Even Old Morose Bats Can Get Soft

“Mr. Snape, please let me go! There’s someone after me! And it tried to put a hex or something on me, I saw it making stuff with its wand,” Tonks hissed cursorily, afraid of that the scavenger galloping up there might hear.

This was enough to whack the professor’s mind out of the seventh heaven. With a hideous splat, his awareness smashed cruelly down onto the cobblestones. Half-giddily, it scampered back into his skull. While fully conscious, the Potions Master definitely did not possess the IQ of a wilted broccoli, but was very agile both physically and mentally. In the flash, he added together Nymphadora’s hasty wail and the rumble that sounded as though a blue whale with legs had rolled down the escalator.

But how to solve a knotty trouble larger than Gilderoy Lockhart’s ego? It would have been a piece of muffin just to Disapparate, but oh, the infernal luck. The near grounds of Gringotts had been littered with all kinds of heavy shielding spells. This tactics was one means of preventing bank robberies, and no intergalactic desperado would simply be able to vanish into thin air with his freshly pilfered loot. It however was rather uncomfortable if you possibly had a Death Eater chasing you with a specifically evil glint in his eyes, and obviously something worse than a little friendly Abracadabra in mind. So... basically the only defense against the Dark Arts was to make your legs stomp down the street and fast. At least this was the manner, in which the Potions Master reacted. The closest Apparition-free zone began somewhere in the rear parts of Knockturn Alley. So, obviously it would be the wisest to aim the toes at that direction.

Snape did not remain to loiter. The fiend had probably already seen their black outlines contrasting with the gas lamp’s pool of light. He gave the girl a quick, sharp glare. From this, she understood that he had gathered back his scattered senses, and that they were going to leave the scene together.

Thus, the following sequence of live-action drama occurred just in a bolt of time. Tonks drew out her pocketed wand in order to bewitch the fallen bags and thingamabobs. With a small pop, they turned invisible. They also would automatically follow their owners whenever Snape or Tonks decided to dash off. But, there was a slight twist of plotline which the Auror could not comprehend in any rational way. She had supposed that the teacher would toss her finally away, and let her run on her own. Nonetheless - for some incomprehensibly, intangibly puzzling reason - the mysterious comrade did not. As if she had been a mere bundle of old threadbare carpets in his arms, he took a sudden skip in the direction of the potion ingredients paradise. Quickly he started to sweep down the zigzagging route. To be exact, Snape had recalled that this nameless, time-beaten lane was hand in hand with Knockturn Alley in its other end. The only nauseating trouble was that this fork was not exactly behind the next corner.

The grimy alleyway suddenly looked entirely alienated. As if all the shops and holes had abruptly drawn heavy shutters over their windows and set a few hundred locks to block all the doors. This nonetheless did not occur because of the cumbersome flee-and-abscond show out there. No, some citizens simply wanted to travel to the slumberland because the night was crawling onwards. Although in quarters like this, when darkness veiled the sky, it could have been expected these ominous shopkeepers to gather in a horrible Dark Side soiree of some sort: dreadful darts, corrupted chess, baleful bowling, and other activities of abomination for the whole evil community.

It was irksomely hard to see forwards, but somehow Severus succeeded to brush past the hidden obstacles like a gale. The deeper they entered the passage’s gorge, the scarcer the wan lampposts became. Nymphadora had a whole swarm of question marks spinning around her scull. Why did not this fellow simply put her down, but had to toil onwards this way? On the other hand, the ride gave her an extremely good visibility in every direction. Or at least the maximum of the wee amount of inches one could clearly see past his or her nose. At least she would be able to warn silently if We-Do-Not-Want-To-Say-His-Name-Because-It-Will-Flatten-All-The-Scary-And-Thrilling-Atmosphere unexpectedly hovered before with Darth Vader. So, perhaps it was indeed better this way. She did not possess such knowledge of these nooks as the crafty old hooknose did, and could have perhaps gotten naively lost.

The tiny, grimy alleyway meandered and squirmed like an unlucky serpent that had done an overhand knot with itself. The stranger’s footsteps kept incessantly rattling on Snape’s tail, wherever he turned. Tonks could hazily see over his shoulders that a gangling shadow of some sort was trying to reach them. They were able to shrug off the pest for short instants as they dived behind mures and pillars. It seemed nevertheless that the ghost was reaching them faster than they could hotfoot onwards. During one ghastly moment, Tonks was positive she saw in the corner of her eye the pursuer raising its wand, and doing a slashing movement of some kind with it. But before anything murderous occurred, the professor had leapfrogged over a small fence and vanished behind a partly collapsed archway, his robes fluttering imperially behind him.

More soaring, pelting, twisting and turning. The deformed cobblestones felt sharp and rather painful under the spindly bottoms of Snape’s shoes. If he had known beforehand that he attended the Sneaky Semi-Villain Marathon tonight, he would definitely have selected good thick-soled trainers instead of the pointed, buckled shoes. Yet, on he zoomed, panting under the speed, his arms throbbing lightly due to her weight. Perhaps there had been the illusion of a feather at first, but fifty kilos of extra load had to affect the muscles at some point. Nymphadora had to give mental applauses to his physical fitness. Those black, vampiric robes definitely did not conceal any watery cabbage casserole inside them.

For Snape’s very deplorable misfortune, the lane was getting somewhat less shadowed. This detail reduced malignantly the possibility to plunge into some snug dark nook, since the snug dark nooks were so cruelly threatened by the evil rims of light. Namely... no Einstein’s IQ was needed to figure out that the couple would never reach the Apparition-free zone in time. Thus, in this mouse-cat battue, a mouse-hole was the only option.

Tonks and the beast of burden had abruptly arrived in an open backyard of some lustrous building. The keeper of this bombastic fortress undeniably had more than old brass buttons on his bank account. The high, multistory piece of perfectly mastered medieval architecture was spiced up with all the classic, scary haberdashery. Tiny, spiky turrets protruded from the black stone here and there, making the whole complex look like a mutated pincushion. Wee balconies peeked out from the sea of arched windows. There was generally no free space on the walls. Every remaining surface was strewn with gruesome statues or small red lanterns that created wriggling orbs of spooky light. The alleyway curved violently leftwards from the building. En route, it passed a high wall crammed full of grimacing stone gargoyles.

There.

Snape’s cranial pinions were spinning with the speed of ten parsecs per second. There. That was the only hidey-hole the unfair passage enclosed. Could they simply infiltrate that nook, and crouch somewhere among the gargoyles until the hazard was over? The Auror seemed following perfectly the course of his thoughts, since she also kept mutely gesturing towards the bogey flock. With a leap, the Potions Master swung himself into a gap between two large rock beasts looking like a weird cross between bulls and helicopters. The fleet of unseeable baggage landed with a semi-silent splat somewhere near their owners.

The refugees naturally had thought about the nauseous possibility of these gargoyles being telltale flibbertigibbets. They however looked thoroughly mute and expressionless. Perhaps they were either jinxed to keep their traps shut or then they were equal to the Muggle world statues: rigid and soulless as stone should be.

Severus soon noticed that Tonks was going to add something crucial to the hiding plan. She abruptly tapped Snape’s arm with her wand, and mumbled very noiselessly a longish spell containing shreds of Latin words about these very stone gremlins. No flash of light blazed from the wand’s tip. Instead, he felt his stomach throwing a few somersaults while a weird stiffening sensation filled his veins.

Snape’s transformation was indeed peculiar. His already rather abnormal nose was elongating inches, a pair of horns sprouted out of his temples, his eyeteeth were crooking into giant fangs, his body was turning hunched and beastlike. The broad flaps of his cloak widened out into giant batwings, and his sallow complexion and the garments were getting a gray, gneiss-like coating. A few blinks later, he appeared as though he had been the best pal of the two other gargoyles squatting on his both sides. Snape’s whole body had turned oddly rock-like. Yet, he still could move himself with labor, and nothing had obliterated his razor-sharp awareness. But the transformation had ceased his horrible panting, and clipped off even the throbbing of his muscles. The transfiguration fiesta was not yet thoroughly over. The woman was casting a similar kind of stone spell upon herself, while she warped her outer appearance drastically with the Metamorphmagus skills.

Right there and then, the pursuer popped out of the murk. The reddish light revealed a skinny, tall man, whose feet were the size of small bathtubs. He was dressed in something that looked like a moth-eaten old curtain. Regarding the shoe size, it was no wonder why his bouncing had sounded like elephant’s tap-dance. He then stopped dead, and started whisking his head into every direction possible. Apparently the weasel had lost its prey, and now boiled in confused anger. The man hopped hither and thither, and eventually decided to rush past the gargoyle enclosure towards the lane’s other end.

However, the freshly sculpted duo among the bogey friends had no much leisure time. The dumbfounded Snape had merely a little while to glance at what Tonks had done to him, and cast his gaze upon the bird of ill omen herself. The whole statue play was as though spiteful irony: she had transformed herself into a graceful sleeping nymph, which was softly snoozing in the arms of an ugly travesty of Nosferatu. The archetypal Beauty and the Beast fairy tale had gotten a new epitome in the most satirical way. Severus had no idea how repulsive he looked like, but the sheer conception made an unpleasant squirm down his spine. And just when he believed the foul theater to be over, the fiend was back.

The shady male and his sailboat-sized feet came traipsing from behind the same corner, where he had dived a meager minute ago. Peering around suspiciously, he halted irritatingly near Snape’s freak show. He knocked on a small windowless door jutting on the same wall. With a huge effort - regarding the fact that his neck was almost as stiff as teak - Severus managed to turn his head an inch leftwards to see what the jack was doing. And, for his ultimate horror, the grimy exit squeaked open. The figure of a second man plunged partly into the sanguine light. Sleek blond hair gleaming in orange hues, Lucius Malfoy turned his pale face in the direction where the unknown individual pointed. A small, snappy conversation was tuned up between those two. Malfoy was snarling ferociously like a fierce bloodhound. Apparently he was utterly disappointed with the other male. Screwing up his new, fashionable elf ears, Snape did his best to distinguish words or fragments of sentences among that whispery dispute. Indeed... ill-boding expressions like ‘Department of Mysteries’, ‘Prophecy’, and ‘lost the tracks’, were fluttering in the air. These barks came from the foreigner’s maw, closely followed by a series of hisses made by Lucius. Evidently the mighty tycoon wanted the slightly lack-witted minion to shut up about such things on a semi-public lane.

A few minutes passed, and the quarrel calmed down. Malfoy stepped fully out of the petite door, and closed it carefully behind him. Lofty, accompanied by his lackey, he then began sweeping down the alleyway right towards Snape and Tonks. He did not care to hush down his tone any longer, but drawled audibly something boring about his son Draco. The men were plodding very slowly onwards. This made it impossible for the statuesque skulkers to return to normal.

Out of the blue, just when the two villains were closest to the gargoyles, the ministry-cajoler turned his arrogant grey eyes towards Severus. The Potions Master felt as if he had suddenly swallowed a tennis ball. That cold, soulless stare was perfectly intruding the privacy of the statue cluster. It was aimed straight at Snape’s face.

Had Lucius Malfoy noticed? That would be the doom and perdition.

Fortunately, this appalling dream did not come true. Malfoy’s following remark however did not quite lift up Snape’s feelings either. Lucius poked at the lackey with his snake-headed cane, pointing at the professor’s fantastic beast costume.

“Speaking of Hogwarts... Do you see that hideous gargoyle over there? I ought to say that it reminds me - yes indeed -” he gave an impish chuckle. “It reminds me so much of the Potions Master that works there. Especially that - so to say - deformed nose. You do not often see a man as ugly around. If I say that he resembles that stone figure, I am still not praising the whole glory of his mostly repulsive looks. Let us take for example the hair. My son Draco has often pointed out that...”

Malfoy finally drew his visage away. The rest of the sentence disappeared under the hoarse hee-haw of the nitwit henchman.

Snape felt as though his chest had become an overheating nuclear power plant. What a disgrace... How dared that obtuse bootlicker of the Dark Lord talk about him that way? That octa-cursed hydrogen peroxide blonde who had nothing better to do than chink Galleons in his pockets! How he would have wanted to shove a barrel of oozing poo down that idle groveler’s throat... Or jinx him into something equal, whichever came first.

Despite that Severus was initially made of gray stone, he sensed how his forehead was shimmering. He had so very forgotten that he was not alone. A certain someone had also heard Malfoy’s every syllable... A chaotic tumult welled inside him; rage was in a hand-to-hand combat with embarrassment. Luckily this Armageddon of sentiments was not visible through the surface. Otherwise he would have revealed the cunning cloister slyly sheltering him and Nymphadora. But oh, oh, it was all so unbearable! That silly child probably sniggered under her breath to Malfoy’s jests, so it had to be! They were all the same after all. Either open mockers like James Potter and Sirius Black, or then insolent cajoling hypocrites that kept sneering and rumoring when the backs turned! Such unworthy trash they all were! And how slowly those You-Know-Who’s cheerleaders were dragging their noxious forms onwards... If they only speeded up their lazy legs, the greasy-hair could take a quick hike back to Hogwarts, and sulk in a closet the rest of the week.

Oh the biased and conflicting nature of the Potions Master... It might have eased his contradictory huff a tad, if he had been able to snatch a ten thousand points from Gryffindor now and here. However, Miss Fortuna decided to be especially sardonic today. Flying out of nowhere, an insomniac pigeon suddenly landed smoothly on top of Snape’s head. From there, it hopped down to toddle along his elongated stone nose. The bird kept tilting its head, goggling at him with its slightly bulging eyes, as if trying to figure out whether this really was the greatest fulfillment of its wishes. A sparklingly clean, unruined statue... could it even be possible? A common pigeon definitely did not meet these rarities every day, not even every year. The most perfect loo. And it, it would have the glory or marking it first. What an unforgettable moment in history! Ruffling its feathers, the bird shuffled along the unlucky Potion Master’s nose bridge, looking for the most comfortable pose... The gargoyle-against-his-will scowled thunderstruck at the twisted evil animal. And he still could not move, could he?

However, this night Snape was saved from this fate worse than getting a kiss from Umbridge. Tonks had apparently both noticed that the Death Eaters were gone, and that her savior was in a diabolical distress. The lane looked entirely desolated now. Neither eerie sweeps of cloaks or haunted footsteps echoed in the tranquil nocturnal cityscape. With a flick of wand, she quickly transfigured them both back to human form. The pigeon flitted rapidly away, croaking and burbling horror-struck. The statue was not a statue after all, but some atrocious shape-shifting monster with malignantly glinting eyes. Who knew if the behemoth might even eat it!

The rigidity melted away. Thereupon, Snape’s limbs felt like sloppy ice cream. His pounding arms barely supported the girl’s weight any more. They were going to push aside the sappiness in any case, because the man wanted only to run, run, run, run away from the pink honey-lands bursting with cupids and love-doves. He wanted to escape from all the embarrassment, flee the mockery, slink under his bed and damn the whole world into the hottest Gehenna... Why nothing ever occurred the way he wanted? Why everything always had to fall into the darkest disgrace? Lo, the woe!

Nonetheless, the odds are odd and uncalculated. Just when he was going to let the girl plop down, he experienced a petrification a hundred times stronger than the stone-fright spell. His arms were again stiff as titanium, and they closed the Auror back inside their coop. Tonks had abruptly ceased his shoulders, one of her hands resting a mere inch away from his sunken cheek. Gawping at him straight in the eyes, her half-angsty aspect was full of unprejudiced, pitying worry. Severus had expected her to explode with hyena laughs and start rolling on the pavement, enjoying every cubic millimeter of Malfoy’s scorn.

But no. There she gawked, her visage softly delineated a few inches away from his own. Gulping, she mourned, “M-Mr. Snape? I - I’m so sorry about all t-this... I - I didn’t mean to cause you harm again...”

---

A dark mass of clouds churned onwards in the sky. The stereotypical London drizzle had been banished only for a while. Now it was back at home, and would soon restart its monotonic patter. The sky gave a forewarning for the pathetic mortals beneath by spitting down a few raindrops. Beware earthen weaklings; vastly more of those wet blobs would soon be belched out.

The existence of two or three water droplets did not finish the staring contest, which was going on between Snape and Tonks. The girl was almost one hundred percent sure that the man did not even blink, but just gaped at her with those pupils that resembled long obscure tunnels. She could not figure out why he had to repeat the same gawk game every time they met. It was not very Snape-like: that behavior merely made the sublime sorcerer seem like some subnormal slug. What was behind that gleaming, almost mad gaze? Hatred, annoyance, surprise, loathing, or what? This man’s mind was like a lonely asteroid flying across the vast, dark distances of space. Just as unreachable it was. She had once or twice heard about his supreme talents in Occlumency. Thus, no wonder the data stored in his brain cells was hardly decodable.

But still... it would have eased her aching conscience if she had perceived what was moving inside the dank, heavily locked dungeons of his mind. Namely, the flight across the alley had not granted her relief even worth an atom. Moreover, a few more kilos had been added to the burden of embarrassment and self-accusations. Her good intentions with the gargoyle masquerade had been totally dumped down the sewer.

Thus, the sniveling woe of her inners erupted in a tsunami of hasty, nervous sentences. Her hands took involuntarily a stronger hold on his shoulders, her thumb unnoticed skimming the skin of his jaw.

“I - I never meant it to happen this way. I... I just thought we’d have a good shelter here. I mean, I - I never meant to splash you all over with that salad, or rip your robes, or burn them, and I never, ever meant to cause you any harm with the gargoyle spell...”

She whisked her head in the direction where Lucius and his lackey had evanesced. “Blimey! I mean, how dared that blasted Malfoy say such things about you? We all look a bit funny, but so what? Now let’s take Mad-Eye... He’s a bit tumble-down, lost limbs and everything, has that weird eye... but I’d never go on deliberately saying a bad word against him! Humor’s a different thing, but blimey...”

Nymphadora’s shoulder angel did not actually shut up, but went on shrieking even more shrilly. She had actually become guilty of Snape-bashing herself. And in rather hefty quantities. Back at Hogwarts, throwing snide remarks about the Potions Master’s looks had been a common game. Of course at that time, she had been an immature teen, sharp-tongued and with a behavioral rate nearly as low as James Potter’s. Tonks had naturally grown out of the adolescence amentia, and treated now people with different kind of dignity.

But, she could not exactly acclaim innocence concerning the immediate past either. Rather recently, when having some insignificant prattle with Sirius and Remus, Black had thrown in some comments about the professor’s Dementor-like appearance. Those lampoons had made her titter, but the giggles had been far away from scorn. On that occasion, he had nevertheless bothered to keep his paws away from certain unpleasant, historic nicknames.

Of course Nymphadora could tell that Severus was no Prince Charming with curly blond hair glistening with pixie dust. And that he definitely would not win Witch Weekly’s Most Charming Smile award with those yellowed uneven tusks. Admittedly even the gargoyle outside Dumbledore’s office was cuter than he. But still... did he really deserve the slanders Lucius had cackled? The Order spy was not a warty cave troll with the emotional range of a battered Wellington boot.

And what he had just done... Could she admit to herself that he had possibly just saved her life? This was somewhat hard to swallow. It ripped up both the Miss Independent -imago she had built around herself, and the fact that she was supposed to be a fully qualified Auror. Were not only fair fairytale princesses in bouffant pink dresses being saved by men? These days the average lass was supposed to be a kick-booty Xena-Lady bursting with Girl Power.

Now, were had those vanished? How embarrassing.

She turned her countenance back to him, only to cause a nose bump. At some point, when the Auror’s regard had roamed elsewhere, he had jerked his head downwards closer to her. The infamous bridge of his nose was generously three times longer than hers. So, it was no wonder why those facial protrusions easily smashed against each other. This incident of course made Snape snatch his oily head back. His mouth clicked so wide open that some lonely swallow could have used it as a comfortable birdhouse and raised a whole family of fledglings there. Her jowls became painted with a deep scarlet tint, and she had severe trouble to affront his piercing pitch black eyes that were burning holes into her. However, she forcibly gulped down the worst bits of disconcertment, and prodded her pointy schnozzle up. Furthermore the syllables came out stuttering.

“A-are you... mad at me? Please don’t be. I - I know I’ve caused you trouble, but we’re working on the same side, right? I’ve - I’ve kept thinking all these weeks if you’re still angry with me because of the kitchen thing...”

Severus had no clue on which planet he resided initially: Tellus, Mars, Coruscant, Middle-Earth, or someplace else. He plain could not trust his senses. Had that child just blabbered Sanskrit backwards, or was she truly feeling PITY towards HIM because of Malfoy? Where was the scorn, the sneer? Why was she not sprawling on the street on her fours, wriggling in violent fits of horselaugh? His brains were very tardily registering the environmental data: the Potions Master was actually experiencing one of these ultra-rare cases when someone was defending him against dishonor. They were indeed so sparse, that it would be more probable to spot Genghis Khan riding a green-striped mammoth wearing roller-skates than seeing someone honestly feeling compassion towards the greasy oddball. In addition... as he sensed her soft hold on his shoulders through the robes, occasionally her small hands shifting a bit their position, the former tennis ball stuck in his gullet grew into the size of a small planet. Additionally the tip of his big pale nose was tingling eerily, having collided with hers. Not to mention the inadvertent skims of her thumb on his cheek... Oh the poor introvert, lonesome old bat. What to do, what to do? There were simply no adjectives in the English vocabulary to describe his stupefaction.

Then there was her bashful mewl about whether he was angry with her. Yes... some mental recess still mulled over grudge. However, ninety-nine percent of his awareness basked in an odd, mellow emotion. Her soft warmth in the misty night was so sweet against his chest, and it radiated such innocent leniency. The male was not livid, which definitely was against all the patterns of his nature. Normally he kept fomenting aversion decades after some minor boo-boo. Jaw twitching furiously, he finally managed to produce a bumbling ‘no’ to soothe down her angst.

A faint smile spread across her visage. Excluding the curses, this was actually the first time this crow had cawed anything understandable after the mayonnaise flub.

She heaved a deep sigh. “Hey, thanks, I... uh... heh, at least I don’t need to think about that any longer. And... umm... thanks for catching me in the stairs and helping me escape. I could’ve hurt myself when I fell and well... gotten into worse trouble that way.” She however was not ready to confess the whole truth about his actions yet. The battle-girl pride did not initially give in all that much.

And Snape merely gawked at her, his heart taking a giddy lambada across his thorax. Nobody had given him such an earnest glance in ages. Her expression, how it was so mild... And how this mere child rested in the dim light... those cheeks curving so softly, her little nose standing proudly in the shadow of his long beak, her lips slightly open, those sincere eyes twinkling under the thick eyelashes... For the first time, Snape became fully aware of the other kind of attractiveness she possessed. The beauty of candor was of course more valuable than physical traits, but still. His cranial grottos had naturally been filled with impressions of her young freshness several times before. But always there was room for more detailed perceptions.

All this rampaging confusion was near to split his brains. If the girl - for some incomprehensible reason - had kissed his cheek right now and here, a full-scale apoplexy would have probably struck the poor gargoyle guy. Tonks could only wonder what was larking about in his mind. Why was this bloke acting like a fossilized oak around her nowadays? Tremendously odd. He never stuttered when other Order members were present. Merely he strutted around in his billowing robes in a vain manner. There was a shrill dissonance somewhere. And why was he still squeezing her up in his arms? The Death Eater Decathlon had ended eternities ago.

“Erm... you can put me down now?” she shyly pointed out. Actually, Nymphadora had to repeat the plea before the intoxicated male even comprehended what he was supposed to do. With a hasp, he unlocked his arms, and let the woman softly down.

Zap. All of a sudden, the reality strangled him like a fierce boa. Only now he grasped, how his arms and back were on fire. He had carried the dream damsel simply too long. Severus unfortunately had no quite as much bulk as Hercules, and hence could not avoid becoming weary. With a paining moan, his face warped into a grimace that would have given toddlers nightmares for months. Empathetic spirit as Tonks was, his state naturally started worrying her. Thus she was suited to give the final touch to his apprehension.

She grabbed his arm, massaged it a bit, and pouted, “You shouldn’t have dragged me like that. I really could’ve run on my own. You know, you’ll be really knocked out tomorrow if you don’t get yourself any relaxant potion. I mean, it was a fair bit of rushing, with all that jumping over fences and everything.”

The male went into hysterics. A drastic shiver rocked his whole body, and this time he could not cease the frantic clattering of his teeth. The girl was just in the middle of the same thing his mind had hatched all these weeks. Although his arm had turned as rigid as a mummified tree branch, he did not snatch it away. He merely wanted to stagnate there, and feel that blissful, soft touch... his pallid, cold, chapped hand in the caress of her sweetly warm palms...

As usual, Nymphadora had no clue what kind of mosquitoes zoomed around his stomach. She became seriously concerned whether the Potions Master was feeling cold because of the shivering. Namely, the heavens were vomiting raindrops more and more frequently, and the temperature was sliding downhill.

“You should get back to Hogwarts and rest. But... I was thinking it would be really important to call up the Order. Well, I kind of charmed my ears a bit while we were hiding and heard pretty much everything Malfoy and the second bloke were whispering. Was a bit keen to know what they were plotting, really, and it wasn’t just any idle codswallop. You-Know-Who’s apparently trying to figure out new ways to get the Prophecy. You think you’d be able to pop in Grimmauld Place still tonight?” she mused, squeezing his fist with both hands.

“Hlblblblblblbl...” Snape’s teeth rattled together.

“Just for a split second. Just so that they could hear your point of view. There may be some crucial stuff I didn’t spot, but you maybe did.”

The male nodded vaguely. This was a matter of urgency, and here he just swam in syrup.

“Erm... We might be a bit more careful though...” The Auror glanced at the lane’s gorge, which had devoured the Death Eaters earlier. “Can’t help it, but Mad-Eye’s attitude is starting to infect me too. Obviously you can never be too careful around here. What if we...”

A few minutes later, Snape’s buckled shoe stepped onto Knockturn Alley’s dreadful surface. An old hunched hag with a huge warty hooknose trotted beside him, arm in arm with him. Yet, the cover lied drastically, and Severus was fully aware of it. That was the reason he reeled onwards like a drunken duck. To avoid any more unwanted encounters with Death Eaters, Ringwraiths, or any other Dark Side creatures, Tonks had transformed herself into something that could have with 99,99999999% probability been Snape’s great great great great great grandmother. Just in case she had been accidentally recognized during the lane marathon.

Knockturn Alley appeared to be far away from slumberland. Ominous figures lurked here and there, occasionally tossing dodgy scowls towards the couple. The hook-nosed tandem was heading towards the Apparition-free zone at the end of the passage. Nymphadora had not cared to bewitch the baggage visible. It gently followed its sovereign owners by flitting somewhere above their heads. The Potions Master had no definite knowledge of whether his hyper-precious Black Crawlycreeper Extract was still intact. If not, the NEWT students would be lacking education the following day. Additionally there would be no instant cure available if anyone at Hogwarts - by some repugnant reason - caught Slug Diarrhea.

Yet... somewhere in the bowels of the flying paper bag the tiny bottle containing this icky bug juice had shattered. And far, far away in the distant lands, where a majestic castle towered above the velvety black landscape, a nefarious dark shadow was levitating something through Dolores Umbridge’s open window. The queen of toads was squatting on her evil throne, scribbling something heatedly onto a pink parchment. The magenta marquee she was wearing - the garment depicted plump rosy doves frolicking among daisies - was torn in several places. She had barely saved herself from the attack of the wicked rubber ducks that had earlier the same day emerged from Snape’s cauldron. These foul imps had haunted the High Supreme Frog for hours, pursuing her around the castle. Perhaps they still would be circulating their number one enemy, if the foozled hex had not worn off. Mere air had created them, and to be swallowed by mere air was their fate in the end. Only faint wisps of smoke twirled above the graveyard of those brave yellow duckies that had given a generous helping wing to the Hogwarts rebels that day.

Umbridge perched back against the window, humming toadishly, her wide slack mouth simpering. Thus she did not notice the small, glimmering dish that was softly hovering in. It contained a wee amount of some transparent liquid. Eerily it glided towards her teacup, which was fuming gently on her desk. Quietly, phantomlike, the dish poured its inners inside the teacup. And just as silently, it soared away through the window, out of sight.

Umbridge grabbed the cup with her stubby short fingers, and took a good gulp of Earl Grey.

Half an hour later, she felt her large belly churning unbearably.

*******

BONK!

Severus raised a hand to rub his slightly throbbing nose. Two inches in front of him jutted a gracefully ornate lamppost. Nymphadora’s hold on his arm tightened, followed by a hushed query.

“Are you all right?”

The Potions Master stared stupefied at the lanky barricade in front of him. Had all the rationality been sucked out of his brains? Had he just walked like some dimwitted zombie straight against a lamppost? How could this be? Such batty blunders happened only in some absurd Muggle cartoons. But so had the lovesick teacher promenaded onwards as though walking on pink fluffy clouds. How dared the irksome reality wake him up this way? What a shame. That idiot stick had definitely done a conspiracy against him!

But before Severus had time to kick the annoying lamppost in his fury, he heard Tonks prompting, “Mr. Snape, aren’t we there now? Knockturn Alley is nearly ending. We should Disapparate before anyone starts suspecting us.”