In the Pensieve's Keep

Chapter Two: Back to Before

He did not know quite what it was that had sparked the sudden cold dread of intuition, the flooding knowledge that something was terribly wrong. He had been prowling the halls, knowing that the fair weather that was threatening to descend at any moment had a tendency to awake the mischief in the students that the dark winter had subdued temporarily. The evening was quiet and still, however, as he continued to walk the halls. It had flooded him then; some instinctive defensiveness honed by too many years steeped in darkness and isolation.

Snape pulled his wand and whirled fiercely on his heel, acutely aware of a presence lurking behind him.

"A-anything amiss?" questioned a trembling Professor Quirrel, eyeing the wand anxiously.

"Aside from the knowledge that half this school is Slytherins and Gryffindors waging constant war against each other and that it logically follows that inevitably something somewhere is amiss every waking moment of any given day in the life of your average insomiatic head of house? Aside from that, no, no obvious sights, sounds, or smells of mischief. That, however, is no proof of relentance from the more troublesome nature of our students."

"Old sp-spider senses just tingling, then?" Quirrell followed this with a nervous chuckle that hiccoughed into a hysterical stream of choking sound. "S-s-so sorry, b-bad joke, eh?"

Severus offered what he considered his most ingratiating sneer. Quirrel was blatant in attempts to befriend the distant Potions master, attempts that Snape rebuffed with even less subtlety.

"Any particular reason you're tailing me?" Snape growled, annoyed that Quirrel had interrupted his heated pursuit of whatever it was that had lit his panic.

"I h-heard a bit of a commotion in m-my classroom. N-nothing m-m- missing, best I could tell. I thought maybe you h-heard it too."

"Thank you for the warning, I'm sure they are up to something and will certainly return to you any properly labeled stolen property."

"I l-labeled everything in the lab af-after the last round of th- thefts," Quirrel nodded thoughtfully. Snape furrowed his brow, making a mental note to explain sarcasm to the Dark Arts professor. He turned off towards the entrance hall. He had been walking past the main doors when he was consumed by a sickening sense of déjà vu. An unnatural number of students were congregating around the lake on the raw March evening. Snape flung the door open and strode purposefully over the grounds, the frosted grass crunching underfoot. He could see a uniformed student, identity unclear, but he feared too easily guessed, stumbling over the bank towards the water's edge. As he neared the knot of quiet, watching students, he finally pieced together what was going on.

He spotted the demonic glow of their lamps first. At first he was not sure what the ghostly, dim glow was, but shortly connected it to their wispy little bodies and their horribly wicked eyes. There were two of them, no doubt stolen from the Dark Arts classroom where they were kept in a covered tank; their disappearance would not have been immediately noted. One was ahead of the student, leading her down to the dark water, while the other lurked behind, eager for the kill. He was running now, though looking back he would not remember breaking his earlier stride. He would only remember that distant form collapsing into the water. The creatures growing frenzied as they lured her to submerge herself. The girl's face going under.

Severus hit the edge of the water and suddenly the congregation broke its stupor and scattered towards the school. Given the urgency of the moment, he disregarded them and instead pulled his wand, obliterating the pair of hinkypunks. Banished, their sway over the student suddenly broke, and the surface of the water broke with her tashing. With unrealized strength, his arms were around the girl, pulling her free of the weeds and muck, hauling her to the embankment. As he laid her down, the course of adrenaline died away, leaving him violently aware of the icy cold of the water, so sharp it burned. Shivering, he bent over the student, who was choking on lake water and convulsing with fear and cold. He looked at her face for the first time and his earlier suspicions were confirmed; the scrawny little thing he had pulled from the lake was one of his own fifth year students, Strava Dolohov.

He felt particularly responsible for her. She was wise enough to never speak it, but seemed drawn to him, drawn to their shared history, his familiarity with her father. She well aware of his past affiliations, and seemed to sense that he too had been miserable among his peers, something she understood too well. The other students had hated her in name already; they jeered the first time when they read her name to be Sorted. When her cold eyes searched them for sympathy as her calculated determination placed her in Slytherin, they had all the proof they needed. Some of their parents were Aurors, the rest simply remembered the fear of Voldemort's reign of terror. She was in the house they instinctively hated. It did not help either that she was incredibly studious. While she did not posses any particular skill or even competency with a wand, she had taken with great skill, attention, and fascination to Potions, earning his respect and greater venom from students with considerably less aptitude. By all accounts and purposes, Strava Dolohov, weak, timid, and bookish, was an enemy of Gryffindor.

"We need to get you into the school, you need to see Madame Pomphrey. I will speak to Dumbledor about what happened." He lifted her to her feet, and supported her weight against his own body. Her small frame was trembling furiously.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," the jagged edges of her voice were beating a ragged cadence of apologies. She stumbled and he tightened his grip around her waist, literally seeing red. Seething anger was coursing through him.

"Do not apologize. You were foolish to take whatever bait they used to lead you to the lake, but that does not mean you deserved this. And Dumbledor will understand that once they released the hinkypunks, all action was beyond your control. Who did this, Strava?" Snape asked.

"Weasleys. Bill and Charlie. And Mick Unkas." They walked silently, the distance to the school seeming much greater at the careful speed he lead her. After a long few minutes, she spoke. Her voice was thin but even.

"At first I wasn't scared. The light was so consuming, it just filled me. I felt I had to follow the warmth, or return to the cold hollowness . . . I never consciously chose to follow and I don't think I could have chosen to turn away. Because it wasn't frightening or horrible, but the moment their control over me snapped, the coldness and the dark were all around me, I couldn't breath, and every wretched thing they had displaced from my mind came rushing back into the void. And that's what's unbearable. Every horror, every tragedy, every moment of agony is so fresh and grating it feels like it just happened," the girl's voice broke suddenly. The girl who had looked down her nose at teenage melodrama and had never cracked under stress was crying helplessly on his arm. He quickened his stride, fighting back the sickening familiarity of the entire scene. It was too similar to the cruelty that had been the Gryffindor standard for his entire student career. He finally reached the school's main doors, shocked to have them opened for him by a bustling Professor McGonagall.

"Bring her in here. I came as soon as Mr. Weasley told me what he witnessed at the lake. I will take her from here, Severus, you're soaked."

"Misters Weasley, Weasely, and Unkas, were responsible for this, Minerva," Snape glowered at her. He was vaguely aware that Madame Pomphrey had stepped between them, wrapping the girl in a blanket and pulling her off with her.

"Professor Snape--," Dolohov's voice was small and frightened as she was lead away.

"She will take care of you Strava. Minerva, given your earthshattering observation that I am wet, I will go change. I trust we will continue this soon in Dumbledore's office?"

"If you insist upon your intervention--."

"My intervention is the only reason that student is alive."

"Hogwash."

"I will meet you in his office. This has gone too far."

Fifteen minutes later, Severus Snape stormed into Albus Dumbledore's office, not bothering to hide his fury.

"Headmaster, I presume we will spend tonight arranging the expulsion of these three," he growled, pointing dangerously at the boys Strava had identified.

"Severus, do not be so quick in your judgment. Let them give you the explanation they have offered before we order their execution, shall we? Take a seat, listen to what they have to say. Have a biscuit. Is that too much to ask?" Albus replied, unnervingly calm and fair. Severus lowered himself into a chair with great reluctance and no intention whatsoever of accepting a snack in his foul mood. He did not miss the smirk on Bill's face as he stared into his lap in mock repentance.

"Mr.--Master--Professor Snape, sir, we are so terribly sorry. We were in the Dark Arts classroom. We were messing with some of the . . . things in there, it's true," Charlie began, mouthpiece of the group. "Bill keeps bragging about how he can take on anything, so we kept on loosing things for him to, you know, stop. It was so stupid, sir. But he was amazing. The hinkypunks, though, they threw him. He just kind of stared dazed at them as they were escaping, so we chased after them. A couple of other Gryffindors were passing and tried to help us. We hit the water and they sort of stunned us. Dolohov was already down at the lake, honest, probably hoping to get someone in trouble. And she seemed blinded by them, started following them into the water. We would have stopped her, but we were frozen. We never meant anyone to get hurt. Honest, Professor, it was an accident." Bill seemed to be barely restraining a laugh.

"You rehearsed that little excuse how many times exactly?" Snape snapped. "Hinkypunks do not enchant masses and they do not randomly switch targets during a hunt."

"Perhaps given Miss Dolohov's mother's--unfortunate. . .and her father's state . . ."

"No point in euphemisms, Headmaster; they mock her for it constantly, they are well aware."

"Very well. Severus, Hinkypunks are distant cousins of the Dementor. They are drawn to suffering with an insatiable hunger. A mother's suicide and father's incarceration could have proven an overwhelming attraction, allowing a deviation from what we consider their normal behavior."

"Forgive me, Headmaster, but as far as unadulterated exposure to the Dark Arts, I do believe I am the expert in this room. Their story makes no sense. But I suppose that does not matter. You always have taken a rather unconcerned stance on attempted murder, haven't you?"

"Stand down, Severus, before you say something you will regret. Dumbledore is not ignoring this; all three will be receiving two weeks of detention," Minerva cut in, but he was too angry.

"Detention? Detention! That's your idea of taking this seriously? Admit it, Headmaster, you don't care what happens so long as the victim won't be missed. As long as the dead one is only a generation away from a Death Eater. You do realize that you all assumed James hated me because I had the potential to fall to the Dark Arts, but it was his torment, him and Black, pushed me over under your negligence. The warning signs were there, but you brushed them off. I was the antagonist, they had an excuse, they feigned apology, they backed out and did not actually kill me -- each time you found a way to let them off and you_ruined_me. I am a grown man, Headmaster, and I have redeemed myself. You have yet to redeem your neglect of your lesser house. Your last shot at redemption nearly died tonight, and she is already more interested in her father's legacy, more defensive of it than we should have ever let her become. But you don't give a damn. She's got the wrong house, wrong body, wrong name. Just like twenty years ago. Scrawny little Slytherin's don't deserve your protection." The words felt like they should be screamed or sobbed, but he held his taut monologue, clutching at the chair's arms. "And nothing has changed."