Damn sunny days.

Damn days so sunny and bright that a man who spent most of his life in a dungeon and the rest of it in the dark, one way or another, had to squint just to see. It was like being a rodent on an open field, waiting for a hawk or an owl to come by and eat him for lunch, and yet he knew logically that it wasn't at all. Even if they've followed you, and they have probably tried, what will they see here? Nothing and no one. A random crowd of Muggles in which no one will stop me for a chat, that's all. Indeed, unpopular as he was, he was still a Hogwarts teacher and therefore known to the entire crop of magical students for the past more years than he cared to count. He could not walk in Diagon or Knockturn Alleys without being recognized, nodded to or turned away from, noted in some way. Here, he was no one, would be forgotten in moments: here, he had the freedom to merely be a shopper, with very little thought other than that.

The usual channels were not answering all questions. It made sense to explore – unusual ones, although as much as he might have wanted and needed a few pieces of equipment, and a few hours of anonymity, he wanted a bit of respite even more. It wasn't healthy to spend your life in a dungeon, hiding from foe and semi-foe alike. It was not normal, and it was wearing, and for one Saturday morning he could stand just being, if not carefree, at least more carefree than he usually got to be.

He had admitted none of this to himself. If you asked him, he was looking for borosilicate glass and stainless steel cauldrons. Cooking pots, you idiot, and don't go calling them cauldrons or who knows what they'll try to sell you. Stainless steel cauldrons, borosilicate class vessels – not beakers, probably, but perhaps different shaped forms in which smoke could curl…perhaps different volumes…perhaps something…

He had chosen this particular store carefully because the picture had shown a dumpster, and he was certain if he Apparated to the side of a dumpster he would not be much noticed. It was horrifically crowded, and very different from what had been his world for so many years. Painfully new, large, open and well-lit, it contrasted strongly not only with everything in his own personal domain, but with almost every place in the wizarding world that he had ever been. He followed the crowd through the cavernous location, past room after room set up like a museum, or like some social experiment in which people would live in public, surrounded by strangers. He knew there were cooking pots; he had seen a list in the advertisement, but he was not sure how to find them other than by following the crowd, which was following the arrows on the floor. He hoped that it would lead him, eventually, past the right piles of merchandise.

He began to smell coffee. Not normally a coffee drinker, he nonetheless found himself following his nose, picking up a tray, sliding it along the cafeteria counter and examining food.

"Salmon" was the loud, deep voice he heard from behind him asked for, and he found himself wanting it as well. Not the sort of thing we have in the Great Hall often, at least. It was reasonably priced, too, from what he could figure out, quickly translating pounds to galleons and coming up with a figure less than he would have expected a Muggle restaurant to cost.

But then, this was not exactly a restaurant, was it? There was the tray he was pushing, and on his right, a rack of overturned coffee mugs; one was expected to take one's own, he deduced, along with butter for his roll. The coffee itself was not immediately visible.

The man behind him – the owner of the deep voice – also reached out for the coffee mugs, and Severus twitched. The hand that reached was burned black as Dumbledore's. and he whipped around, but it was not the headmaster behind him. Instead it was a tall, blond, battered looking man, younger than himself, or his own age? It was impossible to say. It seemed equally impossible that this could be a Muggle, and yet…

The stone in his pocket was quiescent. Not quite a dark detector or he could have saved Moody that year in his trunk, it reacted to magic of any kind, and was useless, therefore, in Diagon Alley, or Hogwarts, or any of his common haunts, but marginally useful as he wandered about Muggle London, around the Muggle world in general. The stone was - perhaps a bit heavier, but heavier did not mean magic.

The tables were full of noisy families and young couples. Over by the window was a small one, barely large enough for two trays, slightly tilted, the salt shaker not quite certain whether it should be taking a header or not. He made his way too it, only to hear that voice over his shoulder again.

"There is nowhere else."

No hint of apology, perhaps not even a hint of explanation, it was merely a statement. There was no where else. He sat down without responding and picked up his fork.

"The salmon is fairly good," he heard from somewhere above him.

Oh Merlin, he is going to want a conversation. Snape looked up sourly.

"For salmon in an English department store, it is very good. But you were forgetting your coffee," the voice continued. "I have brought it for you." A hand deposited a mug on the tray, the same hand he had seen reaching for a mug from the rack – but this hand was not black and shriveled. This hand was – chewed off at the wrist.

His gorge rose, but many years' practice held it down as he looked up. Deep blue eyes stared at him.

"The coffee is good."

I am finally losing my mind, he thought. He was feeling hot around the edges – the edges of his face, the back of his hands, his neck. He was – bemused. All these years of death-defying trickery and I am about to become hysterical in a Muggle department store and get carted off to one of their asylums. To think it all comes down to a plate of salmon and a cup of coffee. He looked up.

"It seems I ought perhaps to have chosen the meatballs. I'm not feeling well," he said in some sort of preparation for leaving, although why he would bother saying anything, he was not certain.

"You are feeling as well as you ever do, Severus. A bit like a Muggle encountering magic for the first time, but that is all. It may be everything, but it is all."

The gravity seemed suddenly no longer functioning: the floor was as titlted as the table top had been. The whole world seemed suddenly off kilter, and yet terribly well focused. The curtains were extremely blue, weren't they? Very new, too, not faded at all. The table was blond wood, quite nice if you liked that sort of thing, which he didn't, and he must have straightened the top of the table without thinking about it…

"I am sorry, Severus. There was not time. Usually we do not impose, but the chessboard of life…at times a piece is in place…that may not be the best piece and yet, it must somehow be the piece. And yet life is not chess, and I am not here to move pieces."

He looked up again, noticing, as he rarely did, the feel of his hair against his cheeks, his feet against the socks in his shoes, the socks with a mended part under the ball of his left foot. He could not, for all the times he had faced Voldemort and found a voice, find one now.

"I do not believe you have ever met me. I am Tyr today."

"Yes, obviously, you are here," he responded, clearing his throat.

"Tyr. Also here, but, Tyr. Twi. Tiur. I did not think you would remember me. I was not sure you had ever heard of me at all."

The hand which was burnt, which was gnawed, which should not have been able to hold anything, which was there one moment and not the next, lay on the table while the tall blond man drank coffee with the other one. Snape's fascination with that hand was noted, and responded to.

"He is right. It is, of course, your choice in the end. You do know that he is right. He has been wrong although not, perhaps, with you, but in this case he is right. Do you know of Fenrir?"

"Greyback?" he responded, uncharacteristically quickly.

Tyr chuckled, growled, almost. "No, not that - poseur. Not that he is not trouble in his own right, no, the wolf Fenrir who belonged to Loki. Loki, that Norse troublemaker…"

He shook his head. No, this was not something he knew. Seventy three potions elements that formed solely in crevices on Fjords, yes, but children's stories…

"You are the makings of a child's story yourself, you know," Tyr said quietly, pushing a small plate with a cinnamon roll on it in Snape's direction.

"Loki, Fenrir, I don't want any cake, thank you…"

"Take the good with the bad. You will end up taking the bad; it is a mistake not to take the good with it. I am making you listen. I am offering you a nice pastry. Take it, Severus." The voice was patient and low, but it irritated the professor as much as if it had been shrill and demanding.

"I needn't listen to you, " he replied as he went to stand.

He could not stand. An Imperius curse? Not possible. I can detect an Imperious; he's not even a wizard…

"'Not a wizard' and 'not even a wizard' are not the same thing, and your curse is a child's toy. Have you never seen a child on a toy broomstick?"

A memory of Draco Malfoy, 18 months old on a tiny Nimbus Nimbletot, exploded in his mind.

"All you have are toys, Severus. You cannot be trusted yet with tools. I have the tools." He began to laugh as a sweat broke out on Snape's forehead. "I have them, Snape, because I am trusted not to misuse them. But yes, all of them – Legilimens, Wingardium Leviosa, Alohomora, even Avada Kadavra. I have been the glance of the Lord, Snape, when the Assyrians came down like wolves on His fold…but I see you don't read the right things. Pity." He leisurely took another sip of coffee.

What felt like a century of cowering before power he could not break, a wave of fury roiled up in Severus, and yet it was one to which he would not entirely give in. ."What will you force me to do, then?" he snapped. "Spit it out, and then send me to do it and be done."

Tyr laughed then, a low, rolling laugh, sympathetic, not mocking. "I make you do nothing, Severus. I force no one. I am quite dilute myself. I am just here to tell you a story, because you do not read the right books. I am afraid you will have to listen to my story, but it is a short story, and then you will be on your way, I am sure."

Having no choice, Snape sat: suspicious that this man could follow his thought, he tried to control them, to focus on the moment. He heard a muttering inside his head, and looked up.

"I was just saying, Severus, that it is a pity…but we have not time. I will not waste your time. There were gods of the Norse, yes? There was a mythology. Perhaps even you have heard of Thor?

Thor, yes, he had a very fleeting memory – a television program, he thought, at his uncle's once.

"I see we are making progress…Thor was not alone. He had the hammer. Loki had…mischief. Mischief likes to get out of control. We cannot permit that. Loki had a wolf. It was necessary to chain the wolf. Tyr put his hand in the wolf's mouth, as a sign of trust, and Fenrir bit it off. That is the story." He paused, and took another sip of coffee. "That is not the only story; there is another one, about a fire...but you need not hear that story."

Snape waited, but there was no more. He felt, heard his heart beat. A bead of sweat made its acrid way down between his shoulder blades. Tyr said nothing, but did begin to eat his own cinnamon roll, breaking it neatly into small pieces and placing one carefully into his mouth, past his large, perfectly even teeth, without touching his fingers with his lips. Eventually, he looked up.

"Do you wonder at this story?"

"That is it?" Snape snapped. "That is the whole story?" So often, lack of solid information, information that was available if one only asked for it, looked more deeply, was the difference between success and failure.

"The whole story…there is no need for the whole story. There was a need to stop Fenrir. Tyr put his hand in the wolf's mouth. The gods chained the wolf. Tyr lost his hand."

"He knew he might lose his hand?" Snape asked, seeking, in the details, the precise ingredients which would make the potion function, make sense of this encounter.

"He knew he would lose his hand. There was a very small chance that he would not, but he did not count on that chance."

"Would counting on it have changed anything?"

The blond man tipped his head a bit to one side and regarded Snape causally. "You know, I don't know. No one has ever asked me before. I had not given it any thought."

"The wolf was destroyed."

"You try to catch me out, Severus? The wolf was not destroyed. The wolf was contained for a time."

"Then what did it matter?" he burst out. "It was futile, what did it matter, he may as well have kept his hand!

"Really. Have you eaten before, Severus?"

Of course I've eaten, that's a ridiculous question."

"And yet you eat now, and you will eat, we hope, again tomorrow," Tyr continued, picking up yet another bit of the roll, but waiting before ingesting it.

"Yes, I certainly hope so. Your point?"

"My point is that it is still worth eating today, although you hope to eat tomorrow as well, and that it was also worth eating in the past."

He stood up then, easily, and looked at Snape quietly.


"I am no more immortal than you are, Severus. The question becomes, if you have forever to spend in the company of a wolf who intends to devour you, or those who would hold back the wolf, which would you choose?

Then he was gone.


"Severus, a moment." The Headmaster had barely raised his voice, and yet, at the other end of the table, perusing the book he had taken from the library, Snape could hear him clearly, and waited as Dumbledore made his way to him. "Did you get the cauldrons you went out for?"

He had not told Dumbledore he was leaving the castle, nor what he had been after, although on this day he was not, for some reason, surprised that the man knew.

"I did, Headmaster, although…"

"But they will be good for something, Severus, even if they are not good for what you had hoped for them. Things are like that." Dumbledore was concerned, looking deeply into Snape's eyes, but not, in any way, attempting a magical entry behind them.

"So I have been thinking, Headmaster." He rose, closing the book and tucking it under his arm

"We are not always what we intended either, are we?" Dumbledore was rueful. "We are but mortal, Severus, the best of us as well as the least of us."

He raised an eyebrow at the older man. "Are we, Headmaster? I find myself, suddenly, reluctant to count on it. If you can excuse me, I have a detention to supervise in the dungeon."

He turned to go, only to hear an amusement in the voice behind him, just the voice of a man he knew, and yet…

"You owe Gryffindor something, don't you, for all their hijinks. They've kept you from having to eviscerate a frog these many years."

"But I--" He had turned back to the older man who, he saw, was smiling, a bit sadly, but smiling.

"Sometimes we do need to save our strength...for the things we are in a position to do" Dumbledore supplied.

"For those things, then."

"You agree, I see." There was a finality in these words.

"I see. My agreement is not necessary, is it? But I do see." He turned, then, and headed out of the Hall, down towards the dungeons, where the light was just enough to see by, and he did not need to squint.


A/N Tyr references Byron's Destruction of Sennacherib, which in turn references the Old Testament, when he referes to himself as the glance of the Lord. While some of the words he uses are identical to the way they are in the poem, I mean to imply that he thinks in exactly these terms, and perhaps to imply that the poem itself quotes something he has always known, and this contributes to my decision not to place several small sets of quotation marks. In no way do I claim these words as my own.