57When Harry woke up a few hours later, he felt better than ever. He rolled out of bed and got dressed, pausing to rub Vampyr's head before going downstairs. He had pulled a jumper out, the wool warming him against the slight chill in the air. He realized halfway down the stairs that he was doing that thing that Snape hated—pulling his socks and shoes on while going down the steps. Snape kept growling that he would break his neck, but Harry had balance . . . most of the time.
He sat down to put on the left shoe, his fingers tying the laces as fast as he could.
"Why are you rushing around?" Snape stood at the bottom of the stairs, frowning. "Did I tell you you could get out of bed?
"I'm fine," Harry stood up. "Has my owl come yet?"
"What are you expecting in the post? And before you answer, march yourself into the kitchen and settle down to eat."
"I'm expecting a book," Harry went to the table and began eating the soup and sandwich.
"A book?"
"I'm allowed to receive books."
"When did you start ordering books?"
"When I started wanting them," Harry paused, spoon in midair. "You are not going to forbid me from reading, are you?"
"I'm not letting strange books in here," Snape went to the stove and stirred the pot of remaining soup as if that gave him the ultimate authority. "They could be possessed or hidden horcruxes or enchanted and dangerous."
"Like the monster book from our third year at Hogwarts? That sure scared thirteen-year-old me."
"I'm not having dangerous books in this house!"
Harry gulped down a spoonful of soup as he weighed his options. He had hoped Snape would have gotten the whole protective bit out of his system, but apparently, they were still in the whole stern-hysterical phase.
"It's nothing. I wanted something to read while I . . . recover."
Snape whirled around triumphantly. "So you are still sick. I knew it. Finish the food and then back to bed."
"I wanted to paint the wardrobe in the guest bedroom."
"Paint?" Snape looked like Harry had suggested running through the snow naked. "Paint?"
"I used to could paint," Harry ripped off a chunk of the sandwich and chewed it ruefully. "Now I sneak around and paint when you're out. Can I send a message to Ginny? I miss her."
He sighed and idly moved the spoon through the soup. He knew he looked pathetic, but the kitchen was so cold. He cupped his hands and blew on them.
"Are you cold?"
"A little. I should put on another layer."
Snape hesitated and then moved across the kitchen with that directed tread of his and put a hand on Harry's forehead. "You're warm."
"It was all the potions you gave me."
"You're warm."
"Your hands are cold."
"I'm going to get the thermometer," Snape marched out the room so fast Harry almost thought he Apparated.
But the moment Snape was gone, Harry lunged for his glass of water. He was cold and the edges of the glass were frigid on his lips before the water hit, but he drank quickly in hopes to cool his mouth enough so the temperature wouldn't be high.
When Snape returned, Harry took the thermometer but maneuvered it on top of his tongue when Snape turned to the stove. He breathed from the top of his lung, letting cool air pass over the glass thermometer as he drew air in and out.
Snape marched back over and took the thermometer out of Harry's mouth. He tilted it to read and said, "92 degrees. That can't be right."
"Can we just talk about what happened?"
"Hypothermia starts when the body reaches 95 degrees. The wizard body can fluctuate but -"
"I'll do it again," Harry snatched the thermometer back. "If I don't have hypothermia, can we talk then?"
Snape went back to the stove.
The thermometer read 97 degrees the second time, but Snape just frowned and left the room. Harry got up to clean up, stacking the dishes up.
"When I come back in there," Snape snarled from the living room, "you better be resting."
Harry slumped down in his chair, letting his head tilt back against the chairback. He needed some way of distracting Snape. Snape was at his best – no, his most agreeable when he was busy with projects. The business of selling potions and plants proved endlessly useful in how it took up the majority of the man's attention, and Harry found plenty of time to sneak off and do whatever he wanted while Snape was watering, pruning, measuring, brewing, packaging, or calculating.
Most of the time Harry would stick his head in the greenhouse and call out, "I'm taking Vampyr for a walk. Be back in a sec."
"You are ruining my concentration!" Snape usually snapped back.
Then Harry would take the dog on a walk, most often to the little pub in the village. He didn't care much for Muggle ale, but in the spirit of blending in, he would order a pint of the local brew and sit in the dim pub with the dog at his feet sleeping. Half the time, Ginny or Ron would Apparate there to visit, and they all took sips of the foaming glasses and tried not to make faces. Twice Hermione had come, and she had efficiently turned the ale in butterbeer charmed to look like ale. Harry had tried to copy her, but he had trouble angling his wand up his sleeve and had caught the ale on fire.
After an hour or two at the pub, he went back home to find Snape still working, and Harry had the chance to play hero and insist on helping finish up the job before dinner.
Those were the normal state of affairs, but now Harry couldn't fathom how to get Snape to go work in the greenhouse, much less how to suggest taking Vampyr for a walk.
He glanced at the soup bowl. Two years ago, when recovering from the wizard pox, he had gotten sympathy by pretending to spill soup and getting Snape to take care of him.
Harry picked the bowl up and tilted it, letting the last bit of soup run towards the edge. Before it could spill over, he righted it and put it back on the table.
No, this was bigger than soup spills. He had fought his enemy and won, but the subsequent coma had frightened Snape badly. There were many things you could do and say in this house, horrid accusations you growled in fights and countless manipulations in attempts to win imaginary wars, but you did not frighten Snape. You tricked him, you confused him, maybe even hid from him and lied quite often, but you didn't scare him in a real way. When he was scared, he felt vulnerable, exposed, raw, and Harry remembered in stark vivid detail that first summer here at the house when Snape had been made vulnerable, exposed, and raw. Snape needed the illusion of control, the satisfaction that he was in charge and the alpha, and that Harry was powerless to do anything but obey.
All their squabbles were opportunities for Snape to reassert his dominance, and while he left in assurance that he had bested his son, Harry got to go live his own life.
"Come on, come on, think!" Harry drummed his fingers on the table. "Think, Potter. Come up with a plan to get things back to normal. Set fire to the kitchen? No, I can't pull that off. Insist on building another room? Ah, we got a dining room, two extra bedrooms, and a greenhouse now. Hermione would build a library, but I don't read enough to convince him. I should read more. When my book arrives, I will read it. I used to love stories – they were my best friends."
He had drifted back into the past of his favorite adventures when Snape returned, and at his lax expression, Snape wanted to check for a concussion.
The book arrived by owl late in the afternoon, and Harry took it, lying, "I think it's that new Auror training they were going to have me study before I – well, I was busy the last few days."
He got the book upstairs without Snape seeing and tucked it under the mattress.
Snape insisted on more potions, more fussing, more avoiding talking, and Harry found himself in bed by 7:30. Vampyr had already settled on the floor, and Harry snuggled down in the bed and pulled out the book.
It had a black cover with red embossed letters that twisted over each other. He skipped the foreword, knowing only too well what it said, but he started to the first story: "The Boggart and the Attic."
He had already read it months ago when Ernie MacMillan had first approached him. The story had been short and horrific at the end – the boggart in the attic was impersonating a woman's drunk husband, slowly driving her mad, and at the end, she ran up there and performed the Killing Curse on it, only to find it was her actual husband wandering around after too many fire whiskeys. The story ended with the woman screaming in the attic over her husband's body while the boggart mimicked the bars of a cell in Azkaban.
Harry had told the story to Ron one afternoon at the pub, and Ron had quipped, "You what's scarier? The boggart turns into a Dementor at the end, about to administer the Kiss."
Harry had paused then. "Is the wizard penalty for accidental killing getting the Kiss? We haven't covered that in Auror training yet."
"Who cares? The point is to make the story scary."
He had told Ernie that, and sure enough, the story now had Ron's ending at the end.
And there were twelve following stories that Harry hadn't read yet.
Nasty twists at the end were Harry's least favorite types of stories, but it was Ernie's first book, and given the circumstances, what harm could there be?
THWTF
Harry closed the book and stared at the wall across from him. Had the closet door just moved?
He reached for his wand, careful not to take his eyes off the door. That fifth story, the one about the children who knew that you had to keep your eyes open so the monster couldn't sneak up on you and their parents hadn't believed them so of course they found the parents' bodies in the –
Harry shook his head. Such nonsense. Nothing was moving, he had his wand, and Vampyr was asleep on the floor beside him. He shouldn't have read those stories, not so late at night. They had all featured a scary twist at the end, and he had felt a jolt of horror each time – really who had such depraved ideas? Thank goodness Ernie had gone into writing and not served as Creative Torture Instigator for Voldemort. His ideas were ghastly.
At the end of each story, Harry had tried to calm himself by starting to read the next story, and it worked until he reached the end and there were no more and he had thirteen horrific tales all bouncing around in his brain. Remember the pageant one and what the committee did to the winner? Remember the tower one with the magical mutilation? Remember –
Harry sat up. He would read something else and he would not freak out and turn up all the lights in the house. He would sleep with his lamp on, but that was necessary because . . . well, just because.
He reached for one of the books on the nightstand. They were all Auror training manuals, rules about procedures and reporting crimes – very dull and ordinary. He would read over them and they would put him to sleep. He would not think about that collection one where the old wizard kept boxes full of –
His hand bumped against the books, and they tumbled to the floor.
He froze. Vampyr woke up and gave a tired bark/whine of inquiry. Normally, nothing would happen unless the dog caused more noise, but given the events of the last week . . .
The sound of Snape's door opening, footsteps coming down the hall – Harry winced. Maybe a monster could come out of the closet and help him out right about now.
"Harry?" Snape opened the hall door a crack. "Are you alright?"
"I'm good. I accidentally knocked some books over. Sorry to wake you."
Snape hesitated and then came in the room.
Harry panicked and tossed the scary book under the bed.
"What was that?" Snape demanded. "Vampyr, fetch it out."
The dog went under the bed and came back with the book between his teeth. Snape took it and looked at the front.
"'Thirteen Stories of Magical Dread and Horror.' By Ernie MacMillian. What? What is this? Why is your name on this book?"
Snape thrust it out and Harry cringed slightly at the words under Ernie's name: Recommended and with a foreword by Harry Potter.
"Foreword is an overstatement," Harry assured Snape. "There are two paragraphs at the beginning where I talk about how scary the first story was."
Snape kept glaring at him.
"So what happened is this," Harry hurried on. "About a year ago, Ernie approached me with a short story he had written. He was going to publish it in a collection of stories and he asked if I would read it and give him my thoughts. I did and I said it was scary and he asked would I write just a short blurb thingy about it and I joked, only if I got the book for free. So he got it published and I got my free copy. Money saved, yes?"
Snape's eyes narrowed, and Harry tried to fish around for what he had done wrong.
"I didn't get any money off it, just a free book. He's not a bad writer. The stories are scary and the writing has – um – promise. I think often we are too critical of first novels as I've noticed by the reviews in Flourish and Blotts. We should think of first novels as dress rehearsals for better things to come –"
"Are you insane?" Snape interrupted. "Did I tell you that you could recommend or put your name on any book?"
Harry scowled. "I'm eighteen. I don't need your permission. I'll put my name on anything I like."
"You now are the most well-known person in the wizarding world. Your name is on every newspaper. The whole world is talking about you."
"How would I know that? You won't let us get a newspaper and you go through everything I get by owl like I'm a child."
"You're not a child – you're the new hero, the killer of Voldemort and the destroyer all his Horcruxes."
"Oh, here it comes," Harry huffed. "You're going to make Famous Potter quips."
"You are famous and now Ernie is publishing a book with your name on it. Do you think he is the only aspiring author out there? Once the world knows that Harry Potter likes to be scared, we are going to have an endless stream of hopeful writers sending us their manuscripts. Thousands of horror stories and other drivel, seeking your approval and your recommendation so they can use your name to get published."
"Oh no," Harry grabbed his pillow and pulled it over his head like a shawl as if he were afraid a monster might suck his brain out. "More scary stories. I've never going to sleep again."
Snape looked even more irate so Harry decided to be logical.
"All right, so we'll set up a system," he dropped the pillow. "I'll only read them in the daytime so as not to get scared. If I get too scared, we can get a Pensieve and I'll drop the frightening images in there. We will only endorse good work, and we can have a ratings arrangement from 1 to 10, and we'll only endorse 7 or higher. We'll be like book critics. Potter and Snape – approval from them is a book worth reading. Oh, that can be our slogan. I should write that down."
"I am not endorsing books!" Snape thundered.
So Snape would not be sidetracked. Then confrontation it was!
"You are so selfish," Harry crossed his arms. "I help you with your plants and your business and you won't read one of the thousands of books that will be sent for our approval? You are the most selfish man I know. It's all about you, all the time! I can't ask for one thing around here, not one thing!"
Snape whirled around and went to the bureau, opening the top drawer.
"That's mine. Stay out," Harry demanded. When he got no answer, he asked, 'What are you looking for anyway? I don't have any more books in there."
"Your hairbrush."
"I got rid of that the day after I turned 17," Harry smirked. "You belted me but that was the end. I'm an adult now and I don't have to let you wallop me ever again."
Snape turned back, rigid with frustration. "Oh, you're an adult now?"
"I am."
"Then why is there so much candy in here?" Snape gestured to the drawer.
"Adults can eat candy. I can do whatever I like now. I've put up with your little treatments but I'm fine and no more. Good night to you, good sir. I will see you whenever I choose to wake up tomorrow."
"Very well. Come along, Vampyr, you can sleep in my room. I'll just turn down the lamps and make sure it's good and dark in here –"
"No, don't!" Harry wailed. "I'm sorry. Don't leave me in the dark alone. I'm too freaked out!" He flopped back on his bed with his arms out tragically. "I can't even get out of this bed because I'm afraid something will grab me like that bloke in the eighth story who kept losing body parts every time he ran for help! Agh-h-h! It was awful."
Snape marched over and smacked him on the side of his thigh with the book. "You try my patience! You had a near-death experience with Voldemort who tried to get you to commit suicide, but that doesn't scare you – a handful of silly stories scare you?"
"They had very shocking and frightening endings that I didn't see coming."
"Then don't read such nonsense."
"I like to be scared a little," Harry looked up. Snape loomed over him, and that should have been frightening, but instead it made him feel secure, almost guarded. Snape could handle the monsters. "It's a balance, really. If it's not scary enough, I'm bored. And if it's too scary, I'm terrified. Has to be right in the middle, you know . . ." he trailed off at Snape's expression. "Are you going to whack me with the book again?"
"Yes," Snape smacked his thigh again.
Under the covers, it didn't really hurt, but Harry made a face which he hoped was a mingle of regret and shame. Snape tended to like those faces when he was in a mood.
Snape yanked the book open and began to read the foreword.
"As a good friend of Ernie's, I was impressed with his ability to navigate the inner workings of the wizard mind and our capacity for good and evil. When I read the first story, I knew I had stumbled upon a vivid imagination that could probe the depths of depravity and find a tormented beauty there. You wrote this?"
"I got stuck so I might have asked Ginny for help," Harry admitted.
"Ginny wrote this?"
"Well, she got stuck too so we asked Ron for help."
"The three of you wrote this?"
"No, we went to Hermione, and she wrote the final draft. The ideas are mine but she fancied up the wording with her clever . . . wording."
"You came up with the idea that the book had-" Snape looked down the foreword page –"the potential to allow us to reimagine fear as the ultimate motivation behind all desires and communications?"
"The wording and the ideas were Hermione's," Harry sighed. "It sounded good so I signed my name. I tried to write something clever, but I got The first story was really good and scary. You should read this and that was too stupid. Aren't you glad I found someone who could write well? You would have been embarrassed if I wrote something silly in a book."
A moment of silence in which Harry indulged in the fantasy that he had outwitted Snape – Snape was overcome with the cleverness of his answer and had no choice but to retreat in quiet defeat –
Snape whacked him on the thigh with the book repeatedly. "You do not put your name in books without asking first."
"Ah!" Harry tried to pull back. "You would have said no."
"Yes, and you listen to me or else."
"I'm an adult now."
"Adult enough not to be frightened by silly stories?"
"I can be two things at once!"
Another wrathful look, the book raised up in threat –
"All right," Harry raised hands in surrender. "No more recommending books."
"Or sneaking scary books in?"
"It's weird," Harry frowned in thought. "I've been through so much you would think nothing could rattle me. You're scarier than any monster, but when it's arranged just so in a story, I can't cope with how scared I am but I don't want to stop either. Maybe that says something about the condition of humans and wizards. Maybe we want fear as much as we hate it."
He looked up to see if Snape was impressed by his profound idea.
"Out. Of. Bed," Snape ground out. "And lean over the bed."
Ten seconds later, as the book whacked solidly on his rear, Harry protested, "You never said I couldn't read scary books."
"All reading," Snape laid down a vicious smack and made Harry hiss, "is forbidden from this moment onward. If I catch you hiding books, you'll get more of this to help clear your head."
"Other people are allowed to read what they like!"
"Other people aren't frightened by silly stories."
Harry tried to come up with a good comeback – something that would dazzle Snape with his intellect – but nothing came. So he just gave in to the spanking and made the appropriate noises that would calm the man down: "Ow! Stop. I'm sorry."
As the whacks came down, Harry contemplated that he really needed to focus on getting their world back on track and stop making so many foolish detours. His excursion into horror alley had not proved useful in the slightest.
There wasn't even any point in telling Snape to read the stories. He would flip through the book, scoffing at what Harry found terrifying and commence with more smacks.
Obviously, the best point Harry could have made would have been to state that different things scared different people. Snape was scared of losing Harry; Harry was scared of his own imagination. Both things were perfectly legitimate foundations for fear.
Sadly, Harry wasn't quite brave (or clever with the wording) enough to articulate any of it.
