“I know,” Kamen dropped down into the chair heavily.
“You have our deepest sympathies concerning your mother,” Dumbledore said gently. “But believe me, if anyone is capable of pulling though this, it is your mother. She has survived over twenty years of marriage to your father after all,” he gave a weak smile, although Kamen didn’t see it as his face was buried in his hands. “She is a strong woman, Mr. Snape. Do not sell her short.”
“Perhaps you had best give us some time,” Salazar suggested. Dumbledore nodded and left his painting hoping to find Minerva in her office. They talked a lot these days, and he tried his best not to interfere too much. “You know, I hear a lot of things in this room. Most of them from my insufferable wall-mate,” he jerked his head in the direction of Dumbledore’s empty frame, “and he has enough portraits that he overhears a great deal.”
“So?” Kamen raised his head. His young eyes were dark and filled with bitterness. He had been so eager to grow up and be on his own, now he longed for the days he had wished away. He wanted his mother to be well, he wanted this whole episode to be put behind them, forever…
“Some things are worth listening to,” Salazar pressed.
“I’m sure they are…”
“And some of them are worth remembering. Especially those which may turn the battle to your side,” Salazar tightened his lips and spoke a bit more coldly. Not the hot, intense anger that so many exhibited, but quiet and calculated dissatisfaction. It brought many more results than any violent display of anger could, and he practiced it very well indeed.
Something in his tone caught Kamen’s attention, “what is so worth knowing?”
“Not all of Voldemort’s followers are loyal to his cause.”
Kamen sat up a bit straighter, “which ones?”
“The Lasas.”
Kamen frowned, “I thought they were some of his closet companions. Why would Voldemort let them into his inner circle if they were not completely loyal to him?”
“Because they despise Dumbledore, and anyone who is connected to him.”
“I’m listening.”
“I thought you would.” Salazar smirked, “Dumbledore overheard a very interesting story form Calchus when he was meeting with McGonagall. The key to it all is Vanth. She is the one who holds the loyalty of all the Lasas and death demons, and she is the one who holds the vendetta against Dumbledore. The Lasas were commissioned to fight against Voldemort during the last war. Dumbledore worked very hard to secure their loyalty, including a number of promises to help them rebuild their deteriorating communities so that they could rebuild their numbers. They are a very powerful race after all. Well skilled in both divination and battle. They were a very valuable set of allies.”
“I thought they had always been our enemies…”
“Just because they are death demons does not mean they fall into your petty category of ‘evil’ boy! Do not be so quick to judge. There is much more to them than meets the eye. They are a proud race, full of tradition. The Etruscans honored them as gods. They demand honor and respect from those around them, and thought they would be welcomed by the wizarding community, honored for what they are, when they joined Voldemort. At that time Vanth and Calchus were lovers, and he very much supported Dumbledore and his cause.”
Salazar paused for a moment, he remembered a few brief encounters with the Lasas during his own lifetime. Even then they were whispered about in rumors, with much speculation about their true natures. Like most misunderstood groups, he had found them to be a wealth of information and knowledge.
He realized he had stopped speaking and picked up his narrative once again. “After many days of negotiations and much convincing, Vanth agreed. Dumbledore knew that he had scored a major victory against Voldemort. The fates appeared to shift back to his side. The lasas knew exactly when and where Voldemort was planning on attacking. So, Dumbledore rallied his forces, they were ready to finally have a decisive victory.”
Salazar stared off into space for a moment, at a point in his portrait that Kamen couldn’t see, “but things went horribly wrong. A large group of aurors were detained and did not show up at their battle stations, and a number of other allies decided that they were not going to fight. So Dumbledore had no choice but to call a retreat shortly after the battle began. He left the Lasas alone on the front line. Every one of them was slaughtered, cut down by the Death Eaters, save Vanth and Calchus. The Death Eaters found them, bloody and battered, when they were clearing the battlefield. They spared them, not as an act of charity, but as an act of revenge. They knew that this was the perfect time for them to make their own offers.”
“They brought in their best healers and they made sure that their two… guests… were given the best treatment possible. They offered them a place among their ranks, feeding them stories the whole time about Dumbledore, and how they too had suffered at his hands. They assured them that he had recruited followers and then abandoned them on the front line before. They assured them that they were not the only ones left on the battlefield with no chance to retreat. Vanth took in every line she was given, and it fed her anger and resentment. Calchus knew that the Death Eaters had a hidden agenda. He tried to convince Vanth of that fact.”
“But she would not listen. She wanted revenge. She had watched her brothers and sisters and her friends die. Cut down, because Dumbledore had promised them safety, and he had abandoned them at the first test. She was determined to have his blood, and the blood of all those who were close to him. Including your father. Over the years her anger has only intensified, growing in breadth and venom. And she has soured the minds of many of the other Lasas. She was able to reach the remaining members of their race before Calchus, and she fed them the same lies that had been given to her.”
“You know that, although I have a good deal of respect for Dumbledore, I do not agree with all of the decisions he made in his lifetime. And this is one of his decisions that has had the costliest repercussions. He should have known better, when you make promises to allies, you do not abandon them at the first test of that loyalty. In an effort to save a few lives, he found a deadly enemy.”
“Is there any chance of turning the Lasas back to our side?”
Salazar gave a short bark of bitter laughter, “have you not listened to a word I said boy?!”
Kamen narrowed his eyes in frustration, “but you said that she wasn’t all that loyal to Voldemort…”
“But she is loyal to her hatred of anyone connected to Dumbledore, and that is all of the forces who oppose Voldemort. Put the two of them together boy! You have a head on your shoulders for a reason, use it!”
Kamen gave the portrait a very sour look, but did as he was told. It took awhile, and seemed like an eternity, especially with Salazar watching him the way he was, “if Voldemort makes her angry enough, she’ll defect. She’s already proven once that she will leave her allies if she is given reason.”
“Very good… there is hope for you yet. But remember, even though she may leave Voldemort, she still has an agenda to fulfill. But if their forces are separated, not working together, it may give you just the slightest bit of edge that you need in order to accomplish something truly great… the salvation of the world as we know it.”
They sat in silence for a long time after that.
“If Dumbledore made so many mistakes, why did my father respect him so much?” he left out any mention of Lucy Liddell. He needed to know if there was anything beyond the fact that his father nearly married into Dumbledore’s family. He wanted there to be something else. After all, Dumbledore was renowned the wizarding world over as being one of the wisest and most powerful men to ever live. And yet he had made so many mistakes… he had ruined lives… and he was praised and exulted in every history book. He wondered if anyone had ever written down the truth, and if it would ever be published. He doubted it, he was learning that people preferred the cleaned up version of history to the real thing.
“I don’t believe I know your father well enough to make any sort of judgment on the case.”
Kamen didn’t buy that for a moment, “but you know the type of man he is.”
“True enough.” He took a moment to collect his answer, “very well then, it is my educated opinion that Dumbledore was the first person, besides your grandmother, to see Severus Snape for what sort of man he could be. The only person to have done that since then was your mother. And possibly Lucy… oh, don’t make that face at me boy, I’ve heard all about that. And I know that you have heard something about her, otherwise I would not have mentioned it.”
“Really? Why don’t you fill me in on what you know, I think I may be missing a few details…” Kamen tried some Slytherin cunning of his own. Unfortunately, he was a Gryffindor at heart.
Salazar smirked, “a commendable effort, my boy, but not good enough. I would wager that you have nothing but the barest bones of the facts. And it is not my story to tell. In fact, I would resist all temptation to mention it at all.”
“But I have the right to know…”
“No child has the right to know all of their parents’ business. Beside, would you really want to bring the topic up if your mother does not know about it?” He effectively rendered Kamen silent. He enjoyed the quiet until Dumbledore returned and the three of them entered into a heated debate about fouling in Quidditch.
~~~~~~~~~~~
“What is it that you have there?” Madam Pomphrey gestured to the box that Eric always kept by his side. The box, which he had been so desperate to have returned to him. It wasn’t much to look at. Small, made of dark wood with a fine grain, but no ornamentation beyond the small brass hinges.
Eric, who usually kept his personal affairs to himself, confided in the mediwitch. “Something which belonged to Yvonne. She loved it dearly.” He handed the box to Poppy, who gave him one curious glance out of the corner of her eye, before sitting primly on the edge of his bed to snap the box open.
Eric had surprised her once again. She had imagined all sorts of things that he could keep in such a box. And with his personality, there were all grand and magnificent and far from ordinary. But she reached into the shallow box and withdrew a simple strand of rosary beads. It was completely unexpected. Of course with Eric, the unexpected tended to be ordinary. “I take it your wife was a religious woman?” she asked, looking at the beads with mild curiosity.
“She is the reason that I am a man of faith.”
Poppy snorted, it was her version of a laugh of derision, and she dropped the beads back in their box, “I can hardly imagine you acting as a man of god.”
“I never said I was a man of god. I said I am a man of faith,” Eric stated firmly, now it was his turn to use a derisive tone.
“Is there a difference?” Poppy smoothed her apron and hair as she stood up.
“There is.”
“Well then, aren’t you going to tell me what it is?” Poppy put her hands n her hips as she glared down at her patient. A patient who she realized she was never going to rid herself of. Oddly enough, she didn’t mind.
“I know that I will see Yvonne again. I know that there is something beyond this life. And that is where I draw my line at philosophy and religion. Although I will admit, I do talk to god on occasion.”
“Has he ever answered you?”
Eric gave a small, twisted smile, “I think he has. Although not in his full glory, I leave that to the prophets. I am merely a man who is seeking, and occasionally,” he raised his eyes to the vaulted ceiling of the Hospital Wing, “He sees fit to give me some direction.”
Poppy snorted, “a lot of stuff and nonsense if you ask me. I don’t put much faith in religion, and it sounds to me as though you put too much, even if you do deny it.”
“Ahhh… but you see, the faith of my Yvonne gave me something that even she couldn’t,” his eyes grew distant as he though of his ballet dancer, the slim, dark-haired French girl, who had so captivated him in youth. His veins had run with fire when he was with her. He now only had the faint embers within his heart to remember her and their time together. They were a pale shadow of the love he had known, but in his advanced years he found that he no longer missed the fiery passion of adolescence.
“And what was it that it gave you that the love of your life could not?” Poppy instantly seized upon the question.
“The promise of forgiveness.” He saw Poppy roll her eyes at him, “do not be so quick to ridicule. I have done many things in my life for which I know I would suffer in the afterlife… if there is such a thing. Religions make so many promises,” he winked at Poppy as she continued to stare at him, her lips pressed into a thin, disapproving line, “if Israel is right, and it is Sheol that awaits us, than I am damned, for I have no offspring who I can count on to remember me after I have passed on. Nor do I take much stock in the sweet fields that the poets praise. And so,” he held up Yvonne’s string of rosary beads, “I let my ballet girl prattle to me about her faith, and its promise of forgiveness. And I knew peace. But whether it was from faith itself, or merely from Yvonne, I am not entirely certain…”
Poppy blushed as she realized how much Eric had just told her about himself. He’d given her a view that she’d wager not many had ever had before. He really was a barmy old coot, she decided, setting her mind firmly. But even as she openly railed at him for getting in her way as she set about disposing of empty bottles and bringing him new doses of medicine, her lips twitched upward into a small smile. And when he grasped her hand in his papery dry one for a moment as she brought him a spare blanket, she met his eyes, and for once did not roll hers at him.
“Do you think less of me now that you know I am a man who relies upon ecclesiastical promises?” Eric asked, his tone dry.
Poppy straightened her back and rested her hands on her hips as she gave it thought. “It’s certainly not anything I would rely on,” she finally decided, “but I can’t help but wonder…” she glanced over at the curtained area where Morgan still lay, “perhaps that sort of faith is a good thing to have. Some people,” although she didn’t say it, they both knew she was speaking of Severus, “some people put all of their faith in one thing or person, and then they have no where else to turn, they have nothing else to live for…”
“And sometimes… sometimes, that one person or thing is the only thing worth living for. Without it, they still wouldn’t be here to fall apart. It seems to me a mixed blessing…”
“We shouldn’t be talking about them like this,” Poppy said as she gathered her tray together and moved to leave. She turned to go, but then turned back, “talk to him, maybe he will listen to you.” Without thinking about it, she clutched Eric’s hand as she issued the order.
“I am not sure what good it will do, but I shall try. For both his sake, and for yours,” he raised Poppy’s hand to his lips before letting her be on her way. His eyes followed her as she moved about the infirmary, and he thought about the differences between a young ballerina and a mature mediwitch.
~~~~~~~~~~~
