Occlumency in Azkaban

Chapter 5: Natures Inner and Outer

The evening Prophet's article on the attack at the Isle of Skye was quite dispassionate. Whoever had written the article clearly couldn't care less about the whole incident, despite the fact that the victim was Meghan McCormack, a famous professional Quidditch player. Tonks read the story with some interest. As far as she could tell, it was only a copycat crime by some idiot who could manage Morsmordre, since nobody was hurt or even hexed too badly in the break-in. Bellatrix Lestrange certainly hadn't been involved; it had happened just as they had met with her in that shabby little London house, though the Ministry had kept it from the papers for a time. There was not much else worth note in the newspaper, and she threw it carelessly aside, already reverting to her typical messy habits.

Snape was of another mind about the matter, she found, when she finally dragged herself into the workroom the next morning, smelling strongly of the coffee she had just spilled all over herself. "Do you know what has happened?" he spat.

"Coffee went all down my nice white shirt," she moaned. "Have you anything that'll get it off? I hate to bother the house-elves even more -"

"No," he replied, less viciously than she might have expected - less viciously, because he was preoccupied. "The Isle of Skye has been attacked by Death Eaters. I was not informed."

Tonks didn't need to be a trained Auror to know that this was a bad sign, if it wasn't after all a copycat. She looked anxiously around at his words, but the room was free of monitors; some potions could be ruined by certain types of magic, so Snape was adamant about what would and would not be allowed within the workroom's bounds. It was probably the only safe place to speak in all of Hogwarts. That worry gone, her thoughts flew through all the free Death Eaters she knew of, an extremely short list. If Narcissa Malfoy was her husband's successor - but she isn't. Mum always said she was too wary to lead anything that might end badly. Narcissa always leaves herself a way out, she said, and that means she can't be much of a Death Eater. Bellatrix... has she become lieutenant now? Where was Snape in the ranking, to begin with?

But what she said was, "Perhaps he thought you'd tell me whatever-it-was. You did make a good show at the restaurant, and me having to pretend to be charmed by an absolute minger, too."

Snape didn't respond to the jibe, but he did relax, almost invisibly. She smiled to herself, felt better, but knew it wasn't to last, knew it was probably false comfort, Tonks thought. It was a very plausible idea, and yet it didn't ring true, especially if Snape was as highly placed as she'd been led to believe. Oh, they don't use Gryffindor or Hufflepuff ethics, she decided. Why would even the highest regarded be told about something they couldn't help with? Anyway, Snape's on the theory end of things. He's hardly the person they'd send to kill someone if they could avoid it.

An owl flew through the cracked door, opening it with its beak in a monumental effort and breaking the tense silence. Tonks watched interestedly; she had never seen an owl actually fly into the dungeons. Usually, they delivered messages at mealtimes, or to a house-elf. Snape took the note it carried and closed his eyes when he had read it, as though something pained him. He handed it to Tonks without comment. It included only one line.

There was a smaller raid, just one person, on the Dichotomy: they took the Key.

"The Dichotomy?" she asked. Just then, she realized that Snape had been paying special attention to the words "Isle of Skye." He'd said them reverently, as though more was there than a relatively large wizarding community and a middling Quidditch team.

"Occlumency," he said, ignoring the non sequitur. "Dichotomy. Look it up, or are you too lazy for that? I'm not your professor and obliged to tell you things anymore. And get out. I can't think with you mewling at me."

This, Tonks thought, was wildly unfair; she'd barely spoken, and only words of encouragement. But it was an excuse to leave the dungeons. "See ya later," she yelled with false cheer as she left, just to annoy him.

"Fifty points from Hufflepuff," came the reply, as the door swung shut behind her - but it was the summer, and his words had no effect on the hourglasses standing solid and implacable several stories above.

An hour later, she had found her answer. A foul smell was issuing from Snape's workroom, so he must have finished thinking and started brewing. She transformed herself into the visage of Fortuna Implaca Smythe, founder of the Dichotomy, and stepped inside. Snape did not look up from where he was bent over a minuscule cauldron.

The Dichotomy, it seemed, was a place - a most eccentric place. It was built over the only magically dead spot in Britain. No magic would work there, none at all; it was therefore sealed away within a building. There was one door to enter the affected room, with one key; that key was kept by the family that owned the land. No matter how much they would have liked to, the Ministry hadn't been able to obtain it; otherwise the Department of Mysteries would have been built right there and damn the Muggles.

To a Legilimens, the Dichotomy would be a dream come true. Stand in the dead spot and stick one finger out of it: from that finger you could practice Legilimency on others, but nobody could test your mind, protected as it was by the dead spot. The first raid was unimportant, then, except to frighten people. It was nothing more than a diversion. What was important was the secret raid, the key, and the ability to reach that dead spot whenever one wished.

The location and history of the dead spot was the sort of fact that was mentioned only once or twice in Binns' soporific lectures. It might get noted down because it was mildly interesting; then again, it might not. Tonks certainly hadn't remembered it. Would anyone else - anyone who wasn't a Death Eater or an Unspeakable?

A Death Eater, an Unspeakable, or Snape, she corrected herself. But it was harder to look at him as a real member of the Order since that Occlumency lesson. As he worked on his tiny cauldron, something in his posture reminded her of his quiet acceptance of the Dark Mark, and she shuddered.

"What does the Wiltshire Stone do?" she asked, to take her mind off it.

"It does..." Snape trailed into silence, shook some unnameable scale-like substance into the cauldron, then spoke again. "It does unspeakable things."

"And you'll be party to it."

"You really have grasped nothing, have you?" In reply, Tonks could only shake her head. He continued. "The Wiltshire Stone does what you wish it to, within reason; it takes magic. It is a conduit for magic, specifically. It was intended to charge the great standing stones, long ago - but that magic is mostly forgotten.

"Censorship and destruction of knowledge: a Ravenclaw hates them on principle, but a Slytherin hates them because they close paths to you, because they stunt growth and limit ambition. Is it any wonder that the Malfoys kept that piece of Wiltshire that would have been destroyed - but kept it for themselves alone?" He was pacing now, off his stool and moving with the same controlled energy he generally spent intimidating his students. Tonks imagined him as a small boy, pacing and running with unrepressed energy. He would have been a strange child, always in motion but never joyous. "The power to destroy one's enemy, yes, I suppose that is within the Wiltshire Stone. But the person has to be willing, and I can't imagine Albus Dumbledore sitting quietly by and letting a Malfoy take his magic from him."

"Then who are they taking it from?"

He stopped walking and pinned her with a glare. "Azkaban." But before Tonks could work it out, he spoke again. "At this point you can be no more help with the potion. It requires a certain power which I do not think you have. Go practise your Occlumency."

She did, regretfully. Soon enough, though, she heard footsteps in the hall outside her room, and Snape entered. "We make for the Isle of Skye," he told her. "I have a friend with much to say to me there."