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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
- 31
- 32
- 33
Unbroken
By Odd Doll
Chapter 32
On the eastern side of the cottage, a little hollow nestled between the structure and the grassy slope that rose behind it. The weathered stones of a retaining wall, half buried in dirt and grass, and a sheltering ring of wind-battered trees betrayed man's hand in its creation. Even in its leafy shade, the break of the wind made it the warmest spot to rest and think, aside from their chairs by the fire.
It was a quiet, protected little refuge, and where the cliffs were a place for confidences and facing fears, this was one for hiding from them. Phoebe often found Severus there, sitting cross-legged with his back against the wall of the cottage or perched on a mossy rock that jutted out from the retaining wall.
She began to seek him out there when she finally realized that on top of his frequent nightmares, he was spending more and more time alone. When she joined him, he seldom spoke, and no matter how gently she asked, he rarely answered any of her questions. Sometimes he rose to leave minutes after she sat down beside him, making her wonder if the she was included among the things he feared.
One morning in mid-June, after she had left him alone there for over an hour, she settled at his feet near the rock where he sat in a small patch of sun. It was a particularly beautiful day, warm with a cloudless sky. Bees droned over the hillside among the wildflowers, and the air smelled like warm grass and fertile earth. For the first time since they arrived, Phoebe noticed how beautiful it was here, but she didn't comment on it, not wanting to break the peace between them.
"Phoebe, do you enjoy what you do?" Severus asked suddenly.
"What?" He had startled her, as much from the shattering of her peace as from the fact that he rarely began a conversation between them anymore.
"Do you enjoy what you do?" His voice had a rough edge beneath its usual silky baritone. She looked up to see his dark eyes watching her intently.
It wasn't just a casual question, not mere curiosity. Phoebe bit her lip as she thought of what to say. "Severus, in my resort it's not like what happened to you. People come to us because they want to. Because they enjoy it."
"How do you know that, Phoebe?" His tone held a challenge. "How do you know that someone hasn't forced some submissive to come and..." He grimaced.
Phoebe took a deep breath and relaxed. This she could answer. "Veritaserum."
"Veritaserum? You give them Veritaserum? To Muggles?"
"We give it to everyone. Members, guests they bring, employees, even the service staff. It was something I started doing very early on. I brew up a cauldronful every month or so." She looked up and smiled. "I bet I could make it faster and better than even you."
"Why?"
"Well, the obvious, of course. To weed out the real sickos. The ones who--" She looked up at him, seeing the color rise in his sallow cheeks. "You know," she said quietly. Quickly she continued, "And to find the kids with false IDs. We tell them that a little psychological interview is all part of the medical check and offer them a drink. It's easy."
"What if they don't want it?" His voice softened. She had captured his curiosity.
She shrugged. "I have a handful of witches and wizards on my staff. Mostly in security. You know there are ways."
"Imperius?"
"Of course not! Just a little hex, like what was done to Michael."
"And the service staff?"
"Sometimes we get perverts there, too. People who want in on the sex but could never afford to join. Some of them are the worst. Peeping Toms, rapists. If we can, we alert the police, but most of the time they already know. And then there's the would-be blackmailers."
"I suppose your place is ripe for that."
"Or the exposé. Sell some good photos to the papers and expose an industrialist. Or a senator. It pays. I don't allow cameras anywhere near the property. They're confiscated at the gates." She glanced up at him. "Some of this I figured out when we were developing the business plan, but a lot of it I had to find out the hard way. You get smarter or you go out of business."
"Hmmph. So this is about business. Not about the people."
She sighed. "It's both, Severus. And it's my reputation."
He crossed his arms and frowned down at the ground for a minute. "You never answered my question," he said, his voice hard again.
She hadn't forgotten, but she had hoped that he had. There was no easy answer. Truth or lie, no matter what she said, she would lose. Respect, trust, maybe what little rapport they had gained.
Truth was best, Daddy had always said. Mom too, no matter how hard. "I enjoyed it, Severus. I enjoyed it before I started taking money for it."
She looked up to see his jaw moving slightly as the muscles of his face tightened. His lips thinned. "And after?"
Brad had asked the same thing. "Not as much. Or at least, not as often. I worked more often, with people I couldn't be as picky about choosing."
"And what is it to you?" If his tone had been hard before, now it was like diamond. "Power or sex."
Phoebe briefly closed her eyes. It was a question she tried not to allow herself to be introspective enough to answer. She wasn't even sure what, for Severus, would be the right answer. "Power. I don't know. Maybe when I was younger, when I was--" She stopped. She wasn't about to give him that piece of history.
He seemed not to have noticed, or if he had, she had missed it. For a minute he stared off into the distance before he abruptly rose to his feet and walked off without a word. But as he reached the corner of the building he slowed and turned.
"Phoebe, didn't you tell that policeman that you had interviewed Filla?"
His eyes bore into her. He knew the answer. Her mouth went suddenly dry. "Yes."
"You knew!" He advanced toward her, his face suddenly twisted with all the rage she knew he had held in check. Phoebe scrambled to her feet.
"No, Severus. I didn't know."
"You knew!" His arm swung up and he grabbed a fistful of her shirt, jerking her toward him. "You knew and you did nothing about it."
Phoebe clutched his wrist with both hands and tried to pull herself away.
"I saw four people die, Phoebe. And that was just while I was there. Just the ones I know about."
"No, Severus. We didn't know. We didn't ask the right questions. We didn't ask enough questions. I checked the records. They just stopped the interview as soon as he showed signs of being unsuitable. We didn't know."
His eyes were wild and veins bulged in his neck. Phoebe fought back panic. If in trying to break free she actually hurt him, she didn't know what he might do.
"Please, Severus, let me go. You're scaring me."
He let go so abruptly she staggered backward a step and her hips smacked into the stone. "I'm so sorry, Severus. Really, I am."
His anger stilled into something much colder but just as dangerous. She was afraid it might be hatred. "This is why you've stayed with me all this time," he said. He was quiet but there was nothing calm in him. His eyes glittered, and his body twitched. "It wasn't that you're so kind, or that you might care about what happens to me. You felt guilty. This," he gestured toward the cottage, "has all been a lie so that Phoebe Baher won't feel so bad about what she did."
"I'm sorry," was all she could say, though she knew it wasn't nearly enough.
"He took over a year of my life, Phoebe," he said before he swung around and stalked away.
*****
It was the same dream as always, but this time there was a subtle anger, like the foreshocks of a major earthquake. Dimly, through thick glass, Severus heard voices, Voldemort/Filla shouting his name. Their faces shivered and melted together, and took on a new visage that he recognized but could not name. The anger grew into a rumble, and the voices merged and rose in pitch. When the rumble turned into a roar and the voice began to scream, the glass shattered, setting free Severus's anger. He saw the face and lashed out at it, connecting firmly with his fist and following through.
He awoke to the sounds of shattering glass and crashing furniture, and the sharp echo of a scream against the bare walls. Severus sat upright for a moment, his chest heaving, before he took in his surroundings and saw Phoebe by the doorway, crouched on the floor, her back against the wall. Shards of glass littered the floor all around her, glittering faintly in the low lamplight from the next room. By her side the nightstand lay overturned. She had her arms wrapped around her bare knees, her face buried against them. She shook from head to toe.
"What the hell are you doing in here?" When she looked up, he saw no sign of tears, but blood seeped from a cut on her cheek.
"You were having a nightmare," she whispered.
"I told you I didn't need you to mother me."
"I know, but it's always helped you before."
"Before? You've been in here before?"
She nodded, the barest tilt of her head. "A lot. Lately it's been almost every night. I'm worried about you, Severus."
"You come into my room every night?" His voice rose.
"Almost."
Phoebe actually cringed when he reached for his wand, but he only used it to sweep the glass from around her bare feet and right the table. "Get out."
Never taking her eyes off his face, she inched up the wall and slid sideways to the doorway. There she paused, licked her lips as if she was about to say something. "Out," he said firmly, and she turned and fled.
For a moment, Snape stood in the darkness. He shook a little from the strength of his emotions, and his ears burned, but he couldn't move. His anger was like the leather straps Filla used, binding him in place. Out in the room beyond, Phoebe moved quietly, the soft scrape of a chair, and then silence.
By degrees he calmed enough to relax his grip on his wand and lower himself to the edge of the bed. The shocking events of the last few moments still coursed through his head, after-images and echoes of the words they had said. A disturbing undercurrent, a half-sensed thought, flowed beneath it. Rather than let it fade, he relaxed and followed it until he could see it for what it was: he had been glad. Glad of someone to lash out at, glad to have a living, breathing person that he could blame. Severus sighed and tucked his wand away. He might nurse his resentments a little longer, but they no longer ruled him.
He went to the doorway and paused there. Phoebe sat hunched in a chair at the table, her hands clasped between her knees. She seemed unaware of the cut on her left ankle, or the trail of splotches from his room to where she sat. Blood still coated her left cheek. He paused there, watching her shiver for several minutes before he found himself turning back for a washcloth and dampening it at the sink.
He almost tiptoed over to her, afraid the heavy silence could only break in to anger.
When he held out the washcloth, she raised her head a little to give him a puzzled look.
"Where is that first aid kit you brought?"
After a moment of blankness, she said softly, "Under the bathroom sink."
"Your ankle." He held up the washcloth.
She looked down, then took it and placed it over the cut. When he returned from the bathroom she still had her hand clasped over it.
"Do you want to do this?" He held the box out to her.
"Yes."
Severus cleaned up the blood spots while Phoebe bandaged herself, then he turned his attention to her face. He rummaged through the drawers to find a kitchen towel, and filled it with ice from the cooler.
"You didn't hit me that hard," Phoebe said as she gingerly held the towel to her cheekbone. "You were mostly asleep."
"Let me see," he said and lit the lamps. "A bruise is already forming. Not that hard?"
"I'm familiar with pain. Don't worry about it."
"Do people hit in the face in your line of work?"
"No."
He suddenly thought an apology was in order. "I'm sorry," he said, and realized he was.
"I'm sorry, too, Severus."
He returned to the bathroom to get a bottle of pain potion. "Take some of this if you need to." He stood there a moment. The towel obscured most of her face and what he could see focused on her lap.
"What am I to you, Phoebe? A burden of guilt? A millstone around your neck that you can't shed?"
She seemed to think this over. "A friend." She took a deep breath. "When this is all over, if we survive, I'll still want to know you, Severus."
"You're only here because of Filla."
"I didn't even make that connection at first. I just saw this broken man and wanted to help. And then you turned out to be...you...and I couldn't walk away."
"So Filla never entered into it? You're not doing this all out of guilt?"
"There's some guilt there, but not as much as you seem to believe. He came to us very early, and we weren't as skilled at the questioning. It's not as if we knew he was a serial killer and let him go." She looked up and met his gaze. "I care about you, Severus. I may have started out of guilt and a misguided philanthropy, but I've stayed because I want to see you healthy and cared for."
Severus had not had this kind of relationship with a woman since Lily, and that had ended badly and so long ago. It made him edgy and confused, hopeful and warm while at the same time wary. This would undoubtedly end badly, too. He looked away from her face into the dark corners of the room and walked away.
*****
He heard Phoebe moving around in the cottage in the dark hours of early morning and wondered if, like him, she had not slept for the rest of the night. Faintly, through the door, the hiss of the kettle reached him, a cozy sound that settled him enough to finally roll over and relax.
After several hours of restful, dreamless sleep he rose to find the cottage empty. Phoebe left no note, but tea and porridge sat in a warmer, waiting for him. His morning medications lay alongside them. He realized he admired the efficient way she approached everything, even the littlest tasks.
Severus thought about Phoebe all through that long day. He walked alone through the tall grass to the shallow cliff above the beach, following the narrow trail their feet had made over the last weeks. He stood for many quiet minutes at the spot they used for sitting and talking until it suddenly became clear -- he wished she were here. For his whole life he had compared every woman to Lily, and while he still loved the girl he had once known, he now found he could have similar feelings for a woman who was so completely different. Lily had been strong through and through, while Phoebe possessed a strong outer shell over a seething mass of insecurities.
He made his own tea, frying a hamburger patty with spices and onions the way she taught him, and thought about the many hours he had with her, standing at this cooker and letting her teach him. The lessons had stuck, but he now knew that for him it they had been an excuse to spend time at her side. He now spent so much of his day in her company.
He sat down to eat, not his first meal without her presence but the first where he felt so alone. Their island hideaway sat amid breathtaking isolation that intensified his inexplicable loneliness. Phoebe had never left without at least leaving a note. He rose quickly, his meal half-eaten, and went to her room. The trunk sat neatly at the foot of her tidy bed. Each drawer in the dresser housed a cheerful jumble of clothing in no appreciable order whatsoever. He returned to his meal, reassured. She simply had forgotten to leave a note.
The book he read in the evening fascinated him, he told himself. He slept late. He wasn't tired. He most certainly was not waiting up. The hour grew later and later until the clock struck eleven. Phoebe never stayed out late, always returning before dark on most trips, or by ten if she went to the pub. Finally, at 11:30, he heard the pop of Apparation from behind him.
Without a word she stepped to the table where he sat. From her jeans pocket she removed a small object and placed her hand flat on the table. When she drew her hand away, a key lay there with the word 'Gringott's' embossed on the barrel.
"Is that...?"
"Your key." In her hand she held a small paper bag. She handed it to him.
"My wallet." He withdrew a heavy gold ring with a flat green stone with a silver snake etched in its surface, and slipped it onto his right ring finger. "My Slytherin ring." He dumped the remaining objects onto the table. A comb, various small papers, a few galleons, and some Muggle money. He poked through them with his forefinger and looked up to say, "Where did you get these?"
"Filla's office. It took me all day to find and then break his safe, considering I didn't know how. I finally used brute force and then did a shoddy repair. Hopefully the Muggles will never notice. Don't ever tell George, he'll kill me."
"The house was empty?"
"The heirs are fighting over the estate, so nothing has been moved. I found your clothes, too. I can go back for them, but they won't fit you now and they were awfully dirty and worn."
She collapsed into one of the chairs. "Severus, you have your ID and your key. You can go anywhere you want."
"You're sending me away," he said, his voice flat, his stare accusing.
Phoebe leaned forward and touched the back of her knuckles to his gaunt cheek. "Severus." Just as she started to pull away, he grasped her hand and pressed his lips against her palm.
"Please," he said, the word a warm whisper against her skin. "Please don't."
This time she kept her hand in place, stroking her thumb over his cheekbone. "Severus, you are one of only three people in the world who have seen all the pieces of me. The ugly, the dirty, the crazy--"
"The strong and beautiful and warm."
She smiled, pulling her hand away but taking his with it. "But you are the only person who ever made me feel like the good stuff was real. That it wasn't just an act I do to fool the world. I need you, Severus."
For a minute they looked at each other, the crackle of the fire the only sound in the room. He wanted to kiss her but he didn't know if she would welcome him. Too perfect to ruin, he let the moment pass.
"While I worked today, I thought constantly about what I wanted, and I decided I needed to be here as much as you do. Do you have any idea how many times a day I have to psych myself up to face a challenge? I do it, and I do it well, but it's like something I've been programmed to do over constant doubt about my ability."
"Do you want to give up your business?"
"No, but I want some more time away. My only regret is missing my good friends."
"Then we need to fight back so you can return to them."
"Are you ready?"
"Not quite yet. I would like to be a little physically stronger, but soon."
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