Postal

POSTAL

(A Severus Snape fanfiction in postcard installments)

By A.L. de Sauveterre

TWELVE

Am I dead?Or dreaming? The dark and light colours ran together at first in her descent to full consciousness. Her muscles ached less, if not at all. Nevertheless, a moan sounded in the stillness and she knew it had been hers. Slowly, she became aware of her own raspy breaths, choked and irregular. Definitely not dead. In the near distance, the quick sound of water splashing against the side of a metal bowl gave way to a cold silence broken only by the far-off chirping of crickets at dawn.

Then she saw him. A tall, slender youth with white-blond hair approached from the side with a cool damp cloth for her forehead. The boy could have been an angel had he not borne the same arctic features as the man called Lucius. His expressionless grey eyes flickered over hers for an instant and she shuddered as the pressure of the cloth brushed her forehead and down her cheek. He abruptly drew away the cloth, studying it, red from her blood and perspiration, now one and the same. This time, what she saw in his eyes was fear. And it looked familiar.

"Don't just stand there, boy! You must demonstrate your gratefulness to be in the service of Lord Voldemort," chastised that voice, its malevolent tones now imprinted in her memory. Thwack! Lucius cracked a whip impatiently in the shadows on the left. "Finish off the job, so we may proceed with the first rite. We must be ready to move by nightfall."

Although his head was bowed, she caught his grey eyes narrowing at once, lancing a sharp sideways glance at Lucius.

"Yes, father."

As his voice cracked, she watched the damning crimson tint creep up his alabaster neck, stealing into his cheeks. His voice conveyed subservience, but in his downcast eyes there was… defiance. The knuckles around the cloth whitened as he tensed. He lowered his head and continued his ministrations as the eerie high-pitched cackle echoed in the dim chamber.

At the very edge of her line of sight, the grey, skeletal creature drew a bony hand from his dank robes and rested it on a dark shape on Lucius's forearm. "You have done well, Lucius," he hissed. "The heir of Malfoy will soon come to know his place and serve well in the ranks of my Army, as you have."

Lucius seemed to pull his face together into a mask, careful not appear to recoil as the Dark Lord lowered his voice and leaned forward, "Which reminds me, there is still the matter of your son's initiation to discuss…"

Unnoticed by anyone but the prisoner, the boy suddenly paled. The cloth felt more abrasive now against her skin, as he hastily redoubled his efforts. She winced, causing his head to jerk up. Their eyes met. Despite his previous insolent posture, she found herself full of pity. There was something in him--perhaps the confusion, the conflict--that brought to mind someone she had known in her youth. Severus.

She blinked. Looking at this boy, she had expected frostiness at the very least, and was therefore entirely surprised by his wide-eyed, uncertain expression. He opened his mouth as if to… apologise?

Thwack!

Another whip crack and the boy fell to the side as Lucius roughly pushed his son out of the way. "That's enough, Draco!" Her eyes darted from the indignant glare of the son to the lecherous stare of the father as he cupped her face forcefully in his gloved hand, pulling her forward. The shackles on her wrists and ankles fell clanging against the concrete floor and she swayed weakly. She heard the whip drop to the ground as he deftly drew another weapon. A blunt wooden tip poked against her jugular, causing her to pinch her eyes shut.

"As for you, witch," he snarled venomously, "there will be no false moves, and no…"--he smirked--"corrupting of my son. Not yet, anyway." He turned momentarily to the red-eyed creature. "My Lord?"

Its wrinkled, lipless mouth curled into a toothless sneer and nodded assent.

"Imperio."

Her body shook violently. Her mind and spirit, too, bucked helplessly as he and the Dark Lord drew closer. She struggled against their words, but all her resistance was countered with a searing pain as she was rent asunder. It was no dream. It was a nightmare.

THIRTEEN

"C’mon, Harry, hurry up, will you."

Ron’s impatient voice assailed Harry as he hesitated in front of Remus Lupin’s fireplace. The library, like the rest of Lupin’s thatched cottage, was charming, but old and in a state of disrepair. Staring dubiously at the cracked slate surround, Harry wondered whether the fireplace would be up to the task. Hermione paced slowly behind Ron, absorbed in scanning the Dark Arts titles on the weathered oak shelves of their old professor’s library. She didn’t look to be in any hurry to leave. Remus sat, one leg draped casually over the other, in the battered club chair across the room. Despite his cropped, prematurely greying hair and his threadbare robes, Lupin looked younger than when they had last seen him nearly a year and a half ago. Probably the cumulative effect of re-encountering his old friend Sirius… and regular administration of Snape’s Wolfsbane Potion.

Remus lifted his dark grey eyes from his latest borrowing-by-owl from the Restricted Wizarding Section of the Bodleian Library, a dog-eared volume of The Seven Night Itch: How to Keep the Wolf at Bay by Cyrillus de Vere.

"Don’t worry, Harry," he said encouragingly. "Sirius’ll be waiting for you at the other end."

An embarrassed flush crept across Harry's face. He wondered if it must be obvious that he had never been entirely comfortable with the idea of traveling by Floo Powder. Lately, he had been secretly lamenting the three-year wait until they were of age to sit for the Apparition Exam and hoped that Apparating was more comfortable and a tad more precise than using the Floo Network. For one thing, one didn’t end up covered in soot at one's destination.

With a determined sigh, he cast the silvery-green powder into the grate, glanced at the note in Sirius’s hand on the old piece of parchment and concentrated on making each syllable distinct, "The Old Coach House Inn’s Shed, the One on the South Side That Leaks."

Harry stepped into the greenish-yellow flames, taking care to tuck in his elbows, and fervently hoping not to end up somewhere as unpleasant as (or worse than) Knockturn Alley. The darkness, the ebb and tide of anti-temporal, anti-gravitational pressure and the whipping wind in his ears ceased abruptly. Blinking and blowing the soot from his fringe and glasses, he found himself in a dank and dingy wooden shed. The afternoon sun crept in through cracks and fissures in the damp rotting walls. Harry remarked that part of the roof on the south side was missing entirely. By the dilapidated door (hanging unsteadily by a single lopsided hinge), stood Sirius, pulling it open a crack to look outside.

"Hi, Harry," he said, glancing back distractedly. "Good. Made it in one piece, I see."

Harry brushed at his robes, verifying that he hadn’t lost his wand. "Um. Ron and Hermione are on their w—OW!"

Something tall and heavy crashed into him forcefully from behind. "Sorry, Harry," said Ron, with a grin. Harry replaced his spectacles, grinning back and giving him a friendly shove in return. The boys cleared out of the way and waited a moment for Hermione, who came sputtering through the fireplace a second later, coughing through a cloud of charcoal dust.

"Good God, what a mess!" she cried, swiping at the soot in her eyes. Her efforts succeeded in making her look like a raccoon.

Ron assumed a comic falsetto. "'By the way, you have dirt on your nose. Did you know? Just there.'" Hermione's pinched expression was his cue to leap forward and make a big show of brushing her off. By the time his sleeve made contact with her cheeks, she was blushing profusely. "Our humblest apologies, Your Highness," he continued, this time in his best baritone, "The next time, we shall endeavour to remember the Red Carpet."

She gave Ron a shy, grateful smile. "Well, so long as it flies..."

Harry grinned, shaking his head as he turned away. He knew Ron well enough by now to tell that he often fabricated excuses to get close to their friend, but that he was too shy to do so unless under the pretense of some joke. Well, bravo for him, sighed Harry to himself, I can’t even talk properly to Cho… or almost any other girl, for that matter, with or without a handy line.

It occurred to him that he could, of course, consult Sirius, who, according to Remus at dinner the night before, was one of the Great Charmers of Hogwarts. ("Although, old Padfoot here specialized in the ladies," Remus clarified, passing a plate of grilled peppercorn steak and spring onion mash to an uncharacteristically bashful Sirius, "not snakes. That was Malfoy’s department.")

"’Coast’s all clear," said Sirius, now beckoning to them from the door. "Follow me. If our Location Spell was accurate, Esmerelda’s in a building at the other end of the field." He pointed. "That old airplane hangar."

"Where exactly are we?" asked Hermione.

"About 20 miles from Dover. There’s an old makeshift Muggle airbase here, although there seem to be plenty of Muggle-repellant spells at work. I doubt any of the Muggles living nearby even knows or remembers it’s here. Most of them can’t get within 500 yards of the place without suddenly remembering they’ve left the stove on or the bath running—"

Sirius was cut off by a loud CRACK! from outside.

Peering through one of the larger breaks in the wall, Hermione gasped. "Look!"

The low metal building at the far end had been struck, as if by lightning, and had begun to topple, starting from its left side. In the distance, two hooded figures stood watching as a third directed another jet of red light into the hangar, probably at a supporting beam. The structure teetered dangerously, filling the air with the strange whines and groans of bending steel.

"Quick, follow me! But keep your heads down!" called Sirius. In an instant, he had transformed into the large shaggy black dog and bounded through the door, headlong into the tall grass. Harry, Ron and Hermione followed closely behind at a sprint across the rocky soil. Not at all that easy to do while bent at 90-degree angles to the ground. Ron clutched at a stitch in his side and Hermione's lungs burned as she ran and caught herself wishing for the first time that they had had real Muggle-style physical education classes at Hogwarts. The tall grass whipped at Harry’s face as he tried to get a closer look at the figures. One was tall and pale. Probably Lucius Malfoy. The shorter one was bald and stooped with a silver hand that Harry would have recognized anywhere. Wormtail nearly doubled over under the weight of a large sack on his back.

Sirius by this time had sprung onto the back of the closest Death Eater, the short, wiry man who had razed the front half of the building. He fell forward, collapsing under the weight of his canine assailant. A loud thud met their ears as his head made contact with the grainy asphalt.

Harry caught Ron's and Hermione's eyes and motioned for them to focus on Malfoy while he took care of Wormtail. Both Malfoy and Pettigrew had lunged forward toward the cover of the nearby wood when the three raised their wands, uttering a great, hoarse cry, "Stupefy!"

But the curses just grazed the first line of trees a fraction of a second too late. Malfoy, Wormtail and their baggage had Disapparated.

"Dammit!" swore Ron. Just one word in a long string of colourful expletives, cut short by Hermione's raised hand.

"Snuffles has got one of them!" Harry and Ron followed her gaze to the rubble-stewn pavement.

A moan issued from the man beneath Sirius as he dug his heavy black boot into the side of the bald wizard's neck. This was perhaps unnecessary, as the man then seemed to have lost consciousness. The captive's thin, dark, pock-marked face twisted into a nasty scowl as a little pool of blood trickled unattractively from his mouth.

Sirius squinted at the body, tilting his head contemplatively. "He'll live. I think this is Alphonso Wilkes. Sure looks like him."

"Wilkes. Wilkes," muttered Hermione. "That name sounds familiar."

"D'you know him?" asked Harry.

Sirius nodded. "Once upon a time. He was part of Malfoy's little gang: Malfoy, Wilkes and Rosier. Never figured him for the hair loss type, though," he said, looking at Wilkes thoughtfully.

"I thought Lucius Malfoy's buddies were Crabbe's and Goyle's fathers," said Ron.

"Only for your basic beating and bruising, but nothing more complex," replied Sirius, withdrawing his boot and wiping it on the ground. "At school, and later as Death Eaters, they ran together for the serious stuff. Voldemort's special emissaries. Although, Wilkes looks kind of harmless like this… Don't you, Fonz?" He gave Wilkes's shoulder a hard tap with the heel of his boot. This elicited no reaction, but Sirius put a Binding Spell on their quarry, just in case. Harry watched his godfather's lazy, victorious smile until his ears suddenly perked up attentively, as if he were still Padfoot. From the wreckage came the faint squeal of a hinge.

"Watch him for a sec, I'll be right back," said Sirius, drawing his wand and heading cautiously into the remains of the hangar.

Harry leaned over Wilkes's bleeding head and shot a frustrated look at Hermione and Ron. "Well, he's not going to be talking for a while," he sighed. "If Esmerelda's not here, we'll never figure out where to find her. Not without having done a good Tracking Spell."

"Oh, I wouldn't be too sure of that," called Sirius's voice from the side entrance. "We've got the next best thing."

Following his voice, the three turned toward the building and saw him emerge, bright eyes gleaming, less like a dog, more like a bird of prey. Sirius's wand arm invisibly tugged a figure wrapped in a bundle of tightly drawn cords. It hobbled unwillingly at his side, glaring at them indignantly through a tousled crop of white-blond hair.

Three pairs of eyes narrowed as they recognised Draco Malfoy.

FOURTEEN

"Merde!"

The old man on the corner of the Boulevard St. Germain and the rue des Saints-Pères threw up his hands, gesticulating wildly and muttering a series of unfamiliar expletives at the pair of black-cloaked figures that had knocked into him, sending his groceries crashing onto the pavement. With a loud ripping sound, the flimsy paper bag tore, scattering a selection of citrus fruits, saucisson sec, bread and yoghurt onto the asphalt. The little glass pots rolled past the Café Rouget downhill into the flow of oncoming traffic and toward the Seine.

The man blinked rapidly. Apparently, none of the preoccupied pedestrians had noticed them, but he was certain that the men had appeared out of nowhere. One had a proud, pinched face with a pointed chin, cold dead eyes and platinum blond hair stemming from a widow’s peak on his forehead. A little bald man, encumbered by a large cloth sack struggled to keep up with his companion’s brisk strides. He held the sack nervously in place with a heavy-looking silver hand that glinted in the afternoon sun.

Lucius Malfoy was peeved and did not stop for so much as a backward glance, let alone an apology. Malfoy hated Paris. Despite being able to trace his lineage to the French baronial classes, he had always detested the City of Lights, preferring the barren, blustery moors surrounding the Malfoys' Scottish Mansion. But the Dark Lord had convinced him of the advantages of using his in-laws’ house. Particularly, the storage capacity it offered away from the prying eyes of the British Ministry of Magic, in general, and that damned Arthur Weasley, in particular. Narcissa had inherited her mother’s Paris pied-à-terre and would never have considered selling the house on the Rive Gauche.

Hmmph. Gauche would be the operative word, Lucius thought nastily, sneering at the Muggle women sporting bright colours and clutching monogrammed bags containing tiny live dogs. Lucius paused to peer at the buildings in search of the entrance. As he had only seen the door to La Maison Danglars twice before, his lack of familiarity with the place precluded them from Apparating directly.

Ah, but there it was. None of the Muggles passing by appeared to take any notice of the tall gilded door with the lion’s head knocker. Their eyes slid from the red and white wicker chairs of the Café Rouget to the brightly-lit display of a women's clothing boutique. Lucius drew his wand and tapped the lion’s head between the eyes. He growled the password ("Le Fou du Roi"), impatiently rolling his eyes before stalking through the archway that appeared. With a crude snap of his long fingers, he summoned Wormtail, just as a little terrier, growling suspiciously, started sniffing at the weighty load on his shoulder.

The sack began to stir. Wormtail’s beady eyes bulged in panic as the dog’s teeth sank into his robes. He pointed a silver finger at the dog, sending out a jet of bright green light and its teeth disintegrated. Before its harried-looking owner, a blonde in head-to-toe camel-coloured cashmere, discovered what had caused its sudden high-pitched yelps, Wormtail and his sack had disappeared.

Their footsteps echoed hollow in the entrance hall, windowless but lit with floating candelabras, flickering along the high white-and-gilt walls. A house-elf wrapped in a scratchy-looking paper doily sat in one of twelve carved ebony and pearl armchairs beneath portraits of Narcissa’s ancestors. Most were pale and wispy with blond ringlets and ruffled laced collars. And that was just the men. Lucius sniffed disdainfully and the house-elf sprang to standing position with a squeak, noticing the visitors for the first time. After a deep, reverential bow, its eyes widened in fear and recognition, darting from Malfoy’s haughty glare to Wormtail’s silver hand. If the poor creature had kept his eyes on Lucius, it might have anticipated his wand rising in the air and the malicious little smile that played across his thin lips.

"Crucio."

Malfoy stood back appraisingly in sadistic satisfaction as the elf jerked and twisted, writhing frantically on the floor in pain. A cacaphony of incoherent screams erupted in the hall. Wormtail wondered if one of its eyes was going to come out. Malfoy gleefully hoped one would. And they might have found out if it hadn’t been for the door at the end of the corridor.

It flew open with a bang, upsetting the picture frames and the more jittery among Narcissa’s ancestors, who ducked out of sight. A long, black-sleeved arm appeared in the shadowy threshold and threateningly aimed a wand at Malfoy’s head.

"Stupefy!"

A blinding flash of blue sliced through the hall with great accuracy. Even before Malfoy hit the black marble floor, Wormtail gasped and dropped the sack with an unceremonious thud. He turned to flee, only to run into two tall hooded figures, closing in slowly and blocking the exit. Wormtail screamed and fell to his knees, cowering and shrouding his face with his hands.

The first figure at the far end of the hall came forward and trained a wand on the convulsing house-elf. "Finite Incantatem." The creature’s breathing, while still ragged and belaboured, was otherwise normal, and the deep green flush returned to its cheeks, indicating that no lasting damage had been caused.

However, beside the house-elf, Malfoy’s rigid frame showed no signs of life, except for his eyes which blinked and darted wildly after the cloaked figure with an expression that on anyone else may have been taken as horror. The figure paused contemplatively, eyeing Lucius. But only for a moment. It drew back its right foot and took aim, evincing several satisfying thunks against Malfoy’s ribcage before stepping on his nose with steel-toed Doc Martens until the single sharp crack echoed through the hall.

"Caro, that’s enough! Leave him be!"

Alastor Moody hobbled away from Wormtail, whimpering in the custody of Mundungus Fletcher. Both Moody's normal and his Magical Eye traveled to the crooked bend in Malfoy's nose and the stream of fresh blood flowing from it before fixing Malfoy's assailant with a thunderous blue stare.

But his glare was quickly returned. A deliberate hand drew back the hood to reveal a mass of wheat-coloured waves, tied back from the delicate face of a young woman. A face that Moody had seen on the odd occasion chuckling rosily with mirth, but which now turned on him, flushed with fury. Her gaze narrowed at her one-time mentor, the legendary ex-Auror, and her grey-green eyes met both of his evenly.

"He as good as killed my godson, Alastor. My nephew."

Despite himself, Moody winced. Caro's voice was low, but her tone, deadly. Moody had heard that before as well, had been impressed by its determination and conviction, enough to enlist her into service despite her age. The old man sighed. He knew that all his years with the Ministry as an Auror and Chief of the Unspeakables had created a tough exterior. But Moody fully understood how it must be killing his colleague not to be able to exact revenge for the murder of her nephew. He thought of how he might feel if anything befell his own niece, his only blood relative, in her seventh year at Durmstrang Academy and felt an empathetic pang. His brow wrinkled uncomfortably and his normal eye stared blankly at a point past her ear, principally because he didn't fully agree with the sentiments behind the speech he was about to give.

"Be reasonable, Caro. He's more use to us alive than dead. 'Tell ye, there's no one who'd love more than me to hang him by his toenails over a pit of starving Manticores--well, 'cept maybe a few of those Weasleys--but he ought to be taken to the Ministry. Our business is justice, not revenge. No use making yerself a fugitive over him either. Amos wouldn't allow it, anyway. He'd have my head."

"Amos has no say in this," she spat, although the lines on her face were easing. "He's my brother, not my guardian. And he of all people should understand, after what they did to… Cedric…"

Caro Diggory's eyes were bright as she turned away. The girl stomped a boot angrily to stem the flood of tears. Moody's Magical Eye noted her steel toe colliding forcefully with the fingers of Malfoy's wand hand, but quickly looked away.

Then his Eye rolled to Pettigrew, bound and gagged in one of the chairs. His first thought was, Well, I'll be damned. Sirius Black was an innocent man. The Eye rested on the shriveled, rodent-like man and it vaguely occurred to Moody that although he should have been whimpering with fear, Voldemort's right-hand man sat strangely silent, eyeing the motionless sack at Fletcher's feet. There was a triumphant gleam in his watery eyes that Moody didn't like…

He flinched, sensing a swift movement in front of him. Caro's hand had shot forward, her wand conjuring a handkerchief as she sniffed. Moody rested a gnarled hand on her shoulder and said, albeit with more conviction than he felt, "It'll be alright, lass. It will."

FIFTEEN

"…It is NOT alright! It would reflect very poorly on us in the semi-annual review. He could dock our bonuses this year. Or, he could save money and just kill us. You know, his way of 'slashing overheads'?"

"Take it easy," replied another in an equally shaky voice, "we didn't screw anything up, it was Avery's responsibility. Let him fix it."

The glass walls of the rooms along the corridor were thin, allowing the anxious voices of the inmates to carry into the hall. In the back of his mind, Severus remembered a Muggle Studies essay he had once done on a French sociologist's view of the perfect prison, its cells set around a central observation tower from which all the inmates could be studied. Whether the tower was occupied mattered not, as the inmates soon learned to regulate their behaviour accordingly. Glancing involuntarily at the Dark Mark on his arm, he also thought of the painting in the reception area and realised that fear and stress were the normative forces at work here. He knew by experience they were infectious. But he was used to it.

Once he had located J.W. Reid's dark, windowless office at Schweinkopf Overbeck Fink Brò ckheimer Pratt, Severus had taken the seat behind the desk. That is, once he could find it. Reid might have looked like a neat, organized individual, but the disarray that greeted Severus was like the aftermath of a Death Eater raid. Bemused, his eyes roamed the walls. If students at Hogwarts thought Snape had strange objects in his office, he wondered at the jumbled assortment of toys and other purposeless articles carelessly crammed onto Reid's bookshelves. Some, if not most of the books, lay, oddly, on the floor. Crumpled paper balls cluttered one corner beneath a makeshift bottomless string basket, suspended over an overflowing bin. In fact, paper covered nearly every inch of the dark grey carpet, save for a narrow strip that served as a path to the door. At the other end of the strip, under towering piles of more paper, files and post, Severus located the chair. It swivelled and creaked dubiously under his weight. Distastefully pushing the piles to the side, he resisted an overwhelming compunction to cast a Tidying Spell and, instead, buried himself in Rosier's contract with Voldemort.

This curious subset of Muggle terminology was rather difficult to follow in places until he found a glossary on page 106, but his task was not made any easier by the fact that some sentences ran on to one or two pages in length. What was clear was that Rosier was intended to take part in the Dark Knight Spell. Although the precise activities remained unspecified, Severus realised with growing terror that Voldemort intended not just to use Rosier in his Army, but something much, much worse. Severus remembered with a pang his conversations with Esmerelda, years before, about how the spell would be cast and how it would take effect. How naïve, how arrogant he had been, thinking that he could protect her from anything, keep her safe from any harm or anything that might come between them. Until that night when he had seen her eyes brim with fear. The fear that he knew was mirrored in his own…

The raised, excited voices he had heard earlier in the corridor cut into his thoughts, growing louder as they approached. Irritable knocking shook the door, followed by muffled voices.

"I thought I saw an absence memo go round," said an unfamiliar, high-pitched female voice. "Are you sure he's in today?"

"He's here, I know he is. 'Saw him this morning, but he never showed up for squash." Severus frowned, dimly recognising the unintelligible lout from the lift banks.

"Well, go on, then. The axe has gotta fall sometime."

They continued to knock until Severus was wholly unable to ignore the man and woman who stepped into the office. He casually slid the contract under the desk and pretended to tug at a tall pile of papers marked "For Shredding." Through narrowed lids he regarded the pair with the usual venom he reserved for Hogwarts students, but they stared back, unphased. Severus grimly concluded that J.W. Reid's choirboy appearance was doing nothing to advance his immediate cause.

"Yes, what is it?" he said shortly. "I'm busy."

The stocky blonde woman bristled sharply. She crossed her arms, angrily pushing her black-rimmed spectacles up a small freckled nose. "Don't you dare take that tone with me, James," she hissed. She pounded a stubby hand on the desk and leaned in to glower at him, magnifying his view of heavily made-up, crinkly lids. "You may think you're hot stuff lateralling in from New York, but as you're new, I'll warn you just this once. You better learn to respect The Way Things Work here, or you'll be out on your ass faster than you can say 'unemployment'!" She was visibly disconcerted when her scolding failed to elicit the desired effect.

The ridiculous image of one of his pug-like fifth years, Milicent Bulstrode, immediately poked at his mind's eye and Severus struggled to camouflage a sneer.

She surveyed him imperiously for an instant before turning to the grey-haired man. "You deal with it, Baddock. I've got work to do," she snipped, storming away importantly as Severus watched in bemusement.

Taking two long strides, Baddock closed the door and turned to Severus with a mixture of bewilderment and awe. He loosened his tie with a thin hand.

"Dude, what has got into you? You can't talk to Pritchard like that, she's practically a partner." He covered the length of the small room in two strides and waved a hand in the air dismissively. "And I'm not even getting into the whole pulling-a-no-show-for-our-most-important-squash-cup-match thing…"

Severus replied with a scowl. He didn't want to have to endure decoding this man's narrative when he had more pressing matters to attend to. He had to find out what part Rosier was going to play in summoning the Dark Knight, or better yet, stop him. But he couldn't do that with--

"Jimbo, did you hear anything I've just said? What is with you today?" His eyes narrowed at Severus suspiciously. "You're not yourself at all."

Behind the desk, Snape blinked, hoping he was managing to convey a look of innocence. His own facial muscles hadn't had much experience in that area in the past, but perhaps Reid's had.

"I've just said," continued Baddock, "that The Trunchbull wants you in his office to explain this"--he was waving a draft letter in front of Severus's face--"and you're just looking at me like--"

"What?" said Severus, suddenly jolted to the present. The Trunchbull. Rosier. "Rosier wants to see me in his office?"

"Yeah, man. Like NOW," said Baddock exasperatedly.

Severus thought of the Callum Rosier he knew and narrowed his eyes. "Why?"

"You really aren't listening, are you, Jimmy? This. This is why." He unfurled the pages in his hand and flung them at Severus.

As if he'd been hit with a Gut-Wrenching Curse, a convulsive twisting spread throughout his abdominal region, like white heat. Clutching the document in his hands, his steps became more leaden as he passed through the grey corridors in search of Rosier's office.

Rosier knows I'm here, he thought grimly. It was the only explanation. Why else would he be summoned to the man's office on the basis of two typographical errors and a dangling participle? Rosier was no great genius, and not known for his subtlety. Such a flimsy excuse had to have been fabricated just to lure him into his lair. It's a trap, said a voice in his head.

But Severus was not about to back out. He checked for his wand, thinking of the last time he had crossed Rosier, fifteen years ago in a dark alley not far from Godric's Hollow: thick neck and wide shoulders, crouched hungrily over something struggling behind him in an obscure recess. In his frantic rush to try to save the Potters that night, he had only a split second to prioritise and sped on, hoping that he had not really seen what he thought he saw. The suddenly limp feet of a man dangling behind that monster's knees. Just one of the nightmarish scenes that haunted Snape in sleep since his turn from the Dark and the sacrifice of his wife.

His wife. He would capture Rosier and find Esmerelda if it was the last thing he did. And it may very well be, he thought grimly. Turning a corner, he swallowed hard. He had arrived in front of the large corner office bearing the nameplate "Callum S. Rosier".

A mousey-looking woman in the cubicle outside the door fixed him with large, fearful eyes. "Mr. Reid?"

Severus stood blinking at her for a moment. He heard an insistent voice in his head begging, no, ordering him not to go in, but he ignored it. He would do this. He needed to do this. For Esmerelda.

Reid's voice cracked as it escaped his dry throat. "Ro--Mr. Rosier wanted to see me."

The woman leaned across her desk, peering nervously into the open door in a way that he was certain was not her normal manner. She avoided his eyes, making him feel more as if he'd been marked for the gallows. But before she'd opened her mouth, a growl issued from the corner office. "REID! Get in here. I've been waiting too long for you."

What met him on the other side of the door was a surprise. The man standing behind the elaborate cherry wood desk wore a dark blue business suit and a particularly horrid tie that reminded him of Dumbledore's sleeping robes. It was chocolate brown with winged pink pigs. Severus felt slightly at ease thinking, Not only does this lunatic have no moral sensibilities, but he also clearly has no taste. Otherwise, Rosier looked exactly like he had in the photos, complete with the plastic smile that Severus instinctively knew not to trust.

"Shut the door," barked Rosier.

His ruddy face was large, uneven and puffy, and the beady eyes, narrowed into thin slits, followed Snape as he crossed to a chair and sat down. Severus was alarmed to feel his Sneakoscope starting to whirr uncontrollably, digging uncomfortably into his side under his cloak. He just hoped it was as well-disguised as his robes.

Severus decided to make the opening gambit. "Baddock said you had some questions about this?" He laid the pages on the desk.

But Rosier fumed in silence, his eyes boring a hole into Snape's face. The man continued breathing heavily and glowering until Severus realised (not without some irony) that he was meant to feel intimidated. Instead, he sat still, calmly meeting Rosier's stare. Just as Snape's patience was wearing thin, Rosier finally spoke, his bloated face twisted into a sneer.

"I've been watching you, Reid. And I don't like your attitude." (Snape raised the brow of his mind's eye as high as it could go.) Rosier leaned menacingly across the desk. "I want you to get this straight. You. Work. For. Me. Not the firm, not the group. ME. I decide whether you have free time and what to do with it. I decide when you go to sleep and what you dream about. You belong to me, Reid. And don't you forget it." Rosier sighed and abruptly crossed to the other side of the desk, changing tack completely. He clucked, sounding almost… paternal. "Reid. Boy. You should understand that to work with subordinates, they must always feel two things"--Rosier felt the need to raise his fingers to enumerate--"fear and guilt. Power is understanding how to use those to your advantage." He leaned in closely to Severus meeting Reid's blue eyes. "And I hope you feel plenty of both of those things."

Snape, who, in his real life was already quite well enough acquainted with both fear and guilt, was finding it impossible to take Rosier seriously. Especially while he was wearing that tie. Snape shot Rosier a steely gaze, then realised immediately his mistake.

Rosier looked at him, startled. Then he frowned suddenly, studying Severus carefully, as if seeing him for the first time. Then his eyes narrowed dangerously.

"Reid. Tell me. Why are you here, really? Hmm?"

Severus felt his throat go drier than the Sahara. "What... what do you mean?" he choked.

"You're from Boston, aren’t you?"

No, he's trying to trick you. New York. You're from New York. "Uh, no," Severus heard himself repeating after the voice in his head. "New York."

"And where did you go to law school?" Rosier was eyeing him cautiously now.

Harvard. Harvard Law School. "What?" Severus heard himself say aloud. Just SAY IT! "Harvard. Harvard Law School."

Rosier eyed him calculatingly. "What year?"

God DAMMIT! Severus's brows flew up at the cry in his head.

Three forceful raps on the door interrupted them before it opened. In the threshold was A.L. de Sauveterre. Severus noticed that her face was flushed and she was breathing rather quickly. A lock of dark hair escaped her ponytail.

"Axelle, I'm in a meeting," snarled Rosier.

Then she did something that surprised both Rosier and Severus. She waved her hand at him dismissively.

"Sorry, ol' boy, but we need Reid urgently. The AOL exec's on the phone in my office; he's about to board the plane for Dubai. We can’t find Avery and the only other person on the account is Reid. 'Promise I'll send him right back when he's done." She beckoned at Severus with her hand and pulled him out the door, closing it in front of a stunned Rosier.

Severus didn't know whether to scowl at, growl at, or thank her. Before he could decide, she had pulled him into an internal room that was filled with beeping and whirring machines, but was otherwise empty.

"What do you think you're doing?" he asked irritably. "I was just about to stun Rosier."

She crossed the arms of her black suit. "The hell you were. One more strike in that little pop quiz and there wouldn't have been enough left of you to fill a Petri Dish."

Severus's eyes darkened. "You were telling me not to go in? You were feeding me those answers… But how did--Why--"

She sighed, her green eyes pleading. "Professor, you really don't have enough time for me to explain it all now. Your life is going to be in grave danger in another few seconds, unless you leave, so I suggest you go now and we can play Big Game Hunter another time. Okay?"

Snape's face showed his fury. "Who are you to give me orders?! I am not leaving until I find out what they've done with my wife."

"You will leave now, or there will be no hope of you ever seeing each other again. I promise you."

"What do you mean?"

She pushed the door ajar long enough for Severus to hear Rosier's secretary calling across the hall, "Mr. Rosier, Thomas Riddle is waiting for you in Conference Room 1."

"You're not safe here, Professor. Any minute now, they'll figure out who you are. Please. Just go. Esmerelda's alive, don't worry."

Severus continued to stare at her dubiously.

She shot him an exasperated look, then smirked. He was getting a lot of those today, he thought. She pointed at his robes. "Severus, is that a Sneakoscope in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

"I beg your pardon?" he stepped back indignantly. She sounded like Baddock.

She glanced quickly at the closed door, lowering her voice. "The Sneakoscope. Is it moving? I can tell you it isn't, because I'm telling you the truth. You've got to go. Now."

"But Rosier--"

She waved her hand. "Don't worry. You'll get another chance at him, I swear. Now, go."

She walked with him to the elevator banks, pausing briefly behind a corner as a heavily bandaged man with wrinkled, greyish skin disappeared into the Conference Centre.

To Be Continued…