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

[requirethree]

(Evidence suggests Antonin will never say no if offered various substances. Even considering Severus' profession.)

"I do not know." Whether he liked it or not, he means. "I have, though, yes. I will need to do something, I suppose." He had no desire to stop drinking, but he wasn't actively trying to drink himself to death. "You are getting at something."

[inkdamage]

(Well, perhaps when he finishes this one and digs another out of the tin on the table, he'll offer.)

"If I am, I don't know what it is," he admits. "Just that you look miserable."

Which is different than Antonin looking like shit, or old, or like an ex-con; it's Severus noticing.

[requirethree]

Antonin's first instinct is to laugh and shrug it off. Another night - most other nights - he probably would. But he's tired, and he doesn't feel like he has the energy to pretend he doesn't know what Severus is talking about. "I did not realize it was apparent," he says, instead, after a moment. He sounds almost resigned.

[inkdamage]

He stubs out the useless end of his joint, which is all paper.

"It's not, really." Not to anyone who isn't in his very specific position - knowing Antonin, knowing about Azkaban, knowing about what happens when Dementors hang around a person for more than half a moment. He can tell.

[requirethree]

Antonin shrugs then. "As you say, I am alive. Now I must think of what to do with it." He hadn't had to plan, at home. When he'd gotten out of Azkaban, he was bound to a powerful lunatic, and he just reacted to whatever was most immediate, and drank and slept in between. He'd avoided the Malfoys, avoided Severus - avoided everyone who looked at him and saw the man he'd used to be.

Here, in Baedal, it was different, but he was the same still. He didn't know what to do with it.

[inkdamage]

In Antonin's time at home, Severus Snape will have had a million other more pressing things to see to than his old comrade's mental health. It isn't a surprise he didn't notice, or ignored it if he did. Here, however, is another story.

"Have you considered starting with getting treatment for the damage?"

He asks quietly, and doesn't look at Antonin meanwhile, instead choosing to pick up that aforementioned tin and go about procuring another joint. He doesn't avoid looking at him because he's embarrassed - rather, he doesn't want Antonin to have to deal with being observed in the wake of a question like that, or have reason to worry about the risks that come with looking Severus in the eyes.

He's fine with the risk of Antonin punching him for asking, though.

[requirethree]

Antonin doesn't punch him, but he does snot derisively. "I do not think chocolate will do much good, Severus, though your concern is touching."

In fairness, any sort of healing that isn't field medicine is healing Antonin has long forgotten if he knew.

[inkdamage]

"Not if you aren't eating any," Severus says, because he highly doubts Antonin is - even though, honestly, as utterly whimsical and pointless as that remedy seems, the older man should be choking down a block of it a day, and should have been since the second he got out.

"But that isn't what I meant."

He offers Antonin the rolled bit of not-actually-illegal-here herb, intent on making his own after.

[requirethree]

Antonin reaches over to take the offering, which is evidently more palatable than chocolate, from the face he makes. "What did you mean, then, as I am clearly too dense to follow." He doesn't seem offended, but he's too tired to play.

[inkdamage]

"There are other ways to recover. Just like there are other ways to fight Dementors."

(In some far-off future that this Severus will never reach, his alternate self will teach Defense Against the Dark Arts, and instruct students on some of these ways - the result is that several, including young Harry Potter, will turn in essays disagreeing with him. But what do they know?)

But then- "Well. In theory, at least for the first. I've had enough Dementors to experiment with-" that's great, Severus, really, "but people seem somewhat more unwilling to be lab rats." Flatly.

[requirethree]

Antonin laughs, at that, though the subject isn't terribly funny. "Oddly enough, it strikes me that most English wizards thought we weren't meant to recover from what they did to us." No one was ever falsely sent to Azkaban. Surely. "What theory, though? I don't suppose your experimenting could make it worse."

[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."