InsaneJournal

Carry On
Disclaimer: None of these characters are mine.
Written for: snape_after_dh

Title: Carry On
Characters: Snape, Neville
Rating: G, gen
Word Count: 3500
Summary: Severus has crossed paths with Neville more times than he cares to remember.
Notes: Many thanks to secretsolitaire for the beta!



Severus came to with a case of the chills. It was the third or fourth time he’d woken up in this place, and each time he was surprised by both his surroundings and his continued survival. He did, however, seem to be making some progress. He was now sitting on a step nearly halfway down the crumbling staircase of the hovel known as the Shrieking Shack.

He was just contemplating maneuvering down yet one more riser when he heard the footsteps. They weren’t stealthy footsteps, in fact they were as loud as a bull in trainers, clopping along the level above, until they hesitated a short distance above him.

“Professor? Professor Snape?”

He had just enough strength left to feel the irony… demoted from Headmaster, then, in the boy’s eyes, but not yet completely without honorific. He supposed he should be grateful that it wasn’t Potter come to claim him, he could only imagine the epithets that would be raining on his head. Then he realized, with another creeping chill that his body hardly needed at the moment, Potter could well be dead.

“What news?” he croaked, squeezing his eyes shut against the stirred-up dust.

“Well,” - Longbottom’s infuriatingly slow drawl as he considered what to relay first made Snape want to hit him with a stick - “Harry’s alive. And Voldemort’s dead. There’s more, of course, but that’s the top headline.” Severus felt a cloak being draped around him. “Just hold on a bit longer, Professor,” the boy urged. “ I’ll bring Pomfrey…”

“You’ll bring no one!” he hissed back fervently. “You’ll tell no one! You’ll leave me in peace!”

“Begging your pardon, sir.” Neville’s voice sounded suddenly hard. “But I’ve been picking up bodies all night, and now I’ve found someone alive, and I am NOT leaving you to die.”

“Bah.” Severus tried to spit the sound out contemptuously but found he was lacking in sufficient saliva. “As if my demise would cause you any great distress. Or anyone else.”

“That’s not true. Harry’s told everyone what you’ve been doing. That you were a hero.”

Severus wheezed with incredulity, the closest he could come to a laugh. Surely the boy was suffering the effects of sleep deprivation or battle shock.

“Listen to me, Longbottom. If it’s true, however unlikely, that you do harbor any mercy towards me, you will give me this opportunity to slip away. Tell the others that you found nothing here in the shack.”

“I doubt anyone’s going to believe you disappeared into thin air…”

“Use your imagination!” Severus barked. “Tell them the ruddy snake ate me! Tell them it was curled around the house, engorged with my carcass!” He sagged back against the splintery wall, exhausted by his outburst. The moldy wood crumbled under his fingers.

“Well, that would be a little implausible, sir, seeing as how I killed it in front of the entire school,” Neville said calmly.

Severus blinked. It might be worth hanging on a few minutes more, he decided, if just to hear that tale.

With effort, Snape opened his eyes to the lantern light and looked up into Neville’s dark eyes. It was something he usually avoided doing at all costs.

*
January, 1982

Severus located the back door of the pub at the first opportunity, and slipped away into the shadows. He’d never been more put off by Bella’s exhilarated bragging. He’d heard his fill of the tale ten minutes ago, and she was still showing no signs of slowing down. After weeks of being the face of tragic melodrama, she had seemed indecently giddy as she’d related her conquest, face flushed as she’d waved her wand around in a parody of her earlier exploits (and tipping over his ale in the process). The others, of course, were rapt and congratulatory.

Careless, was what it was. Disgusting. Pointless. The word tumbled through his head as he strode down the blackened street alone. All of it had been pointless. The serving, the scraping, the work, the risks, the pain, the loss of Lily, and now there was another woman dead in a house with her dead husband, and a baby besides, and for what?

Severus stopped abruptly, making no more or less noise than he had while walking, silence upon a silence. He hadn’t heard Bella mention the baby. Surely she would have been cackling about that, too?

He should contact someone, he supposed. Although…

Self-preservation gnawed against his core instincts. If the authorities were summoned this soon…directly after his leaving Bella’s little performance… would the Death Eaters put it together? Would they suspect him of weakness, of sympathy, of being a traitor? Yet not to do so… the word craven slunk across his mind, with all its despicable nuances.

Severus pulled his dark cloak around himself even tighter, and began walking again, closer to the wall, trudging into the indifferent night.

~

The Longbottoms’ house was unlit. Perhaps it was just Severus’ secret knowledge of what had happened within, or perhaps it was the lone cracked window in the front, but it already seemed derelict and ghostly.

The front door was unlocked, the wards floating in broken tatters like so many useless spider webs.

The scene was as he’d expected ~ broken furniture, and other signs he didn’t let himself interpret. That would be the Aurors’ grim work to do later on. Two still bodies in the kitchen.

Severus walked by; they were not why he was here. They were likely dead, or soon to be so, and better off, he told himself coldly. He pushed his feelings below a familiar surface of ice, and refused to think more about them. They weren’t why he had come.

He let himself look through the house, behind each door down the long main corridor, giving himself a feel for the rooms, the layout. Everywhere there was evidence of a life of comfortable privilege. More furniture in one room than had filled all of Spinner’s End. Eventually he came upon the nursery, with its mural of pastel hippogriffs looking vaguely sinister under the circumstances. The room was, of course, empty.

Severus paused, giving himself a moment to listen, and to think.

Alice Longbottom, he remembered, had been plain but clever. He tried to think back to Hogwarts, berating himself a little for having had so narrow a focus in school. His thoughts in those days had been for himself, Lily, the so-called “Marauders”, and his Slytherin “friends”, in that order, and everyone else had been beneath any real notice.

He considered forgetting the whole thing and Apparating away, but only for a moment. He didn’t like to leave a puzzle unsolved, particularly not one left by a half-witted Hufflepuff.

Severus began murmuring counter-charms, revealing spells, reversal of invisibility glamors, all the while prowling through the well-appointed little house, section by section.

She’d been a powerful witch, he ceded, after twenty minutes. Not as powerful as Bella, unfortunately.

He finally met with success in the solarium. The child was sitting on the tile floor, chameleon-like amid the dense greenery. Leaves and fronds hung over him, as if the very plants were conspiring to conceal him further.

Once he knew where to focus his scrutiny, it was a matter of three minutes work to break the protective spell. Chameleonism. So simple. So effective. So Hufflepuff.

The child stared up at him with obvious fear, and Severus wanted to snarl at it, here he was risking his life and as usual receiving nothing but distrust and suspicion in return. Again he considered just Apparating out of here, sending a message to the Order, and letting someone else deal with the whole sorry situation.

Instead he snatched up the child, parking it on his hip in an awkward but efficient imitation of how he’d seen women toting the things around, and marched grimly though the debris-strewn corridor.

*

The child was heavy.

Severus hiked all the way up the elder Longbottoms’ ostentatiously massive front lawn, muttering under his breath about rich people and their bloody mansions, his gait thrown off center by his burden. He didn’t dare use the crunchy driveway, with its bright white gravel, he stuck to the grass and hedgerow, trusting his black cloak and hair to keep him shielded if anyone should glance out a window. Mercifully, the boy wasn’t crying. Severus didn’t know what he would have done if there had been caterwauling.

At last, his miserable mission was almost over. He set the boy carefully on the doorstep, just inside the pool of light given off by the lantern over the door. The boy looked up at him with large, strangely aware eyes.

Severus hesitated, feeling a bit of a chill creep down his aching back. Children this young didn’t remember things, did they? He realized he had no idea whether they did or not. He wondered how much the boy would remember, of the recent screaming by his parents, of being left in the dark, or worse…. much worse…. of Severus himself. He considered the irony of having his cover blown by a two-year-old.

Hastily, he pulled out his wand. A light came on in the window upstairs. He heard a dog barking somewhere in the distance. He had to get out off this porch… back to the shadows…

Severus was aware that Memory Modification was not advisable for the very young or the very old, except under the most extenuating of circumstances. Deciding that this qualified, he performed the charm as quickly as he dared, just to erase the last couple of hours, nothing more. Besides protecting himself, surely he was doing the boy a favor.

Then he hurried into the concealment afforded by a nearby stand of trees. From this tentative sanctuary, he sent a tendril of light from his wandtip to the bell pull. A short melody echoed sonorously inside. There was activity and movement in the house, and then… finally….the door opened.

Even in the yellow light of the porch lantern, even at this distance, Severus could see the color drain from the woman’s face. She shrieked for her husband, the name cutting through the night like a scythe, and then she pounced on the child as if the hordes of Voldemort were coming up the drive. As she swooped him up, her gaze cut across the seemingly vacant lawn, sweeping over and then past his hiding place, and then they disappeared inside and the door slammed shut behind them.

Satisfied that the grim errand was over, and relieved to be quit of the whole affair, Severus Apparated with a muffled crack.

*

Only it had turned out that he hadn’t been quit of anything, not really. The fall of 1991 inevitably arrived, and it soon became apparent to Severus yet again that he could never be free of the past.

First of all, there was him. The one who wavered between being Lily’s boy and James’ boy, until all Severus could stand to think of him as was “Potter”. Those eyes… those green eyes…. staring at him all the time with ill-concealed loathing…. it was almost more than his nerves could bear.

And then there was the other one. The one whose mere presence was like some kind of living, breathing recrimination against Severus’ litany of poor choices. Neville Longbottom.

Every time the boy forgot something, Severus wondered if he had botched that Memory spell. He tried to motivate him by the strongest means possible, figuring that raw terror might work as a spur. Adrenaline, in his bitter experience, had been known to penetrate many a mental fog. Of course, the intolerable Granger girl never stopped bailing the boy out long enough for the theory to be tested properly.

It wore Severus down. And so he found himself lashing out at both boys mercilessly, he couldn’t seem to help himself. But in a strange way, his unconcealed anger protected him, supporting as it did several necessary illusions.

Because all the while, the sons and daughters of Death Eaters sat all around, their eyes on his every move, ready to write home to Mummy and Daddy about every word, gesture, glance, and deed that went on in his classroom.

Lucius would never put it together, that Snape and Neville had ever crossed paths on that most horrible of nights. Because no one would question why the boy quaked in his presence. No one would wonder why Snape was the boy’s boggart.

No. No one would find it the slightest bit remarkable.

So he taught his class, while Lily’s eyes glared at him from James’ face. And the Longbottoms’ heir dropped his gaze and looked away at every opportunity. And that suited him just fine.

*

Those dark eyes were staring at him now, however. Not with Potter’s petulant anger, but the even gaze of someone who had grown up a great deal in the last year.

“I’m taking you somewhere safe,” Neville said firmly. “No argument.”

Snape ground his teeth, resigned to be floated through the air again like some ignominious puppet, the way Black had taken him out of this shack twice before.

Instead, Snape was bundled in the cloak, and picked up off the dirty stairwell. He felt a swoop of panic, that the clumsy oaf was going to drop him down the steps, that he would survive Nagini only to be killed by Neville Longbottom…

He was surprised to find that he did not fall.

*

His fitful dreams were full of staring eyes. First Nagini’s surfaced from the darkness, then Voldemort’s, and then he was once again at a lectern facing hordes of resentful, seething teenagers in the Great Hall. Potter’s absence from the rebellious crew is only half a consolation, for the other one is still at Gryffindor’s table, watching his every move as he delivers his terse announcements. The boy wears his bruises like purple war paint, and Severus grips the side of the lectern to hide his rage. No matter how much he does behind the scenes, no matter how much he sacrifices, it never seems enough. He doesn’t know if this makes him angrier at Voldemort, or Dumbledore for raising an army of children to fight him, but he has no further doubt that Longbottom belongs in Godric’s House.

No subtlety, that lot.

*

Severus woke up and made two swift determinations ~ that he was not dead, and that he was not in the sort of place to which he had been accustomed. He’d woken up so many mornings in the green liquid flicker of Slytherin, that this room seemed almost like a foreign country. There was too much white paint, too much sun … there were flowers on the windowsill, for Salazar’s sake: daisies in a blueware pitcher, bobbing in a breeze between lace drapes.

Surely he was missing something. He put the recent pieces back together. He remembered the shack, the pain of massive amounts of venom warring through his resistant system, the decrepit stairwell where he’d crawled, trying to escape. The boy coming for him. The indignity of being gathered up like a child … and then a loud crack before everything had gone dark.

Merlin.

Severus took a quick inventory of body parts, then grudgingly gave the boy a passing grade in Side-Along Apparition.

The moment he’d begun moving around, however, a small owl on top of the wardrobe let out a loud squawk, and Severus felt himself flinch, just the tiniest bit, but the wince ran through his entire body. Severus was not usually given to flinching. It was as well Voldemort was dead, if these were to be his reflexes now. A moment later, Neville appeared in the doorway.

“Where am I?” Severus demanded flatly.

“Gran’s house,” came the reply. Before Neville could elaborate further, a tall elderly woman with her hair in a severe bun strode into the room. Severus recognized little of the woman he’d glimpsed in a doorway all those years ago. This woman was lined, silver-haired, and had a hard glint in her eyes. But Severus supposed he bore little semblance to his younger self these days, either.

“You must be ‘Gran’, ” Severus suggested dryly.

“You may call me Augusta. You’re in my home, which is situated in Lancanshire in case you were wondering, and it’s where you are going to remain until we can sort out what to do with you.”

“What to do with me? That does sound ominous.”

“No one’s going to harm you, Professor,” Neville assured him.

“He’s perfectly aware of that, Neville,” the old woman said crisply. “I believe he is attempting sarcasm.”

Severus decided to detest her now and not waste time suspending an opinion. “What I am not aware of, Mrs. Longbottom, is who ‘we’ refers to.”

“Myself, my grandson, Mr. Potter, Headmistress McGonagall, and Madame Pomfrey. We are the only ones aware of your survival.”

Marvelous. Potter and Longbottom and a bevy of old hens deciding his fate. Perhaps succumbing to Nagini might not have been such a bad option.

Mrs. Longbottom must’ve mistaken his pained expression. “We’ll let you get on with your rest,” she declared. “Madame Pomfrey seemed to feel you’re going to require rather a lot of it. Frankly, she’s amazed you’re alive.”

Severus snorted disdainfully. “Poppy knows I’ve always collected my own Potions ingredients whenever possible, including viper milk. Do you have any idea how many protective elixirs I’ve consumed during my career? Enough that I’ve never yet succumbed to poison.”

“Well, then.” Augusta’s lips were thin with disapproval. “Perhaps it might be time to consider quitting while you’re still ahead!”

*

The sunglasses turned the world a strange color of deep, dark beige. Muggle in origin, the device had been a gift sent by, of all people, Potter. Severus wasn’t sure if he liked them yet or not, but they were soothing to his eyes, as he sat in the shade of an oak tree on the manor lawn. He watched the young heir of the house stride towards him with a metal bucket of gardening equipment.

“Do you have your sunscreen on, Professor?” Neville asked cheerfully as he approached.

“I’m not your Professor anymore, Merlin be praised. And yes. I’ve been slathered in this reeking balm Poppy calls a potion. I suspect she brewed it in her sock.”

“She did no such thing and it smells fine.” Neville dropped the bucket into the border and knelt down. “The sun will do you good.”

“So I’ve been told.” Because there was nothing else to do, Severus had to be content with sitting and watching as the young man deftly weeded between the stalks of the annuals and perennials, pausing now and then to pluck a withered bloom or even out a thinning patch of mulch. Just as Severus thought he was going to expire of ennui, he spotted something in the plants, a few feet to Longbottom’s right. The movement and shape caught his immediate interest.

He removed the glasses and set them on the folding table beside his chair, rising slowly.

“… so Kingsley about has everything under control over in the Department of……"

Ignoring Neville’s endless blather, Severus reached down and carefully maneuvered the tiny grass snake into his hand. He watched it wriggle across his palm, turning over like a green silk ribbon across his lifeline.

“Glad to see you weren’t left with a fear of snakes,” Neville remarked, sitting back on his heels and watching.

“Misunderstood creatures. They only ask to be left alone. The request is ignored at one’s own peril.”

Severus leaned down again and poured the creature back into the shelter of waxy leaves, watching until it had disappeared into the border.

“I always wanted to speak Parseltongue,” Severus admitted quietly. He was careful not to let his tone betray the deep resentment he’d felt when that rare and coveted gift had instead been bestowed on Harry Potter. Not even a Slytherin.

“Harry’d probably be willing to teach you,” Neville suggested. “Turns out it’s not something you’re born with like everybody thought…”

“I would sooner take dancing lessons from a baboon.”

“Well, suit yourself.” Neville shrugged and tucked his trowel back into the earth.

Severus returned to his chair, and put his sunglasses back on.

*

Severus looked at himself in the mirror. At least, he thought it was his reflection. Gone were the black robes, replaced by a cream colored shirt, and dark brown trousers, and a silk tie with narrow slanting stripes.

But the most shocking change was his hair, which had been cropped short and lightened with some truly foul concoction by a woman named Gloria the day before.

He did look utterly, utterly unrecognizable, even to himself. He didn’t know whether to be disconcerted by this, or comforted.

“You’re sure you want to do this?” asked a voice behind him. Neville appeared in the corner of the mirror. “If you want to stay, Harry and McGonagall said they’d find a way to make it work.”

“I do not want to spend the rest of my days cleaning eggs off my door and fending off Howlers,” Severus insisted. “All I ask at this point is some peace and quiet and if it takes living in the Muggle world … albeit as far away from any actual Muggles as possible…. then so be it. Besides, I won’t have to worry quite so much about retribution from renegade Voldemort-supporting malcontents. ” He tugged uncertainly at the tie. “Although I doubt my own mother would recognize me in this costume.”

“You know what would really make you look different,” Neville suggested. “A smile now and then.”

Severus suppressed the urge to reprimand the lad for being so bold, and lowered his eyebrow instead. “I’m afraid my face would crack,” he returned evenly.

“Well,” Neville said solemnly. “One thing at a time, then, sir. Don’t rush it.” Their eyes met in the mirror, and Severus found that for the first time meeting that gaze did not cause him guilt or pain. Not much, anyway. Neville smiled at him a little, and maybe there was understanding there, and maybe it was Severus’ imagination, but there might have been forgiveness, too.

“I believe I hear my car.” Severus reached for the valise on the bed and headed for the door.

“Send us an owl once in a while, Mr. Snape,” Neville offered. “Let us know how you’re getting on.”

Severus allowed himself to entertain the possibility. Perhaps he would.