Darkly Bound

13

We made our way out of Knockturn Alley. The sunlight was blinding and the throbbing in my head was nearly crippling. I caught sight of a small apothecary shop on one corner.

"I've got to go in there for a minute. I need something to get rid of this headache before we go to the ministry." I ducked into the cool dark shop, leaving Snape on the pavement outside.

An elderly witch saw me come in an approached eagerly. "Oh dear, you do look a bit peaky. Come in, we'll see if we can get you all fixed up."

"Thanks. I've got a rather busy day today. It hasn't started very well."

"Well what's the matter? Is it....are you...?" the little witch smiled brightly

"What? Am I? No! Oh, no. No, that's not it. I had a bit of a shock, that's all. A very unpleasant surprise."

She looked disappointed. "Ah well, not to worry." She walked over to a cabinet and took two small bottles off a glass shelf. "What you should do is go get yourself a nice cup of tea. Take these. This one," she held up a round bottle full of a thick green liquid, "will settle your stomach. And this powder will stop the headache. You'll be right as rain in no time."

"Thank you," I said as she began wrapping the bottles in paper. "I'll have this too," I picked up a box of peppermints from a display on the counter and popped several of them into my mouth..

"Of course, dear, here you go."

I stepped back out into the sunlight. I couldn't see anything but a bright blur. "What did she give you?" Snape asked from behind me.

"I don't know. Deadly nightshade I hope. How much time do we have?"

He took the parcel. "We have time enough for this."

I had no idea where we were now. It was a lot more pleasant than Knockturn Alley, wherever it was and for the moment that was enough. We went into a restaurant and after Snape had a brief conference with someone who might have been the manager we were shown a back room with only a few tables, none of them in use. A silver tea service appeared instantly, two steaming cups already poured. I sat down and drank, washing the peppermint taste out of my mouth.

Snape sat across the table and watched as I opened the parcel from the apothecary. He eyed the little bottles suspiciously. "What did she tell you those were?"

I glared at him and held out the green bottle, "Stomach." Then the powder, "Head." I knew he was trying not to laugh and I ignored him and dumped the green bottle into my tea.

He stopped laughing when I opened the bottle of powder.

"I wouldn't mix those if I were you."

I glared at him again and he raised his hands up in defeat. I looked him straight in the eye and poured the powder into my teacup.

"Don't say I didn't warn you."

I drank the whole foul mixture then put my head down on the table and waited to die. I hoped it would be messy, just so he'd have to explain it to the manager and I made sure he heard what I was thinking. A few minutes ticked by and I began to feel considerably better. Snape was reading the newspaper making nasty comments about something on every page and then claiming all the crossword clues were misleading.

"Do you mind?" I said from the tabletop. "Can't a woman die in peace and quiet?"

"Not today. Look. Here's something you'll want to see."

"I seriously doubt that," I said but lifted my head expecting the pain to explode back to it's full force.

"It appears that your gentleman friend has managed to find his otter."

"Alright. I give in. I shouldn't have mixed those potions. You don't have to gloat."

"I'm not gloating and I know that headache's gone, so look here. Muggle police found a gentleman wandering around the vicinity of Payneshill. He had no identification and seemed disoriented."

"Give me that!" I snatched the paper out of his hands. It did indeed seem that Mr. Worsthorne had been recovered. His mind had been wiped clean, but he was alive and ministry psi-chologists were working to reconstruct what had happened. "I want to see him." I said.

"That's not going to happen."

"Why not? He's probably here, in London. Ministry doctors are treating him. I was there! I can help him. We can. This is just like when--"

"You'll never get near him. Let me explain how this works. There really is no Ministry of Magic as such. That's too easy. One big monolithic body. It'd never work. Not only that, but it'd be far too vulnerable. So, what most think of as 'The Ministry' is really just a front organization of politicians and bureaucrats. That is where we're going today. It means nothing. Those people strut around and think they wield lots of power over who does what, but they really don't. You don't think for one minute someone like Cornelius Fudge would have the wherewithal to reconstruct the memories of an experienced Auror, do you?"

"Well having never met Mr. Fudge--"

"Oh you'll be most impressed if you should ever have that honor," he said derisively.

"Take another look at those maps you were sent before the Azkaban job. Did those look like the work of the ministry you've heard about?"

He had me there. I'd been wondering about that myself. Those maps were ingenious. They had to have taken days, possibly weeks to construct and had to have been created by someone with great expertise in what they were doing.

"So you see, he's probably not in London at all. He could be anywhere. The real work of the ministry goes on behind that screen. Of course, there are departments that are housed in ministry buildings, ones that need to be seen to work, like, for instance, Arthur Weasley's department. The 'law and order' sections." He leaned back and looked at me levelly. "You see now?"

"Who are you working for?"

"I won't tell you that. And don't try to drag it out of my thoughts, either. You know too much for your own good already. You remember what Malfoy said the last time we were here in London. You were in danger even then. Imagine if they knew what you'd just been a party to. Just try to be satisfied with the fact that Mr. Worsthorne has found his otter, even if he couldn't have found a better excuse for disappearing for several days."

His gaze drifted and I could feel his thoughts change over. Something was ticking over in his mind. It was like watching someone pick a lock, listening as each tumbler fell into place. I caught snatches of his thoughts; went to see a man about an otter...should have put him in Ravenclaw...my little coven... these young ladies have been debating love charms.... He went absolutely white as the last piece fell into place. I was shaking with laughter and the harder I tried to stop it, the worse it got.

He looked at me in a panic. "You can't think this is funny."

"Oh, but it can't be anything else but funny!"

"Do you know what Dumbledore told the school about why we were gone?"

"How could I know? I could never read Dumbledore's thoughts. If I knew, you'd know."

"It'll be all over the school!"

I was practically choking with laughter but he was so upset I was starting to feel bad about it. "Look. You've got to calm down. No one is going to care what a bunch of silly schoolgirls can cook up about a couple of missing teachers."

"Half the population of Hogwarts is 'silly school girls'. This is all your fault."

"What? How is it my fault? That stupid story about my putting a love charm on you came straight out of Slytherin House!"

"Well we'll have points off Slytherin to start with. You encouraged them."

"I warned you off. You had plenty of time to get out of there before any harm was done, but oh no! The Potions Master can't resist a grand entrance, can he? Poetry and all!"

"This is a disaster!"

"Now wait just a minute. What, exactly, is so horrible? Would it be so bad if it were true?"

"What are you on about?"

"You make it sound like a fate worse than death! You've been face to face with Voldemort and you think the idea of being under a love charm is 'a disaster'? Am I that bad?"

"No, that's not--you know what I mean!"

"No, I don't, Severus, why don't you tell me? What would you say to me if I told you it was true?"

"It's not true. Don't be stupid!"

"It might be," I leaned back in my chair and grinned maliciously. "You'd have no way of knowing."

"I would. First of all I am not, to paraphrase your own description 'prostrate at your feet, peeling you grapes and reading the sonnets of Shakespeare'."

I stood up, walked over to him and leaned in close to his face.

"We're not fourteen years old. That's not a love spell, that's a fantasy. A love charm is something else entirely. I'm surprised you don't know that." I reached out and brushed a stray strand of hair out of his face. "A love spell takes time. Once cast it begins to grow. What's that you like to say? 'Bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses?' And there it begins to take root, eventually to bud just waiting for that one last word from the enchanter to bring it into bloom. Are you ready, Severus? Are you ready for that word?"

"Moody was right," he whispered. "You are a dark witch

I smiled, "as black as they come," and kissed him. I felt I was falling into him again that sense that time and space had ceased to exist around us. I felt his hands cupping my face then his lips sliding down my throat. I pulled away just enough to look at him. His hair had fallen forward over his eyes and I reached out to brush it back and kissed his forehead. But some motion caught the corner of my eye and I jerked away.

"No," he whispered, "why?"

"Damn! Damn it! It's Malfoy!"

Snape snapped to attention so fast he nearly fell out of his chair. "What the hell is he doing here? He can't see us together outside of Hogwarts, no matter what. We'll apparate straight to the ministry. He'll never know we were here."

14

The ministry buildings were impressive. Taking up an entire city block, it appeared that the entire complex had been assembled as a final exam by an architecture student. There didn't seem to be any particular design, rather a mix of styles from the past thousand years. Massive columns soared from the street level to support gothic arches at the entrances. Just inside was an imposing rotunda painted with an astrological map of the night sky at the summer solstice.

People were everywhere and everyone looked very determined and busy. The interior of the main lobby looked like a combination of a very busy train station and a working embassy.

"Look at this!" I said, awestruck.

A wave of annoyance hit me from Snape. "Put your eyes back in you head and don't act like a tourist."

"I am a tourist!" I snapped.

He stalked off leaving me gaping at the ceiling. It wasn't painted, it was enchanted like the ceiling in the great hall at Hogwarts. I stood for a few moments watching the ceiling until a shooting star shot by. Snape hadn't come back, but I could see him standing over by a desk poring over a large ledger book. I walked over to him.

"Find anything nice in the gift shop?" he asked with a sneer.

"Overpriced. What's the matter here?" The ledger he was looking through was an enormous appointment book.

He took my arm and began walking briskly towards a corridor. "We're not going to see the talking heads after all," he said grimly.

"Oh no? Is that bad?"

"I don't know."

Wherever we were going it seemed to take forever. The corridors were sloping downward and I'd lost count of the stairways we'd descended and Snape's mood was degenerating with every step. It was getting so bad I couldn't make out any specific thoughts at all, just a general sense of foreboding.

"It is bad, isn't it?"

"I told you I don't know."

"Well where are we going? You do know where we're going, don't you?"

"Department of Dark Arts Authorization."

I stopped in my tracks. "What?"

"You heard me."

"Authorization? There is such a thing? What on earth for?"

He stopped and looked at me in astonishment. "You, of all people, have to ask that?"

"That's not fair. One spell! And I haven't had to use it. Really use it, I mean."

He strode off again in the direction of yet another staircase.

"Well I'll tell you one thing," I called down after him, "I'm not looking forward to the trip back up."

He paused for a moment and I detected a flicker in his foul mood before he continued down. I followed the rest of the way wordlessly. Finally we came to a heavy wooden door at the end of a torch lit corridor.

"After you," Snape said as he opened the heavy door.

The room was not at all what I had expected. I had been ready to step into another museum of horrors like Mr. Borgin's shop, but this was quite the opposite. It looked exactly like an accountant's office. There was no visible source of light, but the quality was exactly like that of flourescent tubes. The furniture was modern industrial, down to the olive-drab painted metal filing cabinets.

A tall wizard with a long mustache peeked out from behind a cubicle as we entered. "Ah you made it! Welcome. I'm Peter Tilbury. Did you have any trouble finding us? I don't know why they feel they have to tuck us away down here, I suppose it's because of the "dark arts" in the name. Give people the willies to have us on the upper storeys." He pushed his wheeled office chair over to a neighboring desk and picked up a thick file, then stood up and walked over to us. "Please come with me, we'll go sit in the conference room."

I suddenly realized that Snape's bad mood had turned into astonishment and that he had absolutely no idea what he was looking at. It's all Muggle furniture. This is what they use in their offices. He was looking around the place as if everyone was wearing grass skirts and drinking out of hollow pineapples. Then he looked at me as if it was all my idea.

"Well come on," called Tilbury lightly, "this way please!"

He motioned us to seats at the round table surrounded by padded office chairs. "Miss Claros, if you'll sit here, please." he indicated the seat next to him as he dropped the heavy file onto the table. I looked down at it and noticed that it was clearly labeled with my name. What could possibly be in it? Why was it so thick?

Snape had picked up my thoughts and I saw him looking at me questioningly. I shot him a question. Is this bad?

Yes. This is bad, He nodded, but never took his eyes off the file.

"Oh no, of course it's not bad! Don't worry yourselves!" Tilbury interrupted brightly. Snape and a I both jumped. "Oh sorry! Terrible habit. Very rude of me. Please accept my apologies."

"May I ask what you've got in there, Mr. Tilbury? There seems to be quite a lot," I asked meekly.

"Oh nothing much, really."

I looked over at Snape who'd raised his eyebrow at that.

Tilbury opened the file. "Visas mostly, the disclaimers for us here that you agreed to take on certain responsibilities on your last assignment. Oh yes, and then there is this."

My throat went dry. "What's that?"

Snape leaned forward.

"Reports of a certain event that took place near Hogwarts about a month, six weeks ago?"

"Reports?"

Snape jumped in to the conversation. "What event would that be, Mr. Tilbury. Lots of things happen at Hogwarts at the beginning of term."

"Well," said Tilbury, glancing from Snape to me, "it's interesting you should mention that Sir, because your name appears in this report as well."

I could feel the blood draining out of my head. "It was my doing, all of it!" I blurted out. "Professor Snape is an innocent party in this. It was done for his protection, and it's true that turned out to be unnecessary in the end but I assure you--"

"Miss Claros, please. No one is being censured. We have some concerns, that's true, but your actions were sanctioned by Albus Dumbledore and that is enough approval for this department."

"Mr. Tilbury," Snape interrupted in a smooth, condescending tone, "if you don't mind, will you please tell us why you called us here? If that 'event' is not the issue at hand then what, pray tell, is?"

Tilbury shot him an angry glare. "Right. We'll get right to it then, shall we?" He turned his chair toward me. "Miss Claros. You assisted in the Azkaban project." He lifted yet another stack of papers out of the folder. I recognized those. "That mission, as you know was quite a success."

"I don't think Peregrine Worsthorne--"

Don't start that here!

I looked over at Snape who'd resumed glaring. "--would quite agree there, but yes, go on."

"Um, yes, well....as you know, being an Auror, that different Aurors come to the job with different skills."

"Of course."

"And you might also know that there are actually very few Aurors who are full-fledged clairvoyants, like yourself." He waited for a response. He got none. "Right. Here's the thing. We, meaning the Ministry, need a seer. A good one, one we can trust but one that, well, the other side, won't recognize. Your record here," he indicated the files, "and the fact that Dumbledore trusts you with the lives of his confidants places you in the forefront for this position."

A roiling, malevolent cloud of suspicion rolled across the room from Snape, whose eyes looked like black holes.

"Are you offering me a job?" I asked incredulously. A job with the ministry. It would mean leaving Hogwarts but that might not be such a bad thing. I'd be out from under Moody's eerie stare. Even Dumbledore seemed to have lost interest in me since the binding had proved unnecessary.

The venom coming from Snape was so palpable now I was amazed we couldn't actually see it. It hit me like a storm when he heard what I was thinking.

"Mr. Tilbury," said Snape in the silky, threatening voice he used when browbeating students. "Doctor Claros has a job. She has students who depend on her. Albus Dumbledore himself hired her to work at Hogwarts. I'm sure, somewhere in that ridiculous stack of papers you keep waving around, you'll find why her presence at Hogwarts is critical."

I looked at him in amazement, then turned back to Tilbury.

"What would this entail, exactly? Seeing is hardly a Dark Art, why is this coming from your department?" I asked.

"No, of course it's not, but because of your," he waved weakly at the file, "history and...um...certain other factors," here he glanced quickly up at Snape who snorted with disgust, "Yes, well, to be blunt you'd be a spy, mostly. From a distance, of course."

"That would involve complete trancing."

"Which we would control," said Tilbury.

No! You can not do this! Snape got up from the table and started pacing.

I watched him cross the room, his demeanor was alarming. This is what I do. What do you think a diviner does? He shot me a glance that went through me like daggers. I turned to Tilbury. "You control? Exactly how do you propose to control these sessions?"

Tilbury was watching Snape pace with an expression of interest on his face and he answered while watching him make another pass across the room. "We have experts in the field. Nothing to worry ab--"

"Who?" Snape had stopped his pacing and turned to face Tilbury nearly lunging across the table at him. "Names. Give me the names of your so-called experts."

I knew what he was thinking, he'd probably taught those experts. "You can do it, Severus. You're as much an expert in this as anyone else."

He froze where he was and I felt his mind go completely blank. It was like watching a blackboard being erased. "Never. I will never, ever do such a thing." That's what killed my mother. She died during a trance because someone got the potion wrong! Four children she left! Just because some bloody idiot got the potion wrong!

Tilbury was looking back and forth between us with more interest than I thought was necessary.

You wouldn't get the potion wrong.

He looked like I'd just slapped him across the face.

I turned to Tilbury, "Mr. Tilbury, this is very tricky. I don't use potions in scrying--"

"This interview is over." Snape declared. "As I told you earlier, Dr. Claros has a job, an important one, at Hogwarts."

I stared at him in disbelief, then with great effort turned back to Tilbury who was watching Snape closely. He spoke to me without taking his eyes off Snape who had resumed pacing.

"All we are doing now is making a offer. I'm telling you the position is yours if you want it. I can see now that there is more at stake here, well, personally than we had anticipated." His words took me by surprise. "Perhaps you will do us the courtesy to at least consider our offer. You'll need to discuss it, both of you, of course. Headmaster Dumbledore is aware we had asked you to come in, in case he mentions it."

"Oh we'll be sure and mention it to him when we see him!" Snape snarled. "Which will be tomorrow. We're going back first thing in the morning."

That was news to me, and not good news either, but under the circumstances I thought I'd better keep quiet about that. I kept my back turned to Snape and thanked Tilbury for his offer assuring him I would consider it carefully. He shuffled the papers in the file nervously. "Well then, shall I show you the way out?"

"No, thank you," I said cooly. "I'm sure we can manage."

He left the room in a hurry shuffling sideways past Snape who had abandoned the tiger impression for his more familiar and self-comforting vampire bat pose. I stood absolutely still with my back towards him for what seemed like a very long time trying to compose my thoughts. When I turned around and saw the smug look on his face it blew any calm I'd forced into my head right back out again.

"Just who the hell do you think you are?" I hissed at him.

The smug look vanished, "I beg your pardon?"

"What, exactly did you think you were doing? Who appointed you my agent?"

"You can't be serious. You're not considering this ridiculous idea."

"Why wouldn't I consider it?"

"Because you have a job!"

"So you said." I turned away, seething. "What would be your assessment of that job so far? Speaking as my agent, of course."

"I don't know what you mean."

"I'll give you some time to think about it." With that I left the room taking extra care to dramatically sweep my own black robes behind me. I walked through the main office and out into the torch-lit corridor. I leaned against the wall outside the office and hoped he wasn't too close behind. I needed time to catch my breath and figure out what had just happened. I knew without a doubt that there was far more going on here than Tilbury was willing to let on at a first interview, but he was a skilled telepath and had been carefully shielded. More of a worry was Snape's reaction. He'd been outraged at the thought of my taking Tilbury up on his offer even before the details had been given. And then there was Renata. It all came back to Renata. I began walking towards the first staircase knowing I had to keep moving if I wanted to stay alone any longer.

I made my way up staircase after staircase with these questions running through my mind, I'd become completely oblivious to everything else around me until I felt rough pull on my arm as I was about to step up the last step into the lobby of the ministry building. I gasped with surprise as I was pulled back down off the step.

It was Snape and he was furious. "We're going to have this out, you and I, once and for all." he hissed

in my ear.

"Right here?" I smirked.

"No, not 'right here'!" he snapped and forcibly escorted me out of the building.