Proof of Life

Imperfect World



That night, Harry dreamed of blood again, and the hoarse, choked breathing that he had heard back in the Shrieking Shack years ago. He bolted awake, drenched in cold sweat, cursing under his breath. Why did he still have nightmares like this, after Snape had been found alive?



And why was the sound still there, even though he was awake?



Oh, hell...



Harry grabbed his wand and glasses, and ran downstairs towards the sound of that labored, choked breathing. He stopped in his tracks when he reached the kitchen.



He was standing in a small pool of blood.



Blood was gushing out of the wound in Snape's throat, just like back then, back in the Shrieking Shack, except now it was in his own home, and...



Harry's panicked stupor lasted no longer than a fraction of a second. His Auror training took over almost instantly. He knelt next to Snape, closed the puncture wound with a single spell, followed up with a few basic healing spells, and rushed to the hearth to firecall St. Mungo's.



Marietta's face appeared in the Floo at once.



“Nature of emergency?” she asked quickly.



“Blood loss, suicide attempt. I stopped the blood flow, but...”



“Don't move him. I'll be right there.”



True to her word, Marietta emerged from the Floo only a minute later. She sat down next to Snape and cast a few examining spells on him, and finally said, “It's not bad. You got to him in plenty of time. I am going to sedate him for the next twelve hours. I've administered one dose of blood replenishing potion. When he wakes, get him to drink another vial of the same.” She set the aforementioned vial on the kitchen counter. “Now help me get him back to bed.”



Together, they moved Snape back to his bedroom, and laid him on the bed. Marietta cast a few cleansing charms on him, removing the traces of blood from his clothing. Harry covered him with a blanket and returned downstairs a few minutes later.



They spent another few minutes cleaning up the gruesome sight in the kitchen. When they finally were done and sat down on the couch, Harry realized that his hands were shaking. Marietta's disgusted glare was not doing anything to soothe his nerves either.



“You left him unsupervised. On his first night back in the normal world, after seven years of torture, you left him unsupervised. What on earth have you been learning in your psych classes during your Auror training?”



Harry shook his head miserably. “Maybe it was too early to bring him home,” Harry mused. “What about a psych ward at St. Mungo's?”



“What about it?”



“Maybe he'd be better off there. With trained mind-healers, under suicide watch...” Harry suggested awkwardly.



Marietta's words hit him like a cold shower.



“Bored with your new toy already, Harry Potter? Life as a slave-owner isn't as glamorous as you had hoped?”



Harry lifted his head and stared at her as if seeing her for the first time. In the last seven years she had aged beyond what she should have, he thought. There were two thin lines crossing her forehead, intersecting the faded, barely noticeable scars. There was incredible weariness in her eyes too, the kind he had begun seeing in Ginny's in the last couple of years.



He moved in to sit closer to her and took her hand in his.



“Don't be cruel,” Harry said softly. “You aren't very good at it, and I don't think you're enjoying it.”



She looked at him, surprised, but allowed him to continue, which he did quickly.



“I'm not frustrated with him. I honestly care about him. I just think he needs professional help, not some fumbling attempts from a well-meaning amateur. Money is no issue, really. I'll find a way to pay for it.”



She shook her head. “It's not that simple, Potter. You say he's innocent?”



Harry nodded silently.



“Then St. Mungo's is not a good place for him,” Marietta said firmly. “It'll mess him up even more.”



Harry looked up at her quizzically.



“All mind-healing programs are very… well, political, for lack of better words,” Marietta explained. “At least, where former war criminals are concerned. They are geared heavily towards ... rehabilitation.” There was a definite note of mockery in her voice. “If he really is innocent, do you really want him to spend the next six months in a mental health ward, with trained mind-healers getting him to admit his wrongs and coaxing him to accept responsibility for his war crimes?”



“That's mental!” Harry snapped. “Can't we work this out somehow? I mean... can't they just treat him for post-traumatic stress disorder, and...well, let the judgments be?”



“In a perfect world it would be possible,” she conceded softly. “However, in case you haven't noticed, we don't live in a perfect world.”



He looked at her sadly, again noting the scarring on her forehead, remnants of Hermione's punitive hex.



“I'm beginning to realize that,” he agreed. They sat in tense silence for a while, looking at each other cautiously.



“Got anything to drink?” Marietta asked suddenly.



“Hmm?” He was taken aback by her question. “I do, but aren't you on duty?”



She shook her head. “You don't think I work 24 hour shifts, do you? No, today is my day off.”



“Then why did you respond?”



She smiled wryly. “I stayed behind, catching up on some paperwork. I asked to be advised if you called in, and my coworker indulged me.”



“That explains how, but not why,” Harry said, walking over to the bar and returning with a bottle of Firewhisky and two glasses. “Why would you be doing this on your time off?”



She shrugged, accepting a glass from him. “Because you can't be billed by St. Mungo's for work I do during my off-duty hours,” she said, taking a sip. “Tell me what happened last night.”



“Ginny arrived early, saw him, became upset, and left,” Harry said. “I think the argument stressed him out.”



“Your wife left,” Marietta murmured. “Not for good though?”



“I don't know,” Harry admitted. “I mean... I would like to hope not, but .. she's never left before. And .. it did sound pretty final, the way she said it. It might have happened sooner or later anyway, I think... But him being here didn't help matters.”



“I'm sorry,” she said sincerely. “That must be stressful for you.”



Harry nodded tiredly. “It's not just that Ginny left, you know,” he said, surprised to find himself talking about this with Marietta. “It's the whole family thing... the Weasleys are the only family I've ever had.. and now... I guess things will be awkward for a while. Even Ron and Hermione... Ginny is Ron's baby sister, and... Hermione... she's great, but whenever Ginny and I fought over the last seven years, Hermione always argued with me. Girls take each other's side. You know how it is. ”



“I am afraid I don't,” Marietta said softly.



“Don't what?” Harry asked automatically.



“Don't know how girls take each other's side in such matters, as my knowledge of heterosexual dating is purely theoretical,” she said, giving him a long look.



It took him a while to absorb the Ravenclaw's words.



“Oh,” he said, feeling incredibly stupid. “Well, then.”



This elicited the first genuine smile from her.



“By the way,” she said, “I realize that it's none of my business, but do you mind telling me how you managed to spend your father's fortune in seven years?”



“Is this friendly concern?” Harry asked sourly, draining the glass of Firewhisky and pouring himself another one.



“Not at all. Morbid curiosity,” Marietta said, still smiling. “Come on, tell me.”



“Different things.”



“I'm listening.”



“I've rebuilt the Burrow from scratch,” Harry said.



“The Burrow?” she murmured. “Dare I ask what that is?”



“The Weasley home... it was in really rough shape. I got them to scrap the entire thing and rebuilt it.”



“How nice,” Marietta said with a smirk. “Why you? Why not the Weasley kids?”



“It's complicated,” Harry said. “But out of all of them, Bill was the only one who was making any real money, and he contributed, but I took care of most of it. They're family... well.. were family,” Harry corrected himself.



She shook her head and chuckled under his breath. “Daft. What else did you do?”



“I restored Grimmauld Place and gave it away,” Harry said. “The Ministry was eyeing it, but I didn't want them to have it. I gave it to Hogwarts, you know, for education and so on...”



“I heard about that,” Marietta agreed. “That was stupid.”



“McGonagall was happy,” Harry protested.



“I imagine she was, but that was still a remarkably daft thing to do,” Marietta argued. “What else?”



“I recovered and rebuilt Arthur's flying car for him,” Harry said, smiling at the memory. “That was fun.”



“Daft,” Marietta said flatly. “What else?”



“I've said enough,” Harry muttered under his breath. “And you've mocked it all.”



“Well, go on, tell me the rest of it,” Marietta smirked.



The buzz of the Firewhisky had caught up with him and he felt slightly intoxicated, and more than slightly uninhibited... and for one reason or another, Marietta was actually listening to him and not really arguing. Even her occasional evaluative 'dafts' did not sound like much of condemnation to his weary ears.



“You can't repeat this to others though,” Harry warned her.



She gave him an amused look. “Come now, who would I repeat it to? Surely you don't think I'm one of those people who actually have friends?”



“Sorry,” Harry said automatically.



“Don't be sorry. Just keep talking. Your foolishness is doing wonders for my ego.”



“Ginny wanted to play Quidditch professionally... she wanted to be a Seeker. There was a really cool private training program. I sent her to do that,” Harry said. “Money was no issue, really. It made her happy and she was damned good at it, so... I don't have any regrets.”



She shook her head sadly. “So for the last seven years you've been trying to buy yourself love and family,” she mused. “And look at you now.”



“I wasn't buying love!” Harry nearly screamed at her, enraged by the suggestion. “It's not like that.”



She shook her head again. “If you say so. But that's not all, is it?”



Harry muttered an obscenity under his breath.



“I know you supported Diggory's campaign when he was running for Minister of Magic,” Marietta murmured. “That was remarkably stupid, even for you. How much did that cost?”



“That cost a lot,” Harry admitted reluctantly. “In retrospect, I shouldn't have done that.”



She glanced at him sadly. “But that part I understand, at least,” she whispered, looking into her drink. “You did that for Cedric, didn't you?”



“Yeah,” Harry said quietly. “I really did think I was doing a good thing...”



“Of course you did,” Marietta said calmly. “You thought Amos Diggory could fill the void in his life by doing something meaningful, and maybe he'd even forgive you for surviving, when Cedric hadn't. Or something along those lines.”



“Yeah well, we all make mistakes,” Harry muttered bitterly. Diggory had seemed appreciative enough, at least until Harry's expendable income had run out. After that he had reverted to his usual belligerent, spiteful self, except ten times worse than before.



Harry wouldn't have cared about that part, but once Diggory got into the office things in the wizarding world quickly went pear-shaped.



“When did you realize you'd made a mistake with Diggory?” Marietta asked with genuine curiosity.



“Well, at first, he kept talking about improving world security and public safety, and I thought it was a good thing, you know, given the aftermath of the war and so on.. but I didn't know what he meant by that, until it was too late. When he brought Dementors back to Azkaban and re-instituted the Dementor's Kiss, I got angry... but then he started going after all of Voldemort’s former known and suspected sympathizers in a really malicious way... and that was just too much. As you probably know, I spent the entire year after that working on keeping Draco out of Azkaban, and, er….well, saving Lucius and Umbridge from the Kiss. And after I managed to accomplish that, Diggory and I stopped talking outside of work altogether.”



Marietta chuckled, a little amused. “What I can't understand is why you cared to help Umbridge, of all people.”



Harry shrugged indifferently and stared at the blood-quill scar on his hand, barely visible after all these years.



“Still hate the bitch,” he said sincerely, “but… look...it was a long time ago, and... well, maybe it's awfully naïve of me to say this, but we can't just Dementor-kiss everyone we despise, or everyone who'd ever sympathized with the wrong side, or had been cruel to us. What kind of world would it be if we did that?”



Abruptly and unexpectedly Marietta stood up, setting her empty glass on the side table.



“The kind of world where a former Death Eater couldn't get proper health care, I suppose,” she said bitterly.



Harry lifted his half-full glass to toast her. “Touché.”



She smiled again but without happiness this time. “A word of advice, Potter.”



He nodded for her to continue.



“Snape's condition is more complicated than I had realized. My guess is that the slave-bond is interacting with his experiences and affecting his perception of you. You should do some research on the psychological impact of slavery, even before you start reading all the stuff I gave you yesterday.”



“Right,” Harry agreed. “Where would I get that sort of literature?”



“I really don't know. I imagine there are no more than a few dozen master-slave bonds in the entire wizarding world nowadays. The literature in the libraries will be hundreds of years old, and sketchy. Your best bet is to contact some pure-blood families who know a thing or two of the old ways, and get some books from their private collections.”



“I can do that,” Harry agreed.



“You still need to figure out what you did to trigger this sort of reaction,” Marietta said softly. “Not saying it's your fault, Potter, but you do need to be careful about what you say or do around him.”



“Right,” Harry said again. “Anything else?”



She pulled out a small piece of parchment and a quill, and jotted something down. “My home address and my firecall connection. Contact me directly if you have any problems.”



He looked at her, not managing to conceal his astonishment.



“Thanks. This really means a lot.”



She nodded curtly. “One more thing. Take care of yourself. You look like crap.”



She departed a moment later, without giving him a chance to respond.



To Be Continued.