Special Delivery for karasu_hime Title: Tea and Pastries for the Dead Author/Artist: Recipient's LJ name:karasu_hime Pairing(s): Snape/Tonks Rating: PG-13 Summary: The end of the story is not mentioned in the history books, not even in a footnote. Some things escape the notice of historians. Word Count: ~3k Warnings/Content: a bit of AU, a bit of fluff, a few liberties taken with regard to spells and potions Disclaimer: Nothing you recognize belongs to me. Author's/Artist's notes: Huge thanks to E for all her help, and to R for the cheerleading and betaing and title, and to the mods for their patience with me. karasu_hime, I wasn't able to fit in all of the elements that you requested, but I tried to work in as many as would fit, and I really hope that you enjoy this.
Two things went unnoticed in the midst of the celebration. There was an outpour of jubilation, the like which had not been seen since the first defeat of Voldemort; amongst the general joy, no one noticed that an unidentified Death Eater was gone, and until Harry Potter thought to send someone to the Shrieking Shack, no one noticed that a redeemed Death Eater's body was gone.
History is written by the victors, and on the eve of their greatest triumph, these victors were not particularly interested in two loose ends.
*****
The knocking did not stop. Severus paused for a moment and then, setting aside his ladle, dispelled the flame burning under his cauldron and went to answer the door.
He opened it suddenly enough that Tonks stumbled forward, poised in mid-knock, and barely missed rapping his face.
"Miss Nymphadora," he said, giving her a pointed look as he refused to take a step backwards, "Whatever the misguided Divination or Charms instructors at Hogwarts would have had you know, there is no particular magical significance to the number three. In fact, if you had applied yourself to Arithmancy, you would have learned that seven is as powerful a number as seven hundred, and that the importance that superstitious Muggles place on certain numbers is–"
She opened her mouth to interrupt him, but Severus raised a finger, cutting her off. "In sum," he said, "whether you choose to visit me here three times or three hundred thousand times, the answer will remain the same: no."
He moved back, preparing to close the door in her face, but she stepped forward just as fast. "Snape, if you would just–"
"I will not," he said. "I have done enough."
"Of course you have – I don't mean to say that you haven't, it's just that … you're the only one who knows what it means to be dead like me."
"Fortunately, neither one of us is dead. If you had paid more attention to my instructions on how to brew the potion, you would not be in your present position. You would understand the consequences of taking it, and would not be here asking me–"
She practically threw herself at him, managing to stumble in a standing position and ending in his arms. "I'm grateful that you taught me how to brew, sir, and I really–"
"Enough of this," Severus said, taking a step backwards and letting her fall. The door slammed shut with a flick of his wand, and she caught herself before she landed face-first on his floor. Severus turned to go into the kitchen. "If you insist on disturbing my rest, the least you can do is make a decent cup of tea."
He'd be flayed before he admitted it, but Tonks brewed a better cup of tea than he did. Watching her suspiciously to see how she achieved it, Severus noticed nothing that differed significantly from his own methods – ah, perhaps the blasting spell that removed the layer of dust from the tea cups.
"Honestly," she said, sitting down on the edge of her chair and crossing her legs. "I'm beginning to think that you don't bother to clean between my visits."
"When the company is so charming…"
"Stuff it, Snape," she said. "You must know that it's not healthy to live like this. If you'd brush up on your household spells you could–"
"As you have no doubt noted," he said, taking a sip from his cup of tea, "I am not precisely living."
"Just because the Daily Prophet announced that you're dead doesn't mean that you should curl up like a snail in this dusty old house."
Severus did not dignify that with a response. He was dead, for all intents and purposes – if Nymphadora Tonks wished to blind herself to the truth, it was none of his affair. He slipped one hand into his sleeve and felt the comforting weight of his wand resting there.
"At any rate," she said, setting her cup down with enough force to send tea slopping over the rim, "you do understand. You're the only one I can talk to – if I–"
Always the same story – Tonks was no better than a songbird that had only learnt one note. She'd find no sympathy here, in spite of all her pleas.
Severus twisted his mouth into an unpleasant line. "If you think that I am an understanding man, Miss Tonks, you did not pay sufficient attention during my lessons."
She gave him a glare, but did not answer – instead, she flounced over to his cupboard and rifled through it until she found the packet of ginger biscuits that she'd left there on her last visit. She offered it, unopened, to Severus, and he shook his head.
"You're skin and bones," she said.
"My consumption of biscuits is none of your business. If you attempt to impersonate Molly Weasley and feed me, you will find that you've outstayed your welcome."
"Why, Severus," Tonks said, munching on a biscuit, "does that mean that I am welcome here?"
After going through his cupboard as if she owned it, she had the temerity to ask. Severus shook his head, and pushed his empty teacup away.
"Miss Tonks," he said, "if I had intended to remain in the wizarding world, I would not have taken such pains to arrange my own death. If you think that you can change my mind by waltzing in here and putting your feet on my kitchen table–"
She jerked and slammed her feet onto the floor. "Have I said that I wanted to change your mind? I only wanted to talk–"
What Tonks would not admit – what she willfully refused to understand – was that the two of them were, for all intents and purposes, dead. The potion that had ensured their survival had ensured that, and Severus did not intend to explain it to her a third time. "Get out," he said, and she, miraculously enough, obeyed.
*****
There was a great deal to be said for being dead – Severus had the liberty of dictating his own time, the freedom to pursue his own experimental potions research, and no further obligations to the world.
If Tonks thought that he was wasting his time and wasting away – well, she was hardly a witch who had the right to criticize anyone's household spells, and as far as Severus was concerned, the cleanliness of his laboratory was the only real priority.
The only black spot marring his afterlife, in fact, was one Nymphadora Tonks and her persistent visits. She interrupted his brewing – her visit last week had interrupted his potion at a delicate stage and caused him to waste valuable time – and she disturbed his domestic arrangements, all because she had not realized that the doppelganger potion would have side effects.
A side effect, singular, because Severus was nothing if not meticulous – he'd put a decade of research into the potion in the time between the two wars. The only side effect was that the wizarding world, believing them to be dead, could not be convinced otherwise – and that was more of a blessing than a side effect, as far as Severus was concerned.
The fact that the Order's second spy among the Death Eaters had a life that she wished to return to – well, it was hardly Severus's fault. He stood, marking his page in the journal he was reading, and went to answer the door.
Tonks was letting herself into his cottage before he got there, and gave him a cheeky smile. "You're getting slow," she said. "I've been knocking on your door for a good five minutes now. Retirement getting to be too much for you, eh?"
"Nonsense," Severus told her. "I have explained to you–"
"You were just so engrossed in your reading that you didn't hear the door, of course." Tonks lifted the journal from his hands and paged through it until she found the place he had marked. "So engrossed, you've not read more than ten sentences further than you were the last time I visited."
"My reading is none of your business." Severus snatched the journal out of her hands and set it aside, crossing his arms over his chest and glaring at her. "I have explained to you–"
"Tea?" she asked, ignoring him and striding on into the kitchen. She was rattling the cups as she got them out of his cupboard before he had a chance to answer.
"What are you doing here?"
She looked back over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow – it was a perfect mimicry of his own facial expression, and Severus glared at her.
"You're an intelligent man, Professor," she said. "I've explained it as many times as you've told me that you can't bring me back to life. I'm here to visit you. Now…."
Pulling a squashed parcel out of her bag, she unwrapped it and rummaged through his kitchen until she found a clean knife. "Cake?" she asked, cutting a slice and offering it to him.
*****
Tea, biscuits, cake – the intrusions that Tonks made into Severus's life did not stop in the realms of food and drink. Severus came up from his laboratory one particularly sunny spring afternoon to find her stocking his cupboards and cleaning his floors.
"What are you doing?" he asked. He'd once been able to stop a score of Slytherin students at fifty paces with that tone – soft, but ice-cold and deadly as a snake.
Nymphadora Tonks had never been a Slytherin – she didn't appear half-fazed. She grinned at him, tripping over her own feet as she turned to face him. "Hullo, Professor Snape! You might have been around to let me in … awfully rude of you, you know, not making your guests welcome."
"Those guests foolish enough to presume a welcome where none is extended–"
That tone of voice had served him well at Hogwarts as well, with Potter and with sundry other students too foolish to realize that the Headmaster's tolerance of corporal punishment was more than limited – it was nonexistent. Still, Severus had kept a healthy dose of fear in them with detentions spent cleaning filthy cauldrons.
His voice had no effect on Tonks, and she had already been cleaning. Severus scowled at her, but she smiled and handed him a cup of tea.
"Come on," she said. "It's too nice of a day to waste all of it indoors. Let's go out for a ramble – you can collect potions ingredients and tell me how stupid I am for not recognizing them."
Severus raised an eyebrow at her – a fully qualified Auror, and she'd made it through his intensive tutoring sessions before taking on her role as a spy in the Death Eaters' ranks. She knew more than enough to recognize any potions ingredient that grew in this part of the world, and she knew it, too – but she only laughed at the expression on his face, and grabbed him, and pulled him out the door.
*****
If the only impediment to enjoying an uninterrupted, peaceful afterlife was Tonks and her persistent visits, then it only stood to reason that Severus would have to find a way to keep her from disturbing him. Such a thing was easier said than done, of course, but he was not a Potions Master for the sort of small accomplishments that some fools considered praiseworthy. Once he had decided on his course of action, it was only a matter of time – time, and experimentation, and refinement – until he had formulated the perfect potion.
"Here," he said, thrusting the vial at Tonks. "Drink this."
"What is it?" she asked, eyeing it suspiciously. She was wearing garish clothing that looked to have been stolen from a thrift shop run by colour-blind fashion refugees, and had put a box of iced ginger biscuits on his counter and proceeded to help herself to them without so much as a by-your-leave.
"The potion you wanted," Severus said, waving it impatiently at her. "The one that will restore you to life in the wizarding world and your precious, blood-thirsty werewolf."
"Remus isn't blood-thirsty," she said, wiping crumbs from her hands off on jeans and frowning at him. "You know that that potion shouldn't work … as well as anyone, I think, since you've certainly told me often enough that it's irreversible–"
"It was irreversible," Severus said. "The side effect of the Doppelganger Potion can now be reversed with this."
She didn't react – she sat there at his kitchen table, still frowning at him. He waved the potion in her face again. "Take it and get out," he said.
"But–"
"Take it, I said." She didn't resist when Severus thrust the potion into her hand. Their fingers brushed together, and she looked at him for a second before she gathered up the rest of her biscuits and left.
Severus was left, the thud of the door shutting behind her an echo that went through his little cottage. She had taken the biscuits with her, but the pot of tea she had brewed was still half-full.
After pouring himself a cup, though, Severus spat out his first mouthful and grabbed his hat off its hook. He would go into town – he would be certain to be able to find decent tea in one of the shops there.
*****
Severus congratulated himself for having had the forethought to arrange for prepaid subscriptions to the Daily Prophet and various other journals prior to his death – he was thus able to follow the story of Nymphadora Tonks' sudden reappearance in the wizarding world with relative ease. There were gaps in the story, necessitated by the fact that Tonks was unable to tell the reporters from the Prophet anything about Severus's own survival.
He was, as far as anyone was concerned, still dead. As far as Severus himself was concerned, he was enjoying an unprecedented state of quiet and contentment due to that fact.
It was a state that he did not plan on altering. He was safe from discovery from the wizarding world, and relatively isolated from the Muggle world – due both to geographic isolation and the charm of his personality. It was a perfectly satisfactory situation, and so Severus was ill-pleased to be awakened, the morning after Tonks' triumphant return to the wizarding world, by loud and persistent knocking at his door.
Tonks was the last person he expected to see at his door again, but there she stood, with buttercup-yellow hair and a sack of pastries in her hand. "What," he asked, leveling his wand at her, "do you want?"
"Only what I've always wanted," she said. She breezed past him, ignoring his drawn wand, and he followed the sound of stumbling and crashing to the kitchen, where she was setting the pastries out on a platter. "To talk to you … among other things."
"There's no need for you to return here, now that you have your choice of companionship–"
"That's what you thought, isn't it? That you'd give me the potion and be rid of me?"
"I hardly thought that it would take a potion, but since your persistence is apparently unlimited, and you have nothing better to do than–"
The kettle started boiling, but Tonks made no move toward it – she simply stood, arms crossed over her chest, staring Severus down. "I have plenty of other options. I've chosen to be here."
"I fail to see why–"
"I told you," she said. "As many times as you told me to get out, I told you that you're the only one who understands – who really knows. You're the only one I can talk to, the only one who's been through the same things, and I…"
Severus closed his eyes. He'd not foreseen this – the impassioned confession, the feelings, the persistence of her attempts to shatter his solitude – and he was, at the end of everything, tired of fighting. Stepping around her, he brushed past Tonks as he went to turn off the kettle.
"I know," he said, not looking at her. He knew – all too well. He had known, since the first lesson where she gave him her damnably bright grin and made light of the fact that she was going to die. "I know what you mean."
"You've mellowed since the war, Professor," Tonks said. She tilted her head to one side and gave him an appraising look. "Or … perhaps I might call you Severus?"
Severus didn't give her permission to use his given name, but neither did he blast her with a hex for having the presumption to kiss him. With his lips still warm from her kiss, he wasn't sure if he could move.
She took this as a sign that she had permission to kiss him again – and so she did, capturing his lips and stifling any objection that he might have made. "Don't," she said, just before she kissed him, leaning in to whisper in his ear. "Don't say anything to spoil this – please?"
However, with Tonks in his arms – warm against him, her breasts pressed against his chest, her body held against the length of his body, her fingers roaming over his skin – and kissing him hard enough to steal his breath, there were no objections that Severus would have wanted to make. He pressed his hand against her back and then let it slide down the curve of her body until it rested on her arse.
She smiled into the kiss and then pulled back to smile at him. "The potion … thank you for it," she said. "It's good to be able to go back and visit old friends."
Severus froze under her touch, but she held him, her hands stroking the stiff muscles in his shoulders, the line of his neck, his face, even his nose. "I know what you did," she said, "when you made that potion – when you gave it to me, and when you gave me the antidote. I know, but your secret's safe with me."
Severus had known that she would be able to guess – that she'd know that he'd been a coward, concocting a potion that would give him an excuse for hiding away from the world after the war, but she looked at him with a soft light in her eyes, and she'd promised to keep his secret. He cleared his throat, trying to say something – to explain, to make her understand – but then he felt the brush of her mind against his.
"I know," Tonks said. "I always have." She leaned into him until he was up against the kitchen table, caught between her and the wood.
"I'm warning you," she said, taking his free hand and holding it in her own. "I'm expecting a very happy ending."
"I think I can brew a potion for that," Severus told her. There might not be such a potion – there was not, as far as he knew, but there were no limits to the bounds of his invention and skill. If it could be brewed, he would brew it.
"I don't think that will be necessary," Tonks said, kissing him a third time. Taking his hand again, she led him to his bedroom. "I think we can do a perfectly good job of making our own happy ending."
*****
Certain things go unnoticed, by the victors in the war and by the historians who record it. Some people slip into the spotlight and out of it, leaving with as little fanfare as they might wish – and happy endings can happen without the notice of anyone not involved in them.
It is, after all, a truth universally acknowledged that a master spy must be in want of a companion to keep his confidences. Such things are not recorded in any written histories.