SALVATION

JK Rowling's characters and Wizarding Universe are all uniquely hers. Plot, new characters, new magical terms and abilities etc. are my intellectual property. If you want to borrow then please kindly ask.

ALTERNATE UNIVERSE. If you are looking for strict Canon or even a slight deviation from Canon you won’t find it here.


Summary: The War is finally over and Snape finds that the world he knows has nothing to offer him. He finds himself drawn to a new world; one steeped in traditions of its own not known to the wizarding world. Will he take the risks needed for his own salvation?

Rated M for Sexual Situations, Language, Some Violence.

Author’s Notes: My inspiration comes from the novel and film WHALE RIDER. This story is dedicated to Ajay, The Potions Mistress at Magical Menagerie on EZBoard.


xxxOOOxxx


SALVATION

Chapter 002: Home


‘Sir… Sir?’ a voice came through the fog.

‘What is it!’ Snape mumbled darkly.

‘We are about to land. Please return your seat to the upright position and fasten your seatbelt,’ the flight attendant directed.

Snape restrained the sneer ready to burst forth at the sight of the weedy young man staring down at him. Instead he grunted and did as he needed to do for the sake of his own safety, rather than because he had been ordered to. He looked out his window at the pristine clear blue sky and fluffy white clouds as the plane began its descent.

The former Potions Master and Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor wasn’t sure what to think now that the day he’d thought might never come was finally here.

There was just one more hurdle to get through.


xxxOOOxxx


Immigration.

How unbelievably tedious – and nerve-racking.

It felt as though he was being singled-out because of the time it took to answer the same questions he’d answered back at the embassy in London. Perhaps it was nothing more than standard procedure rather than over-sensitivity on his part given the past and world he was leaving behind.

‘I see everything is in order, Mr. Stuart-Clark,’ the official said brightly as he finally stamped Snape’s British passport and handed it back to him along with some other official documents. ‘Good luck to you in your new life here.’

The man started to ask him another question, but was given a nudge by the woman who manned the desk with him. There was a long line of people waiting to be processed and they were definitely restless after such their own long flights.

‘Thank you,’ was the only thing Snape managed to say.

He was free. After all this time, he was well and truly free.


xxxOOOxxx


Snape made his way through the sprawling airport looking for the bus rank to his destination.

‘Haere mai! Welcome!’ voices called out along the way. ‘Haere mai Aotearoa – Welcome to New Zealand! Haere mai Tamaki Makaurau – Welcome to Auckland!’’

He let out of breath of relief at hearing those words again. The adrenaline that he’d been surging on was beginning to calm. He needed sleep but given the time difference there was no point to going to bed now – it was only nearing lunchtime. After so many years of being a proverbial night-owl, he was looking forward to having some semblance of a normal time-table.

xxxOOOxxx


The former Potions Master forced himself to stay awake as the coach took him into central Auckland on New Zealand’s North Island. Not wanting to spend money unnecessarily, he walked to the B&B he’d stayed in the last time he was here. He would only stay long enough to recuperate from the long trip and secure a vehicle and accommodation. While the city was undoubtedly cosmopolitan and superbly placed for any number of pursuits, his interests lay within the Eastland region of the island.


xxxOOOxxx


When one was a wizard, anything was possible. It was as true in Aotearoa as it had been in Britain.

Three months after he’d arrived, Snape was finally a de facto citizen and could finally leave Auckland. There had never been any doubt in his mind where he would end up, and so at the dawning of the day following receipt of his new identity papers he set out for Gisborne. He’d been forced to learn how to drive as a teenager, no thanks to his Muggle father who was determined that somehow, someway, his only child would be “normal”.

Being able to live like any ordinary Muggle had served him well over the years. The British wizards who found themselves on the wrong side of anyone’s wand found it impossible to get by within the confines dictated by this world. If their clothes and odd speech didn’t give them away their mannerisms and dependency on magic most certainly did. Fortunately he used what he knew to his advantage. It wasn’t typically Slytherin; it was simply the most logical and pragmatic thing he could do for himself.

He’d registered for Social Security and all the other things any other Muggle newcomer would do and re-acquainted himself with the amenities that Auckland offered. He’d spent a lot of time wandering in Libraries and bookstores, collecting more information on New Zealand and its Maori culture. He was determined to master Te Reo Māori, Maori language, and picked up several tomes along with CDs to listen to. After all – the Maori had been there long before the Europeans that conquered and nearly decimated them. In his estimation; the interlopers should make the effort with the people who had put with them.

In the time it would have taken to get to Hogwarts from London on the Hogwarts Express, he would traverse the North Island to his new home in the Ngatapa Valley. The moment he’d set eyes on its verdant hills and mountains lush with flora and fauna several years ago, he knew without a shadow of a doubt that it was where he should spend the rest of his life. He’d spent a lot of time there on and off as he traveled the Pacific. His journeys after the war had ended had taken him all over the world, but he’d never found a place that could equal its beauty, tranquility and hospitality.

No matter where Snape had gone the world – he’d always been drawn back to it.


xxxOOOxxx


It was just past three in the afternoon when Snape pulled up in front of the house he’d purchased. The real estate agent had given him quite the hard sell when he’d enquired about viewing the property, but it was rather unnecessary and he’d told her so. The house and the scenic landscape it was surrounded were enough to convince anyone. He hadn’t been so foolish as to not check ever nook and cranny thoroughly or decline to have a look at it. His fastidiousness had nearly driven the poor woman to hysterics – not that he cared.

Snape was spending a great deal of money (for him) – and this was the first time in his life he doing anything like this. His old home had belonged to his bastard of a father. Given the extortionate price of real estate in Britain combined with the reality that most of his time was spent at Hogwarts, it seemed ill-advised to sink so much money into a new house that he would definitely have a mortgage on. His money was worth more than double here and so this house was his outright.

His had always been rather simple needs: four walls, a roof and doors and windows he could lock. Anything beyond that would have been a luxury. But looking around what he considered to be a rather nice house (too nice for the likes of him, really), it struck him that he didn’t want to find himself suffering with a kiwi variation on Spinner’s End. The whole house was painted in a creamy magnolia white, no doubt to aid in the sale. Quite a bit of work had been done to the place and it had struck him when he’d first been shown around it that the property was grossly undervalued given the high standard of the property and the location.


x x x x x

‘Well – you are right next to – erm – a settlement,’ the real estate agent had sniffed as she jerked her head in a specific direction. ‘I have to be honest with you, Mr. Stuart-Clark. A situation like this can be…quite problematic, if you understand my meaning? Were this property more pleasantly situated, it would be worth three times its value.’

Snape supposed he must have given her a look that rivaled an Unforgivable. The woman took several steps back.

‘Such ignorance is not my problem!’ Snape had snapped viciously before storming out of the house.


He’d left the woman in an almighty huff, and then gone back to town to another real estate agency whom he already knew also had the property on their books.

He’d had enough of that bullshit in the world he’d left behind.

x x x x x



xxxOOOxxx


Snape looked around his kitchen and began to unpack the boxes and bags of shopping he’d done back in town on his way down here. Once that was finished he began carting his things into the house. He’d picked up quite a bit in Auckland and so the process took longer than he’d expected.

He was pulling a rather cumbersome box of books out of the crammed back of his car when the sound of what appeared to be scooters reached his ears. He was still struggling with the box, trying not to upset the rest of his careful packing when a group of what appeared to be local Maori pulled up on a motley collection of what were indeed scooters.

There were several young women and a few men between them. All were barefoot as tended to be the way in this part of the country. They looked at each other and two of the women giggled nervously.

‘You go!’

‘No you!’

‘I’m not going!’

‘Oh for god’s sake!’ one young lady said irritably as she got off the scooter where she’d been riding with a rather burly man. ‘You wallies! You lot are few logs short of a barbie today!’

Snape stopped what he was doing and stood with his arms folded across his chest. He knew it was intimidating, but he was an old man set in his ways as far as he was concerned. Change was not something that came easily to him.

‘Erm… I need to get back Pai,’ one girl squeaked as she started backing up having not taken one step off her scooter.

There were murmurs of agreement and everyone else took off except two of the men and one girl.

‘Haere mai,’ the young woman said as she extended her hand. ‘Hello. I’m Paikea Ihimaera.’

The others had gotten off their scooters and were watching the exchange with fearsome stares.

‘Michael, Michael Stuart-Clark,’ he replied as he tentatively extended his own hand.

‘Don’t worry about them,’ she said brightly, gesturing to the stern looking group behind her. ‘It’s just our way even when we’re not going into battle!’

‘So I understand,’ Snape replied as he picked a book from the box and handed it to her.

The young woman made a noise in the back of her throat and tossed the book at a burly man who’d moved closer.

‘Must’ve been one of us that sold it to you eh?’ he asked looking down at Snape as he flipped through and nodded approvingly.

‘Correct.’

‘Ahh, there’s only one place you could have gotten it too.’

‘Again, correct.’

‘Brave man – A Pommie heading out to Opatiki Coast…don’t see that every day.

Snape didn’t reply as the man moved closer and looked him up and down. The man studied him for a moment and then nodded his head ‘yes’ slowly.

‘I’m Rawiri – Pai’s uncle; that wuss over there our cuzzy-bro Cliff and the dodgy little madam is Kahutia.’

There were nods all around except for Kahutia, who was checking her lip gloss and decidedly oblivious to what was going on. Only her vanity kept her from missing what wasn’t a thinly-veiled insult.

‘We wanted to welcome you,’ Rawiri continued. ‘We’ve got heaps of tucker for you – couldn’t imagine that you’d be up for cooking after the trip down and such. There’s a few odds and ends too. Mum has this notion y’see; she reckons that a man’s home is his castle, and he needs to be settled like two seconds after he moves into it!’

‘I don’t think that is likely,’ Snape sighed as the box he’d been wrestling with fell off the back seat of the truck.

Cliff and Pai had been hauling over bags strapped to the scooters and a large box and set them near Snape’s front door. They opened his truck from the other side and began to carefully unpack it.

‘This is very kind of you, but I think I can manage,’ Snape said tightly.

‘Look,’ Rawiri said, drawing him to the side. ‘It was our nana who sold you the place, eh? And you paid a fair price for it; a fair market price. It means a lot to people like us and it says a lot about you too. We’d like to help you out if we can, if you’d allow us to. It’s the least we can do after what you’ve done for us.’

‘Give over, you old geeza,’ Pai said playfully as she moved Snape out of the way and began to attack the packing on his side of the truck. ‘You’re stuck with us now!’

‘Pai! You don’t go using language like that to a stranger!’ her uncle said crossly.

‘But he’s not a stranger now, is he?’ she replied saucily. ‘Better get used to it, mate!’

Snape watched incredulously as Pai stacked two rather heavy boxes on top of each other and hauled them into his house. Realizing it was futile to protest against the hospitality that had so enraptured him in the first place all those years ago, he gave in. The group set about getting him moved in with the exception of Kahutia who parked herself in the passenger seat of Snape’s truck and began to re-apply her already caked-on make-up.

‘Get outta there, girl,’ Cliff said as he came out of the house and hauled her up. ‘You make yourself useful or take your hori arse home!’

‘Who do you think you are?’ Kahutia spat furiously as nail polish spilled on her mini-skirt. ‘Now look at what you did!’

‘Hey you two; no fighting! You can both go if you can’t act right!’ Pai called out menacingly.

She had enough of their crap in the village – she didn’t need it here too. But at least Kahutia would leave now that her clothes were ruined. The most used piece of equipment this side of Gisborne hadn’t even seen the stranger before she was setting her cap on him. For girls like her, any man with money was fair game.

Pai almost felt sorry for the poor bloke as she stood next to Snape. She knew what he was going to be up against with some of them.

‘You’ll be lucky if your bollocks don’t fall off from their dodgy blowies,’ she muttered to herself as she watched Cliff and Kahutia take off, screaming at each other like the loonies they both were.

No one had even invited the rest of them, especially Kahutia. Cliff was one thing because he was family, the rest just wanted to see what the stranger had because they thought he was rich. Compared to them he probably was, not that it really mattered. Their people always looked after newcomers and it didn’t matter what they did or did not have.

Snape looked at her incredulously again, not quite wanting to believe that she’d actually said what he knew she’d said.

‘I can assure you, Miss Ihimaera, that unlike the sort who are so easily influenced, I actually do have taste.’

Pai grinned.

‘Is that a fact?’ she asked innocently.

‘You can count on it…’ Snape whispered huskily in her ear as he brushed past her.

‘Easy to say, just you watch,’ she sniffed knowingly as she went back into his house.

Snape watched her through the large window of his sitting room, unpacking books and arranging them on the built-in shelves either side of his fireplace. Her unruly mass of dark wavy curling hair tumbled down her back and fell over her face as she examined his books. It was rare to see a woman who wasn’t a slave to artifice, or to what would make her appealing to the opposite sex.

He’d thought Maori women were amongst the most beautiful on earth and hadn’t been above sowing his oats as he moved about. The few with whom he’d shared his tent or a bed would have no recollection of it however. As always, being a wizard had its advantages.

There were woman he didn’t want to remember him any more than he cared to remember them and his reasons were his own. He supposed there might be the odd one or a few whom he wouldn’t mind having a recollection or a few of their few hours together, but what was done, was done. The Kahutias of the world were ten pence a dozen, in Muggle parlance. They were easily used and disposed of and it was their fault as much as it was the men and women who used them. He was not like everyone else, and if that’s what these people were expecting of him then they were in for a big surprise. He wasn’t exactly sure what he wanted, but it definitely wasn’t that.

That was something else he’d left behind, or so he was trying to convince himself.


xxxOOOxxx


He continued to unpack his things and heave them into the house with the help of Pai and her uncle.

‘Gotta be moving on – Michelle’ll have my head if I’m late again,’ Rawiri sighed irritably.

‘You don’t half pong, ‘Pai grumbled as she sniffed. ‘Better get cleaned up before you go. I know for a fact she’s going to try and talk you into taking her to that fancy new wine bar in Waitroa. Even if she wasn’t taking you there, you know what happened the last time to didn’t clean up for her.’

‘Oh for fuck’s sake…I told her I don’t like that sort of thing!’

‘Well that’s what you get for running around with someone who doesn’t like the same things as you do then, eh?’

Just then his mobile rang.

‘G’day… what? Oh Michelle, right.. No; I’m not home! What? … Dammit! Yeah, yeah! I said I’d be there! All right! All right – I’ll come out to your place and we can sort it out from there!’

Snape watched as Pai cringed. Even he could hear her uncle’s girlfriend screaming down the other end of the phone.

‘Look Pai,’ her uncle began.

‘I can walk myself home, heavens knows I’m used to it by now.’

‘Uhhhh…’ Rowiri gurgled, looking at Snape.

‘Forget what he looks like, I don’t think he’s a rapist. Probably gets it every night – definitely will if Kahutia has her way with him.’

Snape’s mouth fell open and Pai closed it with two fingers. The former Potions Master slapped her hand away and glared at her.

‘Besides, I can kick his arse into the next township,’ she added.

‘Is that a fact…?’ Snape snapped as he rounded on her.

‘That’s my girl!’ her uncle roared with laughter. ‘I’ll be checking on you though, you hear?’

Rawiri’s phone rang again and he took off on the scooter as though the devil were after him.

Snape and Pai stood staring each other down in the middle of his sitting room.

‘Miss Ihimaera – you do have a home of your own!’

‘Rumour has it,’ she said ignoring him as she began to break down the empty boxes piled up in the room.

‘I appreciate the kindness you have shown me but I can assure you your presence is no longer necessary.’

‘Do you always do this?’ she asked looked up at him.

‘Do what?’

‘Put up this daggy front that isn’t fooling anyone who’s got more than two brain cells that aren’t fighting each other…’

Snape opened his mouth as though to speak and then scowled.

‘Koro brought your rubbish bins – they’re by the back gate. You’ll have a bit of a hike to get your rubbish out; they collect one a week around here – usually on Wednesday at seven-thirty in the morning…’ Pai continued. ‘We also put in a new septic tank before this place was put on the market.’

Pai gave Snape other bits of information he needed and then told him she’d written it down and tacked it onto his fridge. He thanked her gruffly and began to carry bedding up to his bedroom. He’d never had anything so spacious in his life or with an en-suite bathroom. He dumped several duvets on the bed and Pai followed him with pillows and bathroom linen.

‘I can take care of this myself, Miss Ihimaera; thank you.’

‘Fine, have it your way…’ she sniffed before storming downstairs.

‘Dammit!’ Snape bellowed ‘I just want to be left alone!’

There was instantaneous silence and then the sound of his front door slamming.

‘Oh, shit! Shit, shit, shit!’ he hissed.

The last thing he needed was to have these people upset with him, especially when all they’d been doing was showing the generosity for which they were known for. He knew of Pai’s grandfather having seen him in passing several times during his travels through here. As Koro, he was the leader of her people and as such was not a man to be on the wrong side of.

He needed to salvage the wreckage he’d created before things got too out of hand.


xxxOOOxxx


Pai was walking slowly down the darkened road. She only had her innate knowledge of the place and the moon to guide her footsteps. She heard Snape before her mind even registered that it was him. She could have turned back, and waited patiently for him to catch up, but she wouldn’t.

She wasn’t going to make it easy for him, no matter how difficult it was for him to accept this new world of his. This was their world, not his. These were there ways and their traditions and were they like certain others of their people, he wouldn’t be here – period. But their family and the village needed the money from the sale of the house and beggars couldn’t be choosers.

Still, being yelled at hurt. She got enough of that from her grandfather. Even after all these years, she was still the grandchild he didn’t want, still the little girl that should have been born a boy so she could lead their people. It was no wonder her father had ran off the first chance he got. Koro’s attitude was like a poison, killing every thing it touched. She couldn’t convinced him that a culture unwilling to embrace change for it’s own sake was a culture that would die out. In his mind, every bad thing that had happened to their people was her fault, simply because she been born a girl and her father was unwilling to have another child.

Her mother had died giving birth to her and her father had walked out of the hospital, never to be seen or heard from again. Whether he was alive or dead or even here in Aotearoa, she had no idea. It seemed that no matter where she went, she was never good enough for anyone. She was always the problem that people were so desperate to be rid of, even the stranger whom she’d just wanted to show her gratitude to for paying them the money they were entitled to for her father’s abandoned house, the house she’d never got a chance to grow up in growing up with her grandparents as she’d done.

Just thinking about the rejection she’d endured from her grandfather brought tears to her eyes and Pai sat on a large boulder, sobbing.

Snape was nothing less than mortified when he finally came upon her rocking back and forth crying bitterly as she watched the ocean through the trees, crashing into the rocks and beach below.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said slowly. ‘I didn’t mean it as it sounded.’

Pai looked up at him, standing uncomfortably and obviously not used to having to deal with hysterical females.

‘Come back to the house; I need some help eating all this food…’ Snape continued as he looked out at the ocean.

‘Thank you, but you were right, I’ve bothered you enough Mr. Stuart-Clark.’

‘Michael. We needn’t be so formal with each other…Paikea.’

Snape held out his hands. After a moment’s hesitation Pai took them and he helped her stand up.

She wanted her tears to stop, but they couldn’t. She caught the twinkling lights of the village she called home in the far distance and new she couldn’t go home like this. All hell would break loose. Her grandfather had had enough of her tears and upset over her inability to accept his authority. She loved her home and didn’t want to leave it as her father had done. He didn’t want to assume leadership and he was running to escape the iron fists of her grandfather.

All Pai wanted was to be accepted and to take what she knew was her rightful place as her Koro’s successor.

But Maori society even in contemporary Aotearoa was bound heavily by tradition. Women could not speak in the meeting place called the “marae”. Women were not to get in the war canoes called “waka” or even see them carved or learn how to carve them. Women did the cooking, performed the “karanga”, the welcome for visitors to their marae. Women were not allowed to wear pants in the meeting place under any circumstance. The women sing the waiata, or songs, at the close of speeches. The men do the war dancing, or “haka” and it is men who wield the Maori spears called “taiaha”. But the biggest rules and most unfair of all were that a woman cannot be chief and she could not be educated in their ways.

From the time she was old enough to understand what she was and her place in the lineage of her family of chiefs, Pai resisted that belief. And the more she resisted it, the more hateful her grandfather grew towards her. He’d had several classes of potential chiefs since her birth, and not one of them had yielded a successor. He was an old man and his time in this world would not carry on forever. If he died without leaving a successor, it would be nothing less than disaster for her people; and everyone knew it.

She could see the waka her father had left behind unfinished in the distance, just on the other side of the mountain that was shaped like the whale that had brought her ancestor to this land in the ancient times. She sees the waka where she has always sought refuge from the storm of being an outcast; the waka that should be hers to complete.

She stares at it as her face crumples and the crying jag continues silently. Snape holds onto her slowly beginning to understand that whatever it going on with the young woman in his arms, their altercation earlier is the least of what troubles her.

But it was the thing that had set her off.

Though he shouldn’t care, Snape is curious to know why.