capeandcowllogs | (no subject)

He'd known she was coming-- and finished dealing with the mess and was downstairs making sure the shop was orderly while he waited for her to appear.

Letting her inside, he gestured. "Callie. Good evening-- I trust you weathered the crisis easily?" She didn't out and fight often, and that was, in Snape's estimation, for the best. She was too smart to waste in the grunt lines.

He led her upstairs-- he'd not been certain what to lay out for dishes and utensils, so hadn't.

"Hey," She greeted him back before stepping in. Rolling her eyes at the question they started their way upstairs.

"Yeah, well enough. Stayed out of the way until someone had a good perspective on things. The way I see it is when you're too close to the problem, you can get caught up in it and act like a jackass." Not that she minded fighting- she just didn't see the reason to. She'd know when she was needed, and adding more people into the mess didn't sound like a good idea.

She set the food down on the dining table, turning to him. "Needless to say you didn't miss much unless you enjoy seeing human nature unfold before your eyes."

His lips quirk, but it's brief.

"I've seen enough of that for two wizarding lifetimes," he replies. "All things, my absence was a blessing. I hate to imagine what it would have been like had I been replaced, or-- no. Best not to think on it." Harry could have been not real. That would have been terror within the wizarding community, what havoc he could have wreaked.

"Things were going poorly enough when I was swept off. Hopefully they are calmer." He tried to message Lily, found that her comm does not respond. James confirmed she's gone. So -- small loss, there. It's the second time. But-- it is what it is, isn't it? Loss. He won't speak of her; he never has with Callie, and sees no point in starting.

She began unpacking the food. "Ugh. Yeah. It's much better now, but I don't think it's a good idea to put our guard down." She smirked a bit. "I'm sure your fellow wizards were feeling at a loss without you though."

Out came an order of soft noodles with vegetables, beef, chicken, and shrimp. Then an order of spicy pepper steak smothered in sauce and onions. "Got chopsticks if you know how to use 'em, otherwise you might want to grab a fork and knife."

"I will use utensils," he replies. Though he's amused if she does-- really, he's never been the most culturally adaptive, and that's fine by Snape.

But he dishes things up, gets a little bit of everything to try. He pulled out a chair for her before he handled his own seat, and sat, always careful-- never one to roll up his sleeves to dine. Not like she hadn't seen the tattoo-- but it was still something he'd never display flagrantly, no matter how intimate the company.

"I find that you'd be wrong. Most of them don't give a toss, and that's fine by me -- they don't have my counsel regardless," Snape replied, as he began to go over his food. "We had a child appear from our world appear in the City. He foolishly made a message to the Network, since I didn't have the forethought to search him and take his bloody communicator. I came back to accusations of kidnapping, despite that he'd been handed off to a friend of his family's already before I'd ever vanished."

Snape did not, really, find any of this amusing, but it hadn't come to much, so he didn't worry about it, either. So he missed nothing in the Skrullfest, really. He'd seen it occur over the boy - accusations thrown and people thinking with their hearts. People lost their minds over anything emotional, and Snape loathed it -- somehow considering himself immune when he was anything but.

"The problem, though, is the boy is a pawn in the war. I'm uncertain of how ugly it will become, but rest assured-- it likely will become most unpleasant."

While Severus didn't find it amusing, Callie kind of did. She dished out her food, thinking about what kind of man his fellow wizards thought of him to accuse kidnapping. She wondered if this had to do with the wizard she met at the convention that seemed to have a air of tension with him. What's-his-face. A cop, she thought? Taking out her chopsticks as he talked, she broke them apart and rubbed them together. Obviously he wasn't important enough for her to really memorize.

"Oh God, tell me we're not going to have to deal with some crap on the wizard front now. That's all we need."

Strangely, James had been the most reasonable one there. If that didn't turn the world on it's ear, Snape didn't know what would.

"I don't know. In our world, a wizard and his wand are-- partnered. The boy's wand is here, and in the possession of another... who wises him dead. I am in a... awkward position between the both of them," he says-- before he glances, flicks a hand, and accio's a water carafe and glasses to the table with words and further gesutres. Pouring for both of them, he considers how to reply with that.

"I watch the one. But he may expect action from me against the boy," he mused. "I am, after all, a well positioned spy. But as death here is impermanent-- he may try... another tactic."

He took a sip of his water again and then said: "I am very tempted to simply kill him, wrest the wand from his cold dead fingers, pass it to the boy, and stop playing spy for anyone. But -- I would then be alone." Not like the rest of the wizarding community would be rushing to his aid, after all.

"What tactic can he possibly come up with that'll be better than death?"

Callie grabs the other glass of water, and has a sip. A smile curled up onto her face when he went on. Working the chopsticks in her hand, she had a couple of bites. "You'd be alone? You're kidding, right? I think that's the least of your concern."

She shrugged a little. "If you kill him, wouldn't you have to be worried about him coming back?" She eyed him a moment then. "Needless to say if you get caught, you'll be in the big house."

"I would be-- vulnerable. My home is known, my associates are known." Speaking of which, "And I've had at least one inquiry into the nature of our relationship-- if Andromeda Tonks has noticed, Tom Riddle may in turn." The problem with being a man who rarely comes out and rarely fraternizes. It makes the people he does see all the more important and all the more obvious.

"The Death Eaters used to operate by terrorism. Dark Magic, murder, torture. We didn't go after the wizards that thwarted us themselves--we went after their families, their friends, their associates. The Dark Mark over a home was a sign: it told you that that was no longer a house for a loving, living family, it was an abattoir. We were feared, we were revered. Like being Gods among men -- even among wizards," he said, voice dipping low. "Tom Riddle -- whose new title we do not ever speak, and invoke instead such things as You Know Who and He Who Should Not Be Named -- gladly engages in this, and his lieutenant, Bellatrix LeStrange, was one of his most ardent followers, is one of the most deft hands at Dark Magic you will ever find, even in our world. So -- yes, I would be alone. And so would anyone that ever knew me or showed me kindness."

Like Callie herself.

Callie ate slowly, absorbed by Severus' words. "...Whoa, hold on." She set her chopsticks down- not really knowing what to tackle first.

"First, your concern- as cute as it is- isn't necessary. I'm a demon that wont be messed with, and I'd sooner tear any kind of assassin limb from limb before they had the chance to put a scratch on me. Second of all, you can talk about your dark murderous torture team anytime." His description about his Death Eater status sent chills. She really wasn't in a place where she could act on those chills, but she loved it when he talked like that. "Last- what do you mean someone noticed? We haven't fooled around in a long time."

"I admire your-- verve," he says, with a quirk of his lips that passed soon enough, "but sometimes your own admiration is ill placed." He doesn't look back on anything he did with the Death Eaters with pride.

"As for noticing-- how many women do you think willingly spend time with me? Let alone openly ask for my company? One message is all it took -- and there are already questions," he said, shaking his head once. "Those who know me well know I give my time rarely-- and never to those who do not hold some importance to me."

Andromeda knows him best of all the people still here. She knows enough to sniff around, at least.

Admittedly, it made sense. And she couldn't help but smile. She was important to him. "Well, it's no big deal. I guess my big point is don't let me be a weak spot, because there's no reason for me to be." If anything, a demon like her on his side should strengthen him.

She got back to eating. "But I guess we haven't come up with a solution to your problem have we?"

He shook his head, falling silent as he ate for a moment, considering. The food wasn't bad, and he had things to think about, and it was a safer way to occupy his mouth than anything else possible, like saying-- things that he could regret.

"No," he finally said. "We have not."

One thing she liked about Severus is the fact that he was a complicated man. Even in his silence he was interesting because unlike other men she had conversations with, she knew while he was quiet there was something going on upstairs.

She didn't have the slightest idea what he might've been mulling over in his mind, but she had a feeling he might need her help on this one. He found himself in a rough situation. Callie felt like she needed to help. Besides, these favors come back around.

"So this Tom Riddle guy... How powerful are we talking here?"

"Tom Riddle is not even a-- actual person," Snape explained. "He is a Horcrux given form. A fragment of a soul. The original Tom Riddle created him -- this is the first of them. He was originally bound to a diary. Dark magic, ritual murder-- the ending of a life to fragment the soul. He split his seven times. To make sure he was as close to immortal as possible, but had -- drifted far from human. Or sanity."

He cleared his palate with a sip of water and a moment' paues. "This is immense magic for our world. Willfully taking the life of another-- has it's affects, even if it's not part of dark ritual. He killed for the first time at seventeen. He wasn't even out of school. I daresay from the wizards of my own world, I am the only one who knows a larger array of dark wizardry-- and only because he's come from a time frmae where does not have his memories of his pilgramage through Europe digging up the more secret, abhorrent rituals man could possess."

"So can he be kept at bay or bound? ...Because you wouldn't have a problem if we can keep him under lock and key. If he's just a fragment of what he would be, then he can be stopped. But then I guess the problem then would be that Bellatrix lady." Callie shook her head. "Knowing the manner of things, I take it'd be a mistake to take her lightly."

She stopped, giving a smirk. "For a guy that keeps himself tucked away, you're sure waist high in trouble." The life of a spy, she supposed.

"As it would appear that the Porter has given him a human form-- I doubt it," he replied. Tom Riddle was-- Tom Riddle, for all intents and purposes. "Belltrix is a danger, yes. And she seems to have made connections here in the city. Which is a lark, as she is mad as a loon."

He didn't laugh at her apt description, but just nodded once. "Imagine what I'd be up to if I were brave and bold. I'd be a corpse by now."

Well, more of a corpse.

"Probably not bold but you don't consider yourself brave? It takes a particular kind of man to do what you do. I know plenty that would crush under the pressure."

She would have felt that her next question was too intrusive, had they not have gotten to know each other well enough. "...Why did you get yourself mixed up in all this in the first place?"

Consider himself brave? "Not, as you point out, in the traditional sense. I am no coward," and he'd vehemently fight anyone who tried to suggest he was, "but I am not certain I would take on 'brave'."

But no matter; it's a mote of Slytherin pride and he can't deny it. Instead, he just glances at his food and considers her second, far more personal question.

"Terrible life choices," he finally replies. "That lead to ruin. Not for me -- not for a long time, anyway -- but for others. While I have never seen the Dark Mark fly over any house that held someone I cared, I have-- seen worse."

And each failure thereafter was another life he had not been able to save.

Callie watched him a moment, brows knitting together. "...Maybe I'm not familiar with the lingo, but I'm not following." She had a feeling this was a sensitive subject. Clearly this life he chose wasn't something that he had planned. Something happened, and she wondered if he felt secure enough with her to tell her.

It was a weight, unshared with anyone but Albus. The gravity of his grief, the torment of that long-burning affection he had held for Lily Evans, even after she became Lily Potter. But he knows it makes him pathetic, weak-- exploitable. Still, he has never found a way to kill that feeling, and-- in his more honest moments, doesn't want to.

It's one of the few things that separate him from men like Riddle; the ability to love a person, no matter how poorly he might express it, elevated him from mad Death Eater zealot to flawed, foolish human being.

"You do not understand why a man who had power, influence, and could hold the life and death in his palm would -- surrender all that, do you?" he asks her, not answering her question with anything but another question. "Such choices are not easily made, nor easily shared."

Which was as polite a way to say I will never speak of it, don't ask as Severus Snape could manage. The fact that he didn't get immediately irate about the question was-- something. The City, perhaps, teaching him patience through his few scant friends, maybe.

She could read into what he was saying, and she could respect it. "Mm. Good. Sticking your ground. You don't disappoint." Callie smiled at him. "You don't need to explain. You have nothing to prove to me. I already adore you." And she shook her head at that, eating some noodles. "Which is saying something. I adore no one."

"You'd be the first that I have failed to disappoint, Callie," Snape drawled with some wry amusement, eyes dark eyes half-lidding at some private joke. "And I do not believe that even my mother ever used 'adore' in relations to me." So that made her as singular in his as he was in hers.

"Did you expect me to begin some weepy tale of woe and pain and throw myself at you?" He shook his head, eyes flickering away to some other point briefly, behind that curtain of lank hair. "Truly, Callie; I expect you know me better than that."

Callie had to laugh a little. "Why, do you feel that you want to?" She teased and turned towards him, grabbing her glass of water and taking a drink. "I expected to have dinner and a conversation, Severus. If I came here for sex, I would've already cleared the table with your body."

She looked amused for a moment. "For the record, nothing upsets me more than a man who can't keep his shit together. Pain and suffering has its place. If you don't let it rule you, that's much better than being a whiny bitch about it. Some pain is better to be kept in, and fighting with it yourself. You own it, and you overcome it. It's not my place to put a bandaid on it." Even if it would be a very curvy, hot, womanly bandaid.

"Hardly," he replies dryly. They knew each other better than that, though he snorted at her-- passionate description of just how she'd initiate things.

But he did at least nod his head once; this is why she was welcome in his home, and even to his bed -- Callie Maggotbone got it. There was no confess-is-good-for-the-soul, none of Albus's tut-tutting. It was delightfully refreshing-- even if it did come packaged with some... odd habits and strange thought processes.

Though he knew some would argue that he did let it rule and define him, he'd have denied it every step of the way. He had mastered it, made it a weapon, and helped saved the wizarding world with it. That was all that mattered.

"I think we understand each other well, then."

"I'd say so~" Callie smiled at him. It was a rarity. Even back home, she didn't have a lot of people who understood her- needless to say a man.

"I'm sorry you're in such a difficult situation. Know you have me as a resource. I'll help you any way I can."