Orion's Pointer

Ordinarily, the prissily-dressed woman's continued hesitation would have him fussing at the folds of his saffron robes in repressed agitation, but Todianus had seen the tell-tale glint in her dark brown eyes that told him she had already decided to purchase the goods. It was merely an appearance of vacillation employed to determine whether or not she had bargained with him as tightly as possible. Customer hesitation would have those of lesser experience reduce the price even further in order to guarantee the sale. Todianus was not so foolish.

"The gall-stones are of considerable quality, madam," he told her mildly in his high voice and clasped his chubby hands together. "I must confess that I've had to turn away several other interested customers as I knew you would be calling in today. Your reputation for a discerning taste in apothecaria tells me that you would not deny yourself the opportunity to secure such quality examples as you see here."

She heard the flattery. Of course she would. Todianus had expected no less. But the woman also heard the intimation that the apoth had been pushed as far as he was willing to go in reducing the price and was prepared to pass on the dragon galls to another interested party. Her keen eyes studied his flabby face for signs of deceit, shrewd beneath her high, arching brows, thin mouth slightly pursed in assessment. Yes, he could very well be lying, but was she prepared to take that chance?

"They are adequate," she decided with a sigh, as if disappointed at being forced to buy them for want of something finer. Her skeletal hand slid into her purse just as the door to the shop opened.

Todianus' gaze flicked up automatically to observe his new customer, his mind otherwise occupied with self-congratulations for achieving the sale with a handsome profit margin. Such thoughts fled rapidly as he recognised the dark silhouette against the winter afternoon's fading light.

The fat apoth tried his hardest to keep his hands from shaking, but it was a futile exercise. The tremor was patently evident as he took the bony woman's Galleons, earning him a sharp look as he fumbled one of the heavy coins and allowed it to clatter onto the counter.

He gave a nervous titter. "My apologies, madam. Allow me to prepare your purchase."

"Swiftly, please," his female customer instructed haughtily, keen to regain some of the upper hand in the exchange by acting snobbishly. "I have business elsewhere and I have been kept here longer than I wished."

Todianus bobbed his bald head in assent, wiping a trickle of sweat off his temple surreptitiously and reaching for a delicate glass case for the die-sized gall-stones. He risked a second glance at his other customer who had drifted from the doorway to give the outward appearance of calmly checking the large jars on the shelf next to the tinted shop window. It was possible that he was scrutinising the merchandise, but the apoth knew the real reason why the man was here.

It was a small miracle that Todianus didn't smash the glass case in his haste to have the woman's purchase prepared and she herself out of his shop. For someone who had professed an urgency to be away, she took an inordinate amount of time to leave. It was all the apoth could do not to shove her out physically. Not that he was keen to be left alone with this man, but he would rather not anyone else know of the situation at hand.

The snick of the door closing made Todianus jump slightly, as if it were the fastening of a dried corpse's hand around his throat. He waited tensely behind his counter, fingers knotted together tightly. The man gave no indication that he knew Todianus was watching him --a deliberate tactic to ensure the apoth's nervousness would do nothing but increase as the seconds ticked by.

Todianus mopped his forehead with a handkerchief as his gaze followed the man across the shop floor to the opposite wall. Several more minutes were spent assessing the wares there in a parody of an innocent customer browsing which covered the reality of a person knowing they were so completely in control of the situation that they could take all the time they needed. And time that they didn't need.

Turning slowly on his heel, the man drifted back towards the door and stopped, looking out on the few shadows moving back and forth along Knockturn Alley with his hands clasped behind his back, head tilted a fraction to one side. Todianus shuffled his weight between his feet and hoped that no other customers would attempt to enter with that forbidding figure blocking passage. It would be appalling for business. He was mere seconds away from clearing his throat when the man spoke.

"I will take five ounces of the lacewing flies."

The low voice kicked back from the glass as clearly as if the man had been facing the apoth, startling the fat man into motion. His trembling and sweaty hands nearly allowed the jar to slip from his grasp as he gathered it from the shelf. Sensing Todianus' discomfort, the man turned smoothly to watch him, a sardonic twist to his mouth and a slightly raised eyebrow.

With the dried insects carefully boxed up, the apoth dabbed again at his perspiring face with the rapidly dampening handkerchief. "Will there be anything else today?" he inquired, hoping for a negative answer.

The man's smile tightened. Todianus sighed, drew out his wand and pointed it in the man's direction.

The dark-haired wizard hissed through his uneven teeth and stepped swiftly to one side, his hand moving partway to where his own wand was kept.

Todianus blinked in confusion, lowering his wand and taking a pace back in alarm before realising how his actions must have looked.

"No! I meant... ah... that is... I... need to close the shop."

The hard black eyes continued to bore into his. He knew better than to look away. He'd learnt the hard way.

"The sign," Todianus clarified. "I need to turn it."

There was a long pause before the man lifted his hand, trapped the sign between his fingers and twisted it around to deny entry to any other, all without taking his eyes off the apoth. The whispered Colloportus would stop the illiterate or the more persistent.

Todanius put his wand down on the counter and wiped his palms on his robes. This was never going to be a pleasant encounter, but his lack of foresight had now ensured that it was undoubtedly going to be even less agreeable. He edged toward to the curtain drawn across the doorway leading to the rear of the shop and pulled the material back.

The black stare narrowed. "After you, I think."

The truth was that Todianus, whilst dreading these particular confrontations, grudgingly admitted, albeit to himself, that they were not the worst he experienced these days. There was no gore, no physical violence like that he witnessed in his dealings with Greyback. No threat to his livelihood or indeed his life that he underwent with Macnair. However, these encounters within his own shop were just as dangerous, just as deadly, the control over him so absolute that to contemplate anything but obeisance and obedience was unthinkable. Not just unthinkable: impossible. The man had a grappling hook buried so deep into his will that even the normally slippery apoth could find no way to avoid its biting pull. He would do whatever the man said, and gladly. That was the way of the Imperius. In some ways, he was glad of it. This way, he had no will, no conscience to struggle against. He just did as he was told.

Yet his flesh still crawled whenever he had to turn his back on the man. The rational part of him knew, knew that it was in the wizard's best interests to keep Todianus alive, but how could he know when he'd outlived his usefulness when the man kept him in the dark as much as Greyback and Macnair tried to?

The apoth sighed and pushed open the door to his small office at the rear of the shop where the neatly stacked ledgers and inventories sat aligned with a near mathematical precision. All trace of his brother's administrative chaos was now long gone. He stood by the leather chair and tried not to swallow convulsively. With it being the only seating in the room, he offered it to his visitor in somewhat fawning subservience.

"My two feet do well enough," was the response. The fact that it allowed the man to tower over Todianus even more than usual was left unspoken.

"There is little to tell," the fat man began, dropping his weight into the chair and blotting the handkerchief against his jowls.

"That may be so." The tone suggested that there was a disbelief in the veracity of Todianus' statement.

"You know I cannot lie," the apoth replied tiredly, looking up at the lanky, black-shrouded figure.

"I know you do not see the greater picture," was the quiet answer. "It remains for me to determine the quality and quantity of your information. You have the location?"

Todianus wiped the corner of his mouth with the back of his hand. "Greyback has moved again. I do not know where. Some place I have not been before. He expressed a... concern that someone was leaking information as to where his den was. One or two werewolves had reported..." He searched for an adequate word. "Lurkers in the vicinity." He shook his head slightly. "Greyback has been more jumpy than usual. More violent as well." Images of torn bodies, clenched fists and poorly-repressed rage flickered through his mind. "I am put through an even more elaborate disorientation process than ever before. I don't believe he suspects me, but that could easily change if I am not careful."

"Macnair."

"Judging on the amounts of drugs he's taking from me, I estimate he has between two hundred and fifty and two hundred and seventy five lycanthropes tied to him. He has made no mention as to what fraction of that number constitutes females." Todianus tapped his fingers on the table briefly. "Perhaps none. There has been no mention of the loss of lyc-females that he did once have, but I am certain they remain lost to him." Simulacra of whispered, fervent exchanges between Macnair and Brachoveitch flashed through his head. "Those two argue. A lot. I sense a... disparity of purpose between them."

"Their long-term plan?"

"Still unknown to me."

The man opposite him considered this for some time, making of it who knew what as he stared steadily into the apoth's eyes. One long-fingered hand slipped into his overcoat pocket, making Todianus tense up immediately. The tightening of his body did not go unobserved, if the man's curled lip was any judge. Three small glass vials were placed in front of the apoth.

"Give the sick woman five drops of the blue, two of the green and one of the clear. This is the most important thing you will ever do, so you will keep the vials on you at all times, even as you sleep. If I discover you have missed any opportunity, you will pray that Greyback tears you apart first."

"But if he asks--"

"Tell the fool that one is an antibiotic, one an anti-inflammatory and the third a liver tonic. It is unimportant which is which as long as you are consistent. The medication is not to be left in his possession, and nor are you. Be creative in your reasoning."

"He'll want to know why one isn't a stimulant."

"Then tell him 'one step at a time'. A stimulant will destroy what's left of her liver and then she will be beyond help. She must be dosed every five hours and the dosage will vary according to her progress."

"How will I know--"

"You will observe her very, very carefully. I will determine the variation based on your observation, so be thorough."

The apoth placed the vials into his pocket. A small, velvet pouch was placed in front of him, its contents making a faint tinkling sound. He blinked in confusion. It hadn't sounded like coins for payment of any kind.

"What is it?" The man had asked the question he had intended to voice. Todianus hesitated before reaching for the pouch and loosening the cord. The jointed metal inside was unfamiliar to him in form but not nature, fashioned in a strange collar-like arrangement with a delicate chain hanging loose from one panel. He turned the metal over in his hands, squinting at the fine engraving, turning the panels towards the light coming from the lamp on the table.

"I don't know, but the metal is pewtinella-haem. I've seen it once or twice before, but not like this.

"Then where?"

Todianus fiddled with the catch, marvelling at the workmanship. Goblin-wrought, surely.

"I came across an incomplete set of flasks made of it at an auction many years ago. The auctioneer knew nothing more than the metal and its approximate age. I was quite taken with them. Pewtinella-haem is resistant to oxidation and non-reactive with most contents, so they would have made excellent, if expensive storage flasks for the more temperamental apothecaria." He set the jewellery down on the black velvet rather reluctantly. "Alas, someone had deeper pockets than I that day. The other time I saw a knife of it in the hands of a woman. Briefly. I could have been mistaken, but the colour..." He shrugged. "Too distinct for anything else." He studied the collar once more. "A gift?"

The man's expression didn't change, but he sounded surprised at the query. "Perhaps."

Todianus nodded, his curiosity aroused but wisely unspoken any further.

"Does either of the Teverington seevy wear such a piece?"

It was the apoth's turn to be surprised. "No! At least, not that I've ever seen." He mulled over the question for a moment. "It's possible. They could wear one under their clothing and I'd never know."

"Who is the senior of the two?"

Todianus looked up from the jewellery, still lost in the consideration of how he would know if either Teverington wore anything like it. A crease marked his smooth forehead.

"In age?"

"In rank."

"Oh." An interesting question. "The Handler, although..." He wasn't sure whether the supposition would be worth relaying.

"Yes?" It was the prompt that would inevitably have been asked.

"I suspect that the Sniffer is changing that."

The fathomless eyes glittered at him. "How so?"

It was quicker, easier, to allow the man to look at what Todianus had seen than try to explain it. In words, the exchanges, the looks, the mood of the incidents would seem inconsequential, but in reality, Todianus' gut feeling was that there was a subtle, inexorable shift of power going on between the seevy. Pushing the memories to the front of his mind only strengthened that belief. It was a belief that seemed to trouble the other man.

"What do you know of seevy?"

Now Todianus was definitely confused. He frowned up at the man.

"There is a problem with the question?" The raised eyebrows and soft voice reminded the apoth that this man had a cold temper.

"Ah, no, but what could I possibly tell you that you don't already know?"

The man did not respond.

"Surely your Sniffer could tell you?" Todianus hunched his shoulders inward to make himself appear even more subservient; sensing a prickly irritation arising in the room's other occupant.

"This question is not how much I know. It is how much you know."

"Little," the apoth was quick to emphasise. "I have heard that some apoths used to employ Sniffers, but personally I know of none now that do so. A shame."

That, strangely, caused a faint smile on the other man's face. "And why is that?"

"Quality control," Todianus replied without thinking ahead. "A tool for differentiating the poor from the fine. The industry is rife with suppliers looking to short change a buyer."

The smile widened. "Quite so."

The apoth realised that one such buyer was currently standing in front of him, sneering down at him through the lank locks of his raven hair. Todianus clenched his teeth in dreaded anticipation of retribution for reminding the man that he had once been duped with less laudable supplies than the coin had demanded.

"I've tried to secure the services of a Sniffer," the apoth rushed on, keen to get away from his rather spectacular metaphorical insertion of his foot in his mouth as quickly as possible. "I was stonewalled by a Screen and now I cannot even find evidence of any other seevy except for the ones working for Macnair. I was told in no uncertain terms that I have been blacklisted."

"How?"

"A knifepoint in my back and a voice in my ear. I never saw them, and so much the better." He saw the man's questioning expression. "I've heard it said that to see a Sniffer's face is to see the face of death." Todianus shrugged slightly, noting the way the fabric of his robes clung to his skin awkwardly from the sweat that squeezed from his pores. "An effective legend, and perhaps it was true once, but I've looked on the Teverington Sniffer's face more than once and I survive still. Given the choice, I would prefer not to see it."

"Where did this warning take place?"

This was clearly of interest to the man: his whole mien had changed from an easy, almost lazy superiority to an intense and focussed alertness.

"As I was leaving the shop."

Jarring visual grabs of the incident swept across his mind, confused and jumbled by the adrenaline-infused terror he had felt at the time. They faded as the man's eyes flicked briefly to one side.

"Find a way to reach Greyback. Tell him you have something that will help keep his captured seevy female alive. Find out where he's hiding and don't let him keep you there. Contact me by Floo the second you return. Remember, if she dies, you'll be next, and it won't be by my hand."

With that, the man picked up the jewellery and its pouch, turned and left the small office, leaving Todianus to scramble clumsily up from his chair and after him. Coins were already on the counter and the boxed lacewing flies securely in the man's hand before the apoth reached the shop floor.

"Ah, there is no charge for today's purchase, Professor!" the fat man called after him breathlessly.

The silhouette paused on the threshold. "I do not steal, Mr Todianus. I pay for everything I take. Kindly remember that in future."

And then he was gone.

Pewtinella-haem. It would explain the colour. A tricky alloy to master, and none were so accomplished as Goblins in that regard. Another line of connection in the web, but one that would lead to a dead-end. Goblins were exceedingly close-mouthed and incredibly canny, and they regarded inquiries into their business very poorly.

Snape sighed as he watched the two silver birds jump from perch to perch in their bamboo cage, serenading each other in an intricate lace of sweet descant and honeyed harmony, wings catching the firelight in pretty little flashes as they flitted back and forth.

At first their singing had bothered him. He was unused to such constant noise in his quarters, however delicate and accomplished a sound it may have been. They would only sing if he were in the room, so he had taken to moving away until they couldn't see him and would therefore fall silent. Then he had been puzzled as to why they would only sing when he was in sight and tested himself with trying to sneak up on the birds to see how close he could get to them before they erupted into what seemed to be a faintly accusing barrage of notes aimed down at him, their tiny bright blue eyes flickering as they scolded him. Folter had caught him at it a couple of times, her large eyes even wider than usual, but typically she said nothing.

It wasn't long before Snape found himself spending more time around the birds, finding their trilling voices oddly soothing. He'd even dragged his small study table nearer to where the cage hung so that the birds could watch him more closely. It seemed to amuse them that they could fluff their feathers and drop those that escaped onto his parchments as he worked. He kept them all. Pewtinella was an expensive, rare metal, and it would have been foolish of him to discard it. Mostly he kept them because the delicate silvern feathers were so elegant.

He wondered how long it would take to collect enough feathers to make a collar like Parr's. It was a piece of incredible worth, both in its constituent metal and the labour and skill that had gone into making it. To blend blood with metal in such a way would not have come cheaply, let alone the fine carving worked into the metal.

The collar laid nestled back in its velvet pouch on the study table in front of him. It bothered him in more ways than one.

Parr had not asked for it back. Since Lupin had left it for him, there had been no mention of it, from the werewolf or from the seevy. Was he meant to return it? Was there a specific etiquette surrounding it? He rolled his eyes. Undoubtedly, if his experience with seevy custom was anything to go by, but he was hamstrung by a lack of information. Questioning the apoth had been fruitless, as he had suspected it would be, but it had been worth a shot.

What did it say to the Parr Striker that he had retained possession of something that belonged to her, something that symbolised who and what she was: a collared creature leashed by a chain so thin that its ability to restrain her would have been laughable? Perhaps that was the whole point of it. The collar unworn and the leash deliberately inadequate to illustrate that the arrangement between Handler and Striker was far more complex and mysterious than Snape had first realised. He had assumed that it was the Handler who maintained seniority in the pairing, but at times it seemed as if the Striker acted as if she were the higher ranked of the two. However, having never been in direct contact with her Handler, it was all mere supposition on his part with little to back it up in terms of hard evidence. How much of her behaviour was wilfulness and how much was that from a Striker's right was impossible to judge.

Both Parrs had been in Greyback's possession. He was unsure of the circumstances in which it had occurred, but Snape couldn't imagine that the Striker would have been able to retain possession of not only the collar, but her knives as well. Regardless of whether they had been taken in the field or ambushed at home, their possessions would have been plundered, fought over, coveted and probably sold. The collar and leash could be a replacement--its appearance was pristine enough to be a relatively new acquisition--but her knives appeared to bear markings of a heavier and longer use than recent facsimiles would display. The long silver knife given into his possession as a mark of the Parr seevys' debt to him sat next to the velvet pouch, well-kept, untarnished, sharper than a razor, but lined and dented as silver was inclined to turn with constant handling and the passage of time.

If what he suspected were true--that they were originals--who had kept them from being pillaged? Of even more interest was how they had been returned to the Striker. It was possible that Snape was not the only double agent in hostile territory.

The fat apoth had said something that at first had seemed innocuous, but the more Snape thought on it, the more concerning it was. Todianus had said that he'd received his warning from a Striker on leaving his shop. On Knockturn Alley. A place where non-magicals could not go.

Whilst it was true that the entrance to Diagon Alley, and hence potential access to Knockturn Alley and the other magical laneways of London, lay at the back of the Leaky Cauldron through the wall of its austere courtyard, it was not the only means of access. It was put in place to allow non-magicals and Muggle-born witches and wizards to gain easy access to Diagon Alley, but Knockturn Alley was expressly forbidden to non-magicals via a number of complex and inflexible charms. It had not occurred to him at the time months ago that, theoretically, a seevy like Parr should not be able to walk down Knockturn Alley, but Snape had been so agitated that his visit to the apothecary was being jeopardised by Lupin's thoughtless tardiness that he had given no thought to how Parr had been able to circumvent those guarding charms. It could be explained away by her inherent immunity to magic, but Snape wondered if that were the only reason. The immunity to magic alone was concerning, especially if other seevy had the trait. They could move in and out of Knockturn Alley with ease and without detection. If they could do that, then they were certainly able to walk along Diagon Alley unhindered. The potential contact between the two societies was greater than he had imagined, and it was shaping up to being weighted heavily in the favour of seevy.

Snape shifted in his chair and considered another possibility: that seevyism and magical ability were not mutually exclusive. Certainly Parr manifested no magical ability, but that did not mean all seevy were Muggles. Half-breed magicals were not well-regarded. For many it was more distasteful an idea than Muggle-borns. The magical world could be disgustingly elitist.

The question that Snape wanted the answer to was how tightly was seevy society already woven into the magical world. If the MLE was employing Lupin to research seevy, it would suggest that the government was unaware of such close proximity of those they were trying to cajole back into the fold. Whilst it was true that the MLE often kept things from its apparent political masters, that they would be scratching for information would suggest that the government had even less knowledge on seevy to hand. Knowledge that they once would have had. Knowledge that was now lost to them. Or deliberately removed. For whoever controlled information held the real power.

That was when he realised he had stared right in the eyes of two seevy and had not even realised it.