The Man Who Came In From The Cold

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. This story is rated T.

Summary: The war has carried on well past Harry Potter’s 7th Year. Snape is on the run from Voldemort and the Ministry of Magic, both of whom will stop at nothing to silence him. He finds unexpected refuge in the most unlikely of places.

The Man Who Came In from the Cold

Chapter 006: Consequences and Crossroads

D’Arcy was awaked by his manservant, Mr. Hill, as soon as he happened across Snape’s note in the kitchen.

‘Gone? But that’s madness – this weather will kill him!’ D’Arcy said frantically as he read the letter aloud in bed.

Hill looked around the room discreetly. It was very sad indeed when a man and wife not only slept in separate bedrooms, but in different parts of the house. If it were two centuries ago that would have been the norm. But this was different – in every possible way Elizabeth D’Arcy made it plain that she rejected the man she had married.

‘I took the liberty of looking outside, Sir. The storm has eliminated any sign of the direction he traveled.’

‘Thank you, Hill. You’re a good man – that’s more than I could have expected from anyone. I just don’t understand it… Why subject himself to that when he can be comfortable? He has no friends here, no connections and he definitely does not have the means to start a new life! I offered my help. Why in God’s name would he reject it?’

The manservant looked at his master.

‘May I speak plainly, Sir.’

‘Hill, the day that you do not speak plainly I will take it as an impending sign of the Apocalypse,’ D’Arcy laughed as he took his bathrobe from Hill and sat at the small table in the room which had been laid out with a hot pot of coffee and the morning papers.

‘Sir, the man struck me as very proud and also…’

‘Also…?’

D’Arcy poured Hill a cup of coffee and fixed it as he knew his manservant liked it. He gestured for him to sit and gave him his undivided attention.

‘He also struck me as a man with a past, Sir. The kind of past that can keep a man on the edges of society. Whatever he left behind, I would say it is not friends or family or even a broken heart. Life, I think, has not been good to him.’

D’Arcy sighed and took a draught of his coffee.

‘I agree. I don’t think he has ever had a reason to trust anyone; therefore it stands to reason that he could not allow himself to trust me. But to die of cold because of that distrust…’

The farmer shook his head and ran a hand through his curls.

‘It wasn’t just that Hill. It was the situation between Mrs. D’Arcy and myself. She, well… she loathed the man on sight. He did nothing to hurt or disrespect her even though he had every right to take offense – she treated him abominably, as she does me… as she does us all. He is not the most pleasant of men nor is he blessed with an agreeable disposition – but that does not warrant disrespecting him. He was here, in my home, at my insistence. She can take out her frustrations on me; but to treat him as she did…

The manservant said nothing and looked at his Master with the gravest of airs.

‘Come now, Hill; don’t be shy! Had I listened to your concerns about dear Elizabeth, my life might have well been different! Yourself and Emma – you set a fine example of what a relationship ought to be…Seeing the two of you together – you always did remind me of my parents…’

‘I won’t pretend to have all the answers, Sir. But the situation between yourself and Mrs. D’Arcy – it drives people away. Private matters ought not to be public and yet they are. There was a time when you were not so open and your heart not laid bare to us all. But there it is… Emma and I are fortunate, I suppose, in that we understand each other so well and that we complement each other in ways that are important. We talk and take the time to hear each other out. She is my support and I am hers. Our financial concerns we meet together. Oh, I have always said that she does not have to work unless she wants to, but my Emma is not afraid to work for the things she wants and so that we and the children can make nice homes for ourselves… She does not leave me to take care of all the material wants of our family. She helps me, Sir. ’

‘You’re a fine man, Hill. And Emma is a gem. You are very lucky, you know. But it’s not a matter of luck. You made your choice and supported it. Had I not bowed to certain pressures…’ D’Arcy put down his coffee cup and frowned. ‘I did what others thought I should do given my position, with no thought to my own happiness.’

Hill paused before speaking, wanting to be careful not to overstep the mark.

‘You do have choices, Sir. And opting not to choose is a choice in itself. I could have married a very different kind of woman, had a life nearer to that of the gentry given my own background. I made my choice. And though there are times when I have wished that we had a better sort of life, I cannot complain about what we really do have. Emma, Sir; she is an angel. It is natural for a man to want to have a comfortable life for the woman he loves.’

D’Arcy smiled faintly as another cup of coffee was prepared for him.

‘Are you happy here, Hill? Because if you are not I will do what I can to…’

‘Oh, don’t trouble yourself Mr. D’Arcy! We couldn’t be happier anywhere else on the island. You have been the best possible Master and all your tenants think so too! We all have a good life and want for nothing. There aren’t many people in service or working a tenancy anywhere that could say that genuinely!’

‘I think that all people deserve comfort and happiness, regardless of their station in life. My father believed it and his father before him. We all need each other for various reasons. And truth be told, I firmly believe that an important part of the success that we on the estate enjoy is because good relationships between us all. God help me – to have the problems that Richelieu and some of the others have… No, a broken heart is preferable. It’s not the end of the world…’

‘It is only if you chose to live with it, Sir, and not pursue true happiness.’

D’Arcy tapped his cup gently with a finger as he looked out his windows.

‘There is no possible way to find Ravenscroft in this; and you and the others should not be out either.’

Hill started to speak but D’Arcy silenced him.

‘Don’t worry about wages, Hill. They will be paid in full.’

‘Begging your pardon, Sir; but Mrs. D’Arcy said…’

‘She has never cared to be the Mistress of the estate and she does not pay your wages – I do! I managed well enough before I was married and I daresay I will again! You will be paid in full.’

Hill nodded slightly at his Master and waited.

‘It’s been too long…’ D’Arcy murmured. ‘I can’t go on like this. Let her go back to England…’

He looked outside again and a let out a deep sigh.

‘Our paths will cross again if he survives this, of that at least I am sure. God be with him, wherever he is…’

xxxOOOxxx

Snape awoke to the sound of heavy winds battering his hiding place. Despite the fact that it seemed a relatively new and sound structure, the coldness still seeped through here and there. His clothes were soaking wet and he shivered with cold. His throat hurt and coughed hard for several minutes, unable to stop. He panicked for a moment after it ceased, wondering if he’d given himself away. But it was quiet save for the noises of the animals below.

He was tired, too tired. Not caring to eat and with no incentive to move, once again he simply passed out.

xxxOOOxxx

He forced himself out of the alcove. Confining himself to such a tight space was probably not the best thing he could do for himself. He wasn’t feeling that well and didn’t have the means to do anything to help himself; that vexed him more than anything. Everything seemed to have turned against him because of his damnable pride and personal demons.

He was going to die here. There was no doubt about it; this was going to kill him. His would be such an ignoble death…to die of cold – and on the run like some common criminal. He was no vagabond, but that is what they would make him out to be.

No one would ever know that he wasn’t the evil monster that many claimed he was.

xxxOOOxxx

Christiane Barthélémy awoke to the sound of the storm which seemed to have intensified. She hit the snooze alarm on her clock radio and closed her eyes to the reality outside her front door. After 10 minutes the alarm went off again, and again she slammed her hand down on the snooze alarm. She did this several times thereafter and finally looked at the time.

‘Merde,’ she groaned. ‘Merde, merde, MERDE!’

She had overslept by almost two hours. It didn’t matter how bad it was outside, there was still plenty of work to do. But God Almighty, how good her bed felt! She forced herself to get up and get started. There wouldn’t be time for breakfast now, she needed to stick to the timetable she’d set and that was ruined yet again because really, she had too much to do and not enough time for everything.

Christiane had a quick shower and dressed; and then hurled herself out into the storm.

xxxOOOxxx

“MOOOOOOO!”

‘Alright Madam, I know I’m late!’ Christiane snapped in Jèrriais as she stepped into the barn and turned one of the lights in the center.

It never ceased to amaze her how quiet it could be as she approached, but the minute she was inside every living creature cried for her attention. Of course these days she almost always managed to be late, and cows needing to be milked didn’t care about her need for a bit of a lie-in.

She looked at all six of the cows, then her two horses and finally the chickens who were protesting mightily at being indoors. As always they’d wandered in from their coop, contained in a smaller structure accessible by means of a small connecting hallway. She was so tired the night before she probably didn’t lock it properly. It wasn’t the first time and probably wouldn’t be the last.

‘You should be used to it by now,’ she scolded them before cleaning out their home and putting down fresh straw, seed and water.

She moved back into the main part of the barn after securing the coop and began cleaning up after the cows. Three hours worth of work was done and yet she hadn’t really made a dent in everything she should needed to stay on top of things.

Christiane wanted more time for herself and the art business she hoped to get up and running, but it was either the farm or working in retail. The last thing she wanted to be doing was working as a shop girl again – she had enough of that after leaving school. What she needed was help, but she couldn’t afford to pay much and there wasn’t anyone who could work the hours she needed but at the small wage she could manage from the profits after the expenses were taken care of. The expenses – something else that needed looking at. She always had been bad with bookkeeping and it was costing her no doubt.

CREAK!

She stood still and looked around.

SCRAPE!

‘I must be tired – too damn tired,’ she said aloud. ‘Nobody in their right mind would be out in this weather. Just the wind…’

Still, something about the noises scared her and she found herself turning on the rest of the lights. The cows still had to be milked and the horses needed mucking out. She sighed, threw down her pitchfork and went back to the house.

The rest of the work could wait until after lunch.

xxxOOOxxx

Snape looked at the woman below through blurry eyes. Merlin’s beard, what was wrong with him? Was that him that made those noises? He rolled onto his back and tried to take a deep breath. He was sweating like a pig and really didn’t feel well. His clothes hadn’t dried. There was a strange odor and he sniffed.

He’d wet himself and from the looks of things he’d vomited at some point.

He’d gone from comfort to this. But what else could he do with little money and no connections? He could not impose himself on anyone. He would not put himself in a position where he owed them anything. But he owed D’Arcy as sure as he owed Dumbledore…

Dumbledore…

Would the gentleman farmer be so obliging and accepting of one as low as him if he knew what he really was, if he knew that he was a murder? The former professor had lost count after his soul split in two and then quadrupled. There were those dead by his wand and then there were those who had lost their lives through his complicity with killers more cold-blooded and bloodthirsty than he had been. A Death Eater only became so through a kill. No matter what Dumbledore said to justify Snape’s presence, when those that knew of his double life looked at him they saw a man already damned to that fictitious Muggle Hell.

They had the sense enough to know what he had done to earn his mark and mask.

It was why they believed his was the action that put the Headmaster in St. Mungo’s Critical Care Unit. The fools; they didn’t know the half of what Dumbledore had doing in the run up to that night on top of the Astronomy Tower at the school. Even Potter, with all he believed he knew from the Headmaster, was so unbelievably ignorant of the truth…the truth that had been right in front of his eyes and everyone else’s all along.

Snape turned it over and over in his feverish head. It would be so easy to go out of doors and just go to sleep… But he was a Slytherin – and stereotypically wanted to save his own neck. He wanted his name cleared and he wanted to be free – truly free. He would never set foot in Hogwarts again, of that he had no doubt. But he wanted to not have to look over his shoulder or worry about the day when his past would come back to haunt him.

For the first time in his sad, miserable life – he wanted to be someone other than who he really was.

xxxOOOxxx

He needed to go to the bathroom and he couldn’t do it up in the loft. It was bad enough that he’d wet himself, but at least it was in the straw. She still had cleaning to do; he could toss it in the horse stalls and she’d be none the wiser.

Snape sat up and tried to ignore the throbbing in his head. He gathered the incriminating straw soaked with his urine and pushed it over the edge of the loft. He licked his lips rapidly. They were chapped and split. He was thirsty and drank the last bit of water he had left. He was becoming dehydrated from losing so much body fluid and not replacing it.

With a groan he pushed himself up and made his way over to the stairs. He had to stop halfway down and get himself together. She was coming back… he was fairly sure that she was coming back.

He’d have to clean up now – she’d left this part of the place fairly tidy…

He hugged the wall as he made his way down. The light was hurting his eyes and they began to sting. A round of coughing seized his body like a vise as he swept the offending straw back towards the horse’s stall. He stopped momentarily, caught up in a fit of wheezing and then started coughing again.

‘WHO ARE YOU AND WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU ARE DOING!’

Snape dropped the broom with a jolt and turned around. He blinked through the curtains of hair obscuring his vision and then brushed it back with a shaky hand.

He opened his mouth to speak…

…and fainted.

xxxOOOxxx

He slept fitfully, tormented by dreams of his worst memories…

His mother cowering from his father’s acid tongue followed by crippling blows; him cowering from his father’s acid tongue and heavy black belt with the sharp buckle; James Potter and Sirius Black tormenting him by turning him upside down and taking off his underwear in their 5th Year at Hogwarts; the night he was initiated into the Death Eaters; the first time he faced the wrath of the Dark Lord; the night he had to return to the Dark Lord’s side after living almost 13 years without him; the moment he realised that Lucius Malfoy was not the friend he had wanted to Snape to believe he was; Harry Potter and Ron Weasley talking about how much everyone hated him; Sirius Black calling him ‘Snivellus’ during Order meetings; Remus Lupin sitting by and saying nothing as a teenager and as an adult when Snape was abused by those the werewolf considered friends; almost being killed by Lupin in his transformed state when they were at school with Potter Sr. and Black; and the night he finally got the courage to tell Lily Evans he loved her and she rejected him…

The sour times that constituted his life flooded to the surface.

He was dead and this was his Hell – one that he deserved…

xxxOOOxxx

Christiane stood above her guest (for that is what he was in her mind), wiping down his body with an herbal remedy that would help draw out the toxins and bring his fever down. There was no way she could get a doctor out here in this weather – and all things considered it was probably best not to. Jerri was not immune to gossip, especially where new arrivals were concerned. Lord knows she’d been the subject of too much of it herself in the Parish over the years.

It had been no mean feat to get him from the barn to the house, but she’d managed well enough.

Where there was the will, there was always a way, someone had told her once.

It hadn’t been too much to clean him up; besides, it wasn’t like he had anything she hadn’t seen before…

xxxOOOxxx

Christiane walked into the room carrying a large bathing bowl filled with soapy hot water to clean her guest again. It had been just over four days of him coming in and out of consciousness, but at least his fever had finally broken. She had spent all day every day looking after him when she was not tending to the responsibilities of the farm. He was cleaned twice a day and his hair was brushed (lord knows it needed it). She cleaned up after his messes when then didn’t make it to the bathroom in time, cleaned up his vomiting all over himself in the bed – she’d done all a woman could do to look after a man as he’d needed.

She knew women that wouldn’t condescend to wipe their own husband’s derriere when such sickness struck them down. And yet she had a feeling that had he been conscious, she wouldn’t have been allowed anywhere near him and certainly not so intimately.

She looked at him closely in the lamplight; he was beginning to stir slightly.

‘Ahh – so Sleeping Beauty is finally awake…’ she said in Jèrriais with a smile as he blinked his crusty eyes.

She reached over to the lamp and adjusted the brightness of the light so that it was dim.

‘Is that better?’ she asked as she took one of his hands in her and began to wash it with the cloth.

‘Keep your hands OFF ME!’ Snape squeaked as he snatched it back.

‘Ah, so I was right – you won’t allow anyone to get anywhere near you, eh?’

He said nothing and glared at her.

‘Listen – friend – you are in my house, in my bed and you don’t have it in you to even get to the toilet and use it without my help. At the minute I can kick your arse quite easily so don’t push it, you won’t win!’

‘What? Just who do you think you are!’ Snape croaked in a voice like sandpaper before swearing at her in Jèrriais.

He only managed to cough so hard that he vomited. Fortunately his caretaker was quick and had shoved a small bucket under his chin.

Christiane took his hand in hers again. The man frowned sourly, but he didn’t take it away.

‘You could have died – and you would have definitely if you hadn’t come down out of my loft or if I had decided to leave you up there to rot,’ she said as she cleaned his left hand and arm.

She then leaned over and did his right, ignoring the bloodshot black eyes that bore into her.

‘I asked you a question!’ Snape squeaked before falling into another spastic round of coughing.

Again the bucket was shoved under his chin. Once he finished with it, she handed him a glass of water flavoured with mint to rinse out his mouth. He handed her the glass and gave her a dirty look.

‘If anyone has the right to some answers, it’s me – don’t you think?’ Christiane said lightly as she attacked his face with the washcloth. ‘I think I have a right to know the name of the man warming up my bed for me…’

Snape sank back into the pillows, clearly exhausted from the effort of fighting her.

‘How do you know I am not some deranged, axe-wielding murderer?’ he spat.

‘How do you know I’m not some mental patient slipping mint-flavoured poison in your drink?’ Christiane chirruped.

Snape opened his mouth wordlessly and then snapped it shut.

‘Right – now that we cleared that up…’ she said sitting on the edge of the bed. ‘All I am asking for is your name.’

‘Ravenscroft, Sebastian Ravenscroft…’

‘Barthélémy, Christiane Barthélémy…’

She picked up his hand, put it in hers and shook it.

‘Now – think you’re up for trying a bit of broth and toast?’

Snape nodded his agreement slowly and he closed his eyes.

‘Miss Barthélémy?’ he croaked.

‘Yes?’

‘Why?’

‘Why what?’

‘Why are you doing this?’

‘I’m not your enemy, Mr. Ravenscroft; don’t make me out to be.’

‘No one does anything for nothing…’

‘Would you have rather that I left you out there to die?’

Snape took a deep breath, but again didn’t answer right away.

‘I don’t have much to give you…’ he said finally.

‘I ask nothing and you owe me as much,’ Christiane said gently.

Snape hoped that in his weakened state his face did not betray what he was thinking.

‘Mr. Ravenscroft: if your being here was a problem for me, take my word for it; I would have had you taken away the moment I caught you in my barn. You are very sick and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t give you the help you so obviously need!’

‘I don’t need your pity!’

Christiane ran a hand frustratedly through her hair. This was proving to be far more difficult than she’d imagined. Goddamn his insufferable pride! She walked back over to the bed and sat down after shoving him over a bit.

‘Everybody needs somebody sometimes, right? I am happy to do what I can until you are strong enough to walk out of here on your own. And if that’s what you decide to do I won’t stop you… But I do hope that you will at least show me some consideration and say goodbye.’

‘Of course I’ll go,’ Snape muttered. ‘I have no reason to inconvenience you further than I already have…’

‘I really don’t see any point in arguing about this. The weather is horrendous and there is no way you can survive out there. I don’t mind having you here and maybe I am stupid – but Jerri is not the kind of place that attracts criminals or even breeds them; it’s not the rest of the world.’

‘No – I rather suppose it isn’t…’

‘Look, why don’t you get some rest. We can have the broth and toast for our dinner.’ Christiane said as she left the room

Once she was gone, Snape pulled the covers tight around himself. But as he drifted off to sleep he began to wonder – just how had she managed to get him up off the floor and to her house in such dismal conditions?

‘Where there is the will, there is always a way,’ he murmured sleepily to himself. ‘And she is definitely strong-willed…’

Uneasy about this latest change in his circumstances and the multitude of questions racing through his head about his latest saviour, he finally allowed himself to sleep. He would address his concerns when the time was right.