Chapter Text
Tobias Snape was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatsoever about that. The register of his burial was signed by a clergyman, a local neighbor, and the undertaker. Snape had signed it as well: his mother might have, but she’d died before the bastard. Old Tobias was as dead as a doornail.
Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a doornail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the country's done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Tobias was as dead as a doornail.
Snape knew Tobias was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Snape and he were father and son, though not through any choosing on either side. Snape was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, and his sole child. And Snape was not so dreadfully cut up by the event of his father’s death, in fact, he’d been rather cheerful, for him, on the day of the funeral.
The mention of Tobias's funeral brings me back to the point I started from. There is no doubt that Tobias was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot -- say Saint Paul's Churchyard for instance -- literally to astonish his son's weak mind.
Severus Snape never stopped using the Snape name, though he might have. The previous owner of the apothecary had left his sign up above the door: Slug and Jiggers. Despite his purchase of the firm after the war, he’d never bothered to change the sign. Sometimes people new to the business called Snape Mr. Slug, and sometimes Mr. Jiggers, but he answered to both names as well as his own: it was all the same to him.
Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind- stone, Snape! An irascible, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, curmudgeonly, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his features, nipped his hawk-like nose, and stiffened his gait. He carried his own low temperature always about with him; he iced his office in the dogdays; and didn't thaw it one degree at Christmas.
External heat and cold had little influence on Snape. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather could chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he, no falling snow was more intent upon its purpose, no pelting rain less open to entreaty. Foul weather didn't know where to have him. The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. They often "came down" handsomely, though Snape never did.
Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, "My dear Snape, how are you? When will you come to see me?" No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o'clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Snape. Even the blind man's dog appeared to know him; and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owner into doorways and up courts; and then would wag their tails as though they said, "No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!"
But what did Snape care? It was the very thing he liked. To edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all humanity to keep its distance.
Once upon a time -- of all the good days in the year, on Christmas Eve -- Snape sat busy in his apothecary. It was cold, bleak, biting weather: foggy withal: and he could hear the people in Diagon Alley outside go wheezing up and down, beating their hands upon their breasts, and stamping their feet upon the pavement stones to warm themselves. Not even a warming charm could penetrate the bitter chill. The city clocks had only just gone three, but it was quite dark already -- it had not been light all day: and candles were flaring in the windows of the neighbouring offices, like ruddy smears upon the palpable brown air. The fog came pouring in at every chink and keyhole, and was so dense without, the buildings opposite were mere phantoms. To see the dingy cloud come drooping down, obscuring everything, one might have thought that Nature lived hard by, and was brewing on a large scale.
The door of Snape's office was open that he might keep his eye upon his apprentice, who was, in a dismal little cell beyond, bottling potions. Snape had a very small fire, but the apprentice's fire was so very much smaller that it looked like one coal. But she couldn't replenish it, for Snape kept the coal-box in his own office; and so surely as the apprentice came in with the shovel, the potions master would grouse and grumble, making threats about throwing her out on her ear. Wherefore the apprentice put on her heaviest jumper and tried to warm herself at the candle; in which effort, she failed.
"A merry Christmas, sir!" cried a cheerful voice. It was the voice of Harry Potter, who came upon him so quickly that this was the first intimation he had of his approach.
"Oh bugger!" said Snape.
He had so heated himself with rapid walking in the fog and frost, the young wizard, that he was all in a glow; his face was ruddy and handsome; his eyes sparkled, and his breath smoked again.
"Christmas a bugger, Sir!" said Harry. "You don't mean that, I am sure."
"I do," said Snape. "Merry Christmas! Who in their right mind would wish me a merry Christmas?"
"Come then," returned Potter gaily. "What right do you have to be dismal? What reason do you have to be morose? You're rich, famous, and no longer under anyone’s thumb."
Snape having no better answer ready on the spur of the moment, said "Bugger!" again.
"Don't be cross, sir!" said Harry.
"What else can I be," returned Severus, "when I live in a world of fools such as you? Merry Christmas indeed! To most dunderheads Christmas is a time for paying bills without money; a time for finding themselves a year older, but not an hour richer; a time for not contributing to the general betterment of anyone, least of all themselves! If I could work my will," said Snape indignantly, "every idiot who goes about with 'Merry Christmas' on his lips, should be boiled with his own pudding, and buried with a stake of holly through his heart!"
"But sir!" pleaded Harry.
"Potter!" returned the older man, sternly, "keep Christmas in your own way, and let me keep it in mine."
"Keep it!" repeated Potter. "But you don't keep it."
"Let me forget it then," snapped Snape. "Much good may it do you! Much good it has ever done anyone!"
"Christmas is a good time of year: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time: the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when witches and wizards seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people seen as below them as if they really were all equal, and not another race of creatures to be looked down upon. And therefore, sir, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!"
The apprentice in the workshop involuntarily applauded, then becoming immediately sensible of the impropriety, she poked the fire and extinguished the last frail spark forever.
"Let me hear another sound from you," said Snape, "and you'll keep your Christmas by losing your situation. You seem to think you’ve grown into quite an eloquent speaker, Potter," he added, turning to the young man. "It’s wonder you didn't go into the Wizengamot."
"And on that note, I’ve come with an invitation. Come to Grimmauld Place! Dine with us tomorrow."
“And how does Mrs. Potter feel about this invitation?" asked Snape.
"She would be as happy as me to see you there."
"Liar!" growled Snape, as if that were the only one thing in the world more ridiculous than a merry Christmas. "Good afternoon!"
"But sir…"
"Good afternoon," said Snape again.
"I want nothing from you; I’ve asked nothing of you; why can’t we be friends?"
"Good afternoon," said Snape, sounding even more impatient.
"I am sorry you won’t be there tomorrow. I know we’ve had our differences. But I have at least tried to make amends for my role in them. So, a merry Christmas, sir!"
"Get out," hissed Snape.
"And A Happy New Year!"
"Now!" bellowed Snape.
Potter left the room without an angry word. He stopped at the outer door to bestow the greetings of the season on the apprentice, who cold as she was, was warmer than Snape; for she returned them cordially.
"There's another idiot," muttered Snape, who overheard her: "Granger, hiding here instead of taking a job where she could have been of use, talking about a merry Christmas. I'll retire to Bedlam."
The blasted girl, in letting Potter out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen who now stood, with their hats off, in Snape's office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him.
"Slug and Jiggers, I believe," said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. "Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Slug, or Mr. Jiggers?"
"Neither," Snape replied.
"Well, I have no doubt their liberality is well represented by you, good sir" said one of the gentleman, presenting his credentials.
At the ominous word "liberality," Snape frowned, and shook his head, handing the credentials back.
"At this festive season of the year, sir," said the gentleman, taking up a pen, "it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many hundreds are in want of common necessaries; more are in want of common comforts, sir."
"Did Azkaban close?" asked Snape.
"Not that I am aware of," said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.
"And the ministries charitable fund?" demanded Snape. "Is it still in operation?"
"It is. Still," returned the gentleman, "I wish they could do more."
"The right to change wizarding citizenship is still available?" said Snape.
"Why yes, sir."
"Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop all the means available to the poor in their useful course," said Snape. "I'm very glad to hear it."
"Under the impression that they scarcely furnish cheer of mind or body to the multitude," returned the gentleman, "a few of us are endeavouring to raise a fund to buy the poor among us some meals and means of warmth. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when want is keenly felt, and abundance rejoices. What shall I put you down for?"
"Nothing!" Snape replied.
"You wish to be anonymous?"
"I wish to be left alone," said Snape. "Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don't make merry myself at Christmas and I can't afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned -- they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there."
"Many can't go there; and many would rather die."
"If they would rather die," said Snape, "they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population."
"But sir, surely you know that the war devastated many," observed the gentleman.
"Including myself," Snape returned. "It's enough for a man to understand his own business, and not to interfere with other people's. Mine occupies me constantly. Good afternoon, gentlemen!"
Seeing clearly that it would be useless to pursue their point, the gentlemen withdrew. Snape returned to his labours with an improved opinion of himself, and in a more facetious temper than was usual for him.
Meanwhile the fog and darkness thickened so that people ran about with wands lit, causing the Knight Bus to pop up randomly all over Diagon Alley. The ancient tower of a church, whose gruff old bell was always peeping slyly down at Snape out of a Gothic window in the wall, became invisible, and struck the hours and quarters in the clouds, with tremulous vibrations afterwards as if its teeth were chattering in its frozen head up there. The cold became intense. In the main street at the corner of the alley, some labourers were repairing the pipes, and had lighted a great fire in a brazier, round which a party of ragged men and boys were gathered: warming their hands and winking their eyes before the blaze in rapture. The brightness of the shops where holly sprigs and berries crackled in the lamp heat of the windows, made pale faces ruddy as they passed.
Foggier yet, and colder! Piercing, searching, biting cold. If the good Saint Dunstan had but nipped the Evil Spirit's nose with a touch of such weather as that, instead of using his familiar weapons, then indeed he would have roared to lusty purpose. The owner of one scant young nose, gnawed and mumbled by the hungry cold as bones are gnawed by dogs, stooped down at Snape's keyhole to regale him with a Christmas carol: but at the first sound of --
"God bless you, merry gentleman! May nothing you dismay!"
Snape seized his wand with such energy of action, that the singer fled in terror, leaving the keyhole to the fog and even more congenial frost.
At length the hour of shutting up the apothecary arrived. With an ill-will Snape dismounted from his stool, and tacitly admitted the fact to the expectant apprentice in the workshop, who instantly snuffed her candle out, and pulled on her hat.
"You'll want all day tomorrow, I suppose?" said Snape.
"If quite convenient, sir."
"It's not convenient," said Snape, "and it's not fair. If I was to stop a galleon for it, you'd think yourself ill-used, I'll be bound?"
The apprentice smiled faintly.
"And yet," said Snape, "you don't think me ill-used, when I pay a day's wages for no work."
The apprentice observed that it was only once a year.
"A poor excuse for picking a man's pocket every twenty-fifth of December!" said Snape, buttoning his black great coat to the chin. "But I suppose you must have the whole day. Be here all the earlier next morning."
The apprentice promised that she would; and Snape walked out with a growl. The office was closed in a twinkling, and the apprentice, rather than apparating immediately home, joined in a snowball fight at the end of the lane in honour of its being Christmas Eve, and then hurried home to her tiny flat in Camden Town.
Snape took his melancholy dinner in his usual melancholy tavern; and having read all the newspapers and beguiled the rest of the evening with a book, went home to bed. He lived a house which had once belonged to his deceased father. It was a gloomy two up, two down. It was old and dreary enough now, for nobody lived in it but Snape, though it had always been rather shabby. The yard was so dark that even Snape, who knew its every stone, was fain to grope with his hands. The fog and frost so hung about the black old gateway of the house, that it seemed as if the Genius of the Weather sat in mournful meditation on the threshold.
Now, it is a fact, that there was nothing at all particular about the knocker on the door, except that it was very large. It is also a fact, that Snape had seen it, night and morning, during his whole residence in that place; also, that Snape had as little of what is called fancy about him as any man in the city of Cokeworth. Let it also be borne in mind that Snape had not bestowed one thought on Tobias for nigh on ten years now. And then let any man explain to me, if he can, how it happened that Snape, having his key in the lock of the door, saw in the knocker, without its undergoing any intermediate process of change -- not a knocker, but Tobias's face.
Tobias's face. It was not in impenetrable shadow as the other objects in the yard were, but had a dismal light about it, like a bad lobster in a dark cellar. It was not angry or ferocious, as Tobias had often looked upon Snape, merely curious. The hair was mildly stirred, as if by breath or hot air; and, though the eyes were wide open, they were perfectly motionless. That, and its livid colour, made it horrible; but its horror seemed to be in spite of the face and beyond its control, rather than a part or its own expression.
As Snape stared fixedly at this phenomenon, it was a knocker again.
To say that he was not startled, or that his blood was not conscious of a terrible sensation to which it had been used to from infancy to the end of the war, would be untrue. But he put his hand upon the key he had relinquished, turned it sturdily, walked in, and turned on the lights.
He did pause, with a moment's irresolution, before he shut the door; and he did look cautiously behind it first, as if he half-expected to be terrified with the sight of his father’s queue sticking out into the hall. But there was nothing on the back of the door, except the screws and nuts that held the knocker on, so he closed it with a bang.
The sound resounded through the house like thunder. Every space in the house appeared to have a separate peal of echoes of its own. Snape was not a man to be frightened by echoes. He fastened the door, and walked across the hall, and up the stairs slowly.
Up Snape went, not caring that the lights were off. Darkness is cheap, and Snape liked it. But before he shut his heavy door, he walked through the upstairs rooms to see that all was right. He had just enough recollection of the face to desire to do that.
Quite satisfied, he closed the bedroom door, and locked himself in; then warded himself in, which was not his custom. Thus, secured against surprise, he took off his cravat; put on his dressing-gown and slippers, then sat down before the fire to take a sip of Ogden’s Finest.
It was a very low fire indeed; nothing on such a bitter night. He was obliged to sit close to it, and brood over it, before he could extract the least sensation of warmth from such a handful of fuel. The fireplace was an old one, built by some Dutch merchant long ago, and paved all round with quaint Dutch tiles, designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaohs' daughters; Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers descending through the air on clouds like feather-beds, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter-boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts -- and yet that face of Tobias, more than thirty years dead, came like the ancient Prophet's rod, and swallowed up the whole. If each smooth tile had been a blank at first, with power to shape some picture on its surface from the disjointed fragments of his thoughts, there would have been a copy of Tobias's head on every one.
"Bugger!" said Snape; and walked across the room.
After several turns, he sat down again. As he threw his head back in the chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, upon the mantle. It was with great astonishment, and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw this bell lift and begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound; but soon it rang out loudly.
This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour. The bell ceased as it had begun, softly. It was succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks of potions in his cellar. Snape didn’t remember ever having heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains, not that this house had ever been haunted by anything but the ghosts of his miserable childhood.
The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floor below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.
Hopping up, he held out his wand. His colour changed though, when, without a pause, it came on through the heavy door and passed into the room before his eyes. Upon its coming in, the dying flame leaped up, as though it cried, "I know him; Tobias's Ghost!" and fell again.
The same face: the very same. Tobias in his usual workman’s coat, trousers, and boots. The chain he drew was clasped about his middle. It was long and wound about him like a tail; and it was made (for Snape observed it closely) of padlocks, empty bottles of alcohol, and chains for locking up the closed mills. His body was transparent, so that Snape, observing him, and looking through his work coat, could see the patches on his coat behind.
Snape had often said that Tobias had been a gutless coward, but he had never believed it literally until now.
No, nor did he believe it even now. Though he looked the phantom through and through, and saw it standing before him; though he felt the chilling influence of its death-cold eyes; and marked the very texture of the folded kerchief bound about its head and chin, which wrapper he had not observed before: he was still incredulous, and fought against his senses.
"So, it’s you," said Snape, caustic and cold as ever. "What do you want with me?"
"Much!" -- Tobias's voice, no doubt about it.
"Who are you?"
"Ask me who I was."
"Who were you then?" said Snape, raising his voice. "You're particular, for a shade."
"In life I was your father, Tobias Snape."
"Can you - can you sit down?" asked Snape, looking doubtfully at him.
"I can."
"Do it then."
The ghost sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace, as if he were quite used to it.
"You don't believe in me," observed the Ghost.
"I don't," said Snape.
"What evidence would you have of my reality, beyond that of your senses?"
"I don't know," said Snape.
"Why do you doubt your senses?"
"Because," said Snape, "a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them unreliable. You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are! For I know you are not the ghost of Tobias."
Snape was not in the habit of cracking jokes, nor did he feel, in his heart, by any means waggish then. The truth is, that he tried to be smart, as a means of distracting his own attention, and keeping down his terror; for the spectre's voice disturbed the very marrow in his bones.
To sit, staring at those fixed glazed eyes, in silence for a moment, would play, Snape felt, the very deuce with him. There was something very awful, too, in the spectre's being provided with an infernal atmosphere of its own. Snape could not feel it himself, but this was clearly the case; for though the Ghost sat perfectly motionless, its hair, and jacket, and laces, were still agitated as by the hot vapour from an oven.
"You see my glass of spirits?" said Snape, wishing, though it were only for a second, to divert the vision's stony gaze from himself.
"I do," replied the Ghost.
"You are not looking at it," said Snape.
"But I see it," said the Ghost, "notwithstanding."
"Well!" returned Snape, "I have but to swallow this, and be for the rest of my days persecuted by a legion of goblins, all of my own creation.”
At this the spirit raised a frightful cry, and shook its chain with such a dismal and appalling noise, that Snape was transported but for a minute to the fears of his childhood. But how much greater was his horror, when the phantom taking off the bandage round its head, as if it were too warm to wear indoors, its lower jaw dropped down upon its breast!
Snape buried his face in his hands.
"Why do you trouble me?"
"Now my son,” replied the Ghost, "do you believe in me or not?"
"I suppose I must," said Snape. "Though you are not like the many spirits that still walk this earth long after their death. So, tell me, old man, where have you been all this time?"
"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow men, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"
Again, the spectre raised a cry, and shook its chain and wrung its shadowy hands.
"You are fettered," observed Snape. "Tell me why."
"I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. Is its pattern strange to you?"
Snape again glanced at the heavy chains.
"Or would you know," pursued the Ghost, "the weight and length of the strong coil you bear yourself? It was full, as heavy, and as long as this, thirty Christmas Eves ago. You have laboured on it, since. It is a ponderous chain!"
Snape glanced about him on the floor, in the expectation of finding himself surrounded by some fifty or sixty fathoms of iron cable: but he could see nothing.
"Surely father," he said in an annoyed tone, “you have come to apologize to me.”
"I have not," the Ghost replied. "It is not something that would change my circumstance. Nor can I tell you what I would. A very little more, is all that is permitted to me. I cannot rest, I cannot stay, I cannot linger anywhere. My spirit never walked beyond our sad neighborhood. In life my spirit never roved beyond the narrow limits of the pub, the dole office, and this house; and weary journeys lie before me!"
It was a habit with Snape, whenever he became thoughtful, tap his lip with his pointer finger. Pondering on what the Ghost had said, he did so now, but without lifting up his eyes.
"You must have been very slow about it," Snape observed, in a business-like manner.
"Slow?" the Ghost repeated.
"Thirty years dead," mused Snape. "And travelling all this time!"
"The whole time," said the Ghost. "No rest, no peace. Incessant torture of remorse."
"You travel fast?" asked Snape.
"On the wings of the wind," replied the Ghost.
"You might have got over a great quantity of ground in thirty years," said Snape.
Tobias, on hearing this, set up another cry, and clanked his chains so hideously in the dead silence of the night, that the local magistrate would have been justified in indicting it for a nuisance.
"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the phantom, "not to know, that ages of incessant labour, by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"
"You did not possess a good Christian spirit father and neither do I," sneered Snape. “I applied myself to righting a wrong and now to minding my own business.
"Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind should be your business. The common welfare your business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, must be your business. Love, Severus. Love above all, should be your business.”
It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
"At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most. Why did I raise my hand against you and your mother? Why did I not consider my immortal soul? Why, Severus, did I never seek your forgiveness for all that I did against you?”
Snape was very much dismayed to hear the spectre going on as he was and turned away from him.
"Hear me!" cried the Ghost. "My time is nearly gone."
"Why should I listen to anything you have to say?" snapped Snape. “Why did you come?”
"How it is that I appear before you in a shape that you can see, I may not tell. I have sat invisible beside you many and many a day."
It was not an agreeable idea. Snape glanced back at the ghost of his father.
"That is no light part of my penance," pursued the Ghost. "I am here tonight to warn you, that you have yet a chance and hope of escaping my fate. A chance and hope of my procuring, Severus."
"And I am supposed to forgive you, I suppose?” asked Snape, rolling his eyes.
"You will be haunted," resumed the Ghost, "by Three Spirits."
Snape frowned.
"Is that the chance and hope you mentioned, Tobias?" he deadpanned, crossing his arms.
"It is."
"I think I'd rather not," said Snape.
"Without their visits," said Tobias, "you cannot hope to shun the path I tread. Expect the first tomorrow, when the bell tolls one."
"Couldn't I take them all at once, and have it over?" snapped Snape.
"Expect the second on the next night at the same hour. The third upon the next night when the last stroke of twelve has ceased to vibrate. Look to see me no more; and look that, for your own sake, you remember what has befallen me."
His supernatural visitor stood and turned towards him in an erect attitude, with its chain wound over and about its arm.
The apparition walked backward from him; and at every step it took, the window raised itself a little, so that when the spectre reached it, it was wide open. It beckoned Snape to approach, which he did. When they were within two paces of each other, Tobias's ghost held up its hand, warning him to come no nearer. Snape stopped.
Not so much in obedience, as in surprise: for on the raising of the hand, he became sensible of confused noises in the air; incoherent sounds of lamentation and regret; wailings inexpressibly sorrowful and self-accusatory. The spectre, after listening for a moment, joined in the mournful dirge; and floated out upon the bleak, dark night.
Snape followed to the window in his curiosity. He looked out.
The air was filled with phantoms, wandering hither and thither in restless haste, and moaning as they went. Every one of them wore chains like Tobias's ghost; some few were linked together; none were free. Many had been personally known to Snape in their lives. He had been quite familiar with one old ghost, in a white waistcoat, with a monstrous iron safe attached to its ankle, who cried piteously at being unable to assist the ghost of a wretched woman with an infant, whom it saw sitting upon a doorstep. The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power forever.
Whether these creatures faded into mist, or mist enshrouded them, he could not tell. But they and their spirit voices faded together; and the night became as it had been when he’d apparated home.
Snape closed the window and examined the door by which the ghost had entered. It was double-locked, as he had locked it with his own hands and magic, undisturbed. He started to say "Bugger!" but stopped at the first syllable. And being, from the emotion he had undergone, or the fatigues of the day, or his glimpse of the invisible world, or the conversation of the ghost, or the lateness of the hour, much in need of repose; went straight to bed, without undressing, and fell asleep in an instant.