Where Angels Fear

Where Angels Fear

Chapter 3

At the Manor

It was evening by the time they reached the Manor. The delay getting on the first train had caused them to miss the second, and they'd had to wait two hours in the station for the next one. Not entirely a bad thing, from Draco's point of view. It was a much larger station than the rural one where they'd boarded, and the delay gave them a chance to have a decent late lunch or early tea and then explore a bit. There was a muggle toy shop, for one thing, and once Draco found the display of battery-operated toy cars, Snape had had to buy him one in order to pry him away. (He had the idea that an engorgement charm might allow him to enlarge the thing to the size of a real one, if he could get the power supply problem worked out.)

Still, he felt tired and grubby by the time he stepped into the Manor's front hall. Muggle-style travel had its high points, but it took a bit out of you, he decided. He accepted Sully and Nobs's greetings, which came with much bowing and scraping, and he and Snape trooped upstairs to wash before dinner.

When he came out of the bathroom, Sully was unpacking his trunk. She had taken out most of his clothes, and uncovered the wheelchair, which called for a lot of tedious explanations. Sully's eyes went very round--more so than usual--and she emitted little squeaks of dismay.

"But I'm fine now," he said hastily. Well, nearly. "Dobby's been a big help. He sends his regards, by the way."

"Dobby brings shame to his family!" Sully said severely, wringing the hem of his pillowcase in her hands.

Draco shrugged uncomfortably. "Dumbledore seems satisfied with him. And I'm not ashamed of him."

Sully didn't have an answer for that, and twisted her pillow-case some more.

Draco, feeling slightly odd about injecting his authority as Senior Malfoy on Deck into what was, presumably, a family matter, hurried on with the rest of his message. "He says he's happy at Hogwarts."

"House elves is not about being happy," Sully said, in evident disgust, and went on unpacking his things.

#

They settled easily into a routine of knocking around the Manor and allowing the house-elves to stuff them with food four or five times a day. They read, played cards, and talked, and at least once a day the Professor dragged Draco outside to make a grueling circuit of the gardens. Madame Pomfrey and Healer Archon must have put him up to it. It felt almost like a holiday, except for the way both of them watched the sky anxiously for owls and jumped at small noises.

One afternoon toward the end of the first week, Draco limped into the Professor's rooms, leaning heavily on a silver-and-ebony cane he'd found in the closet of an unused set of rooms. He thought it had probably been his Grandfather's.

"Hello, Draco." The Professor's eyes flicked up at him and then back down to the paperwork he'd been bent over all morning.

Draco dropped gratefully onto the sofa. It had been a long walk. "Hello." The house was big enough that the two of them could have gone days without bumping into each other if they had tried, but instead they gravitated around each other, wandering in and out of each others' rooms at will and generally living in each other's pockets. Draco rather liked it.

"Thought I might try to get my broom out soon," he said casually. He wasn't sure his balance was good enough to fly, but there was no better way to find out than by trying.

"Wait until I can go with you."

"Okay." He was glad Snape had offered, since he hadn't been about to ask. "What are you doing now?"

"Just answering some letters. School business."

"I didn't know teachers got summer homework," Draco said, picking up a small, leather-bound book that was laying on the table beside him.

"We do."

"Serves you right." He had looked over, but not begun, his summer Potions homework. It was harder than anything they'd done yet, and that was saying something. They were going to be balancing alchemical equations this year, and there was a lengthy list of symbols to memorize before the start of term.

He opened the book idly, and was diverted from further complaints. It was a photograph album, with only the first dozen or so pages filled in. "What's this?"

Snape turned to look at him. "Put that--oh, never mind," he sighed. "Look at it if you like."

The people in the pictures were obviously Snape and his family. Both of his parents looked exactly like him. The first picture, an old-fashioned wedding portrait, reminded Draco unpleasantly of rumors that had gone around school of a Boggart that looked like Professor Snape in drag. Snape's father--Maledictus, Draco recalled--sat in an ornately carved chair made of some dark wood. Mrs. Snape stood behind him with her hand on his shoulder. Neither figure moved, except to blink. "What a cheery-looking couple."

"Yes, it's a good likeness."

The next photo was of the same couple, but this time the woman held a bundle of blankets, and they were posed outside a large, gloomy-looking house. They stood a few feet apart from each other, and again didn't move. The only way you could tell it was a proper wizarding picture at all was a crow flying around in the background.

The Professor left his letters to come and sit beside him. "I don't know why you want to look at that."

Draco shrugged. "It's interesting." The next picture was a pale baby with a face that was half nose. It squirmed feebly, and occasionally an adult hand intruded into the frame to hold it still.

"That was when I was born, of course. They weren't sure I'd live."

Possibly that was why they'd dressed him in a tiny set of black work robes. Draco didn't ask. He turned the page.

The next few photos were a half dozen or so of the same family group, in a variety of grim locales, with Professor Snape a little bigger in each one. In most of them he was trying to squirm out of the picture, and his father was holding him by the collar of his robes. In the last of the series, he was as unnaturally still as his parents. "You were kind of a cute kid." Maybe it was just his fondness for the Professor, but he found the awkward and oddly-proportioned child in the photographs strangely endearing, like a newborn dragon or a hippogriff foal. He also looked wary and poorly cared for. Draco wanted to pick him up and hug him, or something.

"Oh, please," Snape said. "Now, you were a cute baby. All pink and wriggly. I expect there are pictures around here somewhere."

"Loads." Draco refused to rise to the bait. He turned the page again. "Oh, now, this is a good one of you." The version of Snape in it looked about nine or ten. He was sitting on the grass with a droopy, sad-eyed dog in his lap. The dog's tail was waging, and Snape was almost smiling. His horrible parents were nowhere in the picture, which was probably enough to account for that.

"I forgot that was in there. That's Persephone."

"I didn't know you had a dog." He hadn't thought the Professor liked animals much.

"I did. Until some damned Auror killed her."

"I'm sorry."

"She was old." He shrugged. "They killed my parents, too. 'Resisting arrest.' Claimed they thought Persephone was a hell-hound."

"What, er...." She looked a bit like one, except for the expression on her face, which was friendly and loving.

"Bloodhound."

"How old were you when it happened?"

"Sixteen. I was at school, that's why I survived. I wanted to take Persephone with me, but it wasn't allowed."

"That doesn't seem fair." He didn't know anyone who had a dog, but if the school allowed cats, owls, and toads--to say nothing of rats and animate teapots--why not dogs?

"No, it doesn't." Snape said meditatively, "Of course, I could never decide if she'd scare off Potter and his band of thugs, or if she'd just give them one more way to get at me."

"Maybe one of the teachers would have stopped them."

"From tormenting a poor, innocent dog, maybe."

"Yes, exactly." Whatever antipathy the staff had had for Snape might not have extended as far as his pet.

There were a few more photos. Snape dressed in Hogwarts robes and standing on Platform nine and three quarters, on what must have been his first day of school. A House photo taken in the Slytherin common room. (Draco's father was third from the left in the second row.) All of the students were waving enthusiastically at the camera and shoving at their neighbors, except Snape, who stood perfectly still in the bottom right-hand corner, blinking slightly when the boy next to him shoved him. Draco wondered how many people in the photo were still alive. He didn't ask.

There were a few more shots of the family, then a head-and-shoulders portrait each of Maledictus and Mrs. Snape. They were completely still, not even blinking, and their skin was paler than usual, with a grayish undercast. "You kept these?" Draco yelped, when he realized what they were.

"I don't know what else to do with them."

"You didn't even let me look at Father's autopsy photos."

"There was no one to stop me seeing these. I did throw out the more gruesome ones."

That was a relief. "What were they like?" he asked, trusting Snape would know that he didn't mean the autopsy pictures.

"Maledictus was a drunk and a Necromancer. Mother was--" He shrugged. "Not particularly sane. They were surprisingly well suited to each other. Of course, they were first cousins, so that may have helped. I think Mother was her own aunt, or something like that, as well. I'm surprised I don't have two heads."

"Better than one," Draco quipped absently. There was a lot of inbreeding in the Malfoy line, too, although not quite as much as that. "I don't suppose they--" What? Took very good care of him? Loved him?

"No," Snape said heavily, taking the book out of his hand. "They didn't." He shut it firmly.

#

When Severus had finished his correspondence, Draco ran--well, limped quickly--for his Nimbus 2001, and Severus followed him out into the garden. He leaned against a tree, deceptively casually, when what he really wanted to do was snatch the broomstick out of Draco's hands and say, No, no, it's too soon, go inside and work on your Arithmancy. Even if he fell off his Arithmancy textbook, he couldn't possibly get hurt.

From Draco's nervous, slightly queasy look, he'd probably acquiesce if Snape did go into a protective frenzy. But instead he said, "Go on, then."

Draco glanced back at him, with the broomstick quivering against his restraining hand, as if contemplating backing down. Then he squared his shoulders and said, "Right. Wish me luck."

"Good luck," Severus said obediently.

Draco mounted his broomstick and kicked off. He flew, crookedly, to a height of about twenty feet. His balance was badly off--he kept listing to one side or the other and then, when he noticed it, jerking violently in the other direction. Overcompensating. He made one wobbling circuit of the garden, during which Snape kept his eyes on him and his wand ready inside his sleeve to halt a bone-shattering fall if need be. But Draco didn't fall, and in his second circuit his flight stabilized, as he got the hang of correcting the occasional dip or wobble without throwing himself further off balance in the opposite direction. By the third circuit he was flying almost steadily.

He leaned forward and came in for a landing, but hit the ground harder than he must have meant to, staggered, and fell on his backside as his feet went out from under him.

Snape hurried over to haul him to his feet. "Are you all right?" he demanded, looking him over.

Draco nodded. "I don't think I'll be playing Quidditch for a while," he said ruefully. "It was all I could do to fly a straight line."

"You haven't flown in a while." His old skill would come back to him. (Unless, Snape's back-brain whispered, there was some subtle neurological disturbance.)

"Yeah. I'm sure I'm just out of practice." And did he detect a note of false heartiness in Draco's tone? Maybe not. "I'd better try and fit a bit of flying practice into my daily schedule, if I can find the time somehow. My Dragons won't be happy if they come back to school and their captain's been demoted to bench manager."

"Yes, good ides." Only he'd have to make sure he was there to watch. And while Draco's daily schedule was far from busy, Snape actually had a fair amount to do. Dumbledore had started sending him copies of all reports from his other agents, which he was supposed to read and analyze. The idea was that his unique background would enable him to see connections others might miss, and it made sense, since the sort of data that was now flowing in was anything but obvious. That, and a couple of potions projects, and school matters, coupled with the even more important task of keeping Draco sane and amused, made for a surprisingly full life.

They trooped inside, where the house-elves had prepared a small feast of cakes and sandwiches to revive them after their exhausting outdoor adventure (which had taken all of twenty minutes).

"Had a letter from Zenobia," Draco said, dissecting a cream-filled cake.

"Are you eating that, or playing with it? What did she say?" The house elves were easily fooled by Draco's efforts at making it look like he'd eaten when he hadn't. Snape wasn't--or hadn't been--but Draco was getting better at it.

"Eating it." Here he emphatically put a spoonful of cream filling into his mouth. "I think she and Granger have been in touch. She wants to start a club. Slytherins Against Voldemort's Empire. With armbands."

"Hm. Have you written back to her?"

"Started. All I've come up with so far is that it's a good acronym. S.A.V.E."

In other words, he was waiting to hear Snape's opinion before he admitted to anything. This was a disturbing habit he'd picked up, but one that would have to be ignored in the face of more pressing concerns. "And what would the aims of this organization be?"

"She's a little vague on that point. I think it's sort of a cross between a publicity stunt and a support group, with maybe a little liaising with Potter's fan club on the side. If she has any ideas about Potterian heroics, she'll have to be...disabused of them."

No points for guessing who'd get to do the disabusing. "Too right. There's a force that protects fools and Gryffindors, and Miss Zenobia is neither." What she was, was terribly young.

Draco added, "I think, too, she has some ideas about a Ministry career when she's left school. Making it clear where her loyalties lie might be a help there."

"Yes. Assuming things come out..." The way they had to come out.

Draco nodded. "So the real question is--and it's not clear she's thought about this--is whether the publicity angle is worth painting a great big bulls-eye on her back. And that of anyone else who joins her."

"Neutrality is...the safest course. Up until the point when it isn't anymore." A point that was often invisible until you were well on the wrong side of it. A fact much of the wizarding world had learned the hard way twenty years ago. When did staying above the fray become giving implied consent to atrocities? "I doubt she'd be in much danger from...outside...unless things deteriorate to the point that it doesn't really matter anymore. But there is still a substantial pro-Voldemort faction in Slytherin House, even after the expulsion of most of your year. Some of her classmates might make an example of her." Of the kind they had made of Draco last year.

"Yeah." Draco nodded understanding.

"On the other hand...she could be an example. Resisting Voldemort needs to be a visible option for the Slytherin children. Not a kind of...secret cowardice." He winced a little. "So...armbands. Heh. Peer pressure can work both ways."

"Yeah," Draco said again. "So...what should I tell her?"

What do you think? He didn't ask. "Tell her...to be careful. Green and silver, for the armbands, but not to put a serpent anywhere on it. And that it should be worn on the left arm." If he was going to damn any more of his children, it wouldn't be through inaction. Remember Millicent Bulstrode, indeed.

#

Snape's days got even busier when Draco decided to try to taper off his sleeping potions. They weren't working very well anymore, and it was either stop taking them or increase the doses to dangerous levels. Severus was relieved when he chose the former. Not that he would have tolerated the latter, but tying Draco down to detox by force would have been harrowing for both of them.

One small benefit of the new regime was that Draco threw himself into his physical therapy. Trying, Snape supposed, to exhaust himself enough to sleep without potions. It didn't work, but he made enough progress to leave his cane behind most of the time, and could soon get up from a chair without leaning on either Snape or the furniture.

On the debit side, he was woken by bad dreams more and more often, and the house-elves had to give up Apparating around the house, because the crack of air-displacement sent Draco diving for cover, even from several rooms away. The effect of one or the other of them suddenly appearing in a room where he happened to be was even more dramatic.

After he had slunk, embarrassedly, into Severus's rooms three nights in a row to ask if Snape would mind, too much, sitting with him until he fell asleep, he made it a regular part of his routine. Lucius would have been appalled. He had pushed his son into a kind of brittle independence far too early, and now, at an age when most teenagers resented adult interference, he was clingy and nervous. He even--after an intense discussion of whether night-lights were or were not for babies--slept with a candle burning. Then two candles, then three, then every light in his rooms.

When Draco did sleep, he slept lightly, alert for any sign of danger. Which might have been all right if he had slept a lot, but three or four hours of half-sleep a night were clearly not enough. He was drawn and irritable, and couldn't concentrate on anything for long. When he did wake up, he woke suddenly. If not screaming, then at least gasping and looking around wildly.

"Do you think," he asked one night, "It'll be like this forever?"

"No." It would get either worse or better. Probably better, but a wholesale descent into madness was a lurking possibility. It wouldn't even be unprecedented, for a Malfoy. He didn't say that.

"You seem...to do okay," Draco said hesitantly.

"Sometimes." Seem was the operative word, maybe. "I've had a long time to get used to it."

"Eh." Draco nodded. "For me, it's like as soon as I get used to one set of problems, here comes another one. Out of nowhere. First there was Father, and that whole...I had a long time to get used to that. Then he was arrested, and I wasn't expecting that, even though I probably should have been. I was expecting him to get killed even less. Everything else....followed from that, I guess, but not in any predictable way. It all just...happened."

That was the nub or it, or one of them. The last year had been a chain of disasters for Draco, and there was no way to guarantee there wouldn't be more. The reverse, if anything.

"So it's almost like there's no point. As soon as I get this figured out, it'll be time for the next thing. Whatever it is." He had been looking almost at Snape, but cut his eyes to one side at the last three words.

Whatever it was, right. They both knew what he was afraid the next thing would be. "I'm not going to die. Not if I can help it." But he wouldn't be able to help it, not if death was coming for him.

"I know," Draco said, answering the unspoken comment as well as the spoken one.

"I'm not taking any unnecessary risks. Not now." There had been a time when he only had to survive to the end of any given mission, long enough to report to Dumbledore. Now his perspective had radically shifted. The mission was...life. Not his, unfortunately. Draco's. That might be a problem someday, but it, too, was one that would have to be pushed aside in favor of more immediate ones.

Draco nodded once. "I know. But..."

"Yes." He might have to put himself in danger, for things that were still more important than either of them. It couldn't be helped--there was a war on.

"So I don't think that Healer was quite right about my post-traumatic thingy. It's not exactly post. I wish it was. More like inter. Inter-traumatic stress syndrome."

"Hm. Yes."

"So it's a matter of...do I deal with what's already happened, or try to brace myself for the next thing. I can't do both. Not at the same time."

"So you're doing neither."

"Hm." Draco didn't deny it.

#

"Come on, then." Draco thumped his broomstick against the doorjamb impatiently.

"I'm a little busy." Snape was hunched over his desk, where he spent most mornings. Afternoons he shut himself up in his potions lab in the basement. (The potions lab had always been there, as long as Draco could remember, but had hardly been used in all that time. It was only recently he'd realized that it had always been Snape's, too.) In between paperwork and potions they went outside.

"You've been busy all day. C'mon. Or I'll go without you."

"No you won't."

"I will." He paused a beat. "If you're not done soon."

"Twenty minutes."

"Okay." It had been an empty threat, anyway, and they both knew it. "What have you been doing, anyway?"

"Just reading some reports."

Only that wasn't true--he was writing something, too. "Order stuff?"

"Yes."

"What's going on?"

"Nothing much. This will go much faster if you let me concentrate."

"Whatever." He sprawled across the sofa. "Is it 'nothing much' like it's all classified, or 'nothing much' like something's going on but you don't know what yet, or--"

"The latter. A lot of little things, we aren't sure what they add up to. Some muggle kidnappings, some--recruiting, I guess you'd call it, on the pureblood social circuit, some strange occurrences at the Ministry. Nothing definite. Can I work, please?"

"Oh, sure." He digested what he'd just heard. Things were a bit dangerous, in the outside world, but just for the faceless masses, not for anyone he knew. "What kind of strange--" At Snape's glare, he stopped short. "Sorry. Why don't you take that with you?" he suggested. "Outside. You can work while you watch me fly."

Snape considered. "No, I had better not. Some of this lot's classified." Instead, he started putting away his papers in a locking drawer. "Strange occurrences. For instance, a junior aide in the Department of International Magical Law arrived a half-hour late to a briefing. Which isn't in itself unusual, but she claimed to have left her office on time--she even produced witnesses to that effect--and made only a brief stop in the washroom. So we're considering the possibility that an agent accosted her--probably in the washroom--and forcibly relieved her of any sensitive information she may have been carrying, then covered the whole thing with a memory charm."

"Oh."

"We're also considering the possibility that she ducked out for a cup of tea and a bun and is now too embarrassed to admit to it. Tonks--she's an Auror, and a cousin of yours, in addition to being a member of the Order--is looking into it. As well as finding out what classified information she may have had. Officially, nothing much, but people talk. On tea breaks and such." The Professor sounded dubious about the last, as if it was a habit of some primitive tribe that he'd read about and only half believed in.

"So there could be Death Eaters wandering around the Ministry grabbing people in the toilets? I thought they'd cracked down on unauthorized visitors."

"Well, there are six who work there, that we know of. Making sure they don't know we know is a job and a half. And it's not difficult for anybody even moderately well-connected to find an official pretext for stopping in." He locked his drawer with a key and a spell, and they went outside. "Do you want to walk first, or fly?"

"Fly." As if he had to ask.

"Stay inside the walls."

"I know." He mounted his broom and kicked off.

After weeks of being confined to the wheelchair and his own crippled body, It felt amazing to be flying again. For a few minutes, he could almost forget his crushing burden of anxiety. He thought he understood, now, how muggle-born students felt the first time they flew. He couldn't remember his own first time on a broom. It had probably been with his father, when he was little.

He worked on turns, flying in figures-of-eight and spiral shapes. As a Seeker, he'd had to be able to turn on a sickle and give five knuts change. Now a sharp turn was likely to send him toppling off his broomstick. He was practicing, trying to make his circles a little smaller each day.

After he'd nearly dizzied himself flying in circles, he straightened out to make a high, fast circuit of the perimeter of Malfoy Manor. The immediate grounds were surrounded by a high stone wall, topped with cast-iron spikes and embedded with all kinds of nasty spells. Lush gardens with shrubbery and trees--the better to conceal hell-hounds, hit wizards, and other traps for the unwary--pushed up against the wall on the inside. On the outside, however, all vegetation except a tidy half-inch of lawn was pushed back for at least a hundred feet. A cordon sanitaire. No one could sneak up to the Manor walls under cover. It was an important security measure, since the forest--Malfoy Chase--wrapped three-quarters of the way around the place.

Draco flew over the tops of most of the trees, then dived to duck under the branches of an unnaturally tall apricot tree. He wondered if Sully was bothering to put up apricot this year, since Father wasn't here to drink any more of the abundant supply. Then he wondered if she had made any last year.

When he returned to cruising height, a flash of motion caught his eye. He looped back--careful--to look again. There was a man at the edge of the forest. Walking along briskly now, determinedly not looking at the Manor walls.

Draco started to call out of warning--there were things in that forest--then shut his mouth abruptly and flew back to the rose garden, where Snape was, as fast as he dared.

"There's a man over there," he said, pointing, as soon as he'd half-landed, half-crashed, before he even let himself be helped up. "Lurking, sort of. Over there."

The Professor was instantly alert. "Wizard or muggle? How was he dressed?"

Draco shook his head. "Don't know." He had a fleeting impression of robes, but he wasn't sure. Most of the man's lower body had been obscured by the underbrush. "There's a public footpath over there--" he pointed in the opposite direction, "--but no one has any business being on that side. Maybe just lost, but..."

Snape nodded. "But," he agreed.

"Here, take the broom, go see for yourself."

"Right. Wait here." Snape mounted the broom and took off, flying faster than Draco had done lately, but gracelessly. Draco wondered if it would be wise to tell him he ought not to stick his elbows out so much.

At some less tense moment, perhaps.

While he waited for Snape to return, he thought about what the man could have been doing out there. If he wasn't a muggle who'd misplaced the footpath. Not a single-handed daylight assault on the Manor--that would just be stupid. Suicidally stupid. Reconnaissance, then. Father's old cronies had to have had a fair idea of the defenses the Manor had, but they could also have guessed that some of the more flagrantly illegal items had been dismantled with the Manor's change in ownership. They'd want to know--especially if they had anything planned, but maybe just on general principles--what the old defenses had been replaced with.

Snape came back, and landed a touch more smoothly than Draco had. He stayed on his feet, at least. "He'd faded back into the woods by the time I got there. He did have muggle gear on, but..." He shrugged eloquently. "That was enough to stop me flying after him and hexing him. I don't need another muggle-baiting charge on my record, do I?" He didn't wait for an answer. "I'm going to check the perimeter defenses. Have the house-elves save me some lunch."

Great, another thing for the Professor do without him. "Why don't I come with you? I still need my walk. And there shouldn't be any danger. And," he added, suddenly inspired, "if there is, you shouldn't do it without backup anyway."

When the Professor assented, Draco knew he'd agreed about the project not being dangerous. If he hadn't, he might have called for other backup, but he wouldn't have let Draco go along.

Unfortunately, the mere suggestion that Draco's presence might be considered backup triggered in the Professor an impulse to quiz him on Defense. Draco found himself reciting more about the Manor's defenses than he'd have ever imagined he knew, as Snape's method consisted of naming some arcane spell, artifact, or effect, while pointing to where it was, and asking what it did, or, if he didn't know, what he thought it sounded like it might do. There were proximity detectors, motion detectors, thaumaturgy detectors, poison detectors, and even animagus detectors. Most of these had formerly been attached to lethal booby traps. These had been replaced with various stunning fields, fast-acting sedatives, immobilizing jinxes, and even more creative traps. "This section," Snape said, "Used to dig a hole, dump the intruder in it, and cover him back up, all in about half a second. It was one of my ideas." He looked at it pensively. "Broke my heart to get rid of it. I'd like to replace it with something that will instantly translocate the intruder to a secure cell, but I haven't worked out the details yet. Now it's just a stun-field."

"Did it ever catch anybody?" Draco looked down at the ground.

"Yes."

He didn't ask for details.

The inspection showed no damage, sabotage, or anything else unexpected, though Snape did note two "weak spots"--meaning places that were only doubly, and not triply or quadrupally, protected. They went in for lunch.

#

A few days later, Draco wandered up to the potions lab while Snape was experimenting.

"What are you working on?" Draco, standing in the doorway, craned his neck to peer into the steaming cauldron. "That's not the Cruciatus remedy, is it?"

"No. It's a sort of...vaccine, I suppose you'd call it, against the Imperius curse." He scattered powdered lodestone on the surface of the potion. "Or it will be if I ever finish inventing it. You can come in."

"How long have you been working on it?"

"About ten years. Off and on. Here, you can crush these." He pushed some scarab beetles toward Draco.

"Gosh, thanks. How's it supposed to work?"

"It's based on the Iron Will potion." Which was on the sixth-year curriculum, so he knew about it. "Only it has to be more powerful by several orders of magnitude. The idea is that taking it will enable a person to resist the Imperius curse more readily. For a limited time."

"How limited?"

"The longer the better, but I'd be well pleased with four or five hours. Or if I could manage not poisoning my test subjects." He looked over at the cage of white rats that sat in the corner of the room.

"That would be a bonus," Draco agreed.

"So far, the closest I've achieved is a potion that causes instant combustion the moment the subject is touched by the Imperius Curse. Which doesn't strike me as very useful, but you never know."

"Aurors might want it," Draco suggested. "Sort of like a cyanide capsule."

Cyanide was a muggle poison, he knew that much. But why would Aurors want it?

"In spy movies," Draco explained, "They have a cyanide capsule implanted in their teeth, so that if they get captured they can bite down on it and...."

"I see. I expect Aurors have something like that." He never had. If he was caught, finding a way to die would not be among his most pressing concerns. "I started working on this because during Voldemort's first rise to power, people would go to his meetings, undecided about whether to join. Out of curiosity, say. Then they found themselves committing atrocities under the Imperius Curse. It was one of the things that made putting a spy in the organization so difficult."

"Did that happen to you?" Draco wanted to know.

"No. I joined up of my own free will." As free as anybody ever was, anyway. He'd once have said, "with my eyes wide open," but now he understood how blinded he had been by rage and pain. "Lucius, though, I think."

"He wasn't--"

"Not the entire time. Not even Voldemort could hold large numbers of people under the Imperius Curse for extended periods. What he'd do instead was leave it on until the person had got in the habit of obedience, then gradually release the curse. A lot of people weren't really sure when they'd started acting of their own will." And by the time they were sure, their resistance had been sapped, and they'd gotten the taste for Dark magic, if they hadn't had it before. It might have been possible to break free of Voldemort, if anyone had wanted to.

He remembered a boy, a few years younger than he, stumbling off the stage at a rally, after torturing and killing a muggle woman. He'd blundered into Snape, crying.

"Pull yourself together, man," Snape had told him.

"It's gone," the boy had said, "I was under the Imperius Curse, but it's gone." He had looked up at the stage, at the woman's broken and bloody body. "It wasn't the curse. It was me."

Snape, back then, had thought it was funny. "If you don't like it, then leave," he had sneered.

He had shaken his head. "No. I...how could I? After I've done...that. Where could I go?"

The boy had been Nathan Ragier.

Snape shook his head. "Anyone who said he was under the Imperius Curse the entire time was lying. But people were...duped. And were unable to drag themselves out of the darkness once they'd been forced into it."

"And you think Father--" Draco looked almost hopeful.

"I don't know. Not for sure. One day, when he was in Seventh year, he told a group of us in the Common Room that he thought 'this Voldemort fellow' had some good ideas and he was going to hear him speak. He came back...fervently devoted to the cause. Almost fanatical. It's possible he just heard a very good lecture."

That thing like hope still lived on Draco's face. Severus moved to quash it. "He could have quit," Snape reminded him. "After the curse wore off. He could have left. He stayed because he wanted to."

Draco nodded soberly. "Yes, I understand."

"Good." Severus stirred the cauldron three times clockwise. "Are you finished with those beetles?"

"Oh. Yes, here."

Snape added two spoonfuls of them to the cauldron. "Anyway. That's why an Imperius prophylactic seemed a good idea. I'm not sure how useful it would be, now, since Voldemort isn't using that particular trick anymore." But the potion was one of his regular projects, one he turned to whenever he felt the need to do something, but no immediately necessary tasks presented themselves.

"I'm sure the Order could use it for something," Draco said.

Severus looked at him fondly. "Probably."

"What's next? For the potion?"

"Just testing. You can find me some slides. I think they're in that cabinet." He had brought his own ingredients and delicate equipment like his microscope and centrifuge, but basic supplies like lab glassware were still here from almost a decade ago, when the Dark Lord had told Lucius to set him up with whatever he needed.

While Draco looked for the slides, he ladled some of the potion into a test tube and dropped it into the centrifuge.

"What should it do?" Draco asked.

"I'm not sure yet." If Draco was going to do something in Potions for this Seventh-year project--and Severus had to admit he hoped he would--then he had better try to explain more of what he was doing. "Right now, I'm checking to see if the potion can be mechanically separated back into its constituent elements. If they can, no magical reaction has taken place and I've accomplished absolutely nothing."

"Oh."

"Yes. Then I'll put it under the microscope. Iron Will has a dodecahedral crystalline structure. What does dodecahedral mean?" he quizzed.

"Er...twelve-sided."

"Yes. Five points to whatever-you-are-Mr.-Malfoy."

"I'm a Slytherin again," Draco said. "Did you see, at the feast?"

Snape wished he hadn't said anything. Draco had been sorted out of Slytherin. It wasn't that easy. "Right,' he said, instead of explaining.

"So you want it to have this dodecahedral crystalline structure?"

"Not necessarily. But probably. It might have some other closely related structure." He'd know it when he saw it. He took the test tube out of the centrifuge. It hadn't separated--so far, so good. He explained that to Draco. "Now the slides." He prepped two slides, one out of the centrifuged tube and one from the cauldron. He was putting the first one under the microscope when the perimeter alarms screamed.
"Fuck," he swore.

Draco seemed to shrink in on himself. "What--oh."

"Quite." Snape pushed past him to the other end of the work bench, and shoved aside some papers that had gotten piled on top of his scrying glass. He cycled through three different views of the Manor grounds before finding the one he was looking for. There were three intruders, one perched on top of the wall, the others still outside. The one on the wall was jumping down now--but on the outside. Running away.

His pounding heart slowed. If they were running away, there'd be no fighting tonight. They'd be gone before he could catch them.

Still, he had to try. Abandoning his experiment, he ran up the stairs and through the kitchens, emerging into the side garden. It was late evening and nearly dark. A good time for a raid--dark enough to provie some cover, but early enough that, if caught, the intruder could plausibly claim to have been out on some innocent errand.

When he reached the wall, he slowed. None of the traps on the inside of the walls had been triggered, and the alarm's wailing had stopped. They were gone, then. He back tracked and let himself out a side gate. He lit his wand, then performed a charm to detect any magic done in the area recently. Only one set of spell-traces lit up. The three men--he assumed they had been men, but it didn't really matter--had Apparated away as soon as they reached the limit of the Apparation barrier. Clever of them, not to have used any other magic before they were caught.

He turned and saw Draco standing just inside the gate, looking worried. "Get back inside," he snapped. He thought the intruders were gone, but they could come back.

Draco went, without complaint, and Snape spent another twenty minutes looking for evidence in the growing dark, without finding much, then went inside to call Dumbledore.