minute with this man for whose sake she had sacrificed her whole life. She sprang from the bed and shoved her feet into her jeans as fast as she was able. Her shoes went on without socks.
"Where are you going?" Severus asked when she grabbed her purse and went to the door.
"I'm thirsty."
*****
Her SUV, parked right outside the door, roared to life and it sounded to Severus as if she peeled out fast. He wondered if she would return, but then he remembered that her trunk stood at the foot of her bed. She would never leave without it, he told himself. Whether she would leave without him remained to be seen.
The pain in his chest was better. He thought maybe he'd had a heart attack, maybe a small one. Without seeing a healer, there was no way to know for sure what happened last night. If he told her, she would want to take him to a healer, a risk he wasn't sure they should take. But if she asked him outright what was wrong with him, he knew he couldn't convince her that he was fine.
Severus waited a long time for Phoebe to return. He dozed. He turned on the Muggle television and played with the device that changed the programs until a movie about a Muggle war caught his attention. After a few minutes of it, though, he fell asleep again.
When he awoke she was there, sitting on the floor with her back against his bed, drinking beer and watching the movie.
"I didn't want to wake you." The flickering light of the television wasn't strong enough to let him see her expression when she turned to look at him, but she spoke slowly.
"Are you drunk?"
"This is a good movie."
Severus grunted at her evasion, and sat up too quickly. The room pitched and rolled and the first thing he touched to brace himself was the top of her head.
"Do you need help?"
"No, but you're sitting on my pants."
She shifted and tugged the pants out from under her and threw them backhanded onto the bed. "Do you want me to close my eyes?"
"Please." For some reason this made her giggle. "You're drunk."
"Not nearly as drunk as I'd like to be." She raised her hands to cover her eyes with her fingertips. In her right hand she still held the bottle of beer. "You know," she said when he stood to make his way to the bathroom, "I've seen you naked. Twice."
While he was in the bathroom he heard the television go silent. When he returned to the room he found her sitting on the edge of her bed.
"Like I said, I'm not nearly as drunk as I'd like to be." She took a swig of beer and set the bottle on the nightstand. "I suppose it's not how I deal with things."
"That's a good way to be." He tried to settle himself opposite her with as much grace as he could with his head still swimming a little. Altogether, though, he felt better for having been up out of bed.
"I know these words are a sure-fire way to stop a conversation with a man," Phoebe said when he was settled on his bed, "but we need to talk."
"I would like to know how Mr. Robinson died."
"Killing Curse. Narcissa." She frowned down at the floor between her feet. "If I'd been just two seconds faster with my Stun Curse, she wouldn't have been able to kill him."
"That's not your fault."
"Not my fault! He's dead because I was too stubborn to see how bad things really were!"
They were silent for a moment while her shouts echoed in the room, and then she said, "How did I end up there? I remember Michael calling to me, and then suddenly I was in my living room staring down the Malfoys."
"A Summoning. It's an easy spell, but takes a lot of magical power and a great deal of stamina. Only someone like Narcissa could have pulled it off. It's very Dark magic because of the ingredients used."
There was another awkward silence.
"Draco set my house on fire. I kept trying to put it out but they were throwing curses at me right and left." She spoke with a clear voice now. He suspected that she hadn't been very drunk in the first place.
"You did nothing wrong, Phoebe. You might be able to go back and explain everything. Your MBI has nothing they can charge you with."
"Leaving the scene of a crime."
"You were scared, running for your life."
"Which is exactly why I can't go back."
Phoebe took up her bottle of beer and drank some more. "Tell me something, Severus. Something I'm still drunk enough to ask."
"What would you ask?" he said with a feeling of foreboding.
"Just why in the hell are you worth all the trouble you've brought down on me?"
He had an answer, but he wasn't ready to give it to her. Would he tell her the truth and in doing so dive back into the life he wished never to live again? Or would he take the risk that she would cut ties with him, leaving him alone and friendless, and without any reason to go on? Looking at her now, half-drunk and belligerent, he still thought she was the best chance he would have for a very long time. He acknowledged that he needed her in material ways; food, clothing and shelter were no obstacle with Phoebe as his benefactress. That he owed her figured into his calculations, but he didn't give it much weight. He finally decided to gamble on his evaluation of Phoebe's personality. She wouldn't break her promises.
"I don't know. That's for you to decide."
*****
"Your friend had a heart attack," was the diagnosis handed down by a short, curly haired doctor with a clipboard and a stethoscope around her neck.
Severus had looked ready to have another one when Phoebe drove into the parking lot of the Muggle hospital. Now, after an EKG and a small battery of tests, his expression was a decidedly grumpy one.
"It was a mild one, but we'll still need to admit him for a few days of observation. He'll need complete rest for at least a week, and then we'll start him on a recovery plan."
Severus glanced in Phoebe's direction and found her glancing back his way. "What does the recovery plan entail?" she asked at the same moment he said, "We need to discuss this in private."
The doctor glanced from Phoebe to Severus, a quizzical look on her face.
"Let's just hear what she has to say, and then we can talk," Phoebe said.
One hour later they were back in the car. "Just sitting here is restful," Severus said as they merged onto the highway, headed for the desert.
"You should be in a bed," Phoebe said tersely, reopening the heated argument they'd had in the emergency room. Severus suspected that she had only given in because she worried that their sparring would stress his heart.
"We need to get out of town. You said so yourself."
A car pulled in front of them, and it's brake lights flared an instant later. Phoebe braked hard and Severus couldn't restrain a grunt as the shoulder strap cut into his chest and shoulder.
"Severus, if you die it won't matter much if we're caught."
"It won't matter much to anybody," he said before he could stop himself.
Phoebe was quiet for a moment as she shifted gears and the car rolled forward again. "It would matter to me," she muttered.
Something a little warm flooded through him then, and the corners of his mouth lifted, but not enough for her to see it. He lowered his seat back and settled a pillow behind his head.
"You may wake me if there is anything interesting to see." The smugness he felt at winning the argument crept into his voice.
"You're going to get a long nap then. Highway 15 runs through some pretty empty stretches of desert."
*****
With every mile, the terrain became more and more barren. The predominant colors were tans, dusty reds, and gray. Even the brush that fought for life in the sandy ground wore the silvery gray hues of dust and dirt, and long before they merged onto Highway 50, Severus stopped looking. There was nothing to see.
The Loneliest road was aptly named, but it was lonelier inside the car. Phoebe barely spoke, and then only to order him to take his medicines or to get out of the car for a short walk when they stopped for her to rest. Beyond the lack of conversation was the tense atmosphere of her silence. They'd had quiet times before, but they had always been easy and comfortable. Severus even found himself trying to make conversation.
During the longest stretch -- over 100 miles without any sign of human life -- he pointed out the bloated corpse of a steer that had died by the side of the road.
"If you don't take care of yourself, that could be you," she said.
Shocked at her coldness, he turned to stare at her and blurted out, "Whatever happened to the hooker with the heart of gold?"
Phoebe pursed her lips for a second and said, "She died in a fire."
*****
"There's the arch, Severus." Phoebe pointed at the St. Louis arch as she spoke.
As they had traveled further north, the climate improved, becoming cooler and more humid. They found St. Louis dressed in spring green.
Phoebe remained tense and quiet. Severus hadn't realized how important she had become to him until her friendship waned. In the three days since they left Las Vegas, she had only spoken of necessary things. Take your potions. Time for a walk. Get some sleep. He had mastered the car's music system simply for something to break the silence.
He enjoyed the music, as well as the scenery. They drove through mountains taller than he had imagined possible, oceans of grass, small towns. Even the deserts had held their own fascination and a stark beauty.
Now they had reached their first destination, St. Louis, home of Phoebe's father. Severus thought it a terrible risk, but she'd said he might be able to help them. So he dutifully gawked at the Gateway Arch as they drove by, asking her what possible purpose it could serve.
Phoebe grew more tense with each mile, making him wonder about her relationship with her father. In downtown St. Louis, with evening traffic snarled and horns honking, their car swerved to the side of the street, nearly hitting a parked car. Phoebe slammed the gear shift into park but didn't turn off the engine. Severus raised his seat to get a better look and found Phoebe in the throes of another panic attack.
"Phoebe, can you talk?"
She leaned back in the seat, her arms crossed over her chest, and trembled, but not as badly as the last time. Her breaths came in short, ragged gasps.
He couldn't watch it happen and do nothing, so he spoke. "Phoebe, you're safe. No one knows where we are, and they can't find us here." He doubted she really heard him, but he continued. To speak softly, gently, didn't come naturally to him, but he tried.
"Look at me. Look at me, Phoebe."
Her head turned slightly in his direction, but her eyes didn't focus on him.
"You're safe. We're safe. Nothing is going to get us."
He couldn't bear seeing her like this, so he reached for her, pulling her into his embrace. As when he held her before, her scent and warmth overshadowed everything for a moment. Then her arms wrapped around him and she clung to him as if her life depended on it. He continued to speak softly, saying the same things over and over until they were meaningless and the reassuring tone of his voice became his message. When she finally raised her head and pulled away, he didn't want to let her go.
"You were able to pull over."
"Yes." Her voice was weighted with exhaustion. "I've always been able to. It's probably the only thing that kept me driving during the worst years."
"Are we going on to your father's still?"
"No. Let's go in the morning. I've already called and booked a room for the night, anyway."
She sat quietly for a while longer, but the air had cleared. Something had changed in the last half hour, the tense rift between them bridged.
Phoebe merged back into traffic.
"This is why you're always prepared for everything. And all the yellow pads."
"It helps, a little. I make a list and check everything off, and it's reassuring."
She had chosen a regular hotel this time, each with their own room. She ordered dinner for him, but went straight to her bed without eating.
*****
"Dad, I'm in a bit of trouble."
Her father made a show of squinting at her, even though his eyesight was perfect. "You look like Phoebe, but you sound like Heidi. Which daughter are you?"
"Dad, this is serious," Phoebe said, but she laughed. Severus merely looked a bit smug and inscrutable. He knew about Phoebe's youngest sister and her errant ways.
"I know it's serious. You've never come to me for anything before."
They sat in her father's kitchen, in his home on the outskirts of St. Louis. The room was dim. Phoebe had to restrain herself from rising and flinging the curtains wide open like her mother would have done if she were still alive.
"Dad, my friend here and I," she nodded toward Severus, "need to leave the country, but, um, he needs papers."
Her father leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest. "Is he in the country legally?"
She shook her head; she couldn't bring herself to say the words out loud.
"Phoebe, what have you done?"
She glanced uneasily at Severus, but launched herself into her tale. "Our world, the wizarding world, is at war."
"War?"
"Well, it's more like terrorism. Some people practice what we call Dark Magic, it's evil--"
Severus made a noise that was half grunt and half throat-clearing. "Phoebe, there are rules about this."
"Severus, he needs to know if he is going to give us the right advice."
Now Severus crossed his arms across his chest. "I don't condone this."
"I'm not one of your students, Severus." She turned back to her father. "They are trying to take over. They want the freedom to practice Dark Magic and rid the wizarding world of Muggle-born. Um, witches and wizards whose parents were normal. Like me," she added in a whisper.
"I see. I assume you're on the side of right?"
"Any side you're on is the right side, Dad," she said with a little smile, but he didn't respond in kind. "Anyway, yes, I'm with those fighting against them."
"And how long has this been going on?"
Phoebe felt like she was sixteen again and had been caught making out in the back of her car. She glanced at Severus again and said, "Since I met him."
When she told him about the promise she made to Severus when she first saw him, her father snorted. "Phoebe, I've told you time and again, taking control of a situation doesn't necessary mean taking over. And you're too old to still be taking in stray kittens."
"Yes, Daddy, but you didn't see him. He was so alone, and so helpless." Red blotches appeared against Severus's pale skin.
While she told him everything she could, including some of the details of the battle at her home and the death of Jim Robinson, her father's expression grew grave. "Phoebe, I can't believe the mess you're in. Are you going to just run, or try to fight back?" There was a challenge in his voice.
"I don't know. I don't seem to have many choices right now. My whole life is destroyed." At this her father gave Severus a hard look. "It's not his fault, and you know it," Phoebe said quickly. "I got myself into this, and I knew what the Death Eaters were, but it just seemed to keep getting worse and worse."
"So will you run or fight?"
"I will fight if only because of the promises I made." She shrugged. "And because I seem to have nothing to lose."
"That doesn't sound like you, Phoebe. The girl I raised would have thrown everything she had into a cause she believed was right, and for no other reason than her principles and integrity. Do you believe the cause is right?"
Phoebe thought not of Severus then, but of her friends and family, and the world they would inherit if people like her did not fight back. If Lord Voldemort gained complete control, even ordinary Muggles like her father might not be safe. She envisioned a world where Muggle governments were forced to bow to the power of magic and Lord Voldemort.
"Yes," she said firmly. "The cause is right."
Her father nodded as if satisfied. "I'm really sorry that I can't help you."
"But..." Phoebe frowned. "But I thought you were in Army Intelligence. I thought you were--?"
"A spy?" He chuckled. "No I was never a spy. I installed hi-tech surveillance equipment and intelligence-gathering gadgetry, but I was never in the covert side of the job."
"Hi-tech surveillance equipment?" Phoebe spluttered. "But what about all those things you were always writing? We thought they were codes or something."
Her father laughed and even Severus looked amused. "You kids had quite the imagination. Your mother and I used to get a laugh out of the stuff you came up with."
"What about the writing?"
"Training manuals. A sideline to help pay the bills."
"Training manuals?"
"Yeah. Motivational exercises, team-building, independence and survival skills. That sort of thing."
"Wait." Phoebe held up a hand. She felt the blood rise in her cheeks. "Do you mean to say that during all of those 'character building exercises' we were just guinea pigs for your training manuals?"
"Essentially."
Severus snickered. She kicked him under the table. She leaned her elbows on it and rubbed her temples. "And Mom let you get away with this?"
"She had some of my best ideas. But we're getting a bit far afield here. I was going to say, I can't help you, but Brad Jr. probably can."
"Brad?" Her older brother, as far as she knew, was a low-level employee at the Pentagon.
"He has the right contacts."
"Brad? Really?"
"Yes. Brad really."
*****
When they rose to leave, she saw Severus fiddling with the sleeve of his robe, where she knew he kept his wand. She placed her hand on his forearm. "I'll do it."
"I'm much more experienced at these things."
"I've had to do quite a few." Phoebe felt a little guilty and a little sad about the necessity when she slid her wand from her purse.
"What's this?" her father asked as she pointed her wand at him.
"I'm sorry, Dad, but I must." She performed the Memory Charm that would erase most of the visit from his mind.
Afterward, her father blinked and looked confused for a second. "Phoebe! It's so nice to see you."
She gave him a hug and a kiss on the cheek. "Sorry about the short notice, but we were just passing through town and I couldn't pass up the opportunity to see you..."
*****
Seven hours later, after talk, lunch, more talk, a trip to the grocery store and dinner, Phoebe finally managed to turn down her father's invitation to spend the night. "We'll have to drive some tonight to make my appointment in Chicago tomorrow."
"Does this mean more driving?" Severus asked as they strode to her car.
"Yes but the scenery is a lot nicer from here on out."
"Your brother is in Chicago?"
"No, he lives in Virginia, outside the capital. I just didn't want my father to know where we're going in case he's questioned." She paused on the sidewalk, looking at the keys in her hand as if seeing them for the first time. "Severus, he'll be okay, won't he?"
"They didn't harm your friends." He wasn't certain that the situation was the same, but he was reluctant to alarm her.
"It was different then. She's probably royally pissed off now." She headed toward the car and unlocked her door. "I actually hope her son is okay, just so she won't have a second vendetta to fight."
"She was royally pissed off before. I could put a charm or two on the house if you like. Strengthen the window and door locks against opening charms."
"It might make her suspicious."
"If she manages to question him, she'll know you were here, anyway. There's no sense in hiding it."
Phoebe slowly pulled out her seatbelt and fussed with the ignition. "Yes," she said at last. "Please do. We'll find a motel and then come back later."
The day with her father had exhausted him, and although they had let him rest in her father's recliner, he was happy to set the seat back and settle his head on the pillow. Just before he dozed off, he heard her say, "Severus?"
"Hmmm?"
"Thanks."
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UnBroken