Chapters 21-30

Tell-tale Heart

She didn’t even have the grace to knock. Instead, she simply cut through his shaky wards like a hot knife through butter. Standing in the middle of the wreckage that was all that remained of his sitting room, she looked at him with horrified pity in her eyes.

‘Oh, Severus,’ McGonagall whispered.

‘What do you want?’ he rasped, coughed—wheezed—forced himself to concentrate on his throat muscles, his stomach muscles, so he wouldn’t choke, and continued in a slow, hoarse whisper. ‘Your precious summer academy is due to start only in a week.’

Minerva ignored him, surveying the ruined room, flinching visibly when the title of a mangled book caught her eye. Snape shifted uncomfortably. He had managed to pile up the shreds in a corner, but his strength hadn’t been enough to actually dispose of the remains of his library.

‘Who was it?’ he croaked. ‘Who tattled on me? That imbecilic Muggle? That Petrel woman?’

‘Mrs. Petrel is an extremely sensible young lady. With a remarkable grasp of magic for a Muggle. Of course she ‘tattled’. She told Miss Granger that she was worried about you being here on your own, and Miss Granger in turn had the good sense to come to me about the matter.’

‘Good sense?’ Severus scowled. Laughter forced its way up his throat, emerging as the sounds of a hacking cough. ‘Miss Granger? Who had the bad taste and idiotic idea to save my life? And the worse fortune to actually succeed?’

‘Severus!’

The outraged cry afforded him a perverse satisfaction. But instead of giving him one of her famous McGonagall rants that once had reduced him to a quivering mess at age 13, she only took a deep breath and shook her head. ‘You don’t have any idea what Miss Granger did, do you?’

He frowned, trying to ignore the uncomfortable pressure of renewed obligations and life-debts weighing him down.

‘What?’ he breathed irritably. ‘She saved my bloody life. And? She seems to be making rather a habit of that, too, if you look at Potter and Weasley.’

‘Severus.’ McGonagall’s voice turned very soft. ‘How long had you been taking that snake venom before V– before Riddle threw that monster at you?’

That made him jerk up his head and meet her eyes. Caught in the disconcerting, penetrating stare of Hogwarts’ new headmistress, he found that he could only tell her the truth.

‘Ever since Narcissa forced that Vow on me. Dumbledore made me,’ he muttered. ‘But what has that to do with the heroics of your precious Miss Granger or her invasion of my privacy?’

Still Minerva held his gaze. ‘Do you know exactly what Miss Granger did to save you?’

He shook his head. He didn’t want to know! Wasn’t it enough that she had forced him to live, when all he had wanted was death?

‘She used Muggle First-Aid, Severus. Mouth-to-mouth. She swallowed your blood. And with it, she swallowed Nagini’s venom. And she hadn’t tried to systematically build up at least some measure of immunity against that vile beast’s poison. Her heart stopped beating twice in the first night at St. Mungo’s. Her hands were completely flayed because they were drenched in your blood.’

He crossed his arms over his chest. ‘My heart stopped three times, Mugwort was pleased to let me know, so what?’

But even he realised that his tone notably lacked conviction.

‘Miss Granger visited you almost every second day while you were unconscious,’ McGonagall continued. ‘She cares about you. Of course she would alert me to the fact that you are all alone in a ruin of a house, unable to take care of yourself. That is not an invasion of privacy.’

Sitting at his bedside while he was unconscious…sending McGonagall over to help him…caring about him? Suddenly he stared at McGonagall in shock. ‘Do you mean to tell me that this irritating girl has developed a crush on me? And you want her to become my apprentice?’

McGonagall laughed out loud and briskly shook her head. ‘Really, Severus. Whatever happened to your good judgement? Hermione Granger had only one crush in her whole life—on poor Gilderoy when she was thirteen. Are you still holding that against her?’

‘Hrmpf.’ He painfully cleared his throat. When he spoke again, his voice was low and halting, but the sounds were a little smoother. ‘And what about Krum? And that Weasley boy?’

McGonagall sighed and sat down on the one chair still standing. ‘She was in love with Krum, but thankfully she was intelligent enough not to love him. Weasley she certainly loves, but I think she couldn’t be in love with him even if she wanted to.

‘Is it so very hard to understand that someone may simply care for you?’

Snape stared at McGonagall in silence for a moment. Then he drew a ragged breath and replied honestly, ‘Yes, it is.’

‘Oh, Severus,’ Minerva said softly, sympathy softening the lines of her face again.

He resisted the urge to complain about that highly annoying refrain. Instead he only rubbed his aching forehead.

Pouncing on that opening like the cat that she was, McGonagall roused herself and announced briskly, ‘Be that as it may. You’d better get used to the fact that there are still people around who care about you. Including myself. And you’re not staying here one more night. You are coming back to Hogwarts with me now. I’ll send a couple of house-elves over to clean up this mess and get your things. Oh, and you can spare your throat the effort of even trying to refuse, because I will not listen to any more arguments from you today.’

After a moment, ‘By the way, whatever happened to the houses next door? I thought there were Muggles living there?’

He winced, his shoulders slumping wearily. ‘There were,’ he whispered. ‘Immigrants. Poor, you know. Many children. Seems it wasn’t healthy to have me as a neighbour.’

‘Oh God…’