ataraxionlogs | ( closed )

Entry tags:

( closed )

CHARACTERS: severus snape & harry potter.
LOCATION: science labs-ish.
WARNINGS: tba? probably none.
SUMMARY: being pillars of in-universe mythology sucks occasionally.

Severus is irritated. This is not a shocking deviation from everyday life, to be certain, but today he's irritated for a handful of very specific reasons - reasons that are distracting him here and there from the work he's trying to get done. As usual he's sitting at the back of the main lab area, almost cordoned off as its own entity at this point, plants and samples spread out to one side, notes on the other. He's been going over and over what is supposedly the Wolfsbane potion all day; not everything required to brew it exists in space. The Granger girl having essence of dittany with her helps, but it's just one thing.

He can complete it. He knows not just from stubborn determination but from experience in reworking potions that it's possible - he's good enough at it to judge from a distance. Engineering the exact details is taking time, though, and the constant headache that twists between his eyes isn't making it go any quicker.

In a moment of frustration Severus drops his pencil on the desk and presses his forehead into his hands, as if he can press out all the errant thoughts and worries. He's angry at everything and not even Occluding is helping. A moment later he hears something at the entrance to the labs and he snaps "What?" as he raises his head, glare already at maximum voltage.

--Oh.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Harry is not immune to the full force of Severus' irate glare, but he's had enough experience to be somewhat inured to it. He's come along with a tin containing a few odds and ends that he's come across and while he can't get much use out of them, he recognizes their value in potion making.

"I wanted to say thank you, for letting me know about the new arrivals, and to see if any of this could be helpful." The 'this' in question is a collection of curios pilfered from the luxury ship that the Tranquility docked at some time ago - perfumes, dried spices, scraps of silk, a few pearls, and a single, slightly deformed nugget of gold.

His look does not exactly let up, but at least it shifts focus to the offered tin. Severus doesn't seem overtly hostile, but it's clear that he's still annoyed over whatever it was he was annoyed over the last time Harry dropped by. After a moment he extends a hand to take the container, and sets it down on his desk to open and pick through. He does this wordlessly.

Finally: "Have you spoken to Lupin?"

"On and off. Has something happened?" They really only spoke in-depth the once and not much beyond that. Shockingly, Harry learned from the first time he'd met the Marauders and now he's giving them as wide a berth as possible.

"I'm not certain."

That's, uh. That's not good, coming from Snape. Outwardly he doesn't seem concerned, but probably is, seeing as he bothered to ask at all. What he's working on is obvious to anyone who's ever taken a good look at the potion before, but he doesn't have any expectations about whether or not Potter will recognize it. Instead he just keeps going through the items he was brought, eventually taking out one to get a closer look at.

Not that it was ever lacking, but Severus really has Harry's attention now.

"What have you seen?" Harry's been slowly forming his own theories about what this ship can do to people and how it goes above and beyond what they can do to each other. He's not too concerned about Remus' monthly transformations - in the past, he'd been reassured that the on-board wolves won't let him harm anyone.

...and threatened that he'd better not ask for further details.

His gaze refocuses on Harry, sharp. As ever with Severus, there's a sense that he can see straight through people - with or without Legilimency.

"Sit," he says after a moment. There's a stool Harry can pull up to the other side of the worktable. Once he's sat, Severus puts the lid back on the tin.

"Have you experienced anyone trying to contact you?"

He has a theory. An abstract theory, but Lupin's short message to him has prompted closer thought.

Harry accepts the offer and perches on the stool. He runs through his interactions since the last jump and tries to discern if there was anything out of the ordinary.

"In what way? I've spoken with people over the network, and met with Hermione in person, but nothing that's stood out." He frowns and wonders if he should mention the odd feeling that came over him when they woke up - better safe than sorry. "Although, getting out of the pods, I'd've sworn I was supposed to be looking for someone. I can't think who it would be though. I'd chalked it up to, well, maybe Hermione's arrival, but I didn't feel like that when she'd appeared the last time."

Dark eyes narrow. Briefly, there's something like a flicker of mistrust there before he settles back into distant stoicism. He's not sure if he trusts anything Harry says, and he doesn't like the uncertainty. He hasn't actually gotten the impression that the boy's lied about anything, and he doesn't think he's using any kind of Occlumency, but the things he does don't always match up with the things he's said.

"In any way." Severus won't be mentioning his dreams of Albus - it's unsettling enough as it is in private. "You didn't chalk it up to your mother's arrival?"

If only they'd each mention the dreams, maybe they'd be able to piece it together. That said, Harry has always had vivid dreams and if it's not about someone from home, then they're just as strong and about people he's met on Tranquility. After Arima, he's had some real gems.

"No," he says and sounds surprised when he realizes that he hadn't chosen to make that connection. "Before, on Earth, there had been magic connecting myself and my mother, but it doesn't feel like that and when Lily had been here before, I never felt that sort of pull."

That almost makes Severus angry. He's routinely pissed off enough as it is that Lily's life has been reduced to a martyred mother when she had the potential, he feels, to reshape the entire world. That Harry's forgot about her so easily, stripping her of even that connection, scrapes on his nerves.

"Have you felt it with anything else?"

Like from horrible dark lords on a space station, perhaps.

"No. I know what it feels like to have that sort of magic on me, I know what it's like to be in someone's memories, to be under the Imperius, to have you in my head, or Riddle, or ...or Melkor or Mairon. I know what all of those feel like, but I can't place this. It's there, but it's not, and in the past, that's been a sign of the ship getting inside."

Harry looks as if he's about to say something, but then revises his thoughts. "I've tried to shore up my defenses, but in the future, after you'd tried, you admitted that it was pretty much a lost cause. There's holes," he says, tapping at his temple, "And they were put in place when I was too young. I'd hoped it would heal, but I can't tell."

Severus frowns sharply, both at yet more references to mental magic he's yet to experience personally and the soft, pleasant names Harry uses for Morgoth and his cohort - and also at what he says about his defenses.

"Holes," Severus echoes, staring at him. He shakes his head. "That's not a deterrent to learn Occlumency, that should be more of a motivation. The only hurdle there would be if you're singularly determined not to. Favoring a wounded ankle." --Is obviously just a euphemism. But Severus makes a dismissive gesture right away. Whatever, it's apparently in Potter's past. If he's too stupid to protect his own head, Severus can't make him do it.

"Lupin sent me a message," he says abruptly. "Asking me if I thought it was possible for people to be living on other parts of the ship."

"Certainly. Not too many, or we'd notice if they raided the gardens or kitchen, but there's at least one, if not more. They are or once were part of the crew, I think, but that's all I know - Jack or Ianto, they've been here since the beginning and they could probably tell you more." Harry looks around the room, taking note of what's where, and if anyone else is present. "But, I don't think anyone has seen them in person. Once or twice on the network, but not flesh and blood."

He doesn't want to ask for help, but what he wants isn't going to play into it. It never does. "And, if you'd be willing to endure it, I do want to learn."

Severus has picked his pencil back up. He's turning it, sticking one end against the table, pressing down, picking it up, turning it over again - it's a habit that betrays just how irritated he still is. He'll have broken it by the time Harry is his student, having settled into his graceful and intimidating persona entirely, his work as a triple agent having worn away the distinction of who he is. For now, he's still something like a real person.

"I know," he says quietly, about other people on the ship. Watching Harry closely. "But I don't think that's what Lupin meant." He knows it's not. Instinctively. His gaze doesn't waiver from staring at Harry.

"I don't mind teaching you. I mind helping you and then having you turn around and lie to me."

Edited (not the right word) 2014-06-21 03:28 (UTC)

It's unsettling to see Snape fidget. He doesn't like having to think about the other man in terms of who he was as a person. Who he is as a person.

Harry knows he doesn't have the memory to be a good liar and as he sits here, being watched, he tries to recall just what he's said or done that would prompt this particular flavour of distrust. It could be just good caution, but his gut tells him otherwise. The only lie he can recall is not divulging that he was the final horcrux, but Harry is quite sure that was a polite falsehood for both of them.

"I don't think there are people we know, or beings that we'd recognize as 'people' in the depths of the ship. I think, that when we go 'home', we're turned into protein-based goo and flushed into space rather than experimented on in some other, deeper lab." Isn't that a cheery thought?

To Severus, it just sounds like Harry is trying to sound like he's learned a lot about muggle science. He doesn't believe this place is fully technological - it behaves too much like Hogwarts; even if some of their peers insist on tacking on 'but worse' onto it, that's just proof they've never had to meddle with the castle wards. He knows better.

For a while he's quiet.

"How did you get involved in what happened on Arima?"

Severus should drop it and talk about Lupin. About the fact that he sent a Patronus after him and she didn't come back to silently apologize about not being able to find him. But he can't get this out of his mind.

"I was an ass." Harry isn't sure if he feels grateful, guilty, or angry that none of the security people came to talk to him after Arima. No one asked if he was complicit, or to what degree he had known about what was due to happen.

"Long before you came on-board, Mairon and I got our memories entangled and we saw into each other - not everything, not even a fraction, but a glimpse and what I saw in him was good. We became friends and there was no trouble." He saw the making of a world and it was overwhelmingly beautiful. "Then Melkor came."

"The elves attacked and he was hurt, but there was a truce after that. I went and spoke to Galadriel and she told me about a war on their world, but that it had passed. That here and now, they wouldn't fight, and that so long as the truce held, there was hope. That I should be wary, that they were dangerous, and what each party said matched up." With very small, subtle differences in shading.

"And, like an ass, I'd thought that the truce would hold. Melkor and Mairon listened to me and they didn't care that I could do magic, they didn't bar me from talking about or performing it. They had interesting things to say, to show me, and none of it was dark or dangerous. None of it was cruel or hurtful and I genuinely thought that after months, I'd found real friends. Which is why I didn't see it until I woke up, on Arima, and it had all gone wrong. I fought, I fell, I survived their displeasure, and made it back onboard." He can't hide the way one of his hands flexes, as if remembering an injury. There were several, but they're well-hidden now.

"After, I sought out Galadriel to ask what happened, how could we all have been so deceived, and she said she knew. She knew, but she was too scared to speak, and assumed that I'd be beneath their notice." It's pitiful, really. He'd thought the elves might've been better than the Ministry, but really, they're all just the same.

Severus listens. He can muster that much. But the more Harry speaks, the less impressed he becomes. Perhaps it should be a comfort that there appears to be no intentional duplicity involved - and yet he just feels gnawing anger at the fact that he can't let anyone do anything on their own, ever, without it getting fucked up all to hell.

"Someone was very kind to me, once," he says at length. His temper is there in his words, barely restrained. "He encouraged my magic. He treated me with respect."

That statement gets left alone for a moment. Severus stares at Harry, gaze like iron. There is no question that he means Voldemort.

"You spoke to me of frustration and humiliation at being treated like a child despite the war you've fought and the experience you've had. I gave you that courtesy and respected your claims." His voice is low, in that slightly terrifying way that's worse than his explosions. "I watched you from afar liaise with beings whose magic left such an impression on the world around them I could practically feel it in the air. I said nothing, because you have fought the Dark Lord, and you should know already what that feels like. Why," he leans forward slightly, "would you need some elf to take you by the hand and explain to you how darkness works?"

"I never once saw them do anything dark or cruel. I felt nothing amiss. No unkindness, no darkness. If I had ..." He's not sure what he would've done and if it's worth speculating about now. "If I had, I would've asked them about it and probably ended up hollowed out and puppeted."

"They way I see it, there's one of two answers. The best case scenario is that I'm an idiot. That I was stupid and didn't see what was there, that they'd gotten inside before I could tell and kept me under for months and I was too weak, too eager to notice." He doesn't back down or look away, but there's a slight wince as he rubs at his shoulder. "I hope that's what it was. That's the most reasonable answer. The alternative is that I spent so long sharing bits of body and soul with another that I can't taste that sort of magic when it's used around me."

"A single instance, yes, I can pick that out. But a constant hum in the background? I don't know."

"You're making excuses," Severus says, unkindly. "That elf-king of theirs had his mind twisted into a babbling child's because of that thing. He attacked Nuala. He was certainly the shadow her brother railed about." Severus can use the archive function. It's quite handy. (Having an elf ally who will tell him things is also handy.) "If you were told anything at all about a war, you heard about genocide, or however either of them chose to dress it up in conversation. That you heard it and decided that a cease-fire meant they were still all right, that it absolved them or made anyone suitable--"

Severus sits back in his chair, crossing his arms. "You shouldn't have needed anything special to sort it out. Just common sense. Of course they picked you out as a target to use if that's your thought process. You're lucky it wasn't worse. And you-- brought me Riddle's diary and had me destroy it while you were going along with them."

Aha. Here we come to the issue of lies.

"I run enough unsightly errands for Albus Dumbledore. You don't have the right to ask a damn thing of me if this is how it'll be. Not like that."

Harry has his own opinions about the elves and that they're not friends, but he's managing to keep a civil tongue and isn't eager to change that.

"I'm neither powerful enough, nor clever enough, nor have any reason to try and pointlessly manipulate or jockey for power. I don't ...I needed help to destroy the diary and I trusted that you'd know how." It's clear that he doesn't understand what he's supposedly lied about. "I didn't want to bother you and I would've asked Mairon, but he was in stasis that month."

Who gives a damn about friends? Harry should have the minimum brain cells to rub together to figure out 'people who commit genocide and run around mindbreaking people with magic = bad', whether or not he likes the people who end up hurt in the equation. Severus doesn't care about the elves, he's not worried about their welfare, he's just capable of looking at the situation and going 'Wow, that's not good.'

"Stop it. You can't be a war veteran tired of being treated like a fool and too stupid to function." Severus is not being nice, but it's different than the rages he'll get into when he's older, when he has nothing else. At this stage of his life he's still treating it like a relatively normal argument. (That said, Snape mad at you is never strictly pleasant.) "It's good you didn't take anything to one of them, and apparently I should have dragged you away from the both of them by your bloody ear. You want me to treat you like anything but a child from now on, you have to behave like an adult. And you don't get to have me do your dirty work for you while you play around with shades of ignorant duplicity with dark beings."

Harry could argue that he honestly didn't know. That he didn't see or feel anything dark, that he never knew about what happened to Thranduil or heard about some genocide. This is the first he's heard of those things and he tries to hide his surprise and anger, but he's not sure how well it's working.

Snape is being unkind, but he's not cruel and it leaves Harry feeling wrong-footed. Maybe it's just further sign of his innate stupidity or tender-heartedness, but he wishes there was something more he could do to change the other man's future.

"Alright. What can I do to assist you now?"

Severus would probably laugh. Actually laugh. It's one thing to think Harry might have been forcing himself to be blind to it, desperate for a sense of approval and belonging-- Severus even understands that. He understands the magnetism of people with ancient magic, and had one of them approached him? Yes, he probably would have consented to dealing with them. Who knows how it would have gone for someone like him, both predisposed to knowing better and to being susceptible to it. But he wouldn't have been so blind. And to have Harry - Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived, Sainted Savior of Everything - claim No, it really is just that I'm this stupid would be unbelievable.

It's maddening.

But maybe fitting for someone doomed with James Potter's genetic contributions, he thinks viciously, and palms over his forehead in irritation. He almost snaps 'Nothing!' and sends him away, so unimpressed by the dull subject change. "Send a Patronus to Lupin," he all but growls, "See if he'll respond to you."

In all honesty, it was probably a little of both. He was naive and he overlooked more than he should've because they were kind to him and he admired their knowledge and skill. If Arima hadn't come when it did, Harry can admit to himself that he would've tried to pull away.

Being thought of as an idiot is preferable to knowing better and not doing something about it.

Harry nods and after a moment casts the charm. His patronus is bright and defined enough so that the feathers flutter and move in an invisible breeze. He looks at the barn owl for a moment with a strange expression and then sends it off with a message. Remus, can I trouble you with something?

Eventually, Severus will get the hell over it. Maybe. Eventually he'll sort of get over it. Even without the added ten years of his spirit being ground down into nothing but Dumbledore's agent, he's still grudging, unfair, and impossible to please. When faced with something legitimate like this, it's just that much more intense.

It's a lot nicer than his own message, when the charm glides off. ('Don't be stupid.')

They get to wait in awkward silence.

For a while.

"Fucking hell," Severus says after a length of no response and no return of the Patronus, angry. "That idiot."

Edited 2014-06-21 21:07 (UTC)

"What on earth could he be looking for out there?" If it's that the ship has taken hold of his mind, then there's little they can do to stop him, but if he's actually found someone, then maybe they ought to? Harry isn't sure.

"I'll try to contact him again later, but either he's being stubborn or the ship has him."

"There is a finite difference between being stubborn and hiding in a plummeting spiral of self-pity and despair," Severus complains, "the latter of which Lupin is a bloody professional at. Passive-aggressive responsibility-dodging arsehole."

Tell us how you really feel, Snape.

"Looking for people out in the ship, that fool. I don't know why I even bother to check up on him."

Because he made a promise, basically, an no matter how much of a prick Severus is, he keeps his word. Even if he seems really, really pissed off about it right now.

Harry certainly does not smothering anything resembling a snort at Snape's description. He likes Lupin, he does, and he knows that this has been a great shift for him, but it feels almost sacrilegious to speak ill of the (not yet) dead.

"I should get going, but I'll send out another patronus later. If he decides to contact me, you'll be the first to know."

"Fine."

Severus jerks a hand dismissively. As is becoming usual, Harry is of no use to him. He's still bothered by all the things they've discussed - up to and including not considering maybe caring at all about his mother - but like hell if he's not going to take the opportunity to make him go away. As ever, he knows he'll be dealing with all of this himself anyway.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( closed )

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject