Summon the Lambs to Slaughter

Chapter Twenty-One

Snape sat in a chair in front of the Headmaster's desk, his head buried in his hands. The world had gone mad. He was no longer certain of the day or the hour. Everything seemed to be moving so slowly. Even his own breathing was slow and labored, as though a great weight had settled upon his chest.

What was it the superstitious medieval Muggles did to suspected witches and criminals? Ah, yes, pressing. That was it. The barbaric torture where they piled huge stones upon the victim's chest until they were crushed beneath them like worthless, helpless insects. That's what it feels like. The stones are piling on, and my air is getting thin.

He sat forward, vaguely nauseated. His mind was a blur of images and sensations. The aftermath of Potter's collapse played in his mind, an ancient kinescope run amok. The memories were stilted and warped, jerky and colored with an almost sensuous terror. Potter going limp in his arms, lolling like a dead carp. Ron Weasley's furious, accusatory stare. The sepulchral silence of the classroom. It had been so quiet that he thought he could hear the sound of dust motes settling on the floor. Hermione Granger's wide, glassy eyes when she returned with Madam Pomfrey. The bottomless, frighteningly unhinged gaze of Rebecca Stanhope.

Bedlam had erupted with the arrival of Madam Pomfrey and the Headmaster. Not from the students; they remained eerily quiet and still. Time had frozen for them, and in the interminable seconds before Madam Pomfrey's incredulous shout, he had had occasion to think that it was entirely possible that the seams of time had torn, leaving an irreparable breach between the students and their bewildered teacher. Perhaps they were mercifully unaware of the chaos around them. Perhaps they were still in the first stupefying moments after Potter had quaffed that cursed draught.

The thought had simultaneously comforted and horrified him. If they could not see the pandemonium before them, then they could not see him. He was still safe, his voluntary solitude was still intact. Better yet, they could not see him stripped of his confidence and professorial authority. They were ignorant of the fact that their sniping, unflappable Potions Master was reduced to a bumbling, undignified shell of nearly broken nerves.

But if they were sheltered from these realities, then it also meant that they could not possibly have seen his genuine bewilderment, the throat-constricting numbness that had seized him when the boy wonder had wilted bonelessly against him. They would see only fragments of unpleasant recollection, memories of the vicious professor they had always known. When the inevitable inquiry came, they would superimpose the wrathful iconoclast image he had so eagerly constructed for himself over the true events of that terrible hour. He would be undone by his own legend.

Twined your own noose, you have, Severus.

He exhaled heavily through his nose. Nothing new about that. He had been guilty of it since earliest youth, starting on the day he had opened his first book on Dark magic. He should have slammed it shut, shoved it aside like the damnable thing it was, but he hadn't. The journey to Hell begins with a single step, and he had taken that step so thoughtlessly, as though it were just like all the others. He had been so confident, so certain. Much like Potter, come to think of it. His lips curled in an unconscious grimace.

The blistering agony of the Dark Mark being seared into his flesh knocked the arrogant naivete from him in a cold, brutal roundhouse slap, or at least it should have, but somehow his feet had continued down that black and treacherous path, treading heedlessly over the blood and bones of the souls in Voldemort's path. Even then, even in the wake of overwhelming, staggering evidence, he had thought he could handle it. While the two hands that lived on the ends of his arms had busied themselves with matters of conquest and torture and pleasures unparalleled, invisible hands, the ones that truly mattered, had been weaving deadly snares.

He had wrapped and entangled himself in those snares for three long years, never noticing as they tightened around him, strangling him, pulling him apart with insidious languor. Until that terrible night so long ago when he'd awoken from corrupt, seductive dreams to find his shaking hands and stunned mouth covered in warm blood and the irrefutable evidence of his own savagery sprawled cold and sightless in front of him. The scales of smug entitlement had fallen from his bulging eyes, and he had fled, running for the one place and the one man in whom he knew he could trust, the one man who had been faithfully trying to extricate him from the snares of his own making ever since.

Something warm nudged his hands. He looked up to see Dumbledore holding out a steaming cup of chamomile tea. He was not smiling. His blue eyes were heavy with concern, and his face seemed to sag in the bright light.

"Have some tea, Severus," he said quietly.

Snape took the tea without comment. He didn't want it. He was not even certain he could swallow, but he simply didn't have the strength to argue. He held the handle of the delicate teacup between his fingers, barely aware of its simmering warmth. He felt clumsy and awkward, and he was suddenly afraid that if he tried to take a token sip to appease the Headmaster, the cup would slither from his fingers and crash to the floor with a sound like broken dreams. Just as the phial carrying his likely death had done.

Stanhope must feel this way at times, he thought idly. At war with her own body.

He bristled at the thought of sharing any physical empathy whatsoever with her. It was unsettling, and besides, he had far more urgent things to do than ruminate upon her. Why he was even thinking of her when he was about to be accused of the attempted murder of Harry Potter was beyond him. He absently took a sip of tea, oblivious to the liquid heat as it scalded his tongue. There would be blisters in the morning.

He knew damn well why he was thinking of her, really. No use hiding from the truth. He was thinking of her because she had frightened him badly, almost as much as the sight of Potter lying unmoving and mottled at his side had. She was so very odd, a twisted, watchful, leering sybil that spoke in riddles never solved. The way she had looked at him just before the arrival of much needed help had jarred him, made him bite his tongue in chilled dismay. For a moment before Pomfrey's confused face had blocked her from his vision, Stanhope's eyes, those sly, piercing, caressing searchlights, had been obscured by an impenetrable fog of abject terror.

Her last frantic, mouthed words reformed in his mind. Get away. Get away.

From what, Stanhope, from what?

He set the full cup and saucer on the desk and scrubbed his face in his palms. He felt gritty and drained. It would figure that his oracle would be cracked, distorted beyond comprehension. She certainly wasn't normal. She was cryptic, unnerving in her actions. When Dumbledore had swept in, all red robes and controlled worry, Snape had expected her to quiet, but instead her agitation had only increased. A mournful whimper had escaped her, and she had pressed her forearm to her lips in an effort to smother the sound. Her huge, raw eyes had darted between the Headmaster and himself, and for the briefest moment, there had been the faint, prickling tension of an unspoken message hanging in the air. Then it was gone, replaced by silent, breathless weeping.

"How are you, Severus?" The Headmaster's gentle voice cut into his reverie, full of concern and indefinable sadness.

He opened his mouth to speak, but the most he could muster was a hopeless, irritated grunt. There were no words to help him now. He looked into that wise old face and gave a mirthless half-smile.

"What happened?" Dumbledore asked quietly, setting his own tea aside and steepling his long, thin fingers beneath his chin.

Snape slowly spread his hands and let them droop to his lap. "I don't know Albus, I just don't know. One minute, he was glowering at me with that intolerable disdain of his, and the next he was collapsing against me like a sack of wet grain." He clenched his teeth against the memory of Potter's limp body sagging against him.

"He didn't seem ill before he took the potion?"

"No, he was fine. As mulish as ever," he muttered wearily.

There was a protracted silence, and Snape could sense Albus gathering his courage for the next question. He knew very well what it was likely to be, and he steeled himself, the muscles of his neck and shoulders going rigid. He took a deep breath and held it.

"Severus," the Headmaster said slowly, threading the needle of his words carefully, "is there any possibility that an interaction of ingredients or unknowing contamination could have taken place?"

Though it was precisely the question he had anticipated, the frankness of it squeezed his heart like a vise. Albus, whose trust and respect he coveted more than anything else, was asking him if he'd made a mistake, casting suspicious light on his skills as a Potions Master. It made no difference that he was simply doing what any conscientious headmaster would; that he even felt the slightest need to do so cut him to the core. The inside of his chest was suddenly very hollow, as if his heart had suddenly disintegrated. The suffocating pressure remained. He gripped the arms of his chair and forced himself to breathe.

"No. The draught was kept in a locked warded, cabinet until it was used. No one could have tampered with it. There was a jar of corrupted belladonna in the cabinet, but I removed it and washed my hands thoroughly before touching Potter's phial. I inspected it myself. Albus, aside from Potter's atrocious Potions work, there was absolutely nothing wrong with what he took. All it should have done was make him violently ill."

There was another excruciating silence, and Snape had the sneaking suspicion that he was going to like the Headmaster's next question even less than the last. His teeth began their infernal, ceaseless grinding, the enamel cracking like dried bones. His fingers throttled the handrests of his chair. The nascent gnaw of an oncoming migraine sunk its teeth into the base of his skull, and he knew that it was going to be very bad indeed. By nightfall, the nausea would make his insides writhe, and he would be begging the Fates to burn out the moon and stars. He concentrated on Dumbledore's face, pushing back the slowly coiling pain.

"This is going to be a difficult question, but understand that I must ask it," the Headmaster said gravely, pushing his spectacles onto the bridge of his nose and fixing him with a mournful gaze. "You've been spending a great deal of time with Miss Stanhope, often late into the night. Given that, can you say with absolute certainty that nothing was overlooked, perhaps missed by weariness?"

Snape stared, his face scoured of emotion. His heart was thudding slowly and painfully in his chest, and bile rose in his throat. When he spoke, his voice was dead and cold. "You mean, Headmaster, have I, in my careless arrogance and unrelenting desire to crush the spirit of a cripple with a mind hard as diamonds, inadvertently killed Harry Potter?"

The Headmaster's face softened. "I don't doubt your ability as a Potions Master," he said soothingly. "But I am well aware that everyone makes mistakes."

"And I have made more than my share," he finished dourly. "What's one more?"

Dumbledore looked at him in surprise. He opened his mouth to respond, but Snape stood and turned away, folding his arms across his chest. He knew he sounded like a petulant schoolboy, but he couldn't stop himself. He was raw and vulnerable, and he loathed the feeling. He was not supposed to be laid bare before anyone, not even Albus. He should be impervious to such intrusion.

It was all that girl's doing. His life had jumped its predestined course the moment she'd passed through these walls. Damn her. He'd known she would bring nothing but trouble. No one had listened to him, of course. Why should they? He was only miserable, brooding Professor Snape, the soulless bastard who despised the world and everything in it. He was bound to decry anything not to his liking. Look what he'd done to Potter.

Stop it. Stanhope has nothing to do with this. You would have given Potter that potion whether she was here or not. It's something you've hoped for since his first year. She didn't put the idea into your head. Nor is she responsible for your obsession with both her and Potter. Those were works of your own creation. Don't lay them at her ruined feet.

He wandered to the mammoth bookshelf that swallowed the left side of the Headmaster's office and ran his fingers along the smooth, leather spines of the countless books cradled there like contented old friends. They were cool to the touch, and he suddenly slumped against them, resting his burning temple against a creased brown spine. Merlin, he was exhausted. His anger and fear had sapped the very marrow from his bones, and it was all he could do not to wilt to the floor like a dying orchid.

"I have never botched a potion in seventeen years. Not a single one." He spoke softly, almost to himself. "No matter what happened, I always got it right. I've brewed a flawless Wolfsbane on my knees when lingering pain from Cruciatus made standing no more than a foolish lover's fancy. I've vomited on the floor and kept right on working just so Remus Lupin, sworn enemy and filthy werewolf, could lead his mundane little life. Do you really think I'd make such a catastrophic error on account of late-night detentions with a hopeless pupil?" He studied the floor.

"Oh, Severus." Full of sorrow.

Something in the way he said it made Snape look up sharply. It reminded him of blasted Stanhope the day she'd burned his legs. Oh, sir. The same bewildered despair, lost and beseeching. Sure enough, Dumbledore's eyes were bright with horrible realization. He cursed his vile tongue for lashing the only heart that had ever seen fit to find him worthy of patience. He tucked his chin into his chest, as though withdrawing from a chill wind.

Stanhope again. She was beginning to permeate every facet of his life. Here he was, standing before the Headmaster after watching the Boy Who Lived collapse into a lifeless heap, and he was thinking of her, of that twisted, goblin child. She gave him no peace. Before Potter had fallen, she was about to be responsible for yet another calamity. That damned note.

His hand drifted to the pocket of his robes, and he flinched when his fingertips grazed the dry parchment crumpled there. The ugly words it contained surfaced in his mind, and he pulled his hand away, wiping it roughly against the coarse cotton of his robes. It was like touching corpse flesh or rotten wormwood.

That's one point for Potter's collapse; it will knock McGonagall's fanciful imaginings of illicit encounters with underage students out of her mind.

He snorted softly. Wonderful. Exonerated for one imagined crime while being lynched for another. What bloody good fortune. Not that it was much of a leap from groping hapless students to cold-blooded assassination of the entire wizarding world's only hope, especially with sadistic ex-Death Eater on one's resume. If Potter died, so did he. Not even Albus would be able to protect him from the resultant firestorm.

What would it be like to die at the hands of a Dementor? He supposed that would depend upon the manner in which they chose to execute him. Life imprisonment in Azkaban and death by Dementor's Kiss were essentially the same thing. One just took far longer than the other.

The Dementor's Kiss. The stuff of childhood nightmares. The stuff of all nightmares. It was quick, but none could say if it was painless. No one had ever come back from the experience. Once done, it could not be undone. The devil could wrest a soul out, but it seemed only the Fates could put it in. Barty Crouch, Jr. was the only victim of the Kiss he had seen, and hopefully the last. He was profoundly grateful that he had only stumbled upon the aftermath. Had he seen the actual kiss, he may well have quietly lost his mind.

The Kiss was a terrible thing, a violation of the most intimate kind. It was, at its heart, rape, the most brutal unforgivable rape of all. Monstrous creatures drawn from the pages of some forgotten storybook of polluted fairytales-not the clean, glittering tales Muggles read to their children as they snuggled warm and safe beneath their quilts, not the hopeful stories where everything comes out right in the end, but the dirty, sordid tales of treachery, murder, and depravity, the tales of truth, in other words-put their dead, clammy mouth over yours and stole your breath, and with it your memories, your knowledge, your joy. You. They stole you, filling numb, thoughtless, irrelevant lungs with their fetid, carrion stink, leaving a rocking, dribbling husk behind.

That was terrible, yes, no denying it, but there was a worse fate. That bastard Fudge could very well gleefully decide to toss him into a dank and crumbling cell. He would call it mercy, all the while knowing he'd damned him to a terrestrial hell. He, Snape, would know, be agonizingly aware of the slow, diabolically erotic process of losing himself. Piece by piece, they would take it all away with their greedy, scabrous hands, tearing the delicate threads that held him together. He would reach for a memory, only to find it gone, replaced by a noisome recollection he longed to forget. One by one, the wan lights of his fortress would flicker and die, plunging him into unbanishable darkness. The reservoirs of his memory were deep, indeed. It would take years to drain them, years before the flame of his cognizance guttered, smothered beneath a rotten wind of Dementor breath.

And you would last a very long time, wouldn't you, longer than even Black? Not much happiness in you. Though you know they would tear you apart looking for it. How long, Severus? Twenty years? Thirty? Seventy? Four walls and your mind trickling through your fingers. A fitting end for you.

Fingers grazed his forearm. He looked up, startled. He had been so absorbed in his thoughts that had had not heard Dumbledore approach. He met that serene blue gaze for a moment, then resumed his contemplation of the floor.

A familiar bowl appeared beneath his nose. "Sherbet lemon?" The loathsome sweets twinkled up at him, gleaming with a sticky glaze of sugar.

"No, Headmaster. I regrettably must decline," he muttered, eyeing them without enthusiasm. Eating was the last thing on his mind. The thought of swallowing the gaggingly sweet confection made his stomach heave.

"Alas, and I was convinced I'd won a convert," he sighed, sounding disappointed. The bowl disappeared from view. "Intriguing floor pattern, Severus?" he inquired placidly.

That was Albus-speak for look at me, and so Snape raised his gaze, suddenly feeling as though he were the one weighted down by one hundred and fifty years of unwanted knowledge and experience. He fought the urge to squirm beneath those discerning eyes. He hadn't felt so unsettled before him since fifth-year when he'd been dragged into the office along with St. Potter, Sr. and his cronies after an incident involving a very public display of his rather shoddy undergarments. Looking up at him then, he'd wanted to melt into the floor, his sallow cheeks burning with humiliation and shame. That old feeling had returned, compounded by the belief that this time he deserved the venerable man's ridicule.

A swamping sense of failure filled him, made him feel hollow, brittle, as if his bones had been leeched of their marrow. He'd let Albus down, the one thing he'd sworn never to do, and he'd done it spectacularly. Potter had fallen on his watch, his, seemingly poisoned by something left in his care. He could have done no worse had he throttled the boy himself. Albus and the running of Hogwarts would come under close scrutiny from an unfriendly Ministry, and it would be all his fault. He'd made a disaster of things, and his latest, most grievous error in judgment was going to drag down the only man who had ever thought him worthy of a first chance, much less a second. There was nothing else for it.

"I suppose you'll be expecting my resignation," he said stiffly, the words causing his throbbing heart to freeze in his chest.

Dumbledore, who had been looking at him with a peculiar, inexplicable expression of fondness, grew grave, his eyebrows furrowing. "What on earth on you talking about, Severus?" he asked softly.

"You know very well what I'm talking about," he snapped. "The illustrious Harry Potter has collapsed in my classroom after testing something I gave him, something in my possession and my possession only since the day it was brewed. It should never have happened. The Ministry of Magic will be here as soon as word leaks, and I'm afraid neither of us has the most sparkling of records," he snarled bitterly. "It would be better for all concerned if I left."

Dumbledore stared at him, sucking contemplatively on one of his candies. His face was inscrutable. "Unless you are confessing to the attempted murder of Harry Potter, I refuse to accept your resignation," he said simply.

"But Headmaster, I am a liability."

"Only in your mind. You are the finest Potions Master Hogwarts has ever had, and we cannot afford to lose you, not now. You will teach them what they need to know. No, Severus, I think you will be staying here."

Dumbledore's words were a balm to his tortured soul, but he dared not express such sentiments. Now was not the time for maudlin outbursts of hysterical emotion. What was needed was reason. He had to shake the Headmaster from this mawkish, disgustingly noble devotion, make him do what was best for himself and the school. He was not worth the sacrifice.

"Headmaster, I refuse to put the school at risk for the sake of misguided loyalty."

"As do I." Dumbledore's tone was calm, but there was a hint of steel behind the admonition. The argument was over.

"For the record, I do not believe you intentionally poisoned Harry. No, I rather think you would have shown a bit more subtlety, more panache. Poisoning is a tad déclassé, especially for such a skilled potion maker, don't you think?" Dumbledore offered him a wan smile and returned to his chair.

In spite of the dire calamity he was facing, Snape felt his lips twitch in a bemused smirk. Albus always seemed to be able to cut to the heart of the matter, to find the tiniest kernel of levity amid the darkest, most tumescent clouds of strife and danger. The oppressive weight under which he had been struggling for the mad hour since Pomfrey had whisked the comatose Potter to the Hospital Wing shifted; it did not depart entirely, and he doubted that it ever would, but at least he could draw breath without feeling as though he were heaving heavy stones with every rise and fall of his chest. He sat down beside Dumbledore.

"More tea?" Dumbledore gestured to the silver tea set to his left.

"No, thank you."

A thoughtful silence, filled only by the sounds of indrawn breath, the liquid hiss of sand dribbling through the hourglass, and the dusty ruffling of Fawkes' feathers as he preened himself upon his perch. Then, "Any idea as to what could have gone wrong?"

Snape sighed, running ivory fingers through his lank black hair. "I wish I knew, Headmaster. That phial was in my locked, warded cabinet. No one could have tampered with it."

"And you have never left it unlocked and unattended?" Dumbledore scratched the end of his nose.

"Never," he answered vehemently. "The ingredients inside are far too dangerous."

Something niggled at the base of his brain just then, a tiny voice of doubt that whispered that he was wrong, that he had left it unsupervised. It was distant and mocking, and the more he reached for it, the further it retreated. He racked his brain, searching desperately for a single moment of careless inattention. Even thirty seconds would be enough time. There was nothing.

Nor should there have been. Any teacher worth his Galleons would have guarded that cabinet with their lives, and he had. It was constantly in his field of vision, and his back was never to it for more than ten seconds. No one should have been able to come within five feet of it without his knowledge, and even if they did, the ward tied to his lifeforce would alert him immediately.

Then how did Potter and his friends get their grubby hands on that boomslang skin in their second year?

Merlin if he knew. The cabinet was unlocked at the beginning of class when appropriate and locked again at the end, and he watched it from the corner of his eye for the duration, on the lookout for skulking thieves and furtive miscreants. Nary a shadow had ever approached it. Unless they'd managed to abscond with it during the Dungbomb melee that year. He snorted. That wouldn't surprise him at all. Potter was certainly clever enough for such a scheme.

He thought back. Had any similar incident taken place since he'd placed Potter's phial in the cabinet? No. The past few days had been as dull and tedious as ever, passing in a haze of futile remonstration and rampant point deduction. Not that he considered the latter cause for concern; it was actually one of the few delights he allowed himself. First-years in particular were a wellspring of idiocy, and they never failed to afford him ample opportunity to whittle precious grains of sand from the House hourglasses brooding in their niches in the entrance hall.

"Any word on Potter?" he muttered, slowly rolling his neck to ease the cramping tension there.

"No. Minerva will bring word as soon as she can."

He groaned. Minerva was going to pillory him. How could she not? She had spent years accusing him of biding his time until he could bring down Potter, and now her dark and hectoring prophecies had been fulfilled. Oh, yes, when that door swung open, the goddess of war for which she had been named would pass over the threshold, and she would enter, eyes ablaze and radiating righteous fury. She would tower over him, pointing a gnarled, accusatory finger, and from her mouth would spew a lifetime's worth of bitter indictment. And he would say nothing, because she would be incontestably right.

What was worse, she would have a two-pronged attack. Should she run out of recriminations about Potter, she could simply turn her hand to baseless but persistent insinuations regarding his nocturnal conduct with one Rebecca Stanhope. That was yet another trap of his own making. He should never have taken to spending so much time alone with her, even if it was spent in the laudable pursuit of academia. People were bound to start thinking along the same lascivious lines as McGonagall. But he had been so blind, so focused on the chase, the elusive trail of her unfathomable inner workings that he had forgotten the importance of paying at least nominal mind to propriety. He had a feeling that such oversight would cost him dear before all was said and done.

We wouldn't be having these thoughts if this were any other student, especially any other male student.

No, likely not. Had this been anyone else, no one would have batted an eyelash at the countless hours he passed in the company of a single student, especially not if the student happened to be a Gryffindor. Such diligent punishment would have been blithely attributed to his celebrated hatred of the House of lions and left at that. Stanhope, with her twisted legs and cunning, watchful face, was a beast unto her own. She was special. Like Potter, she existed on a plane all her own, untouchable by ordinary rules. He supposed that in McGonagall's view, he was not only a child-molesting fiend, but he was a deviant child-molesting fiend. Ever so much worse. Stanhope, Stanhope, of all people. Any man deriving satisfaction from accosting her pitiful frame must be a sick, sick man indeed, and who better than an ex-Death Eater to fit that bill?

I don't see why. She's female.

Only when it suits McGonagall to see her as such. Otherwise, she is nothing more than a neuter, semi-sentient piece of talking flesh.

So, she will be, for all intents and purposes, just female enough to hang me, but not quite female enough for me to justify my predations should I try.

Precisely.

Terribly convenient, that.

Such is the nature of the witch hunt.

He shook himself. What was he doing? Harry Potter was lying in the Hospital Wing, dying for reasons unknown, and he sat here fretting over an accusation not yet lobbed. The day's events must have undone him more than he was willing to admit.

That letter won't stay quiet long; as soon as Potter comes around, she'll remember it. It's her trump card.

Well, be that as it may, it would do him no good to brood over stones not yet cast. Better to concentrate on the ones hurtling toward the fragile bowl of his skull at this very moment. The stone, actually, the single, monstrous rock that could crush him to bloody dust beneath its unyielding weight. The unforgettable and unshakeable millstone that bore the name of Potter, as had nearly all the wailing stones that he had ever borne.

Still, he couldn't help but wonder if Albus knew about the letter. Surely he must have if the meeting was to have been held in his office. Before he could ask about that, however, the door opened, and McGonagall staggered inside.

Snape was so shocked by her appearance that he recoiled in his chair; it was the antithesis of what he had expected. She did not stride into the room, full of brimstone anger and holy surety, but rather she lurched inside, swaying on her feet, shoulders stooped and hunched beneath an invisible burden. Her hair, usually kept in an immaculate bun, had escaped its bonds and straggled dispiritedly around her pallid face. She tottered uncertainly across the room and collapsed into the nearest chair.

Her face was the worst. He had never seen it so void of life, so slack and haggard. She had aged forty years in as many minutes, it seemed, and when she looked at them, the tendons of her neck creaking as she raised her head, her eyes were red-rimmed and raw, as though she had been weeping. They were also, he saw, glazed and hollow, the eyes of a person who has seen the all the very worst fears of their life realized in a single instant.

He's dead, he thought dismally, a terrible, sinking dread settling into the pit of his stomach. Potter is dead, and Lord Voldemort's reign is assured. And when that fact penetrates the thin cocoon of McGonagall shock, all of her rage and despair will be loosed upon my head. He braced himself for the worst.

But she said nothing. She merely sat in her chair and blinked at them. Occasionally, her mouth would twitch as she struggled to speak, a simple art that had temporarily abandoned her. A grating sigh escaped her, but no more. Her hands shook. Dreamily, she fumbled in the pockets of her robes for her spectacles, unfolding them and putting them on with painful care. She opened her mouth, then closed it again.

"Well?" Snape demanded harshly, unable to bear the suspense any longer.

She started, her eyes clearing of the worrying fog that had covered them like a thin scrim of winter frost. She spared him a furious glance, the flesh around her lips pulling taut as anger suffused her face. She opened her mouth to respond, but at the last second she turned away from him and looked at the Headmaster. "Have you any tea, sir?" she asked faintly, taking great pains not to look at Snape.

"Of course, Minerva," came the quiet answer, and from the relief in his voice, Snape knew that McGonagall's shocking appearance had troubled him as well.

He was not surprised at her anger or her blatant rebuff. He had, in fact, been anticipating both, and yet they still stung. Some deep and unacknowledged part of him had been hoping that she would see to the truth of the matter, as Albus had done. She was intelligent enough, perceptive enough to see that he would never be so stupid, so...inane. She knew him better than that. She must. She had, after all, been privy to the wrenching sacrifices of the last fifteen years.

She doesn't want to see. It isn't convenient.

The bitterness, ever present beneath his skin and in the wet hollows of his bones, arose once more, and he wrapped himself in it, insulating himself from the subtle currents of unspoken emotion that hung in the air. Smothered in its cloying, soothing, familiar grasp, pain no longer touched him. It was far away, insignificant. It no longer mattered.

Of course she would not see. Obstinate, impenetrable blindness was a Gryffindor right, a fact young Potter had proven time and again, and as Head of that venerable House, it came as no great shock to him that she would be the grande dame of intractability. She saw only what she wished, primarily the colors of his House scarf and the Head of House pin he wore proudly on the collar of his robes. The glittering silver serpent was all she could see through the myopic, cataracted vision of her carefully nursed prejudice. She was Gryffindor, he was Slytherin, and that difference alone was enough to assure her of his guilt.

"Sugar?" Dumbledore asked, looking inquiringly over his spectacles at McGonagall, hand poised over the sugar bowl, spoon teetering between his fingers.

"Yes, please."

"One lump or two?"

"Two," she said tersely, still avoiding Snape's gaze.

They sat in painful silence while McGonagall sipped her tea, absently stirring it with her spoon. Snape studied the floor and the endless rows of portraits that adorned the walls, eager for any distraction from her hard, haunted face and the damning looks she would undoubtedly be casting his way.

Finally Dumbledore broke the uneasy, waiting silence. "How is he, Minerva?"

The teacup began to jitter in her hands, clinking with unseemly merriment against the saucer, and she rested it on her knees to steady it.

"He's alive, though just," she said, her voice exhausted and strained. "Madam Pomfrey says he's in a deep coma."

Though his posture changed not at all and he maintained a countenance of bland, bored indifference, relief washed over him in a vertiginous wave. He was still alive. Miracles still existed. Beside him, Dumbledore let out a long sigh and sagged in his chair.

"Does she have any idea what's wrong with him?" Dumbledore adjusted his spectacles on his face.

"Not the slightest," said McGonagall wearily. "She says it could take weeks to discover what was in that phial."

"I already told you what was in it," Snape snapped. "Advanced Sleeping Draught."

McGonagall rounded on him. "When last I checked, Advanced Sleeping Draught most certainly does not send the drinker into a near-fatal coma. Obviously something else was in that phial," she snarled.

"Obviously," he hissed, and lapsed into silence again. The pulsing shafts of pain signaling a migraine returned, and he kneaded his temples.

"Severus," she said diffidently, shifting in her chair to face him, "I'm not accusing you of poisoning Harry. I suspect you have more intelligence than that, but you must admit, the circumstances are suspicious. In a locked cabinet to which you alone have access. And there is the matter of your marked disdain-,"

"Oh, I know," Snape snarled. "I hate the boy, so I must have attempted to kill him. Why not? I'm Slytherin. Isn't that what my sort does?" He knew he was being petulant, paranoid, and reactionary, but he was past caring. He was tired and unsure, and neither state was conducive to a settled disposition. He wanted to get away from here, from her condescending, incomplete absolution, and think, to sort through the facts until he found what he was missing.

McGonagall drew herself up, and to Snape she looked like a disgruntled pigeon. "I said no such thing," she huffed.

"You didn't have to," he said softly. "Your correspondence of earlier removed all doubt as to the regard in which you hold me."

McGonagall flushed and sputtered indignantly, and he saw with a vicious surge of satisfaction that Dumbledore was looking at her quizzically.

So, you didn't tell him, did you? My, my.

"Correspondence?"

"Well, yes, Headmaster. You see-,"

"It seems Professor McGonagall suspects me of lewd conduct with Miss Stanhope," he purred with savage glee.

An ugly flush rose in her cheeks. "I...I most certainly did not! I simply wanted to be sure-,"

Dumbledore held up a silencing hand. "While I am most intrigued about this letter, I'm afraid it will have to wait until the mysterious illness of Harry's can be resolved. Unfortunately, we cannot keep this quiet. There were simply too many witnesses. As such, I expect the first owls about the matter should arrive in London within five days. The Ministry will waste no time once alerted to the situation. At best, that gives us six days to solve the problem on our own. After that, it will be out of my hands. Let us make the most of it."

McGonagall and Snape kept silent, awaiting instructions.

"Minerva, tell Madam Pomfrey to analyze every shard of that broken phial for any substance that should not have been there. Severus, you will provide Pomfrey with the list of ingredients for Advanced Sleeping Draught. I also think it advisable that you inventory your stores for any discrepancy in your meticulous records."

Snape nodded curtly. He would have done those things without the Headmaster's orders. They simply made sense.

"What will you do, Headmaster?" asked McGonagall, rising from her chair.

"I will be informing our network of the situation. They will need to know."

Of course they will. When the king falls, the court scrambles to fill the void, Snape thought.

McGonagall left without a word, and as Snape reached the door, Dumbledore called to him.

"Severus?"

"Yes, Headmaster?"

"For the time being, I must ask you to suspend potion testing. We can take no risks."

"Yes, Headmaster," he said tonelessly, winding the bitterness around him more tightly still. Anything to deflect the sting of unearned mistrust.

He left and headed to the merciful solitude of the Potions classroom, mentally composing the ingredients list for Advanced Sleeping Draught. Six days. Not enough time, not nearly enough. He stalked down the deserted staircase, heels of his boots snapping defiantly at the stone beneath them, and as he moved, the walls seemed to close in behind him.