Goat Song

Prologue:

The villagers of Hogsmeade shuffled across the stage.

From the shops of High Street to the lakeside docks, men and women and little children played their parts with eyes wide shut. They woke, and ate, and went to school and work, and they virtuously said their prayers before returning to their beds at night. They loved, lost, grieved, forgot.

If they were afraid of anything, it was of forgetting their lines. The Ministry--which was still the Ministry to them, capital letter and all, because things being one thing even when they are not is the way of drama--would not waste their time with bad reviews, with reprimands or fines. They had box seats and their own actors in amongst the crowd scenes. Players were written out, exit stage left.

The new order was precisely that. In a few short months it had accomplished more than Scrimgeour's administration had in a year. The Hogwarts board of governors had purged the school of Muggleborns by unanimous vote, after a like culling of its own ranks. A department for seized property was appointed from among professional auctioneers and private scavengers. Every healer in the country had turned their records over to St. Mungo's, and St. Mungo's on to the Ministry: histories and blood tests and dirty little secrets. The Anti-Propaganda Squad scoured Hogsmeade and the Alleys for dissident communications and vandalism. There were supervisors and secretaries and managers of records. There were spies, and spies who spied on the spies. The pension plan, all were assured, was still in place.

So the people of Hogsmeade passed the time. They trod the boards and sang the chorus, and they waited for the hero to make his grand entrance.

I.

Aberforth Dumbledore sat awake in the waxing hours of the cool autumn night, looking out his window onto the quiet scene. The street was empty, or nearly so--a familiar grey tabby slipped out of one alleyway and darted into another--the windows on High Street dark and shuttered, and the streetlamps coldly aglow. He'd had to shut the bar up early on account of the curfew, the cashbox pitifully light as he'd made the last count of the night and fed the goats and then retired to his room upstairs, where he waited as he'd done every bloody night for the last two months.

Twice, a pair of dark-robed figures passed by in the street, and he straightened up in his chair, but they did not pause in their patrol and eventually he slumped again. He packed his pipe from a tin of Trumpeter and had a quiet smoke until just past midnight when he heard a noise from downstairs: the faint creak of the painting swinging out from the passageway. He held his breath for an instant before letting out a ring of smoke. Seven, eight, nine ten. Sixteen heavy footsteps up the stairway. There was the smallest hesitation before the doorknob turned.

He looked up as the door opened and blew another smoke ring.

Severus Snape pushed his cowl back and hovered in the doorway, his pale cheeks still flushed from the nip in the air. He was thinner than the last time Aberforth had seen him, the lean look he had as a young lad back, as though he was worn down and eating at his own nerves, rats on wheels turning, turning, turning inside that dark head of his.

"Headmaster, is it?" Aberforth asked mildly, and nearly regretted it when the lad flinched. He cleared his throat before Severus could turn to leave. "Had dinner yet?"

Severus paused, one hand on the doorpost. "It's half-midnight."

That wasn't an answer, but he wasn't going to bother to press. It was half-midnight, after all. He picked up the bottle from where it had been waiting for two months and placed it on the table, watching a hungry gleam come into Severus's eyes, a glint of green. He took out the rest of the case, placing a lump of sugar on the spoon and pouring the first glassful over it. Severus's gaze was glued to his hands, like a cat watching a bird from the windowsill.

He pushed the glass across to him and poured his own, only a splash. "Cold out?"

"Mm."

The lad's hand shook just a little as he picked up the glass. Aberforth could hardly stand to look.

Severus did not sit, but began pacing the room, long strides caged in by the close quarters: smooth glides and nervous fits and starts in between. The jitters eased as he drained his glass to the bottom, setting it down hard on the mantle before throwing himself down onto the bed, landing in half-graceful sprawl and scrubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands. He'd seen some things, no doubt.

Aberforth put the cork back in the bottle and slowly rose. Three steps took him to the bed, and he sat down heavily at the edge of it. He didn't want to ask, but he had to. "Did it happen like they say? You killing him?"

The lad went very still, and Aberforth saw what colour there was in him bleed away.

He'd figured so, but who knew what was the truth these days. "Don't suppose it came as any surprise to him?"

Severus slowly shook his head.

He'd figured so on that too. His jaw clenched, and they mired in uneasy silence for several seconds before he finally touched him. Laid a hand on his side, feeling the faint chill through his robes. Opened one button and another and another, laying him bare, his gargoyle of a lad, all pale pitted stone and sharp angles.

Severus withdrew his arm from over his face, shifting it to curve above his head on the pillow. He regarded Aberforth steadily, a miserable hunger in his eyes. Then he reached up and plucked Aberforth's spectacles off his nose, folding them one-handed and setting them on the bedside table. The drawer slid open, a bottle palmed.

What followed was short and messy. Aberforth managed to get out of half his clothes, the half that counted, and then he was on top of Severus, rutting like he'd been without for years instead of a single summer. Severus clutched at him nearly hard enough to bruise, knees digging into his sides, spurring him on faster.

"Harder..." Barely croaked, and he gave in to it, nigh well throwing out his back until his shot was primed and Severus was crying out loud enough to bring down the walls. The headboard rattled, hit the plaster, once, twice, thrice, again, before creaking to a halt.

His breath came out in a great shudder, and Severus' spunk hadn't even cooled on his stomach when the lad twisted out from under him, getting unsteadily to his feet. He sat up and watched Severus dress, finding that he looked a little better--not quite so pale, perhaps. The lad wandered over to the table, and his hand ghosted over the bottle.

Aberforth didn't let his face betray a flicker. "You can take it if you like." His voice came out just kindly enough to make Severus drop his hand.

"No, thank you."

"Missed you around here," he finally muttered, just as the lad was poised to leave. Severus paused a moment on the threshold before shutting the door behind him. That was answer enough too.

II.

Severus Snape took a room at his bar in the spring of 1979. He was a model tenant: he had a job in town and he paid his rent on time in exact coin. He was, according to Albus, most likely a Death Eater.

It didn't do for a barman to be judgmental, but still he kept an eye on him as asked, and it wasn't the worst of hobbies. Severus Snape was a novel show, a queer lad with an odd manner about him that disturbed most who met him, Albus included, and so gave Aberforth a good chuckle. He could often be seen going about with a book in hand, his finger marking his place, and he sneered at the drunks downstairs, and he never touched anything stronger than pumpkin juice.

That is, until one late evening in July when he came in out of the rain looking like someone had just thrown his dog in front of the Knight Bus. The lad slunk up to the bar, perching on the stool like a sodden bat, and eyed the row of bottles along the wall.

"Firewhisky," he said. "As much as this will buy." He threw a scanty purse of sickles and knuts onto the bar-top.

Aberforth looked him over. Black eyes rimmed with red, and a stubborn chin, and pale, spidery hands that looked as though they had recently punched something solid. You couldn't call him handsome, but he was the most fascinating thing to look at sometimes.

He shook his head. "You're not a firewhisky man."

The lad looked up sharply, with an expression that clearly said he would be a firewhisky man elsewhere if it wouldn't be sold to him here.

Aberforth ignored the look and rummaged behind the bar, prompted by something he couldn't quite put his finger on. Professional curiosity, maybe. Annoyance with Albus. Eyes like that, and him being a foolish old man. He drew out a bottle of the green stuff and blew a little dust off the top. He set it on the bar.

It was met with a suspicious eye.

"Absinthe," he said. "Thinking man's poison."

He likewise couldn't say what had made him choose it, save that the lad seemed like the sort who'd be sorry for going on a cheap reeler once the humours had cleared. A little went a long way, and he was the only place in town that stocked it.

One glass later, Severus Snape had his head on the bar. "She married him," he mumbled, his eyes unfocused and glassy.

A woman. He actually wouldn't have guessed that, and it must have showed on his face because the lad lifted his head and narrowed his eyes. Even with his load on, he was a sharp one.

"What?"

Aberforth snorted, amused, and wiped off the bar where his cheek had left a smear. "Didn't peg you for the type to get pissed over a woman, that's all."

The lad recoiled as if he'd been smacked, and flushed violently. For a moment he looked as if he might draw his wand, and Aberforth's hand went to his own as his other poured another splash from the bottle.

Severus downed it in one bitter go. "...she didn't care about that."

Two surprises in one day. He decided, as the last of the meagre weekday crowd drifted out of the bar, that he rather liked the lad, no matter what was up his sleeve. It suddenly made a good bit more sense, the way Albus talked about him: amused disdain dripping from every suspicion. You had to be a special case to do what Albus did and not be disgusting. He himself had never been picky; couldn't afford to be.

So he found himself sloshing the rest of the bottle as he peeled the lad off the bar-top and pushed him towards the stairs. "That's enough for now. You come back when you want to forget about her again."

Then he dropped a galleon into the cashbox to cover the loss.

III.

"Has he ever killed anyone?"

It was the summer of 1984, and Severus Snape hadn't roomed at the Hog's Head since well before the days of the Order had ended, but he came in on his Sundays off so regular that Aberforth set his week by him.

He looked up from his paper, the place dead save for Severus being maudlin over his tumbler. "What are you on about?"

"Your brother," Severus said, taking a long sip. "Has he ever killed anyone?"

Aberforth went still. He took a deep breath, his gaze flickering helplessly to Ariana's picture and then back to his paper. He turned to the Quidditch section. "Can't say his soul's clean on that one."

Severus nodded in grim satisfaction. "Fucking hypocrite."

Aberforth blindly read the scores. "He's still rooting around in your head, isn't he?" He saw Severus's shoulders hunch defensively out of the corner of his eye.

It made his skin crawl, Albus's nasty habit. Some things weren't meant to be known, and some things weren't meant to be known that way. He liked to think by now that he knew the lad better than his brother did anyhow. He didn't need any fancy magic to know what made Severus Snape tick. Didn't need to go prying around in dusty corners to suss out that he'd come up in a spiteful house, and that his father had a temper, but that when old Da drank he turned into something weak and sorry that dear Mum ripped into shreds. Didn't need to humiliate him to know that he came in here because he didn't want to be a firewhisky man, and didn't trust himself to stop if he took it up on his own.

He left the lad his secrets. It made him more interesting.

"What about you?" Severus asked after a moment, getting up from his table and coming to sit at the bar proper.

"What about me?"

"Have you ever killed someone?" Severus held out his glass for more.

He poured. "Yes."

There was a bit of grim pleasure in taking the lad aback. Severus never liked to admit he was surprised by anything, having picked up the habit from Albus of pretending like he'd read the whole thing already. He was quick to recover, however, narrowing his eyes. "When?"

"Two years ago."

Severus nearly toppled off his barstool at that, his jaw actually dropping for an instant, as though it would have been another matter entirely if it had been sometime before they met--fifty years ago, another country. "Who?"

"One of his lot. Mullins."

The lad stared at him like he was a stranger. "Gerald Mullins? I knew him. I certainly didn't read anything in the paper about it. What did you do, feed him to the goats?"

Aberforth was silent. He wasn't far off.

"Oh, don't tell me."

He shrugged his shoulders and set about cleaning a glass. "Man came in here, winter before last, looking to find someone who knew how to find something he wanted. Wouldn't take no for an answer, went for his wand. I hit him with a stunner and he took the cellar stairs head-first."

Severus breathed out slowly, one eyebrow slowly creeping up. "So it was an accident."

He could have said yes. He could have said yes and ended it there, and if it had been anyone but that tight-lipped lad who whispered awful things when he was in his cups, he would have. "Old Bess, she wasn't doing too good then." The lad had doctored his tribe out back more than once. Bess liked him. "Had her since we were both kids. And my sister...well, Bess was her favourite. Could always make her smile, even on her bad days. But she was getting on...had been getting on for years, and I'd done all I could to keep her going. Physicks, and doses, and charms."

He paused, Severus regarding him with silent intensity.

"He was bleeding bad. Would've died anyhow if I left him there. Might've died anyhow even if I'd sent him on to hospital. So I took him out back. And I gave what time he'd have had left to her. God knows she'd make better use of it."

"Scapegoating." The corner of Severus's mouth lifted minutely.

"About time it went the other way. At any rate, Albus hushed it up. Didn't ask him to--didn't want him to--but he did. Got a rap on the knuckles for improper charms, and that was the end of it."

Severus was silent for a long while. Then he asked, "What did it feel like?"

Aberforth considered the question soundly, aware that it wasn't asked frivolously. "It felt...like something that couldn't be taken back."

It earned him a small nod, and when Severus's glass was empty again, it stayed empty. Severus stayed a while too.

IV.

The next All Hallow's, when the place was jumping and all were toasting The Boy Who Lived, Severus Snape came over and holed up in the back room, wallowing in the memory of the girl who'd never cared that he was earnest. Aberforth looked in on him at closing time to find the bottle he'd given him empty and smashed, and Severus mumbling to himself on top of the table.

"...wanna die."

Aberforth rolled his eyes and transformed the table into something more resembling a bed, digging out his winter cloak and throwing it over him. "No, you don't. If you wanted to die, you'd have done it already."

"Fuck you."

He collected the broken glass. "You'll have to ask nicer than that."

Silence. Then Severus groaned. "I had too much."

"Not my fault."

"...is so."

He felt himself getting a headache, for all that he hadn't touched a drop all night. "Want me to sober you up?"

"Fuck you."

Would serve him right if he tossed him out in the street. "Want me to hit you with a somnus?"

"...fuck you."

That was good enough for a yes, and he put a sound sleeping charm on him. He straightened the cloak and took off Severus's boots once the snoring began.

He managed a few hours' sleep himself, rising just past dawn and going out to tend the goats before Bess sniffing at his hands reminded him he had a guest. He briefly weighed making the lad breakfast against throwing a bucket of cold water on him, and settled for the middle ground of simply waking him up.

The back room was windowless, and still dark and cool as he went in. Severus lay sprawled on his back, having kicked the cloak off sometime in the night. Aberforth walked quietly despite himself, lingering to look a moment first.

Severus Snape was something else when he slept. Maybe it was only the spell, but the rest seemed to have smoothed out the premature lines on his face, lifting the shadowed smudges from around his eyes. The set of his mouth was just a little softer, almost amused, as though he was dreaming good things. It made him suddenly disinclined to wake him.

He touched his cheek. Just softly, feeling the faint rasp of his beard coming in. He had thought of touching him often enough in the handful of years they'd known each other--more often than he'd have liked. Sometimes it was all he could do, when Severus held out his glass, not to ask what he would give him for it. What he would do for just one more drink. One more bottle of continental spirits he couldn't afford on a teacher's pay. Not that he would, but sometimes it was warm thinking on a cold night.

His hand crept down unbidden, along the pale curve of Severus's neck. He discovered a faint burn-scar, soft and shiny. Severus's breath caught beneath his touch.

He froze, feeling Severus surface, his breath coming lighter, his eyelashes fluttering. One eye opened in the narrowest of slits, and then shut so quickly he might have imagined it. But Severus didn't move.

So he didn't stop. His heartbeat picked up a step as he stroked the lad's neck, gooseflesh prickling up in his wake. He saw Severus swallow hard, but the lad still made no sign of stopping him. Maybe some saint had started the day's celebrations early. His hand drifted lower, over the lad's narrow chest and down his stomach. He paused, and then pushed his luck, starting in on his buttons. Severus's breath came quicker now, and he smelled of wormwood, and he struggled visibly to keep up the pretence as his prick gave a healthy stir.

"Shh..." Aberforth took him in a firm grip, his own prick remembering itself at the feel of the hot, smooth flesh. Prim young lad, flushing like a maid, and Aberforth leaned down and stole a kiss, feeling Severus's lips part and an arm come around his neck.

He needed no more prompting, getting his robe open and getting atop him. This time of morning there was no getting any fancier than a good tug and rub, but the lad didn't seem to mind, ending up on top in the scramble and writhing against him with faint little sounds that had him going off like a firebrand.

He caught the lad by the hips, slowing him down, trying to make it last. Felt the curve of his hipbones, the warm flush creeping over him. A steady, rocking rhythm, hot breath against his cheek, and a faint, surprised "oh."

Afterwards, the lad lay sweaty and panting atop him, face buried in his shoulder. Aberforth gave him a breathless pat. "Been a while here, too."

Severus stilled, and a moment later hummed a faint agreement. Something in him went weak, and he wondered if it hadn't been more than a while for the lad. Maybe more like never. Severus had gone all stiff, and he stroked his back carefully.

"Never mind that."

He'd had his share of cast-offs in his life, worn out clothing and broken toys. Albus never was careful with his things. If nothing else, it had made Aberforth a fair hand at mending.

V.

The night held a burnt edge, the air full of scorched magic and fireworks as he made his way over the brambled path. He walked as quickly as Bess could follow, his pocket watch quietly ticking "too late, too late." His heart pounded in terror as he reached the Shrieking Shack, chivvying his way in. The sight that met him made him groan deep in his chest: the floorboards soaked with blood, and Severus at the centre of it, sleeping. He knelt down. The lad was cold, the sort of cold that did not warm in the slightest as he held a limp hand between his own. Cold, but not yet stiff. A terrible flutter of hope took wing inside him.

Still he hesitated, touching Severus's face, soft and almost at peace. Did he dare? Choice loomed, a wonderful and terrible and terrifying thing. He swallowed hard and scraped his fingers through the tacky blood on the floor, muttering the old words under his breath.

He drew Bess forward, and stroked her. Kissed her on the muzzle. Told her that she was a good girl. "Hush," he whispered, but she hadn't made a sound. Didn't make a sound until he drove the knife into her throat.

She thrashed, kicking, fighting with all the life that was in her, and he held onto that fight until she crumpled to the floor with a noise that brought tears to his eyes. The force of it shook him, and he grabbed Severus by the neck, his fingers digging into the wound as he channelled the warmth with all his might.

Terrible silence reigned as Bess' breathing stopped.

He groaned again.

Then Severus coughed.

He drew back with a grunt of surprise, and Severus hurled himself forward, sitting up and coughing madly, struggling to draw one great gasp of air after another. Aberforth looked skywards briefly, his eyes still blurring, and murmured under his breath, "Bet you never planned on that one, you old sod."

Severus looked around the shack in a panic, and then regarded him in bafflement, his voice slow to come. "P-Potter!"

"Hush. It's done. You did it. The boy came out the other side on both feet--don't ask me how."

For a moment he thought the lad was going to reel over again, but Severus caught himself. He looked over at Bess, and he had the mercy not to say a word. Nearly a minute passed in stunned silence. Then the lad slowly drew his wand, and after a long, thoughtful moment, whispered a glamour. Bess's corpse became a man's body, black-haired and pale. Close enough for Ministry work.

Severus did not quite look at him. "If Potter has an ounce of gratitude in him, she will have a decent burial."

There was nothing he could say to that, and so he only offered his arm and helped Severus to his feet. The lad touched his neck, wiping away the blood until he found the wound, which had closed up into a knotted scar. He looked around once more, a lost expression taking over his face.

Aberforth drew his hand away, and cocked his head, listening to the faint sounds of celebration coming from the castle, the feast scene in full swing and the hero getting his reward. "Come on home," he said. "I need a drink."

He was no good at making plans sober.

Severus took his arm. Then, their parts played out, they left that place and let the rest of the story carry on without them.