Mist and Vapors

Severus stopped in the middle of the large, wood-paneled office, wand held at the ready by his side. A huge marble fireplace took up most of one wall, and the illusion of rain pelted against the enchanted window. Hannigan closed the folder on the desk in front of him with a sharp snap.

"It's all right, Wilson," he said, waving away the little wizard, who had followed Severus into the room. "But keep the door open, just in case." He turned his eyes back on Snape with mock courtesy. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?"

The smugly calm look on his face confirmed all Snape's worst suspicions. He had her. It was, in a way, good news. Hannigan, he thought, was much less likely to cause Hannah actual harm than Pettigrew, the other possible culprit in her abduction. She was the man's daughter, after all.

At the same time, the idea that Hannigan thought he had the right to kidnap Hannah from right under Snape's nose to prevent her from marrying him was insufferable. Hate boiled up from where it had been simmering away steadily ever since he had left Hogwarts. Wasn't it enough for Hannigan to have thrown him into a cell half-dead, to have publicly humiliated him, to have ruined his reputation by spreading lies in the papers, all with impunity? Did he have to make Hannah a pawn in his game, as well? She is mine, he thought savagely. By her own choice, she is mine. And I want her back. Now. His fingers curled tightly around his wand. "What have you done with her?" he spat. "Tell me or I'll..."

"Or you'll what?" Hannigan interrupted, looking at the tense figure of the Potions master with a smirk. "There are more than two dozen Aurors outside these doors at the moment. You just try something, Snape, and you'll find yourself in a cell before you can say 'Azkaban'. - But what was it you were trying to tell me? That someone is missing?"

Severus' knuckles turned white around his wand. McGonagall, eyebrows raised in alarm, quickly took a step forward. "We can't find Hannah at the moment," she said crisply. "We were wondering if you had any idea as to her whereabouts?"

Hannigan calmly rose from his chair and walked around the desk. "So she has finally come to her senses and taken herself off, has she? About time, I would say." He turned a wide, shark-like smile towards Severus. "You didn't think she would stay, did you? Why on earth would she? She may have deluded herself for a while into thinking you have hidden depths, but whatever else she is, she's a clever girl. I knew she would come to realize her mistake before it was too late."

To his surprise, Severus discovered that Hannigan's darts had fallen short of the target. Not too long ago, he would have been only too ready to believe that Hannah had taken a good look at him and taken off running. But not now. Not any more. There was a flicker of triumph in his eyes - he knew the man's taunts had no basis in reality. The red fog clouding his vision condensed into a small, hard pebble of loathing, sitting cold in the pit of his stomach. Let the man talk. This wasn't about Hannigan. This was about getting Hannah back. He exhaled slowly, willing his nerves to steady.

"Don't take me for a fool." He enunciated each word softly and clearly as he took a menacing step forward. McGonagall put a warning hand on his arm. He shook it off in irritation. "She is an adult, and so am I. You have absolutely no right to interfere."

"Interfere with what?" Hannigan was the very picture of wide-eyed innocence.

"So you expect me to believe this has nothing to do with our upcoming wedding?" he asked, his voice tinted with disbelief.

"Wedding? She actually agreed to marry you? Isn't that rich. Small wonder she ran," Hannigan said with a snicker. "That's the stuff of nightmares, that is."

"Where is she? You can't..."

"I will assign an Auror or two to look into the matter," Hannigan interrupted him dismissively. "It's more than I would do if it weren't my daughter we were talking about." His voice took on a sickly sweet, pitying quality. "But try not to fret yourself too much, Snape. I am sure she is just fine. As I said, I assume she has just taken herself off to think things over somewhere without having to look at your ugly nose."

For a second, there was the overwhelming urge lash out, to take the information he need by force. But any attempt in that direction would earn him nothing but a guaranteed ticket to Azkaban. Nothing would please Hannigan more. And help Hannah less. He let out a slow breath. "You have my word that if you let her go, we will disappear and you will never have to deal with either one of us again. But let her go."

"I repeat, I have no idea what you are talking about," Hannigan said, a note of steel in his voice. "And I suggest you leave now before I have you arrested for trespassing. You have quite overstayed your welcome."

McGonagall put a hand on his arm again. "This is useless, Severus. Let's go, please."

Snape stood indecisively for a moment. But McGonagall was right - his chances of getting any further information out of Hannigan were minimal. "This isn't over," he said in a soft, deadly voice. "Let her go, or I will find her. And if I find you have hurt so much as a hair on her head...." He let his voice trail off.

"You aren't threatening me, are you?" Hannigan said, with a smile and cold eyes. "That isn't a smart thing to do, Snape. You should know that by now." He raised his voice as he turned towards the door. "Wilson! Our guests are leaving."

"We can see ourselves out," Snape said sharply. He turned abruptly and, followed by McGonagall, strode out the door, past the disgruntled secretary, and into the cubicle-filled room outside. "Assign an Auror or two, will he?" he muttered, lips pinched in a tight line. "Well, maybe we can help him with that."

.-.-.-.-.

After they had left, Hannigan returned to the papers on his desk. Distractedly, he opened the folder and read the top parchment, signed his name with an angry stab of the quill, and put it to the side. A few more signatures and he called Wilson. "Take these and see that they get to whomever they concern," he said shortly as he handed him the stack. "And shut the door on your way out. I need some time alone."

Once the door was closed, he turned his back to the antechamber and furtively pulled a mirror out of the pocket of his suit jacket. He breathed on it and used his sleeve to polish a few fingerprints off the glass. It was an inconspicuous thing - round; baby-blue plastic; the kind of mirror a little girl might have.

"Peter Pettigrew," he whispered hoarsely.

It took a moment, and then the rodent-like face appeared in the mirror. "What do you want? We agreed to let Snape stew for a while," a whiny voice issued from the image. "Can't you be patient?"

"Our boy just paid me a visit," Hannigan said sharply. "He's cleverer than we thought; he didn't wait for our invitation. Somehow, he figured out that I have something to do with his dearest's disappearance. We'll have to hurry up. I don't trust Snape; he has proven unexpectedly slippery in the past. I don't want him to slip away yet again."

"Did you get what I asked for?"

Hannigan nodded. "Stationed to answer my summons at a moment's notice."

The face in the mirror snickered. "So we'll both get what we have been waiting for. We make a good team, don't you think?"

Hannigan's face grew hard. "We are not and will never be a team."

"Whatever you say, Frank." The face in the mirror sniffed, nose wrinkling. "Go, then, and wait. Just a little while longer. I promise."

"I'll hold you to that," Hannigan said menacingly. "Until later, then."

.-.-.-.

"Well, that was an extraordinarily effective excursion, wasn't it?" Minerva said dryly, hurrying after Snape, who was striding down the aisle reading the nameplates attached to the outside cubicle walls.

"Marston, O'Hara, Slop, Weinberg...ah, Tonks." He walked into the cubicle, where a witch with spiky chartreuse hair, feet up on her desk, sat staring morosely at a piece of parchment in her hand. Severus looked at the young Auror in distaste. Tonks, with her puppy-dog enthusiasm and bumbling ways, was not one of his favorites by a long shot, but she was the last remaining Order member in the Auror Department, and thus their best hope for information. Beggars can't be choosers.

He wrinkled his nose as his eyes darted around the impossibly cluttered cubicle. Every surface was covered with piles of parchments, the walls covered with flyers and a variety of posters ranging from 'Most Wanted' to the 'Weird Sisters'. While he was looking, an inter-office memo zoomed by on smooth paper-airplane wings and landed with a dejected air in what he assumed was the 'in' box, joining a large pile of other unread mail.

"Nymphadora." He curtly inclined his head.

At the sound of his voice, she turned in surprise. "Hey! - And it's Tonks." She shot him a withering glance before breaking into a smile. "I hear you're getting married. Congratulations."

Snape looked at her through narrowed eyes. "How did you find out?"

Tonks shrugged. "Clerk from the Registry told Undersecretary Blalocks's clerk who told Auror Elyot when he went to pick up some papers. Word got around from there." She grinned up at him. "You and Hannigan's daughter - that's brilliant! So Saturday's the big day, is it?"

McGonagall cleared her throat in warning as Severus' features tightened. He looked away sharply.

Tonks turned to McGonagall in confusion. "Something the matter?"

"Severus' fiancée seems to have disappeared," McGonagall explained. "And we think chances are good Frank has something to do with her disappearance."

Tonks' eyes grew large. "Well, yes, I suppose he wouldn't be too pleased, would he now? I mean, he hates Snape's, erm, your guts...ehem." She cleared her throat in embarrassment as she looked up at Snape. She lowered her voice. "Anyway, I wouldn't put it past him."

"Neither would we," Snape said grimly, turning back to face her. "Did you happen to notice when he got in today?"

She shrugged. "No, he usually Floos straight to his office. He did have a meeting with senior staff a couple of hours ago. I saw him hang around in front of his office with a few of them afterwards."

"Did you notice anything different?"

"Can't say. He did seem to be in a pretty good mood. Which is somewhat unusual for him these days, now that you mention it." She grinned. "I have the impression that ever since his daughter showed up in court on your behalf, he is having a much harder time managing Minister Graham to his satisfaction. That was a fine, brave thing she did."

"Yes," Snape said in a clipped voice. "It was." His gaze strayed to the wall beside him. A flyer blinked 'Seminar - Blind Pursuit Spell' across the top in inch-high, neon-green letters, and beneath it, a miniature Death Eater popped up in different places across the paper, with an equally small Auror following him around in hot pursuit. The message 'Improve your tracking skills!' scrolled along the bottom.

"I'm really sorry, Snape," Tonks said awkwardly. "It's a tough break, this close to the wedding. I wish there was anything I could do, but..."

He cut her off abruptly, pointing to the flyer. "What's this?"

"That?" Tonks blinked. "That's old. It was a seminar we had, oh, something like three months ago, maybe? I should have taken it down ages ago. Why?"

"So what was it?" Snape snapped impatiently. "Could you kindly tell me?"

"All right then," she snapped back. "It's some fairly recent stuff the Spell Research Department has come up with. The spell is," she cast a furtive glance at Snape's left arm, "based on the Dark Mark. You see, to Apparate, you have to be able to visualize the destination, right? Well, Riddle managed to figure out a way to allow his minions to Apparate to his side without knowing where they were going. Spell Research thought it would be a useful skill to have, obviously - to follow suspects, or to track escaped prisoners, that sort of thing."

"And? Does it work?"

She shrugged. "Well, they haven't been successful in fixing the tracking spell on any one person so far. But they managed to figure out that if they can bespell an object and plant it on the person in question, then an Auror can follow even after Disapparation. The spell isn't incredibly precise, but it'll land you within a couple hundred yards of the target object. And they managed to configure the spell so you don't accidentally rematerialize inside a solid wall or something like that. It's better than nothing. "

"And you know how to do this?"

"Yeeesss...," Tonks said warily. "Why?"

Snape pointed his wand at all four cubicle walls, muttering 'Muffliato' as he flicked it at each one in turn before turning back to Tonks. "To track Hannigan," he said bluntly. "If I can follow him, I can find Hannah."

"Now wait a minute," Tonks protested. "If he finds out, he'll have my head on a platter. And if I cast the spell, I'll have to be the one to follow him."

"He won't find out. You're a Metamorphmagus, in case you forgot," Snape said scathingly. "Surely you can come up with some disguise he hasn't seen?"

"It's not that!" Tonks said in an aggrieved voice. "They never use me for stealth and tracking assignments. Heavens, Snape, you've been around me often enough! I'm bound to trip up somewhere and mess the whole thing up."

"Then Side-Along Apparate me to the spot. I'll take it from there," Snape cut in impatiently. "It is not that difficult, really. That is if you are willing to help, of course."

"Oh fine, then. Go on. Got anything in mind to place the charm on?" She leaned back in her chair. "It's got to be small enough to slip in his pocket without him noticing."

"You don't say?" he said, looking down at her with disdain. "That clever bit of deduction would never have occurred to me."

McGonagall looked at him with disapproval. "She is sticking her neck out for you, in case you haven't noticed."

With an effort, he unclenched his hands. "If we could just get on with it?" he said tightly.

Avoiding his eyes, Tonks rummaged around in a drawer. "How about this?" She held up a paperclip. Snape nodded his approval; Tonks muttered an incantation, the paperclip briefly glowed pink, and then she leaned back. "Now, how do we get that into Hannigan's pocket?"

She had barely finished the sentence when Snape had already grabbed the paperclip and was on his way out of the cubicle. McGonagall followed him hurriedly.

"I will need you to distract Hannigan for just a moment," he muttered at her out of the corner of his mouth as, robes billowing behind him, he strode back down the aisle towards Hannigan's office. "It'll only take a second or two to direct it into one of his pockets. But I need him to look at you instead of me for just that long. Do you think you can manage?"

"I'll think of something," Minerva said with grim determination. "Let me handle this." She pulled ahead of him right as they reached their destination. Snape in tow, she pushed through the outer doors, muttered 'just forgot something, dear man, t'will only be a minute' with a sweet and sour smile while otherwise ignoring the outraged utterances of Wilson-the-secretary, and strode straight into Hannigan's office.

Too late.

A last flicker of flame died down in the fireplace as a few flakes of ash lazily floated down onto the hearth rug.

Hannigan was gone.

.-.-.-.

After her father had left, Hannah had done all she could to find a way to escape. She had tried the door and found it locked. Peering out through the tiny view panel set in the top yielded no important information - there was just a dark, non-descript corridor, another door or two, a glimpse of a staircase. She had pushed the bedside table over to the window and climbed up to looked out. All she could see was a mostly deserted backstreet alley; rubbish bins sat out along the pavement, waiting for collection. As her father had said, the window did not budge an inch. She took off her shoe and hit the windowpane as hard as she could - she might as well have been hitting a solid rock wall for all the good it did. And even if she had managed to get the window open somehow, there would have been a steep drop down.

Next, she had examined the bathroom - no window, nothing to use as a tool, just a small shower with a grimy plastic shower curtain, a cracked sink, and a toilet. No hope there.

Finally satisfied that her options were exhausted, she curled up miserably on the bed. She now regretted not having taken the sandwich - her stomach was starting to rumble, and the cup of water didn't do much to calm it down.

She lay on her side, her thoughts starting to rumble as well. How to get out of here? What to do? Severus would come looking for her once he figured out she was gone. The thought did nothing to ease her fears. Even right now, he might be walking straight into the trap they had set for him. 'They' - her father and who? She had to get out, somehow. But how? There had to be a way...and she had to find it before he had a chance to put her in a bodybind again.

Minutes and hours seemed to crawl by as her thoughts ran around in circles. She looked up with clenched jaws when Frank opened the door an indeterminate amount of time later.

"Did you have a nice day?" he asked facetiously, twirling his wand nonchalantly as he stopped through the doorway.

"Oh, lovely, thank you for asking," she said, a sarcastic edge to her voice as she sat up. "And yours went well, I trust?"

"Quite. You wouldn't believe who came to see me," he said, lips curling down. "Severus Snape. Imagine that."

Hannah looked up sharply. "And?"

Frank shrugged. "And nothing. A bit too early out of the starting gate, he was. I told him I had no idea what he was talking about. A sore disappointment to him, I believe - not at all what he wanted to hear."

Her stomach clenching, she stood up abruptly. Severus. A pang of longing, so sharp it hurt. Merlin, she wanted him right now. He would know what to do. He was much more experienced at this sort of thing than she was... "What did he say?" she asked, cursing the tremor in her voice.

"Nothing much. 'Let her go, and I'll be a good boy from now on.' That sort of thing," Frank said, a nasty edge to his smile. "But let's talk about something more pleasant, shall we? Are you hungry yet? I could fix you a sandwich if you want."

Hannah looked at him resentfully.

"Well, yes or no?" he asked irritably. "Which will it be?"

She swallowed with difficulty. No use in biting off her nose to spite her face - starving herself would not improve her situation. "I am hungry," she admitted, trying to keep her voice neutral.

Frank looked pleased. "Well, I'll be right back, then!"

She ran to the door as soon as he had left. No, of course he hadn't been careless enough to leave it open. When she heard his footsteps coming back down the corridor, she hurried back to her place on the bed. He entered the room balancing a sandwich in one hand and a glass of milk in the other. With his chin, he pointed to the corner of the room. "Go sit down over there - or do I have to get my wand out?"

Resentfully, Hannah crouched down in the corner he had indicated. Cautiously keeping an eye on her, he moved up to the bedside table and put down the food before backing up again. "There. Eat," he said.

Hannah got off the floor and sat down on the bed, but she didn't pick up her sandwich immediately. "So, did you find out any more about your 'plans'?"

Hannigan shrugged. "I am still waiting for specifics." The nasty grin had reappeared on his face.

"So who is your partner?" Hannah asked with a carefully preserved air of being unconcerned.

For a moment, Hannigan hesitated. "Well..." He shrugged, then conceded with a grin. "I suppose it won't matter if I tell you. You'll have on a Silencing charm before we go, anyway. And you get to permanently say goodbye to your memories once we are finished, so no harm done, right? It's Pettigrew."

Hannah sat still for a moment, too stunned to speak. Then, she exploded. "PETTIGREW? Are you out of your bloody mind? How can even talk about justice if you are willing to work with a remorseless killer like Pettigrew simply to catch Severus? I can't believe you!"

Hannigan's face had gone sour. "You don't understand."

"DON'T UNDERSTAND? What the hell is there not to understand?" Hannah had got up, and stood slightly leaning forward, with hands balled by her side, a hectic blush on her cheeks. "How can you?"

"Sit down." Hannigan took a menacing step forward. "And just for your information, I know full well Pettigrew is as bad or worse than Snape. But I'll take the sparrow in the hand at the moment." As Hannah sat down resentfully, he paced the far end of the room. "I haven't been able to catch either Snape or Pettigrew. After tonight, I'll have at least one of them disposed of." He grinned slyly. "And if I play my cards right, I may have both."

"I suppose it serves Pettigrew right if he is stupid enough to trust you," she said bitterly. "You two deserve each other."

"Oh, he doesn't trust me," Hannigan said complacently. "He is making as sure as possible that he is in control of the situation. I don't know where he is, I don't know his exact plan, I can't even try to have an owl followed - he has limited all communications. But I think I can outsmart him. And if not - well, I'll at least have Snape. One nasty, murderous, Dark, good-for-nothing wizard down. I'll worry about the other one later."

Hannah looked at him with a bitter smile. "Severus is none of those things."

"He is the worst kind of wizard there is," Hannigan said with conviction.

"That's codswallop. And furthermore, you know that it is," she said dismissively. "Your whole plan hinges on the gamble that he will value his life less than mine, that he will do something unselfish and noble, and knowingly place himself in danger to save me. If you ask me, in being so damn certain your plan will succeed you are paying him a huge compliment."

Hannigan opened his mouth as if to answer, then closed it again. "Eat your sandwich; we don't have all day," he said roughly. "And otherwise, keep your mouth shut."