Chapter 18
After saying goodbye to the Macmillan family, Severus wandered Diagon Alley for a while, picked up a few more potion ingredients, and went home.
Two days later.
He opened his eyes slowly, pulled toward consciousness by a pleasant smell drifting through the room, and looked at the tray on the bedside table: coffee and pastries.
"Strange creatures, house-elves. Though I am hardly one to talk." He pulled the cup toward himself, took a sip, and got up. "Hm. Am I forgetting something?" He took another sip and shrugged. If he couldn't remember, it probably didn't matter.
After breakfast he went down to the ground floor, caught sight of the basement door, and it came back to him all at once.
That was it. He drove his fist into his palm, threw the door open, and went down quickly, only to find Tobias lying in a pool of dried blood.
Right. If he had left it another couple of hours, he would almost certainly have died.
He pulled a potion from his pouch and began working it down Tobias's throat, using a thread of magic to help his body absorb it. The wounds on his forehead started to close. His fingers, broken and bent at wrong angles where the hammer had found them, began to straighten. The grey pallor faded slowly from his skin.
A standard restoration potion working this well is a little surprising. He was a Muggle, which probably accounts for it. I should find a mage to test on at some point.
Severus studied Tobias's face. The man's eyelids were fluttering, but his eyes stayed shut even though he was already conscious. Without any particular feeling about it, Severus slapped him hard enough to send him into the wall with a dull thud.
"Awake, or shall I do it again?"
"Awake! Awake!" Tobias scrambled upright, shaking, his eyes full of something close to animal terror.
"Calm down. I am not going to torture you today, and I am not going to kill you. I have a job for you. Do it, and you go free."
The word free did something immediate to Tobias's face. He nodded like a puppet.
"Anything. Anything you want."
"You have two days to sell this house at a fair market price. If you try to cheat me, what you went through before this will seem like a pleasant afternoon walk. Is that understood?"
"And where will I live?"
"Should that concern me?" Severus's gaze narrowed, and he raised one hand, his finger pointing at Tobias's pale face. "One more word and I end this now. Get to work. And I would strongly advise against contacting the police or anyone like them. They will not reach you before I do. Do not make the mistake of thinking that because you could bully a weakened witch, you can pull the same tricks on me." He paused. "The sooner you sell, the sooner I am gone."
He left the basement without another word and went back to his potions.
The very next day, while he was working on a recipe from his old world, Tobias shuffled into the living room holding a thick bag in both hands.
"I sold it."
"Good. Leave the money on the table and go."
Tobias set the bag down carefully and, clearly afraid Severus might change his mind in the next ten seconds, moved quickly toward the front door.
Live while you can, you monster. I know exactly who to call to deal with you. You will be begging on your knees. Tobias turned the thought over with a quiet, ugly satisfaction, already composing the scene in his head as he stepped outside, pulled the door shut behind him, and broke into a near-run toward the nearest busy street.
Eileen had taught him a few things about wizarding law during their years together, including the ban on using magic where ordinary people might see it. Tobias figured the crowd would offer him some protection if Severus changed his mind.
Ten minutes later, surrounded by people, his pulse settled. He pulled a small business card from his pocket, walked to a phone booth, and picked up the receiver with a trembling hand.
"The moment I make this call, it is over for you," he reached for the buttons, anticipation twisting his mouth. "You are finished. You are absolutely..." his finger stopped. His whole body stopped. He could not move at all, as though something had turned him to ice. A moment later, his arm went slack, and he dropped to his knees, his forehead cracking against the phone housing. What is happening? Why can I not move? And then, because something seemed to force his head to turn, he looked to the side, and every trace of color left his face.
On the bench sat Rowena. The same Rowena from the portrait, the one he had spent these past few days begging for forgiveness in front of, sat there. She was his wife. The woman he had beaten to death while drunk sat before him. She sat looking straight at him with cold, empty eyes, not a single thing moving in her expression.
It is impossible. I killed her myself. His whole body shook, and cold sweat soaked through his shirt. Barely ten meters away stood the woman he had killed with his own hands.
"No! This is the monster's doing! I killed her! She cannot be alive! SHE CANNOT! SHE CANNOT! NO." The moment she stood and took her first step toward him, Tobias snapped back to full alertness and flattened himself against the wall.
"Stay back! You're dead! You're dead! DEAD! YOU'RE JUST AN ILLUSION, SOMETHING HE SENT! JUST AN ILLUSION!" The words came spilling out, and with each one her steps quickened.
The blankness left her face and something replaced it, something like hatred mixed with rage so that Tobias nearly lost consciousness on the spot, though something held him upright and wouldn't let him fall.
"D-don't come any closer! I killed you! You're not real! She's DEAD! DEAD! DEAD!"
A small crowd gathered around the phone booth, confused by the screaming man inside. Several people tried to open the door and pull him out, but the lock would not give. Most of them, hearing him confess to a murder while gesturing at empty air, eventually concluded he was simply having some kind of episode.
Meanwhile, in the living room of the house on Spinner's End, Severus stood before the cauldron with a quiet, satisfied smile.
He had finally finished the potion.
Tobias, I was going to let you go. He still could not help laughing, though. What a hypocrite I am. I would have killed you anyway, just cleanly and quickly, and now you have to earn it the long way. The Curse of Desolation and the Vengeful Phantom used together is an elegant combination. The first slowly eats away at the magical core and strips control from the body; the second goes for the mind, dismantling it piece by piece, starving on every bright thought while feeding on the dark ones until there is nothing left. I never thought I would actually use those two together. He poured the cauldron's contents into two vials, turned them in the light, and frowned slightly. The effect came out weaker than he intended. It was only half the boost he was aiming for. As for duration, he needs a test subject. Or several test subjects; he would not mind poisoning them. His eyes brightened at the thought, and a slow, cold smile settled on his face. He could not wait for the school year to start.
He did not linger in the house much longer. That evening he gathered everything with a trace of magic on it, erased all evidence that magic had been performed there, and the following morning, after breakfast, he was preparing to leave.
He did not get the chance.
Someone started hammering on the door, loud and relentless, as though they intended to bring it down.
KNOCK. KNOCK. KNOCK.
"Open up! We know you are in there!"
A rough male voice. Severus had not invited anyone, and he found himself genuinely curious.
He opened the door, and two men came in as though they owned the place, shouldering past him without slowing, spreading out immediately and moving through the rooms with the casual authority of people conducting an inspection they had every right to conduct.
Severus stood and watched them, briefly too surprised to respond. He assumed at first they must be the new owners, the ones Tobias had sold it to. But listening to them talk about the going price for a property like this, and who they might move it on to, he understood he was wrong.
He cleared his throat.
"And who, exactly, are you?"
A bald man roughly two meters tall, wearing a white shirt and dark trousers, walked over to him.
"Are you a relative of that one? His boy?"
"Yes. Why?"
The man's gaze moved over Severus in a slow, deliberate way that made him want to kill him where he stood. He held back. This man was already dead. He just did not know it yet.
"Your dad borrowed a fair amount from some people and then went and lost his mind, so someone needs to settle up."
"The house will fetch a couple of thousand at most, which is nowhere near enough," the second man called down from upstairs.
The bald one turned back to Severus with a wide, almost paternal smile, and dropped a hand on his shoulder.
"Look at it this way, kid: you are lucky. You can work off your father's debt for us. A couple of years, and you walk away clean. We have plenty of friends who appreciate a quiet boy like you. You will clear it fast, trust me."
"I see," Severus said.
A cold smile formed at the corner of his mouth, and something small and very bright moved in his eyes.
Last words?