The Bear and Barnacle

Eight Things Severus Snape Has Learned This Week

1. Having one's own voice back is a decided advantage in persuading Margate to let one apparate out for the day; with a voice that sounds like one's spent one's life sucking coffin-nails, a person had best not attempt to leave for more than a few hours, and certainly not two days in a row.

2. ( The potioneer's association's clerks lead sad, pathetic lives. )

Ivonka-san, he writes, handwriting a bit more stilted than usual, as he's still having a bit of trouble holding a pen steady.

Thank you for taking good care of the restaurant while I was--

He pauses, thinking of ways to end that sentence. 'Held captive by the Lord of Hell' is not something to toss into a work-related memo in his current career, and the marginally more credible 'abducted by aliens' is if possible even more problematic. To say nothing of untrue. 'Unwillingly out of body while encased in a life-sucking, magic-strangling lump of ethereal rock' ( would at least be accurate, but... )

I regret how gone Xel has been recently, and apologize about any threads he would otherwise have taken up. He's been having an absolutely nightmarish couple of months, and since mine haven't been appreciably more bearable (with thanks to anyone who might have asked, it's not something I want to talk about), I haven't been in any shape to try and force him to be social (not that I can ever make him do anything anyway).

The thing with Voldemort was hardly a secret. Q had no idea how many people actually knew about it, but it wasn’t the sort of thing you could keep from talking about if you did. Anyway, most of those who did know about it thought he was dead, so that was all right. He’d do his best to keep his continued existence a secret from the Wizarding world, thank you very much, speaking of secrets. Things like the fact that he slept (when he could sleep) with the light on now, or that he couldn’t swim or had a morbid fear of snakes, they weren’t really secrets, they had just never come up. Same with climbing into his bed at Hogwarts, closing the curtains and crying for hours when he’d heard John Lennon had died. Not secrets, just things no one had ever asked him about. And Q would answer truthfully when and if anyone ever did. But the secret he did have was buried so deep he wasn’t even aware of it.

Dora had secrets. Lots of them. Most were other people's secrets though. Things they'd told her while they were playing with her- like Spike's real name which still makes her giggle. Sometimes it was the nature of the play itself. Like with Alex who didn't want anyone to know about his playing princely dress-up with her. Val told her secrets now- about Jack and Zelgadis, about Xellos, about his master, about dragons and monsters and magic. She thinks most of them are true secrets and not fake secrets too.

But for her own? They were harder to think about. She wouldn't tell Iago about how much she likes to sleep curled up with Val or where she hides the tube of shockingly pink lipstick that Sam the Tattooist's girlfriend gave her. He'd tell her she was staying in her room until she was thirty... Or maybe he'd change it to forty this time. Or send her to a convent. Or something like that. Even if he's not serious, she's not telling.

She expects these aren't important secrets. Some things were important but not quite secrets. Like she knows the lies she has to tell to keep from being taken away if anyone starts asking about of her life or her family. But no one had- at least no one that wanted to try to take her away.

But her nightmares... those are secret. The ones that are filled with angry people and wands, with being pushed away by a wolf with amber eyes, with watching her father disappearing into a map, with being unable to find Teddy who keeps turning different colours, with seeing him so tiny and so far away that no matter how much she runs she can't even get close to him. Those that leave her trembling in her bed, face and hair wet, and the world tinted green... those she keeps to herself.

Holmes sits quietly in his usual booth, smoke from his pipe drifting lazily about his head. Secrets, he thinks. What an interesting topic for discussion. Secrets, finding them out, telling them (to the proper authorities) and sometimes keeping them have been his life’s work. Watson had been the soul of discretion when penning the stories of his cases, not mentioning, or changing the names of those involved when necessary, as well as places and dates. In some cases, Holmes had refused outright to have anything about them referred to at all, though he knew quite well that the good doctor had written about them in his private papers. He supposed that in most instances it would do no harm to tell of those adventures. Still, some of them were, or had been, vital to national security and it went against his nature to blather indiscreetly, no matter how long the principals involved had been dead. One he can tell, however. And apparently some people have been curious. “In 1902, I was offered a knighthood but refused. Instead, I asked for a favour to be done, to honour a man who deserved the accolades far more than I. I asked that the head of British Intelligence always be given the code-name ‘M’, for my brother Mycroft, who was the very first to be so designated. I understand that the practice is still followed to this day.”

It is no secret that Spike is love’s bitch. He’s made a point of admitting it, on several occasions. He fawned over Cecily (though, that didn’t go so well, did it? Especially once he ran into Cecily, aka Halfrek, after the fact), he doted on Drusilla and lost her anyway. And Buffy. He fought for his very soul for her, only to end up hearing empty words and having an empty bed. All of this was common knowledge to those that knew him.
( So then what Secret could he have? )

Seventy years ago, or seven thousand in the future, there’s no way to tell, this happened; now, it's a memory in a boy’s mind, too large a memory for him to cope with …

“What happens to us when we die?” Val asked his master once, idly because just then he was most focused on avoiding it, not speculating about it. ( Are mazoku reborn from the Mother like humans? )

Minerva hasn't got many secrets anymore. She's more or less given them up now that she doesn't have a career riding on them and her reputation seems able to take care of itself.

This isn't to say that she's advertising about her life, but her greatest secret was Tom (and Myron, who would have been sixty by now, how old she's somehow gotten ... and how young she was then), and that she's discussed with at least two of her new acquaintances. Of course, she hasn't seen Susan or the Doctor in months, so apparently that secret is safe, but she feels no imperative to hide the experience now. This does not, however, mean that she's going to chat about it.

When she thinks about it, she's never had many secrets as such, apart from the affair with Tom and its result. There was Dumbledore and the reason why she was his standing date to Ministry functions, but that wasn't a secret so much as something everyone knew who had a reason to know. There's a distinction.

All Hogwarts professors who know what's good for them keep their private life private, since teachers who see most of wizarding Britain in their classrooms are perforce something of public figures and their personal enmities, love affairs and youthful indiscretions would be interesting gossip to literally every adult in their culture. She doesn't see this as secrecy so much as good self-management.

( But to her deathbed, Minerva will never tell anyone ... )

Lucius bent over the single pensieve he currently had in his possession, thinking with regret of the very secured cabinet in rooms hidden below Malfoy Manor which contained so many of his memories. But right now, it was more recent memories he was reviewing, even if those recent memories stirred up many old ones. His conversations with the “new” Severus had awakened many thoughts of the final years of the war, of all the events that had transpired at the end, and after. His failure, his humiliation, his defeat. The broken life he had begun to slowly rebuild, before finding himself here in Margate.

The secret that no one knew, besides Narcissa, and even she knew not the whole truth, was that Lucius WAS full of regret…but not for the reasons one would think. He did not regret his beliefs, or most of his actions (when they were his, not the orders of another). His regret was following the half breed monster and letting him dominate him, and break him. His regret was becoming weak, losing his position and power. And yes, his regret was the damage he had done to those most important to him…to his family. For they were still the only thing that mattered.

The Joker could certainly keep a secret…especially his own. But sometimes, the secret, the truth, was not even under his control.

( Even he wasn't sure anymore... )

Show me the man who has nothing written in his heart he would never let another see, and I will show you a fiction. What are your secrets? Tell them or keep them this month.

Memory posts, lists, drunken confessions ... it's all good! Topic is open until the twenty-eighth. Tag is "secrets".

Two reminders: 1. The gift exchange will be closed in favor of a shiny new event on the fifteeth, so if, like a certain bartender's typist, you have three gifts to give and zero workable ideas, get crackin'. 2. If you observe the good old Characters in Play list, you will notice that we have begun a Pending Removal list for those who haven't spoken up in a long while. We're not kicking anyone to the curb yet, but consider this a gentle poke if any of these players are still watching.