The Purloined Prophetess

XXII: Confrontation

Reg - come here as soon as you can. Bring Snape with you. I don't care what you tell him, but don't mention my name, and don't look him in the eye when you lie to him. - N. T.

This was easier said than done. I don't know why Sev dislikes me so much ... apart from the fact that I kissed him in public, of course, but you'd think we'd be close enough for that sort of thing. We have a lot of mutual friends from way back.

'Hiya, Sev. You're wanted at headquarters.'

'Again?' he said, not looking up from the stack of parchment on his desk. 'Aren't there enough unemployed people in the Order as it is? Why do they keep calling me away from my teaching duties?'

'Isn't it Sunday?'

'You know as little about teaching as you do about everything else. For your information, there are always essays to mark and classes to prepare for.' He added, with exaggerated mock politeness, 'Would you have the kindness to inform me who wants me and what it's about?'

I thought of something Jack said once about lying. The bigger and bolder the lie, the less likely people were to think you'd have the nerve to make it up. I also happened to know that one of Sev's great weaknesses was an irrational jealousy for everyone who had ever held the Defence Against the Dark Arts position. 'Kingsley Shacklebolt thinks he's caught Syb's kidnappers. He's got permission from the Ministry to use Veritaserum to interrogate them and figure out where they've taken her, so he needs you to brew some as soon as possible.' After a dramatic pause for effect, I added, 'The suspects are Dolores Umbridge and Gilderoy Lockhart.'

Sev had been looking deeply sceptical, but he stopped short at these last words. 'Gilderoy ... Lockhart?'

'Yes,' I said with a straight face. 'They both escaped from St. Mungo's a month ago. Apparently when Kreacher got Lockhart's memories, he got Kreacher's, so he has the brain of a malicious house-elf with a pureblood mania and entirely too much inside information about the Order. Except he isn't a house-elf, so he doesn't have to obey orders from anyone.'

I could see the wheels going around in his brain. I'd caught him, all right. Absolutely nothing would give him more pleasure than interrogating Lockhart and Umbridge - except blaming me for the whole fiasco. 'I always knew your little blunder would have disastrous consequences,' he muttered, sweeping a few bottles into his Potions kit and following me. 'And everybody else thought it was funny.'

At Grimmauld Place, we were met by Jack, who had just arrived and seemed as bewildered as I was, and by Nymphadora, who looked more furious than I'd ever seen her. And she wasn't hiding the Black looks now, oh no. Her dark eyes were flashing, and if I hadn't known better I could have mistaken her for one of the ancestral portraits.

'Read this,' she said to Jack and me, handing us each something that looked like an academic journal. 'It will make everything much clearer. As for you ...' She took a small glass vial which was almost filled with a clear liquid out from under her robes. 'Do you know what this is, Severus?' Her fist was clenched so tightly on the vial that her knuckles were dead white.

'How would I know what it is?' said Snape. His voice was cool, but I thought he turned a little paler than usual. 'Many potion ingredients look alike.'

'It is comfrey essence. And I'm not surprised that you don't know it when you see it, because you haven't been bloody well using it, have you?'

'Comfrey essence is a dangerous substance,' he said.

'Not in the recommended doses. Read!' she added to Jack and me. 'It's all there.' Jack fixed his eyes on the journal obediently. Either he had miraculous powers of concentration, or more likely, he was afraid to disobey my cousin in her current mood. I didn't blame him.

'Not using it does no harm whatsoever,' said Snape. 'It is much safer to leave it out.'

'No harm.' Her voice was as dangerous as it was quiet. 'No harm. Only the slow torture of a man who has done absolutely nothing to you. Did you ever stop to look at your handiwork, or were you too much of a coward? You will look at him now. Come with me.'

'My handiwork? I have done nothing to him. He has always been a very ill man, and always will be. I have never understood why a certain type of female always insists on picking the weakest pup in the litter, but as you seem to fall into that category, I suggest that you live with the consequences of your choice rather than blaming me for them.'

I guessed from my cousin's face that this had hit close to home, and from the way Sev was looking at her, I suspected he might have a touch of the green-eyed monster himself, but I was pretty sure Nymphadora would murder me if I mentioned either of these things. If you know me at all, you know I don't keep my mouth shut very often - but this seemed like the sort of situation where silence would be prudent.

Jack was a braver man than I was. 'I think I am beginning to understand what this is all about - and if she's right, it's an ugly thing you've done, Snape. Damned ugly.'

Suddenly Snape snatched up Jack's Instant Message Book and began writing furiously.

You've already appointed yourselves my judges and executioners, haven't you? Give me a chance to defend myself before you close in and start throwing stones. Let me speak. - S. S.

'Give that back!' shouted Jack, grabbing the book and shoving Snape against the wall.

He didn't have a chance, of course. With a quick flick of his wand Snape had retrieved the book and sent Jack flying halfway across the room.

I reached for my own wand. 'I don't have the foggiest idea what's going on, because Miss Nymphadora Diaphanta here won't tell me, but I do know duelling with an unarmed Muggle isn't fair play. Not even close.' I gagged him, and given half a second longer I would have taken the book as well.

'Let him speak,' said a quiet voice from the far end of the hall.

I wondered how long he had been standing there. I felt like I was eleven again and he'd caught me doing something particularly idiotic, like trying to hex the Bloody Baron. 'Hello, Moony. We've just been fighting. I'm not sure what about, but I think it's got something to do with you.'

'So I gathered,' he said grimly, undoing Snape's gag. 'Let the man explain himself.'

I suspected right away that this was not good news for Snape. I knew him when he was a prefect, you see. If he caught you doing anything wrong, the first thing he asked you to do was explain why you'd done it. By the time I was halfway through the explanation, I was usually brick red and stammering in confusion. Snape may have remembered this as well. Nymphadora did not. 'Remus, do you have any idea what this man has done to you?'

'If he's done anything to me, I think I have every right to know his reasons why.'

'He's got Jack's book,' I said. 'He took it without permission. You can't just let him start writing in it.'

'Give Jack his book back, Severus. You won't need it. Take mine.'

XXIII: Confidence

Snape had taken the book and disappeared upstairs, while Tonks and Reg remained in the hall. I could hear their voices growing angrier with each passing minute as she explained matters to him. It was an explanation that I did not need. I'd read enough. I went into the living room and sat down next to Remus on the sofa. He was still in his shabby dressing gown, but he was sitting up and looked well enough to face the conversation I'd been meaning to have for a while. I placed The Andorran Journal of Dark Creatures on the coffee table, open to the page Tonks had indicated. 'Lycanthropy?' I said.

A faint tinge of colour came into his face, and he didn't meet my eyes. 'Yes, well. It's one of those things that are rather awkward to explain, particularly to Muggles. Either they don't know what it means, or they do, and then they stop inviting you for coffee and letting you hang around their children. I wonder which category you fall into?' He was still staring at the floor.

'Neither,' I said promptly. 'And if you want any proof of that, I've known for almost two weeks already.'

He looked up, surprised. 'How did you work it out?'

'Well, what really tipped me off were some of the things you and Tonks and Reg said the night Sybill disappeared, but I knew from the beginning that you were Arcanum Charming something against me. It was a clever editing job, but there were a few loose ends - dropped punctuation here and there, and the fact that Lovegood mentioned two of his daughter's old professors catching his eye, but described only one of them. And then there should have been some account of why you had to leave your old flat, but there wasn't. Not that easy to edit out a big chunk of your life, is it?'

'No. I shouldn't have tried. I'm sorry, Jack.'

'It's all right,' I said. 'I understand why you did it - although it would have led to fewer complications if you hadn't. I can't imagine my migraine pills were much help, for instance.'

He gave me a genuine smile. 'Actually, they were.'

'You'd better take the rest of them, then,' I said, handing him the bottle. 'I can get the prescription refilled easily. You might have a little trouble explaining your problem at the chemist's.'

He didn't say anything for a moment, and when he did, it was with what I had come to recognise as his false-casual voice. 'Jack, how well did you know Prongs - your brother-in-law?'

'James? Not very well at all. I met him a few times when he and Lily first started seeing each other, and once at a dinner they had for our family just before they got married. She wouldn't let us come to the wedding - for our safety, she said. A lot of good it did our mum and dad in the end,' I added bitterly. 'Why do you ask?'

'You remind me of him.'

'I have a feeling that's one of the best compliments you know how to give.'

'It is.'

It was time to confide in him, I thought. 'I'm only alive today because I was away on a camping trip with the Boy Scouts. When I came home, the Dark Mark was over our house and my entire adopted family - was gone. I wasn't about to go back to the orphanage, so I struck out on my own - staying at all my friends' houses until I wore out my welcome, and sometimes at the local youth hostel, moving on whenever anybody asked too many questions. It made me hard to track down. Perhaps that saved my life as well.'

'It probably did. The first days after Voldemort's fall were chaotic, and he had plenty of followers left willing to carry on his work.'

'Why did they do it? I knew nothing about them, and I'm sure my parents knew little more. Lily would hardly even let us see her for the last year, and her letters were short - all she would talk about was the baby, nothing about her work or the war. Why did they come after us?'

'I don't know the answer to that, Jack. I have wondered for seventeen years why they came after an eighty-year-old Muggle widow in Manchester. She didn't know anything about our work either. All I can tell you is that they have always acted as though human life were of no value. Particularly non-magical life.'

I remembered that he had mentioned a Muggle grandmother he was close to - one who reminded him of my wife. I shivered. It was time to tell Harriet everything about my work for the Order, I decided. No sense trying to shield her if it came down to the same thing in the end.

'I'm sorry,' I said.

'It's all right. It was,' he said vaguely, 'a very long time ago ... I don't have too many secrets from you now, do I? May as well lift all those Arcanum Charms.' He picked my Instant Message Book up from the table and flipped through it. 'Patefacio ... patefacio ... patefacio ...'

New writing was appearing on the pages, but it was only Reg's. Remus shook his head and looked up with a wry smile. 'I swear, sometimes I don't know whether Reg is a genius or a madman. Dolores Umbridge and Gilderoy Lockhart?'

'Master's friend called?' said a small voice from around the corner. We both jumped. 'Gilderoy is very busy answering all his fan mail in joined-up writing, but Gilderoy is at your service, sir. Also, Gilderoy would like master's friend to pass on the word that Gilderoy would like harmony between all magical and non-magical people, and also more hair gel.' The house-elf was bald, but the large quantity of white hair growing out of his ears had been styled and slicked to perfection.

We looked at each other and laughed rather shakily. 'I think you've had enough hair gel, Kreacher,' said my friend. 'As for the other part - we're working on it. Give us time.'

As Reg finished his part of the story, I remembered the other writer, the one upstairs, who had written nothing yet, and grew sober. 'He must be reading all of it,' I said.

We waited...

XXIV: Severus Snape Explains Justice

Our people are not usually very religious, but my mother was a Catholic, I suppose because she needed some sort of escape to put up with my father for so many years. She taught me that there are sins of commission and sins of omission, and they weigh equally heavy in the scales of justice. We mortals punish only the sins of commission, but on the day of judgment the things we fail to do will condemn us as surely the things we have done.

Fifteen years as a Potions Master have taught me about balance and measure. One must measure evenly, carefully, patiently. The margin between life and death is the error of a single drop. Justice, too, must be exacted evenly and carefully and patiently.

The last thing Lupin said before he handed me this book was that I did not have to obey their rules, that I could Arcanum Charm certain things against the entire task force if I wished to keep them private - but he insisted on knowing exactly what I had done to him and why. I have read it all and the answers are already there, but I will try to explain what he is evidently still too blind to see for himself. Miss Tonks came the closest when she said he had done nothing to me. That is precisely correct. He did nothing. His friends made my life hell for years and he neither joined them nor lifted a finger to intervene. He kept silent and looked away.

I, too, was a silent child, though not by choice. My father had bound me with a curse called Soloresponsus, which is used in old wizarding families to render underaged persons unable to speak until spoken to. It left me unable to approach those who might have been friends and often unable to reply to my tormentors. (For it is possible to cause a great deal of pain without speaking to the victim directly. The hex muttered behind a turned back, the snowball that conceals something harder, the rumours about one's home life whispered in the corridors...)

He did nothing to lift it. I do not recall him saying a word to me, except when partnered with me in class, until one particular afternoon in the winter of our sixth year. It was the day after his friend Black decided to play an amusing joke on me that would have resulted in my death if his other friends had not been too cowardly to allow it. (I do not delude myself into thinking they felt any stirrings of conscience on my account. They were saving their own skins.) He approached me the next afternoon with what he called an apology. He looked much as he did today, white-faced and shaking. It was a well crafted little speech, but it left out a single ingredient: warmth. He did it from a sense of obligation, not from any sincerity of feeling.

[This passage is Arcanum Charmed against virtually everyone on earth except Albus Dumbledore.] To this day, I am sure he believes I thought he was in on the prank. The truth is that I always knew he was innocent in strictly legal terms. He didn't speak to Black for a month. This does not matter from my perspective. I watched that whole pack of young beasts closely during that month. They were suffering, but not on my account. The prospect of my death meant nothing to them in comparison with the rift in their little clique.

Consider, before you judge me, that I too am innocent in strictly legal terms.

Something Minerva McGonagall has written in these pages is also relevant. He was a happy child when I first knew him, and against all sense or reason he appears to be a happy man. That was motivation enough. The world had taken any prospect of employment or health or social acceptance from a bright, promising child; it has since taken his friends and even members of his family. And yet it refused to give me justice. It did not turn him into what I have become.

When I first heard that he was to be my colleague, I thought I might forgive him. You will remember that Pettigrew had then been presumed dead for twelve years, and Sirius Black had been in Azkaban for most of that time. There was a day or two last spring - just after Black's death - when I felt the same way. On both occasions I was wrong. I will not forget the first time I saw him in the staff room. He was talking to Hagrid with the same easy smile I remembered from boyhood. As long as he could still smile like that, the balance of pain was unequal.

But I had been handed an opportunity. The beauty of it was that I, too, did nothing to him. It was a simple sin of omission.

In the same month that Remus Lupin arrived at Hogwarts, the Ministry of Magic finally approved comfrey essence for use as one of the standard ingredients in the Wolfsbane potion. It is a powerful pain reliever but has no other effect. It is also an inert substance. One can leave out this single ingredient without changing the other virtues of the potion. I have done him no real harm, seriously imperiled neither his health nor others' safety.

She will say that I have done him harm, that pain eats away at the heart and spirit. So it does. She asked if I had ever looked at my handiwork. I have, and I was glad to see the results - glad that the years weighed heavier on him than they do on other men of our age. So they do with me. I have dealt my measure of justice with an even and steady hand.

It is over now. I suspected my attempt to balance the scales was nearing its end a few weeks ago, when I first noticed that my bottle of comfrey essence had been misplaced in a hasty and clumsy way as if she had been measuring the contents in secret. The fact that Evans' pills seemed to help him must have tipped her off; no Muggle invention should have been stronger than Wolfsbane brewed according to the standard recipe. She was in my N.E.W.T.-level class and she is fully capable of brewing the potion herself, and I knew from her face that he will never drink another drop I have brewed for him. I suppose she also means to marry him and spend the rest of her life nursing an invalid and producing bubble-gum-pink children who howl at the moon. I cannot account for her tastes, but I have considerable respect for her intelligence.

My work is incomplete, but I do not regret what I have done. Long years for long years; pain for pain; inaction for inaction; silence for silence; a sin of omission for a sin of omission. Measure for measure. That is justice as I understand it, and as I have executed it.