Worser Angels

Chapter Four

Fac Me Certiorum

When Draco had pushed his food around his plate for a while, he glanced up at Snape. Could he leave yet?

Snape nodded, and got up to walk out with him.

"See you later, crybaby," Zabini sneered.

Draco ignored him.

"What, aren't you going to curse me, crybaby?"

Snape grabbed his arm and dragged him away. "Come along, Malfoy."

"Yeah, go with your nanny, crybaby."

"Probably needs his nappy changed."

Snape gave him a shove, and he fell ass over teakettle. Snape sneered down at him. "Oh get up."

Draco got to his feet and stumbled after him.

"You all right then?" Snape asked, once they were out of the Great Hall.

"Never better," he said sullenly.

"I told you, I can't have it looking as though I like you at all. If that lot carry tales back to their parents..."

"Oh, right. I forgot."

"Well, don't." They went into Snape's office. "What do you want to do, now that we've finished the History corridor?"

"I'm supposed to be being punished," Draco reminded him. "I'm not supposed to get to do what I want."

Snape shrugged. "I don't really care. Dumbledore only gave you detention to appease McGonegal. Now that we're done with the corridor, he won't care what we do."

Oh.

"I could show you how to make a potion," Snape suggested.

The man had strange ideas of what constituted a desirable activity. "Yeah, because we never do that," Draco said.

"A much more difficult and interesting potion than we do in class." Snape seemed to think that would sweeten the deal.

Still, he didn't have any better ideas. "Okay, whatever."

Snape started taking things out of cupboards. "The potion is called fac me certiorum. Which means?"

"Uh...Make me know," Draco translated. "What's it for?"

"It's a variation of Veritaserusm. It helps you to....figure out what's true. I invented it," he added. "Unlike ordinary truth sera, it allows the drinker to sort out contradictory information and access real truth, as opposed to mere factual accuracy." Snape sounded like "factual accuracy" was a dirty word. "It clears the mind, helps you to concentrate. You'll see."

"I don't like Veritaserum." Draco latched on to the one part of Snape explanation he was sure he understood. "It gives me a headache." It wasn't really the headache he minded; it was the loss of control he hated. But he wasn't going to admit that.

"The chemistry of the potions are similar, but the effects are very different. Fac me certiorum, to name only one significant difference, does not require the drinker to speak. We'll make it, and then you can decide if you want to drink any."

"Oh. All right." If he didn't have to talk, he didn't suppose it could really do any harm.

It was a difficult potion, with lots of ingredients they had to get from Snape's private store cupboard, measurements that had to be precise to hundreds of a gram, and special equipment to measure the temperature, specific gravity, and other properties of the potion at various stages.

"How do you invent a potion, anyway?" Making a potion wasn't like making a cake; if it didn't turn out exactly right, it could kill you. Or worse, humiliate you in front of everyone. As Longbottom demonstrated every week in class. "You can't just try different things until it works, can you?" Not without blowing up the place.

"It's a little risky," Snape allowed. "But once you have a thorough understanding of how different ingredients interact, you can predict which combinations may be dangerous. Once you've got something that doesn't melt the cauldron, you try it on rats. Of course, with this particular potion one can't tell from the rats whether it's working or not."

"So you just take strange potions and see what happens?" That took some balls.

"I made it, I know it won't do any harm. Probably." He adjusted the heat under the cauldron. "I've made this one hundreds of times. They even use it at St. Mungo's. It's perfectly safe."

"Oh, I know. I was just curious." He didn't really know what grown wizards did, if they weren't Hogwarts professors or Dark wizards with hereditary fortunes. Father and Mother never seemed to do much of anything, until Voldemort came back. "I mean, what's the point of learning all this magic, when adults never seem to use any of it?"

"Some adults do." Snape ladled out a portion of the potion. "Now we centrifuge it, and if it separates, it's done."

The potion separated into a thin, yellowish serum, a purple liquid, and a layer of thick gray sludge. "So that's it?"

"Yes." Snape flicked his wand at the cauldron and levitated it off the flame. He glanced over the assortment of lab glassware and sniffed at several beakers before selecting one. "I'll go first." He ladled up some potion and drank it down, wincing. "Doesn't taste very good," he explained.

Then he sat down, and his head dropped to one side. Carefully, he propped his chin up on his fist. "My family," he began, "Was a lot like yours." Then he stared at the ceiling for a while. "We do not show weakness. And all feeling, except contempt, is weakness." More ceiling-staring, and he added, "That isn't true, of course. But like all great lies, it isn't so easy to shake off."

Snape sounded just a little bit like the dappy Divinations professor when she was making fake predictions. Draco had to bite his tongue to keep from saying so.

"You," he said, "Are not a fucking cry-baby. Your father just died. You ought to be allowed."

"He was an evil bastard," Draco pointed out. He didn't mention that he hadn't really been crying because his father was dead.

"Well, yes," Snape allowed. "But he was still your father."

"I wish he wasn't."

"Obviously. But you loved him."

"That's none of your business!" He didn't, anyway. Didn't.

"You want some of this?" Snape shoved the beaker at him.

"No." Only he sort of did. If Snape was right, and he'd be less confused....

He grabbed the beaker and tossed back a healthy swallow of the potion.

For a second, he wobbled on his feet, feeling like he was about to fall over.

"You should sit down," Snape said, belatedly. "Before you..."

He sat down hard on the flagstone floor.

"The dizziness only lasts a minute."

It was already passing, but he didn't get up. The feeling he'd had, that standing up would make him feel stronger, more in control, was so obviously false that he couldn't see any point in getting up. "This stuff would be a lot of fun on a date."

"Not if it makes your date realize she was only thinking of shagging you to convince herself she's desirable to the opposite sex." Snape did not sound like he was speaking from experience.

Draco pulled his legs under him. The thoughts that had been spinning through his head for the last three weeks slowed down, distilled into truths.

"I did love him. But I hated him too. I should have known better. I should have just hated him."

Snape shrugged. "It's never too late."

"He kills people. For fun. It seemed normal, because it was always that way. But it's not normal, is it?"

"Er, no."

"I just can't believe it that those fucking Gryffindors have been right all along. Voldemort's evil. Dumbledore knows what he's doing. You're on the side of the muggle-lovers and mud bloods."

"Well, they're not right about everything. Potions is still the most important subject in this school."

Draco laughed. It wasn't really that funny, but nothing at all had seemed funny at all for weeks. Then he sobered. "But what am I going to do? Grow up, follow in my father's footsteps. That's always been the plan. Do I have to be a spy too? Doesn't seem to have done much for you."

"No, it hasn't," Snape agreed. "Don't have much of a choice, do I? But you're still young. You can do anything. Lots of people come from unsavory families. And lots of people are obnoxious little gits at your age. You can live it down."

"I was pretty obnoxious, wasn't I?" Admitting it caused him surprisingly little pain. "I think I thought that was what a man did."

"Well, you're not the only one. In the old families, they tell us being a man means stomping all over anyone weaker than you."

"So what is it really?"

Snape gave him a look, the kind of look he gave Gryffindors in class. "You think I know?"

"Oh."

"Yeah."

Draco looked at the ceiling for a while, now understanding the appeal. "You know what I hate about Potter?" He asked lazily.

"I can probably guess. But go ahead."

"Those friends of his. They're like the three goddamn Musketeers. He must've gotten in line twice when they handed out luck."

"You're jealous," Snape said matter-of-factly. "His father was the same way. Potter, Lupin, Black, and Pettigrew. Dead, werewolf, dead, Death Eater," he recited. As if it was comforting somehow to remember that Potter and his friends had come to bad ends.

Snape, he realized, was a very unhappy man.

"I wonder what it would be like to have real friends," Draco said wistfully. "I've known the rest of the House practically since I was born, but none of them actually like me. Or vice versa. I suppose our kind don't have friends, not like they do."

"Not that I've noticed. Except..."

"Hm?"

"Well, before Voldemort. Things were different then."

He remembered when he'd overheard Snape talking to Dumbledore. Father and Mother loving each other. And Voldemort sucking the joy out of them. "Oh, yeah. Hey, did you see Longbottom at dinner?"

"Yes."

"He's so pathetic."

Snape shrugged.

"D'you think he fancies me?"

"Potion must be wearing off," Snape noted. He looked Draco up and down. "It's possible. But he was probably trying to be noble. That's what they do."

"Must be tiring. Being noble all the time."

"Probably. But consider the alternative. Being smug and superior all the time is tiring too. Are you going to take him up on it?"

"Of course not." He did want somebody to talk to. But... "It's Longbottom."

"There is that."

#

Severus walked Draco back to his dormitory. "Try not to worry too much," he counseled the boy. "If you make it through the war--and you probably will....once Voldemort's gone...." He didn't expect to survive the end of the war himself. As a double agent, he was in danger from both sides. "What's this?" There was a scroll taped to the wall concealing the Slytherin entrance. "Malfoy," he read. "They changed the password. You can probably guess." He looked at the back of the note. "It's not signed."

Draco sighed heavily. "Draco Malfoy is a crybaby," he said flatly. The stones of the wall rearranged themselves. "Goodnight, Professor."

"Wait. I'll change the password back."

"Better not. They'll know it was you. Cover."

He had a point. But Snape couldn't make him say that every time he wanted to get into his own dormitory. He could tell Draco the staff password, but even Dumbledore would disapprove of that. "The enchantment on the entrance can handle multiple passwords. I'll leave that one for the others, and you can use..." He considered. "Pure-blood" was an option, but an uninspired one, and bigoted to boot. "Fac me certiorum," he decided. He performed the enchantment. "They'll get tired of bullying you eventually," he said. "Something else will come along. Just ignore them." That was what Dumbledore and the other teachers had told him on the rare occasions when they deigned to take notice of Potter and his crowd tormenting Severus.

"You're forgetting. I am a bully. I know how they think." Draco looked wan. "That 'ignore them and they'll go away' trick doesn't work. You just turn up the pressure until they react. If they ignore you and you go away, they win, and that's no fun."

Snape wished he'd known that when he was Draco's age.

"Making them think I might go spare and start killing people at any moment has seemed to do some good , though. You'll notice they mostly bother me from out of arm's reach now."

"True."

"Thanks. For, you know. See you tomorrow." He disappeared into the dormitory.

Instead of going to his own rooms, Severus went up the stairs to Dumbledore's.

"Severus, my dear boy. Do have a chocolate cherry."

He took on, even though he didn't really like chocolate with fruit in it. "Headmaster," he said with a slight bow.

"You look troubled."

"Don't I always?" He said sullenly, throwing himself on the sofa.

"More so that usual."

"It's Malfoy."

"What's he done now?" Dumbledore looked alarmed.

"Nothing like that. You heard about this afternoon?" Of course he had; Dumbledore heard about everything.

"The best thing for him, probably."

"He was about to jump off the Astronomy tower and I told him to pull himself together and stop being such a crybaby."

"Oh, Severus," Albus sighed.

"I'm not exactly suited to being a teenager's confidant. You know I prefer to let my students manage their own emotional turmoil." Some of the Heads of House--Sprout and Flitwick, most notably--took a more hands-on approach, and as a result had to by tissues in industrial quantities to keep up with the demand from students having academic, romantic, and family problems. He preferred not to have students weeping in his office every time a toad died or a boyfriend was caught kissing another.

"Hm, yes," Dumbledore said.

"What am I going to do, help him to become as happy and well adjusted as I am?" Snape hissed.

"He could do worse."

"Not much. The poor little sod."

"You're the only one on the staff who has any idea what he's going through," Dumbledore pointed out. "Or who can stand him. I'm afraid you're stuck with the job."

"It's not that I don't want to help him. I'm no good at this sort of thing."

"Good intentions count, Severus."

He wasn't at all sure he believed that.

"You wanted to raise him," Dumbledore reminded him. "On some level, you must have thought you were up to the task."

Snape winced. He'd confessed that fact under fac me certiorum, and it wasn't something he wanted thrown in his face. But he managed to respond honestly--even though hiding and lying were second nature and telling the truth felt like stripping himself naked. "If that had happened, I wouldn't have had the last fourteen years to steep in my own bitterness, would I?" That wasn't quite it. He tried again. "I didn't want to save him so much as I thought he might save me." It was a little more basic than that, even. "I thought it might be nice to have a family again."

"Maybe it's not too late," said Dumbledore the optimist.

Snape snorted.

#

When Draco woke up, he was mortified at what he'd told Snape the night before.

He hated Veritaserum.

He stayed in bed with the curtains closed until Crabbe, Goyle, and Zabini had gone, then he got up and dragged on his clothes. The knot on his tie kept coming out crooked, and he finally decided to just put it 'round his neck and deal with it later. He charmed the dormitory window into a mirror and finger-combed his hair. Using an actual comb just seemed like too much work.

The bags under his eyes were big enough to carry his books in, and his usual pallor had gone from china-doll to day-old corpse.

He tried for a moment to decide if tucking in his shirt was worth the effort.

It wasn't.

Upstairs in the Great Hall, he studiously avoided looking Professor Snape in the eye as he took his seat.

"Why don't you sit with your boyfriend, traitor?" Goyle demanded.

"Yeah--Longbottom," Crabbe added, in case he hadn't guessed.

"Time apart is crucial to any relationship," Draco said mildly, taking a piece of toast. "Accio marmalade."

He'd eaten half a piece of toast before he realized he could actually taste it. He eyed the platter of sausages speculatively.

Then he thought about what Goyle would be able to say about sausages. Maybe an egg instead.

That seemed safe enough. "Accio egg." he pointed his--Snape's--wand at a soft-boiled egg, and it floated toward him.

Then Wyntre flicked his wand at it, and it picked up speed.

Draco ducked, and the egg sailed past him and hit Hermione Granger on the back of the head. She spun around, looking like an outraged beaver.

It was almost funny. "Good one, Wyntre."

"Are you talking to me?" The new Seeker demanded.

"No, I was making sure Granger knows that was you and not me." He helped himself to another egg. "She's a little spitfire, she is." He cut a second piece of toast into soldiers and dunked one in the egg.

The Weasel came up and grabbed Wyntre by the hair. "You don't throw things at Hermione, you slimy git."

Draco sat back and watched the show, feeling more himself than he had in weeks.