Needfire

Disclaimer: see chapter 1.


\"Thank you India
Thank you terror
Thank you disillusionment
Thank you frailty
Thank you consequence
Thank you thank you silence

The moment I let go of it was
The moment I got more than I could handle
The moment I jumped off of it was
The moment I touched down\"

--Thank U, Alanis Morissette


it may not always be so; and i say
that if your lips, which i have loved, should touch
another\'s, and your dear strong fingers clutch
his heart, as mine in time not far away;
if on another\'s face your sweet hair lay
in such a silence as i know, or such
great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

if this should be, i say if this should be--
you of my heart, send me a little word;
that i may go unto him, and take his hands,
saying Accept all heppiness from me.
Then shall i turn my face, and hear one bird
sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

--\"it may not always be so\" -- e e cummings


Chapter 37 -- Letters


Dear Snape,

A month ago I landed in New Delhi. India is a good place to be. I found out I can climb up a train, no matter what the station, and climb down wherever I want. And one way or the other, whether I know where I am or have lost my way -- I am. When I cry I cry, and when I\'m crazy, it\'s okay too. Nobody\'s listening and I am left to myself – only me and the stoic cows that don\'t distinguish the rich from the poor and solemnly lick the Ganges\' filthy, polluted waters.

There are nights when the sky speeds above me; a smallish figure sitting on the roof of a train carriage. There are nights in rooms with ceilings so low I must bend in order to get in; rooms full of scampering cockroaches which straighten up their sensitive antennae and stare at me curiously. When I cannot fall asleep, I get up and go. Sometimes I want to die. I don\'t delude myself to think that the distance would change, or cure me. Wanting to die in India is like wanting to die in Britain. The cage of the human experience is like a gibbet. When I left England, I took myself on the journey. I took the death-wish and the memories and the nightmares that keep haunting me at night. I took this body which is short and thin, and the bright curls and the brown eyes. I took Ron and Harry and everyone who died, and I took you.

Sometimes it\'s if we\'re still together; lying next to each other on the dewy grass. Several stars are hanging at the edge of the sky, like tears I\'m almost crying, and I can feel your chest rise and fall under my cheek as you breathe. We held hands, I think, or else I imagined us holding hands – how sentimental of me. I want to touch you everywhere, as if by spreading my fingers and stamping them against your abdomen, I would become part of you – and part of the entity which is you would seep through my skin. That if I could only touch you I\'d be whole and happy and know what it is to have strong, blue-white, slightly damp hands, and it would fit. That we would be fine together.

Three days ago I shaved my head. For ten years I didn\'t let a pair of scissors come near my head. You\'d probably laugh, but I felt as if my mane – my bird\'s-nest hair, as you had affectionately called it – was like a princess\'s crown. My wreath. My turret. I\'d plait it into a braid and the heaviness on my back held a certain sweetness. Like a hiding place amongst the bushes and ferns which was mine and mine alone to share or to keep secret. Nevertheless, after almost a month here in India, I understood I had no place left in which to hide from myself. A Dutch girl I met a week ago volunteered to give me a haircut, and then shave my head. She touched my shorn locks with reverence, sweetly caressing the curls that fell to the floor.

She called me Joe, as if she had been attempting to share childhood memories. I didn\'t take, Snape. It was time to be left on my own. I cried and I laughed that night. I vomited my soul into a filthy basin and there was no one to hold my hand and tell me everything was fine. No one to prevent me from scraping my palms clean. I didn\'t, though. Everything was so dirty. I became dirty as well. Perhaps I became clean. In the mirror, my bald head was white and shining. I hated it and hated me. But it didn\'t matter. Not anymore.

I love the Indian patience. The illuminated ones, sweet with incense, swarming with gods. The insipid patience, empty-eyed, hollow, vapid. I love the people that are like clay forms, anointed with glaze. I love the colorful linens and the stench of urine, coming off the monks that are begging for food. I am part of a mob, pilgrims in a private or collective crusade, and I\'m dirtied over my head with this country.

I don\'t know what I\'m looking for. I don\'t know what my catharsis looks like. Not every love and not every pain has a name. When it\'s time, Snape, I\'ll come to you.

Love,
Hermione.


~*~

30 July
Oxfordshire


Dear Hermione,

Your first letter contained no date. I have no idea when it was written. Please date any future letters.

Why choose India? Kindly ensure that you are disinfecting all water that you touch or consume. A simple Sterila charm should suffice. The wand motion that accompanies the charm is a sharp, straight flick from upper right to lower left, followed by a jab to the front.

I have at last retrieved all my belongings from Hogwarts. My books are safely shelved in the cottage. The doing of this would have taken considerable time and expense had Minerva not taken pity upon me and sent them all by the Knight Bus last month.

I believe Angharad\'s garden will produce a number of useful plant products this summer. My seedlings are healthy and flourishing. The cutting of black rose that I took from the Forbidden Forest has rooted, though it did not like the sunny windowsill of the cottage kitchen. It much prefers the shade to be found beneath the northern eaves of the house, where it has begun to stretch above the windowsill. In the Forest these roses are ramblers, and climb recklessly. I have hopes for the northern wall of the cottage, and perhaps the rose will win its competition with the ubiquitous ivy. I have some thoughts for distilling the dark perfume of the petals. I will send some to you once it is prepared.

You speak of the patience of the Indians. I, too, am learning patience. I will say that watering the garden is tiresome work without magic. I am having a workman look into arranging a watering system. Yet there is something soothing in the rote motions of drawing the water from the well, pouring it precisely.

I continue our rituals at Angharad\'s Circle. There is a certain serenity to be obtained from the practice, I find, even though I no longer believe I require the Circle\'s protection from Voldemort or his followers. Still, it is perhaps reassuring to you that I take every reasonable precaution.

You have shaved your head.

This seems a poor choice to me, one unsuited for Hogwarts\' Former Head Girl. The bird\'s nest held many secrets within its coils. Upon second thought, perhaps that is why you have cut it off.

Yours,
Severus Snape


~*~

2 April

Americans are a noisy, cheerful lot. Self-centered and abundant in their gaiety. This nation reminds me of a child. Its sense of joy is that of a child, without thousand years of history to restraint its movements and make it aware of the more complicated aspects of life. Did you know that the sands of Florida are white? Sugar white, and this seashore could have been the last crumble of a cookie, dusted with powdered sugar. None of the British morbidity can be found here, none of the British sense of irony. The sand is white, the skies are blue, and the American weltanschauung consists of bold, bright colours.

Last night I slept with a man. I wore the perfume you distilled from your roses and let him have me. It\'s been a while, and when I closed my eyes I wanted to see your face. Then it was me and the scent of roses, a faceless man in a faceless bed and a very existent cock. I missed sex. I missed you more. I hope you are jealous now, sickened at this entry. I hope you wish to kill me and my nameless lover. He was someone I chose on the beach, merely for being so different than you. Beautiful and sun-tanned, with the wind rustling his blond locks. Don\'t ask me for his name. I don\'t remember it.

I am lying in this defiled bed now, with my defiled body, wondering at what I\'ve become. How far do you want me to go in order to come back to you? I\'ve been to the Orient. Now I\'m in America, slowly shedding my skin of civilized Britishness. I am becoming an animal at your command. I am drowning at your command. I\'ll ride into the deep river if you ask me to, although I\'m no longer a maid. Oh, I know you and your evil schemes. You want me to live for me, but all I want is to die for you. Can\'t you see that is all I\'m fit for?

I remember you ranting several months ago about me cutting my hair. I wish I still had it on my head to cut. I wish I still had it to entwine another secret between my curls and forgot any of it ever happened. I remember the aftermath of the last battle. Remember waiting for a certain sense of absolution...of accomplishment. Which never came. I am waiting for it now. I know it won\'t come. Last night I slept in the arms of this nameless, faceless stranger, and I knew that even if it was you inside me, I wouldn\'t have felt complete. The realization was devastating, and I cried when I came.

Is that my catharsis?

What is your catharsis?

How is Crookshanks?

I love you still.
Hermione.


~*~

30 May
Oxfordshire

I find I have no adequate salutation for this letter, a reply to yours of 2 April. I should write, \"Dear Hermione.\" I cannot. I could write \"My Dear Miss Granger,\" but since I have released you to the world, you are not mine.

I suppose you want me to approve of your nameless, faceless, disaffected assignation with your tanned, blond and muscular American cock.

I suppose I should approve, seeing how you are doing as I bade you.

Your damnable Kneazle plagues me night and day. I well understand why Minerva was so eager to rid herself of his questionable company. His only contribution to this household is to rid the garden of rodents, for which I suppose I should thank him. On the other hand, his dining table of choice is the floor next to the bed, where I put my feet each morning.

You ask what is my catharsis. I suppose I should tell you that it is to hear your stories of the roads you travel, your white sands, your brief studies in Paris, your foul Asian rivers, your childishly happy American viewpoint, your shorn locks and my perfume as an agent in your anonymous sexual encounters. In truth it is none of these things. I cannot imagine what will shrive what small soul I have discovered within myself, unless it is you.

It has taken me almost two months to write this much. I am locked within my British morbidity, but even so -- I will never agree that it is your prerogative to die for me.

As you are not mine, I suppose I am not yours.
Severus Snape


~*~

5 June

My love,

You evil, evil man. Don\'t you know that even when I\'m with others I am always, hopelessly, helplessly yours? I am a candle nursed inside a magnolia\'s leaf, sent over the bayou\'s golden-brown water, to carry your wishes into the Gulf of Mexico. I am your bluish white hands, sunk to the armpits in the bayou\'s tannin, clear-tea depths which you might sip in your British morbidity. I cry with exultation as I see and I feel and I breathe and I fuck because you told me to.

Yes, I know there is no absolution waiting for me here, but wasn\'t it Nathaniel Hawthorne, an American, who said, long before Freud, that one must reach the bottom before one can soar?

It is going to be a rough time, Snape, and I\'m afraid. Afraid of me. The bottom is tempting, and whether I am too weak to pull back or too anxious to see what\'s waiting for me there, I believe I\'m going to find out how deep is the abyss in my soul. Am I as thorough in my self-destruction as I have been in my studies? I think that perhaps I may be. Maybe when I\'m done being bad, I can be good. India was for me to glue the broken pieces together . Now that I once more resemble a human soul, I think I can fracture and shatter me all over again. I need to know how I will come out without you or the knowledge of you being nearby to put me together again. I must learn new occupations other than to die for you, as it doesn\'t seem to do anymore. I need to live for me, only I don\'t know how. I\'d ask you to teach me how, only I have this slight suspicion you\'d decline my request.

I miss you hysterically. It\'s almost a year now and I still miss you. I cannot afford to miss you after so long, Snape. It is a privilege I have no coin with which to pay, aside from my heart\'s blood.

Sleeping with that stranger seemed like the right thing to do at the time, although I often wonder what is it that prevents me from moving onward. Perhaps something inside me is broken and I don\'t even know who or what I miss. My grasp of reality is slowly loosening and even what was reality slowly becomes faded and mumbled – like standing, soapy water. I need you to save me, Snape. I need you to save me from my foolish future escapades. Nevertheless, I know it wouldn\'t be right. I know that even when I let you save me it wasn\'t right, because I have been giving up my own ability to save myself.

I wish I knew a healthy way to love you. Without having either of us to calibrate the other. The Western love archetype is false. It commands us to be the broken half of a whole. I wish I knew a way to be whole beside you. I don\'t. I must learn. I must – I suppose – breathe the mingled scent of lemon and musk pouring from the magnolias and not think of you.

I\'m glad to hear you and Crook are enjoying each other\'s company. Talk to him – and don\'t mind his answers. He can be foul indeed, but so are you, my love.

I dream of you from time to time, and while none of the dreams do I remember in great detail, I do remember seeing you washed in the lucid light of morning, barefoot on the dewy grass. Dreaming of you, I wake up with a sense of restfulness.

Wherever I go, Snape, you are my one true north.

I won\'t die for you, and I won\'t live for you, either. I\'ll breathe the heavy, perfumed air of the bayou as if I have no care in this world. But in the end, Snape, I\'ll come back for you. Remember what you promised me.

Mine,
Hermione.


~*~

01 January
Oxfordshire

I opened with much pleasure your Christmas gift, the Collected Works of Edgar Allan Poe. I would refer you most earnestly to the stories, \"The Tell-Tale Heart\" and \"The Cask of Amontillado\" and \"The Purloined Letter\" if you have not already devoured them, voracious reader that you have always been.

Did my gift to you arrive, as well? It took two weeks to properly compound an adequate sun-screen lotion for your south-of-the-equator travels to Peru, since it must all be done without magic. I have been reading about altitude sickness; Nazca is at a tremendous elevation. Please use precautions; there are charms to help the sick breathe; you may find them helpful so high in the mountains. I greatly desire to hear more of the lessons you learned from the witches in Brazil and Argentina, and what you taught them of potions brewing and Flitwick\'s charm methods.

Did you see the Amazon? I must know. Is it truly the muscular and brown river I think it must be? How did it compare to the Ganges? The Jordan?

You may be pleased to know I have finally electrified the cottage and installed a Muggle cookstove in the kitchen. Its operation is not difficult, but surely time-consuming. I find the accurate regulation of the temperature for brewing very helpful. Adequate light for reading was becoming a must; incandescent lights give a warmer glow than does a wand, and I found oil lamps and candles too smoky and malodorous, not to mention dangerous, with your Kneazle roaming everywhere, waving his tail near open flames. I required a way to heat water as well; cold baths were not pleasant.

I have a job at long last; I have graduated to Muggle from Squib. The villagers have decided that I am the local \"wise man\" in the way that Angharad was once their wise woman. Several of them remember me from my time as her apprentice. They come and buy my herbs and simple remedies for coughs or sneezes; spices; vegetables; herbal distillations. Your black rose fragrance pays for the electricity. I have a Muggle bank account, as well. It would not do to transact such business through Gringotts, though I keep my savings in the goblin bank. My current occupation does not bring me as much income as did teaching at Hogwarts, but I require very little in the way of money. So much of what the villagers bring to pay for their purchases is very practical: meat, such vegetables as I do not grow, fish for your damned familiar, plants for the garden, their strong arms when I require assistance with household maintenance such as mending the stone walls or the roof.

The augurey comes and goes; this is the third year since the winter you and I lived here together that she has built her nest on the roof; but she does not cry before the rains, not since she cried for you. Each year a male joins her briefly; there are always two eggs and two chicks. They make a mess of the chimney and roof tiles. I collect her feathers from the empty nest each autumn; they fetch a good sum from Ollivander as wand cores for compact collapsible wands, which grow more popular each year, it seems. To me, a telescoping wand made of metal and filled with the capricious feathers of your augurey is simply asking for troubled spells and charms, but who am I to judge?

Minerva visits me often. Hogwarts belongs to her, now; did I remember to tell you? It took the Ministry fools this long to make her position permanent, with Professor Vector as her deputy headmistress. She brings me news of Potter and various Weasleys, and sometimes of you, though she gives me very hard looks, still, when I mention your name. She has not quite forgiven me, I think. Potter is nearly finished with his auror training, but I expect you know that, and both of the youngest Weasleys have been hired by the Ministry. It seems to run in that family. I always knew they were fools; yet, their intentions are noble. There may be hope for the Ministry yet.

Write to me soon. No one else can convey sarcasm or knowledge, desperation or hope to me as you can.

A Happy New Year to you,
Severus Snape


~*~

12 January
Peru

The Amazon is a strong, brown god. I often think it is the Amazon Eliot was talking about in his Dry Salvages. Perhaps, if the Indians are patient, the Americans young and the Jews ancient and crude, I might say that the Native Americans are everything that the fifteenth-century sailors expected them to be: their earth is a male entity and their rivers are masculine. They might as well wear their eyes on their chests with their myths and archetypes so different from ours. But then, people who are superstitious and biased are often exposed as short-sighted. One had best appear fully clothed at one\'s Auto da Fe ceremony in order to be burnt.

I am still staying at the same Wizarding village I told you about in the eastern slopes of the Andes. The villagers and I hardly understand each other but they are fascinated with my wand and otherwise western methods of working magic. It seems that even the smallest child here is capable of some wandless magic, not to mention the elders. Seeing I have some practice applying wandless magic, I am more interested in their potions making. It is the village\'s priestess who took me under her wing, and while she isn\'t quite the Potions mistress, I daresay her education might be compared to that of a healer.

The kids, who have hardly ever seen white people, are enthralled with my skin and hair. I am sleeping with a man whose name I can\'t quite pronounce, but it sounds like molten chocolate when I ask him to utter it. He, too, is fascinated with my whiteness. When we rest together on his plaited mattress of wide, dried leaves, I wonder at these people who welcome foreigners instead of rejecting them.

Your Christmas gift to me arrived safely, and I\'m grateful for your consideration. I will put it into good use come spring. It is constantly raining these last couple of months, and I have been told – with plenty of hand-waving – that the rain will continue on and off until mid March. It is with the rain falling over the cabin\'s low roof that I am writing to you. The scent of ozone is heady. It seems to pour from the forest and wrap the village like mist. I can detect it on my man\'s skin, the way your perfume clings to my shirts. The bottle you sent me two years ago is empty. I forgot to tell you. Please send me a new one if you can spare it from your stock.

You asked me what did I learn here in America, and I have no doubt you expect me to give you a detailed list of the skills I\'ve acquired. For several minutes, Snape, I intended to do just that. Then it occurred to me – oh, how cliché – that the most important things I learned, the most important skills I have acquired, are not the brewing methods of certain potions and not the casting of certain spells.

The eighteen months have been so hazy I can barely remember them. I have been so lost, Snape. I have been so tired. I remember days being dragged, floating, having no body, only the pain my body served to engulf. I would feel the air stagnating underneath my ribcage, and my heart beating wildly. Nothing more. Sometimes a sense of my body would return – of my head resting on cold flagstones. Of being cold. Missing you; missing me. And I would be afraid, though I would not think of it. Wouldn\'t want to think of it.

Now, however… I can simply lie here, with the sun glittering amongst the raindrops, and I am… this is not acceptance, you see. There is no mental process involved in my sense of complacency. I don\'t feel whole. I don\'t tell myself that I have abandoned my search of mental wholeness as there\'s no such thing. But something in me is able to take pleasure in simply being here. Something in me is able to absorb the scent of ozone and feel exultation and cry.

You were right to assume I keep corresponding with Harry and Ron. Mainly with Harry, as Ron is hardly the type to invest time and effort in writing letters. Harry keeps asking about you, did you know that? He seems to take an interest in what happens to you. Yes, I can already hear your \"The Boy Who Lived to Collect Stray Animals\" speech. Please spare me this one.

It is about bloody time you introduced the cottage to the twenty first century. The word \"Muggle\" does sting, now doesn\'t it? Nevertheless, I hope you do realize that no matter what you do, you would always be able to do magic. I believe that if you gave it a moment\'s thought, you\'d realize that in a way, many wizards are cable of nothing more than some pitiable incantations. They\'re brandishing their wands, drawing whatever magic they are able to draw, manipulating it in the best way they know and using it for their own selfish purposes. You, however, are a true magician. When you call, the earth moves under your feet, and your willpower is enough to move mountains. You can brew me a sun-screen lotion without using a wand and live as a Muggle even though you were born a wizard. You spied after Voldemort for years and outlived him, and saved me so I could save myself.

I can imagine your expression when reading this. Sulk all you want. I know my sentimentality intimidates you. It no longer intimidates me. I am done being scared of myself.

Please give Professor McGonagall my love and pet Crookshanks for me.

I love you dearly,
Hermione.


~*~


13 June
Oxfordshire

Where are you? I will send the little rented owl away with this letter, knowing it will return unopened, as have all my letters this past month. Still, it is my message in a bottle; the vain hope that one perfect cast upon the vast ocean will somehow reach you, the one person in six billion in whom I have the least interest. Well, perhaps there are three people in six billion -- Minerva, Flitwick, and you. Lucius has never turned up, though I had expected he would.

I can only conclude that you have at last met someone to complete you, to fill that void, and therefore I am no longer of use. Pardon my wallowing in self-pity; the level in the Jameson\'s is shamefully low, but I believe I am completely entitled. Your melted-chocolate Peruvian wizard, perhaps, has soothed your soul.

You were right in your assessment of Potter -- he indeed has collected me, one of his strays. I grow weary of his weekly visits. He drinks too much of my whiskey and brings me brandy as a poor substitute. He has set me a task of brewing or at least researching a new potion that is intended to create \"a bubble of peace\" around a person, a bubble that negative energy cannot penetrate. It is not a shield, as those must be cast by strong magic; but it is intended to protect the mind of the drinker. It is destined for another stray of his, some haunted and haunting blue-eyed denizen of St. Mungo\'s who apparently may never leave the closed ward without the negative energy outside St. Mungo\'s rendering her catatonic. I ponder this potion frequently; I may require assistance to brew it, and Potter naturally has volunteered. I will permit him only if there becomes a magical aspect to the solution, which as you know, Muggle that I am, I cannot supply. It seems this inmate has charmed him; he speaks of her often.

Perhaps you are hurt somewhere, lying poisoned from some foul New World potion.

I have been waiting for the black rose to blossom again in order to distill more of your fragrance, but it sulks this year, expending energy in climbing to the roof of the cottage. Perhaps the upper limbs are receiving too much sun, and that is affecting its blossoming. I will consider pruning it, but unless I prune the truly old branches, there is a screaming in my mind that I cannot bear. There is more to the black rose than its strange fragrance and its love for the dim places. An odd sort of blood pulses in its stems, which is, I suppose, why it reminds me so much of you. Cut you, and you bleed. I cannot bear to clip the young branches; the welling of its dark sap is too much to observe.

If I thought you might actually open this letter, I might beg your indulgence in a reply, no matter how curt or hurtful. Send me a detailed list of the men you have fucked, their length and girth specifics, and how many times they made you come. I would surely curse you beyond the capabilities of my speech, were you to do so. Yet I would rejoice in the reply.

You told me once that I am a true magician. You told me once that I am your true north. The only truth I know about myself is this: I am a man; a man only, yet I want these other things to be true as well. I would move myself, the mountain, to set myself in your path. I long for you to climb me, to set your ice axe in me, to melt the glacier of my soul.

If I thought you might actually open this letter, I would not dare to ask the question that has been in my mind for months. But since I know that this letter will return like a boomerang that found no target, I will ask it here. The message for my bottle.

Is it time?

Yours alone,
Severus Snape