Dark Gods In The Blood
Chapter Seven
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A/N: None for this
chapter. Thanks for reading.
Summary: A wandering
student comes home, a broken man pays his penance, and a gruesome murder is
both more and less than it seems. Some
paths to self-discovery have more twists and turns than others.
Rating: R, for
intermittent dark themes, violence, and language
Disclaimer: Nothing
you read here (save the plot and bits of the text itself) belongs to me.
property of JK Rowling and Warner Bros. (and someone else, probably, but not
me). All chapter headings are properly
credited to their sources.
Dark Gods in the Blood
by: Hayseed (
Chapter Seven
pan>pan>
‘In
the interior you will no doubt meet Mr. Kurtz.’ On my
first class agent;
my disappointment at this information, he added
slowly,
laying down his pen, ‘He is a very remarkable
person ... ’
-- Joseph Conrad, Heart of
Darkness
Ron couldn’t believe that she’d gone to see Snape again
strange enough the first time, but the second time was completely inexplicable.
Apparently he’d yelled at her, which had caused his therapist to go
into a frenzy and ask Hermione to help him figure out Snape.
talk to Snape again.
While Ron’s opinion as to the general sanity of the entire female
gender had shifted minutely through the years, he was still convinced that
Hermione Granger at least was completely ‘round the bend.
He pulled his mind back to reality long enough to register the fact
that baby Alice was currently shoving a box under his nose with a pout on her
little face. “Piggy!” she cried, giving
the bright box a wave for good measure.
“Watch piggy, Unca Ron!”
Sighing, he plucked the box out of her chubby fingers, wincing at the
slick feel of what Harry said the Muggles called ‘plastic.’
technologies that Harry (and probably Hermione, too, although Ron had never
asked outright) was accustomed to. He
also didn’t understand why Harry had thought it necessary to bring his children
up with a foot in both worlds, living in a Muggle-built home just outside of a
town that was less than half wizarding.
Nicholas attended a Muggle school, even.
“For culture,” Harry had always said when Ron made some distasteful
gesture toward whatever nuggluggle toy Harry brought home.
office, a machine that washed clothes for Françoise that she spent more time
complaining about than actually using.
The latest of Harry’s mad Muggle purchases had been a toy of some sort
that had Nicholas thoroughly excited. A
‘station-player’ or some such nonsense.
Ron knew it hooked into the television and Nicholas could play games
with it, and that was about as far as it went.
Harry had spent literal hours with his son, battling animated monsters
and laughing at the fun of it.
And so it was that he regarded the shiny disk that Alice wanted him to
put into the machine that made talking pictures with nothing short of abject
fear. He finally worried it out of its
case, realizing in the last few moments that if he pushed a button, the disk
released itself. Unfortunately, though,
Ron could not immediately see how he was to put it into the machine.
disk in from last time (shiny side down, Harry had said with laughter in his
tone), but it was nowhere to be found on the machine’s front.
<
Ron sighed, knowing he was bested.
“Hey, Nicholas?” he called, turning toward the staircase.
After a few painful moments, the boy appeared on the stairs, giving Ron
a quizzical look.
“The PVC machine,” he explained.
“The one that makes movies. Do
you know how to work it? Alice wants to
watch that one about the pig she likes so much. You know ... Babe.”
Ron’s surprised hand. He deftly punched
a few buttons on the front of the machine, causing it to spit out the tray Ron
recalled, and inserted the disk, pushing a few more buttons for good measure.
the machine and was halfway up the stairs again before it occurred to Ron to
call out.
“D’you want to watch it with her?” he asked hurriedly.
laundry as well and I can’t be in two places at once.”
“Pig!” Alice shouted as the screen flashed up some ridiculously singing
mice. Nicholas appeared to be engaged
in a mental debate. “Piggy, Nic’las!”
she said, crawling up the stairs to tug at her brother’s shirttail.
With a decidedly reluctant look, he made his way back down the stairs,
sister carefully in tow. Once they were
seated on the sofa, quietly watching the television, Ron slipped out of the
room and out the back door.
He and Nicholas had never gotten along spectacularly.
Nicholas’, of course. There was just
something about the boy, always had been.
Something ... disconcerting.
Sometimes he had a way of looking right through you, as if he could see
just how insignificant you were. It was
difficult to befriend that.
That didn’t mean Ron hadn’t tried to overcome his disinclination.
try and get along with Nicholas. And
sometimes it worked. Sometimes they
could pretend. But with Harry out of
the picture, without the potential for the hurt that he always thought Harry
would feel if he realized his best friend and his son did not get along, Ron
didn’t feel the need to pretend that Nicholas’ glares weren’t disconcerting.
the child alone. His latest goal was to
keep his life as pleasant as possible in the face of his grief, after all, and
glowering seven-year-olds just weren’t part of that picture.
Of course, if pushed, Ron would have to admit that this desire
unfortunately included the inclusion of one rather cheerful, slightly cynical
young man whose life had become so entwined with Ron’s own that he found
himself unable to leave the fellow’s widow and children alone, spending day after
day, week after week, with them. On the
particularly bad days, Ron could not bring himself to believe that Harry wasn’t
at work. That he wouldn’t come
stumbling in, late, laughing and bearing prototypes of his latest creations to
put into his kids’ outstretched hands.
Nicholas’ glares were, if nothing else, a good reminder to Ron that
this was not going to happen. That
Harry was gone.
Dead.
Harry was dead.
He still had not repeated it enough.
Harry’s ghost still flickered through his mind, invading his thoughts,
pervading his dreams, waking and sleeping.
It sat on Nicholas’ features, on Alice’s ... hell, even on Françoise’s.
wife -- not just Françoise
Maybe if he stayed long enough, maybe if he repeated his mantra enough,
Harry would stay dead. Harry’s face
would rest in Ron’s mind and not on his son’s brow. Françoise’s smile would once again reach her eyes and not just
sit on her face with nowhere to go.
With a soft snort, Ron began unpinning a sheet from the clothesline and
folding it awkwardly. He had no place
to be questioning Hermione’s motives, then.
If he was staying with the Potters to kill a man that had died more than
a month ago, he had no right to ask Hermione why she felt the urge to visit
Snape not once, but twice.
But still ...
Snape used to make her cry, Ron remembered. Before he knew what Snape was, just the mention of the man’s name
used to make his temper simmer. All he
thought of were the tears coursing down his friend’s face as the man snapped at
her one too many times, said one too many unforgivable things.
All through Hogwarts, if asked, Ron would have said that Snape may have
enjoyed tormenting Harry Potter the most, but Hermione Granger was an
unfortunately close second.
And she went to visit him in the loony bin. When no one else apparently would.
It boggled the mind.
Of course, Ron told himself as he finished the bedclothes and began
folding one of Nicholas’ Muggle t-shirts, Snape rather boggled the mind himself.
What was it he heard people say?
A puzzle wrapped in an enigma.
Severus Snape made children cry, had the temperament of a rabid,
starving weasel, and the all the appeal of a train wreck.
buildings, seemed to be inhumanly loyal to Albus Dumbledore and the Order of
the Phoenix, and in general sacrificed himself continually on the altar of
Good, until it had consumed him completely.
No wonder he went nutters.
Ron began pulling Françoise’s unmentionables off the clothesline,
quickly dropping them, unfolded, into a separate basket he’d grabbed just for
this purpose. He would do anything for
Harry’s widow ... except fold her knickers.
That was an issue she could
handle on her own, not to mention one that Ron didn’t want to consider, even
for a second.
Pushing this thought out of his head as quickly as he could, his
previous musings inevitably returned.
/spa/span>
There was one thing he hadn’t told Hermione about Snape.
himself.
Harry didn’t know. Harry
wouldn’t have understood. He couldn’t
make his peace with Snape like Ron could -- he hadn’t seen the man in action,
wand held outstretched, throwing curses like one possessed, fighting -- always
fighting -- the Enemy. The Death
Eaters.
Snape had come to see Ron in the hospital one day.
He’d been at St. Mungo’s for so long.
The doctors searched and searched for an answer to his injury.
horrible tastes. They kept him in St.
Mungo’s for more than three weeks. Monitoring
But Snape showed up one day.<
He must have asked Dumbledore about it.es"> Harry hadn’t been able to come and see Ron that day, and his
mother was off, visiting Bill and his newest son. Ron was all alone.
And then Snape was there, standing unbelievably awkwardly in the
doorway, nose wrinkled at the medicinal smell that permeated St. Mungo’s from
basement to attic. “Weasley,” he’d
said, with an even more uncomfortable
nod.
Ron hadn’t believed, until that exact moment, that the self-assured,
temperamental Snape could be
awkward. “Professor Snape,” he’d
replied cautiously.
His head was bandaged that day -- the charm one of the nurses had been
instructed to cast had left his eye oozing blood disturbingly, andit wit was
wrapped up, in hopes of staunching the slow, steady flow.
Snape approaching the bed, moving jerkily, as if under the control of a
puppeteer. He did not speak.
“How are you, sir?” Ron remembered himself saying inanely.
weather as of late, and ...” He also
recalled trailing off at the admittedly hazy view of Snape’s withering look.
“I’m not a professor any more,” he said abruptly.
“May I asat yat you are up to
these days, then?”
“You may not,” Snape retorted sharply.
Ron remembered he looked rather tired.
“You are recovering, Weasley?”
Blinking at the subject change, Ron’s words were slow and approaching
slurry. “I would be,” he said in a dark
sort of tone. “If the bloody doctors
didn’t insist on hexing me daily. They
think they can find a cure ...”
tone if he recalled.
“A cure?” he asked, in possibly the politest voice Ron ever recalled
Snape using.
“For my eyes,” he explained.
“My peripheral vn onn on my left side is nearly gone.
me two weeks ago, but the Ministry is pushing for my restoration.
mediwizards can patch me up.”
“Useless,” Snape repeated and for a moment, Ron had thought he was
going to say something truly poisonous.
“I hesitate to endorse the Ministry condemning anyone
“especially given its history.”
He remembered being absolutely stunned. Albus had told him before that Snape had a sense of humor, but
he’d never thought he would have any occasion to be witness to it.
come up with anything else.
And that had been it. Snape
stood, made a dismissive sort of grunt, and walked out of the room, leaving Ron
to stare after him.
It had been one of the strangest conversations Ron had ever had.
comforting.
It had also been the last time Ron had ever leyeseyes on Severus
Snape. Eight months later, once he’d
cobbled himself together enough to make it to an Order meeting, Snape had been
conspicuously absent and Dumbledore made his little announcement.
'>
“Severus will no longer be joining us,” he’d said, his usually
twinkling eyes dulled. “He is under
treatment up in Yorkshire and it is likely that he will be there for quite some
time.”
No one had to ask. Everyone
knew that the only place offering ‘treatment’ in York was Perkins -- the mad
house. The only wizarding mental
hospital in Britain, as a matter of fact, and one of the more prestigious ones
in the world.
Harry had smiled. Pushed his
glasses up on his nose, shot Ron a look that smacked of victory, and smiled
And Ron had tried to feel the same way. Tried to muster up all of that old anger.
tears.
But then he felt Snape’s oddly rough hands on his shoulders, tearing a
burning shirt off his back, calloused fingers slapping over his face, trying to
hold back the blood. Heard Snape’s
grunt as he heaved a semi-conscious Ron over his shoulders and walked of
of
the crumbling building. The smell of Snape’s
sweat, and the smoke, and the blood washed over Ron in that one nauseating
instant and he wanted to hit Harry.
Harry, who’d been allowed to bow
out of the fight. Harry, who had
fulfilled his destiny in childhood and was now able to live a life of his own
choosing. Harry, who sat at
Dumbledore’s right hand during Order meetings even though he didn’t understand
the real mission at hand. “Voldemort’s
gone,” Harry used to say, “Voldemort’s gone and we’re free to live in peace.”
He thought they were warmongers.
Looking for shadows in the sunshine.
Harry didn’t understand.
normal'>
And in that moment, Ron knew he and Snape somehow understood what Harry
could not. They could see the darkness
even through the light.
But the next moment brought a familiar feeling on its heels --
shame. Shame and guilt and
self-castigation.
Harry was Ron’s best friend.
time and time again. How could Ron
accuse Harry, the friendliest person he knew, of poor camaraderie and claim
that Snape -- Snape, of all people --
understood true brotherhood?
Ron loved Harry.
And so he smiled gently at his friend’s smirk, indulgently, as a father
smiles at a wayward son. Harry could
afford to hate Snape -- he’d certainly earned the luxury.
he had his own reasons.
The moment passed entirely, then, and Ron thought little of it
afterward. A fleeting impulse upon
being reinstated at work and saddled to a desk went relatively unnoticed.
staring at the line reading 11:45, Yorkshire.
He could go and come back at lunch and no one would even notice.
The urge faded even as he continued to look down at the page before his
eyes. Why would he want to go visit
Snape? Really ... Harry would give him
hell if he found out. Besides, they
probably wouldn’t even let him in the door.
He had no real relationship to the man, after all.
clasclass=MsoBodyText align=left style='text-align:left'>Until Hermione had brought Snape up three weeks ago in Françoise’s
parlor, Ron had barely given him a second thought since he’d successfully
talked himself out of that one visit.
And now he stood out in the middle of the Potters’ backyard, holding a
miniature set of wizarding robes (Nicholas’, by the look of it) and regarding
them as he was contemplating the nature of the very fabric of the universe
itself.
“Bloody hell,” Ron grumbled to himself, tossing the robes into the
basket. What was he doing
The dry laundry was off the line and while he had no real urge to watch
that talking pig film with the kids, it would certainly be better than standing
outside, thinking about a fellow he’d known in what felt like another lifetime.
But he remained still, frowning at the grass. A bumblebee was lazily investigating a lone dandelion poking
through the green blades.
He wondered if what Hermione saw in Snape was the same thing he
The same reason he almost wanted to see him.
The bumblebee circled the stalk once, twice, three times before
hovering near the yellow petals.
He wondered if what they wanted to see was the thing that made Snape
save his life.
The dandelion tipped under the bee’s slight weight, nodding gently at
no one in particular. A breeze lifted
one of Alice’s little dresses, still damp, perched on the clothesline.
If that was the thing that made Snape save Harry’s
The bee, oddly agile, flew up abruptly, through Alice’s dress, from
skirt to collar, and out of sight, leaving the dandelion to shake its head
forlornly in its wake.
Ron blew out an impatient breath and turned to go inside, leaving his
thts bts behind, holding one basket above his shoulder and clutching the other
at his hip.
A high-pitched, bloodcurdling scream made him drop both baskets,
however,llinlling all of the clean clothes along the grass.
one of Alice’s little romper suits, leaving a stark grass stain along its pink
front. He swore and ignored it, still
running.
“Alice!” he bellowed upon reaching the back door and flinging it
open. “Nicholas!”
he thought to himself. They hadn’t been
out of his sight for more than half an hour.
But the only reply was that same plaintive cry, mixed pain and
terror. It chilled Ron to the bone to
hear as he flung himself through the kitchen, catching his shin on a chair and
his elbow on the doorjamb.
There was blood.
It flowed down Alice’s scalp, staining her shirt, staining the
floor. Running down her chin, mixed
with her tears as she sobbed, looking up at Ron with wide, fearful eyes.
“Oh, baby,” Ron cried, dropping
to his knees automatically and gathering her into his arms.
He blotted at the blood carefully with his shirttail, trying to find
the source. Continuing to shush the
baby, he barely noticed as his own shirt grew steadily wetter, from both her
tears and her blood.
“Uncle Ron!” came a shrill, terrified cry. “I’m so ... I didn’t mean to ... she fell
jumping and I told her not to and she fell!
Alice momentarily forgotten, Ron looked up at a disconsolate Nicholas,
tears running down the boy’s cheeks.
“Nicholas?” he whispered.
“She hit her head!” Nicholas wailed,
nearly as hysterical as Alice herself.
“It’s all right, Nicholas,” Ron found himself saying, outwardly eerily
calm as he turned his attentions to Alice’s scalp.
The wound was small -- a cut near the crown of her head, little more
than an inch long and less than the tip of a quillbreabreadth.
“Alice, hush,” Ron soothed.
“It’s not that bad ... but your head, well, it bleeds a lot when you hit
it. Let me clean you up and get the
bleeding stopped and then I’ll patch you right up. How does that sound, my girl?”
The sobs were subsiding into sniffles and the panic was ebbing from her
eyes as he spoke in that patient, tranquil tone he’d learned worked best when
dealing with the very young. Using a
bare hand, he wiped most of the blood off her face, while applying gentle
pressure to her scalp with the ot
“Uncle Ron ...?” he heard Nicholas ask in a fairly tear-clogged voice.
The bleeding had almost stopped.
“Yes, Nicholas?” That same
calming tone.
“Is ... is she gonna die?”
Ron’s head snapped up as if pulled by a string.
he asked, feeling the blood drain from his face.
“Is Alice gonna die, like Papa?” Nicholas repeated, almost
whispering. “There’s so much blood
There was a rushing sound in his ears as he stared at the child.
hearing. “Nicholas ...”
So the boy had seen, despite
their best efforts.
“Nicholas,” he said more firmly, steeling himself.
small. If you’d like, you can watch me
heal her. It won’t take a second.”
Swiping tears out of his eyes, Nicholas knelt over his sister, a solemn
look on his little face as Ron waved his wand over Alice’s head and gently
murmured the proper incantation. The
boy looked relieved as he saw the wound seal itself.
“There you go, little girl,” Ron said, kissing the top of her head and
tasting her blood on his lips. “All
better now.”
She made a hiccupping noise that was at least half a sob.
“We’ve got to get you cleaned up,” he continued evenly.
As he scooped Alice in his arms and made a move toward the nearest
bathroom, he felt a hand on his shirt, tugging slightly.
“Uncle Ron ...” he said plaintively, echoing his sister.
Nicholas stopped, a curious look on his face as he apparently found
himself at a loss for words.
Ron shrugged and gave him a careful pat on the shoulder.
-- --
-- --