Summon the Lambs to Slaughter

Chapter Thirty-eight

Hogsmeade. For Rebecca, raised and nurtured beneath the sterile fluorescent light of D.A.I.M.S. and told that magic was a tool to be used but never enjoyed, it was a wonderland, a panacea for her aching joints and perpetually scalded eyes. Everywhere she looked were witches and wizards garbed in bright and merry robes, and the air hummed with the subtle crackle of magic as Charms flowed without restraint. The fairy bells of the myriad shops tinkled incessantly as the happily buzzing throng of Hogwarts students trooped in and out clutching parcels and purse strings. The atmosphere was light and buoyant, a welcome change from the somber pall that hung over the castle like an accursed mist.

"Where are we going?" she asked as she trundled beside Neville, her lips barely visible over the Gryffindor scarf Winky had bundled around her neck as protection against the mid-November chill.

Neville shrugged, and a shimmering plume of breath whorled beneath his nostrils. "No destination, really." He shoved his mittened hands more deeply into the pockets of his robes.

"Where do you want to go?" Seamus asked from beside Neville. "Seeing as how we've got two hours before we have to check in with Professor McGonagall. Is there anything you need?"

She pursed her lips and flexed her stiff fingers inside the woolen mittens she wore over her hands. "I was thinking of buying an owl. Is there anywhere to buy one?" She looked around at the shops, searching the age-blackened signs for evidence of a pet shop, postal office, or owl emporium.

Seamus nodded and pointed down the street. "There's a shop further down the way. The old chap who runs it is a bit odd, but the prices aren't too bad, and most of the animals are in good shape." He scratched absently at his cold-chapped cheek as he walked.

"Are they expensive?" she asked.

"Depends on the kind you're looking for," Neville told her. "The small ones are cheap, but the bigger ones, the ones for transatlantic post, can be a bit steep."

She winced. "That's the one I need. How expensive? More than a hundred Galleons?"

There was a strangled guffaw from Seamus. "Not bloody likely. With that much money, you could put a nice down payment on a flat."

"Oh," she muttered, and despite the frigid air swirling around her cheeks, her neck prickled with embarrassed heat.

"Don't you use Galleons back home?" he asked, and scuffed the toes of his shoes over the frozen ground as he walked.

She shrugged. "I guess D.A.I.M.S. uses them to buy supplies, but we don't live in an exclusively magical village, so we have to use Muggle currency when we shop."

"Really? What's that like?" Neville raised an inquisitive eyebrow.

"Nothing exciting. Paper and small coins."

"I've seen it," Seamus said. "My dad's a Muggle."

"Oh? What's he do?" She had never thought to ask about Seamus' parents.

"He's a postman."

"And your mom?"

"My mam," he corrected with a laugh, "is a witch. She works at the Ministry."

The Ministry. The words sent a surge of bitter bile into her throat, but she only said, "Must have been weird for your dad."

"Gave him a nasty turn, all right, but he got used to it soon enough."

"Can he see Hogwarts?"

Seamus opened his mouth, then closed it again. "I don't know. I've never asked. I suppose not. I reckon he has to take mam's word that it's there." His brow furrowed as he pondered the question further. "Why do you ask?"

"Oh, I just wondered," she said slowly. "Both my parents are Muggles, so I was wondering if they would be able to see me graduate."

Seamus looked at her askance. "Graduate? Do you mean, when you get your certificate?" His eyes were dancing with blithe amusement.

"Yes...I think," she answered, unwilling to show more befuddlement than was necessary.

"Well, we don't really have a ceremony for that. Silly tosh. You get a paper in the post with your last marks, and that's that.

She felt a guilty relief. Her parents had shown very little interest in their only child since they had divested themselves of her on the front steps of D.A.I.M.S. five years ago. They had left her there with her luggage and perfunctory kiss goodbye, and aside from a pre-printed Christmas card every December twenty-fifth, that was the last contact she'd had with them. Her transfer papers with their hasty, smudged signatures had been mailed from home in a manila envelope, and they had not come to see her off at the U.S. Customs Portkey from St. Augustine to London. She had made the journey alone, and she suspected that she would make the short crossing from pupil to an adult fumbling for her place in the world the same way.

"What do you need an owl for?" Neville asked. "The school has plenty."

She was absurdly grateful for the change of subject. "I just thought it would be nice to have one of my own. Something to keep me company now and then. You know how it is, Neville. You've got Trevor, and he's useless, isn't he?"

"He is not," Neville retorted defensively. "His croaking sends me straight off to sleep at night."

"Funny that," said Seamus drily. "It's always had the opposite effect on me. Bloody thing sounds like rusty gate hinges. Lost count of the number of times I've thought of throttling the little beast."

"You wouldn't!" Neville said in scandalized horror.

"Wouldn't I?" Seamus smirked.

"Git," Neville murmured agreeably, and the three of them lapsed into a companionable silence.

Happy as she was to be out with her friends, she could not help but feel a pang of guilt as she rolled along beside them, the grit from the street crunching beneath her spinning wheels like tiny bones. She wasn't being entirely truthful with them, and though she was quite accustomed to telling boldfaced lies to the oppressive authority figures who made her life unspeakably dull, it was another matter altogether to lie to her friends, her comrades in arms, as it were. It made her feel greasy, tainted, and shame tickled her throat like the first faint stirring of a long and unpleasant cough.

Except they're not your comrades in arms, not in this. They can't be. The prejudice runs too deeply in their blood. You tell them what you need that owl for, and they'll both break their necks getting to McGonagall and the Headmaster with tales of your obvious mania. This is the nasty business of being a hero, the side they don't tell you about on the enlistment form. You've been lolling around for far too long, and it's time now to get this crusade off the ground.

Crusade is hardly the word for this. More like suicide run.

Whatever this is, be it crusade or death march, there is no more time to waste on nail-biting and navel-gazing; stop whining and get on with it.

I don't know how. I don't even know where to start.

Bollocks you don't. You damn well do, or else you wouldn't be on your way to get an owl. You're just afraid. Afraid you'll make a mistake.

He'll die if I do.

And he'll die just the same if you don't. Hell, he might be dead already. It's a risk you will just have to take.

Right though her grandfather's voice was, his harangue from beyond the pale did nothing to bolster her flagging confidence. She still felt as unsettled and lost as ever, a blind child groping for the shape of something familiar. Deciding to take on the Ministry of Magic and actually going about it were two entirely different beasts, and though she had been perfectly willing to undertake both tasks, she was no longer sure she could achieve the latter.

It wasn't a question of sufficient will or desire-she brimmed with both. But she had never been so tired. Her eyes burned and throbbed, heated gelatin inside her face, and her bones creaked and popped like dry kindling inside her skin. George, still wounded by their squabble a few days earlier, had even put aside his self-imposed edict of no more solicitous interference to ask her if she felt all right the evening before last, and though she had told him she was fine and brushed aside his concern with a flap of one bony hand, it had been obvious to anyone with a working pair of eyes that she was anything but. Even Ron Weasley, absorbed in delicious fantasies of vengeance against "that bastard Snape," had taken notice of her haggard appearance and the bruised, swollen pouches beneath her eyes.

The insomnia was crippling, har-de-har, and each night, she found herself staring listlessly at the shadow-swaddled canopy of her bed or thrashing in the grips of unremembered nightmares that left behind only the cold burn of tears on her cheeks. It was a rare night that she did not rise before the sun and flee to the bathroom in an attempt to scour the lingering unease from her skin. Most lessons were spent trying not to nod off in mid-lecture, and more than once, she had caught busybody McGonagall surveying her with surreptitious worry.

The gnawing, rapacious hunger in her belly made things no better. Her appetite had not returned since Professor Snape's absence, though her stomach growled incessantly for sustenance. She wanted to eat. The food looked and smelled delicious, and she salivated like a starving dog at the sight of it, but the instant she raised the fork to her lips, her eyes would drift to the empty seat at the High Table, the victuals turned to ash and gravel in her mouth, and her stomach spasmed with guilt and confusion. So the food went untouched, and the hunger grew until she was dizzy with it. Only Winky's theft of bread and weak broth from the school kitchens kept her from collapse.

She needed to pull herself together, gather up her scattered, tattered courage, and form a plan of attack, which was why she had decided upon an owl. She might not be able to depend on help from her Housemates at Hogwarts, but she could find help in other places, places over across the Atlantic, where the only prejudice was against those who walked about on two legs and lorded over those who could not, against curbs and stairs and broken elevators. At D.A.I.M.S., where a certain level of narcissistic assholery was a prerequisite for survival, Slytherin was not an epithet. Indeed, it held no meaning whatsoever.

Jackson Decklan was the obvious choice. Level-headed and crafty as a lord, he could be counted upon to use discretion and weigh options before rendering an opinion. They had shared an affinity for Runes and Arithmancy, and the professors there had dubbed them the Beast With Two Brains for their cold-and some said vicious-dissection of problems and possible solutions. If anyone was able to see through the soupy miasma of conflicting emotions and directionless flailing, it would be him.

The only drawback was that transatlantic mail took eons to reach its destination and another eternity for the reply to find its way back. While quaint under the best circumstances, Hogwarts' archaic inability to integrate magic with advanced Muggle technology was an enormous problem when it came to expediency and secrecy. She would have loved to have access to the Floo network, but all the Common Room fireplaces were undoubtedly being surveiled by eagle-eyed Aurors, so hotwiring one illegally into the network, even for five minutes, was out of the question. The professors' fireplaces were on the network, but she would wager every Knut in her vault that Fudge was monitoring them as well, and even if he weren't, she wasn't about to go traipsing to McGonagall's chambers and ask if she could use her Floo connection to conduct covert and possibly treasonous activities on behalf of one Professor Snape. The woman would swallow her tongue.

So the owl post it would have to be, and in the meantime, she was going to launch a clandestine offensive of her own, start the cautious and painstaking process of uncovering the truth. The first order of business was to begin sorting what she knew from what she didn't. After that, she would need to find the people with the keys and various pieces of the puzzle and coax the knowledge from them by hook or by crook. It was, as Jackson would have told her, time to "roll dem bones and make the runes speak."

Easier said than done. Have better luck making a stone scream.

That wasn't much of an exaggeration. The Aurors were everywhere, and asking pointed questions about what had happened to Saint Harry, no matter how discreetly, was bound to attract their notice. So paranoid were they that they had insisted on accompanying the students to Hogsmeade, as though they expected the bedraggled and confused pupils to organize an underground resistance movement over butterbeers and sweets from Honeyduke's.

Most of them were hovering around the sullen and silent Slytherin students like carrion fowl. Draco Malfoy was being tailed by no fewer than six badly disguised Aurors, and now and then, one of them would stop and mutter not very inconspicuously into the sleeve of his robes.

She leaned over to Neville and lowered her voice so as not to be heard. "Do you suppose he really thinks he's fooling anyone?"

Neville cast a surreptitious glance at the Auror, who was pretending to linger over a pot of wilted, desiccated poppies perched forlornly on the window eave of a nearby shop. Now and then, the Auror inched forward to keep pace with Draco, Crabbe and Goyle, who were strolling haughtily through the crowded street, roughly elbowing anyone who dared impede their progress.

"He's barmy if he does," Neville said at last. "My Gran could do a better job of it really."

"They're not too bright if you ask me," Seamus chimed in, and nodded in the direction of another Auror, who was making a ludicrous production of reading the newspaper as he followed half a dozen paces behind the trio of Slytherins.

Rebecca stifled a snigger when she realized that the Auror, in a fit of creativity, had gouged two ragged eye holes into the thin paper. "Not a bit obvious, them," she said drily.

Seamus snorted. "That's nothing. Before we left the castle, I noticed one walking about with a pair of earmuffs he'd enchanted to overhear conversations. Looked ridiculous with a pair of great glowing muffs wrapped around his head."

She giggled, but said nothing. She was too busy watching Draco as he sauntered ahead of her with his cronies. His platinum-blond hair was white fire in the chill, drab sunlight, and it made her eyes water to look at him. His stride was a feline, lingering swagger, and she knew immediately that he knew he was being pursued. What was more, he knew and didn't care. He walked and talked and sneered at those around him as he had always done, in quiet defiance of prying, quelling eyes.

She felt an unwilling stab of admiration for him. The other pupils fell silent when the mute, forbidding figures of the Aurors drew near, shrank closer to their companions and formed a meek herd of thin-lipped, frightened gazelles, eyes darting from side to side as they searched for escape from interminable scrutiny, but Draco refused to be cowed. His arrogance afforded him a power and confidence beyond the reach of his peers. The blood in his veins, cultivated by ten centuries of carefully refined breeding and an equal measure of indoctrination superseded the paltry, superficial authority of those pursuing him like a pack of slavering dogs, and she suspected he would be damned to unending perdition before he bent to their will.

Smug little bastard, she thought, but the perverse admiration refused to be dislodged, and she smirked when Draco proclaimed, quite loudly, that the Aurors behind him were making an awful business of covert observation, and would they please refrain from coming too close, as he was highly sensitive to the smell of Mudblood offal.

"Sodding little prat," grumbled Seamus, and he shot him a venomous glare.

"He'll get what's coming to him," she said, though she was trying desperately not to laugh at the goggle-eyed surprise stamped on the pursuing Aurors' faces.

She was startled to a sudden stop when Draco suddenly whirled to face her, his pale, patrician face a mask of pained hauteur.

"Find something funny, do you, you wretched little Mudblood?" he asked coolly, and she was not at all surprised to see that he held his wand in one elegant, long-fingered hand.

"Yes, actually," she said. "Though I daresay it's not what you'd expect." She was dizzy with adrenaline, and there was a delicious tightening in her groin, as though invisible fingers had caressed forbidden flesh. She shifted in her chair and fought the urge to dissolve into helpless cackles.

"Here, now," said the Auror who had been reading the paper, and he stepped forward with his wand at the ready.

Rebecca snorted, and her eyes narrowed in contempt. She didn't want help, especially not from the likes of him. This, whatever it was, was between her and Draco, and should it come to wandpoint, she was perfectly willing to accept the consequences, even if it meant a trip to the infirmary. In fact, she wanted the momentary, blazing color with which a duel would infuse her life, longed for the surge of cruel magic through her frozen fingertips. Anything to break the wilting monotony her days had become.

Come on, Draco. Give me what we both want.

But Draco was regarding her with a strange, almost incredulous expression, and a cold smirk flitted across his face. He twirled his wand in graceful, lissome fingers. On either side of him, his faithful lackeys exchanged bewildered glances over the top of his head, temporarily unmanned by his abrupt change in demeanor. Even the newspaper-reading Auror looked nonplussed. He lowered his wand, then raised it again and cleared his throat.

"Enough," the Auror said gruffly. "Break it up."

Draco rolled his eyes. "It's a tete a tete, not a ménage a trois, you dolt," he drawled. Crabbe and Goyle guffawed obediently, and the latter cracked his large, square knuckles with ominous relish.

Flustered, the Auror lowered his wand again. "You're blocking the street," he protested weakly, and fell into a sullen silence.

Draco paid him no mind and took a lazy step forward. "Oh? Would I find it amusing, Stanhope?" Her name was a beautiful epithet in his mouth.

She felt her own mouth stretch into a sardonic, knowing smile. "I think you would," she said coyly, an unspoken invitation. There was a disbelieving grunt from Goyle, and Crabbe's thick brow knitted in ponderous, hopeless contemplation.

Draco raised a delicate eyebrow in surprise. "Don't flatter yourself, Stanhope. There is nothing a deformed, Mudblood freak like you could say that I would find worthy of my time." He pocketed his wand with thoughtless ease.

"I think there is." She smiled more widely still.

His lip curled in haughty disdain, and his grey eyes flashed, flawed quartz in his porcelain face. "Your opinion is irrelevant, and one day you will learn that lesson, Mudblood. Most painfully, I hope." He turned on his heel and started away.

She would never fully comprehend why she did it. Perhaps weariness and malnutrition had clouded her better judgment and eroded her sense of self-preservation. Maybe she was simply mad with the need for a respite from the bland, monochrome colors of her insulated world, or maybe she just wanted to touch him. Whatever the reason, she rolled forward and placed her icy hand upon his shoulder.

Three things happened in the space of seconds. The Auror who had been watching the conversation with ill-disguised unease stepped forward with a pre-emptive shout. Behind her, Seamus bellowed something that sounded suspiciously like, "Oi, bollocks!" and lunged for the handlebars of her chair. The plaintive scrape of his nails against cold plastic as they missed their grip was preternaturally loud in the stunned stillness. And Draco Malfoy whirled with the speed of a cornered asp and caught her wrist in an agonizing, iron grip.

It hurt; it was, in fact, almost excruciating, but she found herself laughing, her cadaverous face tilted toward Malfoy's chin, her mouth opened in a white-plumed gape. It was suicide to laugh when he was so furious, but she couldn't help it. The explosion of color that illuminated her world the moment his fingers clamped over her bony wrist was absolutely exhilarating, and her heart, which for the past week had been little more than a leaden ball inside her chest, was racing, soaring with a nearly orgasmic euphoria.

Touching the forbidden. If only they could see what I see, she thought giddily, and laughed louder still.

The colors were fever-bright, piercing as the last death throe rays of a supernova sun, and she squinted against them and smiled. Draco's skin was flawless ivory, and this close she could see the faint stippling of platinum hair beneath his nose. Fury had flushed his cheeks rose, and as she drew in a breath to laugh again, she smelled spiced rosewater. She closed her eyes and let it wash over her.

The hand gripping her wrist tightened its hold, and in her heightened state of awareness, she distinctly heard her fragile sparrow's bones creak and grind dangerously. Then, shrill as the cry of a banshee, Seamus' outraged bellow.

"Let go of her, you dirty, poncy prat!"

Despite the sharp, jagged pain radiating from her tortured wrist into her elbow in steady, nauseating waves, she giggled, a carefree, absurdly merry sound amid the threatening chaos. From the corner of her eye, she could see the poppy-inspecting Auror marching resolutely toward the fray, wand outstretched in an authoritarian point, blue robes snapping in crisp affront with every step.

"Oh, thank you, Malfoy," she wheezed through a snort of pained mirth. "You have no idea what you've just done."

Beautiful fingers bit into her numbing, puffy flesh, the mitten she wore scant protection from his ruthless grip, and his lips curled back from his perfect, pearldrop teeth. "Never put your filthy, worthless hands on me, you disgusting freak," he hissed through gritted teeth. He began to push her wrist backward with casual sadism.

"Go on," she grunted, "break it. "Make the bones grind and pop. You think it will sound like an icicle snapping from the eaves?" She grimaced as a tendon in her wrist gave an ominous twang and sent a bright flare of pain through her frozen forearm.

"You're diseased and mad," he snarled.

"Maybe," she agreed amiably. She certainly felt mad. "But there are two things I know for certain."

"Oh?" Another painful wrench of her wrist. Someone-Seamus probably-swore, and Goyle, perhaps realizing that the Aurors were going to set upon their pampered charge any moment now, leaned over and muttered thickly into Draco's finely sculpted ear. He was silenced with a disdainful glare from his benefactor.

"Oh, yes," she said, vaguely aware that she had lost the feeling in her fingers. "The first is that if you break my wrist, you'll be giving those clueless bastards a reason to step on your miserable little throat." Her eyes darted to the rapidly advancing Aurors, and her blue lips curved into a contemptuous, reptilian sneer.

He squeezed her trapped wrist, and black irises of pain bloomed behind her eyes. "And the other?" He jerked her forward until her lap belt bit into her scrawny upper thigh with tiny, sharp teeth.

"Whoremaster!" screamed Seamus at the top of his voice, and the enraged oath drew the attention of several passing Hogwarts pupils, who stopped to watch the fray, clustered in tight, jostling, craning groups at a safe distance. A Ravenclaw fourth-year took one look, spun on her heel, and sprinted toward the Three Broomsticks, going, no doubt, to fetch Professor Flitwick.

An Auror had at long, blessed last reached them, and he seized Draco by the scruff of his robes and yanked him roughly away from her. "That will be quite enough of that, Mr. Malfoy," he snapped. "We will be paying a visit to Professor McGonagall since your Head of House is currently...indisposed." His mouth twitched in ill-concealed glee. "I daresay you are in a great deal of trouble." He turned to look at her. "Are you all right?" he asked.

She took a ragged breath and nodded. Her offended hand lay twitching and throbbing in her lap, and she bit her lip as the blood began to flow sluggishly into her deadened fingertips and infuse them with reluctant life. Already the flesh around her wrist was turning a disquieting plum.

"You should get that seen to," commented the poppy-inspecting Auror, who was still holding Seamus by the collar of his robes. He sounded indifferent, almost bored.

That explains why Draco isn't sporting a fat lip and a crown of knots, she thought, and snorted. To the Auror, she said, "Yes, sir, I will. Thank you."

"And you," grumbled the Auror who had seized Draco, "are coming with me. I would say I'm surprised at your behavior, but given your Head of House, I'm afraid that would be stretching the truth. I'll be sure your father hears of this." He turned and dragged Draco away, leading him by the elbow. Crabbe and Goyle followed in his imperious wake like poleaxed bison.

"Draco," she called after them as they trudged toward The Three Broomsticks, "don't you want to know the other certainty I've come to understand?" Her hand spasmed painfully in her lap, and she bit back a groan, lest an Auror should take a renewed interest in her injury and send her back to the castle before her investigation even began.

Draco, stiff-backed and sullen beside the Auror, halted abruptly, and though the Auror prodded him none too gently with the tip of his wand, he refused to budge. Instead, he pivoted on his heel and stared at her with a flat, inscrutable expression.

"What do you know?" he spat.

The Auror tugged impatiently on his elbow. "Come along, you," he demanded.

Draco ignored him and repeated the question as though he had all the time in the world. "I said, what do you know?"

"You see. You watch." She savored each word as it passed her lips, shivered at the unexpected warmth they sent into her throat and the shriveled pit of her stomach.

For a moment, the surprise on his face was so complete that it was comical. His eyes widened, and the rosy flush with which his anger had endowed him ebbed away and left in its place an alarming pallor. Then he recovered himself and passed a well-manicured hand over his windswept hair in dainty, fluttering strokes.

"I don't know what you're on about. You're barking," he said smoothly, and with that, he at last allowed himself to be led away.

"Yes, you do," she said softly, so that only she could hear. Then her wounded wrist sent out a sizzling pang of distress and drove all thoughts of cryptic word games from her mind. "Shit," she muttered, and turned to face Seamus and Neville.

"Are you all right?" Neville hurried over, and Seamus trailed behind him, straightening his robes amid a muttered litany of dark imprecations.

She gave her fingers a tentative wiggle and hissed as a bolt of pain clawed its way from thumb to forearm. "I don't know. I think he sprained my wrist. Little bastard."

In truth, she was not angry with Malfoy. Instead, she was filled with an inexplicable gratitude and a dim glee. In the seconds before the Auror had waded in and separated them, she had seen the fulfillment of her closely guarded, lovingly nurtured hope. His haughty grey eyes had been home to perfect hatred and seductive revulsion. She had made him see her as more than a convenient repository for his elegant loathing, and he despised her for it.

He hates me, he hates me. A glorious corruption of a young girl's whimsical love chant. She could not have been prouder. It was grudging affirmation of her existence, whether he intended it or not.

"Why are you smiling?" Neville was regarding her with an endearing expression of unease, as though he thought she might suddenly leap upon him or start speaking in tongues.

"Was I?" she asked innocently. She gingerly peeled the mitten from her wounded hand.

"Yes. It was like you were a million miles away." He peered at her hand. "I reckon we should get you to Pomfrey."

She bristled immediately. "I don't want to go to Pomfrey. I'll be fine." The impact of her fervent declaration was undermined by a brilliant flare of pain from her aggrieved wrist, and she winced.

"Yes, you're brilliant," Seamus observed drily. "That's why your fingers are swelling like cocktail sausages." He gestured at her hand, and she was dismayed to see that they were indeed nearly twice the size they should have been.

"It's not that bad," she muttered unconvincingly, and tried her best to hide her hand in the folds of her robes. She was rewarded with another starburst of bright, glassy pain.

"The hell it isn't," Seamus said baldly. "I don't care if you want to see Pomfrey or not; you're going."

"I am not," she said, narrowing her eyes at him. "I need an owl."

Neville sputtered in exasperation. "An owl?" he repeated incredulously. "Your fingers are turning a royal shade of blue, and you're worried about getting an owl?"

"I need an owl, and I don't know when I'll have another chance to find one," she said obdurately.

Seamus planted his feet and crossed his arms. "You are being ridiculous, and you are going to the Hospital Wing right now."

She shook her head and dug in her heels. If she allowed them to chivvy her back to the castle for medical attention, her plans to help Professor Snape would be set back by several weeks, and that was time she could not afford. She had wasted enough time on pointless dithering. It was now or never. Her injured hand would have to wait.

"Sorry, Seamus, no can do." She calmly reached over and turned off her chair.

So there they stood, staring at one another through the ephemeral haze of spent breath. Most of the gawking students had long since moved on to other diversions and pursuits, but a few paused in their stroll to take in the bizarre sight of three Gryffindors sizing one another up like young rams preparing to do battle. A fifth-year Hufflepuff settled herself into a comfortable crouch to watch the proceedings, sucking absently a neon green lolly that still bore the Honeyduke's sticker.

Seamus lowered his head, an impatient bull about to charge, and scraped his toes furiously into the hard-packed dirt of the street. "Have you cracked?" he asked matter-of-factly, and spat in the dirt at his feet.

"No."

He looked up at her. "Then why are you being so pig-headed about this? Madam Pomfrey won't hurt you."

She shifted uneasily in her chair, unsettled by the intensity of his gaze. "I know she won't, but I just can't."

"Why not?"

"Wait a minute," Neville cut in, alarmed realization flooding his face, "does this have anything to do with Snape?"

"Snape? What about him?" Seamus demanded sharply, and his eyes narrowed to match her own.

Dammit, Neville, you and your big mouth, she thought viciously, and spared him a smoldering sidelong glance. "It has nothing to do with Professor Snape," she said tersely.

"Then stop this nonsense and go to the Hospital Wing," Seamus snapped.

"No."

He swore under his breath. "Right. If you won't come willingly, then I'll round up Fred and George, and the four of us will drag you kicking and screaming. Won't we, Neville?" He looked to the other boy for affirmation.

Taken by surprise, Neville shuffled from foot to foot, a miserable flush staining his neck and cheeks. He cleared his throat and shot her a dubious, stricken look. "Erm, r-right," he stammered.

"You see?" Seamus crowed triumphantly.

She sighed in rueful resignation. "Yes, I see," she said quietly, and reached for her wand. "But if you want me to go, you'll have to duel me."

Seamus guffawed. "You can't be serious." His eyes were suddenly round as saucers inside his face.

"I don't want to be." She gripped the shaft of her wand in numb, sweat-slicked fingers and prayed she would not have to raise it.

"Seamus," Neville said, stepping forward with hands spread in supplication, "let her be. We've got to check in with McGonagall eventually, and you know she'll make her go." His eyes darted nervously between Seamus and her, bright with consternation.

Seamus rounded on him, and Rebecca relaxed. She had no real desire to engage Seamus in magical fist-to-cuffs in the middle of Hogsmeade, if for no other reason than it would bring the Aurors running. Besides, when he wasn't being an interfering worrywart, she liked him. He was wry and kind, and he was always among the first to spring to her defense whether she needed defending or not. She would prefer not to spar with anyone if it could be helped. It would only make things that much harder.

"Have you lost your mind?" Seamus was asking Neville in outraged disbelief. "It's an hour and a half before we've to report to McGonagall again. It'll be useless by then; she can barely lift it now." He jabbed a finger at her hand, which was turning an unmistakable shade of purple.

"Yes, but we can't just carry her off," Neville replied. "She can be completely barmy if she wants to," he said simply.

Despite the pain in her wrist and fingers, Rebecca howled with laughter. "Touche, Neville," she chortled. "Oh, Jesus." She swiped at her streaming eyes with her good hand. After a moment of stunned silence, Neville joined her, planting his pudgy hands on his knees and hooting.

Seamus boggled at both of them, his hands fisted on his hips. "You're both nutters," he said flatly, "absolutely raving." His chest heaved with a long-suffering sigh. "Well, you two can do as you like, but I'll have no part in this foolishness. I'm going to find Dean. I'll see you lot at dinner." With a grim, tight-lipped smile and a half-hearted wave, he turned and strode in the direction of Zonko's Joke Shop.

"Well, that went well," Neville said somberly, and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his robes.

"Most excellent," she agreed drily, and snorted.

"Would you have done it?" he asked quietly, and studied the ground. "Dueled Seamus, I mean."

She thought for a moment. "Yes. I wouldn't have had a choice." She ran a clumsy hand through her hair. "No choice at all."

He lifted his gaze from the ground, and his eyes searched her face, flitted from chapped tip of nose to jut of chin as though they were looking for some unseen fault or carefully concealed deceit. "It's not really about the owl, is it?" he said shrewdly.

She kept her face a practiced blank. "No." She did not elaborate.

"Is it about S-,"

She held up a silencing hand. "Not another word, Neville. Not one. Just leave it alone."

"I reckon we'd better see to that owl, then," he said softly, and started down the street again.

"So we'd better," she murmured, and followed him in watchful silence.

While Rebecca was searching for the perfect owl in a dingy, ramshackle pet shop, Albus Dumbledore was staring across his desk at Cornelius Fudge, who was beaming at him with an expression of malignant glee. Though he was outwardly composed, he longed to wrap his hands around the Minister's punctilious neck and squeeze until his gimlet eyes bulged.

"What brings you here today, Cornelius?" he asked politely.

"Well, you see, Headmaster, I've been hearing the most remarkable news." Fudge folded his stubby fingers over his stomach and continued to beam.

"Oh?" Dumbledore reached sedately for a sherbet lemon and said nothing further.

Fudge fussed for a moment with the sleeve of his robes. "Yes. It seems you have not yet appointed an interim Head of Slytherin House," he purred coyly.

Ah, I thought we would come to that. "No, I haven't.

"Why ever not? If I am not mistaken, you have another-,"

He held up an admonitory hand before the Minister could continue. "Yes, I do. However, I am not comfortable appointing them to that position, as there could be problems when Severus returns."

Fudge arched one grey eyebrow and snorted. "'When Severus returns.' Bit optimistic, wouldn't you say?"

"Not at all."

"Merlin, Albus, be sensible," Fudge snapped. "He's as guilty as sin, and you know it. The only thing he will be returning to is the earth from when he came."

"Until that is a certainty, I cannot agree. As it is, Slytherin has managed itself remarkably well in the absence of a Head."

"Remarkably well?" Fudge repeated softly, as though he had just been told the earth was made of cheese. "You've taken leave of your already dubious senses," he declared. "Since we've hauled their exalted Head away, they've run amok. Scuffles in the corridors, in the classrooms. One of my Aurors broke up a fracas during the Hufflepuff Quidditch practice last evening when the Slytherin Beaters arrived and tried to use several Hufflepuff players as impromptu and rather unwilling Quaffles. Nothing more severe than a few lumps and bruises, thank Merlin, but clearly the Slytherins are out of control.

"Scuffles among Quidditch teams are quite common, Cornelius. They happen every year."

"Maybe so, but how do you explain Millicent Bulstrode dangling a first-year Gryffindor over the balustrade of the fifth-floor stairs by her ankles? Rough horseplay?" Fudge gave an ugly snigger and tugged indignantly on the midriff of his robes.

Dumbledore took off his spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose between his fingers. Much as it pained him to admit it, Fudge had a point. The Slytherins were spiraling out of control. Troublemaking and occasional discord were a hallmark of the House, part of the legacy from their Dark and rebellious founder, Salazar Slytherin, who had driven his ordered colleagues to terrified distraction with his constant plotting, but of late, their chicanery had taken a decidedly darker turn. Gone were the venomous catcalls and sneers and harmless, if painful, thumpings in the corridors, and in their stead were thinly veiled threats and Dark hexes that trod the uneasy line of legality. Their fury at the world, long nursed within their breasts, was latent no more. It had at last bubbled to the surface, a festering boil denied the soothing, cleansing scrape of the lance, and now they were dealing with the consequences.

Well, what did you expect? Every black and morbid fantasy they have ever entertained is coming to pass before their very eyes. The Ministry, or Cornelius, if you want to be truthful about it, in his haste to restore his flagging standing in the court of public opinion, has trampled their civil liberties into dust beneath his well-polished heel, and whatever kernel of respect for authority we have managed to drum into their suspicious heads has been crushed beyond resuscitation.

He let his eyes drift to the tattered Sorting Hat sitting upon the highest shelf of the bookcase that ran the length of the left wall. Its rend sagged toothlessly, a thin wisp of fabric trailing from one side of the gash like the orphaned nerve ending of a missing tooth. Ever since the Tri-Wizard Tournament, the Hat had been carping about the need for House solidarity in the face of the coming calamity. Despite shifted eyes and stricken murmurs immediately following its sage pronouncement, most students had forgotten its warning soon enough, dismissed it in favor of the safer, more comforting lullaby of Quidditch and Hogsmeade, and the heady, glycerin glimmer of adolescence.

He and the rest of the staff had paid heed, of course, but the admonitions of the old were dismissed as muddle-headed paranoia by prosaic youth, and so all they could do was hope and pray that reason and reality would assert itself before it was too late. Now Fudge and his minions had ensured that the feeble hope of unity had failed, and nothing he or any of the others could say would change that.

"The Slytherins are unsettled, Cornelius; all the students are. They've always been the most volatile of Hogwarts pupils, and with their parents inculcating them against the evils of a Muggleborn-tolerant government, it's hardly surprising to see an escalation of hostilities."

"An escalation of hostilities? You talk as if this were a war." Fudge's eyes narrowed to glittering slits. "The stories their parents tell them might be the least of their worries. These students must be brought to heel."

"They are students, Cornelius, not malingering dissidents. I can see no harm in taking a few more days to appoint someone to the position," he said calmly.

"There is a great deal you have refused to see when it comes to your pet Death Eater, Albus. I had hoped you would act reasonably, but I'm afraid you leave me no choice." Fudge rose with an insincere sigh of regret.

"Choice?"

"You have forty-eight hours to place that cherished pin-," he pointed at the silver and jade serpent lying docilely atop a stack of parchment, "-in the hands of someone who can lend it suitable honor and dignity, and appoint an interim Head of House. If you don't, I shall appoint one for you, someone more amenable and accommodating to the wishes of the Ministry." He smiled thinly. "And Merlin knows, we wouldn't want to see it end up in the hands of someone unworthy."

"No, indeed," he said blandly.

Fudge left without another word, and when the door had closed on his pompous swagger, Dumbledore sighed and reached out to pick up the small pin. The jade eyes shone with contemptuous defiance, and the dainty silver fangs glinted with the promise of cruel retribution, but their promise was empty without the stern, stiff line of Severus' brutally starched collar behind it. He closed his fingers over it and invited the tiny snake to strike, but there came no castigating bite.

Forty-eight hours to place that pin in the hands of someone who will lend it suitable honor and dignity. Fudge's words reverberated inside his head and in the stillness of the room. How vague. How brilliantly vague.

Speak in haste and repent in leisure, he thought for no reason at all, and smiled.

After a moment, he replaced the pin atop its nest of parchment, picked up his quill, and glanced at the hourglass. Just past one o'clock. Four more hours until the pupils returned from Hogsmeade. With practiced patience, he pulled a stack of disciplinary reports toward himself and pretended to be interested.