FIC: Womb (R)

[iulia_linnea]

Title: Womb
Type: Fic
Age-Range Category: Four
Characters: Phineas Nigellus Black, Severus Snape
Author: eldritcher
Rating: R
Click to View [Warning(s)]Creator Chooses Not to Warn.
Summary: Phineas revisits the question of legacy.



I had a brother once. Sour-faced and stick-shaped, only breaking from gloom to lopsided beaming bright when to him I waddled in child's waddle.

"A boy made of twigs," Mother had called him.

"A boy the womb spat out," Father had said.

A boy made of twigs, knobby-kneed and thin, with fever in his eyes and a hole in him where magic should have been.

~
"Perhaps it is ether," Dumbledore opined.

"Ether?" McGonagall tutted. "It is only paint and wood and enchantment, Albus. As you well know."

He said nothing to that. McGonagall returned her attention to the sheaves of parchment upon her desk. Dumbledore shifted about as a preening duck in his monstrous armchair and settled into sleep.

The portrait in question shimmered as the sea under a half-birthed moon. Severus. Ten years. Underneath the silver hung an unanimated figure, indiscernible but as stagnant lines. Cloaked in his memories, Dumbledore had speculated once.

McGonagall and Potter had done everything in their power. They had procured experts and fakirs, they had brought in the Unspeakables, they had availed the assistance of pompous braggarts who ought to have their tongues torn out and their heads mounted in an attic. All in vain. The portrait shimmered silk-spun as a cloak of weeping stars upon the western heaths on a bitter Walpurgis night. Beneath the immurement lay the lines of a man who had been as no other.

Dumbledore had valiantly attempted to enter Snape's portrait, only to be repulsed.

The years passed, and Potter left the country, and McGonagall turned her attention to the doldrums of a school that was only a school.

~
"There is madness in you, boy!" I had screamed at the last of my blood.

"And it is the madness that came to me from the womb!" he had yelled.

He had carried my brother's name. He had been made of rabid wrath and heartsickness, with fever in his eyes and a hole in him where reason should have been. A mad boy. Then a dead boy. There was no portrait of him.

~
There had been a boy made of twigs of sullen unhappiness, swaddled in mother's tattered silver and green, screaming about werewolves. Dumbledore had silenced him.

"Let him speak!"

"Silence, Phineas!" Dumbledore had demanded then. "I shall call upon you should I need your counsel."

The boy had stared at me with fevered eyes. Sour-faced and stick-shaped, with doom on his brow and gloom in his heart. I had little patience for the antics of children. The boy had been made of twigs and misfortunes, ugly-warped as something a womb had spat out in discard. I had a brother once, with a hole in him where magic ought to have been. Snape had been bound to silence by Dumbledore, and then bound again to purpose, and then bound once more to death, and he had died with holes in him where magic ought to have been.

"What became of your brother?" Snape had asked me once, during that year that had been endless night. We had sustained ourselves as only those of our House could, in brittle truce that hid final earnestness, all so that we might watch a boy and a dead man's portrait and a creature made of no womb.

"He died," I had told Snape. A pregnant silence had fallen then. Snape had known how to turn his silences pregnant. If he had carried a womb, in it must have been silence's dreary substance.

"He died?"

"He died."

~
There was a dead girl on Dumbledore's conscience. There was a dead boy on mine. A brother, stick-shaped and sour-faced, spat out by scorning womb, with a hole in him where magic should have been.

As gossamer strands lay the silver upon Snape's portrait, and beneath lay he as a stick-figure enwombed.

I had been a boy of six when I had poured magic in child's desperation into my brother. I was a dead man painted in pigment when I poured the substance of mine into the ether that immured another dead man.

Dumbledore had hatched one clever plan after another, and had willfully overlooked the obvious. Magic of this nature demanded payment. He had once paid it himself in blood and life when he had broken a lover, and then once more paid it when he had slain a thing carven of no womb. He knew what must be done. He had chosen blindness.

"There must be something!" Potter had implored.

"Have you told me everything?" McGonagall had asked.

There was something. He had not told them everything. It was his way. Perhaps he meant to spare them.

The silver startled, as a maiden bathing in a pond caught by a hunter, and then it fled hither and thither from corner to corner of the wooden frame in aghast panic, and then it reared and roared, as a duellist in survival's combat, and then it whirled and swirled, as something primordial shaped of alchemical ether, and then it gasped and tore and spat, as only the womb could gasp and tear and spit.

For ten years, Severus had gestated the substance of him into fierce purpose, waiting for threat's return, readying for boy's arrival. For ten years, I had poured the substance of my portrait into the frame, all so that-

And out came bursting a stick-shaped, sour-shaped man, bawling as only a newborn could, naked as something sprung from the mother, with pigment smearing him in afterbirth.

He took a deep and shuddering breath, and trembled in seizure's choke, but fierce the magic that unspooled as silver from my portrait into his nose, so that he may draw another breath, and another, and another.

The other portraits watched the agony-addled, bawling, twiggish, silver-spotted progeny in horror. Dumbledore was missing from his frame. He must have gone to alert McGonagall.

"Phineas!" Snape screamed, as a babe screams for its mother.

~
"Name him for your dead brother, you say!" Walburga had screamed. "But it is I who paid the womb's price in body's warp and agony!"

She had named the last of the Blacks after my dead brother.

"We should have named him something else," she had yelled in lament, when I had borne to her the tidings of the boy's death. "You condemned him to die!"

"Perhaps he survived as long as he did to be the last of us only because of the name he bore!" I had shouted in anger.

I could not offer her sympathy, for she could not have endured it. He had been the last of the Blacks, with a hole in him where reason should have been, with bright eyes and fevered mind.

There was magic in the Veil. The House Elf had taken my portrait to the Ministry, to the Veil. I had attempted to pour the magic imbued in pigment to the Veil, to summon what must not be summoned, but the Veil had repelled my efforts.

Snape had found me.

"Phineas," he had said, wearied past weariness. He must have been there on the bidding of one or the other of his masters, perhaps tasked to conceal the traces of what the boy carried in his scar.

"Leave his portrait with me, Kreacher."

Kreacher had muttered something about how a filthy Half-blood was not his master. Snape had mastered the art of terrifying even the most truculent pupils at the school. He had put that art to use, scaring Kreacher too with scowl and glare and scathing words, and my portrait had been unhappily handed over.

"This is not your business, Snape," I had protested.

"None of this should be my business," he had said, with bitterness that had been as warped and poisonous as Walburga's lament. Hers a thing of womb's grief, but his-

"I am not suicidal," he had said.

"You think yourself a thing cursed by the womb."

"When I came to Slytherin, I heard a tale about how Muggleborn boys could not impregnate a true Pureblood girl, because at the entry to her womb lay teeth that would bite off the cock. Perhaps it would have been better if my mother's cunt had in it something of that nature."

There had been screaming in Dumbledore's office once. Two boys who had hated each other and one had tormented the other merely because he existed. The antics of children that I had possessed little patience for.

Snape had stood before the Veil, holding my portrait and staring at the artefact, no doubt contemplating what had been turned from existence to void. Troubled longing and resentment brimmed to the fore for a moment's sliver upon his sour-shaped face before he exhaled and looked away.

"The paint," he had murmured, worried, skimming a thumb over the edge of the frame in delicate probe. A cold man gyved by purpose, but his care had been warm upon the substance of me that remained. "The paint is peeling."

His paint had been peeling too, and plain he had been to the eye. Sour-faced and stick-shaped thing of miserable womb's make illumined only by the manacles of cause about his brow.

"He was named for my brother."

Snape had tapped a finger against the frame once. In remonstrance? In reassurance? In repudiation?

"We should return," he had said.

His hands had been yellow and stained, but their hold had been warm because it had not been in guilt-gyved purpose that they had held the frame.

The last of the Blacks had fallen into the Veil. My line had ended.

"The last Headmaster from Slytherin," Snape had murmured in quiet reverence, thumbing warmth into the substance of the portrait, a warmth commingled with resentment and envy and wonder.

~
The portraits had stirred in disquiet. Most had pretended to doze. Dumbledore ought to have welcomed him, but he had not. A strange and quixotic man had been Dumbledore, made in equal parts of greatness and resentment. He had seen to it that Snape would be Headmaster, but it had not gladdened his warped heart.

"Welcome, Headmaster," I had said.

Sincerity, they said, was no Slytherin trait. I had not been renowned for my honesty.

Earnest had been my welcome that day.

And the ease it had brought to Snape's features, turning him from guarded blankness to terrified keenness. Oh, he had wanted this too. He had wanted to be the first Slytherin Headmaster in over a century. The Hat had put him in Slytherin for a reason. Ambition had warmed him before guilt-gyves had.

"A proud day for our House," I had declared.

Would that the circumstance had been different, another would have said. A short-sighted view. That it had come to be mattered more than why it had come to be. Any Slytherin knew that!

"Welcome, Severus," Dumbledore had greeted him finally.

"Phineas," Snape had acknowledged me first. Then he had turned to nod blankly at Dumbledore.

It might be Dumbledore's purpose that had enshrined him to this office, but he had wanted to be my successor, not Dumbledore's.

The last of the Blacks had watched Walburga's portrait before running to the Ministry to save his boy.

"As a son watches the mother, knowing that there will be no succour and yet hoping that the womb's a final miracle!" she had lamented afterwards.

Snape had been little given to smiles when he had been a twig-like, sour-shaped boy in mother's tattered silver and green.

That last year of endless night had brought forth not a single smile on Snape's countenance, but he had watched my portrait as the last of the Blacks had watched his mother.

~
"Why did you undertake this folly?" McGonagall demanded.

"The power of the substance of a portrait is correlated to the power of the wizard depicted," Dumbledore noted.

"This will void the portrait!" McGonagall again, pacing in worry.

"But what about Snape? How can we keep him alive?" That was Potter, singularly focused.

"The weak magic contained in a portrait's substance cannot pay for life," Dippet said sadly.

I had a brother once. My magic I had poured into the hole of him where his magic should have been. The last of the Blacks had been named for him. The substance of my portrait had been repelled by the Veil.

"I could not enter the portrait," Dumbledore said. "How were you able to enter, Phineas?"

The womb spits out its fruit in tear and rend. It cannot return to the before.

"He cannot speak!" Potter exclaimed, horrified.

The substance of my portrait was torn and rent from within.

"The animation," McGonagall whispered. "The magic that was imbued to animate the portrait has been drained."

"Right." Potter took a deep breath.

There was a graveness to the boy. There had always been a touch of the grave in the boy, as there must be in any man with a claim to greatness, for how can there be greatness without piercing sacrifice?

Potter strode to my portrait and picked it up with tender care in his rough hands.

"Harry!" Dumbledore exclaimed.

"Harry!" McGonagall said softly.

"I am taking him to Snape. If we cannot keep Snape alive, if the portrait is losing its magic, then we must-" he cleared his throat.

"Harry." Dumbledore again.

"It should be this way," Potter insisted.

~
"Phineas," Severus had said, on the night that had dawned as yawning fate after a year of endless night.

His face had been grave and resigned. The manacles had fallen away as he had stood before my portrait with clasped hands.

The last of the Blacks had watched Walburga's portrait in desperate beseech and quiet resignation before leaving to save his boy.

"Off to save your boy?" I had asked Severus.

"Yes."

Walburga had said nothing to her son before he had left.

"Legacy is of the blood, I was taught. I deemed my legacy ended when the last of the Blacks fell into the Veil," I had told Severus. "I have been proven wrong."

His eyes had been wide in shock, and the yearning to be seen had spilled to his countenance in trembling, wavering creep. And I had seen him then. I had seen the substance of him ungyved. Oh, the ruins of him had then shedded conceal, baring quivering greatness. It had been my paltry words that had swept away the char to a bleating, earnest creature that lingered still.

"Phineas," Severus had said in gratitude.

Guilt and rage had been what had enlivened him.

Until then.

The life of him had abruptly turned from wrathful remorse's purpose to a shimmering cloak of tender and foundering hope.

Enlivened by what I had granted him, he had departed to save his boy by rending himself open in holes that bled magic and memory.

~
"Phineas."

My brother died because of my folly.

Snape knew the make of guilt well. He knew the make of guilt because he had carried it in the bones and the gristle and the blood of him.

"My mother did not loathe me, but I knew she wished that I did not exist, once or twice," he confessed. "You birthed me. With intent."

With intent. Over ten years.

"In guilt," Snape probed hesitantly.

Guilt had sufficed to save the world before. Why couldn't it be reason enough to birth a man? Guilt, Snape assumed, as any reasonable man would.

There was nothing left to pour unto him.

"Not in guilt," Potter cut in, exasperated and grieving and angry and wearied and unreasonable as only he could be in Snape's presence, mourning anew once more what he had begun mourning a decade ago in raging disquiet. "He wanted to give you what my mother gave me! He wanted you to exist. To live!" He shook his head. "You aren't going to die. What protects you is what protected me."

Snape did not speak. He would have snarled in mocking castigation at the ridiculous notion of a portrait's capacity to invoke what the boy claimed. After ten years of gestation, he had become Dumbledore's hand. After ten years of gestation, a dead man lay birthed from something beyond a portrait's all, and little wonder that it was Potter who had recognised the truth of the affair before Dumbledore had.

I wished-

Potter marched to his side with portrait in hand, but hesitated when he arrived by the bed. Then, as only Potter could, as only Potter would, he dared once more and boldly knelt beside Snape and handed him the portrait. Snape's hands were silver-smeared in portrait's substance, shaking in hope and disbelief, and his thumb came delicate to rub warmth at frame's edge once more.

Once more, and once more, and once more.

His fingers trembled in hunger and fear and rue and greed, suckling away what the portrait had left to give.

"It isn't guilt. Can't you tell?" Potter asked earnestly.

"What is it then? Tell me! Tell me!"

"It is what protected me," Potter said in the gentlest tone that only grief and remorse and love could shape. "You know what protected me."

"It cannot be," Snape whispered, doubting as only a child of mine could doubt.

"But it is," Potter insisted.

The last of the Blacks had fallen into the Veil. My line had ended then.

My portrait was peeling and hollow as a womb after it had spat out its get. And its pigmented progeny wept upon its voided frame.

Snape's tears were warmer than the pads of his thumbs, warmer than the horror in his eyes, warmer than the agony in his scream, warmer than the terrified joy of one who knew he had been made of womb in keen intent.

His tears the first glad-singing heart's warmth I knew, and then-