Summon the Lambs to Slaughter

Chapter Thirty-Seven

At half-past seven the following morning, Dumbledore found himself heading to Severus' frozen chambers. He winced as he moved, the cold sinking its gleeful, biting teeth into the joints of his hips. He stifled a yawn. He had slept little the night before, had, in fact, awakened at just after two o'clock to find that both he and Minerva had fallen asleep where they sat, heads drooping onto their chests. Even after she had departed with a hurried and rather chagrined adieu, he had remained before the smoldering embers of the fire, too tired and worn out to make the journey up the spiral staircase to his bedchamber.

His hand drifted to the pocket of his robes, and he withdrew a chunk of Medi-Chocolate wrapped in bronze foil that he had nicked from the Hospital Wing before setting off. Pomfrey, bless her intrepid soul, had tutted and fussed at him to have a liedown and some heartening warm beef broth, but he had politely declined and exerted his right as Headmaster to commandeer the slab of chocolate instead.

You'll be hearing from both her and Minerva before the day is out.

He broke off a piece of the chocolate and slipped it into his mouth, rolling the smooth, rich chocolate over his tongue with a sigh of relish. Warmth flooded him, filling the hollow places in his bones and making his fingertips tingle. His footsteps, heretofore dogged by weariness, lightened, and he moved with a renewed sense of buoyancy. Though he had no conscious intention of doing so, he began to hum, a soft, cheerful buzz in the early morning stillness. He pocketed the rest of the Medi-Chocolate and continued on his way.

This early, the castle corridors were nearly deserted. Here and there, a bright-eyed house elf scurried just beyond the range of his vision, savoring the sweet ambrosia of toil, and every now and then, he passed a bleary-eyed pupil as they shambled to the library or to the Great Hall for breakfast. The Fat Friar hovered somnolently beside the cramped, damp corridor that led to the dungeons, chatting idly with a bored Auror posted to keep watch over who entered.

"Hello, Headmaster," said the Friar, and he gave a small bow. The Auror straightened and gave a curt nod, but said nothing.

"Good morning, Friar," Dumbledore answered. Then, to the suddenly uncommunicative Auror, "Good morning, young man."

The Auror scowled and shifted uneasily from foot to foot. "Sir." Terse. Cool. Mildly affronted.

There was an outraged snort from the Fat Friar, but Dumbledore silenced him with a warning glance. He was too preoccupied with the task that awaited him at the end of the corridor to spare precious energy on a useless squabble with Ministry officials. Severus was a difficult man under the best of circumstances, and now, caged, cornered, and stripped of every vestige of dignity he had ever managed to acquire, it would be all but impossible to jolt him from the fugue of hopeless despair in which he had immersed himself.

He left the Auror and the miffed Friar behind and let the darkness of the dungeon corridor swallow him. His nose wrinkled at the faint smell of mildew and the sharper, greener smell of mossy rot. It was always ten degrees cooler here than anywhere else in the castle, deprived as it was of the sun's warming rays, and moss and lichen flourished in the corners and the divots gouged in the walls by the slow, persistent wear of time. He had approached Severus numerous times about casting a Warming spell or having the walls scrubbed by a cadre of industrious house elves, but all such offers had been refused with clipped civility, and as none of the students had ever suffered any ill effects, he had let the matter lie.

His breath misted before him in a shimmering gossamer fog, and his shoes clacked sharply on the stone. Up ahead, he could see the shadowed outlines of Kingsley and Dawlish as they stood outside the door to Severus' chambers, hands clasped behind their backs, eyes facing forward, silent as the gargoyle that guarded his office from uninvited guests. Save for the occasional stamp of feet to keep the blood flowing, the corridor was absolutely still.

"Good morning, gentlemen," he said as he drew near. Neither man turned to face him, but Kingsley's eyes slid surreptitiously in his direction.

"Been visiting our friend here quite a bit," observed Dawlish suspiciously.

"Severus, until he is convicted of the crime of which he is accused, is still under my care," he said crisply. "As such, it is my duty to make sure that he is not planning to harm himself."

Dawlish looked dimly alarmed at this. The thought that his victim might rob him of the opportunity for further torment by killing himself had apparently not crossed his mind. His lips twitched, as though he were about to say something further, but then he pressed them together with an irritated nod.

Oh, dear, he thought dismally, I've probably given them incentive for another strip search. He suppressed a pained grimace at the terrible thought and reached for the door handle. To his surprise, Kingsley's long, supple fingers closed over his forearm.

"I'm afraid, Headmaster, that I'm going to have to accompany you," he said, and his face was inscrutable in the dim and wavering torchlight.

"On what grounds?" he demanded coolly. He was so taken aback by this unexpected turn of events that feigned outrage was unnecessary.

Kingsley did not hesitate. "How do I know you're not planning to slip him the means to escape justice?"

"I believe the Ministry has installed Listening Charms to be sure that no one is planning any ill-advised escape attempts," he retorted calmly.

Kingsley only gazed at him with half-lidded eyes. "Yes, but one need not make a sound to slip someone a dagger or a phial of poison." His lip curled in a faint, mirthless smile.

"I have no intention of doing any such thing."

"Either I accompany you inside, Headmaster, or I strip search you, same as your friend in there." He jerked his head in the direction of the closed door, and there was a muffled snort of wry appreciation from Dawlish, who was watching the unfolding drama with an expression of soporific joy.

"I see," he said shortly. "Very well."

With a satisfied nod, Kingsley released his grip on his forearm and opened the door with a deft flick of his wrist. Then he stepped inside and beckoned him to follow with three fingers of one elegant hand. Off-balance for one of the few times in his life, Dumbledore did as he was told, and then the door closed behind him.

He opened his mouth to ask what was afoot, but Kingsley lifted a slender ebony finger to his lips, and behind the upraised digit, a smile curled in the corners of his mouth. His eyes sparkled with mischievous cunning, and before he spun away, Dumbledore saw his hand disappear into his robes. All at once, comprehension dawned, and his hunched shoulders relaxed. He fought an unseemly gormless titter.

Listening Charms. Severus' rooms were covered with them. In cornices, beneath his bed, even in the lavatory. It would be dangerous to speak freely here, and were he not so tired, he would have remembered it, but he had been so eager to jolt his Potions Master from his unmoving apathy that he had nearly done something heretofore absent from his list of foibles-acted with undue haste. He groped in the pockets of his robes for a lemon sherbet.

He watched in thoughtful silence as Kingsley moved through the rooms, tapping the tip of his wand against likely locations for the Charms, swift and stealthy as shadow. Wardrobes, cupboards, and chests were all opened and inspected. Then the rugs and pillows were searched by deft, knowing hands. When he found a Charm, he tapped the area with the tip of his wand and marked it with a glimmering orb of red light.

Tap. Tap. Tap. A dozen tiny bonfires ignited in the gloomy cornices and deep recesses of Severus' cupboards. The carpet beneath his feet was blanketed with them, as though it had sprouted a crop of mushrooms in the night. Thirty, then forty. They extended from the threshold to the bedroom to the lavatory, an enormous, twining, serpentine line of them.

Did they know that was they shape they were making when they set them? One more jibe at his helpless honor?

He doubted it. Fudge wasn't that subtle, and in any case, Severus would not have been able to see the pattern the Charms made, and therefore would have little reason for frothing hysteria. Not that he had been engaging in any of that of late. He frowned at the inert figure of his Potions Master perched on the sofa like a breathing effigy.

He wouldn't need to see, just them. It would be enough for them to know that they were using the symbol of his own House against him. They could tread upon it and laugh, take perverse joy in their unspoken knowledge. The sadistic joy of it would be in their eyes while they mocked him and tortured him and spat upon his dignity. They would draw upon it when they wearied, and use it as a shield against feeble pangs of conscience.

This particular train of thought disgusted him, and so he crunched the last of the sherbet lemon, which was suddenly too sweet in his mouth, between his teeth and moved to stand before the sofa.

"Good morning, Severus," he said quietly, and pushed his spectacles onto the bridge of his nose.

The only response from the man on the sofa was an imperceptible twitch of the jaw. This close, Dumbledore could smell the pungent reek of dirt and body odor. The stubble on Severus' cheeks was coarser than ever, and his formerly meticulous robes were wrinkled and limp. His brutally short fingernails were caked with grime and what looked suspiciously like dried blood.

Ignoring the protests of his nose and knees, he crouched until he was eye to eye with his wayward child. "Severus, what have you done?" he whispered. Silence. Only the slow blink of lifeless eyes.

He felt like weeping as he took one of the dirty hands in his own and extended one of the lax lily fingers, fingers that knew the secrets and delicate nuances of potions beyond counting, and brought it up for a closer look. Sure enough, he recognized the dull rust of old blood beneath the thin crescents of nail. He moaned softly. He thought he knew where it came from, and with numb, shaking hands, he reached out and gently pushed up the left sleeve of Severus' robes.

He flinched. Severus had obviously been at it for hours, even days. Every inch of the Dark Mark was covered in open sores in various stages of healing. Some were raw and bleeding; others were covered with fragile scales of hard skin. The eyes of the grinning skull were home to a pair of ruthlessly deep gouges, as though he had tried to rip imaginary eyes from their sockets, and blood leaked from the wounds in sluggish trails.

"Oh, Merlin. Severus, why?" he asked weakly, and cupped his hand over the wounded flesh. It was a useless gesture, but he needed to do something other than gape.

Kingsley threaded his way through the maze of furniture and Listening Charms and came to stand beside him. The Auror's lips pulled away from his teeth in a surprised grimace when he glanced down at the partially obscured flesh of Severus' forearm.

"Merlin in a tarnished tea cozy," he muttered, and turned his head in revulsion. Then he collected himself, turned to him, and mouthed, Fifty-six.

Can you neutralize them? came the soundless retort.

I think so, but I'll need enough noise to cover what I'm doing.

Leave that to me. If you would, go to the Hospital Wing and get some ointment from Madam Pomfrey. Some of these look infected. If anyone asks, I've had a sudden attack of hemorrhoids.

Kingsley shot him a startled glance, no doubt pained by the thought of his considerably wrinkled nether regions, but after a moment he nodded and turned to go. Yes, Headmaster.

When he was gone and the door had closed behind him, Dumbledore rose from his deep crouch with a grimace and seated himself on the sofa beside Severus.

He patted the younger man's hand. "That was foolish, my boy," he chided softly, and his voice caught in his throat. "It's rather cold in here. If you don't mind?" He withdrew his wand from his robes and raised an eyebrow in mute inquiry.

When there was no response, he pointed his wand at the empty fire grate and murmured, "Incendio!" A fire roared to life in the hearth, and he stretched his frozen hands to it. "That's better, don't you think?" he ventured, but there was no answer.

He dropped his hands and sighed. "This silence is utterly childish, Severus, and will achieve nothing. Neither will wallowing in self-pity and your own filth."

Severus only blinked.

"What would your pupils think if they could see you in such a sorry state?" he asked in an appeal to his vanity. "You, who have eschewed any sign of weakness, sulking like a histrionic woman jilted by her lover."

He knew he wasn't being fair, that Severus' dire situation was nothing so fleeting, but he was trying to stoke the embers of his anger, ignite that volatile, endless temper into new life. If he were properly furious, he would not sit idly by like some broken and discarded doll. His pride would not allow it. He would fight, no matter how passively, and he, Dumbledore, wanted, needed him to fight. If he didn't resist, his gross apathy would bring Stanhope down with him.

He grabbed Severus' pale hand and thrust it toward the fire. "You're freezing. It isn't wise for a Potions Master to neglect his hands." He rubbed the dirty fingers briskly between his own, forcing the blood to frigid fingertips.

Predictably by now, there was no response from Severus. He only sat and blinked.

Dumbledore simultaneously longed to enfold him in a comforting embrace and slap him until his cheeks bled, but he did neither. Instead, he busied himself with massaging warmth into glacial fingers which lay like the legs of an albino spider in his palm.

"I suppose you think you're martyring yourself," he said suddenly, "withdrawing into yourself like some tragic Byronian hero." He mustered a snort. "I really thought you knew better. Haven't you been haranguing Potter about just that sort of mawkish, self-pitying behavior for years?"

Potter. If anything was guaranteed to re-ignite the fury in Severus' soul, it would be the subject of his pet nemesis. He had never yet missed an opportunity to vent his boundless rage about Potter upon anyone unfortunate enough to bring him up, to remind them all of the sacrifices he had made on behalf of the "puling, ungrateful wretch" that James Potter had left behind in mocking legacy. Given the circumstances in which Severus now found himself, it was only fitting that Harry be the catalyst to wrench him from his self-imposed stupor.

He waited for the ugly plum flush to creep into Severus' cheeks, for black eyes to narrow and glitter with long-nurtured and well-fed malice, for the nostrils of his long, crooked nose to flare like the hood of a cobra that has scented prey, but nothing happened. Not even a snort. Eyes remained wide and lifeless as ever, marbles pushed into dough, and the cobra did not rear its poisonous head.

You're letting them win, Dumbledore wanted to shout. Do you think that Fudge and his lackeys care one whit if you sink into unreachable apathy, that they will suddenly lament their cruelty and set off in search of the truth simply because you've closed yourself off? You can't possibly. You know better, Severus! You're only making it easier for them. Fight. With your serrated tongue and your ruthless wit. With sheer obstinacy, if you must. Anything but sit, Severus, anything but this dribbling facility. But he didn't. He couldn't. If one syllable of these thoughts reached Fudge's burning ears, he and his underlings would be here in a trice to truss them both and drag them off to Azkaban on charges of sedition.

The door opened, and Kingsley entered carrying a bottle of salve. He closed the door and brought the bottle to him. Then he reached into his robes and produced a jar filled with a creamy, yellow substance.

"Essence of murtlap," Kingsley said, speaking concisely so that the Listening Charms could record every word. "Madam Pomfrey told me it would ease the discomfort and swelling."

"Splendid," he answered, equally loudly, "I must admit, it has made for an uncomfortable few days."

"Indeed, Headmaster." The Auror's voice was cool, neutral, but he was biting his cheek to stifle a spate of slightly hysterical laughter as he retreated to the other side of the room.

Dumbledore sympathized perfectly well. He, too, was keenly aware of the absurdity of the entire affair as he unscrewed the cap on the bottle of salve, dipped his fingers into it, and began to slather it onto the raw, scraped pocks on Severus' forearm. He, the preeminent Headmaster of a venerated school of witchcraft and wizardry, and an experienced Auror, were hiding their subterfuge in the flimsy guise of clandestine hemorrhoid treatment. How very juvenile. Not a ploy one was likely to find in the Auror or Unspeakables training handbook.

"Might sting a bit, Severus," he murmured as he dabbed more salve onto the wounded forearm.

He was too tired to conjure a more sophisticated plan, the reservoir of his cunning stretched far too thinly over three separate fronts, perhaps a fourth should Lucius enter the fray. If inventing an embarrassing ailment kept the Aurors away long enough to do what needed to be done, then he would use it. Panache was not a requirement for success.

He closed the bottle of salve. "There you are," he told the still unmoving figure on the sofa. "That should prevent the necessity for amputation in future."

From his place on the opposite side of the room, Kingsley drew his wand. Shall I begin? he mouthed.

He nodded and rose from the sofa. "Well, you've left me no choice," he said gravely to Severus. "I've tried everything I know to rouse you from your useless melancholy, and alas, I must use the last weapon at my disposal-a round of mindless capering and gibbering. Quite cathartic, really." He said this last with painful precision, and in his mind's eye, he envisioned the young Auror no doubt stationed at the receiver end, his eyes bulging in horrified incredulity at that pronouncement. Another legend in the lengthy, and often lurid, Dumbledore mythos.

He drew a deep breath, counted to three, and proceeded to sing as loudly as he could, bellowing a raucous tavern ditty about Miss Cassandra and her skill with a broom. It was a resonating vibrato tenor, and it filled the room, curling in the corners and skulking over the floors like a precocious cat. He stomped his feet and clapped his hands in time to the words, ignoring the grating twinges in his hips. It was a glorious cacophony, and for a moment, he lost himself to it, let the stomps and meaty claps and off-key notes wash over his ears and sweep away the lead that had lodged in the hollows of his bones.

His feet lifted from the floor as though winged, and he found himself dancing across the floor, his robes snapping like banners caught in a lively spring breeze, flashes of phoenix plumage on the periphery of his vision. He sang louder still, drawing air from the bottom of his diaphragm and yodeling about Cassandra and her affinity for a certain well-worn Nimbus 1998. He forgot, for one sweet moment, why he was singing, and lost himself to the pure and simple joy of it. One hundred years melted away, and he was fifty again, fifty and unburdened by a century of war and destruction.

There was a sharp, urgent rap upon the door, and from behind the heavy oak came Dawlish's voice. "Shacklebolt! Is everything all right? What in the name of Merlin is going on in there?"

"Everything is splendid, Dawlish," Dumbledore called gaily, prancing with preternatural grace between the sofa and the hearth; he made sure to plant each step as closely as possible beside a Listening Charm.

Kingsley went to the door and poked his head out, and as Dumbledore drew in another breath to renew the vaudevillian barrage, he heard the sussurating mutter of muffled conversation, smooth steel and jagged gravel. After a few moments, Kingsley's head reappeared, and he closed the door. He hesitated briefly, and then his deft fingers pinched the lock between their adroit grip and turned it.

Safe from further interference, Kingsley sprang into action. He, too, began a frenetic jitterbug across the floor, and as he stomped and pirouetted from place to place, his wand pointed at the forest of gently bobbing red markers. When Dumbledore's hearty song crested, he would whisper, "Fallero ferrere!", and the bubble would disappear with a cheerful pip.

"Headmaster, I must really ask you to stop this," Kingsley said somberly, but he was grinning broadly as he disabled another Listening Charm.

"Don't be such a spoilsport, Mr. Shacklebolt," Dumbledore retorted jovially. "No harm can come of it; indeed, I daresay it might even do a bit of good."

The latter was wishful thinking. Severus had not so much as twitched since this lunatic debacle had commenced. He was still in the same position he had maintained since Fudge had ordered him confined here-ramrod-straight, hands locked over his knees, and eyes fixed on the opposite wall.

What do you see?

He thought he knew the answer to that. Severus saw what they all saw when left with nothing to distract them from themselves. He was reliving his sins one by one, watching them unspool in the relentless theatre of his mind, shuttered inside his impregnable citadel and driving himself mad with the bitter agony of hopeless recrimination.

Minerva had always wondered why he had offered a ridiculously young and wildly temperamental Severus a teaching position and Head of Houseship. Foolhardy, she had told him, too much trust and responsibility for one so unproven, and she had been right. She almost always was, but he thought that if she could see Severus now, lost and being slowly overcome by his pestilential demons, she would understand.

Teaching, and the all the requisite responsibility the position implied, forced him to look beyond his own problems, wrenched his focus from pointless navel-gazing to the broader horizon of the world around him, enabled him, much as he publicly disavowed any interest in doing so, to extend to others the protection he had been denied. Professorial robes and a small, shining pin had been his wards against the perilous downward spiral from which he had been rescued, and now that these had been snatched from him, he was quietly giving up the fight.

The thought settled over him, a suffocating woolen mantle, and sapped the strength from his bones. The giddy, slightly delirious joy affected in him by the frantic whirling, stomping dance and the ribald song forsook him as swiftly as it had seized him, and its sudden absence made his head throb dully. The hundred years he had left behind found him again and wrapped themselves around his knees, ankles, and the small of his back. He longed to sit, to collapse upon the sofa and bury his head in his hands, but Kingsley was not yet done, and so he kept dancing, his feet heavy as iron pillars.

"I really must ask you, Headmaster, to stop this unseemly capering," Kingsley called as he performed an ungainly arabesque over a cluster of the dwindling Listening Charms.

Dumbledore hardly heard him. He danced without knowing where he trod, moving on instinct. Never had his failure been so plain to see as it was on Severus' slack face. It wasn't even the carefully schooled blankness of a man living a dangerous double life. It was just...nothing, bland putty stretched over a skull. Everything that was Severus-his bile and bellicose fire, his stubborn, unquenchable pride-was gone.

One failure, one slight too many. You've wondered how much it would take before he buckled. You've watched the lines etch themselves deeper and deeper into the flesh around his eyes and the corners of his mouth. You've watched him eat pudding and milktoast while his colleagues ate rack of lamb because his stomach was too unsettled from Cruciatus to tolerate anything else. And yet you told yourself that it was all right, that he could take just one more lash, one more affront. One more became ten, then twenty, and now you've lost count.

When was the first? Can you recall? Was it at fifteen, when he stood before you, white-faced with fury, and told you that James Potter and his friends, Minerva's cosseted darlings all, had turned him upside down and stripped him of his tattered undergarments, and you, knowing, the truth, seeing it in Lupin's downcast eyes, let them get away with it because to do anything else would mean stripping Lupin of the one bit of accolade he had ever received? Was it when you sacrificed the dignity of one boy for the self-esteem of another?

Or was it a year later, when Severus came to you and told you that there was a werewolf on the grounds, and that Sirius Black, roguish, brash, best mate of James Potter, the Gryffindor Golden Child, had lured him to the creature's lair in an attempt to kill him? And you knew it was true because you knew about Lupin, but you did nothing because to expel him would be a victory for all the close-minded Pureblood families who swore that only the untainted had a right to the magic that flowed through their veins. So you swore him to secrecy under unspoken threat of expulsion. To say so outright wouldn't have done at all. Blackmailing the innocent wasn't the Gryffindor way. So you bound him to you with the first of many dirty little secrets.

Which was it? It doesn't matter, really. What matters is that you never stopped after that. You reasoned that since he had weathered one, he could weather others. And when he came to you with blood in his teeth and slathered on his face like warpaint, you took him in as your indentured servant, and with every injustice, you told yourself it was his penance. You felt no guilt when you, publicly and without preamble, wrested the cup from Slytherin and placed it in Gryffindor hands, and whatever doubts you had were snuffed out by the rationale-oh, how absurd a word-that Harry needed it more. It was his childhood all over again. Passed over for the sake of another.

Even then, with the fault lines growing ever wider, you didn't stop. You couldn't by then. It was almost compulsion, and because Minerva, always your rudder when you strayed from the course, did not protest, you told yourself that all was well, despite glaring evidence to the contrary. You ripped the Order of Merlin from his grasp and showed him for a fool in front of Fudge, decimated his credibility, and now that has come back to haunt you.

You should have eased things then, but you didn't. Not you. You couldn't be wrong. You were Albus Dumbledore. So you invited Remus Lupin, his childhood enemy, to Hogwarts, and you asked him to brew a potion for a man he despised. And because he loved you in his own odd fashion, he did. Sometimes he brewed on his knees because he was too weak to stand. You know this because you watched him once, crawling on all fours to the cauldron and trying not to cry out from the pain and fatigue. But he brewed that potion, and it was perfect. Just like always.

And still there was no respite, no reprieve. The Tri-Wizard Tournament, and an impostor revealed. When Bartemius Crouch, Jr., under guise of Alastor Moody, tried to kill Harry, Severus was at your side, wand at the ready, and how did you repay him? Why, you forced him to shake hands with a sworn enemy because you wanted your little ragtag coterie to be perfect, or at least maintain the illusion of perfection. You couldn't leave well enough alone.

And what of this past summer? You know how he spent it. How much more of that do you think he can endure? Not nearly as much as you hope, as you need. How long, if by some miracle he slips this inescapable noose, until he does not return from his nocturnal rendezvous, or returns to die at your feet? It doesn't really matter, does it? Because if he comes out of this, you will send him back, and you will keep sending him until there is nothing else to be had, until you have used him up. That is the way of war. One or the other, and if you must choose between him and Harry, there can only be one choice.

Always in the nick of time, you are, but not for him. It's too late. You've waited too long. Your noblesse was legendary, and yet with him, you were too dear. Too little, too late, and now look what you have done. Stanhope fights for a man already dying.

He wanted Kingsley to be done. His knees were loosely bundled straw between thigh and ankle, and they would not support him much longer. His ears were filled with thunder of blood, and from far away, he heard his own voice singing with manic gusto about the storied exploits of the voluptuous Cassandra. The bawdy ballad had become an atonal, nightmarish dirge, the screaming confession of a man stretched beyond his tether.

Failed. Failed. I've failed.

The thought hounded him as he flapped and stomped like a seizuring heron before the fireplace, his eyes riveted to Severus' face. Every line and groove in the expressionless alabaster visage was a wordless indictment against him, a testament to his carelessness. He longed for him to sneer, to curl those thin lips into an expression of seething scorn. He wanted him to snort and tell him that he was behaving like a fool, that his Gryffindor sensibilities had finally addled his mind. He yearned for a glimpse of quintessential Severus, for a smoldering ember that would tell him hope was not lost, but there was only bleak nothingness.

He nearly shouted when Kingsley tapped him on the shoulder. He stopped his frantic fandango and staggered, his feet nearly tangling with one another. He lurched to a nearby chair and sank into it.

"Yes, Kingsley?" he said when he had caught his breath. One hand kneaded absently at a fading stitch above his right hip.

"The Listening Charms have all been disabled, sir. Are you all right?"

"I've been better," he murmured absently. Then, in a brisker tone, before Kingsley could pursue that, "Will Fudge and the others realize what has happened?" He reached into his robes and pulled out the slab of Medi-Chocolate, half-melted now by his exertions.

Kingsley scratched one sparse eyebrow with a graceful index finger, wand gripped in one sweaty hand. "I've essentially recorded over it, looped a continuous stream of silence and random clatter that repeats itself ad infinitum. With any luck, they'll not catch the tampering."

"Well done, Kingsley."

"Thank you, Headmaster." He inclined his head respectfully.

Perhaps if you had said "well done" to Severus just once, you could have spared yourself this terrible grief. He fought to stifle an agonized titter. He had lost his mind.

Kingsley's warm hand settled over his shoulder, a shoulder that suddenly felt fragile as dust beneath his robes.

"Headmaster?"

Dumbledore took off his hat and ran his fingers through hair bleached white as cotton by the steady onslaught of years. "I'll need a few minutes alone with Severus, if you please, Kingsley," he said quietly. The gentle weight on his shoulder lifted as Kingsley withdrew his hand.

"Of course, sir. I'll examine the lavatory for any Charms I might have overlooked." With a last skeptical glance at Severus, Kingsley disappeared into an adjoining room.

There was a long, awkward silence as Dumbledore gathered his thoughts. What to say? How did he break through this impenetrable wall of silence? He rubbed his aching knuckles. Even with the fire in the hearth, it was still abysmally cold. The thin lather of sweat he had worked up during his crazed jig was rapidly cooling, making the silk of his robes cling to his skin and faint tendrils of steam rise from his shoulders, a soul escaping the shorn bonds of its mortal housing.

"That number drew considerably more applause at The Three Broomsticks," he said in what he hoped was sardonic levity. Severus remained silent.

He sighed and scrubbed his face with his hands. "Severus, please. I know things seem dire at the moment, and perhaps they are, but there is still hope." Even to his own ears, the words were flat and unconvincing. He tried another tack. "Have faith, Severus. You are not forgotten. You have allies." The figure on the sofa moved not a millimeter.

"Merlin, Severus, I cannot help you if you will not allow it!" he cried in exasperation. "Despite what you may think, I've not left you here to rot. But things must be done carefully. I'll be of no use to you locked away in Azkaban on charges of sedition. Even I am not invulnerable, Severus," he finished quietly.

You've certainly let him and everyone else think so for all these years. Why should he believe differently now? Because it's convenient?

He pushed the scalding thought away and pressed on. "Have you let Fudge break you, Severus? Has he managed, with his pomposity and alarming lack of common sense, what Voldemort, with all his torture, could not? You are a far better man than he, so why do you surrender so easily? If you do not fight, he will take your silence as a tacit admission of guilt."

Black eyes looked blankly at the wall above and to the right of his head.

Dumbledore buried his head in his stiff hands. "Are you punishing me, Severus?" he moaned from behind them. "Is this your vengeance for all my failures, all the things I let pass in the name of expediency, of advancing a higher goal? Now that I have no power over you, you would have me pay for my misdeeds." He laughed, a dry, brittle croak. "I assure you, I know my sins, and they are legion. Not least among them is my categorical failure where you are concerned."

It happened without warning. One moment he was slumped in a chair with his head in his hands, dry-eyed and weary, and the next he was weeping, great, silent sobs that wracked his thin, exhausted frame. He rocked back and forth in the chair, breathing in hiccoughing, watery sobs. He was too tired to deny his guilty grief, and too old and too wise to cling to useless pretension. There were no students for whom he had to project the image of unshakeable strength. There was only Severus, broken and silent upon his sofa, and if anyone understood the reason for the tears trickling down his cheeks, it would be him. Alone with his most neglected pupil, he gave in to gnawing despair.

Snape, perched upon the sofa and hunkered behind the battlements of his fortress, watched his Headmaster and mentor crumble beneath the incalculable weight of his grief in mute disbelief. He had seen Albus cry only once before, upon learning of the Potters' deaths, and those had been restrained tears, blunted by shock. This was different and infinitely more terrible. This was raw and savage, from a deep wellspring he had never suspected. They were the bitter tears of a man cornered at last by his demons and doubts.

He weeps for me. Harder than he wept for his precious Potters. It was childish and ridiculous and selfish, but he could not help it. James Potter had won at everything to which he set his sainted hand, and the fact that he had bested him at something filled him with heady satisfaction. Even if that something happened to be the level of grief and guilt he had managed to heap upon the heart of Albus Dumbledore.

He promptly despised himself. Albus had given him a second chance, accepted him with all his faults and his scars. Where others had seen an unsalvageable waste of flesh and sinew, the old man had seen a terrified, bewildered man clawing at a web of his own weaving, trying to escape before he was crushed by the darkness. He had offered him an exit from the road to ruin, a chance for absolution before he met his end, and here he sat, gloating at the man's despair like an aesthetically pleasing Dementor.

Don't be a fool. He mourns the loss of a tool.

He snorted inwardly. Bollocks. As a tool, he was little better than useless. He was being excised from the Dark Lord's inner circle with neat, ruthless precision, and soon, when the joy His Lordship took in watching him writhe and scream at his feet had waned, the last tenuous connection would be severed, and follower would become gross liability. And liabilities to the great and glorious cause of Voldemort did not survive for long.

I suppose you think he loves you, sneered the cynical voice inside his head.

Of course not. The man is a Gryffindor; futile teeth-gnashing and rending of the sackcloth is a prerequisite of the House. Unfounded guilt is his birthright.

The Headmaster's bout of weeping began to taper off, and from behind wrinkled, long-fingered hands came muffled, watery snorts, and Snape curled his lip in disgust. It was unsettling to see him sniffling like a bereft pupil. Another sin to lay at his own well-sullied feet.

Not yours alone. Not this time. That puling Potter brat and our esteemed Minister of Magic both have a hand in this.

Fudge and Potter. His hands tightened around his knees in a vise grip at the thought of them. Bile, warm and greasy, rose in his throat. If the Headmaster was right, and there was one last miracle to be had in the cosmos, he would make certain they paid for this, for all that he had endured. Dumbledore should not be in a chair, weeping for a man unworthy of his tears, and he should not be trapped in his own rooms like a dangerous beast, not when truly dangerous filth like Lupin was allowed to roam the streets.

Oh, yes, he would avenge himself upon both of them, but for the first time since he had set eyes upon the damnable boy, Potter was not the one who made him grind his teeth in bilious rage. Fudge had superseded him, usurped the honor he had been sure he would never bestow upon another. It was Fudge he saw now when his eyes closed. His florid, pudgy, sanctimonious face had etched itself into the waiting shadows behind his fluttering eyelids and emblazoned itself upon his retinas like the hazy afterimage left in the wake of lightning's eye-searing flash. Not a moment passed when he did not see that reptilian, triumphant crescent of perfectly white teeth. A politician's smile. The smile he had worn as he ordered an Auror not long out of puberty to destroy his mother's china.

The tinkling fullisade of shattering china filled his ears, and his lips pulled back from his teeth in a feral snarl that exposed glistening gums. That would not go unpunished, even if there was no reprieve at the eleventh hour. He would exact his revenge with his bare hands if need be, wring the impertinent youth's neck with his strong and supple fingers. The Auror's life would not be the first he had snuffed between squeezing fingertips, and unlike the others, girls whose only sin had been to mock him, he would feel no guilt as the body dropped to the floor like a sack of wet grain.

A deep sigh tore him from his reverie, and he scowled as the Headmaster. It was disconcerting to see the man who had been his touchstone for so long reduced to sniveling impotence. It shouldn't be, and it did nothing to settle his mind. In fact, it infuriated him. Why should Albus weep? He was free to do as he chose. No one would come to his chambers and riffle his things. And no one would dare suggest Albus Dumbledore be stripped and subjected to gross bodily invasion by a prying, ruthless finger.

"Such cheap emotional weaponry is beneath you, Headmaster," he snapped, and reached into his robes for a handkerchief.

The Headmaster froze in the act of replacing his spectacles before his puffy eyes, and he looked up with exquisite, dreamy slowness. He blinked, as though uncertain of what he had heard.

"Severus?" Full of desperate hope.

He said nothing and held out his linen handkerchief. He could not find it within himself to be moved by the pathetic joy radiating from the Headmaster's face. He had served by his side long enough to know that he was a master manipulator, puppet master of a thousand pawns, and he used them as he saw fit.

The Headmaster took the proffered linen with trembling hands. "Thank you." He removed his spectacles and daubed at his swollen eyes.

"Should I have been moved by your concern?" he asked, bored by the unseemly pathos that permeated the room like musk.

Another sigh, this one tinged with impatience. "I did not come here to wheedle myself into your scant good graces, Severus." Dumbledore's hand disappeared into his robes and withdrew a slab of Medi-Chocolate. He snapped off a piece and slipped it into his mouth.

"Oh?" he replied, irked by equanimity in the face of his vitriol. "Then to what do I owe the...pleasure of your visit?" He laced pleasure with mocking sarcasm.

The Headmaster remained unperturbed. "To tell you that you are neither alone nor forgotten," he said softly.

He snorted, ruing his decision to break his silence. "How comforting. I'll hold that thought dear when the festering lips of a Dementor cover mine." He shifted on the sofa and stared at the uncharacteristically scuffed toes of his boots.

"For Merlin's sake, Severus, stop this useless whinging," Dumbledore said sharply, his eyes suddenly hard as flint. "What is happening to you is unjust, I'll not deny it, but you have contributed to your own noose just as much as I have. You've shut us all out and turned us away. Your walls are unbreachable, and most have wearied of trying to scale them."

"Those walls have sustained me through years of your merciless penance," he hissed.

"A penance for which you asked," came the even reply.

He laughed, a choking, barking cry of bitterness. "I should have known better. I'd forgotten your penchant for moral expediency." He was satisfied to see a flicker of shame cloud Dumbledore's face.

"I have made many mistakes, and I regret them all," Dumbledore conceded, and steepled his fingers beneath his chin. "Which is why I am trying so desperately to prevent another."

"The premature loss of your pet reclamation project?" he said bitterly.

There was a thoughtful silence, and then, "The loss of my friend."

He stared at the Headmaster in dumb incredulity. He could not believe what he had just heard, could not grasp the full meaning of it. He had worn many labels over the course of his life-mistake, bastard, failure, git, murderer, monster-but friend had been beyond his scope of self-definition. Even as a child and student at Hogwarts, he had been a solitary figure, permitting only the most formal and aloof of acquaintanceships. Even his own Housemates had left him to his own devices, and he had found solace in his cauldron and his Dark magic.

"Friend," he repeated, as though it were a word he had never heard before. "A friend."

"Yes, Severus. My friend." A gentle, knowing smile crept across the Headmaster's face. "I'm sorry to disappoint you, but strictly as a professor, you've proven quite the inconvenience. Your complaint dossier is rather prodigious." The smile was wry now, fond.

An unexpected snuffle of amusement escaped him, and the cold scrim of ice around his heart thawed the tiniest fraction.

He lies. He'll tell you whatever he has to in order to assure your unwavering docility. He no more considers you a friend than does Lord Voldemort; you are a tool, and when you have served your purpose, this precious friendship will dissipate like smoke in the wind. Don't be taken in by such sentimental pap.

Everything the voice said was true; painful experience had told him so, but sitting on his sofa, wearing robes that had last seen the school laundry three days ago, the tenacious survival instinct that had borne him through a misspent youth and a never-ending penance clung to the tantalizing thread of hope the Headmaster offered him.

"Ah, the young scholars of Hogwarts. They must be capering in the corridors at my ignominious departure," he murmured.

"Fewer than you surmise have found joy in your absence," said Dumbledore placidly.

Snape snorted and rolled his eyes. "Please, Headmaster. Given my present circumstances, diplomacy is a useless frippery. I am well aware that three-fourths of the student body are eagerly awaiting news of my demise, and the quarter that finds the situation depressing does so only because of all inherent exigencies and their requisite implications. The Gryffindors in particular must be on tenterhooks waiting to catch a glimpse of my dishonored corpse. My head on a pike would do nicely."

Dumbledore smiled, but his eyes were grave. "Not all Gryffindors, Severus."

"Is McGonagall knitting paisley socks with a fortuitous file inside?" he sneered.

The Headmaster grimaced. "I'm afraid not."

Snape said nothing. He knew very well that McGonagall was convinced of his guilt. She had always been suspicious of him, sure that he was biding his time until he could betray them all to the darkness. She watched him while he ate, waiting, perhaps, to see him slip a killing draught into the Headmaster's pumpkin juice.

"So long as she isn't helping to weave my noose," he murmured.

"Hardly. Indeed, I'm certain she would rather weave one for Cornelius Fudge," the Headmaster said drily, and a mischievous twinkle gleamed in his eyes.

"Who, then, is my savior? Granger, patron saint of the hopeless cause?"

"Your cause is hardly hopeless, Severus," Dumbledore chided. "But no. Miss Granger is devoting her considerable energies to finding an antidote for the poison."

"Then who-," he began, then trailed off. A terrible possibility had begun to form in his mind.

"Did you know, Severus, that a mongoose is the natural enemy of the serpent?" Dumbledore stretched out in his chair and folded his hands across his abdomen. He was watching him with a beguiling, thoughtful expression that he found unsettling.

He shifted on the sofa, wrinkling his nose at the sour smell of stale sweat that drifted from his filthy robes. "Thank you for the zoology primer, Headmaster, but what has that got to do with the dreadful supposition filling my mortified mind?"

"Imagine how formidable an ally a mongoose would make."

"Miss Stanhope is not a 'mongoose.' She is a willful, irritating chit who takes far too much interest in my affairs," he snarled. "She will be more hindrance than help."

"She refused the implements I offered her yesterday in Potions," Dumbledore said quietly.

"Yet more evidence of her stupidity," he muttered, unimpressed.

"Stupidity? Loyalty, Severus, and integrity, two qualities of which you are in dire need." Dumbledore pulled a lemon sherbet from the folds of his robes. He held it out. "Sweet?"

He curled his lip in a moue of disgust. "No," he said shortly, and lapsed into a brooding silence.

"She is all you have, Severus. And she sees, doesn't she?"

"More than she should. More than is safe," he conceded, and kneaded his temples.

"She will see her way through. She will be your watcher in the night. Trust in that. She will be with you until the end, and so will I." After a moment, Dumbledore stood. "Kingsley?"

The Auror immediately appeared from within the adjoining room. "Yes, Headmaster?"

"I think it is safe to assume that Professor Snape is hiding no contraband, and I must return to my office."

"Very good, sir. Allow me to escort you." Kingsley strode to the door and opened it.

"Thank you." As the Headmaster stepped over the threshold, he turned to Dawlish, who was surveying him suspiciously from his post beside the door, and said, "Dawlish, a word, please?" The door closed on Dawlish's grunted reply.

He sat for a very long time after the Headmaster had gone, unable to digest what had happened. His life was now in the hands of a fifteen-year old girl whom he had once despised and tried to crush beneath his unforgiving heel, a twisted, mercurial sibyl fashioned from the half-finished plans of the Fates. The unlikeliest of champions. He was doomed.

And yet, he thought as he stripped off his stinking robes and headed for the lavatory, it was somehow fitting. It would be his final penance, to have one of the hated children of the Lion as his would-be savior, the last insult from pernicious gods.

Except that you're not sure she is a child of the Lion.

He paused in unbuttoning his trousers, his brow furrowed. No, he wasn't. He hadn't been since that strange, illusive vision they had shared in the Potions lesson not long before Potter collapsed. She was something else, a changeling who fit nowhere and everywhere, a lion, a raven, a badger. A serpent. Whatever she was, she was now his only hope. The world had gone mad.

He was halfway to the lavatory when he heard a muffled thump from behind the door to his chambers. He froze, hands hovering over the tiny buttons of his linen shirt, and listened. There was nothing-no voices, no thundering feet, no muted discord. When a minute passed with no recurrence of the sound, he put it out of his mind and went to take a much-needed bath.