Spiral of Despair by Henna Hypsch
Summary: A year after Voldemort’s death, Harry and Snape have reached a brittle reconciliation with one another. Harry wishes Snape would speak more to him about Lily, but Snape is being stubbornly secretive and jealous of his private life. Harry’s own relationship with Ginny is getting shakier. Hermione has initiated a campaign in the press against Obliviating spells which will have unexpected consequences for Neville Longbottom, and the Auror Office is looking for Voldemort’s son, without really believing that he exists.

In the second part of “Spiral” Harry goes to medical school at St Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries and lives at Grimmauld Place in London with Ginny, Ron and Hermione. As to Snape, he is a multitasking headmaster who seems to turn up ever so often in Harry’s life.
Categories: Teacher Snape > Professor Snape Main Characters: .Snape and Harry (required), Arthur, Ginny, Hagrid, Hermione, Luna, McGonagall, Molly, Neville, Other, Ron
Snape Flavour: None
Genres: Action/Adventure, Angst
Media Type: None
Tags: None
Takes Place: 8 - Post Hogwarts (young adult Harry)
Warnings: Alcohol Use, Romance/Het, Romance/Slash, Suicide Themes
Challenges: None
Series: Spiral
Chapters: 23 Completed: Yes Word count: 98719 Read: 8394 Published: 28 Aug 2022 Updated: 27 Nov 2022
Chapter 2 At Spinner's End by Henna Hypsch

The person Harry had fastened his eyes on outside Snape’s house was a small, slender-limbed witch with long blond hair who looked almost like a child. But Harry knew that this witch, Henna Hatch, was a Metamorphmagus with a male counterpart whose androgynous figure would fire Avada Kedavras without hesitation. Both Snape and Harry himself had been very close to falling victims to her curses during a battle that took place at Hogwarts at the end of last term against the gang she belonged to, the Shiftings, an organization associated with the old Death Eaters but also comprising much younger criminal elements.

A square-shouldered strong-looking wizard was crouching at her side, wand drawn. Would that be her father, Hades Hatch? Harry wondered and let go of the curtain slowly. He forced himself to move carefully while in reality he wanted to tumble down the stairs to find Snape, but he did not want them to detect someone was awake in the house. It might give Snape and him crucial time to prepare themselves, because the house was obviously going to be under attack very soon.

For moving so slowly, Harry panted very hard when reaching the bottom floor. To his relief he spotted Snape asleep in the armchair in front of the extinct fire – apparently Snape had never made it to bed last night. Harry heard a faint noise from the entrance door, froze and turned his head. Nothing happened at first, but then his eyes widened as a purple coloured mist began seeping in under the door.

Panicking, Harry darted over to Snape and started to shake him by the shoulder. Snape woke quickly and quietly, riveting his black eyes on Harry, sitting up and gripping his wand that had been lying only inches from his fingers.

“They’re here!” Harry whispered in a gasp, clutching Snape’s arm. “Henna Hatch is outside. They’ve spelled a gas to enter the house. Look!”

 “Shit!” Snape exclaimed in a low voice. Harry had time to reflect that the professor normally would use wizard curse words, but maybe it was the effect of being at his Muggle home. “Upstairs! Get upstairs!” croaked Snape, putting a fold of his long sleeve over his mouth, thrusting the blanket he had been sleeping under for Harry to cover his airways.

Harry scrambled back up the stairs, less quiet this time. Snape followed him, casting a spell that seemed to seal the well between the floors. The gas would not easily reach upstairs, but on the other hand they were trapped, Harry thought.

“The house is well protected, they won’t be able to enter,” said Snape.

“No, I think they expect the toxic effects of the gas to make you come out to them,” Harry responded.

Snape fumbled with a pocket watch of his, with many small pinions in an intricate pattern.

“Security watch,” he explained. “I’m alerting the Aurors. Mrs Steadfast forced this upon me before I left for Iceland.”

“Wise witch,” muttered Harry. Mrs Steadfast was the head of the Aurors under Kingsley Shacklebolt, the Minister of Magic. Mrs Steadfast wanted both Snape and Harry to have personal protection in the form of an Auror body-guard, but both Harry and Snape had declined because of integrity reasons. “What do we do now?”

Snape had entered the room where Harry had been sleeping and positioned himself beside the window just as Harry had done when waking up. He was observing the street below.

“They’re about seven wizards and witches,” said Snape. Harry noticed that the hand that let go of the curtain trembled the least little bit.

“Is that Hades Hatch who is at Henna’s side?” Harry asked. Last year during the battle with the Shiftings when they duelled, Henna Hatch had accused Harry of killing her half-brother – an accusation which was true, because her half-brother, Machivato, had attacked Ginny and Harry on a vacation to Paris, and Harry had had no choice but to kill him. It had been a most agonising experience, for both Harry and Ginny. Henna Hatch had also revealed that her father, Hades Hatch, held a grudge against Snape because of something that Snape had done long ago. Snape had been reticent on this matter, barely recognizing that he knew a Mr Hatch at all. It showed again now since Snape clamped his jaws and only grunted indistinctly.

“Is it him?” Harry insisted.

“I think so, I haven’t seen him since I was thirteen,” Snape responded aggressively.

“Thirteen?” Harry exclaimed incredulous. What could Snape possibly have done to Hades Hatch as barely a teenager that made him hold a grudge for twenty five years?

“It feels ridiculous to crouch inside! Should we go out and fight them?” Snape asked briskly, suddenly energetic.

“Do you mean…?” Harry hesitated, torn between cautiousness and common sense on the one hand that made him see that waiting for the Aurors was the most sensible alternative, and temptation of going into battle together with Snape on the other hand, using the Spiral Knights’ Battle Move that he had learnt to master last year. “Er… why not?” Harry’s worried face suddenly broke up in a broad mischievous smile.

“They don’t know you’re in here with me and they counted on having me alone, I think,” Snape said. “We did it a few months ago – we can hold them at bay for a reasonable amount of time before the Aurors arrive.”

“How do we get out?” Harry wanted to know. “And what about your Muggle neighbours? They won’t know what hit them!?”

“It’s so early no one’s out. Anyway, I suspect some of my neighbours have been bribed to spy on me. How else did the Shiftings know I had returned from abroad? I’m sure there was no surveillance when I got back two days ago, nor yesterday when we arrived together,” said Snape. “But I’ll draw disillusionment spells around us when battling – I guess the Hatches might already have done so. None of us want to deal with the Ministry for troubling the Muggles.”

Harry and Snape got out on the roof from an attic window and mounted back-to-back in a spiral in the air. The combat technique which utilized both Apparition and air gliding elements, made the two wizards’ magic dock tightly and made the swirling movement up and down in the air go almost by itself, letting the combatants direct all their energy at cursing their enemies. Harry who had thought that all Aurors mastered this technique, had been surprised to learn last year that it was considered extremely difficult and that the fact that Snape and he performed it to perfection was because their magic was so well balanced. It was mere chance that Snape had taught Harry, because they had not exactly been friends at the time.

On the street beneath them, they heard cries of dismay and curses.

“It’s them!” Henna cried to her father. 

Hades and Henna Hatch had brooms at hand and started to circle Snape and Harry, putting up a fight with fierce determination. The speed attained on broomsticks could never compare with the Spiral Knights Move, however.

The fight did not last long, because from both ends of the street Aurors approached, ambushing the Shiftings left on the ground.

“Severus, you snake!” Hades Hatch roared and fired an Avada Kedavra at Snape and Harry that missed.

After that, Hades Hatch and his daughter turned and fled, being outnumbered. Four Aurors took after them, but Harry doubted they would catch up. Snape and Harry landed, the fight too short to have really satisfied their appetite for battling, much of their charged up magic still rippling through their bodies.

Soundy, the chief Auror when Mrs Steadfast was on holiday, eyed them from top to toe and muttered:

“Nice of you to let us help out, Professor – not that you needed it.”

“I would have needed your help if Mr Potter had not come to work with me, if he had not stayed the night, and happened to be an early riser,” said Snape, only the slightest bit out of breath. “But the house is full of poison – it needs to be decontaminated. I’m curious to know what kind of substance they were using to smoke me out. That was cunning – I had not protected myself against that particular kind of attack.”

“I’ll put my men on the task. Meanwhile, come with me to Headquarters and tell me what you know,” said Soundy.

They knew preciously little, since everything had happened so fast.

“What are they after, anyway?” asked Soundy, frustrated. “Revenge?”

“Don’t forget that we took their book,” said Snape. “The one with Voldemort’s instructions how to make him come back a second time.” Harry shuddered.

“Well, they have no chance,” he said in a low voice. “All the horcruxes are destroyed. And they need to find that son of Voldemort first, if he exists, to make it happen. Surely they no longer think it’s you or me?” Harry was speaking to Snape who had suffered wild speculations in the press last year, particularly by Rita Skeeter, as to his descent, and so had Harry. Snape shook his head, but it was Soundy who spoke:

“I think those crazy ideas about your shocking parentage to Voldemort belonged mainly to our former Auror colleague who betrayed us, your Dark Arts teacher last year, Bellamy Burgess. He wasn’t part of the attack this morning. Are you sure that Henna and Hades Hatch believe in this outrageous theory? My guess is that they’re only after revenge, pure and simple. It’d help if you could tell us a bit more of your previous interactions with Mr Hatch, Professor.”

“I’ve told you, I don’t know what that’s about,” said Snape, looking Soundy steadily in the eyes, practicing, Harry knew it, Occlumency to conceal his real thoughts and feelings. Harry always got frustrated when Snape displayed his wax-like face of Occlumency – it reminded him of his cold, inscrutable and unreachable teacher from the years before. He much preferred the present Snape who, even if he could flare up and get mad sometimes, was more spontaneous and alive than before. “They might only resent the fact that I made my contribution to the fall of the Dark Lord,” Snape added.

“They might,” Soundy confirmed conciliatory, letting Snape off the hook far too easily in Harry’s opinion. “Well, we know what we have to do,” Soundy continued. “First, we need to find those Shiftings and arrest them. Got four prisoners today - that’s a start. Second, we need to find out if the son of Voldemort exists, and third, we need to locate the last Pleasure Temple of Voldemort and release the victims from the place, if they’re still alive. The last one’s actually our priority, but it’s complicated. We need to get our hands on the Secret keeper to get through the Fidelius charm that protects the place. He or she has eluded us for so long now, but we haven’t lost hope.”

There was a short pause during which Harry thought with horror on the cave that they knew existed, where Voldemort’s Death Eaters had kept and, as far as they knew, were still keeping prisoners, Muggles and Witches, to play with and torture. Soundy who had searched for the cave with his Aurors for more than a year seemed not to want to dwell on it longer because he turned to Harry and went on:

“Now, will I see you at the start of term next week at the Auror program, Mr Potter? Tell me, what’s the arrangement? Mrs Steady only mentioned it briefly before leaving for the US on her holiday.” Harry blushed a little as he got both excited and a bit embarrassed when he started explaining the arrangement he had made with Mrs Steadfast. He was not fond of special arrangements on his behalf as a rule, since he was adamant not to get special treatment only because of being the ‘Boy-who-lived’, but Mrs Steadfast had persuaded him this was not the case here.

“Well, I’ve been accepted to the healer program at St Mungo’s, and I have confirmed: I’ll start my training to become a healer, and that will be my priority. I made that very clear to Mrs Steadfast. But I will at the same time enter the program here with the Aurors, together with Ron Weasley, Seamus Finnigan and Dean Thomas from my class at Hogwarts and start the training. Mrs Steadfast will follow my progress and… Well, it’ll take longer of course than for the others, but I’ll try to catch up and do my best – and we’ll see…” Harry finished lamely.

“Double programs, no less! A worthy challenge for the Saviour of the Wizard World,” said Snape sarcastically. “The press will have a day reporting your success.” Harry riveted his eyes on Snape and snapped back:

“No, they won’t, because at St Mungo’s I’ll be Harry Evans and I’ll keep that part of my career as secret and as anonymous as possible. That was the argument which convinced me of doing this. Everyone expects me to become an Auror, so I will. I can’t get away from the attentions of the press, so I might just as well live up to their expectations. I’m thrilled about the training as well of course, and it’ll enable me to keep up with Ron and the others. Moreover, I’m already involved in all of this.” Harry made a sweeping movement with his hands as if to include all that they had been talking about previously.

“You don’t have to justify yourself, Mr Potter,” Soundy said. “I think it’s a superb arrangement. We’re happy to have you with the Aurors.”

“Harry Evans, hein?” Snape said in a milder tone of voice. “Yes, it might be a wise move with two careers after all. I sincerely hope that they’ll leave you in peace at St Mungo’s. I’m sorry I implied… some sort of arrogance on your part…” Harry clenched his jaws. Snape was often quick to judge Harry to his disadvantage. But at least he was apologising for it this time.

“You, too, do multiple tasks,” he pointed out to Snape. “Headmaster at Hogwarts, extra shifts at the Emergency at St Mungo’s, extra teaching on the Healer program… and on the Auror program. And on top of it collaborating with the Aurors to find the Pleasure Temple.”

Soundy raised his eye-brows as Harry enumerated Snape’s engagements.

“A fine raw model you’ve found there, Mr Potter,” he said drily.

Snape muttered something indistinctly.

“It’ll be hard work no doubt,” said Harry. “I’ll do my best.”

The End.
End Notes:
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