Turncoats And Cold Fire

It had found him.

Severus darted away into the night, running for all he was worth. He couldn’t fight against this creature; no magic nor any physical skill he had could possibly make a difference. He should never have left Hogwarts; he was safe at Hogwarts. Nothing could get through those wards. Out in the open he was vulnerable to harm, and the Voldemort’s side wasn’t the only side that’d like to see him screwed.

His lungs sucked in and out, in and out, as he ran. His heart thundered.

It struck.

He awoke.

And found it sitting on his chest. A demon.

A hoarse sound of fear involuntarily scraped out of his throat and he shoved at the thing, too late to stop it from sinking its venomous fangs into his hand as it laughed at him with strange orange eyes, too late, too late…

He did nothing, could do nothing, and it vanished into thin air anyway, mocking him with the ease it just left him alone in the dark to suffer his wound.

Sitting up in his bed, he gasped in the dry cool air of his bedroom. A demon. On his chest, but gone now. If it hadn’t been for the fact that his right hand was loosing its sense of touch, and feeling as if his skin was turning to ice and crawling up his shoulder, he would of suspected some near cousin of a boggart had been set on him by some vindictive asshole—Black?—but no boggart had real venom. No boggart would make the pitch black room around him swam and dance with green flecks as the power of the Green Flame spell, which Voldemort had devised and implemented into the Green Flames so many years ago, fought with the venom. It wouldn’t, couldn’t, stop the poison permanently, but it could hold back its degenerating process until he could get an antidote.

Kicking off the heavy velvet covers, Severus tilted dizzily out of bed, bare feet scrabbling at the ice-cold floor. It took a moment for him to find his balance, and then he fled, as quickly as he dared, out of his bedroom, across his living room, and into his workroom. An antidote to demon poison…he didn’t have any ready. In his old potions pouches he’d once had some, but so many years it would have dissolved into vinegar.

With a bitter laugh after sweeping clear a shelf with a loud crash, he realized what they’d done to him; they’d transported a demon to infect him with venom into his quarters, knowing the chance he’d have an antidote on hand to be slim. If it wasn’t for the power of the Green Flame struggling to keep him alive, he’d already be dead. He wouldn’t have even left his bed. And even though he was still alive now, he was nearly certain Voldemort could track him by the active green flame power in him. That had been one flaw in the initial dark mark tattoo and spell that had vexed the dark lord; he could call them, but he couldn’t track where they were. There was a second player out to get him, Severus knew, unless Voldemort had already found someone trustworthy enough to plan with him, which he doubted. Voldemort wanted him, but not enough to divert his mind from finding ways to kill Harry to kill him, and however they’d gotten a demon into his shielded quarters at Hogwarts had taken a lot of effort thinking. If the poison didn’t work, the dark lord would surely finish him off for them. Perhaps he could stay here, in Hogwarts, but could he trust the shields now to keep them out? After all, it had not kept the little demon out. The little deadly demon from whose bite he just might die of, if he couldn’t find an antidote.

Dumbledore would have the antidote, in his office. Behind the scenes where nobody could see, he took the safety of the school to what seemed to be an extreme sometimes; Severus had regularly brewed obscure potions when the ones the man had had lost their potency. But Voldemort would be alerted by the Green Flame becoming active in him; he’d show the dark lord right where Dumbledore’s most secret places were if he went to go find the antidote, and he didn’t know if Voldemort could use the magical signature of his Green Flame spell to get around the wards that prevented someone to Apparate into the school. He was fucked either way, no matter what he did. If he stayed here, he’d die. If he went to find Dumbledore, he might cause the headmaster’s death.

But there is a way, he suddenly realized.

He fled to the kitchens, his nightrobe flapping around his bare ankles and his right hand numb past the shoulder. The house elves had their own magic that allowed them to Apparate within Hogwarts. They also had very good noses for magical potions—he had a sulking suspicion that Potter had somehow coerced a house elf to steal that gillyweed he’d used during the Tournament. The Goddess knew Hermione had been thick with them for a while.

It was the wee hours of the morning, and the house elves weren’t in the kitchen; they were doing the cleaning now when everyone sleeping, before they started to make breakfast. He cursed under his breath and tore to look in their sleeping quarters. Nothing but nicely-made beds. He stalked back into the kitchen, panic mounting—and spotted one sitting by the hearth. He’d mistaken it for a pile of rags, but now he realized it wasn’t…it was a small sorry specimen of a house elf, stinking of too much butterbeer and many tears.

“You!” he snapped, and it jerked up to stare at him with oversized watery eyes. “I need you to do something.”

It burst into tears.

“By the goddess’s tits, shut up!” he cried, and yanked it up with his left hand. “Quiet!”

It sniveled and whimpered, but did as he asked.

“I need you to go to Dumbledore and get an antidote—“

It shivered, then dissappeared with a pop.

He swore in a way that’d make Albus sack him in a minute if he’d been around, running through a list of English swears, falling into his mother’s native tongue of Greek, and returning to English again.

Then, feeling the poison reach his chest and creep into his lungs, making it hard to breathe, he realized the creature had returned—with a vial of potion.

A sense of relief hit him hard, and he sank to his knees, if only because the poison was spreading fast now. Despair did that—it undermined the efforts of the Green Flame spell. He mouthed a thank you, not realizing it came out in Greek, and grabbed it from the creature. It seemed, no matter what he thought in the most depressed hours of his life, that he didn’t want to die.

A shudder suddenly ran through him as the poison hit some major artery and was swept through his body with each pounding beat of his heart. He felt things slowing down, his thoughts, his heart, his muscles. Gripping the vial tightly, he took the cork in his teeth and tugged on it. It didn’t budge, and the house elf had gone again. He felt like weeping, but he was too numb to do so, and he couldn’t really see anymore anyway, for all the green specks in his vision. How horrible would it be, to die here in the kitchens, alone, from poison? He laughed hysterically, seeing the headlines in the Daily Prophet in his mind. Hogwarts Professor Severus Snape dies from bad food during a spate of midnight munchies. Of course it wouldn’t say the real cause of his death, since the Ministry still denied everything. Oh, the students would get a kick out of that, wouldn’t they? The evil Potions teacher dead from food poisoning.

Then amazingly, he felt a hand on his neck, and someone took the vial from him, opened it, and tilted his head back, pouring it down his throat. He hoped the house elf hadn’t been planted to give him another poison to finish him off—it really had been a sorry stinking specimen. Damn, he was paranoid…

* * * *

There was something warm curled up at the small of his back. It was a weird feeling, that small spot of warmth. It was bigger than a cat, but not big enough to be a person. He moved away from it.

“Awake, Severus?” Madam Pomfrey asked him, and he opened his eyes to see her leaning over him as she opened the curtains around his bed.

“He’s awake?” Albus asked from somewhere behind the woman.

“Yes headmaster, but I think he’s still confused. I hope its only a temporary thing, and not a sign of permanent damage,” she added softly, before moving away to let the headmaster come to sit on the edge of his bed.

“Hello Severus.”

Severus sighed, and closed his eyes, muttering something. Good god, he was alive, and not feeding the fires of whatever hell he was destined for. He was unsure what to feel…relief, dread? He wasn’t safe inside Hogwarts anymore, but he was alive. After a moment of sorting through his thoughts, he murmured to the headmaster, “Hello, Albus.” His deep baritone voice was hoarse, but that always happened when he was really stressing.

Through eyes half closed, he saw the man cut off a motion to stroke his hair. He coughed softly, masking a laugh. Did the man stop the gesture because he didn’t think Severus would appreciate it, or because he was in dire need of a bath now, after fainting in the kitchens and laying in this bed for who knows how long?

“Only I and Madam Pomfrey know what happened to you, Severus,” Albus said softly. “To everyone else you had a bout of food sickness.”

Severus burst into laughter. Albus stared at him in surprise and shock as Severus rolled over to his back, laughing. “After a midnight kitchen raid?”

“Well…”

Severus couldn’t stop a giggle from escaping his lips, but his mirth faded abruptly as Albus raised an eyebrow at the sound. He glared, then looked away as he snickered again at the irony of it all.

“What was that?” the older wizard asked after a moment.

“Me finding something hysterically funny, something you won’t see again for a long time, if ever.” Severus replied with a twitch of his lips.

Albus grunted, frowning at him in thought.

They were startled by a forced tiny laugh mimicking Severus’s.

Severus turned his head on his pillow to stare at a female house elf sitting on the other side of the bed. Her large eyes were wide, and she looked from him to Dumbledore uncertainly. The last of his mirth was dashed away as he realized the warm spot at his back must have been her. Eww…a house elf curled up with me? He felt his lip creep up in a sneer.

Albus coughed. “She wouldn’t leave your side, although she did clean herself up when I asked her to. Her name is Winky.”

She was much cleaner than before he’d fainted, clad now in one of his deep blue hand towels, one of the few he owned that bore the crest of the Snape family. She was also the house elf that’d caused so much trouble with the whole fake-Moody thing. What did she think she was playing at?

“She came and got me after getting you the antidote you wanted, Severus. I’d say she saved your life; I found you struggling to get the vial open with your teeth. If she’d hesitated in getting someone to help you, you might have died.”

“You was dying, Master. Winky got the headmaster; Winky knew you didn’t want anyone else.”

“Master?” Severus said very very softly.

She gulped, then said, “Winky’s old master doesn’t want her anymore, but her great aunt’s grandchild’s brother-in-law’s sister’s son serves the Snape family. It is a good old wizarding family, it is. Winky serves you now.”

“What if I don’t want you?” Severus asked, lips still sneering faintly. She began to weep, silently, the big fat tears rolling down her cheeks. Albus shifted on the bed, disliking the fact that Severus wasn’t trying to comfort her as she cried, but didn’t say anything. This matter was between Severus and the house elf, it seemed.

“Winky…” she said, unable to find the words for what she was feeling. “Winky…” She quivered under his dark direct gaze.

Crouch was a damned glaze—well, it’s obvious what glazes can do. What if she’s a plant? But house elves…he knew that house elves liked to serve, and that to betray their master was the most hideous thing one of them could do, no matter how their master treated them. Would they consider pretending to serve another master for the gains of their first master horrible? Or would that be all right? Why did she want to serve him though? And what on earth would he do with a house elf? It’d probably bring more trouble than it was worth, what with Granger starting that whole house-elf-rights thing some years back. It irked him, that he really didn’t have enough information to make a good decision. He’d not had anything to do with house elves since he left his family’s house for good.

Then something clicked. Dumbledore wouldn’t have kept her at Hogwarts if he thought she was a plant, would he? Surely he would of said something to Severus. And he had the option of dismissing her later—although by then she might have picked up some of his secrets. Well, if it was proving difficult to keep her out of his secrets, he could just dismiss her before she found anything of note out. He supposed that it wouldn’t be too hard to teach her something truly useful, like fetching him potions ingredients or cleaning up after a class.

“Fine then,” he told her curtly. “First rule: get off my bed.”

Winky jumped off like she’d been burned.

“And stay out of my quarters until I let you go in.” He wanted to moniter what she got into when she cleaned. The usual house elves knew what to touch and what not to, but she didn’t.

“But…but how will Winky…”

“Just do it. Help the rest of the house elves out, or something.”

“Yes Master.” After waiting a moment to see if he would say something else, she dissappeared with a pop.

Severus relaxed minutely under the bed’s covers, feeling exhausted. The poison had taken its toll. He met Albus’s eyes, and for a second they just stared at each other. Albus didn’t make any “helpful” comments about Winky, however.

“You’re tired, Severus. You should sleep. It doesn’t seem your sickness has done any permanent harm to you, but you still need rest. We’ll talk later, you and I.”

“Of course, headmaster,” Severus said.

“And I have something for you, from Mrs. Weasley.”

Severus blinked as Dumbledore pulled out a small embroidered pillow that smelled of sweet-scented herbs.

“A get-well present, I believe.” Albus’s blue eyes danced with amusement.

“Good lord.”

“You’ve seemed to have made a good impression on her through her husband. His opinion of you is pretty high, considering the mutual dislike between you and his boys.”

“I hope I never meet her face to face,” Severus muttered.

Albus chuckled. “I doubt you’ll be able to escape it. She seems to like adopting people, despite having seven children.” Hesitating for a moment, he patted Severus’s leg through the blankets, then got up and left. “Rest well, Severus. I need you up and about, doing what you do best.”

“What’s that?”

“Being an ass.”

Severus blinked, and Albus left, after giving him a mischevious smile.

* * * *

“Winky,” Severus said calmly, hiding something under his chest as he squatted down to be on the house elf’s level, “Look at me.”

“Master?”

This was a trick his mother had done with their house elves, many years ago. She’d gotten frustrated that they ran about in little more than castoff household rags, and he didn’t blame her. Who wanted the creatures looking like tiny barbarians that’d come into the home to steal their tablecloths and toilet paper? In an indirect way, they represented the household they served. You could tell a lot about a person or their family by the way they treated their house elves. He did not want to give any enemies anything they could use against him.

“I don’t like you wearing my hand towel,” he told her.

She stared at him, expecting the worst. He felt the urge to burst out laughing—she was so gullible—but restrained himself.

“I have something else I want you to wear. It resembles a dress, Winky, but it isn’t; it wasn’t made for me, and I don’t own any dresses. I do not have any children; it is too small for me. Actually, I think it resembles house-elf clothing, not human clothing.”

Her wide eyes stared into his, not quite comprehending. She shivered, hearing the word “clothing” but as he was changing the meaning of the word, saying “house-elf” clothing, not “human” clothing, she wasn’t quite ready to bolt away in screaming and sobbing hysterics.

“Do you want to see it?” He was rather proud of himself, being able to stop her from having a fit. He could be kind if he wanted to, if it served his purpose.

Slowly she nodded.

Not letting her see the whole outfit he’d had made for her, he pulled out the shirt first. He had had a hard time convincing the tailor that it shouldn’t look like a miniature of a uniform a human servant would wear. It should look like itself; clothing, but not anything a human would wear. It was made of deep blue velvet, the color his family adopted as its own, and was layered with many hand-sized half circles laying loosely over the silk lining of the shirt, and covering it over the chest and shoulders. The arms were of silk, and unlayered, made to lie sleekly over her skin until where they ended at her wrists. The edge of the sleeves near the wrist were hemmed neatly with silver thread. It was obviously a shirt, but when you looked at it it was equally obvious it had not been made for a human, and no human, child or adult, could ever fit it properly. Only a house elf could. He gave it to her.

Next he pulled out a very short skirt. The tailor had had a very shocked look when he’d told him how short he wanted to be. He’d nearly laughed in his face when he comprehended what the man was thinking. Pervert. Like the shirt, it was lined with silk and had the same velvet half-circles covering it. He put this in her hands too, and pulled out the pants. The pants were made of a fine soft suede, plain until where the skirt ended, and then wrapped in an intriquately knotted gauzy material, wrapped around and around, braided around itself, and attached firmly to the suede. The gauzy material had thin lines of silver woven into them, rather like a simple tartan. Her hands were somewhat full now, but he shoved this in them anyway.

Last were the shoes. House elf feet were long and thin, quite unlike human feet, so while they were shoes, they weren’t human shoes. Socks were quite another thing; he’d not been able to figure out how to make socks for her and yet have them obviously not be human socks. There wasn’t much you could do with a sock to make it different. These shoes were made of hardy blue leather on the outside, but lined with something soft on the inside, so it wouldn’t chafe her sockless feet. They were tied on the top with an intricate system of loops and knots, and he hoped she could master them.

“So you see, no human could ever wear this. I am not giving you clothes, but you are being ordered to wear this. I want to know if it rubs you wrong anywhere; I don’t want you to get blistered. Go put it on.”

Still confused, she dissappeared with it, and he paced around his workroom waiting for her to return. So far it had gone well. He hoped it would stay that way. Absently, he ran his finger around the rim of an empty designer potions bottle. Somebody had given it to him for Christmas one year…Sprout, he thought.

A moment later she appeared with a pop. He turned to look down at her, and as she stared back up at him, actually smiled. It was much better; now she looked like some creature out of a high-budget muggle fantasy film rather than some impoverished cast away. With an accio spell, he summoned a mirror over. On him it was an upper-body mirror, but for her it was a full-length one. He gently placed it in front of her.

She stared, comprehension dawning. “M-m-master. Winky is beautiful! Winky—“

“Will wear that as her uniform in order not to embarrass her master,” Severus said severely.

“Yes master,” she said meekly, judging his mood correctly as she’d been starting to do in the last three days since he’d woken up in the hospital wing.

“We understand each other then,” Severus said, abandoning his kindly façade, and turning away. “Go away and do something. And return my hand towel to wherever you found it.”

* * * *

“They used tincture of house elf,” Dumbledore said softly as they went up a stair. “They dosed the demon with it, and had it use its usual powers to Apparate in. The presence of the tincture made the shields recognize it as a house elf, not a demon.”

“The shields will have to be changed,” Severus said, although he was relieved they knew how it had happened now. The signs in his room were miniscule, overwhelmed by impressions left by himself, but they had been able to find the traces of the demon on it, as well as tincture of house elf, it seemed.

“I am aware of that. I’m worried where they got the tincture of house elf, though.” He eyed Severus for a moment, but Severus said nothing. “I’ll have to see if the Ministry even knows such a black market is going on. Murdering sentient beings for use in potions is not right.” He looked at Severus again. Severus knew the headmaster was nearly commanding him to say something, so he could judge Severus’s knowledge on the properties of house elf tincture, but he didn’t feel he had any reason to mention that particular tincture could be stored for years and years without any loss of power, not when it wasn’t relevant to the conversation at hand. Besides, he’d never actually used that ingredient, even if he did have some.

“Where are we going?” the Potions Master asked.

“You’ve been aware I’ve been starting up the Order of the Phoenix again, even if I haven’t directly involved you yet. We’re going to intensify the shields, and I need to get an idea of how many different shielding spells we collectively know. We’re going to a meeting of my top officers. Well, some of them will be the officers once I officially state the Phoenixes have returned. You do realize that we’ll most likely put under some official sanction by the Ministry, don’t you?”

Severus snorted. “I’m not stupid.”

“No you aren’t. Usually,” he added just to goad Severus, his eyes twinkling.

Severus ignored the jibe. “Who’ll be there?”

“You’ll see.”

Severus rolled his eyes, not surprised at Dumbledore’s usual mysteriousness. At least it betokened that things were going as normally as they could right now. When Dumbledore got painfully frank, that was the time to be scared.

In a few moments they were inside a conferencing room in the Astronomy tower, and Severus did indeed see who was there. A sour feeling gripped his stomach as he noted Lupin and Figg among the others seated or standing around. McGonagall was there too, as was Flitwick, Sprout, Madam Pomfrey, and the rest of the higher-ranking staff. Dumbledore drifted off to the head of the table and left Severus to find a seat at the end of the long U-shaped table where he could.

The meeting did not start immediately; rather, Dumbledore talked with McGonagall, no doubt bringing her up to date, while other groups met each other and did the same. No one came near Severus; he could feel a glower affix itself to his face and he didn’t feel inclined to change it, especially as it seemed to be a deterrent to Mr. Weasley, who glanced at him once or twice as he talked to his older sons Bill and Charlie, who were also in the room, although they’d probably leave once the meeting proper started.

After a few moments, he claimed an empty chair at the end of one leg of the U, but had the urge to squirm in his seat as he suddenly felt someone else’s eyes on him. He turned his head slightly to the side and caught Mad-Eye Moody staring at him with his magical eye. What did he want? Damn Auror. Sometimes he wished Liadawn had done more than take a chunk out of the man’s nose.

Moody wasn’t the only one staring at him, though. He saw Arabella Figg glance at him, then turn to mutter something to Lupin. He strained his ears, but couldn’t quite make out what she said over the general sounds of the room.

He hated meetings.

Finally Albus stopped talking to McGonagall, and got the meeting started. Everyone took their seats, and Bill along with a few other young men drifted out, although, strangely, Charlie stayed. He was the one that dealt with dragons, wasn’t he? Bill did something with curses. Severus tried to weigh each profession against the other in terms of usefulness to Dumbledore, and couldn’t, and decided Charlie must be staying for another reason, which either meant he had had some kind of contact with a Death Eater or the like, or some other mysterious problem. Great. And how many other people had has problems? He had, although it wasn’t totally unexpected, if sooner than he’d thought it would be. Voldemort wanted his guts on a stick. Lupin, being a werewolf, always had problems. Figg…well, he was half convinced she was a polyjuice potion addict; she always smelled of cabbage, which was a sure sign of an inadept potions brewer making droughts at the edge of their ability, and she seemed uncomfortable in her own skin, which was another sign.

“Welcome to Hogwarts, gentlewizards and witches,” Albus said to them, taking his seat at the head of the U. “I could wish it’d be under less sad conditions, but, as they say, if wishes were fishes we’d swim in the sea—or at least have daily meetings with the lake squid.”

There was a murmur of laughter at his joke.

“I’ve two reasons to call this meeting together so urgently; one, being the fact that our shields here at Hogwarts need examining—“ There were a few looks of surprised (and sickenly unfeigned) horror. “—and the other fact that we just might be holding a few pieces of the puzzle we have to start decoding, in the form of various attacks on us.”

“Someone’s been attacked?” Flitwick asked, looking shaken. He was rather tan, probably from his vacation in New Zealand, or wherever he’d been.

“I’d say attacks are simultaneous with You-Know-Who coming back,” a blond witch Severus did not know said wryly.

“All of you know that I’m planning to put the Order of the Phoenix back together,” Albus went on. “And right now I’ll tell you to take a good long look at your neighbors in this room; I trust all of you completely, and I urge you to put any personal gripes to the side as we deal with this much larger evil.”

Severus felt several pairs of eyes stare at him, and he sneered in response. He’d done far more for this cause than any of them ever would. How dare they judge him?

“What, you want me to trust those Slytherins with my—“

“Hey, I resent that!” the blond woman said, cutting off the old man who was speaking. “I was in Slytherin, you Gryffindork!”

“Please,” Albus said, and the rising mutter quieted. “We don’t need this.”

The old man who’d started to bash Slytherins looked uncomfortable, then cleared his throat. “My apologies, headmaster. I was out of line.”

“Thank you, Mr. Titterman.”

The blond witch said nothing, although it would have been only polite to apologize too for her slur after the man had done so, and Severus felt a perverse sort of kinship with her, although he knew he had no real reason to. Dumbledore was right; they couldn’t afford inner rivalries, but it was so hard to put up with some of the utter fools he “trusted”! Dumbledore was but a man, he said so himself, and sometimes—well, often in Severus’s opinion—his taste in people lacked something.

“Now, first at hand, I want to talk about the shields. You all know they are very old, and very complicated. You also know that spells can gradually erode over the centuries, and loose their power. I need ideas on how to attack our shields.”

“How to—“

“Use tincture of house elf,” Severus said, his tone a mix of extreme dryness and sarcasm. “And Apparate a demon in.” Albus caught his eyes for a second, and Severus shrugged ever so slightly. As if he would tell everyone in the room he’d nearly died a few days ago! This way he could bring it up without notice.

The word “demon” caught their ears, and they quieted, looking at him. Then Moody broke the momentary silence by stomping his peg leg loudly on the floor. “Exactly! Constant vigelance! We need to guard against someone using house elf parts, unless we just get rid of the damned pesky creatures!”

“Whoa, wait a second,” Arabella Figg said, not quite getting it. “Why are we thinking up attacks? I thought he said shielding.”

Severus felt like whapping her upside the head with something, if only to wake her wits up. From the looks that were exchanged across the room, he suspected he wasn’t the only one. “Any attack we can think up and guard against is one that they can think up and try to use against us—and fail,” he said softly, “Because we thought of it first. The reason the Dark Lord got so far is because he thinks outside the box.”

“You would know how he thinks, wouldn’t you!” a voice hissed at him as suddenly, as meetings were apt to do, everyone started babbling at once. He felt his back stiffen, and he jerked his head around to try to locate the speaker, but didn’t see anyone.

God, I hate people.

He held his tongue as people trampled over each other in words, and suddenly they all stopped talking. Minerva cleared her throat, and began to speak. “Severus: what do you mean, use tincture of house elf?”

“It’s well known that it’s impossible for any witch or wizard to Apparate into Hogwarts or onto its grounds, but it is a fact that the house elves are still allowed to Apparate themselves and other objects. Using tincture of house elf in certain potions can mask a creature’s natural magic signature to our shields, and let it Apparate in unstopped. I’m not aware of any specific recipies to make this sort of potion, but it wouldn’t be too difficult if you modified some of the drafts used in becoming an animagus—the ones that let your essence be modified. A wolfsbane potion, properly tampered with, might get a similar result, as it deals with supressing the…eh…loony…werewolf mind and magic and enhancing the human part. Once you get the right mixture, all you have to do is dose some dangerous creature with it and coerce it to Apparate where you want it to within the shields.”

“Do you have any ideas of how to stop such a potion from working?” Professor Sprout asked.

“Two. We could get rid of the house elves and man the school with people who are willing to do culinary and cleaning work in exchange for the protection of the school—I don’t recommend this, as it’d open us up to a spy entering, if there isn’t one already—or we could somehow alter the house elves’ magical signature and then change the shields to only recognize the altered magic. Of course,” he went on, sighing, “that would only last for as long as it took them to capture a Hogwarts house elf and make a potion with its flesh.”

“We’d be forced to keep changing the spell,” Lupin said, frowning.

“Or make it too intricate for us to easily implement with checks and balances, and auto-changes.”

Moody made a sour face. “Is it so hard for us to clean our own clothes and cook our own dinner? Why, back in—”

“Why can’t we just make it so nothing can Apparate in, not even house elves? It’d take longer to get the work done walking everywhere, but in exchange for our safety…” Sprout trailed off.

Soon it trailed off into arguing, thinking, and planning. It was very tiring. Severus heartily agreed when the old Gryffindor from earlier exclaimed in exasperation, “Are we going to do this for every single thing we think up that could be an attack? It’ll take us forever to decide what to do, much less do it!”

“We should narrow down what we work on to what are obvious breeches of security.”

“I don’t like that Apparating thing,” Arabella said.

“What about stopping the use of dangerous magical cloaks and rings—“

An idea hit Severus like the Hogwarts Express. Magic cloaks? Oh, yes, here was the opportunity to stop Potter and Co. from roaming around into dangerous places whenever they could by the use of Harry’s bloody invisibility cloak. A smile curled up the corner of his lips, and he cleared his throat.

“We can’t prevent all magical cloaks—most are simply enchanted to keep the user warm, or visible at night on their broomsticks, but I certainly think such items as invisibility cloaks should be banned, and warded against too. It’d be a simple matter for someone intent on doing harm to steal the cloak from some innocent child, or even Professor, use it to achieve their goal, and frame the owner.”

“Much as I hate agreeing with you,” Moody muttered at him before raising his voice, “Professor Snape is right. How can we know? We should write up a list of proscribed items.”

Once again, chaos. “What will be on—“ “Do rings of protection count?” blah blah blah, ad nauseum. Although, in the end, Invisibility cloaks and other dangerous items made the rough draft of the list before McGonagall broke people into a committee to write it all up, and Severus felt well pleased.

As one hour wore into two, then three, then four, a hunger break was announced and people left to stretch their legs or to consume like vacuums what food was served. Dumbledore summoned Severus with a crook of his finger, and Snape, being curious, obeyed. Arthur was hovering nearby, with his son, and Lupin had joined the little group.

“I’m sorry, Charlie, for adding Mr. Lupin and Professor Snape to this group without asking you first, but as they’ve had odd experiences of their own, I thought it necessary. Remus, this is Arthur Weasley and his son Charlie. You’ll have met Charlie’s younger brothers Percy, Fred, George, and Ron, as well as his sister Ginny.”

“Well met, Mr. Weasley,” Lupin said and shook Arthur’s hand.

“Very well met. I’ve heard good things about you,” Charlie’s father replied, smiling warmly.

Lupin smiled. “You have interesting children, Mr. Weasley. It was a pleasure to teach them.”

A pleasure teaching Fred and George? Loony Lupin was an apt nickname, Severus thought. Fred and George had been the worst students he’d ever had to teach until he got Potter in his class. Mischief-makers of the most undeterable sort.

“Charlie was telling me about how he missed a family party and…well, go on Charlie. I shouldn’t tell your story for you.”

Charlie, who’d been composed a moment before, coughed and shifted his feet nervously. Albus gave him an encouraging smile.

“Er…after school let out, mum got this idea to do a summer’s-here party at home, and somehow managed to get both me and Bill off for a week. I was already around, since I’d promised Ron I’d take him somewhere cool once the school year ended, and I missed the letter that mum sent to my supervisor. So Bill sent me another one just to make sure…or so he says. I, uh, was doing something for the headmaster in one of the ports, and from what we can tell the owl from Bill did reach me there, but I don’t remember a thing. I don’t have any letter, and somehow I…I lost the invisibility cloak the headmaster loaned me.” He turned beet red. “All I remember is getting to a port, and then waking up in some room with…er…empty beer bottles.” If possible, he turned redder. “I don’t drink! Well, not usually…it’s rare I drink anything beyond butterbeer, and that stuff’s safe for children. Only a house elf can get drunk off of that. I have a shot with my dragon-keeper buddies once in a while, but not alone in a strange port.”

“And you remember nothing more?” Remus asked gently.

“Not a bit. Oh hell, I turned the place over trying to figure out what happened to me, but I didn’t find a clue. I did a few spells too, but they didn’t help.”

“So what do you think happened?” Lupin asked in general. Charlie shrugged, Mr. Weasley obviously didn’t know more than he, and Albus looked thoughtful.

“At first glance, it looks like someone used a memory charm on him and stole the cloak,” he said.

“But I was wearing the cloak!” Charlie exclaimed, and then stopped. “Wait…how did I know that?”

“I don’t know. How did you?” Severus asked, rolling his eyes before looking at Albus once more. “You think it was more than someone beating him up for the cloak.”

“I don’t think memory charms and the stealing of the cloak, at this time, are the work of a thieving street wizard. But Charlie never said he was beat up.”

They looked at Severus, who, looking at Charlie, was at a loss to explain why he’d chosen that word. Then Severus narrowed his eyes. Examining Charlie, he saw a few telltale marks. His scalp, near his hairline, was red and slightly bruised, and he had another faint bruise on his cheek. “Someone grabbed you by the hair, I think, and then backhanded you. Do you have any more mysterious bruises?”

The young man blinked, and then nodded. “I thought I got them from the dragons—I get all sorts of odd scrapes I don’t find until later—but they didn’t quite fit.” After hesitating, he pulled up the bottom of his robe slightly to show off a matching pair of deep bruises on his shins.

Since it was obvious no one else would—or could—hazard a guess on what had made the marks, Severus knelt down and looked at the two wounds, feeling weird. Kneeling in front of a held-up robe was the sort of position one might get into with a woman—if one was feeling a bit kinky—not a twenty-something Weasley. He thinned his lips and tried not to let his mind wander off course.

Purple and greenish-yellow blotches made up most of the mess on Charlie’s legs, but he did note that in the center of both, the skin had been split, and the remains of a scab were there. Charlie been hit with something mostly blunt, but with an edge sharp enough to split the skin. “It looks like you bumbled over something in the dark, like a crate.”

“How do you come by that?” Arthur, who’d been ignoring him in front of his sons as if Severus had not been teaching him things, drew closer to peer over his shoulder, well within Severus’s personal space.

“It’s mostly all bruise, but the center was hit hard enough by something to bleed; I see scabs, maybe a week old or so.”

“It did happen a week and a half ago,” Charlie confirmed. “It all did.”

“Do any weapons do that?” Arthur drew closer, peering over his shoulders. He glared, and Arthur backed off to a nicer distance.

“A heavy club with a long square metal edge could, but that’s an unusual thing to see, and unlikely. I think he fell over something.”

“That doesn’t explain the hair.”

“What, on his legs?”

Charlie flushed and dropped his robe to cover the bruises, while Severus stood up to face Arthur.

“No, on his head!”

“That could be his mother’s genes,” the Potions Master retorted, looking pointedly at Arthur’s receding hairline.

“Ha ha,” Arthur said sarcastically, and everyone stared at him, except for Severus, from whom a startled laugh came.

“It does look like he got into a fight,” Severus said after a moment, as they stared at him too, “and tripped over something, but who’s to say it wasn’t a fight with one of his siblings?”

Arthur’s mouth moved as if to say something, but at the last moment he bit his tongue. Severus knew what the man was going to say, anyway; it was the same thing he’d said last time Severus had made a jibe at his hoard of children. At least I get laid! That wouldn’t be strictly appropriate, though, in front of the headmaster and his second eldest son. He snorted, mouth curling up once again in a little smile.

“So you remember you did have the cloak on?” Lupin pressed Charlie quietly, moving the subject back on track as they floundered on the new knowledge that Arthur and Severus weren’t completely antagonistic towards each other.

“Kind of. I’m not sure what’s real, or what is made out of other memories, to fill the gap. I remember a woman, sort of.”

Severus didn’t say it.

“What did she look like?”

“Tall, gaunt…mass of curly hair and piercing hazel eyes. “ For a moment, a fierce angry light filled the young man’s eyes, then it faded as he dug harder into his memory. “I think her name was Snappet, or something.” He sighed. “I also met a Mr. Snedder, the innkeeper, and he said nobody by that name had been around. Only the current patrons of the inn then had been there all night, except for one woman, and he said she seemed to be a Spanish witch, with her rolling accent and the ship she came on in coming from Spain. The witch I remember wasn’t Spanish. She spoke her English in some upper class accent. You know how fruity some of the upper class wizards’ accents are. Begging anyone’s pardon,” he added, not looking at Snape.

“Snappet? The name ring a bell?” Albus asked.

They shook their heads. Nobody knew of anyone in particular that had the name of Snappit.

“You could do a search in the school records,” Severus suggested after a moment.

“If you would, Severus? Since you suggested it.”

Digging through musty rolls of paper wasn’t high on his priority list, but he assented anyway with an irritable jerk of his head. It’d wile away the time, he supposed, and if Albus was right and this was connected, he preferred to discover the clues first, by his own research.

“Fine then. You remember nothing more, Charlie?”

“No, headmaster.”

“Then let’s move on. Remus?”

“Nothing has really happened to me directly, but I’ve heard things. The younger werewolves are being pestered by a group of teens, to join their clubs, gangs, whatever. It’s not their friends—well, you know.” He didn’t elaborate, but they all knew anyone in their sane mind stayed away from a werewolf. “Unless there’s a youngster making a scene on some gang turf, making a sort of fad that its cool to have a werewolf as a member, there is no reason so many would be made offers unless something was pushing the offering teens to do so.”

“Like You-Know-Who.”

“Yes.”

“Do you think if he tried hard enough Voldemort could sway them to his side?”

Lupin looked pained, and much older than he was. “Yes. Oh yes. If they forgot that his cause was to get rid of half-bloods. A lot of werewolves are muggles, magicless outside of the monthly transformation, but they hang around the wizarding world because there’s slightly—slightly—more tolerance. Wizards will shun you, but won’t come after you with a shotgun full of silver bullets.” Lupin sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “That’s all I know, but I’ll keep an ear open.”

“Thank you. That’s all I can ask. Severus?”

“The problem has been resolved.”

“Severus.”

It was a trust thing. Since both Lupin and Charlie had spilled their secrets to the world, Albus wanted him to do so as well, to form some sort of bond, he supposed. But he didn’t want to form a “bond” with wolf-boy and someone as bland and non-interesting as Charlie. Ooooh. Dragons. Big whoop. “I believe some scrolls are calling my name, as hideous as the thought is. Good day.” He turned away and felt a bit lighter—even if a tinge of guilt hovered in the back of his mind for refusing Albus’s request—with the happy thought that he wouldn’t have to sit around the second round of talking, which would merely be finalizing plans he would have no part in. They would hardly discuss what he was slowly doing. Preparing a group of dirty deed doers wasn’t a thing to talk about with polite wizarding company.

“What was that about?” Lupin asked softly as he left. A few weeks ago it would have been too soft for him to notice, but now he was reviving his Green Flame training, he heard.

“That was Severus being Severus,” Albus replied, masking the absense of a real answer. He felt grateful the man didn’t go around leaking his personal theories on others; the headmaster was unusually acute in knowing a person. He wasn’t too bad himself, at times—he knew Albus was going to be ticked with him next time they spoke really privately together, although he couldn’t decide yet if he knew that because of past experience or physical signs Albus was giving him.

* * * *

Snappet. Nowhere to be found. All the regular class lists of incoming first years had been read, once, twice, thrice, and that particular name was never mentioned. There really wasn’t any alternate spellings either; no “i” replaced with a “y”, no “ph” for “f”. He supposed he could search for the silibint “c”, but he didn’t feel as if that way held much hope. He was sure he would have spotted it, even if he had been looking more at the “S” names. The only name he’d found close was “Snape”, and since he wasn’t a woman, that hardly described him. There was a profound lack of female Snapes in his family for his generation and beyond, and even if there had been one or two, surely they’d be as cowardly as his aunt. He supposed his mother would be considered a Snape by marriage, but her eyes were not hazel, nor her hair curly. She had the piercing eyes part down pat, eyes as dark as his, but he could never see her terrorizing Charlie. She was rather airheaded, from what he remembered of her, only inspiring fear in silly children through her petty cruelties.

He sighed, and opened the book that held the names of young wizards who had been sent letters of acceptance, but had, for some reason, turned them down. It also held lists of “special applicants”; wizards and witches who had special needs. He laughed suddenly as he remembered a childhood prank he’d played on some Hufflepuff boy, stealing this very book and putting his name in the special applicants list the day before the boy’s muggle studies class used it as reference. Then his smile faded as he remembered it had been Lucius Malfoy who’d goaded him to actually do it after he had thought it up, but had been too scared to try it.

On a whim, he flipped to his year’s lists. On the left was the sent-but-not-accepted list with notes on why the parents denied their children going to Hogwarts, and on the right, the special-needs list. His eyes skimmed the names. Cina Fleitare; denied, medical reasons. Nancy Hobberstock; denied, enrolled in Durmstrang. Nancy Pettigrew; denied. Private tutor at home. Liadawn Rednet; denied, see “Special Applicants”. John Tuflock; denied by muggle parents. Second attempt, denied again. Enrolled in muggle secondary school. Wendilis Zaza; denied. Private tutor at home. Then the special-needs list. Aodhn, Gwendolyn. Condition: half-elf (extreme allergies to iron and steel and some foods). Accepted? Yes. Lupin, Remus. Condition: lycanthropy (werewolf. Active, stage 4.) Accepted? Yes. Safety measures implemented. Rednet, Liadawn. Condition: Lycanthohija (daughter of a werewolf, concieved after father’s transformation. Dormant, stage 10. Will be reevalutaed upon onset of puberty.) Accepted? No. Denied by father on grounds of social stigmas.

Severus’s eyes flicked from page to page. No Snappet, but Liadawn…Liadawn, his old partner was there. She’d always said she’d been accepted, that her father hadn’t let her attend. Not that he hadn’t believed her…he wondered where she was, if she was alive. No, she had to be alive. Hadn’t she? Silly man…she’s not a limb, to be felt if it is chopped off. He’d never heard of her as one of those convicted and sent to Azkaban, but by that time, he’d had worries of his own that were too heavy for him to handle. Liadawn Rednet. One half of their duel “entity” of Liaverus SnapNet. SnapNet! Snappet! Oh god…piercing hazel eyes… “Goddammit, Severus, you fool!” Curly hair… “We’re psycho, you know that? I killed my father…we did, together…by the way, you’ve got chocolate on your lip. No, to the left! Normal people don’t do that.”

He hadn’t thought of her for a while. How could he? Yes Headmaster Dumbledore…I’ve changed. I saw I was wrong. I still don’t give a flying fuck about that bastard I killed with my partner on our first Green Flame mission. We skinned him, you know? The bloody werewolf… You want me to be a Professor? I—I…time? Time won’t heal me…I don’t think I’ll be alive long enough for that. No, I’m not suicidal, headmaster. Just extremely realistic. They’re gonna kill me you know? You’re gonna kill me if you know…lock me in Azkaban with that loony Black…he might have taken out more in one blow than I ever did, poor muggles, but if you added all my individual kills up…

Oh god. Liadawn—who else could it be? He didn’t understand the Spain connections—Liadawn wouldn’t be able to learn a foreign language, he thought, if her life depended on it; she’d had such a hard time learning spells because she failed to see the Latin base-words and compare them to English ones. Why would she beat up Charlie, though? Why would she come back into England now of all times? My dear, you’re going to get yourself killed…what side was she on anyway? With an ice-cold pang of dread, he hoped she was turncoat, like himself. Before Voldemort had been defeated (by Potter, of all people) he had had to face down some other Green Flames. It had been horrible. They weren’t glazes, like half of Voldemort’s forces. They had had minds, and he had been one of them, and he was using his training against them…

He didn’t quite feel that way now. He thought it was funny Voldemort had trained weapons that could turn on him—it was the humor of a man whose solid beliefs had once, seventeen years ago, disintegrated in face of painful reality. Facing off against Liadawn would be pure horror, he knew in the center of his soul. He wasn’t even sure who would win. He was good with knives, but emotion was his Flaw, and he knew it would be tearing up his insides, playing with his mind. She was good hand-to-hand, but her Flaw was overconfidence, and she might underestimate his mind if she saw his body couldn’t perform as well as it used to do.

“Severus? Did you find the name ‘Snappet’?” The soothing voice of the headmaster broke into his reverie.

Gently, so as not to show the headmaster his whirling emotions, he closed the record book. “No, I didn’t,” he said, before he even realized he was going to hand the man half-truths to possibly protect Liadawn. He felt both serene and dirty at his unthinking choice. Where do your loyalties lie, Severus? What is your duty? Oh Severus…if she’s alive, she could use you so easily. The only other person who could do that is Nick, but thank the heavens I’ve never seen him once since he left Hogwarts when we were twelve. One less opening to hurt me through…falling back into his thoughts, he automatically rose and took the record book with him to the shelf. Stretching up—the shelves were stories high in some places, and needed a ladder in those places—he replaced it where he had found it.

“Are you ok?”

Severus nodded. “I’m fine. Just thoughtful.”

“Yes, it’s amazing what reading old school records can do,” the man said in a dry tone, looking at him strangely.

Severus pressed his lips together in a thin line, then brushed past the wizard to restore the scrolls to their cases, and the cases to their cubbies. I’m such a coward, Severus suddenly thought. Yes, I’m going to build a web of informants. Yes, I’m going to write a little list and then sit on my butt, wondering if I can find half the names on it after so many years.

That resolved him, standing there in the middle of the deserted library with only Albus standing near. He had to get moving. He had to do something. He should track down Liadawn, then do research on demons, and recruit the Goths—or some group—to Dumbledore’s cause.

“I need a badge.” He eyed Dumbledore. “A Phoenix badge. Or some other talisman. Nobody will believe me if I just say ‘Oh yes, I represent the headmaster, and you just might get a pardon if you do this…’. I need something shiny to flash in the youngster’s faces. Young people like things like that—they can show it off to their friends and say, ‘Look here! I’m special.’.” A wide smile appeared on his face. “Why do you think all Death Eaters get the bloody tattoo, even though it’s a dead giveaway if anyone knowledgeable spots it when it’s black? It says ‘Lookie, Voldemort cares for me, even if you freaks don’t. I’m part of his group.’”

“Then I give you leave to design one suitable to your needs. I have a feeling anything I make won’t appeal to the youths you’re going to target.” The wizard smiled at him. “Actually, I give you leave to do whatever you want with them. Just keep in mind what you know of me, and you should do fine. If you need a badge, make it. If you need a special code pertianing to the way they dye their hair, do it.”

“Actually, gang colors of a type wouldn’t be a bad idea. Black and gold would be appealing to most—I can give some dipshit about it symbolizing a phoenix’s birth and rebirth. Dark ashes, newborn gold chick. Colors might be a good thing to adopt up top, too. White and gold will make the underground people feel suitably underground with the white contrasting with the black.”

“I was thinking gold and red.”

Gryffindor colors. Severus shrugged. Not that he’d say that out loud. They were just colors. “Suit yourself.”

“Well, if you’ve not found anything, I suggest we go to dinner before I start firing off spells at anything that moves and resembles a chicken,” Albus said, truthfully giving things into Severus’s control instead of giving lie to his words and trying to discuss it all with him.

Severus snorted. Albus was a powerful wizard—nay, a sorcerer, although it wasn’t flaunted or well known—and Voldemort was afraid of him, and yet Severus could never see him as killing anything for his dinner. Well, unless he made it die of embarassment when he decided to parade his hat collection including the bonnets. The man certainly wasn’t helping any gender-benders out there. “But the Headmaster wears girls hats!” would never be a fly excuse for anyone to flaunt lipstick and muggle skirts.

“I see dark and dreary Severus is laughing at the idea of me killing something for dinner,” Albus said gamely.

“Actually I was picturing dinner wearing lacy bonnets,” Severus said, starting to leave the library.

“That sounds…kinky…”

Severus shot the headmaster a disgusted look. “I’m sure.”

Just before he was out of earshot, he heard the headmaster mumble to himself, “Sometimes the man is transparent, other times I have no idea where he gets his thoughts from.”

He laughed. The feeling was very much mutual.