Proof of Life

When the Bough Breaks, Part I



The following morning Harry\'s time with Lily at the Burrow was cut short when Ginny returned from her Quidditch practice early. To Ginny\'s credit, she did her best to be friendly and cheerful, but neither her nor Harry\'s valiant attempts at normalcy and small talk seemed to be working this time.



She seemed tense, awkward, and the conversations ended almost as quickly as they began. Eventually, Harry stood up, gave Lily a tight parting hug, and promised to be back tomorrow, before taking his leave before the tension could become truly unbearable.



He Apparated back to Godric\'s Hollow and began to walk towards his house, barely noticing the cool drizzle of the autumn rain.



As he approached his home, he saw a small, lonely, but very familiar human figure at his doorstep, and ran towards her.



Marietta Edgecombe sat on his porch, curled into herself, her face buried in her knees. She had probably waited for him for a while, if the fact that she was drenched head to toe was any indication. Even the small knapsack at her feet appeared to be completely wet.



“Marietta?” Harry said softly.



Slowly, she lifted her tear-streaked face to look up. “Hey, Harry,” she said with an awkward smile. “Sorry to drop in on you like this, but...”



Harry nodded quickly, extending his hand to her. Her ice-cold fingers dug into his palm.



“Come in,” Harry said, leading her inside. “Mari, you\'re wet and frozen – have you forgotten all the warming and drying spells? And why didn\'t you come inside?”



“I knocked on the door, but nobody was home,” she said numbly, following Harry into his house.



“Well, you\'re in the house wards,” Harry said, trying not to sound too indignant. “All the Light Brigade members are. You can come and go anytime.”



“Huh. I didn\'t know that,” Marietta murmured sheepishly. “It didn\'t even occur to me to try the door. I guess I\'m not thinking clearly this morning...”



Quickly, he flicked his wand and summoned a warm dressing gown and a fresh towel out of the linen closet, and deposited the two items into Marietta\'s hand.



“Go have a hot shower and warm up,” he said firmly. “I\'ll make you some tea. Then we\'ll talk. Okay?”



“I\'m fine,” she denied instantly, but her teeth chattered while she spoke.



“Yeah, sure you’re fine, you look like a bloody Inferius. Do me a favour, and just get warm. Please?”



“All right,” she said meekly, and went upstairs, her wet feet leaving muddy tracks on the floor.



She took an incredibly long time to shower, while Harry made tea, privately wondering what on earth was going on with Marietta. When she returned, a good hour later, wrapped into the enormous dressing gown, she looked much warmer, and much calmer.



“Got any healing potions?” she asked in an almost normal tone of voice. “I really can\'t get sick now. Do you have Pepper-Up? Do you have the Wellness Draught?”



Harry pointed her to the kitchen cupboard: she inspected his supply, before quickly proceeding to drink the necessary potions one after another. Eventually, she sat down at the kitchen table, and accepted the mug of hot tea from Harry. A moment later, Tripod emerged from somewhere and proceeded to examine Marietta with open curiosity, arching his back up and rubbing himself against her legs. She smiled and leaned forward to give the cat an absent-minded pat on his back.



“What happened?” Harry asked finally. “What\'s wrong?”



Marietta shook her head and smirked with undisguised loathing. “I don\'t even know where to begin,” she said tiredly. “It\'s all so fucked. Last night, or rather, yesterday afternoon, everything hit the fan at St. Mungo\'s. I guess the Ministry is monitoring the Floo Network very closely, because my visits to your home didn\'t go unnoticed... so officially, they fired me for making home visits without a private practitioner\'s license...”



“They can\'t do that!” Harry snapped indignantly. “That\'s ridiculous!”



“The rule doesn\'t apply if there\'s a genuine medical emergency,” Marietta clarified, “but to provide ongoing medical care one needs to be licensed...”



“You could have just told them it was a social call...”



“Could have. Didn\'t,” Marietta cut him off abruptly. “Their minds were made up anyway. Arguing would have been just... embarrassing.”



Harry found his hand clenching into a fist. “All just because you helped Snape?” he clarified.



She nodded curtly. “My supervisor wasn\'t really happy about firing me, but it seemed like his hands were tied. Some pressure from the Ministry, I gather. But that wasn\'t really the worst of it,” she continued tiredly. “When I got home, my mother already knew... we had a fight – probably the worst fight ever. She couldn\'t fix this for me... not this time. She was so upset... upset that I lost my job, and sent my career down the drain... but I think what upset her the most was that I wasn\'t even sorry about any of it.... we kept fighting until probably four in the morning,” Marietta said with a dejected smile. “Then, I couldn\'t take it anymore... and I reckoned, maybe it\'s best if I just leave... So I left...”



“At four in the morning?” Harry muttered incredulously. “Why didn\'t you come here right away?”



“Well, I got on the night bus to take me to London. I should have just gone to Diagon Alley, really, but the Leaky Cauldron doesn\'t open until eleven, and I didn\'t want to knock on Hannah\'s door at five in the morning – for all I knew she was still asleep. I didn\'t feel like loitering in Muggle London, either... so I caught the train to Godric\'s Hollow... and then, you weren\'t home, I didn\'t have any money left to go back, so I just reckoned I\'d wait.” She sniffled slightly and almost childishly. “Ok, I guess it was stupid, in retrospect...”



“Why all the fuss with the Muggle buses and trains? And since when do you need the Leaky Cauldron to enter Diagon Alley - what\'s wrong with Apparating?” Harry demanded.



“Ah, well, here comes the best part,” she said unhappily. “They confiscated my wand. I\'m not allowed a wand for the next six months.”



“Fuck,” Harry muttered quietly. “First Neville is fired, then you...”



“Neville was fired from Hogwarts?” Marietta asked, shivering slightly. “Well, that... really sucks. I admit, I\'m surprised that Granger still has her job with the Ministry.”



“Surprised or disappointed?” Harry teased unhappily.



Marietta shrugged. “I really am not angry with her anymore, you know,” she said quietly, but sincerely. “I doubt we\'ll ever become bosom buddies or anything like that, but... I can\'t be angry with anyone who\'s trying to... work through this spectacular mess we\'re all in right now. Anyway,” she continued softly, wrapping the dressing gown tighter around herself. “I should probably go to Diagon Alley, but I\'m a bit tired... so... can I crash at your place until tomorrow? Tomorrow I\'ll go to Gringotts, get some money out, rent a room somewhere, and start looking for another job, I suppose...”



“That\'s the stupidest thing I\'ve ever heard you say,” Harry protested. “Why would you waste your savings on renting a place when you can stay here for as long as you need? Meanwhile, I\'ll talk to Percy, maybe he\'ll help you get your wand back... and as for another job, we\'ll ask around, all right? There are fifteen members in the Light Brigade, I\'m sure someone will have heard of a suitable job opening somewhere.”



“I don\'t want to impose...” Marietta started saying, but Harry waved her off impatiently. For the first time since his divorce from Ginny he felt an odd, unfamiliar, but extremely welcome sense of liberation and relief – relief that he no longer needed to justify himself to her after bringing a friend home and settling them in.



Across the table from him, Marietta looked like she was beginning to nod off. Harry smiled, walked up to her and gathered her into a friendly embrace, and to his surprise, she let him. He led her to the couch, and covered her with a quilted blanket. Tripod jumped onto the couch and curled up next to her. She wrapped her arm around the cat, and issued a single choked, soundless sob.



“Sorry,” she whispered. “I don\'t know what the fuck is wrong with me, but everything is so screwed up, and my mum...”



“I know you\'re upset that your mum is unhappy with you,” Harry said cautiously, “but... look.. you aren\'t fifteen anymore. We all have to cut the umbilical cord eventually. Or so I\'m told, anyway.”



“I know, I know,” Marietta said quickly. “But... I\'m still worried she\'ll lose her job because of me... you know how the Ministry is... if they don\'t like something, they go after your family...”



“It\'s okay,” Harry said firmly, sitting on the couch next to her, and giving her shoulder a firm squeeze. “We\'ll work it all out. It\'ll get better.” He ran his hand over her damp hair in a single cautious comforting motion. Marietta lifted herself on her elbow and buried her face in his lap, sniffling quietly and clinging to him as if he was her last grip on sanity.



She drifted off to sleep shortly afterwards, with Harry\'s hand still on her head. Suddenly, it occurred to Harry that he should have sent her to his bedroom, but by the time he realized that, Marietta was already sound asleep and he decided not to wake her.



Harry sighed and cast a glance at the clock above the Floo. Another couple of hours, he thought, and he could go to the Leaky Cauldron to pick up Severus. It was a blissfully comforting thought amidst all the madness of the wizarding world, and Harry held on to it as he drifted off to sleep, listening to Marietta\'s even breathing, and Tripod\'s almost mechanical purring.



~ * ~



“All right, let\'s see what you\'ve got,” Neville said brightly, reaching for Severus\' notebook. “A brand new spell, you say?”



“Yes,” Severus confirmed, feeling reasonably confident that, in spite of the sleep deprivation and constant fatigue, he was finally onto something very important. “I believe this spell will allow the tissue from the Silver Usnea to be grafted into a stem of Snow Angelica without being rejected by the rootstock...”



Neville studied the entry in Severus\' notebook for a few long minutes, following the details of the newly constructed spell. Severus watched him with undivided attention, suddenly feeling like a nervous schoolchild again, presenting his first assignment to a teacher.



“Interesting,” Neville said finally. “It\'s a remarkable spell. Definitely one of a kind.”



Severus scowled at once, sensing a roundabout putdown, and beginning to realize that he may not have made as much progress as he had hoped. With a tight nod, he urged Neville to continue.



“All right, well, first things first - it\'s a very creative spell. I\'ve never seen anything quite like it. It will definitely allow you to place the Silver Usnea material right into the Snow Angelica without the former being rejected. The spell will perfectly preserve the Silver Usnea organic matter, with all of its magical properties, within the rootstock indefinitely... for that matter, you probably won\'t even be able to detect that it\'s there...” Neville gave a tiny, faintly apologetic smile before continuing. “Unfortunately, it won\'t help us where grafting is concerned, because the tissues of the two plants will not interact with each other. But that said, the spell is a stroke of genius in its own right; it seems to be a new kind of dynamic stasis field, and it\'s definitely worth a scientific paper of its own...”



Severus stared ahead blankly, utterly mortified by his error, and even more so, by the cheerful, encouraging smile on Neville\'s face, as the young man continued to talk excitedly, still gushing over the creativity of the utterly useless spell.



Severus could feel the vein on his left temple beginning to throb, and his hand involuntarily clenched into a fist. He never used to be like that – making idiotic mistakes, not managing to grasp the simplest concepts, failing at a subject that wasn\'t even particularly challenging... Neville\'s enthusiastic praise of the bloody spell seemed only to add insult to injury, giving Severus the distinct impression that the young man was simply humouring him in the attempt to soften the blow as much as possible.



“Very well,” Severus said stiffly, eager to end the conversation as soon as possible. He stood up abruptly, and grabbed the notebook from Neville. “I\'m sorry for wasting your time, Longbottom. I believe we\'re done for the day. Excuse me.”



He turned around and walked towards the Floo.



“Hold on – look, I didn\'t mean it like that, I\'m sorry -” Neville started saying, but Severus didn\'t look back. Severus\' hand shook slightly – from anger or embarrassment, he couldn\'t tell – when he tossed a handful of Floo powder into the hearth and departed back to Harry\'s house.



The last thing he heard was another apology from Longbottom, which only irritated him even more.



~ * ~



When Severus emerged in the living room of Harry\'s home, he was met with the sight of Harry sound asleep in a sitting position on the couch. Marietta Edgecombe, wearing a thick dressing gown that appeared to be one of Harry\'s, was also asleep, her bare feet resting against Tripod\'s side, and her face buried in Harry\'s lap. Harry\'s hand was still entwined in the young woman\'s hair. Luckily, neither woke when Severus made his appearance.



The irritation he felt a minute ago during his strained exchange with Longbottom quickly gave way to a wave of helpless, debilitating rage, as Severus stared silently at the two young people, both asleep in that intimate position.



Severus knew of course that it was only a matter of time until Harry began dating, and established another long-term relationship with a suitable partner, and he knew that Marietta was a lovely person... but seeing her like this, occupying the exact same spot he himself used to a few months ago, in exactly the same way, was absolutely and utterly unbearable.



Irrational, Severus thought quickly, making a desperate attempt to gain control of his runaway emotions. Certainly, almost half a year following Ginny\'s rather dramatic departure, Potter was entitled to some personal happiness, but.... bloody hell! Did Potter really need to be happy right here, in the living room?



Giving up on rationality, Severus simply gritted his teeth, and walked quietly into the kitchen. He opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of Firewhisky that was almost full. Gripping it tightly in his hand, Severus headed downstairs. To his surprise, Tripod jumped off the couch and followed Severus into his study.



“I doubt I\'ll be very good company today,” Severus informed him softly. “Maybe you should leave.”



Tripod had no intention of leaving. He jumped onto Severus\' desk and stretched on top of a heap of parchments, kneading the rough edges of the papers with his claws before making himself fully comfortable.



“Suit yourself,” Severus muttered, shutting the door quietly and sitting down at the desk. He stared at the bottle with a wry smile, before bringing it to his lips and taking a single sip. It burned his mouth and hit his empty stomach a moment later.



Drinking alone was a dreadfully depressing affair, but it still seemed preferable to pacing aimlessly like a caged animal, or growling at no-one in particular with the bitter jealousy of an old dog angry about a new addition to the family.



Severus looked around the walls of the study, feeling more confined than comforted by his surroundings. For a few brief moments, he found himself longing for a simple walk through the streets alone, instead of being stuck – trapped – in Potter\'s home, where everything – from books on Potions and Herbology, to Marietta, sound asleep on the couch in the living room – reminded Severus of the grotesque abnormality of his own life.



Severus sighed slightly, shook his head in disgust and brought the bottle to his lips one more time, simply hoping to be left alone for the rest of the day.



To Be Continued...