Summon the Lambs to Slaughter

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Forty minutes after setting off for the pet shop, Rebecca and Neville were squeezed together at a table in The Three Broomsticks, a caged owl hooting noisily at her feet. Professor Flitwick had been waiting for them, and now he stood beside Rebecca on the points of his toes and peered anxiously at her swollen hand.

"Oh, dear," he murmured, and gave it an experimental prod with the tip of his wand. He grimaced at her ill-concealed flinch. "Quite tender, is it?"

"Yes, sir," she said.

"Well, I'm hardly a Mediwizard, but I'd say it's sprained. Let's see now...," he tapped his chin thoughtfully for a moment. "Yes, yes, indeed." He pointed his wand at her hand. "Hold steady now. "Curare mano!" he squeaked.

She tensed in anticipation of discomfort, but none came. Her hand was enveloped in the swirling silver light from the tip of Flitwick's wand, and it felt as though it had been plunged into a vat of local anesthetic. One moment her fingers were throbbing miserably in time with her heartbeat, and the next her hand dangled uselessly from her wrist. She tried to move it and found that she could not. It was as if it had been severed from her body by an invisible scalpel.

"Erm, Professor," she began uneasily, but Flitwick merely beamed at her.

"Not to worry, Miss Stanhope. The numbness should only last twenty minutes or so, and when sensation returns, your hand should be good as ever. Though if you'd be more comfortable, I'm certain Madam Pomfrey would be glad to examine it." He slipped his wand inside his robes.

"Thanks, Professor."

"Not at all, Miss Stanhope," he said cheerfully, and turned to go. He had scarcely gone two steps when he stopped and turned to face her again. "Dear me, I almost forgot." He rummaged through the pockets of his robes, and after a few moments of patient search, he produced a neatly folded piece of parchment and held it out to her. "Here you are."

She took it from him with a faint scowl. "What is it, sir?"

"Regrettably, I must cancel our appointment tomorrow, so I took the liberty of copying the Charms the Headmaster requested you learn. They should make your task much easier. I've always thought those pitch stairs a trifle steep," he said with a mischievous gleam in his eyes. "Now I must be off. Now that McGonagall has marched the unfortunate Mr. Malfoy back to the castle, I must see to the students checking in."

"Yes, sir. Thank you for the Charms," said Rebecca.

"My pleasure, Miss Stanhope."

"Erm, Professor?" Neville ventured timidly.

"Yes, Mr. Longbottom?" Flitwick raised one untidy eyebrow.

"Is Professor McGonagall angry with us?"

He squirmed furiously in his chair, and Rebecca was reminded of the Potty Dance, the bizarre and heroically inelegant dance of small children and the incontinent whenever demands on the bladder became too great. She fought to suppress a snigger and studied the pocked and knobbled tabletop in front of her.

Now both of Flitwick's eyebrows were raised in surprise. "Angry at you? Whatever for? No, no, Mr. Longbottom, I should say not. Indeed, she seemed oddly radiant when the Auror explained the circumstances. The same could not be said for Mr. Malfoy, however." He shook his head ruefully. "I daresay he's in a spot of trouble."

"Good," muttered Neville.

"Now, Mr. Longbottom, it's most unbecoming to revel in the misfortunes of others," chided Flitwick, but there was a mutinous twitch at the corners of his mouth. "Now I must be off." His eyes darted to the teachers' table, where an impatient gaggle of students was waiting to have their names checked off the roll. He turned to go. "Five points to Gryffindor for forthrightness, Mr. Longbottom," he called over the hum of conversation, and then he disappeared into the throng of milling customers.

"Wouldn't want to be Malfoy," Neville said gleefully, buoyed by the award of points.

There's an understatement, she thought wryly. Old McGonagall is probably beside herself. Malfoy will be lucky to see the sun again in his lifetime. Might even be expelled. After all, he didn't just attack a student; no, he attacked a crippled student, and that is ever so much worse. Never mind that it was hardly fatal, and rumor has it that Fred and George have gotten away with worse.

And you know damn well that the sins of a Gryffindor are easily pardoned, while the sins of Slytherin will never be forgotten.

She couldn't get Professor Snape through me, so she'll settle for Malfoy instead. How chivalrous.

Chivalry and Gryffindor are hardly comfortable bedfellows, as well you should know by now.

She snorted and heaved her nerveless hand onto the table, where it lay like a shucked mollusk. The swelling was, as Flitwick had predicted, receding; the flesh of her wrist was now merely pink instead of mottled blue-black, and her fingers were slowly regaining their spindly appearance. She tried to flex her fingers and was rewarded with a faint, uncoordinated twitch from her thumb.

"Does it hurt?" Neville asked, and peered and her hand with avid curiosity.

She shook her head. "No. Just feels like a shot of Novacaine."

"Nova-what?"

"Never mind. It's a Muggle anesthetic dentists use," she muttered absently. She was not in the mood for idle conversation.

She studied the tavern and the people in it. The sparse little pub was filled to capacity and beyond with chattering students and watchful teachers and Aurors. Every chair at every table was claimed, and the cheery clink of butterbeer bottles and the grinding scrape of chairs being pushed from tables punctuated the reverberating babel of conversation from all corners. Everywhere she looked, robes bearing the Hogwarts crest flitted to and fro in a merry cavalcade. Feet stumped heartily across the freshly scoured floor, and behind the bar, a harried but pleasant barmaid handed out a steady stream of mugs containing steaming apple cider.

Even without the barriers of damp Common Room walls, the segregation of the Houses still held true. Like with like. The Gryffindors huddled together in the corner nearest the fire, while the Hufflepuffs hunkered in the opposite corner, setting to the tasks of drinking and conversation with the gritty, yeomen resignation of their House. The Ravenclaws occupied the center tables, murmuring in hushed, eager tones and thumbing idly through books propped against satchels and brimming mugs of cider. And then there were the Slytherins.

They sat in the corner furthest from the door, bundled in their robes against the warmth and light, hunched around their tables like stooped crones over cold, empty cauldrons. They clutched their mugs in blue-nailed hands, and their discourse, what little there was of it, was terse and subdued. The more intrepid of them played a desultory game of Gobstones, and the clack of the colored stones as they rolled over the uneven wood of the table echoed in the uncomfortable silence that separated them from their boisterous fellows like an unseen partition.

The reason for their taciturn, wary silence was readily apparent. Aurors, some in various shoddy guises and others wearing bright blue robes, surrounded them, stalking wolves pursuing helpless, hopelessly ensnared prey. They sat in chairs and threaded through the crowd, eyes alert and diligent ears straining for the slightest hint of pernicious subterfuge. There was a pattern to their movement, a slowly, inexorably tightening circle that closed around the Slytherin students, the clandestine knotting of the inevitable noose, and each time they passed the tables with their confident, disdainful stride, dozens of pairs of furious eyes followed their circuit.

They're closing ranks as best they can, pulling up the drawbridges and manning the ramparts. Settling in for the siege.

A cold smile flitted across her face. Well did she recognize that behavior. It was a strategy often employed by the denizens of D.A.I.M.S. to ward off the unwelcome proddings of the white-coated, bespectacled psychiatrists and psychologists who tried now and again to unlock the carefully guarded secrets of their minds. They had closed their mouths, squared their shoulders, and bent their heads against the assault, rebuffed it with stony silence and hard, unreadable expressions, confounded it with cryptic non sequiturs, and in the end, the interlopers had retreated in exhausted defeat, none the wiser for their clumsy, juvenile fumblings.

It was strange to see her own tactics employed by those she would have considered her enemies a country and a lifetime ago, and more than a little unsettling. She saw them as the pointy-headed pop psychologists had no doubt seen her, saw them as obdurate and remote and incontrovertibly alien, existing in a place and on a plane unattainable by anyone else. It was as though she were observing them from behind a pane of porous glass; she could look, smell, and taste, but she could not touch, not quite.

Mirror, mirror on the wall, she thought, and her hand reached out and picked up the piece of parchment Flitwick had given her. She turned it over and over in her hands with dreamy, absent fingers.

She started when Neville suddenly nudged her in the shoulder. "Hm?" she said, and her fingers spasmed around the crisp parchment.

"Sorry, didn't mean to frighten you," he murmured hastily. "I just wondered if you'd fancy a bit of cider?"

"Sure. It is chilly in here." She tugged at the scarf around her neck and tucked it beneath her chin.

"Anything else?"

She turned her head and scanned the bar. "Do you think they might have stew or something? I'm starving." As if to confirm her assertion, her stomach gave a low, burbling rumble.

He shrugged. "I don't know. I can ask. If not, we can look somewhere else."

"All right. My Galleon purse is inside the pocket just above my left hip." She shifted and tilted her hip upward to grant him access.

He flapped a hand at her in good-natured dismissal. "I've got it."

"Nonsense," she persisted. "I'll get this round. You can get the next."

"Have it your way," he replied amiably, and plunged his hand into the proffered pocket of her robes.

Even through the thick wool of her winter robes, Neville's hand was warm against her skin, the baking heat of a glowing coal clothed in flesh, and she closed her eyes to savor the sensation, grateful that Draco was not here to spoil it with choice invective, make it seem dirty and lurid. There was nothing erotic about it. It was a simple touch, unnoticed by the giver, and yet she treasured it just as much as Malfoy's crushing grip that had sent cold fire surging between her legs.

"Got it," Neville said, and pulled a small, maroon felt sack from her pocket with a triumphant flourish.

She sighed in disappointment at the loss of contact and readjusted herself in her chair. "Take what you need. There's plenty left."

"Right." He loosened the purse strings and withdrew a handful of coins. When he was done, he drew the strings closed again and handed her the purse.

"Thanks." She laboriously shoved it into the pocket from whence it had come.

He turned and ambled toward the bar, and when she could no longer see him, she returned her gaze to the milieu of people in front of her. Her hand returned to the parchment from Flitwick and began to fold and unfold one corner into a tiny point.

More students had lined up to report to Flitwick, and their stamping, constantly shifting bodies formed a bottleneck in the narrow doorway. Chairs scraped and groaned as their occupants dragged them closer to the tables in order to make room for the encroaching throng. Aurors, disturbed in their heavy-handed surveillance of the students and the Slytherins in particular, scowled and folded their papers beneath their arms as they reluctantly surrendered their seats to shivering newcomers and took places along the walls.

The passage of time and the scarcity of space made the de facto segregation of the Houses impossible, and some began to mingle, rogue satellites breaking from the orbit of the planet to which they normally paid unwavering obeisance. Hannah Abbott, a Hufflepuff, sidled over to the Ravenclaw tables and struck up a conversation with Cho Chang, and Luna Lovegood, a world unto her own, glided over and ensconced herself in the chair beside a beleaguered Ron Weasley, who greeted her arrival with no discernible interest.

Rebecca watched them for a moment before letting her eyes drift to where Hermione Granger sat, her nose buried in a thick book and one hand snarled in the unruly nest of her hair. Her face was a pale, bruised model of unblinking concentration, and even from this distant vantage point, Rebecca could see the grim shadow of stress that clung to the hollows of her cheeks and the flesh beneath her eyes. She looked positively spent, and yet she continued to turn pages and scribble notes with a shaking hand.

She doesn't quit, I'll give her that. Pugnacious and relentless as a locust.

She wondered if the erstwhile Granger had found anything of significance in the interminable hours of her research. If she had, it had been of no help to Potter-he was still lying in the Hospital Wing, a lump of living clay molded into human form.

You'll have to talk to her sooner or later. She may be a tight-assed little prig with an inflated sense of her own importance, but she's undeniably brilliant, and she knows how to research. Not to mention she's friends with Potter and more privy than most to his condition.

She grunted. Picking Hermione's formidable brain for answers to the mystery surrounding Potter's collapse was not something to which she was looking forward. Since their squabble over the matter of house elf rights, Hermione, though perfectly civil, had been decidedly cool, an arrangement that had suited both of them well until now. Their armistice had been one of studious avoidance and limited interaction, and the prospect of getting her to freely divulge what she knew of Harry's condition was slim. Even when Housemates with whom she was on friendly terms broached the subject, she was grimly tight-lipped.

You could always try the direct approach, suggested her grandfather.

Oh, yes, that would raise no suspicions whatever. Every syllable I utter would be duly transmitted to the listening ears of Those-Who-Seem-Wholly-Incapable-Of-Covert-Behavior courtesy of the Listening Charms planted all over the Common Room, and even if they weren't, Granger isn't stupid. She knows damn well I've never visited Potter, never so much as asked about him before now. How shall I explain my sudden interest in the affair-I found my misplaced concern for his welfare beneath the Common Room couch? How could she possibly question that?

Then pay Potter a visit. Bring him a bouquet of gardenias or poppies and sit in your chair at his bedside and gnash your teeth like all the rest of them. Tell him and anyone else who cares enough to ask that you haven't come to see him before now because hospitals hold painful memories for you. That would hardly be a lie. Blubber a bit if you can manage it. Do it every day until the walls come down.

Bit underhanded, don't you think? Seems the sort of disingenuous ploy people in the fabled black hats would use. Doing something like that would make me little better than the Aurors.

Inside her head, her grandfather gave a garrulous, sardonic snort. I never figured you for the type that would fall prey to the goody-goody notion that the world was black and white. It isn't, it never was, and you know it, so stop acting like the goggle-eyed virgin who's gotten her first glimpse of her Romeo's blessed pecker. You knew going in that it was going to be a nasty, dirty business, and it's a bit late to back out now. You're in it to the knees, and when you wade through bullshit, you can hardly expect to come out of it smelling like Chanel.

She grimaced, torn between horror and juvenile amusement. Though she was accustomed to his acerbic tongue, it had been a long time since he had been so unequivocally frank.

Could you be any more blunt, grandpa?

The request had been tongue-in-cheek, but her grandsire was only too happy to oblige.

What I'm trying to tell you, girl, and what you know deep down, what've you always known, is that it's every man for himself now. No black, no white, just by any means necessary, and if you have to exploit people to get what you need, manipulate their trust and their emotions to get where you need to be, then you'd better have no compunction at all about doing just that. You polish up those steel knives and you drive them as deeply as they go if it comes to it. It's as simple as that, and it's the only chance your professor has.

Even if, by some catastrophic lapse in judgment, Hermione decides to take me into her confidence, what then? What do I tell her when she asks about my change of heart?

Whatever you have to. The only bad lie from now on is the one that doesn't work. Tell her a convenient truth. Tell her you want to help because you know what it's like to watch a friend suffer, watch them wither before your very eyes, while all you can do is cry and puke and send useless prayers to a God gone stone deaf and blind and half-mad from all the inhumanity He Himself has inflicted upon His "children". Tell her you don't want her to go through the same thing. It's more truth than lie, and what she doesn't know won't hurt her.

Had she not been sitting, she would have fallen to the floor. The idea was so ludicrous and so profane that she felt sick. She closed her eyes and swallowed a knot of greasy bile, and her hand closed around the scrip of parchment with which she had been toying hard enough to leave behind tiny, crescent tears in the wake of her fingernails. Her skin, heretofore a pliant sheath of ice, was suddenly too warm, and she wrenched the Gryffindor scarf from her neck with a strangled wheeze.

She wouldn't. She couldn't. Some things were sacred, never meant to be exploited, even for the best of reasons, and that was one of them. Those eternal eleven months spent at the bedside of her dying friend, watching as the crisply starched white linens and the mockingly sterile bedframe devoured him from the inside out and left behind nothing but an unrecognizable husk were hers, her private grievance against God and the world, and nobody but Him was going to see it. It was a votive candle for someone long dead, and to use it to pry potentially useless information from the lips of the school swot was a desecration of his memory.

I would do anything for love, but I won't do that, she thought suddenly, and clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle a bray of lunatic laughter. A second-year Gryffindor at an adjoining table shot her a wary, appraising glance and shifted his chair away from her. I can't do that, Grandpa.

You need to decide which is stronger-your loyalty to the dead, or your loyalty to the living. You can't help Brad anymore. He went to whatever rest was waiting for him, and he is far beyond the reach of this world and its petty machinations. Your professor, on the other hand, has no such luxury. Ethics are a liability you can no longer afford.

She snorted and scrubbed her palm across her pinched, gaunt face. What about all that claptrap about right and wrong you fed me as a little girl? Though she was unaware of it, she had begun to stroke her forefinger back and forth over the wispy goosedown hair of her forearm.

As of Tuesday morning, that line has been blown to Hell.

She laughed, a hollow, mirthless death rattle in her throat. So that's how it was, then? She searched for a kernel of surprise within her soul, some shred of healthy outrage, but she could find none, only a bitter amusement that the truth she had long known had at last proclaimed itself for all to see. No more coy insinuations or demure semantics, just the unadorned, ugly realization that right and wrong existed only as long as people said they did, and when they grew cumbersome, it was no great trial to cast them carelessly aside, the discarded playthings of a naïve child.

She looked at Hermione, hunched and squinting with feverish desperation over the likely minute text of some obscure and crumbling tome with her bedraggled and drooping quill clutched in one hand like a weapon against the skulking beast of failure, and tried to prepare herself for what she was about to do. She swallowed against another wave of horrified shame. A vision arose in her mind's eye of the pudgy Auror as he searched the Common Room sofa. Wasn't so lordly when we finished with him, he crowed inside her head, and she whimpered softly.

Father God and Sonny Jesus, I'm better than him, aren't I? I have to be. She chanced another peek at Hermione, who was gnawing absently on a ragged fingernail, seemingly oblivious to the thin ruby rivulet of blood dripping down her wrist with hypnotic, exquisite slowness. I don't want to do this, not even for Professor Snape. There has to be some other way. You can throw all the philosophy in the world at me, but this is still fundamentally, undeniably wrong. It's grave robbing.

Put your Gryffindor sensibilities aside and get going, her grandfather ordered abruptly, but beneath the no-nonsense facade of his command, there was a wrenching tenderness, as though he understood just what he was asking of her.

She swiped the back of her hand across dry, chapped lips and winced when the tortured skin there broke with a prickle of moist heat. I have Gryffindor tendencies. Won't McGonagall be thrilled?

She tucked the scrap of parchment from Flitwick into the pocket of her robes and reached for her joystick with stiff, icy fingers, but before she had even pulled away from the table, Colin Creevey appeared.

"Mind if I sit?" he asked, and pointed at an empty chair. His ancient, unwieldy camera was tucked awkwardly beneath his arm, and he held a steaming mug in one hand.

She blinked at him, unable to conceal her surprise. To her recollection, she and Creevey, who she regarded as a histrionic nuisance, hadn't exchanged so much as a syllable since her arrival at Hogwarts. He spent most of his time wandering the corridors with his camera at the ready, snapping random, candid photographs of the school's denizens, or, lately, standing morose vigil over the bedside of Harry Potter like a bereft steward holding a deathwatch for his ailing lord. For her part, she had passed her free hours under the baleful gaze of Professor Snape, and what little social time she had had not been spent in proximity to him or his simpering brother, Dennis.

Whatever reason he's got, you let him sit. Don't let this opportunity pass unseized. If nothing else, you can put off the unpleasant business of using your dearly departed friend as the key to pick Hermione Granger's emotional lock.

What opportunity? she thought, and then it came to her.

Colin had been there that fateful day, had, in fact, been the one to catch the glittering phial of Potter's Advanced Sleeping Draught before it could shatter upon the stone floor and dash all of Professor Snape's malevolent hopes into a thousand prismatic shards of comeuppance denied. Maybe he had seen something, felt something, smelled something that Professor Snape, in his fury at being interrupted in his moment of triumph and impatience to be rid of the unwanted interloper, had missed. Even if he hadn't, he and his brother often accompanied Hermione and Ron on their daily pilgrimages to visit Potter in the infirmary, and someone as inveterately curious and nosy as he was would certainly pick up bits and pieces that Potter's friends, insulated in their cloying grief, would not.

For the first time since the Aurors had burst into the Potions classroom and levied their terrible accusation against Professor Snape, her analytical mind surfaced from beneath the tumultuous morass of exhaustion and overwrought emotion, and she smiled.

"Erm, sure," she said, and took her hand off the control stick of her chair.

"Thanks." He slid into one of the empty chairs and set his camera carefully in the other. Then he took a hearty sip of his cider and placed the stein on the table in front of him, his hands wrapped around its base as though it were a lifeline.

Which, she thought as she got her first good look at him, was not outside the realm of possibility. He looked, were it possible, worse than Hermione. Always a slight boy, he was now nearly skeletal. The painful jut of his collarbone was evident beneath the heavy fabric of his robes, and the pasty flesh of his face was pulled taut over the sharp, angular bones of his face. When he took another fortifying sip of cider, she saw that his nails were well on their way to joining Hermione's in ragged, raw neglect.

And Pomfrey thought I would spread contagion, she thought with a surge of black amusement. Looks like Sleeping Potter has beaten me to it.

Colin trailed his uneven nails along the tarnished, dented sides of his stein in dreamy contemplative strokes. "Your lip is bleeding," he said conversationally.

She frowned and touched her fingers to her lips. "Am I?" Her fingers came away smeared with blood.

"Malfoy do that?"

She shook her head. "I don't think so. He twisted my wrist, though." She held up the appendage in question and wiggled her fingers experimentally. "Professor Flitwick seems to have fixed it."

"McGonagall was pretty angry when she dragged him out of here. Don't think even his father's connections will get him out of this one."

Don't bet on it, she mused, but her only answer was a noncommittal grunt, and an awkward silence descended. She drummed her fingers upon the tabletop and eyed him with bland curiosity. His eyes, which had always reminded her of a dimly alarmed lemur, were sunken, dull pits inside his face as he stared back at her in silence.

"Not that I mind, Colin," she ventured at length, "but what are you doing here?"

He didn't respond right away. Instead, he pinched the bony bridge of his nose between his fingers and scrubbed at his hollow, haunted eyes with the palm of one hand. Then he said candidly, "You look terrible."

A startled huff of amusement escaped her. "Yes, well, there seems to be a bit of that going around," she observed drily, and let her gaze drift to the sea of haggard faces all around them.

"It's the Aurors," he said with sudden vehemence. "They're everywhere, skittering about like spiders. Can't even go to the loo without them hearing about it."

She decided not to point out that she was quite accustomed to this state of affairs. "I know what you mean. They scattered everything onto the floor when they searched my trunk, and Parvati has been complaining for days that they broke her crystal ball."

He snorted. "Wouldn't be surprised. I was sure they'd break my camera." His hand strayed to the squat black box crouching in the chair beside him like a loyal hound, and he stroked the casing fondly, almost reverently.

The camera. Her gaze was drawn to it, to the milky flashbulb that peered blindly at her, the cataracted eye of a dead Cyclops. An inexplicable shiver of dread darted down her spine, light and quick as the legs of a butterfly, and she shivered. She wanted to stop looking at it, to turn her head away, but she couldn't. The vertebrae of her neck seemed to have fused into an unyielding mass beneath her skin, and any attempt to shift her gaze produced only the muted cellophane crackle of muscles and the pained creak of tendons.

Why an innocuous piece of equipment she had passed over a thousand times before should affect her so profoundly, she could not say. Colin and his ubiquitous camera were part and parcel of the Hogwarts landscape and the Gryffindor Common room, as expected and familiar a sight as the shadowy hulk of the giant squid as it drifted through the flat, mirrored waters of the school lake. There was hardly a soul who hadn't been immortalized by the impartial lens. To be captured on film was now considered part of the Hogwarts experience. So why was she staring at it with unaccountable unease?

You're tired. You've been thinking and worrying too much, and you're seeing bogeys in every shadow and bush. Get a grip. Get some food in your belly, and things will make sense again. A good night's sleep wouldn't hurt, either.

All of it was sound advice and undoubtedly true, so why didn't she believe a word of it? Her lip curled in an unconscious snarl, and her tongue darted out to moisten it.

Be reasonable, girl, came her grandfather's voice. It's not the camera that bothers you. It reminds you of something, that's all. Something important.

Her heart, which had begun to triphammer against her ribs with jarring force, slowed, and she let out a relieved sigh. He was right, of course. It did stir a faint and crumbling memory within her, but it was dim and far away, and when she reached for it, it sifted through her fingers like dust. She willed it to return, to coalesce into a tangible thought she could scrutinize with painstaking care, but the only thing to take shape inside her head was the first heated spike of an oncoming headache, so she let the matter drop and absently kneaded her temple.

"All right, Rebecca?" Colin asked quietly.

She jumped, a guilty giggle on her lips. She had been so busy chasing memories and ogling the camera that she had quite forgotten its owner. She ran a hand through her hair and tore her gaze from the lidless eye of the flashbulb. "I'm fine; just the beginnings of a headache."

"Little wonder, that. With all this cloak and dagger business, it's a wonder the infirmary hasn't run out of Anti-Ache Powder. I daresay they will before too long, what, with all Madam Pomfrey's energy going into brewing antidotes for Harry."

That piqued her interest. "An antidote? Have they discovered what poisoned him, then?" She leaned forward and propped her elbows on the table.

He shrugged, a brusque, brutal jerk of his scrawny shoulders, and took another gulp of cider. He grimaced. "Cold," he muttered. Then, "If they have, it hasn't worked. He's still cold as a marble slab."

"Any ideas? Surely they must talk." Easy, Rebecca. Tread lightly. Not so eager. She forced her hands to remain flat on the table, determined not to betray unseemly interest in his answer.

"Not with the Aurors standing about, they don't," he said sourly, and shot a baleful glance at a Ministry official loitering in an adjacent corner. "You've no idea what it's like trying to talk to a mate with that lot standing about. Imagine they'd like to strip-search us if they could. Feel like a ruddy criminal every time I go in there."

"Actually, I do," she said.

A memory surfaced in her mind of one of her final visits to Brad in the D.A.I.M.S. infirmary. He had been in the last losing stages of his battle by then, and he had drifted in and out of consciousness, cocooned in a nest of clear plastic tubing, I.V.s that only served to prolong the agony, extend the deathwatch by precious, excruciating minutes, hours, and days. The only sounds in the room had been the hushed beep of the cardiac monitor, the mechanical clack of the machines as they delivered a carefully measured dose of borrowed time into his emaciated arm, thigh, or calf, and the sussurating shuffle of crepe-soled shoes on spotless linoleum.

The shoes had been the worst, because she had known that they were attached to the feet of stern-faced nurses, nurses who hovered like voiceless wraiths around the periphery of his struggle, waiting for the moment when they would pull the starched linen sheet over his wasted face and watch the bed devour him whole. And while they waited for the appointed hour and the completion of their duty, they watched and listened to the final goodbyes and useless lamentations of those who could no longer avoid the knowledge that they would soon be left behind forever.

It had been impossible, sitting beneath the prying, knowing gazes of the nurses, to say the things she had so desperately needed to say before time stopped, and at ten-not-quite-eleven, she had not yet acquired the means to express, in any coherent fashion, the thoughts of her head and furious, bewildered heart. So she had done what she could, prattled inanely about things that had long since ceased to matter, and held on to his cold, limp hand so tightly that her own fingers throbbed. Hello and goodbye and please don't go, all encoded in the language of books and parchments and dining hall gossip.

So, yes, she did know how Creevey felt, better than she ever wanted to. If Creevey, who was little more than an infatuated hanger-on of the Holy Hogwarts Triumvirate, felt out of place and unwelcome, how must Potter's loyal sycophants, Hermione and Ron, feel? Surely the things they had to say to their fallen hero were just as sacrosanct to them as the last garbled confidences to Brad had been to her, and she wondered if they would grow to despise the Aurors as deeply as she had come to despise the granite-faced nurse who had been waiting for her in the D.A.I.M.S. infirmary the day she had discovered her friend was no more.

More to the point, what was it going to be like for her, the Gryffindor by fiat who had never shared in the dewy-eyed adulation three-quarters of the school heaped upon him? No doubt those assigned to guard him would paying special attention to anything she had to say, if for no other reason than she was a new face among the obsequious masses. Surely they would notice if she simply sat there, silent as a fencepost, and stared at his unmoving face, and they would not take kindly to her removing his bedclothes in search of physical clues to what had befallen him.

Actually, the stuporous, vapid silence might work in your favor, add to the already-prevalent notion that you're addled. The gormier, the better.

She shifted in her seat and cast a glance at the bar to see what was keeping Neville. The top of his head was just visible amid the crowd of students jockeying to catch the eye of Madam Rosmerta, and from the looks of it, he would not be returning to the table in the near future. She heaved a private sigh of shamed relief. He, bless his noble, Gryffindor heart, would only get in the way.

Funny thing, that. People said the same thing about you not long ago, and as I recall, you hated it.

She scowled and thrust the thought away. If honor and dignity and every ethical code she had ever been taught were about to be thrown by the wayside and trampled into distant memory, then she was damn well going to do a thorough job of it. She leaned across the table, and her blonde hair fell around her face in a shielding, conspiratorial golden curtain.

"Colin," she said hesitantly, "do you think it would be all right if I visited Harry?"

He stared at her in honest surprise for a moment, then smiled in mild befuddlement. "I can't see why he would mind. He's a good bloke." He swirled his cold cider around in slow circles, tilting the mug first one way, then the other.

"It's just, well, I'm not sure if I should. I'm not exactly a close friend."

"Most people aren't. The only people who can lay claim to that coveted title are Ron and Hermione." At the mention of their names, he let his eyes drift to where the pair now sat, Ron drooping miserably in his chair as Luna Lovegood murmured incessantly about Crumple-Horned Snorkacks in her dreamy lilt, and Hermione still crouching over her beloved books. "But we go anyway. Harry needs all the support we can muster, you know?"

She nodded. "I don't suppose I should stay long."

"You wouldn't want to," he said flatly. "It's distressing, seeing him lying there like that. Anyway, they wouldn't let you stay much longer than that. Pomfrey is beside herself trying to organize the basic potion stores to last as long as possible. Without Snape, they'll have to depend on the Mediwizards at St. Mungo's to replace them, and according to rumor, they're hardly the most efficient lot."

"Really?" she muttered vaguely, not really interested, but doing her best to keep him talking. She folded her hands in front of her.

"Mmhmm," he grunted. "Who knew that greasy git Snape was actually useful?"

She stifled the urge to wrangle her stiff, unwieldy fingers into a crude gesture of displeasure and decided to seize the opportunity his vitriol had presented. "About Professor Snape," she said softly, slurring her words lest Aurors be listening.

He frowned at her sudden change in elocution. "What of him?" he asked dubiously.

"Well, I was wondering..." She trailed off and scratched the bridge of her nose. "When you caught the phial that day, did you...feel anything funny about it?" Her eyes darted around the room to see if any of the Aurors had registered any undue interest in their conversation, but all Ministerial eyes were currently trained on the Slytherin section of the pub, where Goyle, bereft without his pampered patron, was cogitating laboriously over the sprawl of Gobstones on the floor in front of him.

Colin blinked at her. "Funny?" he repeated, mystified.

She shrugged. "Yes, funny. Anything wet or sticky or that smelled funny?" Her hands twined restlessly on the table, as though aware of the inadequacy of her explanation and desperate to fix it.

Easy. Never let them see you nervous. No emotion, no fear.

And how, pray tell, am I to manage that?

Disconnect from everything except the one thing you want more than anything in the world and tell yourself you will stop at nothing to see it happen.

Though her eyes were locked on Colin's haggard, sleep-deprived face, they were no longer seeing him. They were turned inward, turned to the poisonous and intoxicating memory of wishing the pudgy Auror had been writhing at her feet as she held him in the agonizing sway of a terrible Curse. She saw it with vivid, bald clarity, and so strong was the grip of her imagination that she felt the furtive, phantom surge of Dark and vengeful magic in her veins, the irritating, skittering tingle of it underneath her cold nail beds. Her mouth was filled with the bitter taste of gall and retribution, and the delicate hairs of her nape quivered in delicious anticipation.

She still wanted to see her vision come to fruition, but now she wanted more. She wanted to see Professor Snape restored to his offices and garbed in his spartan black robes, robes that smelled of allspice and parchment dust and spoke of doom from on High. It was no longer her frail, palsied hand that held the judging wand, but his, long and graceful and unwavering as carved ivory as he gave form to his bitterness in a crackling, merciless stream of red. His face was impassive as he watched the man writhe at his feet like a crippled insect, and so was hers, but in her eyes was a triumphant, curdled glee.

One potato, two potato, three potato, four. See the Auror a-writhing on the floor, came the rhyme, and though her face was scrupulously blank, her soul smiled, and her hands stilled.

Something must have shown on her face because Colin sat back in his chair and eyed her with wary curiosity. "No...I don't think so. Why?"

"No reason, really," she answered absently. "I just thought that if you had, it might have helped the Aurors in their investigation."

Colin pursed his lips and considered this. "Do you know, I'd never thought of that," he conceded. "If I had known what would happen, I would have paid a spot more mind." He frowned and rubbed his bleary eyes. "Anyway, it's no use. If anyone is going to find out what happened to Harry, it'll be Ron and Hermione, Hero Twins." He smirked into his mug.

Though she said nothing, the bitterness in his voice surprised her. He was normally an upbeat, cheerful presence on the grounds, chattering to his brother, Dennis, while he kept an eye out for the object of his all-consuming adoration, and whenever he found him, his excited, fluting voice drifted through the air like the joyous peal of church bells. Despite their ill-disguised annoyance at his bug-eyed idolatry of Potter, most students regarded him as the epitome of unbridled optimism.

A heavy silence descended over the table, marred only by the dusty shuffle of owl feathers from the cage at her feet. Colin opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again, and when he did not speak for several minutes, she dropped her gaze to the pocked tabletop and lost herself in the catacombs of carved initials and pithy vulgarities.

Tiberius Crumble is a wanking tosser, she read, and smiled wearily.

Well, Tiberius Crumble of wanking fame, she thought, what have we learned here today?

Remarkably little, that was what. If Colin had told her that yes, he had felt something strange on the phial that day, then she would have had a starting point, but since he hadn't, she was still stuck at square one and no closer to clearing Professor Snape's name. It occurred to her that Colin simply hadn't noticed anything because he had been too busy trying to escape a furious Professor Snape with all his limbs still attached, but in all likelihood, he was right. There had been nothing on the outside of the phial. If there had been, Professor Snape would have noticed. The man was precise, if nothing else.

Great going, Nancy Drew. She was seized with the need to lay her head upon the rough surface of the table and shut the world out.

"May I take your picture?" Colin asked suddenly, and he straightened in his chair, a dull glimmer of enthusiasm in the dark pits of his eyes.

"I can't imagine why you want one," she muttered, and cast a sidelong glance at the camera perched smugly in the chair beside him. She was rewarded with another thrill of clammy unease, this one in the pit of her stomach. She was suddenly sure she did not want her picture taken.

"I've gotten pictures of everyone else," he said. "I'd like to keep my collection complete." He was looking at her with the scrutinizing gaze of a photographer, sizing her up.

"I'm hardly photogenic at the moment," she protested in an attempt to forestall his burgeoning fervor.

"Neither is anyone else," he pointed out imperturbably. "If you like, I'll make you a copy, and you can send it to your friends across the pond."

"I don't know," she hedged.

"Please? It'll be fun; I haven't taken any pictures since the Killjoy Squadron showed up." He nodded curtly in the direction of an Auror who was thumbing restlessly through a battered copy of the Daily Prophet and sipping a Firewhiskey.

She started to refuse again, but he was smiling, a broad, effusive smile the likes of which had not been seen since the advent of the blue-robed inquisition that now stalked the school corridors, and so, against her better judgment and the leaden unease that held her in its iron grip, she relented and allowed him to maneuver her into position in front of one of the grimy windows behind their table.

"Smile," he instructed her as he raised the camera, but she was painfully aware of both the glaring white iris of the leering flashbulb and the smothering weight of curious stares against her bony shoulders, and the best she could manage was a frozen rictus of exposed gum.

Stole my soul, she thought as the flashbulb exploded with white light and dazzled her vision with electric purple sunspots. The hoodoo man stole my soul. It was a ridiculous thought, and she giggled as she blinked to clear the dancing blots from her vision.

"Wish you'd smiled like that when I snapped the picture," he said wryly, but he clapped her on the shoulder all the same as he reclaimed his seat at the table. "Thanks."

"You're welcome."

He stared down at the camera in his lap, its milky, blind eye staring sightlessly back. "Harry never liked it when I took his picture," he whispered, almost too low to be heard.

"He didn't?" she said blankly, not sure how or why they had returned to the subject of Potter.

He shook his head. "No. He always used to try and dodge me if he saw me coming. Never had time for it, he said. He was too busy looking out for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. So busy that he never spared a look over the other shoulder, apparently. Well, now he's got all the time in the world, doesn't he?" he said morosely, and set the camera on the chair beside him.

One potato, two potato, three potato, four. See the Auror a-writhing on the floor, she chanted inside her head. It was all she could think to do to conceal her shock at his words. What do you know?

"Col-," she began, with the intent to ask him just that, but before she could get any further, Neville returned, carrying two brimming bowls of stew and two mugs of cider.

"Sorry I took so long," he said breathlessly as he squeezed between two tables to reach them. "Bit of a queue." He stopped when he saw Colin. "Oh, hello, Colin! Was I interrupting something?" He looked from her to Colin, who was slouched quietly in his seat, his eyes gazing dully at Ron and Hermione.

"Not at all," she said, and shook her head. Whatever she might have learned had slipped away the moment Neville had spoken.

Neville smiled and slipped into the seat beside her. He pushed a steaming bowl of stew in front of her, along with a mug of cider. "Tuck in," he said brightly, grabbing his own bowl and spoon. " I hope you like it, as it's all they've got."

The unspoken and unanswered question lingered in her mind for a while, but soon it was banished by the rich, meaty smell of beef stew, and because she was fifteen and mentally exhausted, she temporarily gave up the chase and allowed herself to be swept up in talk about the Quidditch match next weekend and the latest inter-House romances.

Behind her, the Gobstones rolled over the floor like tiny, round bones.