Chapter Four

'Call Severus, Harry; dinner's ready,' Hermione gasped, from where the top of her body was inside the cavernous oven. She half-turned and handed Ron a huge steak pie, which he dropped onto the table with a yelp; the oven mitten she had handed him first was still tucked under his arm.

'You go.' Harry nodded to Draco, who was sitting with his feet up on the table, blowing smoke rings at the dingy ceiling. 'He's less likely to bite your head off.'

Hermione gave the two boys a shrewd look; there was something contrived about the way they sat at different sides of the table, about the way they almost seemed to struggle to maintain the air of hostility between them. If she hadn't known better she would have thought that there was something going on between the two of them. She hadn't had enough time to study them though, what with supervising whoever was on the rota she'd drawn up to cook the meals and, well, other things that had happened. She gave Ron a quick, almost guilty look.

'I'm not going,' Draco replied and nodded to Sirius. 'You go. It's your fault he's in the huff.'

'My fault?' Sirius snapped. He was becoming fed up with everyone blaming him. 'I didn't spike our drinks with whatever crap you two slung together.'

'They didn't make it,' Ron offered. 'Fred and George did. It sold very well for Christmas. Funny,' he said with a smirk, 'it was mainly women who bought it.'

'Why doesn't that surprise me?' Hermione asked nobody in particular.

'What's that supposed to mean?' Ron asked, as he flushed horribly at some imagined indiscretion.

'I made the lunch. Lucius, you go,' Lupin said coolly to the blond Slytherin, who had been uncharacteristically quiet since breakfast.

Sirius reckoned Lupin had been giving Malfoy a hard time too; he was glad he wasn't the only one who was getting it in the neck. Served the supercilious fat bimbo right. Only he wasn't fat, not really; Sirius remembered that much from the night before ... he was sixteen stone of solid muscle. He pushed the thought away.

Hermione stood at the head of the table with her hands on her hips. 'Nobody eats until Severus comes down, and I'm not going for him.' Sirius wondered who had put her in charge.

'The house traitor and his scum friends will have a long wait,' Kreacher said in a snigger from under the sink. 'The black-haired half-blood went out hours ago.' He gave a nasty little laugh. 'Nobody even noticed but Kreacher and his mistress.'

Sirius stood up and bent to haul Kreacher from his hidey-hole. 'When did he go out?' he snarled at the elf as he shook him.

'Many hours ago.' The elf gave him a sly look. 'Does my master care now that he has tasted the wholesomeness of the pure-blood's body?' He let out a yelp as Sirius dropped him and booted his arse for good measure.

*****

The dungeon corridor was even creepier than Sirius remembered. It was empty; the echo of his footsteps sounded uncomfortable, a kind of out of kilter double click, as though his doppelganger stalked one and a half steps behind. He got quite a turn when the Bloody Barron appeared on his right shoulder and hissed in his ear.

'Come to waken the dead, Animagus?'

'Bugger off,' Sirius snarled, the reality of his own voice doing little to calm the nerves he didn't realise were frayed.

He saw Peeves further down the corridor; he had a Santa hat on and seemed to be bouncing a series of snowballs against the door to Snape's room, just out of kilter too, designed to drive the occupant insane. It seemed pointless to go any further; Snape obviously wasn't here. Peeves wasn't that brave.

'Well doggone, if it's not the cur,' the poltergeist cackled. 'Nothing here for you to hump.'

'You can bugger off too, Peeves.'

'Bugger off, bugger off, oh,' Peeves mocked. 'Was that a threat or a promise?' He disappeared and reappeared between Sirius's legs, his hand snaking up to his crotch. 'Is that for me, Rover? Bugger on I say. Woof woof.'

Sirius tried to catch his throat, but ended up with a handful of cold air instead. 'Clear up this mess or I'll set Snape on you when he comes back.'

'Not coming back.' Peeves shrieked in maniacal laughter. 'So why don't you go jump in the lake too.' He threw a snowball at Sirius; that was real enough, it was wet and cold.

'What's going on?' Another voice issued from the end of the corridor, coming from below a lantern. 'Who's there?'

Sirius turned so Filch could see him. 'Peeves has thrown snow all over here; it'll need cleared up before Snape gets back. I wouldn't want to be you if he goes on his arse.'

'What did you bring him down here for?' Filch nodded to Peeves, who was throwing snowballs at the walls in an erratic zigzag pattern.

'I didn't bring him,' Sirius argued. 'I just came looking for Snape; he was here when I got here.'

'Yer musta; he don't come down here when the Professor's here,' Filch rasped, and gave him a hard look. 'What are you wanting here anyway? Coming in here and disturbing the peace.'

'That's none of your business actually,' Sirius said in as cool a tone as he could. He was trying not to look at Peeves who was now pretending to masturbate an inch above Filch's head. 'Why has everyone got to be so fucking hostile?'

'Maybe we don't want you here.'

'Where's Snape?' Sirius asked flatly; he'd had enough.

'If he ain't in his rooms, he musta gone out,' Filch replied, as though losing interest. 'I'll not bother to tell him you called; he's in a bad enough mood.'

Sirius watched him walk away, with Peeves still an inch over his head, and his bug-eyed kneazle throwing one last suspicious glare at him. He walked to the door of Snape's rooms; he'd better check he wasn't inside after all. No one answered, and he turned the handle, more out of habit than expectation; he was surprised when the door swung open.

He'd never been in this room, not since he'd been at school and the occupant had been his own Potion's Master. He supposed it was what he'd expected, if he'd expected anything.

One torch was lit in the far corner; it gave off an oddly sooty glow, casting shadows and darkening already dark corners. The fire was low, and instead of warming the room, it suggested that it was cooling; the whisky bottle on the table was three-quarters empty, as though it hadn't been brought out, more that it hadn't been put away; everything seemed to be negative. Sirius had a funny feeling he'd just missed Snape.

He didn't really take in the rows and rows of books, and the jars and bottles all meticulously labelled in Snape's spidery green handwriting, or the black bearskin rug on the hard flagstone floor. He let his eyes rest on the door to the left, which probably led to his bedroom. He opened the door for a cursory look: no bed of nails, no empty coffin lying open in the corner, no Potions Master dangling from the rafters with a noose around his neck, he thought with an inward smile, and then started uncomfortably, wondering what had made him think that. He pushed back the pang he felt as he looked at the bed; he wondered who had last grappled with Snape on the black rugs.

Sirius closed the bedroom door again and moved back to the living room. A book lay open on the table, and he picked it up, careful not to let it shut on whatever Snape had been reading. His raised his eyebrow; he didn't think Severus would read Muggle literature, but he supposed Poe was a suitable exception, another depressive. The line of text jumped out at him; he recognised it as the last line from "The Raven".

"And my soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor

Shall be lifted - Nevermore."

Poems to cut your throat to, he thought sourly, and froze. What had Peeves said? Something about the lake, jump in the lake too? Had that been it?

He ran the length of the now empty corridor and up the two flights of stone steps to ground level. The hallway was empty too he noticed vaguely, as he gasped to catch his breath, cursing the years of Azkaban, alcohol and cigarettes, and the fact he wasn't twenty any more. The front doors were closed, and he had to fiddle with the myriad of bolts to open it. He gasped again as the cold of the air outside assaulted his lungs.

He didn't notice Filch standing on the stairs behind him, or the grim smile of relief on the old caretaker's stubbled face, as Sirius hared across the lawn to the lakeside.

Filch bent down and picked up the scrawny kneazle; he stifled her to his chest. 'Be all right now, my lovely. Took him a while, but it'll be all right now,' he rasped into her tattered ears, and turned to climb the stairs again, just an old man with a battered cat doing his rounds, checking everything was safe and no one was going to jump in no lakes, not on his shift.

*****

'I shouldn't jump if I were you; it looks very cold tonight,' a soft, almost nickering voice said from behind Snape. 'The answer you seek is not in the depths of the Dark Lake, Severus, but in the heavens. It will come to you.'

'I can't even remember the question, Firenze.'

'So melancholy? Perhaps even a little misty-eyed? Oh dear, my old friend, maybe you should jump after all,' the Centaur replied in his deadpan mocking voice. 'If even you have become wistful and self-pitying I really fear for the world. I shall possibly follow if it is that bad.'

'Back off, Centaur,' Snape replied with a smirk. 'I am not about to succumb to your charms.'

'It was ever thus betwixt us.' Firenze sighed. 'What are you doing back here anyway? I thought the school was closed for the festival of men.'

'It is. I just wanted some time alone.'

'Because Lupus and Serpens have at last decided to make their dance through the heavens public, and you feel that now Lucius does not need you, you are alone?' Firenze cocked his shaggy head to the sky to constellations only he could see.

'You knew about Lupin and Lucius?'

'Oh yes, for many years, even before they knew themselves. Their namesake constellations have been hurtling towards one another for a million of your years.'

'I suppose I am not surprised, by either you or them.' Snape smiled his quirky smile; Firenze was one of the few people with whom he was truly at ease. 'But to answer you, I envy them both their courage to do the one thing I never managed to do. I am, however, quite confident that Lucius will still be able to get into trouble with Lupin at his side.'

Firenze gave him a level look. 'He will come to you, Severus; that is also written in the stars.'

Snape looked at him sharply. 'I don't know what you're talking about.'

'Ah well,' Firenze said as he looked again into the Dark Lake, 'it might as well be the water then. Farewell, old friend. I confess I thought you were a stronger man.'

For a while man and Centaur said nothing, each lost in his own thoughts as the gentle but bitter wind ruffled their hair and rippled the moon path on the dark water.

'The Dog Star will only be here for a few short months, Severus.' Firenze broke the silence and pointed to where Canis Major's blue-eyed boy shone low in the southern sky just below Orion's belt. 'Pluck him quickly, lest he slips from your grasp below the horizon again ... unless you want to wait another forty-nine of your years.'

'What do you mean?' Snape frowned.

'Even now the Dog Star and his invisible brother spin together in an orbit of such intensity that for a time they actually change places. It does not happen very often, only every half century or so. You will be an elderly man when it happens again, and neither you nor he will be very much use to one another if you let him slip away. Every man has his moment in time and every dog his day.' Firenze began to move away. 'Of course, if you change your mind about him, I'm always available, Severus, and I'll always be young.'

Snape waited until his soft strange chuckle faded in time with his almost silent hoof beats, and turned towards the dimly lit castle. He squared his shoulders and began to walk, not noticing the large black dog that ghosted him in the shadows.

Severus would never know the little chain of creatures that had watched over him; he'd never know that Filch had sent Mrs Norris to watch out for him when he saw the set of his shoulders when he'd come back from Grimmauld Place. He'd never know that she had followed him when he'd gone outside, and had run to the Forbidden Forrest for the Centaur when she'd realised he was heading for the lake. He'd never know that she'd left him with Firenze to run back to the castle to tell Filch, or that the Centaur had watched him until he sensed the Animagus join them, and that he'd passed the watch to the unknowing Sirius, secure in the knowledge that he would let no harm come to him. He would never know these things, but it didn't matter; he hadn't really been going to drown himself. As Firenze had said, the water looked cold.

He saw Filch looking out of a top floor window and then turn away; he didn't hear Peeves demanding the hundred Galleons Filch had promised him if he managed to get Sirius out to the lake, or see the Leprechaun gold the caretaker had confiscated years before from the Weasley twins change hands.

*****

The moment Severus closed his door he sensed that someone had been in his rooms. The whisky bottle was where he thought he'd left it; the bedroom door was closed, nothing was disturbed ... but he knew. He leant against the door, unsure as to how to proceed with his evening; he hadn't made any long-term plans. He hoped there was another bottle of whisky in the cupboard; getting seriously smashed seemed like a good idea.

He uncorked the bottle with a pop and splashed a slug into a glass before shrugging himself out of his heavy winter cloak. He glared at the dying fire, and it flared somewhat reluctantly anew. He sat down, lit one of his slim black Russian-blended cigarettes, slung his long legs up on the table and lifted the book of the works of Edgar Allan Poe. He had his back to the door when it swung silently open again.

'Kindly close the door, Black, preferably from the outside,' he said calmly without turning. 'It is cold enough in here.'

Sirius closed the door and walked to the table; he didn't look at Snape until he had sat opposite him. 'How hard are you going to make this for me?' he asked.

Severus tried to keep his breathing even, as he tried to still the trip hammer beat of his heart. 'What are you talking about?'

Sirius looked away for a moment; when he looked up his Gryffindor grin was on his face. 'Can we skip all the crap and get to the important bits?'

'What important bits?' Snape asked, painfully aware that not only his eyebrow had risen. He knew he had the benefit of a drink and a cigarette, big advantages, but he was feeling magnanimous; he pushed the almost empty whisky bottle across the table. 'The glasses are above the sinks.' He'd made a commitment, taken a huge step. He watched the Gryffindor stand and pat his pockets down for his cigarettes, light one, and curse as he got the first smoke in his eye. He thought Black rummaged around more than could possibly be necessary to find a glass before he sat back down, completely emptying the bottle into his tumbler.

'Old animosity,' Black said as he tipped the drink and swallowed it in one.

'What important bits?' Snape persisted, aware that somehow over the last few minutes he'd become a little more relaxed. He drew on his own cigarette, squinting his eyes to make sure he didn't suffer Sirius's fate. He was aware of the room becoming warmer, or maybe that was just him.

'I suppose there's only one. One question, one answer, nothing else matters.'

Black seemed to have drawn courage from the whisky; Snape was glad, he was already regretting being so pedantic. 'Ask your question,' he said. The silence hung between them; but it didn't really matter now, they both knew where they were going.

'Do you want me as much as I want you?' Sirius asked eventually; he'd put the grin away.

Severus held the blue eyes; he'd backed himself into this corner, put the noose neatly around his own neck. Surely one word couldn't be so hard for a man of his undoubted eloquence; that was all it needed, just one word. He looked away for a moment. His cigarette was burnt to nothing, his glass was empty; he had nothing left to hold him up, but it hardly mattered. He knew he was undone.

'Yes.'

He watched Sirius close his eyes; he had his elbow on the table and he dropped his forehead to the palm of his hand. Severus stood up; Black had done the hard work, and he knew he had to reach out too. He stood behind Sirius's chair and dropped his head.

'I have a question too,' he said quietly into Sirius's long dark hair. He felt the fractional nod of Black's head, the invitation. 'Why? Is it just because you feel you have lost Lupin?'

Sirius turned with a frown. 'It's not like that with Lupin and me. It's more convenience ... not even that.' He creased his brow, as though in an effort to find words to express himself. 'I love Lupin like a best friend. The sex is just ... I don't know how to describe it.'

Snape nodded; he knew exactly what Black meant, it was much like the relationship he had shared for so long with Lucius. Lovers, who loved one another, but weren't in love. He hadn't moved his hands from where they sat on Sirius's shoulders as he held the blue eyes. 'So that just leaves the 'why?' doesn't it?' He raised his eyebrow.

He felt Sirius do a quick mental appraisal; he could see him discounting looks, temperament and humour in quick succession, it didn't leave much.

'It goes so far back that I can't even remember. It's just a bit of who I am.' Sirius looked away, as though trying to make up his mind whether he should voice his thoughts; when he did they surprised Snape. 'Why didn't you tell me who you were?'

'What do you mean?' Severus frowned.

'I mean when you came to Azkaban, but I think you knew that.'

It was Snape's turn to look away; he had been so sure no one had known who he was, no one had seen through the disguise. 'I don't know what you mean.'

Sirius smiled. 'I'm a dog, Severus. The first time you walked in that door I knew it was you, even in the state I was in.'

'Denial is pointless then. Let us just say that I was not prepared to risk you telling me not to come back,' Snape replied, trying to suppress the memories of the years of watching helplessly on as the man he loved turned into the bitter wreck he had become.

Sirius drew in a shaky sigh. 'All I lived for was these visits. I pretended it was revenge, or wanting to see Harry grow up, or clear my name, but it wasn't any of these things. I stayed alive because I thought I owed you that.'

'Enough talk,' Severus said quietly, aware that somehow their roles had reversed. 'It's strange, but we have nothing to say to one another that isn't deeply hurtful on some level.'

'There's one more thing I need to know.' Sirius gave an attempt at his Gryffindor grin. 'Why did you leave Grimmauld Place? Are you upset about Malfoy and Lupin?'

'That is why I left, but not for the reason you think. I only really realised about Lucius and Lupin last night, and yet I cannot think why that should be. I've long suspected Lucius of harbouring a fancy for the werewolf. His place in my affections is similar to Lupin's in yours. The reason I left...' He trailed off; it was so petty, so petulant, and he could tell Sirius was enjoying his discomfiture. 'For what it was worth I couldn't bear to be witness again to the fact that I was the one who never got what I wanted, not what I really wanted. Apart from that, the plumbing and heating are woefully inadequate.'

'Apart from the plumbing,' Sirius said with a smile, 'sometimes you've got to wait for quality and class.'

Severus pulled him to his feet. 'We'll see,' he said with a smirk, and nodded to the bedroom door.

'By the way, I only top,' Sirius called to his back, and Snape froze mid-stride.

'I beg your pardon?' he said as he turned slowly. 'Allow me to make it quite clear...'

'Only kidding,' Sirius interrupted him with another grin.

*****