Endings and Beginnings

As Snape sat at Dumbledore's bedside he couldn't stop thinking about how those two little three-year-olds got past his wards. He had tested them. No one could possibly have gone into his rooms without meeting a brick wall and having a terrible sense of dread. Last time someone had tried it he had found her sitting in the middle of the hall gibbering and holding herself. That hadn't been more than three weeks ago when Lupin and Angie had come so Lupin could try the improved wolfsbane potion they had been concocting.

Angie claimed she thought the door was the bathroom. Who would ward a bathroom? The young woman was snooping, and Snape didn't like it at all.

But Dumbledore trusted her the way he trusted him. But Dumbledore had been wrong before. It was one reason he wanted to stay in his rooms during the party. But he had overslept. He looked over his rooms carefully after Hermione left. Nothing was taken or disturbed in any way except the bookshelf and the pillowcase, which Hermione had cleaned for him.

He said and did nothing during the party because he knew that Dumbledore would not be happy. He had waited out of respect for the old man to check his rooms again. He knew no one had entered them because he had charmed alarms inside and out. He would have known immediately if anyone had even entered the corridor.

Snape warded Albus' bed, called Winky, and apparated to the door of his rooms. He checked his wards. They seemed perfectly well in place. There was the wall; there was the sense of dread. Maybe it was because those two ignored fear. Still, they shouldn't have gotten past the wall. He conjured a cannonball and rammed it into the wall, but it stood firm. Maybe he needed another type of wall. He stepped into his rooms and warded the door this time with a double-thickness steel wall. And he added extra repelling charms. That should work, he thought.

He certainly hoped so.

He apparated back to Albus's sitting room. Once again he transfigured the couch into a camp bed. He had been sleeping on a four-poster the day Albus had wondered out into the woods, and he was determined to sleep lightly from then on. Therefore he would deny himself comfort. It made sleeping in his own bed even more luxurious. Maybe that was the reason for his slowed reflexes.

Maybe it was also because he felt relatively safe for the first time in years. He knew the danger was still out there, but right now ex-Death Eaters weren't going to come to France and hunt out Order members.

Besides, the house they lived in was the second safest place in the Wizarding world to Hogwarts itself. A large number of people had worked together to make it that way. One could not apparate to or from the house, however one could apparate into and out of unwarded rooms once inside. That convenience was in case there was an emergency and somebody was needed to go from one part of the house to another immediately. The house was unplottable. There were only two fireplaces on the floo network inside the house: the one in Albus' sitting room and the one in the Hall. Both were closely monitored. Also Minerva McGonagall was secret keeper. Anyone who wanted to visit Albus had to owl or visit Minerva first. She sent out the invitations to Albus's party.

There were very old wards on the house and grounds that were set there by the original occupants. The house had originally been the home of Juliet Beauxbaton and her brother Maurice, the founders of Beauxbatons School. Their descendants, incidentally, had sold it to Albus. The structure was imbued with light magic. The Order members had added their own wards, making the demesne even more secure.

The house itself was a heavy, two-story, cross-shaped Romanesque structure made of Alpine granite with red Italian marble columns. There was a huge atrium downstairs with crescent-shaped staircases on the left and right. Huge doors in the wall behind the crescents led to the entrance to the hall. Bathrooms were on each side of the entrance area. The hall itself was a two stories tall with two rows of columns down the center. The upstairs had an east and a west wing, each with six spacious rooms. Albus and Severus had taken the East wing because it allowed Albus to bask in the morning sun. To Albus's room was added a balcony. The library and the potions labs were the rooms nearest to the stairs, on the left and right respectively. Albus's sitting room was on the left, and Severus's bedroom was on the right. Albus's bedroom was on the left opposite Severus's sitting room at the end of the hall. Their private bathrooms were rooms added after the house was built, and they were between the bedrooms and the sitting rooms. They had added a half bath in the corner of the potions lab as well.

The west wing of the house had two guest bedrooms and one room that was used for storage. The other three rooms, though kept well by the House Elves, went unused.

Severus felt the need to check every room in the house before actually going to sleep that night. He called Winky to stay at the foot of Albus's bed and went off to inspect the place.

He did a magical scan for evidence that anyone besides Albus, Dasom, or himself had been in any of the rooms. All the rooms on the east wing were untouched that day except his own. He went to the west wing and did the same scan. No one had been in the guest rooms since three weeks ago. The wards were well intact. He unwarded and checked the storage room, and there was no sign of entry or inhabitation. Then he did the same to the unused rooms, including the room on the left side of the end of the hall - the one which featured the white marble caryatid.

When he entered that room the caryatid looked at him and smiled. Snape looked back at it, momentarily surprised. It wasn't the first time he'd seen an animated architectural feature; he just hadn't seen that one move before. He went back to his scan.

"No one's come to visit me until now," said the caryatid. "You are scanning to see if anyone has been here recently. They haven't."

Snape finished his scan and turned to look at the huge woman-shaped column. She was, of course, correct.

"You wizards have a phrase, 'if walls could talk.' I guarantee you they can, and they talk to me," she said.

"Indeed," said Snape.

"Yes, and that's why I'm here," she replied.

"Then I would assume that if the walls can talk, that they observe everything that goes on in the house?"

"Yes, they do."

Snape was certainly glad he had never had a romantic liaison in this house.

"And if you were put here to listen to the walls, I assume you also tell humans what the house sees?" said Snape. It was best to use elementary logic with non-living sentient objects.

"Yes, and no. I do not talk to just anyone; I talk to the residents of the house who come to my room. I will not talk to even the residents if there is a non-resident present."

"Which is why we had no idea you were...animate," concluded Snape.

"Precisely," answered the column-lady. "Is there anything in particular you'd like to know?"

The lady-column couldn't be reading his mind-no, this was just a normal question for her. This was the service she'd been charmed to provide.

"In fact, yes. I wish to know who broke the wards to my rooms earlier," answered Snape.

"The east wing told me. Two very small red-headed girls did it."

"Are you sure there were no adults with them?"

"Not until later. One brown-haired woman came running upstairs and into your rooms. Your wards were already broken at that time."

"Hermione," Snape thought. "So she didn't do it."

"Were there any others?" asked Snape.

"Besides yourself and the old man who lives here, nobody else went upstairs or downstairs today," said the column as if giving a routine report.

"Did the walls...see...how my wards were broken?" asked Snape.

"Your wards produce a brick wall. The wall swung forward as if it was a door," answered the caryotid.

Snape looked momentarily stunned. "Brilliant," he thought. 'But how could two three year olds have the power to do that?"

"That sounds highly unlikely," said Snape.

"I tell only facts," said the caryatid frankly.

"Is there any way I can see what the walls saw myself?" asked Snape.

"Yes. My former masters wanted to do just that frequently," said the caryatid, stretching out her hands. "Take my hands."

Snape took the huge yet delicately carved, cold, marble hands of the statue. Instantly images of all that had happened in the house flooded through his mind. He saw all the guests arrive through the front door and the hall fireplace, he saw the house elves in the servants' area working as well. He saw the "Happy Birthday" song being sung, saw the guests sitting, saw the cake being magically cut and appearing on plates. He saw the children running around the hall and the Weasley girl twins sneaking upstairs. He saw them run up and down the hall touching doors on each side. He saw his ward-wall appear. The girls stopped and looked at it. After a few moments the wall swung open just as the caryatid described. The girls opened his door and went inside. He saw them sneak up to the head of his bed, cake in hand. He let go of the caryatid's hands and looked at her.

"Do you have the information you need?" she asked.

"Yes, I do. You have done well," answered Snape. He had no desire to cross her. Even though she was made of stone, she was a woman, after all. And she seemed to be the main load-bearing column for the ceiling over his head.

The beautifully carved woman smiled.

Snape apparated back to Albus's sitting room and dismissed Winky. He was sure he had explored the house before, but he had never seen that column move in the nearly four years he had been here. He wondered if the column was charmed to sense the need for its services.

In nearly four years no one had so violated their privacy that he needed to use the column. That was truly remarkable considering the number of visitors who had come and brought their children. Then again, no one had ever broken his wards here before.

The next day Severus and Albus got an owl from Lupin. The message was unsigned and merely said, "I need to see you at the earliest opportunity."