Animalexus

Snape was, for once, relieved rather than irritated by the revolving staircase leading up to the Headmaster's office. The prospect of climbing the height himself was not appealing at the moment. He glanced down. His wand was still tightly clenched in one hand, and he forced himself to relinquish his hold and tuck it back inside his robes.

Dumbledore made as if to stand when Snape entered, but Snape stayed him with a growled, "Don't bother." He settled himself into one of the high-backed chairs opposite the massive desk. Snape never had liked this office. Too grand, all of it. Ostentatious. But then, he was able to recognize that few other wizards' tastes ran similar to his own. Dungeons were not in high demand as living or working quarters.

"Tea?"

"No."

"Are you--"

"I'm fine." Snape closed his eyes for a brief moment, then reached inside his robes and pulled out a tiny silver flask. He unscrewed the cap after two tries and downed the contents in one gulp. He relaxed, confident that his potion would begin to work shortly and he'd feel a bit less exhausted, if not more comfortable.

Dumbledore watched him closely. "What happened, Severus?"

"Nothing much worth reporting, really. The DeathEater population has decreased by one."

Dumbledore raised an eyebrow.

Snape held his gaze. "The Dark Lord was, predictably, decidedly less than pleased to have lost his Animalexus."

"Were you able to ascertain what exactly happened?"

Snape frowned. "You didn't ask her?"

"It was not the time, Severus."

"It was exactly the time," he muttered into his cloak. "Would've heard the truth, anyway." He raised his eyes. "You do need to talk to her, though. As soon as possible. She knows things about the Dark Lord's operations that even I don't, Headmaster. The other DeathEaters--" Snape winced inwardly at his own wording. "--They'll talk about anything in front of her. She knows names, faces...she's used in a lot of interrogations; she'll have gleaned some information from that--"

"Severus." Dumbledore's eyes were dangerously close to sparkling in amusement, and Snape felt the beginning of a curl at his upper lip. "It is not the time."

Snape held the older man's gaze for a few long seconds before clearing his throat. "Fine. What happened this afternoon. Near as I can figure, Sythe--he's that young prat from the Continent, the--"

"Yes, I remember."

"He was supposed to be returning Miss Llewellur to her quarters, such as they are, but he was evidently a bit off, having been subjected just prior to a rather extensive punishment for failing at some inane task or another." Snape inclined his head slightly. "She's a smart girl; she took advantage of the situation. Grabbed his wand and jumped into the nearest fireplace."

"I assume, then, that Sythe is the one who is no longer with us?"

"After a full hour of...that... I should hope not."

"And what about you, Severus?" asked Dumbledore, softly. "What was your crime?" He looked meaningfully at Snape's hands, at the slight residual tremors there he couldn't manage to hide.

Snape pulled his hands quickly under his cloak. "I was late."

Dumbledore seemed to sink a little. "I cannot tell you how much it means to the Order to have you working for us. You know that, of course, but I do want to reiterate how very sorry I am that you have to go through all this so--"

"It's the least I deserve," Snape said, shortly. Dumbledore had no idea how true that was. Snape had far from confessed all of his sins to the man across from him.

"You're thinking of Marie's parents."

"I'm thinking of a hell of a lot more than that." He would have sighed if it had been in his character, but instead he simply straightened further in the high-backed chair and set his jaw more solidly. "I meant what I said in the hospital ward, Headmaster: I killed those people quickly, it was a mercy, and it was stupid."

Dumbledore watched him expectantly. Snape stared back, determined not to do it this time, but as always he gave in and elaborated after only a few moments of silence. Damned if he understood how the old man always drew the words out of him.

"That was my first kill after I went back," he explained. "The fact that I didn't torture them to death cast suspicion on me, where my loyalties lay, etcetera. Should've just done it." He pointed one hand lazily towards a dark corner of the office, mimed a flick of the wand. It was a gesture any young magical child might perform, though Snape doubted many of them did so with the word 'Crucio' in mind. He was going to die one of these days. Someone was going to get too suspicious, the Dark Lord was going to find another Potions Master, something was going to snap, and his life wouldn't be worth it any more. He still wasn't certain whether or not Dumbledore really understood that.

He received his answer when Fawkes flew across the room and landed on the table next to Snape. The bird didn't move to touch him, but he bobbed his head and watched him closely through disturbingly sentient eyes, and Snape could feel the warmth and goodwill even at the distance. And the sorrow. He looked at the Phoenix out of the corner of his own eye and wondered briefly what Fawkes would say to him if he could understand.

"Marie is doing better," Dumbledore said, though Snape hadn't asked.

"The Veritaserum will be starting to wear off."

"She's a remarkably bright girl."

"Yes."

"She's had no formal training whatsoever, though. McGonnagal and I are going to begin tutoring her privately immediately, bring in other professors as it seems feasible."

He couldn't keep the sarcasm out of his tone. "And what are you going to teach her? 'Wingardium Leviosa'?"

Dumbledore, blast him, kept his tone perfectly calm and reasonable. "What would you suggest, Severus?"

He snorted. "Defense Against the Dark Arts about ten times over. Possibly," he muttered, more to himself than to Dumbledore, "Without the 'Defense Against' element." The Headmaster's usually-bright eyes did darken considerably at that, and in some part of his thoughts, Snape realized he'd just shattered any chance he might ever have had of winning the DADA professor's position. But, damn it, this was a unique situation. "Come now, you don't really think--" Snape bit off his own words, though, because it was clear that Dumbledore really did think. That this was going to work. That somehow Llewellur could stay here, have a halfway decent life, that she wouldn't have to go back to the Dark Lord and face all that again.

"How do you plan to explain her presence to the students? She's too old to pass as any but the oldest student, and as you yourself point out, her total lack of magical training precludes that as well. For the same reason, she cannot serve as some sort of instructor, either..." He trailed off, and the Headmaster resolutely refused to meet his eyes. Snape cleared his throat. "All right, then, by tomorrow they will have been able to trace the Floo and they'll know she's here, though they no doubt already suspect. How do you plan on keeping up this charade if the Dark Lord demands that I find and return her, as he certainly will? There is no way to protect Miss Llewellur if you would have me maintain my position with the Dark Lord." Rare was the time Snape had seen Dumbledore at a total loss, but he did not appear to have any answers now. He waited for several long, silent seconds, but the Headmaster didn't speak.

Snape shook his head, stood abruptly. "You'll excuse me. I have classes to teach come morning."

***

Marie still hadn't taken off her cloak. The rooms Dumbledore had given her for the time being were at the end of the Professor's Hall, and were more than adequate. She couldn't help but shrink back from the aura of magic that infused every bit of the place, though. It was different from that which hovered in the very air of the Dark Lord's headquarters, of course, but 'good magic / bad magic' was not a distinction Marie was terribly interested in making. She would be more than happy to never see or experience another magical event ever again, to go back to the Muggle world of shopping centers and suburbia. She shook her head in a silent scolding, sat on the wide canopied bed. She had no right to complain. This was better than the stone room He had kept her in, wasn't it? Little better than a cell, that. And at least, as Head of Slytherin House, Snape lived in an entirely different--and she hoped, remote--part of the castle.

The Mark on her arm had stopped throbbing, but the pain hadn't quite gone entirely. Marie rubbed the spot absently, through the sleeve of her robe, but didn't bother pushing the fabric up to look. She knew what she'd find: the skull-and-serpent Mark no different than that borne by all DeathEaters, except for the image of a narrow chain crossing under the skull and around her forearm. It looked like little more than ink, but the chains felt real, every link solid. Not-so-subtle proof that she was a slave. It was the reason she'd said 'Hogwarts' when she'd jumped into that fireplace, the reason she'd come to another magical place rather than disappearing back into the Muggle world. That Mark on her skin--and it was more than surface; it reached to her soul--bound her to the Dark Lord, and the instant she stepped outside the bounds of the wards around the school, He would be able to remotely Apparate her back to that hell.

This was ridiculous. Hogwarts would rapidly become another prison. What the hell had she been thinking? Not that she had been thinking. It was fear, impulse, action. No rational thought anywhere in there. But Christ, she wasn't any safer here than anywhere else. If she'd thought about it at all, she would have remembered hearing that Snape was employed here, that many of the DeathEaters' children attended school here. For all she knew, Floo Networks--even illegal ones like the Dark Lord's--could be traced, for all she knew, she'd already been found out. And much-lauded anti-Apparition wards notwithstanding, Marie knew enough about the magical world to realize that 'impossible' didn't really exist, any more than 'impenetrable' did. She knew better than to feel safe.

She started at the sound of the knock. It was late, too late for most people to be up. After all, it was a 'school night', foreign as the phrase seemed to her nowadays. Marie pulled her cloak more tightly around her when she opened the door and saw Snape there. It took all her effort not to slam the door. For all the good it would do, if he really wanted in. She'd witnessed his work; he was an extremely powerful wizard. "What do you want?" she asked, more quietly than she'd intended.

Snape held out a stoppered glass bottle filled with a reddish liquid. "It's a Dreamless Sleep Draught."

She made no move to take it.

Snape rolled his eyes, but did not seem in the least bit surprised. "I'd drink from it to prove it's not poison, but as the effects are rather immediate and as I doubt you want me staying the night in your foyer..."

Marie accepted the bottle without a thank you.

"Has the Veritaserum worn off yet?"

She swallowed, forced her answer. "Yes."

Snape noticed the hesitation, though, and something almost like satisfaction played at the corners of his lips. "Nearly," he said.

"Is Sythe dead?"

He rocked back slightly on his heels, and his robes swished. "Much as I would love to engage in a late evening chat with you, Miss Llewellur, the subject matter would be rather difficult to explain should anyone overhear." He glanced pointedly down the dark hall.

Marie grudgingly opened the door wider. She felt terribly vulnerable without any kind of weapon, especially when she knew he had a wand and could do almost anything with it. She held the cloak yet more tightly, as if the threadbare fabric could stop harm from coming to her.

"Yes," Snape said, as soon as the door was shut behind him, "Sythe is dead. You can't have expected any less."

"I killed him, then."

"As I have just spent a significant portion of my evening watching the Dark Lord execute him, I very much doubt that that is possible."

"You know what I mean."

"Sythe wasn't going to last much longer regardless," Snape said, in a bored tone, sounding as though he was unsure why he was bothering to try to assuage her guilt. And Marie certainly didn't know why she was looking to him for comfort, however slight.

She looked at Snape's hands. "And you?"

He hid them behind his robes, pressed his lips into an even thinner line beneath that sharply-downturned nose, the lines in the surrounding skin creasing deeply. "As you noted earlier, the Dark Lord does not take kindly to tardiness."

Marie looked at the floor, and she saw in her peripheral vision that Snape stared resolutely ahead, at the wall behind her head. At least she was reasonably certain he was no more comfortable in this situation than she was. "What makes you think I'll need this?" she asked, giving the bottle he'd brought her a slight shake.

"I've guarded you," Snape said, simply. "You scream in your sleep."

"I think about them every day, you know," she said, abruptly. She hadn't planned on saying anything at all--certainly not this--and wondered if Snape was right, if that Veritaserum Wormtail had forced down her throat this morning had yet to wear off entirely. "My mum and dad. When you killed them."

"As do I, Miss Llewellur," Snape said tersely, and turned and left.