you had me several years ago, when i was quite naive

[inkdamage]

Who: Antonin Dolohov, Severus Snape.
What: words words words
Where: Severus' Flag Hill home.
When: Little while after the riots.
Warnings: Medicinal drug use??

Though disdaining of social pursuits, Severus can't quite be called a homebody, either. He works, and he works a lot - he'd be bored otherwise, and considering the pace his mind works at, boredom is intolerable. When he isn't working he's studying, because Severus looks at learning like both an enjoyable leisure activity, and something vital to his existence. He'll never just be done.

Which makes tonight rather rare: sitting in the covered garden room of his house, one window open, a few books laid out before him but nothing that would give the pedestrian academic a headache. He's accompanied by a plate of leftovers, a pizza box with several pieces missing, an oversized plastic cup filled with what is apparently iced coffee, and a lazy golden-colored dog, currently laying dejectedly on the floor near him, in utter, bleak despair over not being permitted to eat anything.

His last few jobs have been intense - fascinating, difficult, different, but also draining. He needs some time off of commissions of that nature lest he burn himself out, and after a day of not having the stomach for anything even resembling food, he's taking an evening for himself.

Comments

[inkdamage]

"Azkaban was not meant to permit anyone to recover, no. It was made as a sadist's trap, both to keep people in and keep the Dementors away from everyone else."

Long ago, when the prison was first conceived, wizards had not the means or spines to eradicate Dementors from their world - or perhaps some of them were fascinated, and wanted to keep a piece of that darkness around. What better way than to feed and isolate them? And so, this habit began, instead of the kindness of execution.

"The theory is that if you shove the same things that deter a Dementor into a person, it'll rebuild the decay."

That sounds kind of unpleasant, Professor.

[requirethree]

Antonin lights the joint and takes a drag on it, still looking skeptical. "I do not think a patronus 'shoved' anywhere sounds very pleasant, in all honesty." Antonin knows that isn't exactly what Severus (probably) meant, but it's a vivid image all the same

[inkdamage]

"Who told you I was pleasant?" Ha, ha. But at that, Severus leans his head back in an exhale of smoke, and raises his free hand, making a motion with it, his eyes slightly unfocused. A formless, pearl-white shape appears, bounding around them for a moment and then vanishing -

- and it does, surprise surprise, feel sort of pleasant.

A fully formed Patronus would be too much work right now, between the mj and his work of the past several days, and it's helpful not to have to explain to Antonin the shape it would have taken, anyway.

(Also surprise, he can make one of those.)

[requirethree]

Antonin raised both his eyebrows at that. He'd never made one himself, but then he'd always been more offense than defense. The rumour that taking the Dark Mark made it impossible struck him as unlikely, but he'd never seen anyone with a Mark try, either.

He blows a small puff of smoke, not quite a ring, and says, "So how, practically, would that work? Forcing it 'back in,' as you say?"

[inkdamage]

Severus, pedantic bookworm that he is, would argue that protection from Dementors and flying, man-eating evil coats (sigh) are not the only reasons to want the ability to make a Patronus, but that's for another day.

"I've theorized it's a matter of taking the same sort of magic, in different applications." He thinks Antonin, a spellcrafter himself, will be able to follow this logic, even if he's being cranky about it. "It wouldn't be the only factor necessary, but it should wedge the door open for improvement."

[requirethree]

"That does make some sense," he acknowledges, a bit grudgingly. (Antonin has never been as stupid as he takes care to appear, and sometimes the act slips.) "But as I understand it, the longer it's been, the less you have that which repels them to draw upon."

The longer one was exposed to Dementors, the less likely one still had a sufficiently strong memory of anything good.

[inkdamage]

"That is true. But it's also true that negative thought exacerbates the damage, and the idea that there is no help contributes to negative thought, which creates a fantastic little circle, there."

It's far easier to remain hopeless when you're sure there's no reason to have hope.

Now, his tone is more somber - speaking of things he shouldn't, maybe. "But even those who split their souls can reform, with enough remorse, and sympathetic magic. Which proves the soul is more durable than we're taught to believe."

[requirethree]

Antonin processes this. Given the source, it's worth considering. Severus has no reason to give him hope if there is none, and he knows his own judgment is not what it should be.

"So then what? Where to begin? I look in a mirror - hell, I look at Rodolphus. I see what we are now." And he remembers, still, what they once had been.

[inkdamage]

"You start by eating more chocolate and doing at least one thing a day that is mentally stimulating and devoid of alcohol," he says - and to his credit, he does try to keep that from coming out in his Professor Snape voice. But seriously, Antonin. Seriously.

"When my head's in order again I'll put something together." He exhales, almost a sigh. "You know, he thought Azkaban wouldn't hurt us."

Us meaning Death Eaters and not prisoners, obviously.

[requirethree]

He laughs, bleak, at that last. "Did he? No, I did not know that."

He bites back a crack about being assigned homework, as he did ask, and if it's this evident, he needs to get it at least nominally back under control. Instead, he continues to smoke, languid.

[inkdamage]

"He has nothing for the Dementors to take, so could never understand even if he were inclined to sympathize. He assumed, as his adopted kin, we were the same."

Severus says all this quietly, watching the curling tendrils of smoke. His voice isn't disrespectful - he's not that reckless, even if he thinks he could get away with toeing the line with Antonin far more than the other - but it certainly isn't reverent. Tired, maybe.

[requirethree]

"Well, with no disrespect to the lovely Bellatrix," ...yes, "I do not think most of us meant to go for his sake once he was supposed to be dead." Not all of them went in already mad, in fairness.

"I do not think many of realized the type of fire with which we played until near the end." The end of the first war, he means - everything in his life is pre- and post-, relative to Azkaban. The skirmishes before Baedal hardly matter to him.

[inkdamage]

"Which was awfully short-sighted of us, wasn't it."

Severus is inexplicable, there; for a moment he seems distracted with his own thoughts, perhaps over the mention of Bellatrix. Perhaps it's just that while he always thought they'd lose - an acceptable risk, for someone who only wanted to practice the Dark Arts and found no point in living otherwise - he couldn't have predicted what kind of staggered, decaying finish they'd endure.

[requirethree]

Antonin's smile is grim. "A lot of it was very short sighted. For many people."

Antonin hadn't expected to survive the war he'd more or less blundered into. He isn't sure he'd have chosen this sort of survival, but that's different from being actively suicidal. It is what it is, and he sees no point in hang-wringing.

"But now here we both are."

[inkdamage]

Hand-wringing isn't a style that suits either of them. Severus is quiet for another length of time, either thoughtful or just stoned. Surely, he's a little buzzed to even be saying any of this. Which is perhaps why his eventual comment is, "You're going to have to learn Occlumency, if this keeps up."

[requirethree]

"If what keeps up?" Antonin says, a bit languid. This conversation certainly is going down easier than it would sober, for both of them.

[inkdamage]

"Sitting around nit-picking the Dark Lord's performance."

Severus, that is the absolute worst joke in the world.

[requirethree]

From the face me makes, Antonin is of this opinion also.

"No one bothers trying to read my mind. Nothing there to see." Not entirely true, but probably not entirely false, either. No one would have approached Antonin as a spy.

[inkdamage]

"You'd be surprised how much anyone was observed at any given time."

But that seems like a terrible subject to go down, and he casts about for a new line of conversation, ends up on: "How's Rodolphus?" ... Which then, seems like an equally bad topic, and Severus looks a bit like he wants to do something like pinch the bridge of his nose, but instead gets some more pizza so he has something to shove in his mouth to prevent himself from talking anymore.

[requirethree]

Antonin laughs, expelling a puff of smoke. "A wreck, what else? I got him very drunk just after his wife arrived. I will not swear he was the better for it, but all the same it seemed appropriate." Bellatrix inspired even men who didn't love her to heavy drinking.

[inkdamage]

Severus mumbles something with his mouth closed, and this time he does rub his face, which seems safer than actually responding. Rodolphus drunk seems like it's a step up from Rodolphus sitting alone in his house staring at the walls, anyway, or whatever else it is he does in his free time besides mooning after fairies a quarter of his age. He's not sure if he even cares, but he is aware of the strange, guilt-like sensation that manifests every so often when he begins to process why Bellatrix is so keen on him anymore.

"I should really stop in on Regulus sometime."

[requirethree]

"I haven't seen him yet. Or the Malfoys, but they never really liked me." Probably something to do with Antonin's relationship to Narcissa.

And, in the first concrete evidence he's stoned: "Did you ever write Tatiana, after?"

[inkdamage]

Severus sees a fair bit of both Malfoys, but decides not to mention it; the elder is something of a partner in crime still, between ... well, no, all of their business is illicit, there's no reason to differentiate between professional and personal. And that the younger is practicing Occlumency is no one else's business.

That, though.

"For a while," he admits. "I told her to stop sending me anything, but she kept on for a while. Fortunately the Soviet embassy hates ours-" a hesitation, his brain catching up with his mouth a bit, then he explains, "Dumbledore reads all my mail."

[requirethree]

"That seems unsurprising." From the little Antonin knows of Dumbledore. "I didn't think of her much, for a while." Inside Azkaban it had been hard, sometimes impossible. Antonin was and is a rather terrible brother, but that doesn't mean his sister never mattered to him, and it was one of the first things the Dementors latched on to.

"Here, though, I do sometimes. Just to wonder." He laughs, at himself, a little bitter. "Maybe she found something better to do than write you, eventually." Or perhaps she'd just withered, alone in the big empty ruin of a place he'd left her. He considers getting up to find alcohol.

[inkdamage]

"Well, every so often she sends something to Macnair and threatens his balls to give it to a house elf and send it 'round my office, so I figure she's all right."

You know, if she's got the spirit for that sort of thing. Severus ... well, he should communicate with her more often. He really should. But it'll just look worse for her when the war gets back on, and he'd be selfish to go on with it.