Unexpected Meetings
It had been a generally pleasant day thus far. For one thing, lessons were a lot less dramatic, as the four who usually made them otherwise were uncannily quiet, the teachers mildly cooperative, and even the weather - calm and soothing. Moreover, you were meeting Lily in the library later, which alone was enough to make the worst of days positively filled with sunshine.
You should have known it would not last. When has it, ever?
For as you stare at the thing now walking back and forth over your four-poster bed as if it was a carpet, two things come to mind. First, the one occupying the boys' dormitory is not a Slytherin fifth-year; and second, the intended quick dash to grab the books from your trunk will not be as quick as you anticipated.
The bat-eared creature turns upon sensing your presence, and you immediately recognize it as a house elf. However, this revelation does nothing to clarify the purpose of one standing on your bed now, dressed in a snow-white loincloth and gazing at you in a mix of deference and something that seems almost like pity. Consciously, you realize that the look would have made you highly uncomfortable, had you not been so shocked already.
"Master Snape," squeaks the elf, apparently unaware that you are rather displeased to hear such an address and completely unaccustomed to it being delivered with this degree of reverence.
"Who are you?" you question, struggling to remain calm and not give in to the chilling feeling one experiences upon realisation that the situation is spinning out of one's control. Or rather, in this particular case, it may have spun well beyond your control already, as nothing seems to be happening at this exact moment.
"Kreacher is a House Elf, Sir. He has been sent to tell you many things, Sir. Things that will not be easy for Sir to hear."
"And who has sent you on this task?" you ask, trying and failing to keep the note of suspicion out of your voice.
"Kreacher cannot say, Sir. Kreacher is not allowed to say. He can only say what he is told, Sir," the elf replies.
"Well, I suggest you get on with it, as I have a rather urgent appointment which I cannot reschedule for your sake," you say. The elf does not need to know the nature of your appointment, you decide, desperately hoping that your premonition is wrong this time.
Instead of hurrying up as you had hoped he would, the elf only shakes his head sadly, making his snow-white hair droop over his ears.
"Miss Evans is not coming, Sir. It was Kreacher who had left that note, asking Master Snape to bring that book. Miss Evans did not ask to see Sir in the library."
This time, you are too shocked to even conceal it. Lily's surprised expression comes to mind as you remember passing her at lunch, hurriedly mumbling that you would be at the library at five. The shock gives way to anger, and your disposition is not improved by the elf's further speech.
"Sir had better sit down. Sir is not going to like what Kreacher is going to say now."
How could you possibly dislike anything else more than what this creature had already said? You fail to understand why you have not hexed your unwelcome guest soundly by now, as you would have probably done if you were in a normal frame of mind. Perhaps you are not. Perhaps this is a mere illusion caused by the fumes of the potions you had been inhaling for some five years now. Yes, they had all accumulated now to attack your nervous system. It is as good an explanation as any.
And as long as you are hallucinating, you might as well listen to what your hallucination has to say. You make your way to the four-poster opposite yours, from which you can observe the elf without shortening the distance between you two.
"Sir is not going to like this... but Sir needs to know. It is very important that Sir knows this," the elf quivers, apparently afraid to state what he has come to. You are beginning to lose patience. How else can you react if even a hallucination refuses to cooperate?
"Get on with it, then. I assure you a have a stronger stomach than most."
"In twenty-two years' time, Sir will be dead."
"Right."
"Sir will no longer be alive," the elf continues hesitantly, as though unsure you heard him the first time, or perhaps doubting that the meaning of his words was carried across. You nod to confirm your understanding and ask,
"May I enquire how you came across this bit of knowledge?"
"Kreacher cannot say, Sir."
"I see. Please go on."
"Sir will die in twenty-two years' time. But you see, a most terrible disease will be plaguing the world in the future. And no one is knowing how to make a cure for it. Many people have tried, but they are not having any successes, and they are not as good as Sir is being at potions when he dies."
"So you come to me now to ask me to make a cure for some future civilization, because apparently, I can manage it better than people with twenty years' worth more in knowledge, equipment and medical advancement?" you ask, not caring to keep the sarcasm at bay. What would be the point? This is a hallucination, after all.
"No, no. Sir is only to make a cure that will prevent Sir from dying in twenty years. Sir can be making the cure in the future, when he is alive again," says the elf with a reassuring smile, clearly under the impression that he has made you feel a lot better. Enough is enough, you decide.
"I see. And now I have a question. Why should I believe you? For all I know, you could have been sent as a joke by one of the more immature Gryffindors, although I fail to see the amusement in this situation - but that's alright, as I seldom share their mental level. I don't see a single reason to believe you. Care to name any? At least one?" you demand, finally deciding to put an end to this ridiculous daydream.
The elf looks at you sadly, as if he has been expecting that very question and does not wish to answer. Slowly, it says,
"Sir's Patronus is Miss Evans."
And that is when the hallucination shatters into reality.
When was the last time you had screamed? Not yelled at someone - those cases were aplenty; not shouted an order or a warning - those cropped up frequently as well; but screamed - out of pain, or fear, or both? You cannot remember...
When?.. Inexplicably, it seems so important that you remember. You gather your scattering thoughts and focus all of your remaining strength on thinking back to the past, almost oblivious to the slippery feel of blood under your fingers.
When?.. It must have been almost twenty years ago, you realize. Not because you remember that particular occasion - earning a Cruciatus was ridiculously easy those days. But simply because soon thereafter, something happened that had robbed you of the ability to hurt. When hit sufficiently hard, one often gasps instead of crying out. To scream, one then needs to draw a breath. You have not breathed ever since.
Why now, then? Another equally pointless, yet somehow meaningful question. Maybe... maybe because it was just like the time that took your voice away for sixteen years. You were trying, trying so desperately, only to be caught off-guard, your efforts rendered in vain, and you, for the second time in your life, left without a way out. Except that for which you wished sixteen years ago, but cannot afford to take now.
Unfortunately, no one seems to care as to what you can or cannot afford. You are going to die now, and there is nothing you can do about it. That is why answering those pointless questions was so important. Simply your mind's feeble attempts to keep you from understanding this simple fact. It was very kind of it, certainly - except that it seemed to fail to take the obviousness of the situation into account.
No. You do not give your mind enough credit. It was not the fact that you were dying that it was trying to conceal - but the realisation of this fact's meaning that it was trying to protect you from. Too late now.
No! Don't you dare think of that. Not of the ivy-covered rubble with a large wooden sign in front of it, covered in meaningless words. Not of the white marble tombstone with the two names engraved on it - after all these years, the pain of seeing one still made the presence of the other one irrelevant. Not of the inscription that you re-read time and time again, as if hoping that its meaning, as well as your way forward, would become as clear as you were told they were...
The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death.
You failed to destroy death for her.
You are not allowed to think this now. Otherwise your mind may just play yet another trick on you, confuse the seeming desire of your heart with the real one - although which one is which, you hardly know either by now - and finally give some substance to the myths of the Shrieking Shack's being haunted.
So, don't think of Lily, don't think of her death, don't think of these years... don't think!
That may be problematic...
Then think of something else. For example, how many minutes you have left, at the current rate of bleeding... Not many, which is a relief. What time it is now... Probably around three in the morning, which is completely irrelevant. Why in the world that crate in the corner is moving... Who...
You hear a gasp and a rustle of fabric, and a pair of green eyes stares down at you. How perfectly ironic that the one you spent all night searching for is so kind as to make his appearance mere minutes before your end. You would smirk if you had the time and strength. But they must be saved for something else.
Both air and time seem to have thickened, because lifting your hand feels like the greatest effort you have ever attempted. You are almost thankful to the boy for leaning over you so you finally manage to grasp his robes. Only to find that you have run out of time. After sixteen years, you have run out of time when you needed it most.
You draw a ragged breath. It would be too much to hope for the blasted boy to come up with something, anything - he is simply staring at you listlessly, and you find yourself wishing he could simply read your thoughts now...
Oh, but he could... If only...
"Take... it..." you manage to rasp, using the last of your mind's strength to knock down the most powerful blockade of all.
If time seemed thickened before, it is simply suspended now, as both you and the boy are frozen in a bizarre tableau, him kneeling by your side as you are giving to him that which kept you alive, and now it seems perfectly reasonable that you did not die until now, for what could mere blood possibly mean compared to the silvery substance in the vial he is now holding with trembling fingers?..
You give him too much, but anything that is not too much would be too little...
You just gave him so much - can you make yourself ask one thing in return?..
"Look... at... me..."
The boy's eyes dart from the little vial to your face. You barely have the time to register the surprised and frightened expression, as it fades away, taking with it everything that you always hated setting your sight upon. Only the eyes remain, and everything around them, everything in the world, everything in existence seems to be simply... erased.
Yes. That is the way it should be. It was always like that.
It had been a week. A week since the Apparition of that elf; a week since you had found out that you were going to die in twenty-odd years; a week since your darkest secret had been revealed, laid bare for the empty dormitory to see and digest and upon failing that, bounced back to you.
What happened after the revelation was sufficiently trivial compared to what had already come to pass. You had to prepare an antidote for a poison of the likes you had never encountered, fuse it with a blood replenishing potion, while keeping your work away from prying eyes and being limited with supplies available in your environment and time period, and then travel two decades into the future to administer your potion to yourself in time in order to save him... Or was it 'yourself' rather than 'him'? You tried to avoid thinking along this line.
Just as well you never expected life to be fair, or you would have been in for one heck of a disappointment.
Well, you could refuse to go, naturally. But if you knew next to nothing about that elf and his sender, somehow you were sure that he was telling the truth. Perhaps it was because you had lived all your life amidst liars that you could distinguish his honesty with such certainty. A rarity such as it was bound to stand out.
So, you had gone against your better judgment and consented, for the first time in any issue related to someone except one person. You had started brewing the potion in the abandoned second floor bathroom - to the delight of the ghost who haunted it, and had kept the secret from even her, despite the reproachful bespectacled glances you were given when you pretended you did not hear any of her questions.
You had managed to obtain as many ingredients as you could by whatever means necessary and stumbled blindly through the overgrown path with a proverbial hourglass as the only thing to guide you.
It had been, possibly, the second most stressful week of your life, not least because throughout it, you were forced to avoid Lily much more than you would have liked. But now that the wretched week is finally over, you are ready, a flask of potion clutched in your hand, its results as unstable as the thoughts of its bearer sitting on the edge of his bed, waiting for the elf to make an appearance. Quite possibly, you have never been less sure of the outcome of your work - but what else could you be, given the conditions?
From whatever information that was revealed more than sparingly by the elf, you gathered that making up for the blood loss was the topmost priority, while the poison... The poison you chose to suppress rather than combat directly, as a poison suppressant for an unknown substance had a higher probability of success than a direct antidote for the same. Just as well, because the poison would only have the residual effect, which would kick in only provided the person in question lived long enough. Still, most of the poison that entered the wound would leave it almost immediately, as the blood would have no chance to take it to the rest of the body. At least, you gathered as much, and you could be lethally wrong.
Well, it would serve them right, you think to yourself bitterly. It is not like your own predicament in twenty-two years' time could possibly get any worse, but should you fail, that would only be fair to them - they being the mysterious senders of the elf - for making you work with such scarce information. Preparing an antidote without as much as a sample of the poison - the very thought let you understand that whoever was behind the elf had barely any idea of potion-making.
The expected Apparition sound rings sharply through the room, announcing your visitor's arrival. You watch him with an air of indifference, to which he responds with one of deep sadness, which only serves to make you all the more indifferent. But this time, your attitude has a purpose.
"Sir is ready?" he asks, and you stifle the wish to point out the ridiculousness of that question, settling for a curt nod instead. Why bother wasting your breath on a failed cause? You struggle to remain in the calm waters of indifference and not give in to the emotions the situation is liable to provoke.
"Sir will be needing this," he says again, extending his spindly arms, and you catch the sight of a long golden chain nestled in the wrinkled palm, a minute hourglass hanging from the chain and drooping over the edge of the thumb. You reach out for it, keeping your eyes firmly on the chain and away from that sad stare that would be sure to welcome your gaze if it wondered to the elf's face. Why is he watching you like that? Is it because in the time he had travelled from, you are already dead?
You shake the thought off, already calculating in your head how many hours it would take you to go forward to the midnight of June 17 - you have seen midnight repeatedly referred to as the best point to time travel to, it being almost out of the time stream as the momentary point between two days, and therefore, more likely to accept visitors without upsetting the rest of the time. The elf interrupts your calculation when he hands you a rucksack.
"Sir is needing this too."
"What is in it?"
"Sir will find out when he is needing them. He cannot find out before that. That which is in here is helping him do his job, but he cannot know at once. He is needing to be patient."
You nod as if you have never heard a more sensible explanation and sling the rucksack on your back. You then pull the chain around you neck and get ready to do the absurd that you have not yet allowed yourself to even think of in any other terms than purely theoretical ones, afraid of being dissuaded by common sense alone.
"Sir must remember, he cannot be seen."
Of course you remember. Does he think you have not done your research? That when your journey was first determined, you had not dedicated whatever free time remained in the course of this week to surreptitiously study every book on time travelling you could find in the school library? Did he think you were ignorant to the danger you were putting yourself and the time stream in? But once again, you settle for a nod. If this elf is so all-knowing, he would know that you are not among the Britain's socialites. In any case, when had words ever come to your aid?
You slowly reach for the hourglass, knowing that you may never return to the past you are leaving behind. You would feel sad, afraid, curious, but you remind yourself just in time that where you are going to, you will be as good as incorporeal and therefore, will not be able to feel.