Rice over a campfire takes its time, so they ended up talking after all. Partly because Andrei had to give Snape his wand back. The look he got for that. Andrei felt compelled to explain himself. Severus bristled:
"And you'd have just left the child here? I'm a bastard, yes, but not that much of one."
"I'm glad to hear it," Andrei said simply. "Sorry, Severus—I don't know you all that well yet."
"Then what possessed you to—"
"All right. I'll tell you what possessed me. Just give me your word you won't touch the wand."
Snape, who kept glancing sideways at Harry nestled in the crook of his arm, was a funny sight—but there was something right about it. Very right, actually. Or there would have been, if he hadn't suddenly straightened up and announced that he needed to go to Dumbledore. Hagrid frowned.
"What do you need him for?"
"I have to! I made him a promise!"
"What kind of promise?" Hagrid asked patiently.
Snape drew a long breath, apparently realising at last precisely what he'd been talked into saying that night, and exhaled:
"Anything. Whatever he asked."
"And what did he promise you?"
"He promised he'd protect Lily!" Severus flushed, then added: "The Potters."
"And how did that work out?" Hagrid asked pleasantly.
All the colour drained from Snape's face and he pulled Harry closer, for some reason. The little boy's nose had already started running—he'd caught a chill after all. Hagrid produced a small cloth and Snape wiped the grubby little face with it, awkwardly but carefully.
Harry had stopped clinging to him out of pure fear. He seemed to be getting used to the gamekeeper at last, and was now gazing at the fire with wide, transfixed eyes.
"He's so quiet," Snape observed, watching the child with something close to surprise.
"After what he's been through," Hagrid replied, "quiet makes sense."
"Even a child…" Snape murmured.
"Exactly. Right now he's little Snottius," Hagrid glanced sideways to gauge the reaction—Snape did flinch, naturally—"and if it weren't for us, he'd be well on his way to pneumonia. Yes—the Headmaster left him on the doorstep of one Petunia Dursley, whom you may know. At night. Think I was overreacting? I knew the address, but Apparating there—could you teach me, by the way?"
"So that's what I'm for," Snape said, with a thin smile. "I can try."
"Not just for me. For both of us."
Snape looked at Hagrid with something between doubt and reassessment.
"I never imagined you could be… like this."
Andrei turned back to stirring the porridge and thought that if he started explaining who he actually was, Snape would simply short-circuit and miss everything that mattered. Better to stay Hagrid, full stop. God, the boy was young. Just a kid, really.
"Neither did I," he said, "until I fell off Black's motorbike. I was supposed to bring Harry to the Headmaster, only things went a bit sideways. Someone hit us. I was out for most of the night, lying in a field somewhere—but it was like sleeping, like watching a dream. Though not exactly like a dream either. The short version: I saw the future. A whole lifetime of it. And I didn't like what I saw. Not one bit. And then… here we are."
"You even speak differently."
Andrei smiled.
"They say a knock on the head can change a man."
Snape snorted—and then, almost involuntarily, glanced toward a substantial oak growing nearby.
"Don't even think about it," Andrei said, barely keeping a straight face. "I suspect enlightenment only works on idiots like me—for all you know, it'd go the other way with you." He paused. "I hope you understand you have no reason to go to Dumbledore."
He turned back to the porridge. Nearly done, by the look of it. He lifted the pot from the fire, tilted it carefully to drain the excess water, spread the coals with a stick to lower the heat, hung it back, and added a few of the surprisingly dense sugar lumps he'd pocketed back at the cottage—along with a couple of little boxes of salt. Lomonosov had always known how to pack for a trip.
"I hate him," Snape said quietly.
"Mm," Hagrid nodded. "Same, a bit. I propose we get our revenge—later."
"On Dumbledore? You're out of your mind. He's the greatest wizard in the country, possibly alive, and we're—who are we, exactly?"
"I suspect Britain could have had more great wizards," Andrei said, still rummaging in his pockets for the milk. "Only they don't tend to be allowed to get that way. So our first job is to grow into it. Learn. And raise Harry, of course."
The sight of his companion's jaw dropping was gratifying, but was beginning to get slightly repetitive. The bottle of milk, however, had finally surfaced, and Andrei upended it into the pot in one go.
Snape made a strangled sound and stared at the pot.
"Something wrong? You do know that milk porridge is usually made differently?"
"Where did you get that?"
"What, the milk? From the larder."
"You keep unicorn milk in your larder?!" Snape looked close to passing out.
"Ah. Hm. So it seems," said Andrei—it was genuinely news to him, but abandoning the pot at this point would have been catastrophic: the milk had just brought the whole thing to a rolling boil. He pulled it off, gave it a final stir, and set it aside to cool.
"Barbarian," Severus exhaled, staring at the rice porridge with an expression caught somewhere between horror and reverence.
"Guilty," Hagrid admitted. "In no small measure. But we're not going to let good ingredients go to waste, are we?"
"We're going to eat that?!"
"We're certainly not throwing it out!" Hagrid said, transfiguring a pair of deep bowls and spoons.
Severus looked at him in anguish. He didn't, in fact, have many other options.
The porridge was good. Nothing extraordinary—just ordinary, fresh milk rice porridge, not bland, sweetened to just the right degree—but on an empty stomach it tasted close to divine. Neither of them noticed their faces slowly easing, or the more or less human colour gradually returning to Snape's skin. They were simply, unexpectedly, and profoundly comfortable. Harry was fed from a spoon and grabbed at every mouthful with both hands, not protesting in the least.
But as soon as he'd eaten a little, he clutched his forehead and burst into loud, desperate crying—then fell sideways and screamed, as the scar split open and bled freely, and something began to crawl out of it: a brownish, smoke-like substance, the colour of dried blood.
"Inflamare!" Andrei tried to ignite it, catching the child at the same time. "Snape—can you manage Fiendfyre? Burn it! Quickly—burn it before it gets away!"
"Adesco Fire!" Snape barked. There was an unearthly shriek and howl, half the clearing went up—
"Finite! Finite!" they both shouted. "Aguamenti!"
"Aurors—run!"
Andrei grabbed Snape and Harry without looking and Apparated to his cottage—where else was there to go?
* * *
At that same moment, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore was experiencing a state quite unlike his usual one: bewilderment. And the location—Severus Snape's home—was equally unfamiliar territory.
When he'd found the Floo blocked, he'd Apparated in, cursing himself for roughly the same thing Hagrid had cursed himself for upon entering this same house. Only more so, because Snape wasn't there. Nor was his cold body. Nor any signs of flight—some things lay scattered, the books stood in their places…
He examined what remained of the fireplace carefully and concluded that Severus had perhaps wanted to cut himself off from the world, but had evidently found another means. He cursed himself again—this time for failing to place a tracking charm on the boy. But the boy had always been so straightforward, so utterly predictable.
Where could he have gone? The disembodied Voldemort couldn't have summoned him… a colleague, perhaps? One of the old families?
Albus's expression darkened. If any of the aristocratic families were sheltering Snape, reaching him would not be simple. And he needed him. Now, while the boy was still unsteady on his feet—not yet in possession of himself. Though in fairness, that was unlikely to happen quickly. He permitted himself a small smile. Over the past few years, while the Dark Lord had been establishing his reign of terror, the Headmaster had accumulated a rather useful collection of material on his followers' more regrettable activities. Which meant options were available.
He took one last look at the room, which already had the feel of somewhere abandoned, and Apparated back to his office. There he opened several folders, selected a few pages, made copies, and sent them to the Auror Office via an unremarkable school owl.
* * *
"What was that?" was the first thing Snape said, finding himself back in Hagrid's familiar cottage. Hagrid was still standing as he'd been when he grabbed them: umbrella in one hand, bowl of porridge in the other. The spoon had vanished somewhere into the night. Snape himself had Harry Potter clamped firmly under one arm—though it was honestly unclear which of them was holding on to the other more tightly—and the pot of porridge in the other hand.
Andrei tossed his fur coat into the corner, smiled broadly, and took the pot from him with a quiet pat on the shoulder. He was deeply satisfied with how Snape had handled himself—boa-constrictor satisfied—and decided to say so. Severus's response to the sparse but genuine praise was entirely predictable:
"Leave that behind?"
Fair enough—I'd have left an ordinary bowl of porridge, Andrei thought, and sighed. And I didn't even think to grab the pot. Getting old. Reflexes going. But what he said was:
"Congratulations, Severus. We've just destroyed the first Horcrux."
"The what?" Snape stared. "How—where did that come from?"
"From here." Hagrid touched a finger to Harry's forehead.
The boy had calmed down since the Apparition—the forehead clearly wasn't hurting anymore, and the bleeding had stopped with suspicious speed for a wound that size. Understanding was beginning to dawn slowly across Snape's face.
"So that's why the Dark Lord…"
"Quite," Hagrid said, and shrugged. "Now let's finish the porridge."
He fished Snape's bowl from the pot, wiped the bottom on a convenient rag, and held it out. Harry immediately reached toward it again.
"Eat up, little one. It's doing you good."
"He looks well, actually," Snape said, studying the child's face. "No runny nose. Breathing normally."
"Coffee would go down a treat right now," Andrei said, rubbing his hands together. "Or did we lose it in the chaos?"
Snape silently produced the jar, transfigured it into a hand grinder, and set the handle spinning on its own. The smell of coffee began to drift through the room and Andrei swallowed involuntarily.
"And those idiots had the nerve to say you had trouble with Transfiguration," he said, obscurely indignant.
"All my O.W.L.s in Transfiguration are Exceeds Expectations or Outstanding," Snape said matter-of-factly. "Whatever anyone may claim. McGonagall and I simply… don't get along." He frowned—looking, at this moment, almost like a schoolboy, and visibly brighter for the food and the coffee fumes. "Now talk. What exactly did you see in this terrible future of yours?"
Hagrid glanced out of the window. The sky was darkening again already. Quite a day they'd had out there in the open air—more of an expedition, really. He wondered how the Aurors had managed with the clearing.
Harry, who had been exploring the cottage with great thoroughness—there was plenty to investigate for a curious one-year-old—had finally succumbed to the combined effects of an enormous meal, an enormous quantity of impressions, and sheer exhaustion, and was quietly asleep on the floor atop some sort of animal skin. Hagrid moved him to the bunk and covered him with a blanket, and Snape conjured something like a screen to block the light.
Then Andrei sighed, settled himself, and began—the part of the story that concerned Snape himself, Harry, and a little of Dumbledore. God willing, he'd be done by morning.