Chapter Text
Returning to life, as it turns out, is even more painful than dying, at least in a socio-emotional sense. Although the lack of adrenaline flooding Severus’ system does make the aching pain in his neck difficult to ignore. For the first month following his resurrection, he’d been locked in a secured ward at St. Mungo’s and subjected to all manner of poking, prodding, and diagnostic spells. The only evidence of his untimely demise is two jagged stripes across the left side of his neck where Nagini’s savage bite had ripped away his flesh. The scar tissue is wide and slightly knotted but there are no severe lasting effects from her venom; No, the only poison Severus must contend with is that of his own choices.
The wizarding world does not know about him yet. While he was post-humously pardoned and awarded an Order of Merlin, the court of public opinion had not been so easily swayed. Rita Skeeter had spun an inventive tale about his innate depravity and obsessive tendencies that far too many had believed. As a result, he deemed it prudent to move into a heavily warded Spinner’s End with only three people aware of him, Unspeakables not included. Spinner’s End, Cokeworth in general, really, remains unchanged by the past six years. The river is still disturbingly grey, the corner shop still sells his favorite boyhood candy for fifty pence, and the fourth step up to the second floor of his house creaks no matter where one places his foot.
Severus is seated at his kitchen table when the floo flares to life. Neither Shacklebolt nor Weasley ever darken his doorstep; It is his personal hell that Harry Potter has direct floo access to his home, even if it is a privilege he has only used once a month for the last four months. He pinches the bridge of his nose. Visit number five.
With a long-suffering sigh, he rises to meet him. Potter is standing just off the hearth, the soot already charmed away. He is not looking around the room. He does not attempt to sit even after Severus does. The boy, it seems, has finally learned. Except, of course, for the fact that he still comes.
“Have you—”
“I have received no word of or from Hermione Granger. I’ve not seen her. I don’t feel her. I have not the foggiest idea where she is, Potter.”
“She’s not dead,” he says hotly.
“I did not suggest she was.”
“Ron is starting to doubt.”
“I did not ask.”
Potter glares at him. “You’re a particular kind of bastard, you know that?”
“Because I do not ascribe to your Gryffindor sensibilities? I was under the impression that the three of you retrieved me because you felt that you owed me, that you believed it to be the right thing to do and yet you return here month after month about Granger as if I’ve a debt to repay her.”
“Hermione—”
“Made a choice. A choice I did not ask her to make. A choice she did not consult me on. If the consequences of your brash actions were unfavorable that has nothing to do with me.”
“You… You really don’t care.” His voice is thick with disbelief.
Severus arches his brow. “Why should I?”
Potter fists his hands together so tightly the knuckles turn white. Severus half-expects him to swing. Instead, he releases a slow breath. It seems that the boy has finally gained some control over his emotions. He puts up his hands in a submissive gesture though his eyes are anything but.
“I know it’s not your fault.” His voice shakes with emotion. “My best friend is missing because of an idea I suggested and that’s on me. Finding Hermione is my responsibility. I won’t bother you about it again.”
Severus says nothing, watching Potter with suspicion as he steps back onto the hearth, certain that is not his last word on the matter. The flames roar to life but Potter turns his back to them. He looks around the sitting room.
“I understand you didn’t ask for this,” Potter says bitterly. “But if I had thought for even a second that you’d waste it cowering away in this hovel, I would have told the Unspeakables where to stuff it.”
He disappears in the flame before the figurine smashes against the fireplace. Severus grabs another and then another until the hearth is covered in shards of porcelain and he’s finally rid himself of his mother’s knickknacks as he’s been saying he would since she died. Cowering? Severus seethes. How dare he?
He is not cowering.
He is recalibrating.
Beyond having been dead for six years, Severus had been far too focused on saving that boy’s sorry arse since he was a bloody first year to even think of planning anything that didn’t involve Potter or the Dark Lord. Then, once Albus had died by his hand, he’d been rather certain his future would be either death or Azkaban, neither of which required any level of planning on his part. Severus stews over the boy’s words for the better part of the week and his home bears the brunt of it.
Shattered dishes. Shredded furniture. Incinerated books. A smashed clock. On the fifth day, Severus stands panting in the center of the desecrated spare bedroom. There’s a faint smell of singed material. He raises his wand again to begin repairing the damage but then he pauses. Absolutely nothing in this room is worth the effort to repair. Severus sighs; Potter was right about precisely one thing, and it is that his current home is a certified hovel.
He scowls at the room. Despite Potter’s clear return to loathing him, it is doubtful that he will never darken his door again. Especially as Severus can’t see Weasley daring to do it, and he is required to have some degree of Auror supervision if he wants Shacklebolt to continue to hide his return to life; after all, it would be a scandal if the Minister was found to be sheltering a former Death Eater with no oversight.
Severus weighs his options. If he leaves his home as is and Potter returns, the boy will likely feel superior but if he repairs it, he might feel vindicated. The solution comes to him almost at once. His father had passed after he’d become a Death Eater. To protect his image as a man who scorned his muggle upbringing, he’d never done any of the paperwork to receive his meagre inheritance. If he did that now, however, he could claim it as the impetus to his home repairs. After all, Muggle paperwork takes time and a dead man could hardly withdraw from his Gringotts account.
In truth, with the aid of a few confundus charms, it takes less than a week for the bank to process his funds. Severus stares at the official letter with irritation. His parents’ shared account balance is barely two hundred pounds. If his father had been consistent in no other way, the man could be counted on to drink away his earnings as quickly as they came in. He sighs, incinerates the letter, and storms up the stairs to his parents’ yet untouched old room.
Perhaps he has not fallen as far from his father’s tree as he might have liked. How many times had Tobias received bad news and walked up these same steps to take it out on him? The thought twists his stomach into peculiar knots but does not give him any meaningful pause. His wand slices through the air violently, ripping the mattress in two, and gives him a moment’s satisfaction. Satisfaction quickly turns to confusion as banknotes fly into the air.
Severus steps closer. The lumpy mattress his father had complained about many nights over is stuffed with money. Using a careful summoning charm, Severus gathers and sorts the money before casting a cleansing spell over the lot of it. A counting charm gives him the sum. His brow furrows. Ten thousand pounds squirreled into a mattress. It had to be his mother who had put it there but—he does the mental math quickly, factoring in how much she could likely sneak by Tobias at a time—she must have been at it for at least a decade.
She’d died two years before he graduated from Hogwarts. Severus stares at the money, a strange lump forming in his throat. Her death had been ruled an accidental drowning after a drunken fall from the bridge; at the time, he’d accepted this without question, unsurprised that his mother had fallen to the same vice as his father, but now he wonders if there’s more to the story.
Severus had always thought his mother pitiful, a woman who never helped him because she couldn’t help herself but clearly, she had had more fight left in her than he’d thought if she’d been saving up to run. Would she have taken him with her? Unable to shake the feeling she’d meant to leave him behind, Severus flees from the room. He doesn’t stop running until he’s standing in his backyard. Fire flows from his wand tip like a blow torch. The ache in his chest builds.
He wants it to burn.
He wants to burn with it.
Potter and Granger, those self-righteous fools, had not granted him a second chance but sentenced him to a twisted sort of purgatory. He has no family. No friends. And with the war well behind them, he has no purpose. There is nothing for him in this life except pain. Pain without end. Pain that he no longer has reason to endure.
His wand slashes through the air, aimed not at the house but at the rundown shed that abuts the alley. The scraggly brush surrounding it catches fire. He slashes his wand again and again until the structure itself begins to burn. Something in his chest eases even as his lungs constrict with the smoke. He should step back. He should cast a charm to obscure the smoke but he’s doubtful a neighbor will notice it, let alone care enough to summon anyone that may cause problems.
Then he hears it, a pitiful yowling sound barely audible over the crackling of the fire. Severus casts aguamenti at once. The flames disappear as quickly as they had come and the yowling cuts off. He enters the shed cautiously, mindful of the structural damage he’d just caused. This is what he gets for letting his feelings take over him.
A persistent whimper comes from under a shelf in the back corner. The animal’s breath quickens as his footsteps draw closer. With a silent flick of his wand, he removes the charred debris to reveal the most pitiful creature he’s ever seen.
He reaches out to pick up the cat, retracting his hand quickly as its claws scrape over his hand. Severus casts a barrier spell before reaching out again. It releases a high-pitched scream of pain as he lifts it up; although there’s no sign that the flames had touched it, the cat has evidently been terribly injured. He carries it inside carefully and lays it on his kitchen table for a proper assessment.
The cat or kitten, really, is severely emaciated and lays there as if a single swipe was the only fight it’d had left in it. Its curly coat is matted with some empty patches where the hair had been torn out completely. As he studies the scrapes and lumps on the animal, Severus develops a theory; he would wager all the pounds he’d just discovered that a group of troublesome boys had come across the fragile kitten and attempted to destroy it for nothing more than the crime of existing. The irony that it chose to slink away and take refuge in his garden shed just as he had after experiencing the same in his youth is not lost on him.
Severus frowns. Healing spells are not the same for animals. There is no vet within walking distance. He has no car. He does not know the area to apparate and furthermore any magic performed outside of his wards runs the risk of being tracked. There is nothing that he can do for the creature.
“Perhaps it would have been a kindness to just let you die,” he muses as he looks the kitten over. He sighs.
Expecting the kitten to die within the hour, Severus sits back in his chair and watches. He feels a twisted mixture of foolish and macabre as he stares at the dying animal. The kitten means nothing to him, but even he, right bastard though he was, hadn’t had to die alone. So he waits.
The fast-paced pants relax into something slower, and he assumes the moment is soon. But then the hour passes. Then another. Eventually the kitten opens its eyes to look at him and Severus tenses. There’s an intelligence in its gaze that seems more human than animal. The animagus reversal spell leaves his lips without conscious thought, but nothing happens. He casts a magic detection spell instead. There’s a subtle reading.
“Kneazle blood then,” he mutters to himself before standing and conjuring a dish that he then fills with water. Then he summons a can of tuna from the cupboard which he opens before placing both containers on the floor. He carefully lays the cat down beside them. “You can stay until morning.”
He leaves without sparing the creature a second thought. If it has even a drop of Kneazle blood as he suspects, that would be sufficient for the cat to recover fully within a few hours; it’s also enough to make them dreadfully spiteful so the bowl of food and water serve as something of an apology for nearly cooking the mangy thing. Severus sets off walking without direction, hoping that by the time he returns his mind will be clear and his house feline-free.
When he returns the sun is setting. Only two blocks from his house, he spies a group of boys up ahead. There’s about five of them in a semi-circle, advancing slowly, the posturing of pack hunters cornering their prey or, in this case, bullies cornering a helpless victim. He disillusions himself and muffles his steps as he draws closer. It takes him a moment to see their target.
A cat.
No, the cat.
Severus internally scoffs. Whatever other traits it had inherited, the kneazle intelligence had clearly not been one of them. As if it can sense his thoughts, the cat’s gaze moves towards him. Despite the way it is backing away, its eyes betray no hint of fear. Its tail twitches. The group of boys condense slightly, and he realizes they’re at the entrance of an alley, if one could even call it that. It is narrow. The eldest boy can’t be more than sixteen, yet they can barely manage two of them entering the alley shoulder to shoulder.
The desire for the catharsis of verbally berating the cruel street kids compels him to remove his disillusionment spell and wait near the opening. Underneath the boys’ eager mutterings, he can hear the plaintive mewling of the cat. He’d intended to let one strike first to ensure his admonishment was justified, but the sound makes him uneasy in a way that he does not immediately understand. Before he can call out, the cat hisses and a boy screams out in pain.
Severus moves to see what is happening, his mouth falling open in surprise. He had been wrong about the cat. It had not allowed itself to be trapped again. It had done the trapping. While the narrowness of the alley prevented the boys from moving about easily, the same could not be said for the cat. The malevolent creature darts between their legs, biting and scratching. It leaps onto crates and knocks them around the head.
It is a proper thrashing delivered by what cannot be more than eight pounds of pure fury. The boys scramble backwards, falling over themselves and stepping on one another to get out of the alley. They fall into a heap at his feet. The first boy to recover looks up at Severus, face scratched and tear-stained, eyes wide with panic.
“Mister,” he cries. “Mister there’s a cat—”
He cuts off as the cat in question stalks out slowly with all the dignity of royalty. It winds itself around Severus’ legs. For the first time since his resurrection, he must fight the urge to smile. Instead, he arches a brow at its antics before picking it up and running a hand along its body in quick inspection.
“I was wondering where you got off to,” he says quietly.
“I-Is that your cat? It just attacked us!”
“Attacked you,” he repeats. “The five innocent boys who stalked her down the alley. Imagine that.”
“We thought it was lost,” the eldest boy says defiantly. He assumes this is their leader.
“Indeed.” Severus allows the cat to jump back down. The boys scramble to their feet and back away slightly. “Well, good Samaritans that you are, perhaps you know what happened to my other cat.”
“Other cat?”
“Practically identical to this one. I found her in the shed this morning. Terribly injured.”
The boy literally gulps. Embarrassing. “We’re, uh, we’re sorry to hear that, Mister.”
“Not as sorry as the people who did it will be,” he says mildly. “I mean, what kind of people would want to hurt something as innocent as a kitten?”
“I—I don’t know, Sir.”
“A weak sort, I assume,” he muses softly. “Cowards who wish to appear impressive.”
The boys say nothing. Their eyes anxiously dart to each other when they think he’s not looking. He looks at each one in turn, just long enough for them to shift under his gaze.
“You lot would do well to make sure that you don’t go down that path. You never know who’s at the end of it,” he says, voice dangerously low. Then he turns on his heel. “Come along, Briar.”
Severus does not look behind him as he walks but he can sense the cat’s quiet presence. When they reach his house, he opens the door and allows it to pad past him. It does not proceed far into his home, however, choosing to linger just inside the entry hall and, apparently, awaiting his direction. He frowns. Kneazles are notably intelligent, but he’s never met one so oddly polite.
“To the sitting room then,” he mutters, leading the way. The cat follows him and leaps onto the armchair nearest to the fire. “Perhaps I don’t allow animals on the furniture.”
It gives him an unimpressed look, and a breath of a laugh escapes him. He sits on the couch opposite the chair, suddenly feeling rather foolish. There’s just something impossibly human about the creature. On a whim, he attempts legilimency. Nothing.
“I imagine if there was someone to miss you, you’d be on your way to them by now.”
Reproach enters its brown eyes. He gestures between them.
“By all means, tell me your life story.”
His snark is rewarded with a flick of its tail.
“If you want a posh residence and a kind companion, wander yourself to London and start shmoozing. Lovely as you are, some old biddy will snatch you up right away,” he says dismissively as he stands to go into the kitchen.
He feels the cat’s eyes on him, but it does not follow him. Severus cooks his late meal in silence, already noticing how it feels to live with another presence aware that you are doing so. It is hard to say whether or not he likes the feeling. When he finishes cooking, the cat wanders into the room. Rather than jumping up to his table, it perches on a nearby counter that puts it at eye-level but away from the food. He summons his last can of tuna to land in front of her before charming it open. It must be the deprivation of social interaction beyond Potter that loosens his tongue.
“Shall I keep trialing different names or does Briar suit you,” he asks.
The cat pauses eating, tilting its head as if considering the matter. It looks at him expectantly.
“I’m not spending my evening coming up with your name,” he scoffs. “I’ll call you what I feel like, and I suppose you’ll have to let me know what you like.”
She flicks her tail in clear irritation but returns to her meal. His lips twitch. The second time in one day. He’d forgotten how much he loves to nettle, even if it’s just an overly intelligent animal.
“Delicate. Beautiful. Will make you bleed if not handled carefully,” he continues drily. “Personally, I think Briar is well suited.”
Just as before, the cat stops eating and tilts its head. This time, however, it leaps down from the counter and, after stretching in that languorous way all cats must, brushes its face against his ankle. Then it saunters back into the sitting room.
“Briar it is then,” he mutters, shaking his head.