Shadows Came to Stay

Professor Severus Snape was the son of two blood traitors, and he laughed like a hissing snake. "My, but this has made me thirsty. More tea, Mr. Potter?"

Harry hadn't been in the Headmistress' office before. He'd never expected to set foot in it during his training. Even now, after his judges had escorted him up here, he remained untouched by the tiny electric thrill that he would have otherwise felt at accessing a forbidden room; he was too sickened, too nervous, to feel much of anything. His full cup of tea, on his lap, was stone cold. "I'm not thirsty, sir," he mumbled, flattening his bangs.

Professor Snape's thin, cruel lips pulled down in a disdainful sneer. "Already had a drink from his skull, then?"

"Severus, that was completely uncalled for," McGonagall snapped from behind her wide mahogany desk. She looked calm and unaffected as she stroked the back of her familiar, a sleek tabby cat. Harry wondered if she cared about what was on her tea table at all.

"What, Minerva? What?" Snape shot back. He gestured to the mess on the tea table as he said, "You expect me to keep quiet about something like...this?"

Harry had spared the blood traitor when he was still able to distinguish one star from another. By the time clouds obscured most of those stars in hazy whiteness, he'd brought back the pureblood's severed head, transfixed with terror and dripping gore, to where his judges were hidden. At the time, he congratulated himself on his superior attempt at Transfiguration -- the 'head' was nearly a perfect match to the real thing. But one glance at the identical expressions of horror on his judges' faces was enough to make his heart drop and make him realize he'd made the wrong decision. That 'head' lay on the tea table now, between Harry and Snape, making a mockery of Dumbledore's mercy.

None of the judges wanted to be here; from the expressions on their faces, Harry could tell their minds were already made up. They stood in a rough semicircle behind McGonagall's chair, averting their eyes, refusing to look at him and Snape and the 'head' like the headmistress dared. "Where's Rubeus?" she asked, ignoring Snape's question.

Snape's sneer grew more pronounced at that name. "Off with the last student," he announced, "as I would be, if Mr. Potter had the slightest idea of what he was supposed to do."

"Bones was back an hour ago," McGonagall objected. "They gave her an O. He should be here!"

"There's no need to wait for Hagrid." Professor Flitwick, the Curses teacher, had to shout to be heard even when no one was speaking. "As good as Potter's Severing Charm is, he didn't follow directions. I gave him an A."

"Exactly. Keep it to yourself, Snape!" Moody growled. "He killed the blood traitor, didn't he? There's one less in the world, isn't there? Isn't that the whole point? He deserves that A."

"The point, Alastor, is to demonstrate the ability to follow directions," the Poisons Master explained coolly. "If some slip of a boy doesn't understand the importance of obedience to Dumbledore's Army now, what makes you think he'll understand it two years from now? It's a sign he can't be trusted."

"So what, exactly, proved your obedience to the army? Was it a certain assassination?" Moody's eyebrows wiggled suggestively.

"Enough!" McGonagall snapped as Snape turned an unlovely maroon color. There seemed an odd haste in the way she had said the word, but Harry felt so disconnected from the moment that he didn't register it -- no more than he registered the fact that his judges were discussing him. Does lying do this to you? It might explain why the headmistress was so curiously emotionless.

She opened her mouth to say something more, but the door to the office opened so loudly that even Snape gave a start, and McGonagall's familiar jumped off its perch on the desk, frightened. The pictures lining the room's walls trembled in their frames as Professor Rubeus Hagrid, the Deputy Headmaster, squeezed himself through the door and stamped in. Despite his fierce black eyes and wild black beard, he was deceptively soft, and Harry looked in his direction hopefully as he entered. Surely he would save him from Snape's protests!

"Harry," Hagrid said warmly, turning his attention quickly to McGonagall as she cleared her throat. "What's the trouble, Headmistress?"

"Potter brought back something very interesting from his O.W.L.s," she explained tersely, gesturing vaguely at the decapitated head. The glimmering light in Hagrid's dark eyes dimmed as he glanced at it, and Harry suddenly felt very ashamed at his behavior. He couldn't pretend to be ashamed when McGonagall looked like that -- after all, he didn't know her very well. But Hagrid was his friend, and a frequent visitor to the Potter home, and that expression of disappointment hurt. It'll be even worse when they find out I Transfigured it, he knew.

"You did that, Harry?" the half-giant said hoarsely. Harry squirmed uncomfortably before he nodded assent.

"Don't make me give you a handkerchief, Rubeus," Moody growled. "He killed the blood traitor. It takes a lot of bravery to do something like that."

"Bravery the students don't need to show until their N.E.W.T.s," Flitwick pointed out.

"Quiet!" McGonagall said warningly. "Rubeus, we wanted to know what you thought. Most of us gave him an A, but Severus seems to think he should fail."

Hagrid was looking at Moody as he said, "H...he killed the blood traitor. I reckon he should get an A."

"Severus, you appear to be quite alone in this," McGonagall pointed out. "I think Rubeus' opinion is enough. What you did was deplorable, Potter. I'm taking one hundred points from Gryffindor and giving you a week's detention, but--"

"Do any of you know where the body is? Did you see it? Did you take pictures?" Snape was on to something; he dashed Harry's hopes of an easy escape. He was looking at Moody, too, his black eyes narrowed, his long fingers steepled.

"We didn't think it was necessary," McGonagall said after a pause. "We thought the head was enough proof. Severus, what are you driving at?"

"I'm not driving at anything, Minerva, I think I'm being quite clear," Snape said coolly. "Tell us where the body is, Potter!"

It wasn't fair! He wasn't skilled enough to lie! Harry nearly spilled the cup of tea on his lap, but he set it beside him on the ground before any damage could be done. "I reckon it's still on the lawn of the Malfoy Manor," he stammered.

"That's what you reckon, is it? Well, I suppose you wouldn't mind us going to search for it, would you?" Snape withdrew his wand, as if to Apparate.

"NO!" Harry said quickly, his eyes wide.

"What's wrong, Potter? You killed the pureblood, didn't you? Didn't Transfigure anything to get out of your O.W.L.s, did you? You can prove everything, can't you?"

"I -- I don't--" Harry wasn't sure what to say. Every answer he thought of would only lead him into one of Snape's carefully baited traps.

"Well, if you can't prove anything, and you don't want us to see the body, you've left me no choice. Finite Incantatem!" Snape snapped, canceling Harry's Transfiguration spell. He looked positively triumphant as he held up a fistful of the leaves the Gryffindor had Transfigured into the pureblood's 'head.' "Care to explain this away, Potter?"

Harry's jaw worked, a hazy gray panic overtaking his actions and thoughts. "I--" he looked around desperately for anything that might give him inspiration to lie. "I--"

McGonagall was the first of the judges to recover. "You cheated on something as important as the O.W.L.s? You let a pureblood go? Why? What was going through your head, Potter?"

If he thought Hagrid had been disappointed before, it was nothing compared to how he looked now: positively crushed. Despair and self-pity washed over Harry, even as he took responsibility for his actions. "He told me you lied -- that he hadn't killed anyone at all. I felt guilty. I believed him. I had to let him go, miss."

"I wondered when we'd see this whiter-than-white Potter," Snape said smugly, a satisfied smile enhancing his ugly features.

McGonagall gave Severus a long look until his smile faltered just a little. She turned her attention quickly back to Harry, who was looking intently at the floor. "Look at me, Potter. How could you believe that? He was about to die. What did you think he was going to say, that he had killed her? Of course he wanted you to believe he was innocent."

Harry chewed the inside of his cheek, unwilling to admit that he had been a git.

"You do realize, Potter, that your tuition is paid by athletic scholarship? That you've jeopardized that scholarship by your actions?"

"Yes, miss."

"It's as I said at the beginning, Minerva," Snape said. "The boy obviously can't be trusted. Expulsion is the only answer."

"Loath as I am to agree with Snape, that does seem the responsible thing to do." It didn't sound as though Moody believed what he was saying. His mad eye rolled with electric blue anger.

When Harry, wondering what his mother would say and hating himself, didn't raise any objections, the headmistress sighed. "Well--"

Cho looked up, her face contorted in thought; she must have been thinking for some time. "Headmistress," she ventured carefully, "Harry performed exceptionally well on the written portion of his O.W.L.s. He got several O's and E's. There are several others in the same situation -- mostly Hufflepuffs, but--"

"Minister Dumbledore has no use for assassins who can't kill," Snape interrupted silkily.

"Quiet, Severus!" McGonagall barked. "Go on, Chang."

"Perhaps they were unsure, like Harry, or maybe they froze -- sometimes I have test anxiety. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is, maybe they would benefit if they saw someone else perform an assassination before they tried again."

"But why should we let them try again?" Flitwick wondered. "They've had five years to master the technique, haven't they? And who would be willing to kill another pureblood and take time out of their busy schedule for a handful of students?"

"Not everyone learns at the same speed! And Professor Snape, if they meant to betray us, they've had five years to do so!" Cho countered the Poisons Master before he even opened his mouth, her hands on her hips, her brows knit. "Who'd be willing to help out a 'handful of students'? I would! There's no reason to let them go if they know what they're supposed to do! They could go on to become productive members of society, like the Poisons Master!"

Harry looked up at Cho, his eyes wide. Could this be happening? Was she, a pretty and successful sixth year, really arguing to help him, some lowly fifth year, pass? It seemed inexplicable -- but it made hope dance in his belly, and he decided he quite liked that feeling. He didn't raise any objections.

McGonagall made a mark on a piece of parchment. "Tomorrow's the make-up day," she said. "We've dropped one Ravenclaw from the roll, and there's no one to kill who they were assigned. You could demonstrate how to do it on him, and they could re-test some time next week. You're doing a selfless thing, Chang."

Cho flushed with pleasure. "They had the best of intentions," she maintained, then lapsed into silence. Harry was silent, too, though he meant to thank his headmistress for this opportunity. Shock wouldn't allow him to speak. He was being given a second chance!

Snape, who must have seen his chance to expel Harry slipping away, argued vainly, "They're a security threat, Minerva! You can't, on good conscience, allow Chang to teach them this!"

"You had your chance, Severus, and you lost it. Rubeus, escort Potter back to his common room."

* * *

When the wizard was told he had two weeks to live, he laughed aloud. "This has to be a mistake," he told the mudblooded Healer, absently rubbing the translucent skin of one of his wrists. "I was admitted to get rid of boils -- my granddaughter, she doesn't know how to use her wand yet, silly girl--"

"I remember, Mister..." The Healer was only a second-year resident, and didn't use magical assistance to shuffle through his many charts. "Mr. Riddle. Anyhow, I was there when they brought you up to Spell Damage. I remember how you looked. It's not that at all -- the restorative draught is working beautifully. You'll heal fully."

"What is it, then?"

"Oh, the DA is going to use you to test some of their N.E.W.T.s-level students," the mudblood said cheerfully. When he smiled, as he did now, his pockmarked face seemed less hideous. "It shouldn't be so bad -- they'll just capture you, interrogate you, then kill you. You won't suffer overmuch -- unless they fancy the idea of torturing you."

Mr. Riddle could have choked on his fury. This entire ordeal -- that started with his daughter's idiot of a child thinking it a good idea to practice a spell she'd just learned on him, messing it up horribly, and ended with him in St. Mungo's, listening to some lowly resident tell him benignly that he was going to die -- was thoroughly humiliating, but this final announcement exceeded his patience. He was Tom Marvolo Riddle after all, not a man to be threatened by pimply Healers with lispy voices.

The sole good that had come of this was his escape from his parasite of a daughter, who constantly tried to sway him to the side of 'good.' She disliked his stance on wizard-muggle relations and deplored his underground activities with purebloods, a fact he'd kept in mind as he packed for his stay here. In his suitcase had gone the jimson weeds, the Sneakoscopes, the All-Seeing Eyes, all the incriminating evidence she knew he had and would likely hand over to the army as soon as he was gone. The more time he spent thinking in this lonely room on the fourth floor of St. Mungo's, the more he suspected it was her, not his granddaughter, who'd plotted to debilitate him.

There was another thing in his suitcase that she'd never know about. He'd stored the project of a long complicated month in a vial and thrown it in with his other things on a whim -- perhaps there was something in the wind that made him do it. It was harmless in its present form and he'd questioned that decision before, but now it looked as if it might come in handy.

"Mr. Riddle?" the Healer asked politely.

Tom looked up from his introspection.

"There you are," he said cheerfully. "I thought I'd lost you. Anyway--"

"Why are they going to assassinate me? Have they forgotten I'm a halfblood?" He could barely keep the disdain out of his voice as he said that disgusting word.

"You know, that's the other thing." He was frowning as he looked down at the chart. "Some sergeant in the DA -- Umbridge, I believe they said her name was -- led a raid on your mansion earlier today. They found a letter from a pureblood to you and what they think is a manticore. It's enough to link you to the blood traitors. The minister's already signed the order for your execution. Sorry."

Alise hid them from me, Tom knew at once, his blood burning with the fiery injustice of it all. If he got out of this, his daughter would be the first to go. Damn Alise! Damn her damn her damn her! "You didn't answer my question! The Killing Curse doesn't kill us!"

"Ordinarily, you're right." The Healer set aside his clipboard and withdrew his wand. "Bare your left forearm and hold it out, please. I need to mark you."

Does he really expect me to comply? Maybe he's as big a fool as he looks. "And why would I want to do that?" Tom asked through clenched teeth. "I like living just fine, thank you."

"There are two members of the army outside, if you'd like to discuss it with them," the mudblood said politely. Tom's eyes slid away from the Healer and his wand to look through his door, just slightly ajar. He was alarmed to see two shapes outfitted in the priestly white robes of Dumbledore's Army lurking outside the threshold. Reluctantly, his eyes straying to his suitcase, he held out his left forearm.

"Isn't it nice to be obedient? Morsmordre!" An annoying, vaguely disturbing pain drilled itself into Tom's forearm. He dared to look at the spell playing itself out. A vivid green thread of magic was issuing from the wand, coiling around the white flesh of his left arm, irritating the skin, carving a drawing into it. He wasn't sure what it was. When its work was done, it retreated back into the wood.

The Healer tucked away his wand. "It'll grow darker as your time grows nearer," he explained. "Don't look so afraid -- it won't hurt as it colors. All right?"

Tom couldn't take his eyes off of his arm. The mindless green thread had left behind an unbroken line of raised irritated flesh, definitely forming a shape that could have been a skull, though it was too soon to say for sure. And there was another shape curving within the larger one, shifting and moving-- "All right," Tom affirmed, his voice hard with hate.

"Your assassins want to meet you," the Healer announced, turning away from him to retrieve his clipboard. "They're here on a day pass from Hogwarts. It might be beneficial to them -- and to you -- if you all meet together. You don't really mind meeting them, do you?"

What harm could it do? Tom reasoned. Most likely he'd be able to turn the situation to his advantage. Perhaps he'd even be able to assassinate the assassins! He moved his head in the briefest of nods. Relieved, the Healer shot a significant glance at the door. Obviously waiting for this sign, the two nondescript members of Dumbledore's Army pushed open the door and ushered in two identical red-haired Hogwarts students, both smiling smugly. Their eyes went to him immediately as the door closed. Tom looked at them as well, searching for some excuse to make, some weakness to exploit.

Before he could speak, they pulled out of bed and, stumbling, to his feet. Cold air pressed against the backs of his thighs and he was reminded that the hospital gown he wore didn't tie properly in the back. "Hullo, bloke!" one of them said warmly, pumping his left hand enthusiastically. The other boomed some equally intimate greeting and patted him on the back, hard. Tom was too bewildered to retaliate.

Once these bizarre greetings had been exchanged several times, the boys sat him firmly down on the edge of his bed and plopped down on either side of him, their arms slung affectionately about his shoulders. They were much too close for comfort. "I'm Fred, he's George. Nice private room you've got here. D'you like toffee?" Fred shoved a brightly colored wrapper underneath his nose.

Disgusted, Tom pushed his hand away. "Another time," he begged off.

"Yeah, maybe you'll be more in the mood for toffee in two weeks," said George. A little

notepad, opened to a clean page, rested on his lap, and there was a quill in one of his freckled hands. "So, how d'you feel?"

"Fine, actually."

"No, no! How d'you feel about dying?" Fred asked impatiently.

This exchange was making him dizzy. He needed to concentrate on what was in his suitcase, how he was going to get to it. "I've only known I'm going to die for ten minutes," he said.

"No reaction? You just don't care? No dizzy spells, runny stools?" George was writing furiously on his little notepad.

When Tom shook his head, Fred sighed. "This is difficult," he said. "We're trying to gauge the reactions of blood traitors when they're told they're going to die. We were thinking of releasing a candy that simulates the effects."

"We're opening a joke shop, you know," said George.

"No, I didn't know."

"Well, I guess you can tell us how you feel when we come to kill you. By the way, d'you have any final requests to make? You know, a favor for a favor?" Fred looked at him beadily.

Thank you, boy, for being such a complete and utter fool. "Actually, there is one thing," Tom said slowly. "It's in my suitcase. I brought it with me since it gives me comfort...but I suppose I've no more use for it, since I'm going to die. I want my daughter to have it -- if someone else got their hands on it, I think it'd break her heart." And what a blessing that would be.